[LEAPSECS] Leap smear

[Stephen Colebourne]

On 20 September 2011 17:04, Ian Batten <igb at batten.eu.org> wrote:

> Yes, indeed, if we allowed leap seconds to build up at the current rate, there would be an issue with an additional hour being required in the range of timezones in approximately five and a half thousand years' time (one leap second per eighteen months, times 3600 seconds per hour).  Five and a half thousand years ago is somewhere around the boundary between the neolithic and the bronze age, and the rate of technological change is accelerating, not slowing.  I can think of few things I care about less than people in five thousand years' time having to revise the Olson tz code.


http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/dutc.html#dutctable
Looks like it could be 400-900 years to the first hour.



>> Personally, I think it would be very unwise to give up

>> control to politician of the core clock that is used by the world's

>> population (yes, "UTC" would still be driven by science, but it would

>> be irrelevant to real people, in the same way that TAI is today).

>> Saying that people just care about the time on the news or their wall

>> isn't enough - they do care about offsets too, and decoupling those

>> from anything meaningful is just asking for trouble.

>

> Could you outline the sort of trouble you have in mind?


My assessment is that most people (which thus includes politicians)
don't generally trouble themselves with the finer details of standards
or technology so long as it works in a way that is reasonably in tune
with their basic expectations. The problems occur (cursing, annoyance
or political pressure) when things are in some way out of kilter with
those basic expectations. Today's UTC offset system is easy enough to
explain - its the "number of hours time difference of our local area
to the 'standard' solar day in the UK". Vague? Yes. Imprecise? Yes.
But it doesn't matter, as a general explanation - people feel that
they have a *basic* handle on how the clock and the offset work, and
it seems enough like common sense for them to be comfortable.

However, the tzdata approach ends up with no meaningful common sense
definition. The offset becomes an ever increasing offset to some
arbitrary clock to the length of day 500+ years ago that a bunch of
time nerds back then was more important that the length of the solar
day. I posit that people would be uncomfortable about that lack of
ability to link the concept of time and offset to something
meaningful, like a solar day. And if people are uncomfortable, then
politicians become uncomfortable. Perhaps, one or more countries would
redefine time completely as a result, who knows...

Now, if those supporting this proposal are wililng to say publicly
that it basically punts the problem to future generations and that
they don't care what those generations do, then they'd be being more
honest.....

Stephen