Items are grouped loosely according to themes, and then chronological
order. The
links here refer either to daylight saving research or to more extended,
reflective perspectives on the anti-daylight saving case. For more immediate
news articles on the subject, go to Light of Day
News.
Links entered in the last
6 months are marked *
- even if they do
not carry a recent date.
A
rare example of a published article stating the DLS opposition viewpoint
(the scarcity of which is by no means an accident!). Full of sound scientific
arguments and social obvervations concerning the misguided push to introduce
daylight saving to Queensland. The article originally appeared at the
political website Online
Opinion, where it includes comments from readers. 'Daylight
saving energy?', Andrew Bartlett, 16 January 2007
Website article
by Andrew Bartlett, Australian Senator and Brisbane resident, who mainly
argues against daylight saving for Queensland, and in favour of more research
on the viability of the energy saving argument.
Another well-argued
Brisbane-based blog that comes out against daylight saving. Good article
- and also interesting to view the blog comments at the end, which are
almost entirely split along temperate/tropical lines.
A
lively dissection of the main arguments put forward by Queensland's pro
daylight saving business lobby each year in the media.
To
put the above article in perspective, anyone who is interested in the
reality of Queensland's business and economic health - as opposed to the
'financial backwater' and 'commercial hardship' mythology heavily promoted
by the Brisbane-Gold Coast pro-daylight saving lobby - could take a look
at this article at the Australian
Bureau of Statistics. In all categories of economic criteria, Australia's
two standard time states - Queensland and Western Australia - rank either
at the top or above the national average.
Western Australia daylight saving trial, May 2009
On 16 May
2009, West Australians went to the polls to vote in their fourth daylight
saving referendum in just over 30 years. The referendum was defeated in
WA's biggest ever No vote. Here is a collection of the main No-friendly
articles that featured in the media in the lead-up to the referendum.
Based
on overall empirical data from Indiana during the first two years after
it switched to daylight saving in 2004, University of California (Santa
Barbara) researchers Matthew Kotchen and Laura Grant have found that the
Indiana clock change has led to an increase of 1% annually (and up to
4% in the fall) - translating to an increase of $9 million to the state
in energy costs. Added to this is the social cost of an estimated pollution
increase of up to $5.5 million per year.
Research
paper from the California Energy Commission, which concludes that
the recently implemented US (2007) daylight savings extension is likely
to merely shift electricity use to off-peak hours rather than create a
significant drop in power usage. Electricity use could decline 0.5 percent,
'but the savings could just as well be zero.’ [Highly
recomended]
Does Extending Daylight Saving Save Energy? Evidence from an Australian
Experiment, Centre for the Study of Energy Markets (CSEM), University
of California, January 2007
This study from the University of California, based on data from the early
(winter) shift to daylight saving in Victoria, Australia prior to the
2000 Sydney Olympics, actually reports a negative energy
saving. The report concluded that reduced
energy use in the evening hours was entirely negated by the new morning
spike in power consumption as Victorian households turned on their lights
and heaters while getting ready for work.’
Voltscommissar
- Electricity Industry Watchdog, Website
of Victorian energy expert, Michael Gunter, who recommends the abolition
of daylight saving as a way of reducing the demand on baseload energy
consumption, which is far more polluting than peak-energy generation.
Blog
entry for a US health and fitness site that carries a poll and commentary
section. At time of writing, the poll results in answer to the question
'Is daylight saving adversely affecting you?' are 77% (175 votes) Yes,
and 23% No (53 votes). Although online polls are far from representative
samples, the fact that this is a health and fitness blog and that it seems
to be targeting young women indicate that acceptance of daylight saving
could well be waning over time.
Note
also: The entry contains a set of helpful links to related blog
entries on daylight saving's effect on health and fitness.
'This darker side of daylight-saving time
has some doctors and researchers concerned about the impact the earlier
time change [since the US 2007 DST extension)will have on people with
winter depression. That's because there is a growing body of research
showing that dark mornings—not short days—are the real trigger
for seasonal affective disorder, a form of clinical depression that occurs
cyclically every winter.'
Abstract
from two German studies, using a large (n = 55,000) and small population
sample (n = 50), both of which reveal that people readily adjust to the
release from DST in autumn but poorly adjust to the DST imposition in
spring - largely because humans adjust to the east-west
progression of dawn within a given time zone. The studies conclude that
the disruptive effects of DST are 'poorly understood' and that 'this disruption
may extend to other aspects of seasonal biology in humans'. *'Daylight
Saving Time: Clock shifts affect our risk of heart attack', Science
Daily, 30 October 2008
A
Swedish study ('Shifts to
and from Daylight Saving Time and Incidence of Myocardial Infarction,'
Janszky I,
Ljung R, New England Journal of Medicine)
has found that there is an increased risk of heart attack following the
forward daylight saving clock change and a corresponding decrease in the
fall back to Standard Time.
* 'The
Effects of Sleep Disorders and Daylight Savings Time', NaturalNews.com,
11 August 2008
Features an excerpt
from an interview with sleep expert Dr. Michael Breus on sleep disorders
and the affects of daylight saving time.
This small but comprehensive
study, looking
at nine healthy adults in Finland, found that daylight-saving transitions
increased night-time restlessness and compromised the quality of sleep.
German and Dutch researchers looked
at 55,000 people in Central Europe and concluded that the human circadian
system (the body’ day-night cycle) does not adjust to daylight saving
time. A separate part of the researchers’ work looked at 50 subjects
and found that both early birds and night owls handled the end of daylight
saving in fall better than the start in spring.
'Steps help brain adjust to daylight saving', ABC News (US),
29 March 2006
US
biologist David Glass adds fuel to the case against daylight saving, indicating
its negative effects on our body clocks and corresponding flow-on to increases
in traffic accidents.
Glass
refers to a study he made of actuarial tables from the insurance industry:
'If
you look at accident rates, one of the highest days for an increase in
accidents on the highways or in the workplace or whatever occurs on Monday
after the Sunday [daylight saving] phase advance.'
'Annual
Return to Daylight Saving Time', National Sleep Foundation, 30
March 2005
Article
by the (US) National Sleep Foundation, implicating daylight saving as
one of the causes of the nation's chronic sleep deprivation: 'Millions
of lives in this country are affected by the return to Daylight Saving
Time each spring, and for many this means, "losing" an hour
of sleep.'
This article presents the findings of a Canadian team of economists who
examined market returns 1967 to 1997 across four countries - Canada, the
US, the UK and Germany. They found an average larger negative return than
the mean regular weekend for every index they looked at - in fact, the
negative difference was 2 to 5 times greater than the average fluctuations
on normal weekends. Translated into monetary terms, and in the US context
alone, the 'daylight saving effect' implies a one-day average loss of
$31 billion dollars.
The researchers
linked their study with what is known as 'sleep desynchronosis' associated
with the change in the circadian rhythm and its impact on sleep patterns
associated with the twice-a-year clock change.
A rebuttal
to the Kamstra study was published in: 'Losing Sleep at the Market:
Comment,' Michael J. Pinegar, American Economic Review, September
2002. Pinegar's
article (but not the Kamstra article above) was published in Australia,
in Economic
Papers (Economic Society of Australia), with an introduction
by Andrew C.Worthington, December 2003.
Not
only does Coren refute one of daylight saving's core arguments (that it
reduces the road toll), his exhaustive study also sheds light on how the
practice neatly fits Western society's obsession to do away with as much
sleep as possible. Note: Coren is author of the book Sleep
Thieves (1997) and was also a consultant on the Kamstra research
study (above). 'Battling
the effects of daylight saving', Blackmores www.blackmores.com.au,
31 March 2004
Online advertisement/article
appearing at the website of leading Australian health products company,
Blackmores. The article alerts readers to the potential negative impact
of daylight saving 'on our body and morale' and recommends a selection
of health and lifestyle remedies. (The Light
of Day recommends abolishing daylight saving!)
This
highly readable book by American writer/novelist Michael Downing meticulously
charts the century-long history of daylight saving as the stubborn growth
of an essentially bad idea or, as the dusk jacket puts it:
'... a perennially boiling stew of unsubstantiated science, profiteering
masked as piety, and mysteriously shifting time-zone boundaries ... a
true-to-life social comedy'.
Downing dispells
any myths that daylight saving was ever about the lifestyle wishes of
ordinary people. The long arm of big business, big media and big government
casts its shadow over every page. After finishing the final chapter, I
was left wondering if daylight saving should really be called 'Chamber
of Commerce Time'.
Interesting and attractive website on ending daylight
saving in Florida. Also contains a blog. The
Florida daylight saving issue is particularly relevant to the Queensland
perspective because the two states share virtually identical latitude
ranges.
Although the authors of this American website call themselves
'standardtime.com’, they are not against daylight saving as such. Their
aim is to reform United States time zones to eliminate the need to change
clocks twice a year. Even so, the site contains a substantial amount of
very well-argued anti-daylight saving commentary and a set of related
reading links.
This is a much more entertaining
read than the boring title suggests. To quote:
'Oh Yes! That exhausting
clock time change is coming up again soon! [...] At my house that includes
a grandfather clock, 2 chime clocks, 2 cuckoo clocks, 3 television sets,
2 clock radios, a VCR, DVD player, coffee maker, stove clock, 2 microwave
ovens, the furnace thermostat, the front and back porch light timers,
her bedside talking alarm clock and two automobile dashboard clocks./
I can still remember the pain caused by the “Spring Forward”
time change in March.' [Highly
recommended] 'Toothpaste
plus snake oil equals daylight saving,' Michael Downing, Huffington
Post, 7 March 2008
'The
adoption of Greenwich Mean Time in 1884 as the international standard
shaped the first wave of the global economy. Local times and methods of
telling time were swept away. The same process continues to this day.
It became a condition of Mexico joining the North American Free Trade
Agreement that it adopt Daylight Savings Time.'
Not
exactly about daylight saving, but an insightful essay on how the meaning
and value of time has changed with the industrial age and the spread of
the global economy. Gives some indirect insight into daylight saving's
strange popularity among time-deprived Westerners.
'Daylight
savings time (DST) is probably one of the most annoying inventions of
the human race. Each year people spend a week or so adjusting to an hour
forwards or backwards causing all sorts of erratic behavior and poor sleep
while people adjust. Last year the U.S. Government decided to take it
a step further and cause IT professionals and IT vendors to spend plenty
of time and money to satisfy a few politicians with a not so brilliant
idea.'
Eye-opener
of an article, describing the very under-reported IT headaches caused
by daylight saving - in the context of the latest US extension. No doubt,
a similar set of headaches is occurring now in Australia as a result of
its latest DS extension, but will no doubt be 'absorbed' into a general
consensus of how much better off we all are for having it.
Swatch Internet Time was a decimal time concept introduced in 1998 and
marketed by the Swatch corporation as an alternative, decimal measure
of time. One of the goals was to simplify the way people in different
time zones communicate about time, mostly by eliminating time zones altogether.
European
Union:
European
Union Law Summertime Directive shows the full text of the
European Daylight Saving legislation, as at March 2002. Article 2 of thedirective
states that the choice to join daylight saving is up to the individual
member states and only the annual start/end dates are the EU's concern:
'Given
that the Member States apply summer-time arrangements, it is important
for the functioning of the internal market that a common date and time
for the beginning and end of the summer-time period be fixed throughout
the Community.'
However, this right of 'choice' is applied quite differently in practice.
In 1996, the French government attempted to opt out of Summertime but
backed down after it was threatened by the EU with legal action. This
issue is also covered in Light
of Day News.
Also, in 2001, a Latvian
poll – scroll down link to heading: 'Social and local
interest' – showed that 60 per cent of the
country's population was opposed to daylight saving. The three Baltic
nations - Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania - had dropped daylight saving
in 2000. However, Latvia decided to re-introduce the practice in 2001
as part of their preparations to join the EU, which were finalised in
2004 (RFE/RL
Newsline, 3
January 2001)
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