[LEAPSECS] LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 153, Issue 3

[Demetrios Matsakis]

Poul-Henning, you may well be right.

There is a well-known decrease in the slow-down due to the global warming since the ice ages.   Basically the ice caps melt, the oceans rise, and the Earth gets rounder.   But the same people who do that math say today’s warming, dramatic as it may be for our biosphere, is too little for this particular effect.   People have gotten that stuff wrong since George Darwin, though.

> On Jul 15, 2020, at 1:11 PM, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk at phk.freebsd.dk> wrote:
> 
> --------
> 
>> I haven't re-run the statistics.  I'd still bet that the 
>> average LOD stays constant at its latest several-year average value for 
>> the next ten years, meaning no negative leap second.   But I'd 
>> lower the ante :)
> 
> If we keep leap-seconds, I would bet even dollars (ie: a 50/50
> probability) on at least one (and probably only one) negative
> leap-second before the 2K38 time_t roll over.
> 
> This is an unscientific hunch, but based on scientific data: I see
> far more co-trending in DUT1 and climate model result than I am
> comfortable with.
> 
> -- 
> Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
> phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
> FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
> Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.