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Tag Archives: United States

History of climate change denial

28 Sunday Jun 2020

Posted by Chris Pearce in Articles

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AGW, American Petroleum Institute, anthropogenic climate change, Australia, Brazil, carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate change denial, climate research, climate scientists, CO2, communsim, consensus, cult, Democrats, deniers, economic collapse, Exxon, finances, fossil fuel industry, fossil fuels, Global Climate Coalition, governments, greenhouse gases, history, hoax, ice melt, IPCC, one world government, Pew Research, political movement, polls, pseudoscience, Republicans, right wing, scientific organisations, scientists, sea level rise, social media, temperatures, think tanks, United States

I’m still sparring with various anthropogenic climate change deniers at Quora. Most of them are old white males, right wing, and live in the US. I put together the following brief history of climate change denial and have included it in several replies to comments made by these people. But they are locked into denial. They don’t want to know the background to climate denial or the facts about climate change / global warming …

‘Climate change denialism is kind of a cross between a cult, pseudoscience and a political movement, with all three features very much on show. It’s only developed over the last 30 years or so. Here’s the background to climate denial.

The fossil fuel industry and the scientists it employed were basically on the same page as the climate scientists up until about 30 years ago. In 1968, an American Petroleum Institute report warned that large increases in CO2 could melt icecaps and increase sea levels and change fish and plant life. In 1978, an Exxon scientist warned of temperature rises and their serious consequences and that energy strategies would need to be reviewed.

By the early 1980s, about 10 major fossil fuel companies met regularly to discuss science and climate change and its implications. In 1982, Exxon spoke of “potentially catastrophic events” if fossil fuels weren’t reduced. Exxon was quite aware that the consensus of the scientific community was that a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels would result in temperature rises of 1.5–4.5°C, a figure that still applies today. But Exxon cut its climate research budget from $900k to $150k in 1983.

The IPCC was formed in 1988. The fossil fuel companies formed the Global Climate Coalition in 1989 and pushed the view that: “The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood.” Having previously agreed with the science, they were now sitting on the fence. By 1990, they were attacking IPCC findings, perhaps aware that measures taken to reduce CO2 would have serious financial implications for the industry. By 1997, Exxon was saying that climate change wasn’t happening.

The whole denier movement mushroomed. The companies funded various right wing think tanks and paid an assortment of folk with varied backgrounds to write papers denying climate change. More than 90% of papers denying anthropogenic global warming come from these think tanks.

With the rise of social media, all sorts of denier stuff has been spread around the place along with spreading fears of economic collapse, communism, one world government, etc. But the climate scientists aren’t listening, nor are the scientific organisations, nor are governments except the US and Brazil. Australia is probably sitting on the fence with the current centre right government.

Polls show that most people agree with the science. According to Pew Research, the proportion of people in the US who agree that climate change is a major threat increased from 44% in 2009 to 60% in 2020. For Democrats, it’s increased from 61% to 88%, although for Republicans it’s only increased from 25% to 31%. The US is very conservative and most other countries tend to have higher percentages.’

But the deniers pursue. They dispute the facts and figures and regard anthropogenic climate change as some sort of giant hoax.

Ascension Day

30 Thursday May 2019

Posted by Chris Pearce in Articles

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1 Timothy, Acts, Anglican Church, apostles, Apostles Creed, Ascension Day, Austria, Belgium, bishops, Book of Common Prayer, Catechism, cathedral choirs, Catholic Church, Christ, Christian calendar, Christian liturgy, Christianity, Christmas, christology, Common Worship, creed, Croatia, David, Denmark, disciples, Easter Sunday, ecumenical council, Ephesians, Epistles, Eucharist, Europe, Father, Father's Day, First Council of Constantinople, First Council of Nicaea, First Peter, France, Germany, God, Good Friday, heaven, holiday, Holy Spirit, Iceland, Indonesia, Israel, Jesus, John, king of Israel, Latin, Lord, Luke, Lutheran Church, mark, Matthew, Netherlands, New Testament, Nicene Creed, Norway, Paul, Pentecost, Peter, Presbyterian Church, prophecies, psalm, public holiday, resurrection, Roman Empire, Romans, Stephen, Sweden, United Methodist Church, United States, Vanuata

Today, May 30, is Ascension Day in 2019. In Christianity, Jesus ascended to heaven 40 days after his resurrection and this was witnessed by 11 apostles. Ascension Day is regarded as the fourth most important day on the Christian calendar. First is Christmas, celebrating Jesus’ birth, followed by Good Friday, remembering his death, then Easter Sunday, celebrating the resurrection, and then Ascension Day, commemorating his rise to heaven. Along with Christmas and Easter, the ascension is one of the three major feasts in Christianity and dates back to the fourth century.

Three thousand years ago, David, the second king of Israel, prophesied that Jesus would ascend to heaven and sit on the right-hand side of God. This is recorded in Psalm 110:1. Out of the 150 psalms, it is the one referred to most often in the New Testament. This alone suggests that the ascension is quite significant in Christianity. There are a number of other references to the ascension in the New Testament, attesting to the importance of the event.

One of the earliest mentions is in the Epistles, where Paul reports that Jesus is in heaven (Romans 10:6). Another early mention is in Acts (1:1-11), which states that Jesus presented himself to the apostles 40 days after the resurrection and was then taken up on a cloud and out of sight. Luke (24:31,50-53) believes Jesus was taken up on the same day as the resurrection. In Matthew (26:64), Jesus says he will be sitting next to God up in heaven. Mark 16:19 states that Jesus was received into heaven and sat beside God. John 14:12 and 20:17 refer to Jesus going back to his father. First Peter 3:21-22 declares that Jesus has gone to heaven and is with God. According to Ephesians 4:7-13, he rose above the heavens. 1 Timothy 3:16 has him “taken up in glory”. Stephen, in Acts 7:55-60, saw Jesus in heaven standing next to God.

The ascension is clearly referred to in the Nicene Creed put together by the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE where about 300 bishops from throughout the Roman Empire discussed and agreed upon various christological issues. The original creed states that Jesus “ascended into heaven”. At the next ecumenical council, the First Council of Constantinople, in 381 CE, the wording was revised to read that he “ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father”. Modern accounts are essentially the same as the ancient versions.

These words are also contained in the Apostles’ Creed, a further indication of the significance of the ascension in Christianity. Line six of the original 12 line creed states in Latin that Jesus “ascendit ad caelos, sedet ad dexteram Patris omnipotentis”. Part of the Catechism of the Catholic Church includes this creed and says at line six: “He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.” The wording is virtually the same as that contained in the creeds of other Christian churches, including the Anglican Church’s Book of Common Prayer and also the Common Worship, the Presbyterian Church, the Lutheran Church and the United Methodist Church. Indeed, the ascension forms an important part of Christian liturgy, or regular pattern of worship, in all Christian churches, both eastern and western.

According to Christianity, the fact that Jesus ascended to heaven means he is Lord and has complete authority (Matthew 28:18 and Ephesians 1:20-23). At Pentecost, or the descent of the Holy Spirit, Peter talks about the ascension and that Israel should know that God has made Jesus both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:32-36). Further, Jesus was responsible for the Pentecost (Matthew 3:11 and Acts 1:5, 2:33). After the ascension, Jesus bestowed on his disciples the power to know God’s thoughts and to be able to make prophecies (Ephesians 4:10-11). Because the disciples saw Jesus physically ascend, they expect him to return as a visible being.

The ascension is important enough for many countries to declare Ascension Day a public holiday. These include many European countries, such as France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Croatia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland, as well as Indonesia and Vanuatu. In Germany, Father’s Day is also celebrated on this day. Ascension Day is important in many countries where it is not a public holiday. In the United States, for example, special services are arranged on this day, often involving several churches. Cathedral choirs are sometimes combined for a Eucharist specific to the occasion.

(This is an edited version of an article I wrote called ‘The significance of Ascension Day in Christianity’ and posted to www.helium.com now gone.)

Daylight saving time in China

31 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by Chris Pearce in Daylight saving time book

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airline schedules, Asia, Australia, Brazil, CAAC, Canada, carbon emissions, Chamber of Commerce, China, Chongqing, clock time, communications ministry, Communist Party, daylight saving time, drought, electricity supply, Emergency Powers (Defence) Acts 1939 and 1940, energy, fuel shortage, Hangzhou, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Daylight-Saving Regulations 1941, India, Israel, Japan, Japan Standard Time, Legislative Council, Macau, Macau Official Gazette, Nanjing, oil crisis, Pakistan, Peking Summer Time, People's Daily, power, power outages, power shortage, Shanghai, Shanks and Pottenger, Sri Lanka, standard time, summer time, Summer Time Ordinance, Supreme National Defence Council, Suzhou, Taiwan, The International Atlas, The Summer Time Bill 1946, timepieces, United States, World War II, Wuhan

Many Asian countries have had daylight saving time at some stage. The details of daylight saving time in every country that has ever had it or considered it is included in my book, The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy. The book also includes details of daylight saving in every state of the United States, Australia and Brazil and every Canadian province. Here’s an excerpt on daylight saving time in China.

“Four Asian countries first took up daylight saving during World War II: China in 1940, 1941 and 1945, India (including what is now Pakistan) and Sri Lanka from 1942 to 1945, and Israel from 1940 to 1945. According to The International Atlas of 2005 by Shanks and Pottenger, the only part of China to have daylight saving in 1940 was Shanghai, which also had it in 1941 along with the four cities of Suzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Wuhan. The Supreme National Defence Council ordered daylight saving in free China in 1945 when Chongqing was provisional capital, although western regions of the country may not have used it, while much of the east was occupied by Japan.

All of China had daylight saving from 1986 to 1991 to conserve power. The country saved an estimated 700 million kilowatt hours of energy in 1986, down from earlier forecasts of up to 2 billion kilowatt hours. The Communist Party announced on 18 April 1986 that the whole country would run on Peking Summer Time from 4 May to 14 September to save energy and ran an intensive campaign on television and radio and in newspapers to prepare people. But the authorities created more confusion than clarity. The state airline, CAAC, said it was changing all flights by an hour and then said planes departing at 3 p.m. standard time will now leave at 4 p.m. summer time (same real time) to meet international carriers. The government also said that train, bus and boat timetables would be unchanged, with a service leaving at 3 p.m. standard time now departing at 3 p.m. summer time (an hour different).

Adding to the uncertainty, the People’s Daily said: “During the whole period of summer time, all the trains will work according to the summer time schedule, but passengers will take their trains at the present time schedule.” Also, the communications ministry announced that “nothing would be done to alter the schedules of China’s inland waterway services and long-distance buses to meet daylight saving time”.[1] No doubt many people arrived an hour early or an hour late for their plane, bus, train or ferry in the initial days and weeks of daylight saving.

In some areas of China, businesses, schools and government offices started and finished an hour later by the clock, meaning that everything happened at the same real time as before. Many people preferred to start an hour earlier in the warmer months without changing the clock. The power shortage problem wasn’t resolved and in 1991 drought and heat led to an increase in power outages and in the number of complaints about the electricity supply and daylight saving. The scheme was discontinued after the end of the 1991 summer time period. Energy consumption has soared in more recent years and fuel shortages remain a problem, as does the level of carbon emissions.

In Hong Kong, the Chamber of Commerce was opposed to daylight saving in 1932. By 1936, the media favoured the idea and the governor of the colony came out in support of it in the Legislative Council on 2 December suggesting an extra half an hour of daylight after work all year, but the proposal went no further. The colony had three months of daylight saving via the Hong Kong Daylight-Saving Regulations 1941 under the Emergency Powers (Defence) Acts 1939 and 1940, with clocks put forward one hour. Japan Standard Time, which was one hour 23 minutes ahead of Hong Kong local time, was used from 1942 to 1945.

The Summer Time Bill 1946, introduced into the Council on 27 August, aimed to formalise the process of daylight saving that had started on 20 April and would enable the governor to approve it in future years. The bill quickly passed the other stages on 5 September and became the Summer Time Ordinance. Hong Kong had daylight saving each year until 1976. Arguments against the measure included the need to adjust timepieces twice a year, the preference of some people for an extra hour of light in the morning, and difficulties for airline schedules. The government dropped daylight saving for 1977 and a survey found that most people wanted standard time all year. Summer time returned briefly in 1979 due to the second oil crisis.

According to the Macau Official Gazette, [2] Macau had summer time in years 1946 to 1948, 1951 to 1976 and 1979. A notice in the form of a decree was printed in the weekly gazette each time Macau started or finished daylight saving. The reason for the last year of summer time in 1979 was the same as that for Hong Kong. Most other sources state, evidently incorrectly, that Macau had daylight saving between 1961 and 1980.

Taiwan was another area on Japan Standard Time during World War II, until 21 September 1945, and had daylight saving postwar in the years 1946 to 1961, 1974, 1975 and 1979. It was called summer time from 1946 to 1951, daylight saving time from 1952 to 1956, summer time from 1957 to 1961, and daylight saving time in the 1970s.”

[1] “Fuel saving throws off China’s timing”, Chicago Tribune, Chicago, Illinois, United States, 4 May 1986, at http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1986-05-04/news/8602010127_1_daylight-summer-time-saving

[2] “Summer Time”, Macao Meteorological and Geophysical Bureau, 2014, at http://www.smg.gov.mo/smg/geophysics/e_t_Summer%20Time.htm

The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy is available at Amazon, Kobo Books, Apple and Google.

DST book cover

How the United States got to have national daylight saving time in WWII

02 Friday Nov 2018

Posted by Chris Pearce in Daylight saving time book

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Alabama, Allies, America, Atlantic Ocean, Boise, Central time, clocks, Congress, continuous daylight saving, Daylight Saving Bill, daylight saving time, Eastern time, Eastern War Time, Europe, excerpt, Far West, farmers, fast time, Florida, France, Franklin Roosevelt, Gallup poll, Georgia, Germany, governors, Hampton Fulmer, Harold Ickes, Hawaii, House Agriculture Committee, Idaho, Idaho Chamber of Commerce, Interstate Commerce Commission, Japan, Lend-Lease agreement, local time, Louisiana, Merchants’ Association of New York, Michigan, Middle Atlantic, Mississippi, Mountain time, New England, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pacific Ocean, Pacific time, Pearl Harbor, Pittsburgh, power shortages, Robert Garland, South, South Carolina, Soviet Union, standard time, Tennessee, United States, Virginia, War Time, World War II, WWII

The United States resumes daylight saving time on Sunday 4 November. Here’s another excerpt from my book on the history of daylight saving time around the world, The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy, available at Amazon, Kobo, Apple and Google. This excerpt looks at the lead-up to national daylight saving time in the United States during World War II …

With the war escalating in Europe, the United States became increasingly concerned for its friends across the Atlantic and for its own defence. By 1940, it was sending war materials and money to the Allies, which was stepped up after France fell in spring. American volunteers were helping out in aircraft squadrons despite it being illegal, and the country was sending billions of dollars in food, oil and equipment under the Lend-Lease agreement after the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941.

Various people and organisations were calling for national daylight saving to redirect energy into the country’s defence efforts by early 1941, including business groups such as the Merchants’ Association of New York, interior secretary Harold Ickes, and Robert Garland, often regarded as the “father of daylight saving” in the United States and who had recently retired after 28 years as a Pittsburgh councillor. Ickes felt that substantial fuel savings could be had from daylight saving but also called for priorities and restrictions, believing that making aluminium was more important than night baseball. Power shortages were also evident in drought areas that relied on hydroelectricity. Industrialists pushed for continuous daylight saving, while defence chiefs wanted two hours of the measure. Bills were introduced for federal daylight time.

President Franklin Roosevelt asked Congress on 15 July to draft a bill to give him broad power to implement daylight saving, including on a national or regional basis, just in the summer or continuously, and for one or two hours. He wrote to the governors of south-eastern states where power shortages were particularly acute asking them to initiate daylight saving. A week later, the governors of Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi and South Carolina issued proclamations, while Georgia, Florida and Louisiana refused, and North Carolina and Virginia at first took no action but later agreed to the measure. As governors didn’t have authority to order a change in time, the proclamations only applied to state offices and not to businesses and citizens, who would have to act on a voluntary basis perhaps encouraged to varying degrees by their governor and other politicians. One person who was less than enthusiastic was South Carolina representative and chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Hampton Fulmer, who said that “the farmers wouldn’t even set their clocks ahead … It might be all right in big cities but in the little old country villages and farms, it would be nonsense. They wouldn’t pay any attention to it.”[1]

Overall support for daylight saving was strong though, as evidenced by a Gallup poll in June 1941 (see following table [see book]). Respondents were asked: “To save electricity and to increase daylight working hours, it has been suggested that the entire country be put on daylight saving time until the end of September. Do you favor or oppose this suggestion?” Now that the country’s security was at stake, many people changed their minds about daylight saving. Results showed that all parts of the country were happy to have the measure on a national basis, including the South region [which had been opposed to it in a poll in April 1940] where approval was at 64 per cent, while only 16 per cent were opposed and 20 per cent were undecided. Nationwide, two-thirds of people would be happy with daylight saving and just one-fifth against the idea.

Continuous daylight saving was less popular. As part of the same survey, people were asked: “Would you favor or oppose keeping the country on daylight saving time throughout the coming year?” Just 38 per cent favoured this proposition, 41 per cent opposed it and 21 per cent were undecided. Only New England and Middle Atlantic showed majority support (see table [see book]).

Despite strong support for the measure by the public, the plan for national daylight saving was shelved on 5 December 1941 due to lack of interest by Congress. Two days later, the Japanese launched a surprise attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and America declared war on Japan the next day. The United States immediately stepped up its assistance to the Allies, which led to Germany declaring war on the US on 11 December to which America reciprocated on the same day. Talks on daylight saving resumed by mid month, including the option of all year fast time for the duration of the war and beyond.

Another Gallup poll in December showed an increase in support for continuous daylight saving although the surveys aren’t strictly comparable over time due to different wording in questions and a new set of circumstances with America now at war. This time, respondents were asked: “As long as the war lasts, would you favor or oppose daylight saving time in your community for the entire year?” The poll found 57 per cent of people approved of the plan, 30 per cent didn’t and 13 per cent were undecided (see following table [see book]). In each region, considerably more residents backed the policy than disliked it. The Far West now had the second highest proportion in favour, probably due to the threat across the Pacific. Support for the proposal was higher in larger cities than smaller ones. Resistance continued from farmers, with just 36 per cent supporting it. A North Dakota farmer commented: “You can’t change a cow’s milk habits to fit the clock, or evaporate the morning dew an hour earlier.”

In January 1942, Congress debated the bill to give the president the power to order daylight saving of up to two hours, regionally or nationally, and all year or just in summer. The House didn’t want to give him this much flexibility and set down a few specifics, including just an hour of daylight saving across the country on a continuous basis. Support for advanced time year round was strong among representatives as peak demand for electricity in the evening was higher in winter than summer and keeping the clocks ahead all year would conserve a considerable amount of extra fuel. The amendments were made and the bill was passed by both houses. Daylight saving would start 20 days after the president signed the bill and extend to six months after the end of the war or some earlier date approved by Congress.

Meanwhile, the Idaho Chamber of Commerce wanted the Interstate Commerce Commission to move the southern part of the state to Pacific time as this would put it in its true zone rather than in Mountain time. Standard time in capital city Boise was 45 minutes ahead of local time. With year round daylight saving added on, sunrise would be as late as about 9:20 a.m. in winter. Other areas would also be disadvantaged by the new time, such as parts of Ohio and Michigan which had been transferred from Central to Eastern time in 1936 and would effectively have two hours of daylight saving. However, no changes were made to standard time zones.

Roosevelt agreed to the amendments to the bill and signed it on 20 January. It became “An Act to promote the national security and defense by establishing daylight saving time”. The measure began on 9 February for all federal government and interstate commerce activities, and the government was confident the rest of the country would follow. A week before daylight saving was due to start, the government labelled it “War Time” and the Eastern time zone, for example, would be on Eastern War Time.

[1] “Daylight saving assured despite farm opposition”, Dunkirk Evening Observer, Dunkirk, New York, United States, 16 July 1941, p. 1, Newspapers.com (subscription only), at https://www.newspapers.com/image/56261209 

DST book cover

Who was the first person to propose daylight saving time?

28 Friday Sep 2018

Posted by Chris Pearce in Daylight saving time book

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artificial light, Atlantic Ocean, Australia, benefits, Benjamin Franklin, Christchurch, cricket, cycling, daylight saving bills, daylight saving time, DST, ebook, electricity, Europe, gardening, George Vernon Hudson, New Zealand, North America, origins, problems, seasonal time, standard time, Tasman Sea, Thomas Kay Sidey, United Kingdom, United States, Wellington Philosophical Society, William Willett

With daylight saving time starting up again in New Zealand on Sunday, I thought I would post an excerpt from my book, The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy. It’s the first six paragraphs of the chapter on New Zealand, ‘The long road to daylight saving across the ditch’.   . . .

“Just as people in Europe and North America talk about “across the pond” to mean the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, “across the ditch” refers to the other side of the Tasman Sea which separates Australia and New Zealand. The country or dominion of New Zealand was the first to officially adopt standard time, in 1868, and was at the forefront of daylight saving with George Vernon Hudson the first person known to advocate it, in 1895. Legislating for it would take longer. Politician Thomas Kay Sidey pursued with daylight saving bills for nearly two decades before New Zealand finally put its clocks forward in summer.

Benjamin Franklin of the United States is credited with sparking the idea of daylight saving and William Willett of the United Kingdom is regarded as the father of the scheme, but New Zealand postal clerk, entomologist and astronomer George Hudson was the first to propose it. On 15 October 1895, he presented a paper, “On seasonal time-adjustment in countries south of lat. 30°”, to the Wellington Philosophical Society. He suggested a two hour change in clock time between 1 October and 1 March. Standard time in New Zealand was then GMT+11:30, half an hour earlier than now.

Many of the benefits Hudson described of advancing the clocks were broadly similar to those used later by Willett and others, as were some of the concerns he addressed. He pointed out that “the early-morning daylight would be utilised, and a long period of daylight leisure would be made available in the evening for cricket, gardening, cycling, or any other outdoor pursuit desired”.[1] Instead of getting up around 7 a.m. and retiring at 11 p.m., his idea was that people would rise at the equivalent of 5 a.m. and go to bed at about 9 p.m., saving two hours of artificial light. But the proposal was met with similar negativity and ridicule often experienced later by Willett. Society members called the idea unscientific and impracticable and the paper wasn’t published in the society’s journal.

Encouraged by positive comments from Christchurch though, where 1,000 copies of his paper were printed and circulated in 1896, Hudson followed this paper with an update, “On seasonal time”, which he delivered to the society on 18 October 1898. He reiterated the main thrust of his argument and then expanded on the benefits of daylight saving and addressed the potential problems.

He felt it was easier to alter the clocks, and to do this in the middle of the night, rather than to expect people to change their hours in the summer months as the measure would involve different work and meal times, adjusting transport timetables and changing business opening hours. Hudson was aware of employees’ concerns that shopkeepers and others might make them work longer, but he said there was legislation already dealing with working hours. He knew that milkmen and people in certain other occupations would have to get up even earlier by clock time but that they were a small minority. He thought the disadvantage to electricity and gas companies would be more than offset by community savings on power. And he knew that theatres and concert halls would suffer as many people would remain outdoors.

But he was sure that the benefits of better health and happiness brought about by extra time spent outside by working people and school children would outweigh any of the alleged drawbacks of turning the clock hands forward in the summer months. He didn’t use the term daylight saving but used “seasonal time” which is perhaps a more accurate description. Unlike Willett, Hudson didn’t seem to pursue with his interest in seasonal time and nor did anyone else in New Zealand as far as we know, including in parliament.” (Or not until a little later.)

[1] George Hudson, “On seasonal time”, Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand, vol. 31, 1898, pp. 577-583, Royal Society of New Zealand, National Library of New Zealand, at http://rsnz.natlib.govt.nz/volume/rsnz_31/rsnz_31_00_008570.html

The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy can be obtained from Amazon, Kobo Books, Apple iTunes or Google.

Amazon

Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/Great-Daylight-Saving-Time-Controversy-ebook/dp/B06Y2R5KQ7

Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/Great-Daylight-Saving-Time-Controversy-ebook/dp/B06Y2R5KQ7

NZ: as per US

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Daylight-Saving-Time-Controversy-ebook/dp/B06Y2R5KQ7

US: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Daylight-Saving-Time-Controversy-ebook/dp/B06Y2R5KQ7

Kobo Books

Australia: https://www.kobo.com/au/en/ebook/the-great-daylight-saving-time-controversy

Canada: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/the-great-daylight-saving-time-controversy

NZ: https://www.kobo.com/nz/en/ebook/the-great-daylight-saving-time-controversy

UK: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/the-great-daylight-saving-time-controversy

US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-great-daylight-saving-time-controversy

Apple iTunes

Australia: https://itunes.apple.com/au/book/the-great-daylight-saving-time-controversy/id1224081657?mt=11

Canada: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/book/the-great-daylight-saving-time-controversy/id1224081657?mt=11

NZ: https://itunes.apple.com/nz/book/the-great-daylight-saving-time-controversy/id1224081657?mt=11

UK: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/the-great-daylight-saving-time-controversy/id1224081657?mt=11

US: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-great-daylight-saving-time-controversy/id1224081657?mt=11

Google

Australia: https://books.google.com.au/books?id=kpmbDgAAQBAJ&dq and click on Angus & Robertson

Or check out other articles and excerpts on daylight saving time at the Daylight saving time book category on this site.

DST book cover

The debate over creation and evolution

31 Friday Aug 2018

Posted by Chris Pearce in Articles

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Adam and Eve, Africa, Americas, ancestors, animals, Asia, atmosphere, Augustine, Australia, baraminology, Bible, biblical flood, biochemistry, biology, birth, Cambridge, Catholic Church, Celsus, Charles Darwin, China, Christians, christology, Church of England, climatic change, closed systems, complex molecule, creation, creation model, creation sciences, creationist model, creator, death, Diatessaron, disorder, DNA, Douglas Futuyma, earth, ecology, entropy, environment, Establishment, Europe, Evangelists, evolution, evolutionary process, flood, food, fossil trail, fossils, fundamentalist Christianity, galaxy, Garden of Eden, gene development, Genesis, genetic code, geochronology, geological strata, geology, God, Gospels, Grand Canyon: A Different View, Guadeloupe, health, heat, heaven, humans, Jerome, Jesus, Josephus, koala, life, life expectancy, macroevolution, manuscripts, meteorite, microevolution, Middle East, moons, Mount Everest, natural selection, Newton, Noah, Noah's Ark, nutrients, nutrition, ocean chemistry, Old Testament, On the Origin of Species, organism, Origen, Oxford University, oxygen, Phillip Gingerich, planets, plant life, pre-Cambrian, protein sequences, Protestants, pseudoscience, rain, rainfall, religion, Reunion Island, scientists, scripture, Shangdi, sky, solar system, species, stars, sunlight, Tatian, theologians, theory, theory of gravitation, thermodynamics, Tom Vail, traits, transitional forms, uniformitarianism, United States, universe, US, William Buckland, World War I

Some years ago I wrote four articles on evolution and religion for US writing site Helium now gone. Here’s the second one (link to first one at bottom) …

The debate over creation and evolution has been going on for more than 2,000 years. Creationists have held sway for most of that time. Indeed, it wasn’t always good for one’s health to have a different viewpoint. Evolutionists, hiding in the closet for centuries, suddenly got a boost in the mid 19th century with the work of Charles Darwin. But creationists were having none of that, and initiated a resurgence in creationism around the 1920s. Today, the debate rages, especially in the United States, and I hope I can make some small contribution to it.

We should remember that when the creation story was written, the earth was thought to be flat and at the centre of the universe, with other components being just a few lights in the sky. Scholars and ordinary people wanted answers, even back then. When the Old Testament was written, nothing was known of evolution, and creation seemed like a logical explanation of how we got here. We now know how huge the universe is, and that our planet, solar system and galaxy are just an infinitesimal part of it. The creation of trillions of stars, maybe half of them with their own planets and moons, would perhaps be beyond any god. And if there is a creator, who or what created him, her, or it? And who or what created the thing that created the creator? And who or what created the thing that created the thing that created the creator?

Integral to creation is the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. We don’t know its location, with various hypotheses having been put forward over the years. Even some theologians feel it never existed on earth but was an adjunct to heaven. Some scholars regard Adam and Eve as metaphorical, a story made up by early leaders to teach people about truth, sin, and so on.

Also relevant to creation is the story of Noah’s Ark and the flood. The ark has never been found despite its location being reasonably well identified in Genesis. Given the creation model doesn’t allow macroevolution, the number of species that turned up at the ark at the time of the flood would have to be at least the number today that would be in need of saving from such an event. The number of species has been estimated at anything from 2 to 100 million. Allowing for sea dwellers, insects and any others that allegedly didn’t need saving, that’s still a lot of animals, especially when a pair (or was it seven pairs?) of each animal went onto the boat. It might have been millions. Even using the biblical “kinds” (baraminology is regarded as a pseudoscience like other creation sciences), this would still be a very large number of animals. On this basis, estimates range from 2,000 to 35,000 animals.

The alleged boat was an unlikely 450 feet in length, the size of a modern ship. Theoretically, it would have been large enough to accommodate many thousands of animals. However, it is far larger than other ancient boats. How did Noah acquire the skills to build such a huge vessel, one that would have been way too large for one man and his family to operate in any case? How would you get all these animals onto a boat? Old paintings have them, quite unrealistically, marching in an orderly fashion up a ramp, and onto a vessel far smaller than 450 feet. How would you round them up in the first place? What if the elephants, lions and other formidable beasts refused to cooperate? What about those native to Africa, the Americas and Australia – how would they be expected to find their way around the world to a boat that was allegedly going to save them? And how would you prevent the animals fighting and trying to eat one another as they stood in queue to board the boat?

Assuming all this is possible and did happen, let’s consider how much rain is required in 40 days to flood the earth to a level 20 feet above the highest mountain. Mount Everest is about five and a half miles above sea level. Coastal plains would be under this amount of water, and the seas and oceans would be this much deeper. Five and a half miles is 348,480 inches. This would require daily average rainfall of 8,712 inches for 40 days, or 363 inches an hour, or 6.05 inches a minute, worldwide. Rainfall intensity records are given as 73.62 inches in a day at Reunion Island in 1952, 15.78 inches in an hour at Shangdi, China in 1975, and 1.50 inches in one minute at Guadeloupe in 1970. Rain resulting in the biblical flood would have been four times the intensity of the heaviest rainfall ever recorded over one minute and this had to last 40 days across the whole planet. Noah’s family, the animals and the ark would have been obliterated by rain like sheets of concrete. Nothing would have survived the rain, let alone the flood. Apart from all this, the rain has to come from somewhere. You can’t have this much evaporation and condensation in a short period. Even subscribing to the biblical view that mountains were much lower at the time of the flood, for all the land to be covered with water would be physically impossible.

Can we necessarily believe what we read in the Bible about creation (or much else)? We don’t really know who wrote the Gospels or when. Numerous changes have been made to the Bible over time, especially in the early centuries. There was much bickering among early Christians as to what was scripture, and various christological issues were hotly debated. Many of the writings were chopped and changed amid followers accusing one another of corrupting text. Second century philosopher Celsus said that some of them “changed the original text of the gospels three or four times or even more, with the intention of thus being able to destroy the arguments of their critics”. Tatian’s Diatessaron was one of a number of works that aimed to rewrite the gospels as a narrative, fixing conflicting passages and eliminating duplication. In the third century, Christian scholar Origen admitted that “there is much diversity among the manuscripts, due either to the carelessness of the scribes, or to the perverse audacity of some people in correcting the text, or again to the fact that there are those who add or delete as they please, setting themselves up as correctors”. Many other early church leaders, such as Jerome and Augustine, were concerned about the extent of changes to biblical documents. Then there is the curious absence of Jesus’ birth and death dates (which of course are unknown) and of his life between infancy and the age of about 30. A lack of evidence for Jesus’ historicity in non-biblical sources (e.g. Josephus’ paragraph on Jesus turns out to be a later addition) brings doubt to the Bible’s story of Jesus, let alone the creation story.

When science was still recovering from something like 1,500 years of suppression at the hands of religious leaders, one Charles Darwin made a number of observations relating to fossils and the distribution of wildlife that led him to propose that life evolved from common ancestors, including humans. He coined the term “natural selection” to describe how animals passed on their traits from one generation to the next. His ground-breaking book, On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, shook the establishment to its core. But this wasn’t Darwin’s intention. Indeed, he had studied theology at Cambridge. He simply recorded what he saw and aimed to draw logical conclusions from it.

Evolution soon became accepted by scientists and the general public. In the second half of the 19th century, few scientists or religious people had a problem with the earth being very old indeed. Few accepted the literal description of the flood and few felt it was geologically significant. By 1900, even the Catholic Church accepted that humans evolved from animals, but that humans’ souls were God’s domain. A return to fundamentalist Christianity occurred after World War I, at least in the US. The opposing views of creationists and evolutionists diverged ever wider after this, despite more and more evidence for evolution and its general acceptance by scientists, and little evidence for creation, or Christianity in general for that matter. Today, evolution is accepted by at least 95 per cent of biological and earth scientists, with one survey suggesting a figure as high as 99.8 per cent. Neither the Church of England nor the Catholic Church accepts a literal interpretation of Genesis. Evangelists and Protestants in the US appear to be the chief supporters of a literal view.

Creationists come up with all sorts of ways to try and discredit evolution. Let’s start with thermodynamics. Its second law says that entropy or disorder will always increase over time. Creationists jump on this as proof that evolution can’t happen as it requires an increase in order. But entropy only increases in closed systems and there are none of these in nature. An organism maintains its internal order as it takes from free energy sources such as nutrients and sunlight, returning the same quantity of energy to its environment in the form of heat and entropy. There is no reason for animal and plant life to deteriorate over a period of time. Individual species may deteriorate, and may become extinct, while other species will strengthen, depending on their environment and how well they adapt to it and to changes in it. With extra nutrition and sunlight, humans are taller and stronger than in the 19th century when many people struggled to find enough food and worked long hours in dingy factories. Our liking for junk food may see a weakening in the human species as it adversely affects our health and reduces our life expectancy.

Another favourite argument among creationists for evolution not being possible is an alleged lack of transitional forms or fossils. Christian websites often quote from works by scientists saying no transitional forms have been proven. But note that the references are always old, usually from the 1960s through to about 1980. Research into transitional forms is difficult, time consuming and costly, and virtually none was carried out before the mid 1970s, a major reason being the lack of commercial possibilities. An early researcher, Phillip Gingerich, took 10 years to document two lineages, completing this work in the late 1970s. In the last few decades, there has been a steady increase in this research and in findings from it. Numerous transitional forms have now been identified. For a list of some of these forms, see http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html. For a detailed discussion of transitional forms, with references to numerous books and journal articles on the subject, see http://www.gcssepm.org/special/cuffey_04.htm. Sure there are many missing links, and probably always will be.

The creationist model doesn’t allow for transitional forms, with every species regarded as separate and having no link to any other species. That’s all Genesis allows for, and thus there can’t be any grey areas under this model. It won’t matter what is found or how many gaps are closed, creationists will regard any two fossils as separate species with no links between them if they feel the difference is great enough. If the difference is small, then it’s regarded as the same species. In other words, the model allows microevolution but not macroevolution. However, the two terms describe the same process. Any division is arbitrary and, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has no scientific basis.

If these fossils are less common than other forms of fossils, this might be because the evolutionary process is usually one of gradual change and a transitional form might not always show up. However, the equilibrium might be punctuated when a species experiences a sudden change in its environment, such as an ice age. At this time, many species might become extinct. Those that survive often have to adapt quickly to their new environment, and a transitional species might not be around for as long and therefore leave less evidence.

A quickening of the evolutionary process seems to have happened during the Cambrian explosion. Before this, there are few fossil records as the soft bodies of pre-Cambrian animals left few traces. Various causes of the explosion have been put forward, for example an increase in oxygen in the atmosphere, changes in ocean chemistry, gene development, climatic change or a large meteorite, or some or all of these to a varying extent. Whatever happened, it seems that conditions were right for a rapid increase in the evolutionary process. But 10 million years is still a long time, and considerable change would be possible in this timeframe if there are major changes in the overall environment.

Interestingly, fossil records don’t support creationism. As we’ve seen, the story of Noah’s Ark had all remaining animals at a single place at the same time. Yet, all around the world, there are fossils of numerous species that are only found in the vicinity of their current location. There are no trails of various American or Australian animals in Europe or Asia. How would a creature such as the slow, awkward, tree-dwelling koala travel from the Middle East to Australia and not leave behind a considerable trail of fossils over a long period? And how would it cross oceans and seas? The so-called land bridge between Asia and Australia thousands of years ago had at least one water channel. This could be negotiated by humans in canoes but not by koalas, which at any rate have been in Australia for millions of years.

The impossibility of virtually all aspects of the biblical flood story hasn’t stopped the likes of Tom Vail coming up with a non-fiction (sic) book, Grand Canyon: A Different View, and running canyon tours. The book is about the canyon being carved out by the flood, rather than erosion over millions of years. The American Geological Institute and other bodies want the book removed from national park shops. The idea that a single flood caused all geological strata was rejected as early as 1837 by Reverend William Buckland, professor of geology, Oxford University. The scientific community regards flood geology as pseudoscience. Through the principle of uniformitarianism, geologists have found that the earth has been shaped mainly by slow acting forces rather than one or more massive catastrophic events. Geochronology has determined that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old, rather than 6,000-10,000 years under creation. So speeding up the camera, if science says the earth has been here 24 hours, creation says it’s been here around 0.1 or 0.2 of a second. The ancients could not have envisaged an earth and a universe as old as what they actually are.

Unlike creationism and the Bible, evolution isn’t contradictory. Biochemistry backs it up, including DNA and protein sequences. The genetic code is nearly the same for all species. There are new fossils and more evidence all the time. The UK Natural Environment Research Council states: “It is almost certain that all life developed from the same single source, as all life discovered has the same complex molecule – DNA.” (http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/issues/biodiversity/life.asp). American professor of ecology and evolution Douglas Futuyma believes there are enough similarities in species to show that all species are related. This is generally accepted in biology.

Just a note on the use of the word “theory”: In scientific terms, a theory has to include evidence for it to be called a theory, for example Newton’s theory of gravitation, or the theory of evolution with its vast evidence base. However, in common usage, people tend to think of a theory as a hypothetical proposition that isn’t backed up by any evidence. People will often say: “In theory …; however, in practice …” about different issues. Creationists often criticize evolution as a theory, saying: “It’s only a theory”, knowing that many people will then think of evolution as something that some bunch of scientists dreamed up, perhaps to get under the skin of creationists (!), and that it doesn’t or can’t work in practice. The definition of “theory” from the US National Academy of Science is: “Theory: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.” (http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8178). Scientists don’t spend their time and money and careers trying to stir up creationists. They wouldn’t be doing this work if they thought evolution was nonsense.

Those who accept evolution have done their research and have concluded that evolution makes more sense to them than creationism. They have found answers that, to them, they don’t get from religion and creationism. But there are gaps in evolution, and many people really must have answers to everything, without any gaps. These people become or remain Christians or belong to some other religion that supports creation as they feel this gives them all the answers. Creationism and Christianity will give these people an answer to everything they seek. This is one of the features of these things that attract people to them. It’s a pity that many of the answers, so often promoted as fact or truth, are actually void of evidence.

If you could find, and bring to earth, an intelligent alien who knew nothing about creation or evolution and explained both to him, her, or it, I think I know which one the alien would find more believable. My bet would be on evolution.

See also: https://chrispearce52.wordpress.com/2018/07/15/what-is-evolution/

[I have discovered the above article of mine here, http://scotdir.com/religion-and-spirituality-2/thoughts-on-god/the-debate-over-creation-and-evolution-2, posted by someone called Hailstone. I have emailed scotdir.com to try and get it removed. When it’s done, I’ll remove this endnote.]

 

Postwar daylight saving time confusion in Indiana, US

08 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by Chris Pearce in Daylight saving time book

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ban, Central Daylight Time, Central Standard Time, councils, daylight saving time, Eastern Standard Time, fine, Indiana, Indianapolis, Interstate Commerce Commission, jail, law, newspapers.com, United States, World War II

This is another extract from my daylight saving time book, The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy. It looks at the situation in Indiana, United States, in part of the post-World War II period or from 1949 to 1961. The book is available at Amazon, Kobo, Apple and Google. …

Yet another state to forbid daylight saving was Indiana where Central Standard Time, or GMT–6, had been the law since 1949. That didn’t stop most municipalities putting their clocks forward each summer. A meeting of mayors, councillors and attorneys in Indianapolis in October 1954 voted to have permanent daylight saving or Eastern Standard Time, or GMT–5, and the idea quickly gained support. Many eastern and northern counties were already on Eastern time. By September, Indiana had a confusing mixture of Central and Eastern standard time and daylight saving time, with each community deciding its time zone and when to finish fast time.

A vote was held in November 1956 to determine if residents wanted Eastern or Central standard time and with or without daylight saving. Eastern Standard Time year round got the most votes (32 per cent), followed by Central Standard Time all year (31 per cent), Central time with daylight saving (24 per cent) and Eastern time with daylight saving (13 per cent).

But the state legislature passed a bill in April 1957 for the third most popular option, Central time with daylight saving, figuring that none of the options had anywhere near half the vote, that Central time had more support overall (55 per cent) than Eastern time (45 per cent), and that Central Daylight Time was the same as Eastern Standard Time. That way, the politicians perhaps hoped to keep most people and communities at least partly happy although this seemed unlikely as only 37 per cent of voters wanted daylight saving. Any government official who broke the law would be subject to a fine of up to $1,000 and jail for up to 60 days. Also, state funds could be withheld from municipalities that dared contravene the order.

Straightaway, councils looked for ways to circumvent the new law, such as operating an hour later in winter months. Indianapolis had been on EST since 1955, which is the same as Central Daylight Time, and didn’t have to change its clocks in the summer of 1957. In autumn, it shifted to CST. North-eastern and south-eastern communities unofficially stayed on EST through winter and did this each year. The following summer, the capital changed back to EST and remained in this time zone.

This pattern continued and by late 1960, only the north-west and south-west corners were going back to CST although the changeovers were at different times, while the majority of the state kept to EST. The boundary between CST and EST areas went through the middle of many counties and seemed subjective. In December, The Indianapolis Star Magazine commented on the chaos as follows:

… this state has huffed and puffed itself into a condition of horological horror, a phrenetic, incongruous mixture of such a simple thing as the time of day. … The time map of Indiana is a cartographer’s nightmare, sort of speckled all over like a purebred Dalmatian. It’s a confusing, tremendously expensive, intolerable situation that we haven’t been able to straighten out ourselves by compromise, treaty, referendum or legislative act.[1]

The state law demanding Central time with daylight saving was repealed in March 1961 and time was left to each community to sort out. Various bodies had been asking the Interstate Commerce Commission for some years to move the boundary between the Central and Eastern time zones to the west, which it did in June. After the shift, about half of Indiana, including the capital, was in the Eastern time zone although a considerably greater proportion of the state used this zone in practice and most or all of it kept on doing so.

[1] Joseph Shepard, “A time of confusion”, The Indianapolis Star Magazine, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States, 4 December 1960, p. 9, Newspapers.com (subscription only), at https://www.newspapers.com/image/105784123

DST book cover

What is evolution?

15 Sunday Jul 2018

Posted by Chris Pearce in Articles

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Some years ago I wrote four articles on evolution and religion for US writing site Helium now gone. Here’s the first one …

Evolutionary thought has been around since before the time of Jesus. In the 6th century BCE, Greek philosopher Anaximander speculated about the origin of life and he believed that animals originated from the sea. A succession of Greek, Roman, Arab and Persian philosophers put forward their ideas on evolution. Such ideas became more sophisticated in the 18th century as Pierre Maupertuis and Erasmus Darwin took advantage of the greater knowledge of biology by this time. Biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck wrote about the transmutation of species in 1809.

But it was Charles Darwin’s ground-breaking book, On the Origin of Species, in 1859 that shook the establishment to its core. He proposed that life evolved from common ancestors, including humans. He coined the term natural selection to describe how animals passed on their traits from one generation to the next. Evolution soon became accepted by scientists and the general public. Today, evolution is accepted by at least 95 per cent of biological and earth scientists, with one survey suggesting the figure is 99.8 per cent. However, a resurgence in creationist beliefs since about the 1920s has led to at least 40 per cent of people in the United States supporting creation, although the figure is generally thought to be lower in other countries.

Evolution refers to the changes in a population’s traits or characteristics between generations. These changes can be caused by genetic influences or by environmental factors or both. Inherited traits in any individual come from the parents’ genes, which are passed on to it automatically. Mutations, or changes, in genes can occur due to things like chemical agents, viruses or radiation and can result in altered traits in offspring. Migration is likely to speed this process up as genes from different groups are passed on to the next generation. Some mutations will decline in a population while other more favourable ones will increase by natural selection and may lead to evolutionary change. Favourable mutations are those that help a species to survive in its environment and to reproduce.

The other main factor in the evolutionary process is genetic drift. Under this principle, introduced in the 1920s by American geneticist Sewall Wright, random chance determines which gene variants will be passed from the current generation to its offspring. To see how this works, imagine a barrel with 10 blue balls and 10 brown balls. Look away and take a ball from the barrel. Put a ball of the same colour in a second barrel and return the ball you took from the first barrel to that barrel. Shake the barrel and pick a ball. Do this 20 times and see what combination you end up with in the second barrel. It could be 10 and 10, or 11 and 9, or some other combination although the chances of a particular combination decrease the further it is from 10 and 10. The second barrel will be the new generation. Repeat the first step and another different combination of balls will likely result. Keep repeating the process. Sometimes there will be more blue balls, and other times more brown balls. It’s possible that one of the colours will disappear altogether after a large number of generations. This is how genetic drift works.

Natural selection and genetic drift occur at the same time in any population. In a small population, genetic drift will dominate. However, in a larger population, natural selection will tend to overshadow drift, even when selection is weak. Try the above experiment with 50 blue and 50 brown balls and you will see that the relative effect of drift will be less than what it was with 10 blue and 10 brown balls.

How did life come from non-living matter in the first place nearly four billion years ago? I wish I knew. Whether scientists will eventually come up with a satisfactory explanation is hard to tell. It could have been the result of some sort of spontaneous chemical reaction or self-replicating molecules (e.g. ribonucleic acid, or RNA) or self-assembly of simple cells. Lots of things are possible in an open system. But understanding how evolution occurs, and the fact that it does occur, doesn’t depend on knowing how life started.

All organisms have a common ancestor or gene pool. The first organisms on earth go back 3-4 billion years. These were the prokaryotes, single cell bacteria and archaea that can live in inhospitable environments. The next step was eukaryotic cells which evolved from ancient bacteria. Various multi-cellular organisms developed independently in the oceans from around one billion years ago. Evolution accelerated during a 10 million year period known as the Cambrian explosion about 530 million years ago. Complex forms of animals developed at this time. Some 500 million years ago, plants appeared on the land. Animals such as certain arthropods soon followed. Other animals appeared later, such as amniotes from 340 million years ago, amphibians 300 million years ago, mammals 200 million years ago, and birds 100 million years ago. The evolutionary process is ongoing. What we see today is a collection of species at their current stage in the process. New species will form and others will become extinct.

Perhaps the best way to see what evolution is and how it occurs is by way of example. Let’s assume a particular species lives in a certain area and goes about its daily routine of survival: eating, sleeping and reproducing. If food becomes short due to over-populating or drought or some other reason, some of this group will have to move and find another home if all members are to survive. Let’s say a few hundred of the species move on and a few hundred stay put. The migratory group finds a new home that is a bit warmer and wetter, has more food, has fewer natural predators, and has trees that are easier to climb as the timber is softer. The environment of the sedentary group is somewhat the opposite, and actually continues to become drier. (For the purposes of the example, the new environment of the migratory group might be dry and the old environment wet. It doesn’t matter.)

What would happen to the two groups? Assuming they are a reasonably hardy, adaptable species and would survive, the two groups would gradually adapt more and more to their respective environments. Over time, the migratory group would probably breed faster, eat more, perhaps get larger and fatter, and maybe slower and lazier. Their claws might lose strength and sharpness over time. The sedentary group might not breed as fast as there is less food and water. They have to watch their backs more and will become quicker and perhaps develop better eyesight or smell or both to avoid predators and to catch their own food. And they would develop sharper claws, and stronger limbs, to climb the hardwood trees. Eventually, physiological changes in the two groups might make them sufficiently different that a male and a female from each group could no longer breed. The result is two species from one. This might take many tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of years depending on the circumstances.

But food is running out in the habitat of the sedentary group, so some of them migrate in search of a better food supply. They find it, and live in this new, different environment for a long period and adapt to it. Eventually, they are sufficiently different from the rest of the group they left behind, that the two parts of the group become separate species. The part of the group that migrated is then hit by an ice age and a large number of them set off to find a warmer climate and more food. And so the process continues.

Some groups and part groups continue to adapt to their ever-changing environment, while others die out. Some subgroups have to become smarter to survive. Constant use of their brains results in them finding new ways to survive. They use sticks and rocks to help them kill prey, and fire to cook it and to keep warm during cold winters. These particular subgroups no longer live in trees as there are predators waiting for them, so they start living in caves instead where they can throw sticks and stones to ward off these predators, and put up barricades at night, knowing that other, bigger, stronger species don’t have the know-how to tear them down.

One particular subgroup develops its brainpower at a faster rate than similar species and secures the lion’s share of the available food. The several species that make up the close cousins of this superior species become increasingly hungry. Their numbers dwindle and they eventually become extinct. The surviving species is modern humans. Their close cousins, the Neanderthals and others, have disappeared. Meanwhile, slightly more distant cousins within the Hominidae family are doing their own thing in their own environment, perhaps including members of the initial species described in this example, and are still climbing trees and have plenty of food and man is not a threat (until far more recently). Evolution has taken place!

We might be seeing the potential for further evolutionary change in humans in the last hundred years or so. We saw an increase in height and weight as we improved our nutrition, general living conditions and health. More recently, we’ve seen further considerable increases in weight due to junk food and sedentary lifestyle. If you divided a group of humans into two further groups, put up a wall between them and let one group continue a lazy, junk food existence and let the other group become fitness fanatics, changes in each group might become sufficient that breeding between the “lazy” and “fit” groups may no longer be possible in perhaps as little as several tens of thousands of years, assuming the “lazy” group survives its excesses.

The evolutionary process is sometimes divided into microevolution, which describes small changes over a short period of a few generations, and macroevolution, which refers to the larger changes that occur over a longer period. The creationist model supports microevolution but not macroevolution where new species might be formed. However, the two terms describe the same process. Any division is arbitrary and, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has no scientific basis. In the example above, two groups of the same species aren’t going to stop evolving simply because they’ve reached the boundary of their ability to reproduce together. They may continue to evolve and may end up as two separate species.

Evidence of evolution is abundant. You may have seen those Christian websites that quote from works by scientists admitting to a lack of transitional forms. The sites then claim that the absence of these forms means that evolution is nonsense and therefore everything had to be created by a creator. But note that the references are always old, usually from the 1960s through to about 1980. Research into transitional forms is expensive and has long lead times. Since pioneering research in the mid and late 1970s, numerous transitional forms have been identified. Sure there are many missing links, and probably always will be. But knowledge of evolution has come a long way since Darwin first made his observations on fossils and species, and saw evidence of evolution, rather than accepting without question what was stated in literature from 2,000 years ago.

How the events of WWI led to the start of daylight saving time in the US

23 Saturday Jun 2018

Posted by Chris Pearce in Daylight saving time book

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The following is an extract from my book on daylight saving time, The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy, and shows how certain events in World War I initiated daylight saving time in the US for the first time in 1918. The ebook can be obtained from Amazon, Kobo Books, Apple and Google. See links at bottom …

… A German U-boat had sunk British passenger liner Lusitania in May 1915 with 128 Americans among the dead. President [Woodrow] Wilson had declared that “America was too proud to fight” and demanded an end to passenger ship attacks. Soon supporters of daylight saving were linking the idea to patriotism and efficiency, with slogans such as “mobilize an extra hour of daylight and help win the war”.

Then, in February 1917, America learned of a coded telegram sent the previous month by German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmermann via the German ambassador in Washington, D.C. to the German ambassador in Mexico. It asked that he persuade the Mexican government to become Germany’s ally against the United States in exchange for financial assistance and support to regain Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, lost in the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. The telegram was intercepted by the British. The same message announced that Germany was starting unrestricted submarine warfare from 1 February. Over the next two months, a number of American merchant ships were attacked and three sank. This was the final straw.

On 2 April 1917, the first day of the new parliamentary session, Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany. Congress complied and on 6 April the United States was at war. Less than two weeks later, on 17 April, a bill calling for standard time and daylight saving time was drawn up by the National Daylight Saving Association and brought into Congress by [William] Borland [of Missouri] and senator William Calder of Brooklyn. The bill not only asked for five months of daylight saving, but to finally make railway time (effectively standard time) official, which had been observed by virtually the whole country for well over 30 years.

A long list of leading daylight saving supporters testified before the Senate committee, including [Marcus] Marks, [Robert] Garland, [Lincoln] Filene, George Renaud, C. M. Hayes and [Harold] Jacoby. They presented a wide range of arguments in favour of daylight saving, such as reduced fuel consumption, an increase in food production, improved health, and more time for recreation. Garland, for example, stated that the estimated number of incandescent lamps in America was 130 million and growing rapidly, and to illuminate them all for one hour a day from May to September took 937,000 tons of coal. The energy saved could be rechannelled into the war effort, he pointed out. Professor Robert Willson of Harvard University reminded the committee of how most cities near railway time zone boundaries chose the eastern zone and hence longer afternoons. Sidney Colgate of Colgate & Company spoke about his firm’s experiment in 1915, where it put clocks an hour ahead in July and August. A vote among staff found that 94 per cent wanted it to continue through September.

Meanwhile, very few places advanced their clocks in the summer of 1917. Two that did were the cities of Green Bay and Superior in Wisconsin although a number of businesses around the country and a few schools kept daylight saving hours. Perhaps the general thinking among communities was that national daylight saving was close and there was no need to go it alone.

As usual, farmers and the railways were against daylight saving time. The American Railway Association’s D. C. Stewart had calculated the number of timepieces at stations and on rail staff across the country at about 1.7 million and stressed to the committee that if just one clock or watch wasn’t changed correctly, there could be a terrible accident on one of the many single track lines.

While the reasons to have daylight saving were sufficient to carry the bill through the Senate on 27 June 1917, the bill’s path in the House of Representatives took much longer. Various government and business spokesmen supported the bill, and the press now largely favoured the scheme. P. S. Risdale of the National War Garden Commission said that daylight saving would add 910 million person hours of home vegetable gardening a year. This meant that more food produced by the large firms could be transported to America’s allies in Europe where millions of farm hands had been taken off the land to become soldiers, and countries were starving.

But farming and railway groups kept up their fierce opposition to daylight saving, as did many politicians. Some felt they couldn’t treat it as a pressing matter, such as representative Otis Wingo of Arkansas who commented:

“I do not know that I have any particular objection to this bill; I just decline to take it seriously. … A majority of the men who advocate this character of legislation have not seen the sun rise for twenty years. … This bill is for the relief of the slackers of the nation who are too lazy to get up early. … We should not be wasting our time on such bills, but should go on to the war-finance bill. … While our boys are fighting in the trenches, we are here like a lot of schoolboys ‘tinkering’ with the clocks.” (United States, Congressional Record, 1917)

Nevertheless, the tide of support for the bill continued to grow. When the House was advised that considerably more coal was consumed in the cooler months of March and October than over summer, it revised the bill from five to seven months of daylight time to start on the last Sunday in March and finish on the last Sunday in October. The amended bill was passed by 253 votes to 40 on 15 March 1918 and approved by the Senate the following day, becoming law on 19 March. The result was the Standard Time Act of 1918, or the Calder Act, which included daylight saving time, the long title being “An Act to save daylight and to provide standard time for the United States”.

Except for Alaska, clocks throughout the country were put forward an hour for the first time at 2 a.m. on Sunday 31 March 1918. Thus 2 a.m. became 3 a.m. Many folk stayed up until 2 a.m. to make the change although the National Daylight Saving Association had suggested that households adjust their clocks before they went to bed the previous evening and for workplaces to alter theirs at the end of the last shift of the previous week. It was Easter and priests were worried that people would oversleep and be late for service due to the time change. The association advised churches to “ring their bells more lustily than usual”.

Some people went out and celebrated the changeover. Thousands turned out at Madison Square Park in New York to watch a parade featuring the New York Police Department Band and members of the Boy Scouts. As the crowd listened to patriotic speeches, Marcus Marks appeared from the Aldine Club where he had been celebrating with other Daylight Saving Association members. He made his way to the Metropolitan Tower and moved the minute hand of the clock ahead an hour to resounding cheers. Similarly, William Calder attended a gathering in nearby Brooklyn where the Borough Hall clock was wound forward.

(end of extract)

DST book cover

The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy can be obtained at the following:

Amazon

Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/Great-Daylight-Saving-Time-Controversy-ebook/dp/B06Y2R5KQ7

Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/Great-Daylight-Saving-Time-Controversy-ebook/dp/B06Y2R5KQ7

NZ: as per US

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Daylight-Saving-Time-Controversy-ebook/dp/B06Y2R5KQ7

US: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Daylight-Saving-Time-Controversy-ebook/dp/B06Y2R5KQ7

Kobo Books

Australia: https://www.kobo.com/au/en/ebook/the-great-daylight-saving-time-controversy

Canada: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/the-great-daylight-saving-time-controversy

NZ: https://www.kobo.com/nz/en/ebook/the-great-daylight-saving-time-controversy

UK: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/the-great-daylight-saving-time-controversy

US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-great-daylight-saving-time-controversy

Apple ITunes

Australia: https://itunes.apple.com/au/book/the-great-daylight-saving-time-controversy/id1224081657?mt=11

Canada: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/book/the-great-daylight-saving-time-controversy/id1224081657?mt=11

NZ: https://itunes.apple.com/nz/book/the-great-daylight-saving-time-controversy/id1224081657?mt=11

UK: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/the-great-daylight-saving-time-controversy/id1224081657?mt=11

US: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-great-daylight-saving-time-controversy/id1224081657?mt=11

Google

Australia: https://books.google.com.au/books?id=kpmbDgAAQBAJ&dq and click on Angus & Robertson

Or see other extracts and an index to the book here:

https://chrispearce52.wordpress.com/category/daylight-saving-time-book/

National daylight saving time in the US: Uniform Time Act of 1966

11 Sunday Mar 2018

Posted by Chris Pearce in Daylight saving time book

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Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, Alabama, Arizona, chaos, Clyde Reed, daylight saving time, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Gordian knot, Harley Staggers, House Interstate Commerce Committee, Idaho, Indiana, Interstate Commerce Commission, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Lyndon Johnson, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, standard time, state legislatures, Tennessee, Texas, time zones, Uniform Time Act of 1966, United States, US Congress, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming

Daylight saving time starts again today (March 11) in the United States. This excerpt from my book on the history of daylight saving time around the world, The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy, looks at the lead-up and result of the Uniform Time Act of 1966. The US had suffered a chaotic time with daylight saving since the end of World War II with states and municipalities basically going their own way. By 1966, 18 states plus the District of Columbia had daylight saving throughout, 13 states had daylight saving in part of the state and 19 had it in no part (see the table that shows which states were in which category towards the end of chapter 13 of my book; I can’t reproduce it here).  Here’s the excerpt …

Congress had become increasingly concerned over the years by the haphazard approach to daylight saving across the country, especially in those states where individual counties and municipalities went their own way. Many bills for uniform time were introduced but few made it to either house for debate and a vote. In February 1948, Kansas senator Clyde Reed had a bill for national daylight saving from the last Sunday in April until the last Sunday in September each year. But Congress didn’t seem game to look at universal daylight time so soon after the controversies it had brought during the war. He got little support. One senator wrote him a letter strongly opposing the measure, closing with “Disgustingly yours”.

New representative Harley Staggers of West Virginia introduced the first of his annual daylight saving bills into Congress in 1949 “after citizens from cities as well as rural areas complained of the confusion resulting from the ‘two-clock system’ during the summer months”, he said. A few of his bills got to the committee hearings stage but no further. In 1959, he gave up on daylight saving and tried a bill for standard time, just keen to get all of the country’s clocks on one time or the other rather than have a confusing mess each summer. Next year, he was back with daylight saving and, for the first time, his bill got a hearing by the House Interstate Commerce Committee. In 1962, his bill was for standard time again.

Bodies such as the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations were keen for Congress to enact uniform daylight saving. More bills were drafted, including by Staggers and other members, often with his involvement. A New York newspaper [The Kingston Daily Freeman] described the US time problem as a Gordian knot that “needs to be slashed with one mighty cut”. The ICC described the system as one of “increasing chaos”. More and more farmers agreed that a uniform time system, even if it included daylight saving, was better than the present costly and confused patchwork of times.

A House commerce subcommittee approved by a vote of 9 to 8 a bill introduced by Staggers in 1964 that did away with the term “daylight saving” and instead used the four existing time zones, Pacific, Mountain, Central and Eastern, and added a new one, Atlantic time. From late April to late October, the whole of the area covered by each time zone would shift one zone to the east. For example, the Mountain zone would move to the Central zone, meaning that the region would be on Mountain Standard Time in winter and Central Standard Time in summer. People in the Eastern zone would be on Atlantic Standard Time in the warmer months. While the bill had no binding provisions for states and communities to go along with it, the author felt few areas wouldn’t welcome uniform time. Common start and end dates would be mandatory for any location using the scheme. Federal agencies and interstate transport bodies would have to comply. The Senate Commerce Committee approved a similar bill. But the current Congress session ended without the bills progressing further.

With Harley Staggers now chairman of the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee from January 1966, bills for nationwide daylight saving were thought to have a better chance of getting through the chamber. The issue was his hobby horse. His varied background before being elected to Congress, including science teacher, head coach, sheriff, brakeman, rubber maker, silk mill worker, field hand, highway right of way agent, county rent control director, state director of the Office of War Information, and lieutenant commander and navigator in the US Naval Air Corps, perhaps enabled him to see the daylight saving time issue from more perspectives than most people. He gave the matter high priority.

The committee was looking at a plan where states that chose to adopt daylight saving used set dates of the last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October and for a whole state to either use it or stick with standard time. This differed from a bill the Senate had passed the previous year that allowed local option. The House passed its own bill by a ratio of better than three to one on 16 March and sent it to the Senate. But the upper house added an amendment that permitted a state to split into two parts and have daylight time in one part and standard time in the other. Staggers called for a meeting to sort out differences. The updated bill required uniform changeover dates in all areas observing daylight saving in 1966 and for each state to use either standard or daylight time from 1967. If a state wanted to exempt itself from daylight saving, it had to legislate by 1 April of that year.

The Senate agreed to the compromise on 29 March 1966 and the House passed the bill by a vote of 281 to 91 next day. President Lyndon Johnson signed it on 14 April and it became the Uniform Time Act of 1966. After two decades of time turmoil, the United States seemed to have at last sorted out daylight saving with federal legislation rather than leaving it to states and communities. Railroad stations wouldn’t need clocks with two hour hands anymore. Many people thought time would no longer be a problem. Not so. [end of chapter]

With the Uniform Time Act, the US states had to decide if they were going to have daylight saving or stick to standard time all year. In 1966, counties, cities and towns in 13 states had chosen whether to use advanced time, legally or otherwise. Local areas would now have to go with whatever their state decided to do. Many businesses as well as television, radio, trains, planes, bankers and golfers liked daylight time, while farmers, theatre owners, restaurants, bowling alleys, and families with children heading off to school before sunrise didn’t want it. By and large, it was a city versus country dispute.

State legislatures swung into action and numerous bills were introduced in 1966 and 1967 to exempt no fewer than 25 states from daylight saving: Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio and South Dakota in the midwest, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas in the south and Arizona, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming in the west. Three state legislatures weren’t due to hold regular sessions in 1967: Kentucky, Virginia and Mississippi. Another complexity was that 12 states were split between two time zones and the western part of some of them had often used daylight saving in the past, meaning that both parts were on the same time in summer. The Uniform Time Act would cause the two areas to be an hour different all year.

Committees met, houses debated, and groups lobbied. …

(end of excerpt)

The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy can be obtained from Amazon, Kobo and Apple in various countries around the world. Here’s the link to the US Amazon page: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Daylight-Saving-Time-Controversy-ebook/dp/B06Y2R5KQ7

DST book cover 

 

 

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