It’s been a week since the time change and finally I was able to adjust the timings for all the global meetings. Need to do this exercise again in March! The problem gets exacerbated because Australia changes time at a different time and so does most of Europe whereas China and India don’t change their times in Fall or Spring. Meeting times setup during Daylight Savings Time (DST) are inconvenient for the global participants when we fall back to Standard Time.
Inconvenience apart, twice a year time change causes confusion, both for the body and the brain, at least for the first few days. Confusion causes stress, sleep disturbances, increased accidents, workplace injuries and cardiovascular diseases (Effects of Time Change).
Naturally, many have suggested keeping the same time throughout the year. There are two schools of thought - one group wants to make the DST permanent while the others want permanent Standard Time. Both the proposals have merits on one side of the spectrum while demerits on the other side.
Keeping DST throughout the year, for example, means the latest sunrise during winter will be at 8:25am in San Francisco (refer to the tables below). Most schools start at 8am and school kids have to go to school during pitch darkness. Keeping permanent Standard Time has its own demerits as the earliest sunrise will be at 4:06am in Boston. We would lose the Energy saving advantage for which time change was proposed by Benjamin Franklin in the first place.
Can we devise an alternate scheme, a midway between permanent DST and permanent Standard Time? The year round time will be adjusted half an hour between DST and Standard Time. The tables below indicate how the sunrise and sunset times will stand with adoption of the midway time.
Boston (42.4 N, 71 W)
Miami (25.7 N, 80.2 West)
San Francisco (37.8 N, 122.4 W)
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