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

[Ian Batten]

On 4 Jan 2012, at 19:58, Warner Losh wrote:


> 

> Do people have a notion how we'll recon time when the accumulated delta becomes large (like on the order of 100k seconds)?  UTC+27?


I think there's a certain degree of hubris involved in any discussion in which you attempt to solve problems that will not be confronted for thousands of years.  And, from a political perspective, any attempt to argue that you shouldn't do a thing because it'll cause problems in a thousand year's time will need to be something of the form "the entire planet will explode and mankind's history will come to an end" rather than "they might need to introduce a leap day, but they'll have a few centuries' warning".   

After all, Western Samoa has just had a negative leap day in order to switch from one side of the date line to the other, and the switch from Julian to Gregorian calendars didn't cause the world to end.    Given there's some ambiguity about leap-year rules out into the far future anyway, worrying about the effects of calendar reckoning a few thousand years out looks somewhat like shroud waving in order to pursue a more immediate agenda.

ian