[LEAPSECS] The ends we seek

[Ian Batten]

> 

> IMO it is the lack of a consistently written and fair set of options and their implications that is holding the debate back in the ITU and elsewhere.



Perhaps so, but the claim that absorbing an increase in timezone changes (ie, allow DUT1 to grow to 31 minutes, and then allow anyone who wants to reduce DUT1 to 29 minutes to change their time zone) requires agreement on a trans-national scale is simply a spurious objection.    Typical estimates for DUT1 to grow to 30 minutes are about six hundred years.  The idea of writing international treaties to deal with something that will not happen until 2600 is fanciful enough.  But time zones haven't existed for half that time, and have changed every generation without major debate.  There's presumably a country whose time zone and borders have remained fixed for more than fifty years at a stretch, but it's hard to think of them.  

And even if you accept that planning timezone changes requires us to write documents in case they can't figure it out in 2600,  which countries will be parties to these agreements?   Most countries from 1400 barely exist today: few can claim a continuous government.

ian