grimwerk: In Bangkok, the time at which sunrise occurs varies by less than one hour over the year. Consistent enough that perhaps they derive little benefit from DST.
timppu: I fail to see the relevance. If the idea for shifting time is so that you can force people to go work earlier (because otherwise they wouldn't?), why not shift it for the whole year, even more than mere one hour. Why shift it back at all in the winter, if the advantages are so apparent?
The idea is to adjust aggregate human activity such that it occurs when daylight is available. In wintertime, we get up when it is dark, and go to sleep when it is dark. We're using all the light already. In summertime, we get up after sunrise, and go to sleep after sunset. So we can shift the clock (which tends to dictate when aggregate human activity occurs, even if you personally feel like doing your own thing) to ensure greater overlap between activity and natural light.
In Thailand, the variation in available daylight is small enough that it may not be worth the shift.
Like many ideas, this has both disadvantages and advantages. Certainly, some people feel inconvenienced by DST. They must shift their sleep schedule by an hour, and there is some confusion caused because it is not a globally uniform shift. Also, even nominally intelligent people can't be bothered to read a single page on the subject. So yes, if the only factor was to align activity with available light, we could certainly shift the clock daily to accommodate continuously varying sunrise times. But instead, there's a compromise. Two simple yet awkward shifts during the year for a season's worth of benefit.
grimwerk: In Helsinki, that variation is over six hours.
timppu: So we reap great benefits from it? Finland didn't take daylight-saving into use until 1981 (probably just to sync with the rest of the Europe), somehow we magically managed without it before that.
Finland
magically managed without the internet in 1981. You could be right. For Finland, aligning with Europe could have been the driving force. It could be you already collectively behaved in such a way as to take full advantage of the limited winter light.
timppu: Daylight saving is merely a silly relic that does nothing but inconveniences people. It is one of those things where a big part of the world seems to have swallowed a crazy pill at the same time. The US Department of Transportation claimed in 1975 that daylight saving saves energy by 1%, but already in 1976 that was debunked.
Rather than cherrypick studies I'll just link to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time#Dispute_over_benefits_and_drawbacks And folks can draw their own conclusions.
grimwerk: Depends on how you view it. For their summer season (broadly speaking), they shift their clocks forward as we do for our own. Just so happens that we're shifting backward at (roughly) the same time, as our winter season begins. But for both of us, our clocks are
normal and unshifted during the winter.
timppu: Was that a "yes"?
I haven't been rude to you. Extend me the same courtesy.