Credit LtPowers – CC-BY-SA
Please do not make Daylight Saving Time permanent. Not just because I don’t want to have noon coming at 1PM permanently, but for many other good reasons. If you’d like a good synopsis of the reasons, read this Scientific American article. Here’s a sample:
Less sunlight in the morning makes it harder for us humans to get started in the day, and more sunlight in the evening makes it harder to get to sleep. Darkness is a signal to the pineal gland in our brains that it’s time to start producing more melatonin, which is our body’s cue to lower internal temperature and start feeling sleepy. Early morning light is detected by the suprachiasmatic gland, which sits above the optic nerves, and its instructions cause our bodies to stop melatonin production so we can feel wakeful throughout the day.
Maybe the saddest reason to reject this mistake is the fact that in 1973-74, when the US tried permanent DST, more children walking to school in the dark were killed by cars.
Please, don’t be swayed by the false notion that we’d be ‘saving’ daylight. We’d only be shifting it later in the day, and making things worse.
rjb
