Time Zones and Savings Time
The timeless time zone fight.
Many years ago, when airplanes still has propellers and the world was still totally innocent and rational (TGOD), I flew, as a teenager, on my first long distance flight. I had previously only been up in some guys’ piper cub, during which he let me fly it a little, and my father, who was always trying to amuse me, paid him $15. On long distance flight, I sat next next to a young woman (but older than I was), and we made conversation. Turns out we had a friend in common, which was not that odd since I was flying from a small city to a tiny town, and our friend in common was my relative who’s relative, also a relative of mine, had just finished living* in the tiny town. Anyway, she was a nice person but not the sharpest tack on the aircraft, I figured, since she was worried about something: She was really unsure of what happened to the hours that she was about to lose flying later from Mountain to Eastern time. “Where the heck will those two hours go? Where exactly will they be?”
I didn’t know, and I still don’t know, but I’m pretty sure that the problem there is not finding the answer, but rather, rephrasing the question.
Anyway, this is the time of year that the Time Zone Argument re-arises and is tossed around for a time, until everyone gets used to the time change. Then it goes way. Suggesting to me that it wasn’t that important of an argument to begin with. But I’m going to keep it alive here for a few more days, on this Substack, just to see what happens!
I propose that at least some of the different arguments for or against continuing with daylight savings time come from people living in different locations with respect to their own time zones. To test this, I propose the following experiment.
Identify a number of arguments, made by specific individuals, about whether or not we should keep daylight savings time in America. Filter out the arguments that are based on nothing (most of them), keeping only those that cite specific effects of keeping vs not keeping daylight savings. I think most of the arguments I’ve heard do not include information, data, rational constructs, and many seem to be about tossing off the yoke of government regulation and interference. But some of the arguments actually cite reasons. So find a bunch of them.
Locate the arguments (as in, where the person making the argument lives) on a map. If I’m right, people’s position on time zones generally and daylight savings in particular will sort out based on where in their own time zone they live, and the specific shape of their time zone.
OK go do that and report back.
Meanwhile, Consider the following observations. Assume that “time zones” can be labeled by how far, in terms of 1/24ths of the Earth’s circumference on a Mercator projected map, they are west from UTC (Greenwich). So, for example, England’s time zone is Zero, and New York is in zone -5.
Let’s just look at those two time zones for a minute. Within the UK, actual England is entirely within Zero, but most of Ireland is to the west of that time zone. Ireland’s clocks are in Zero, but about half of actual Ireland is in -1. Much of Mauritania, all of Senegal, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, The Gambia, and parts of Mali are in Zero time zone, but they are physically in -1. I assume this has something to do with colonization. Generally speaking, the true time zones are north-south strips of a fixed (projected) width, and a given piece of land has a high probability of NOT being exactly within that strip even if it is nominally in that time zone.
Since the argument being discuses here is US Daylight Savings Time, let’s look at the US.
New York City is nearly in the middle, east-west-wise, of the -5 (EST). The whole east coast metro area is either a little east of the middle of -5, or pretty much in the middle, and also contains the vast majority of US residents at the time that daylight savings time was being established. There are still a lot of people there now.
California and the other western states are even more so like this. The entire western fourth (or a little more) of -8 (pacific) is out over the ocean, so nobody in the continental US experiences living at the edge of that time zone. The most populated parts of the west coast, are near the middle or just east of the middle of that time zone.
Most of the people who live in -7 in the continental US live within actual -7, and most near the middle of it.
Now let’s look at -6, Central. In terms of east-westness, the -6 time zone is the widest in the US, spanning from very near the western edge of -5, like you would expect, but extending way into -7. A few days ago, before daylight saving time, sunup in the most westerly part of North Dakota was just before 9 AM. During the winter solstice, the sun would rise at close to 10 AM were it not for daylight savings time. This is unimaginable for the average Coastal American, who lives in the middle of their time zone. Same with people from Chicago or Denver.
Here is the map from which the figures above were extracted.
If you live in the western part of the “Central Time Zone,” -6, then you may actually live in the dead center of zone -7, Mountain. Nobody in the continental US Central Time Zone lives on the eastern edge of the actual -7 zone, but people who live in the western most part of the easternmost zone live in the easternmost part of the central zone. Never mind Mexico! Most of Mexico, which is physically in Zone -6, uses zone -5 for its clock.
It is, of course, worse in some other places. China, for example, runs from actual zone +5 to +9, but is all in one time zone (+8 if you must know).
People from EST (-5) argue against daylight saving time because they find changing their clocks to be inconvenient, but they live in the middle of a relatively rational zone. They actually benefit from -5 daylight saving. My impression from cruising around YouTube for a while is that people who live outside of their nominal zone fight for their position the hardest, but they seem to fight equally hard for opposite outcomes. Only the study outlined above will clear this up. So get to that soon, OK?
I could be worse. In fact, it has been worse:
*He is still alive, he just moved.