Markus Kuhn scripsit:
> In my eyes, a UTC leap hour is an unrealistic phantasy.
I agree. But the same effects can be achieved by waiting for local
jurisdictions to change the existing LCT offsets as the problem becomes
locally serious. They've done it many times in the past and can easily
do so again. The fact that America/New_York is either five or four hours
behind UTC is not carved in stone anywhere, it's just what happens to
work right now. A change to being either four or three hours behind
will not have nearly the same disruptive effect as a disruption in UTC.
And perhaps people won't even bother. If people in Urumqi right now
can tolerate a three-hour difference between LMT and LCT, a slightly
different relation between the sun and the clock may seem quite tolerable
to our great^20-grandchildren.
(Astronomers will howl. They doubtless howled when we broke the
connection between the calendar and the synodic month, too. IERS can
even maintain OldUTC for their benefit; what matters is what the basis of
LCT is, since we all live our lives primarily by LCT.)
--
In politics, obedience and support John Cowan <jcowan_at_reutershealth.com>
are the same thing. --Hannah Arendt http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Received on Thu Jan 20 2005 - 04:42:33 PST