European Summertime to end in 2021

k.jacker

k.jacker

Hey folks, for all of us, living in europe, we're going to +1 our clock tonight and switch to European summertime.

As my wife reminded of that today, I got curious about the current state of the European Union's plans to stop switching to summertime in the future.
Living in Norway, we will not be affected by decisions of the European Union, but the same discussion has been going on here, too.

Please bear with me, if anything of the following, isn't 100 per cent correct. I mainly wrote this, because I have no way of shouting at those polititians right now :(

Many of you may know that already, here in Norway there isn't much to hear about it, if you don't search for it yourself. Like I did today.
In short, they finally made a decision and it will definitely end in 2021. The transition seems to involve, that any European country should decide, until april 2020, the timezone they want to stay in after oktober 2021. Eh, what? Timezone? Summertime isn't about timezones :eek: it's about temporarily adding +1 hour to your country's timezone.

A little explanation for the folks outside Europe:
During the 6 month long summer period, all clocks run +1 hour. The Idea behind that was, when it was inventedlong ago, to save energy used on light, in the evening.
Didn't work. In addition, many people have a hard time adapting to the switch that occurs twice a year (+1 now and back in october).
Europe extends over three timezones, GMT, GMT+1 and GMT+2. Like everywhere on our planet, this is bound to the longitudes of that area where you live (yeah, with some kinks and bends).

We have some special names for it, too:

GMT (e.g. United Kingdom, Portugal)
winter = Western European Time (regular GMT)
summer = Western European Summertime (GMT+1)

GMT+1 (e.g. Germany, Norway, Belgium)
winter = Middle European Time (regular GMT+1)
summer = Middle European Summertime (GMT+1+1 or GMT+2)

GMT+2 (e.g. Poland, Estland)
winter = Eastern European Time (regular GMT+2)
summer = Eastern European Summertime (GMT+2+1 or GMT+3)

What I really wonder about now (I think it's ridiculous to be honest), why can't they just remove the summertime switching nonsense and just leave it there?
Why will they allow countries to choose their timezone? What they mean is, let every country decide, if they liked the summertime (+1) or wintertime better.
But matter of fact is, if any country decides to choose it liked it's summertime (GMT+N+1) better, this country will become a member of another timezone, a timezone it has never before been a member of.

Think of travelling north to south in Europe and you have to adjust your time, that sounds like a bad idea to me. Even worth, think of UK still in the EU at that time and switching it's timezone.
I mean, Greenwich, base of all timezones around the globe. I doubt they would, but...

What about the required changes to OSes? Simply removing the summertime would only require to turn of the summertime switch.
Otherwise, changing several countries timezone, say Germany decides to keep it's summertime, then it would become a member of GMT+2 (Germany is GMT+1). So Oslo and Berlin will no longer be in the same timezone. This would also require to change timezone maps, books, etc. Not to say that it's down right stupid.

Just another advanced topics, that politicians fail to handle.

Just my 2 cent
(I hope this is not to political, sorry if it is)
 
We call it Daylight Savings Time and turned our clocks back one hour last week. In the spring we advance it one hour.

Spring forward/Fall back.

I thought I heard a sound byte of doing away with the change here as well.

We have 4 timezones as it is. Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific.

Time Zone Boundaries

Description of the boundary lines between time zones in the United States.
www.timetemperature.com www.timetemperature.com
 
Together with brexit, ireland may end up in different time zones and different rules. Imagine your place of work being +1/+2 hours away while being in the village next door.
 
Can't we all just use GMT and be done with it? Ok, your 9-5 job is now 18-2 but all this other pain can go.
 
Trihexagonal said:
We call it Daylight Savings Time
Click to expand...
That was it... I couldn't come up with how it's called in the US.
In case US will stop using daylight saving time, I hope they'll not allow every state to choose it's own time(zone) like they do in Europe.

Crivens said:
Together with brexit, ireland may end up in different time zones and different rules. Imagine your place of work being +1/+2 hours away while being in the village next door.
Click to expand...
That sounds crazy but is possible. The small distances in Europe (compared to the US) could also make it possible to travel through several timezones, with +/2 hours by car on a single day.
I hope most countries will stick to their regular time.

Once a year we drive on a big shopping trip to germany by car. That is a journey of 7 hours by car and ferry, straight north to south.
I can imagine it to take take 8 hours in the future, at least on the clock. We'll see and hope for the best.

Crivens said:
Can't we all just use GMT and be done with it? Ok, your 9-5 job is now 18-2 but all this other pain can go.
Click to expand...
If we all could free our brains of the association, which time of day corresponds to day and night, that would save a lot of problems. Not to bad of an idea :D
 
k.jacker said:
In case US will stop using daylight saving time, I hope they'll not allow every state to choose it's own time(zone) like they do in Europe.
Click to expand...
That's already the case. Some US states deliberately ignore daylight savings time (Arizona is one). Hawaii does not have daylight savings time, because being in a tropical latitude, the difference in day length isn't big enough. There are some US possessions in strange areas (Samoa, Marianas), and they do strange things.

The really weird one is the Navajo reservation. You have to remember that the reservations are legally pseudo-independent. The Navajo do use daylight savings time, in spite of the fact that most of the reservation is located in Arizona, which does not. Where it gets really weird: The Hopi tribe reservation does *not* use DST, in spite of being completely inside the Navajo reservation! I think the real reason for these disagreements is: they are really political statements of disapproval.
 
The craziness in all this, in the US at least, is some people are pushing to make Daylight Savings Time standard so it's light longer into the evening. That brings up issues about sleep deprivation and schoolkids walking to school in the dark in the morning. To me, the issue is that "standard time" is the standard and we should be letting the sun dictate our day, not how late you can stay up and party.
 
Sorry, for not answering in time. Had to do my taxes what gave a bit of a headache.

Interesting DST craziness isn't unique to Europe. Nice read.
 
The summertime is being discuted to end in Brazil too, and this year is supposed to already not have it. We don't have wintertime in here, btw.
 
My two siblings and my (elderly) parents live half and half on both sides of the equator, and in widely spaced longitudes: Australia, Brasil, Germany, and the US. that means that the summer/winter time changes that happen around this time of the year and in ~6 months create chaos and confusion. For example, the time zone difference from my parents to me just changed from 5 to 3 hours, with a stop at 4 hours for a few weeks. Or due to the changes, it has become virtually impossible to have a conference call with my two sisters and me, without someone being in the middle of the night. All very annoying.
 
I know the struggle, I lived in Portugal and often have to talk with people in there, and I never know what times is in there (or the other way around when I am in there). :confused:
 
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