I am sorry but my statement was correct: the IAU has not taken a stand. My
statement was correct because an IAU Working Group is not the IAU, and that IAU
leadership has been explicitly clear about this point. I am sure the demeanor
of everyone in the WG was professional. But I would also bet that the opinions
of the individual Working Group members at the end of their deliberations were
exactly the same as their opinions when they joined the group. I have no
knowledge of that fact, but its a good hunch that you would know more about
than I or anyone not on the WG.
Similarly, it appears you have distorted the Torino meeting by suggesting a
consensus existed. The summary of that meeting, as referenced on Steve Allan's
web pages for example, specifically states that there was no concensus, yet you
claim one existed. More importantly it also says the ITU should consider
replacing UTC by a new continuous timescale, with a new name TI. The actual
phrase was evolving, and that means no more UTC and no more leap seconds after
a period for preparation.
Perhaps it should also be noted that the only still-active proposer of the
name TI, Dr. Arias of the BIPM, no longer supports a name change.
From: Rob Seaman <sea...@noao.edu>
To: Leap Second Discussion List <leapsecs@leapsecond.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 6, 2014 10:45 PM
Subject: [LEAPSECS] IAU UTC report
On Nov 6, 2014, at 8:04 PM, Alex Currant via LEAPSECS <leapsecs@leapsecond.com>
wrote:
The IAU has not taken a stand on this - if it were so simple then the
disagreements that were expressed in the IAU deliberations would not have been
sufficient to prevent a resolution.
This is not correct. The IAU UTC working group did take a carefully negotiated
stand on this. All members of the working group contributed in a serious and
professional manner, and I was honored to work with all of them, including
those whose opinions differed from my own. The final report from the IAU UTC
working group is available online from the scrolling news banner at the top of
the page:
http://hpiers.obspm.fr/eop-pc/
>From the executive summary:
"Consequently, the Working Group recommends that the IAU respond to the ITU-R
by stating that the IAU is not in a position to formulate a conclusive opinion
regarding any change in the definition of Coordinated Universal Time.
Nevertheless, in the event of the deletion of future leap seconds the name of
the scale should no longer reference the astronomical time scale “Universal
Time” to avoid technical confusion, and a time interval of at least five years
between adoption and implementation should be allowed."
This supports the consensus from the 2003 Torino colloquium. Whether a large
organization like the IAU or ITU responds efficiently to such a recommendation
depends on many factors, but nothing about the report was "sufficient to
prevent a resolution" or to prevent forwarding it to the ITU, and the report
was delivered to the IAU Exec in a timely fashion.
Rob SeamanNational Optical Astronomy Observatory
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