[LEAPSECS] alternative to smearing

[John Sauter]

On Wed, 2017-01-04 at 16:29 +0100, Preben Nørager wrote:
> On Wed, 2017-01-04 at 15:25 +0100, John Sauter wrote:
> 
> "Preben, You and I disagree on this issue.  For me this is
> fundamentally a moral
> concern.  I believe that each generation should handle its problems
> as
> best it can, leaving to the next generation only unforeseen problems.
>  
> The tension between the need of civil society and science for a time
> scale that simultaneously matches the Earth and atomic time is met by
> the Gregorian Calendar and UTC.
> The reform that brought the calendar back into synchronization with
> the
> seasons was proposed several times but got no traction until 1582.
> That generation bit the bullet and suffered the dislocation of
> dropping
> 10 days from the calendar rather than continue to defer the problem.
> It took centuries for everyone to get on-board, but today almost
> everyone uses the Gregorian calendar.
> UTC, as it is defined today with leap seconds, is a similar
> challenge.
> We can fix the buggy software or we can cause a problem for the next
> generation.  I feel that it would be immoral to remove an adequate
> solution just because we are too lazy to write code correctly."
> 
> --
> 
> Dear John,
> The existing leap-second-system will not last forever. Because of
> future deceleration of earth rotation, the need for leap seconds will
> sometime become so immense, that future generations will have to have
> another system anyway. And as I said international atomic time, with
> national official time zones, seems the best way forward. I agree
> with you that the gregorian reform was a good thing, but there were
> actually two different aspects of that reform. The first was the new
> rule for leap years. That new rule brought the calendar back into
> synchronization with the seasons and hurra for that. The other aspect
> was the dropping of ten days. I don't know exactly why the march
> equinox shall occur allways around march 21. Would allways around
> march 11 not have been just as good? Anyway, meeting the need for
> synchronization with the seasons is not the same as meeting the need
> for synchronization with solar noon. The gregorian calendar can meet
> the need of the one, and atomic time with time-zones can meet the
> need of the other. I think honestly your moral concern is not future
> generations, but something else.  
> Preben

Dear Preben,

I agree that the existing leap second system will not last forever, but
it will be about 1000 years before we need more than one leap second
per month, and that's a long time in my book.

I believe the dropping of 10 days was to get the calendar synchronized
with the traditional dates of the seasons, as they were in the third
century.  The equivalent in UTC would be to adjust the time zone so
that 12:00 local time corresponds to the Sun being high in the sky.

I am curious: since you do not think my moral concern is future
generations, what do you think it is?  Feel free to answer privately if
you don't think your answer is suitable for the leap seconds mailing
list.
    John Sauter (John_Sauter at systemeyescomputerstore.com)
-- 
PGP fingerprint E24A D25B E5FE 4914 A603  49EC 7030 3EA1 9A0B 511E
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