[LEAPSECS] "China move could call time on GMT"

[Rob Seaman]

Referring back to the original post in this thread, the South China Morning Post (www.scmp.com) has a free trial so the article is still available.  Some additional quotes:

	'The US wants to get rid of time standards based on the earth's rotation, a somewhat erratic system that underpins Greenwich Mean Time and Co-ordinated Universal Time.'

The ITU proposal is about UTC, not GMT.  On the other hand it also doesn't discuss TAI and yet the plan appears to be to deprecate TAI after redefining UTC.  It seems quite possible that the plan is similarly "to get rid of" GMT.  Indeed, how can GMT continue to have a coherent meaning afterwards?

Another quote immediately following the one about Beidou in the referenced message below:

	'But China is not without its concerns about the US proposal. The new standard, which would go into effect in 2017, would force Beijing to recall many sensitive devices already in use, for fear of manipulation or malfunctioning. "That means lots of work and costs amounting to billions of yuan," Liu said.'

One yuan is something over $0.15, so that converts to hundreds of millions of dollars.  Liu Changhong is 'senior engineer at the National Time Service Centre and Beijing's spokesman on the issue'.  That is, this cost estimate is from the Chinese government itself.

And another:

	'Not all mainland researchers agree with the government's change of stance. Professor Gao Yuping , a researcher at the National Time Service Centre, said he prefers the current system because it honours tradition.

	"I don't think we should get rid of the sun in our definition of a day simply for some technological convenience," Gao said. "I am a human before I am a scientist, and I feel uncomfortable surrendering everything to atomic clocks."'

Whether one or another of us accepts or rejects such philosophical aspects of the issue is not the point.  Large numbers of the lay public will most certainly feel the same way.  If broad consensus is not sought before action is taken, it ensures ongoing wrangling over the issue later.

Rob Seaman
National Optical Astronomy Observatory
--
	
On Dec 29, 2011, at 6:13 PM, Dennis Ferguson wrote:


> This morning's South China Morning Post has an article about China

> dropping opposition to the change to UTC.  The headline is here

> 

>    http://www.scmp.com

> 

> but the body is behind a paywall.

> 

> Here are the quotes from Liu Changhong, who works for China's

> equivalent of NIST and who is apparently the official spokesman

> on the issue now:

> 

>   "A few years ago we could not understand some technical

>   complaints from the US and took them as a plot against

>   China because we had not encountered those problems,"

>   Liu said.  "Now we do.  Our delegation will attend the

>   meeting with an open mind.  If most countries want the

>   change, we will vote for it."

> 

> And, concerning Beidou:

> 

>   China has found itself in a similar situation since the

>   deployment of its Beidou navigation system, Liu said.

> 

>   "The leap-second operation has made ground devices more

>   difficult to maintain," Liu said.  "Dropping the leap

>   second would give everyone a break, especially our

>   consumers.  We sweat each time a leap second operation

>   is called, for fear that the equipment might go wrong."

> 

> It seems like the difference between opposition and support

> might be the ownership of a satellite navigation system (which

> uses Yet Another Not-UTC Timescale for its system time).

> 

> Dennis Ferguson


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