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End Daylight Saving Time

Twice a year there are many public discussions about Daylight Saving Time. People comment on whether to keep it, end it, change the dates, or even make it year-round. The reasons are always the same.
I’m in favor of ending it. I started this petition so that our advocacy of ending it will go to our elected people in Washington and eventually persuade them to end Daylight Saving Time. Please join me!
Facts to keep in mind:
1. The only factors which control the length of daylight during any 24-hour period are the calendar date and the latitude of a place.
2. The belief that changing the clock time will give an extra hour of daylight is an example of “magical thinking” – “fallacious attribution of causal relationships between actions and events” [Wikipedia].
3. The division of the day into 24 hours was created by the ancient Egyptians.
4. The decision to begin each calendar date at midnight was created by the ancient Romans.
5. Before time zones were created at the International Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C. in October 1884, local solar time was the custom. Time zones were made necessary to make railroad schedules orderly.
6. Standard Time in the USA was established by an Act of March 19, 1918.
7. Coordinated Universal Time [UTC] was settled in 1972. Leap seconds were added. It combines atomic and solar time. It is a world standard, not a time zone.
8. Ideally, there would be 24 worldwide time zones perfectly aligned along lines of longitude. In reality, the boundaries vary for a number of reasons. This is not related to the debate over Daylight Saving Time.
9. Many studies have found that changing the clocks for Daylight Saving Time is causally related to ill effects on human health and safety. This is the most important reason to end Daylight Saving Time.
10. Since DST was established, Americans have made ever more devices which have clocks in them. Many of these clocks must be changed manually for DST. Since these devices will always be around, DST causes people to have to waste a lot of time changing them.
11. Many individuals, private businesses, and government entities have established “summer” and “winter” hours of operation. These are voluntary, legal, make sense for the entity doing it – and don’t require changing the clock.
12. It would be better to end DST than to make it year-round, to stay with our custom of beginning each day at midnight. Wanting it year-round is based on magical thinking. Schedule changes can be made without changing clock time.
13. The most harmful effects of DST are actually related to use of alarm clocks, which force people to wake up before our bodies have had enough sleep. We can’t solve this problem soon, but we can immediately end the harmful effects which happen twice a year for DST.