To return to a previous point, Tony Finch wrote:
Note that there's no need for global co-ordination. Each country (or county) can change when it is convenient for them. The effect would probably be a shifting of timezone boundaries in lumps and bumps that averages out to the overall DUT1 drift.
Some requirements (in general, the most important ones) apply to the results of implementing a system, not to the manner of implementing it.
These spiraling lumps and bumps in time are not acceptable. Perhaps we might ask a few historians or folks from other long point-of-view professions whether there is a need for global coordination? Time isn't just about what happens today. Time has permanence in our records and histories.
(Also, I'm not sure saying "the politicians will fix it" is your most successful tactical point :-)
Leap seconds represent authentic intercalary corrections. (So would leap hours - with the small caveat that they cannot be implemented.) On the other hand, the lumps and bumps from the timezone gimmick both accelerate with time, and pile higher and higher, one on top of the other. Real time (the solar time that drives politicians in each county or country to reluctantly deal with this issue) will get further and further from civil time. As a result, civil time will mean less and less.
As with the notion of leap hours, the lumps and bumps are really more like the Himalayas.
We need to stabilize civil time just like we need to stabilize the civil calendar and on a schedule not too dramatically different.
Rob _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list LEAPSECS@leapsecond.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
