back to article Time Lords decree an end to leap seconds before risky attempt to reverse time

The Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM) has made a decision, and declared that the world can do without leap seconds. Leap seconds have occasionally been added to official timekeeping records to reflect changes in the Earth's angular rotation and a way of measuring time called UT1. While UT1 is valid and correct …

  1. bazza Silver badge

    Cop Out

    And kicking the problem down the road.

    Since at least the 1970s the most obvious timescale to use for computers and data records has been TAI. Even if presented to humans (ie a developer can't be bothered to apply the right offset for display purposes), TAI time is close enough for most purposes to UTC to make no difference.

    However most software developers chose not to use TAI, despite that being the globally agreed, officially mandated monotonic and never varying timescale.

    It looks like we'll end up with three versions of TAI, TAI itself and a scale called UTC with a fixed offset from TAI. That is pretty ridiculous. There is also GPS time, which will remain yet another fixed offset from TAI.

    So we still have the mess of leap seconds forever more, because we still need to know the offsets, and are just making for an even bigger problem somewhere down the line. Our descendents will laugh and curse at us.

    Even under these new conditions there is an intention to change UTC at some point to keep it in line with UT1. Instead of that change being a piddly leap second, it's going to be a bigger adjustment. So UTC for record keeping is now even less appropriate than it was yesterday.

    Also, no project manager is going to sanction prepping for that when the consequences of not doing so are far off, apparently. However, when it does happen its going to be an enormous cluster fuck.

    My advice going forward is to switch now to TAI, and have a display adjusment between records/clock and display to users if that matters at all. That way when the world decides to add in a leap hour, you simply change that offset.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Cop Out

      add in a leap hour, you simply change that offset.

      So giving the world a Y5.6k problem ?

      1. Roland6 Silver badge
        Pint

        Re: Cop Out

        Bet someone will still have an IBM mainframe running some (then) prehistoric batch process ...

        1. Griffo

          Re: Cop Out

          Yes probably one of my customers. We still run nightly batch processes on AIX and i-Series for most of them.

      2. Persona Silver badge

        Re: Cop Out

        That one hour time difference that build up after 5.6k years can easily be countered by cancelling one of those somewhat arbitrary GMT/BST changes.

        1. richdin

          Re: Cop Out

          Why bother? According to Greta, AOC and Al Gore and the rest of the Chicken Littles, the world is going to end in 12 years...

    2. Schultz
      Boffin

      TAI = UTC + 37 seconds, am I missing something?

      The whole idea of this change to UTC is to remove leap seconds and the announcements stated that this will remove any requirement to play with time until the end of this century. So we'll leave it to the next generations to decide if they want to fiddle with the clocks or accept a few second's shift in time versus the day/night cycle. Stop worrying and trust your grandchildren to make a competent and informed decision about UTC versus UTC1, it's not your business anymore.

      1. TeeCee Gold badge
        Facepalm

        Re: TAI = UTC + 37 seconds, am I missing something?

        Stop worrying and hand the problem to your grandkids?

        Can we do that for this climate bollocks too?

        1. sebacoustic

          Re: TAI = UTC + 37 seconds, am I missing something?

          > Can we do that for this climate bollocks too?

          we're mostly doing just that, but it's a false equivalence: having the sun rise a bit later (according to the clock con the wall) is benign, but crop failures, parts of the world becoming uninhabitable, floods, droughts, and similar "bollocks", isn't.

          Go back to your circa-2010 Lewis-Page-Editorial hellhole.

          1. vtcodger Silver badge

            Re: TAI = UTC + 37 seconds, am I missing something?

            Downvoted because you're apparently getting your climate information from the BBC/Guardian/NPR/New York Times and probably other sources that don't seem to know squat about the consequences of climate change. Mostly, they seem to make stuff up then quote each other.

            FWIW, the consequences of climate change are NOT well understood. Note that the Earth is in one of its colder periods -- source -- the Paleomap Project scotse.com/climate.htm figure 2. Observe that most of the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and early Tertiary were seemingly far warmer than today. Far from struggling, life apparently thrived. Conclusion -- climate change is not likely an existential threat to humanity.

            Let me encourage you to, rather than depending on "experts" with dubious expertise, do some actual research on both climate change and mitigation technologies. I'd start with the latter. It's far easier. I expect that you'll rather quickly develop doubts about the ability of non-nuclear climate change mitigation strategies to do what they are expected to do. Nuclear will work, and may very well be needed simply because fossil fuels won't last forever. But nuclear comes with a long list of caveats and concerns

            1. FIA Silver badge

              Re: TAI = UTC + 37 seconds, am I missing something?

              [...]Conclusion -- climate change is not likely an existential threat to humanity.

              It's the threat to civilisation we're worried about.

              1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

                Re: TAI = UTC + 37 seconds, am I missing something?

                >It's the threat to civilisation we're worried about.

                That explains why certain people aren't concerned

            2. Julian Bradfield

              Re: TAI = UTC + 37 seconds, am I missing something?

              I'm fascinated by what you mean by "do some actual research". Could you explain?

              Yes, of course the world has been much warmer in the past. There's a difference between temperature shifts taking millions of years (or even thousands of years), and those taking a few decades.

              1. adam 40

                Re: TAI = UTC + 37 seconds, am I missing something?

                True but I wonder if those fossil records of climate change have a resolution down to decades.

                We probably therefore draw the graphs with a relatively benign-looking curve.

                In reality, there were probably big tipping points along the way and a few degrees change per decade may have been possible.

                1. FeepingCreature

                  Re: TAI = UTC + 37 seconds, am I missing something?

                  While we're making up our own evidence, I might as well say "in reality, those big tipping points probably attended mass extinctions."

              2. vtcodger Silver badge

                Re: TAI = UTC + 37 seconds, am I missing something?

                I'm fascinated by what you mean by "do some actual research". Could you explain

                Fair enough. What I'm suggesting is that very little in this climate mess stands up to scrutiny.

                So, what I'm suggesting is take a claim -- most any claim -- and investigate it. Who made it? When? What's the evidence for the claim? Is the evidence credible? Is there contrary evidence that is being overlooked? I'm suggesting that very little in the "climate crisis" will stand up to that sort of scrutiny. (And yes, the claim that CO2 emissions will affect climate actually does stand up well although the exact impact is not so clear)

                I'd also suggest that a good place to start would be the claim that wind and solar can satisfy humanity's energy needs. Why that one? Because it's pretty clear that for the most part they can't. And investigating it doesn't require much more than a bit of grammar school math and a lot of digging for data. And maybe if enough people develop a healthy skepticism about that, the use of wind and solar can be held to what they can actually do well. They are not totally useless. But their utility looks to be pretty limited and it's possibly important to move on to "If not wind/solar, then what?"

                1. GioCiampa
                  FAIL

                  Re: TAI = UTC + 37 seconds, am I missing something?

                  So... we have a claim being made... time to investigate!

                  My first action when investigating - ask what YOUR source for the claim is, so that I can look at that, decide on its accuracy, then go from there.

                  What doesn't count is a clichéd statement stating you do "a lot of digging for data" which equates to no more than the "do your own research" bollocks we hear so often - YOU make a claim, YOU back it up! (Especially given that it only requires "grammar school math")

                2. Michael Habel

                  Re: TAI = UTC + 37 seconds, am I missing something?

                  I might be a numpty, but don't Trees actually need CO² to breath, is as far as Trees (or other plants), can breath. I seem to recall that Plants inhale the stuff, while exhaling this other toxic gas called Oxygen.

                  1. Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch Silver badge

                    Re: TAI = UTC + 37 seconds, am I missing something?

                    Trees need both. They take in water and CO2 to make oxygen and glucose which becomes cellulose. But they use oxygen and glucose to drive cellular metabolism, just like us.

                    They are net consumers of CO2 and net producers of O2, they just make more O2 than they use.

                  2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

                    Re: TAI = UTC + 37 seconds, am I missing something?

                    Photosynthesizing plants will convert CO2 (not CO2) plus H2O to O2 and sugars, given appropriate conditions. Referring to that as "to breath" is dubious.

                    More dubious is what relevance that has for atmospheric GHG concentrations and atmospheric warming. Existing flora can only absorb CO2 at a certain rate, and are not primarily constrained by the amount of available atmospheric CO2.

            3. First Light

              Re: TAI = UTC + 37 seconds, am I missing something?

              What kind of life was thriving? Our complex society of 8 billion humans with the type of lifestyle we have will not thrive when food supplies are destroyed or distribution disrupted by natural disasters.

              But the main issue is water scarcity. Glaciers and rivers globally are shrinking and disappearing and water will be the new oil in terms of its value and the geopolitical consequences of its disappearance.

              1. FeepingCreature

                Re: TAI = UTC + 37 seconds, am I missing something?

                Which is why, for another spicy take, environmentalists are right about the outcomes but ruinously wrong about the remedy. Far from reducing consumption, we need to massively increase our electricity consumption and go all-in on nuclear and fusion research. Only this way will we gain the economy of scale for the cheap, plentiful electric power necessary to run the desalination plants that are our only shot to prevent the coming water crisis.

            4. LionelB Silver badge

              Re: TAI = UTC + 37 seconds, am I missing something?

              "Downvoted because you're apparently getting your climate information from the BBC/Guardian/NPR/New York Times and probably other sources that don't seem to know squat about the consequences of climate change."

              Hm. I get my information from climate science reports and occasionally journals - oddly, they totally agree with the person you replied to.

              "FWIW, the consequences of climate change are NOT well understood."

              They're certainly well-enough understood to be alarming to anyone who actually gives a toss about the not-so-distant future of humanity.

              Oh, look, there's a 112km asteroid heading towards the earth.

              Is it going to hit us?

              Hm, quite likely... there's a chance it might miss, though - we don't fully understand the trajectory.

              When will we know for sure?

              For sure? Well, when it's much closer.

              Oh, okay. But you said it might miss, right? I guess the sensible thing to do is wait till it's much closer before we do anything about it. That way we'll be sure.

              "Note that the Earth is in one of its colder periods"

              Erm, so what? You're talking about geological time scales, not human-civilisation time scales. Unless (as another commentator pointed out) you're not too bothered about the dystopian demise of billions of actual, living humans (some of whom you might even know).

              "Let me encourage you to, rather than depending on "experts" with dubious expertise, do some actual research on both climate change and mitigation technologies."

              Thanks for the excellent advice. Done that. My take-away is that (i) climate change is real and very worrisome indeed; and (ii) regarding mitigation, nuclear, for all its issues, will be important - but that it is also slow to get on line and very, very costly indeed. In practical terms, renewables, being cheaper and quicker to get up and running at scale, will be essential too. Oh, and (iii) the problem is not so much that fossil fuels "won't last forever", as much as that they have lasted far too long already, and remain easy pickings for corporate greed and (as we have seen very recently) short-termist political expediency.

              1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

                Re: TAI = UTC + 37 seconds, am I missing something?

                Hm. I get my information from climate science reports and occasionally journals - oddly, they totally agree with the person you replied to.

                Sadly, most people do not. So they use oil-based products to superglue themselves to oil paintings to demand that civilisation adapts to their belief system. That's the thing about civilisations. We're adaptable. But as for the Bbc, it just lies-

                https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2022/11/22/bbc-response-to-svalbard-complaint/

                As I inconveniently pointed out at the time, Svalbard’s climate is only marginally warmer now than eighty years ago, but temperatures plummeted in the 1960s, which was of course the time which the BBC chose to make comparisons from:

                Climate pseudo-science relies on people's ignorance and lack of understanding around statistical manipulation. Pick a cold interval, get an exagerated trend. Same thing was done by picking 1850 as the baseline for 'Global Warming'. Historical records show that was a cold period known as the 'Little Ice Age (LIA)', and is well documented. Or just denied by climate 'scientists' who's career and funding depends on keeping the gravy train rolling. So the gets dismissed as some localised phenomena, as does the Medieval Warm Period. There's no real attempt to explain how those could be localised, and anyone who dares question the dogma gets called a 'denier'. Stock woo-science is to blame Milankovitch Cycles and some changes to our orbital parameters.. But then nobody really knows if those are real, or what causes those changes, but we humans are very good at spotting patterns where none exist. Some see Jesus on a slice of toast, others pick a career in climate 'science'.

                But so it goes. This news is a neat example that demonstrates our planet isn't in perfect equilibrium, and stuff changes. Then the typical response from officials is to STEAL OUR SECONDS!

                (Milankovitch Cycles are fun along similar lines. Something happens that tips us into Ice Ages, then out again. We're on the out phase at the moment, so warming is to be expected. Problem is understanding the mechanics given effect typical excedes cause, so to alter the Earth's insolation needs a fairly significant orbital excursion. So how does that happen? Something does, but reality is it's probably a combination of things, so our geomagnetic activity, the Sun's potential cycles, and mebbe we just end up flying through a particularly dense cloud of cosmic fluff every 100ka or so. Real science is fun like that, and far more fun and fascinating than figuring out ever more elaborate ways to tax gases and profit from that activity.)

                1. Schultz
                  Boffin

                  Climate pseudo-science versus science

                  As a scientist, let me inform you that rising atmospheric CO2 does lead to increased temperatures on the earth surface. It's as simple as filling a bottle with a transparent liquid and another with a dark liquid, placing both into the sunlight and observing how one warms up with respect to the other. Only we fill the earth atmosphere with a 'darker', more absorbing gas.

                  If you want a deeper understanding of the earth thermal equilibrium, you'll have to look up the blackbody radiation spectrum for sun and earth and account for the place where sunlight is absorbed (mostly on the earth surface) and how heat is re-emitted into space (as IR/THz radiation through the atmosphere, with CO2 absorbing some of that, trapping the heat). This has been understood for some 100 years. We now have very good observations that CO2 concentrations and climate were coupled in past millenia and we have good observations showing the correlation of man-made CO2 and climate. The controversy is no more among scientists (crackpots excepted), but among the uneducated and populists.

                  1. vtcodger Silver badge

                    Re: Climate pseudo-science versus science

                    The first part of your post is fine. CO2 does interfere with the progression of radiation from the Earth's surface to space. And right near the peak level of the Earth's IR emission. A bit of playing with the Modtran program online will show that to anyone who cares. Some then reasonable, but now questionable assumptions were made a century ago. We know (or think we know) now that IR absorbed by CO2 is not immediately converted to heat. Rather, it makes the CO2 molecule rotate faster. That's latent energy and doesn't show up on thermometers. From there it's unclear whether the IR is reradiated with much of it eventually finding its way to space or whether it is converted to kinetic energy (heat) during collisions. However, there seems to be a plausible case for reradiation being a minor mode. Assuming 100% conversion to heat unless and until something different is demonstrated seems OK with me. But it's not really settled science ... yet.

                    The last couple of sentences however .... No, we do NOT have good observations of climate and CO2 for the past millenium. Good observations of CO2 concentration only date from the mid-1950s. Before that we have some scattered observations of quite questionable quality. Temperature is a bit better, but good observations worldwide are a 20th century thing.

                    And do keep in mind that there is strong evidence for past climate excursions -- the "Little Ice Age" of the 16th-19th centuries for example -- that currently don't seem to be CO2 related.

                    The claim that CO2 concentrations and climate are correlated simply isn't yet supported by credible data. Not that some correlation won't very likely be shown ... but you really ought to wait for the data before declaring the issue settled

                    1. LionelB Silver badge

                      Re: Climate pseudo-science versus science

                      And do keep in mind that there is strong evidence for past climate excursions -- the "Little Ice Age" of the 16th-19th centuries for example -- that currently don't seem to be CO2 related.

                      Just to point out that the "Little Ice Age" was a regional phenomenon - and as such irrelevant to the issue of global warming. Unfortunately, it is commonly trotted out by (and for?) the ignorant and/or duplicitous in support of AGW denial.

                      but you really ought to wait for the data before declaring the issue settled

                      See my asteroid parody earlier in this thread. The data is already compelling enough to be alarming to all but the ignorant and/or duplicitous.

                      1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

                        Re: Climate pseudo-science versus science

                        Just to point out that the "Little Ice Age" was a regional phenomenon - and as such irrelevant to the issue of global warming. Unfortunately, it is commonly cited by (and for?) the ignorant and/or duplicitous in support of AGW denial.

                        Faith is a wonderful thing. Global Warming is also a regional thing. Or a highly localised thing. It's demonstrated by looking at thermometers that are located at airports. Those airports have changed dramatically over the last century. Could those UHI (Urban Heat Island) effects be contaminating those records?

                        Or when denying the LIA, just ask a tree. Drill a core sample, measure wood density, convert that to temperature and produce a Hockey Stick. Then use those wooden thermometers to deny the LIA and MWP. The trees know! And part of the denial was to claim 'regional phenomena', even when the phenomena happened contemporaneously in many parts of the world. But how can these be? What exactly caused decades of warm, or cold weather? We know some mechanisms, eg massive volcanic eruptions can lead to the 'year without summer', but those are short duration events, not several decades of 'climate change'. It can't be CO2, so because climate models can't explain them, they're simply denied.

                        Then the gullible take it on faith, and make posts like yours.

                        Me, I suspect this-

                        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum

                        with a side-order of Svensmark's CCN theory. William Herschel noticed a correlation between sun spot activity and grain yields. Correlation != causation, but solar variability is vigorously denied by the Climate Cult. It simply must be CO2 because there's an enormous industry and billions at stake. Except-

                        A potential explanation of this has been offered by observations by NASA's Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment, which suggest that solar ultraviolet light output is more variable over the course of the solar cycle than scientists had previously thought

                        and we know that UV has a big effect on atmospheric photochemistry. As do changes in solar magnetic activity (ie more/less SEPs) and our own magnetic field varies. So maybe that leads to more/less CCNs, more/less cloud cover and more significant climate change effects than CO2 could ever possibly manage. But snag is it's also an area where effect may exceed cause, ie the 'raw' solar variability between cycles may not produce the energy fluxes that could explain events like the MWP or LIA.

                        Science is fascinating like that, especially when there are so many factors in play. But don't worry about that stuff. Keep your faith in CO2. Pay your carbon indulgences. Make sacrifices to save the planet. You'll be fine if you just keep your faith..

                        1. LionelB Silver badge

                          Re: Climate pseudo-science versus science

                          Faith is a wonderful thing.

                          No faith required. I am a mathematician, statistician and research scientist - not in climatology, but it does mean I know my way around a journal article, have a good understanding of mathematical modelling, data acquisition and statistical reporting. I am also a reviewer on several journals, and like to think I have good science-BS detectors.

                          You appear to have a naive notion that climate scientists just haven't even bothered considering some of the phenomena you mention. They have. it's their job. I'd recommend you delve into the actual climate science literature, rather than feeding on the cherry-picked, out-of-context, misinterpreted and not-the-whole-story fodder promulgated by the AGW-denialist lobby (gullible, moi?)

                          Global Warming is also a regional thing.

                          Sure - broadly in the region of planet Earth.

                          1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

                            Re: Climate pseudo-science versus science

                            No faith required. I am a mathematician, statistician and research scientist - not in climatology, but it does mean I know my way around a journal article, have a good understanding of mathematical modelling, data acquisition and statistical reporting. I am also a reviewer on several journals, and like to think I have good science-BS detectors.

                            Good for you. You may also have noticed from my posts that I understand (some) of this stuff as well. But earlier I posted a link to a Bbc complaint regarding 'unprecedented' warming in Svalsbard. All because they cherry picked a start date that gave them an exagerated trend. This is an extremely common presentation trick that's used in climate 'science' and PR. Other classic examples are the origin of the '97%' meme, the infamous Hockey Stick, Eric Steig's Nature cover story about Antarctic warming and how he was an 'anonymous' peer reviewer on Nic Lewis's rebuttal. Or my personal favorite, Rahmstorf smoothing, where a climate 'expert' found a novel data manipulation method by using a triangle filter plugin incorrectly. There are many other examples, eg Gergis et al using a inverting a sediment proxy because 'the sign doesn't matter' in their version of mathematics, widespread pre-screening and selection bias, and the list goes on.

                            I suspect that if you're assuming that your peers actually understand maths and stats, when there's copious evidence to the contrary, including many retractions after these errors are pointed out. Yet because it's such a lucrative field, there's a lot of pressure applied to deny reality. If models predict 2C warming, and based on observed trends we're never going to achieve that.. Just change the target to 1.5C, and demand that we waste billions more on something that is statistically insignificant.

                            1. LionelB Silver badge

                              Re: Climate pseudo-science versus science

                              I'm not sure what you mean about "assuming that [my] peers actually understand maths and stats". They do to varying degree, although on the whole they will not have got their PhDs and research positions without basic competence. But if I'm reviewing their work, you may assume that if the maths and/or stats is unsound they will get a "fix this" or a straight "reject". This is normal. This is how it works. I don't see that the picture is any different in climate science. In fact climate science is highly multi-disciplinary and hugely demanding in terms of mathematical, statistical, modelling and computational skills - I've been pretty damn impressed by the breadth and depth of knowledge and competence of the (few) climate scientists I've met personally. (More so, I might add, than in my own field, which involves mathematical analysis of neuroimaging data... I work a lot with neuroscientists who are great at neuroscience but frequently rather less so at the maths and statistical analysis. Of course they would likely say the same about my neuroscience competence...)

                              There are, of course, examples of poor science practice in any field, and peer review will not always catch that. However, we don't write off the totality of, say, astrophysics as bunkum because some mistakes have been made, or because some finding has been misleadingly reported by some media. Your implication that climate science is somehow worse in this respect is, quite simply, ignorant and/or dishonest and/or agenda-driven.

                              Sorry, but I see way more agenda-driven duplicity on the AGW-denialist side - and those agendas are driven almost exclusively by non-scientists.

                              Of course I won't convince you, or any of your fellow denialists - your position is far too entrenched; a matter of—to use your own term—faith. (In fact arguing with AGW-denialists is strikingly similar to arguing with religious fundamentalists about evolution - except that the biblical literalists, at least, are generally more upfront about the article of faith driving their agenda.)

                    2. Schultz
                      Boffin

                      The definition of temperature, latent energy, etc.

                      Temperature describes the average energy in matter. To talk about temperature only makes sense when all molecular degrees of freedom are reasonably equilibrated, including kinetic, vibrational, and rotational degrees of freedom. Molecular collisions very rapidly equilibrate these degrees of freedom and the equilibration between rotation and velocity is actually faster than that between vibration and kinetic energy. It therefore makes no sense to separate out rotation or to claim that rotation is a form of latent energy. While the earth is warmer than space (at a cool 2.7 K, or -270.5 C), all that heat will eventually be re-emitted into space, but fortunately the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere (predominantly water vapor, but unfortunately also CO2) retain the heat from solar absorption long enough to keep us at comfortable temperatures.

                      Latent energy is energy consumed in a phase transition. E.g., a cooling earth might spend a lot of time at -2 C while all the oceans freeze, emitting a lot of latent heat. Latent heat does not play any role in the understanding of global warming.

                      In my field of research, we use supersonic molecular beams, expanding a molecular gas into vacuum. Within mm distances from the molecular beam nozzle (microseconds of flight into vacuum), molecules cool from room temperature to few Kelvin. So rotation is not special and equilibrates almost completely within microseconds (faster near room temperature!).

                      I'll be happy to recommend some textbooks if you want to learn more. I know this stuff pretty well, considering that I develop and perform molecular spectroscopy experiments for a living and teach all aspects of physical chemistry.

                  2. Jellied Eel Silver badge

                    Re: Climate pseudo-science versus science

                    The controversy is no more among scientists (crackpots excepted), but among the uneducated and populists.

                    Indeed. 33,500 of them jetted off to Egypt recently to for a spot of subsidised fine dining and to demand $100bn+ a year to save the planet. Some even took a Swedish school dropout who believed she could see CO2 emitted from power stations and turned her into a prophet & multi-millionaire. Some took a poll, and boldly announced '97%' of scientists bought into CO2 dogma. Then scientists pointed out the flaws in their reasoning and sampling methodology. Others counted tree rings, weighed wood and came up with a formula that converted wood density to highly accurate temperatures.

                    Others called BS. One of my favorite examples here-

                    https://climateaudit.org/2007/10/12/a-little-secret/

                    While paleoclimatologists are attempting to update many important proxy records to the present, this is a costly, and labor-intensive activity, often requiring expensive field campaigns that involve traveling with heavy equipment to difficult-to-reach locations (such as high-elevation or remote polar sites). For historical reasons, many of the important records were obtained in the 1970s and 1980s and have yet to be updated.

                    Which was a quote from the 'Nobel Prize' winning climate genius, and creator of wooden thermometers, Michael Mann. Steve McIntyre's 'Starbucks Hypothesis' and a quick road trip easily disproved Mann's claim. Plus it gave a good explanation as to how the tree-ring circus operated, and added to the scientific record when McIntyre's core sample was added to the record.

                    But historically significant because antics like this helped show the... quality of 'science' from some practioners in this field. Especially as the 'Hockey Stick' became the poster child for the Global Warming cult and industry. The MWP and LIA didn't happen. The trees tell us this. But this is how scepticism often starts. Someone makes a claim backed by some gish-gallop involving terms that sound plausible, like 'black body radiation'. Ok, trivially true. But then claims appear that trigger educated people's BS meters, and they're called 'sceptics', and later, 'deniers' for daring to question the faith.

                    For me, that was the radiation claims. I do optics and was familiar with some fun things like the water peak that can plague optical fibres, or just the way impurities or doping can alter transmission characteristics. Same principles are core here. Sun heats surface, surface absorbs energy, energy in motion is heat, if heat is 'trapped', it gets warmer.

                    It doesn't take much effort to understand the basics. It's fundamental physics that eminent scientists like Arhennius and Angstrom argued about a long time ago, then Einstein et al around quanta, photons and energy in general. Then it gets bastardised by shiesters like Al Gore & Mann doing tricks with bottles full of CO2 as 'proof'. That's showmanship, not science.

                    Science is using tools like MODTRAN, HITRAN, molecular dynamics and general intellectual curiosity to learn stuff. Which is fun, except the more you learn, the more dubious climate 'science' becomes. Bold claims, collosal sums of money but precious little quality science to back that up. Especially when the dogma is essentially based on homeopathy. So assume CO2 is the principle climate driver. Past evidence shows wide temperature excursions. If so, then smaller concentrations of CO2 had dramatically larger climate effects. Especially in the far past, when CO2 concentrations were far higher than today, and was at a time when most life evolved, and thrived. How can this be?

                    But along the way it also demonstrates more relevant stuff. A second is a second, a year is a year etc. Except when they're actually variables rather than constants and we need to make adjustments like leap seconds. Only really been a problem since the digital age, but in climate science there are far more variables at play than just CO2. You could for example calculate the insolation changes and energy flux changes to the leap second, should you choose to.. But in reality, much as with anthropogenic CO2, it's not statistically significant.

                    1. LionelB Silver badge

                      Re: Climate pseudo-science versus science

                      "So assume CO2 is the principle climate driver."

                      No, don't assume that, because it's not true - and your subsequent "argument" is pure hokum. You are (again) confusing geological and human-civilisation time scales. CO2 becomes relevant to global climate on human time scales when -- all other factors remaining roughly the same (which they tend to do on human time scales) -- atmospheric CO2 concentrations change on human time scales. Which they have - extremely rapidly since industrialisation, at an accelerating rate, and with quantifiable and statistically significant effect on global temperatures.

                      "Someone makes a claim backed by some gish-gallop involving terms that sound plausible"

                      Oh, the irony! This perfectly describes your own posts!

            5. Youngone

              Re: TAI = UTC + 37 seconds, am I missing something?

              ...do some actual research...

              On Facebook or Youtube?

          2. PhilipN Silver badge

            parts of the world becoming uninhabitable

            I haven't been to Bradford for ages but I didn't think it was as bad as that

          3. Michael Habel

            Re: TAI = UTC + 37 seconds, am I missing something?

            Yes if millions... Yeah verily billions of years of geological research has told, anyone anywhere, at any time EVER! was that the Earths climate was "Fixed, and ever unchanging", then I would tell you to redo your research. But, if we were to use your example. Than pray tell me this? Why is it when it rains at my House, and my Basement floods as an effect of this My Insurer will kindly point out some scheisster loophole in my Flood Insurance, before (in the politest terms), telling me to go fourth, and multiply? Yet what with this last Conference, someone from the Subcontinent, a place best known for scamming little old Nannies out of the Bank Accounts, gets to step up with their Treat Bag out, demanding Reparations because of a random Storm passing overhead?

            BTW... If the Attenborough Docus are, anything to go by... Them Polar Bears seem to be doing just fine. Also, Why is it we never hear from the other side that clames this IS just a Money making scam, hell bent to control 2/3s of the World. Look I have no problems IF YOU want to eat the Bugs. Be my guest! Use them to cure strvation in Africa if you want. Me? I like owning things. in as far as I'm still able to in <2020, and in private ownership can I begin to find happiness. So yeah these Dolts need to march on! ASAP

            1. LionelB Silver badge

              Re: TAI = UTC + 37 seconds, am I missing something?

              Also, Why is it we never hear from the other side that clames this IS just a Money making scam, hell bent to control 2/3s of the World.

              Congratulations - you are the other side.

            2. Yes Me Silver badge
              FAIL

              Re: TAI = UTC + 37 seconds, am I missing something?

              Them Polar Bears seem to be doing just fine

              No, they're not, nor are (e.g.) walruses, or any creature that is adapted to living around the ice shelves that are visibly disappearing on a non-geological timescale, i.e. far too quickly for evolutionary adaptation. Glaciers that I saw as a young adult can no longer be found. We've burnt so much stuff since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution that we have already changed the climate much faster than we, even with our allegedly superior brains, can adapt to.

              Denying inconvenient truths, even with pseudo-scientific arguments, is a good illustration of just how weak our brains can be.

        2. Michael Habel
          Big Brother

          Re: TAI = UTC + 37 seconds, am I missing something?

          Greta Thunberg frowns upon your shenanigans Sir! Besides its a great way to let Governments the World over to bend you over and have they way over you. All in the name of some ruddy spotted Owl or, some Tree thing. Because how dare you get in yout Yugo to drive to some crappy soul draining job, just to keep a Roof over your head, and Food on the Table. Sadly both of which, along with Motor Fuel are on an ever upward slide. Why becauseit rained somewhere, and now the natives want your Money to fix, what your Insurer would dub an "Act of God!".

          So yeah the sooner we see the backs of these numpties like Greta, the better!

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Cop Out

      TAI time = International Atomic Time

      International Atomic Time (abbreviated TAI, from its French name temps atomique international[1]) is a high-precision atomic coordinate time standard based on the notional passage of proper time on Earth's geoid.[2] TAI is a weighted average of the time kept by over 450 atomic clocks in over 80 national laboratories worldwide.[3] It is a continuous scale of time, without leap seconds, and it is the principal realisation of Terrestrial Time (with a fixed offset of epoch). It is the basis for Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is used for civil timekeeping all over the Earth's surface and which has leap seconds.

      UTC deviates from TAI by a number of whole seconds. As of 1 January 2017, when another leap second was put into effect,[4] UTC is currently exactly 37 seconds behind TAI. The 37 seconds result from the initial difference of 10 seconds at the start of 1972, plus 27 leap seconds in UTC since 1972.

      1. SonofRojBlake

        Re: Cop Out

        Unrelated query: why is it all the abbreviations for things are French? English is the de facto international standard language, and yet a large proportion of international organisations have their initials in french order. Topical one: FIFA. Formula One? FIA. Swimming - FINA. How is it the French title for these organisations is the one that gets used in a world where most of the proceedings of those orgs goes on in English?

        (

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Cop Out

          France has a long history of being behind the development of standards that ultimately become international. Why shouldn’t they be credited accordingly?

          Systeme Internationale being just one, extremely important example.

          1. FIA Silver badge

            Re: Cop Out

            France has a long history of being behind the development of standards that ultimately become international. Why shouldn’t they be credited accordingly?

            SCART

            1. Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch Silver badge

              Re: Cop Out

              Didn't I read somewhere SECAM = System Even Crazier than the American Method?

              1. ThatOne Silver badge
                Devil

                Re: Cop Out

                > System Even Crazier than the American Method?

                The famous Never Twice the Same Color?

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Cop Out

            "Systeme Internationale being just one, extremely important example"

            Or the ISO ("Organisation internationale de normalisation" which seems to have intentionally juggled their acronym to try to keep everyone happy, or at least equally irritated.

          3. bazza Silver badge

            Re: Cop Out

            The French are really good at this kind of thing. GSM: largely a French standard, and (for its day) it's a true engineering masterpiece (points to the global pervasiveness of GSM back in the day). Metric: French. Airbus and the strong coordination in their product lineup: very heavily French (though, it took an American to gee up their ambitions to dominate the aviation market).

            I fancy that there is a strong linguistic reason for this. The French language is pretty well designed as a language, and it's relatively easy to be exact in meaning. So, it's easy to give exact reasons for needing to do something, exact about saying how it is done, and exact about appraising it. Kind of lends it self to writing standards. Similar for German and Russian. It's said that language has a strong influence on how one thinks. I think it's no coincidence that some of the best examples of the clearest engineering thinking come out of France, Germany and (when their engineers are actually allowed to get on with it) Russia.

            English, cobbled together thing that it is, actually makes it difficult to be completely unambiguous. That can be useful - ambiguity can be a vector for creativity.

            1. Someone Else Silver badge

              Re: Cop Out

              The French language is pretty well designed as a language [...]

              I dunno. It always seems to take roughly twice as many words to say something in French as it does in English (or German, or even fellow romance language Spanish). I guess if inefficiency is the hallmark of a "well-designed" language, then I could agree with you. But MMMV1 in that regard .

              1 My Mileage May Vary

              And don't get me started about L'Académie Française, whose sole purpose in life is to take this "well-designed language", and insure that it remains firmly rooted in the 16th century.

              1. Adrian 4

                Re: Cop Out

                > It always seems to take roughly twice as many words to say something in French as it does in English (or German,

                It takes less words in german due to the practice of taking all the spaces out and counting several words as one

                1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

                  Re: Cop Out

                  >It takes less words in german due to the practice of taking all the spaces out and counting several words as one

                  Is there a German name for this practice ?

                  1. stungebag

                    Re: Cop Out

                    There is, but the word is too long to write in the margin.

                  2. OhForF' Silver badge

                    Re: Cop Out

                    Is there a German name for this practice?

                    Wortzusammensetzung

                2. Fred Daggy Silver badge

                  Re: Cop Out

                  Actually, some of the time, it splits a word and put some of it at the end of the sentence, and some of it as the second word - and other places. But it is still (nominally) one word.

            2. Justthefacts Silver badge

              Re: Cop Out

              I’d agree that France has strong and technical leadership in standards, including history. I think your reason is reaching a bit though. The truth is that standards are “soft power” for colonial powers, which can be a good thing when it happens to be constructive.

              The meter was originally defined as 1/1000km (yes, that way round), which was 1/40000th of the circumference of the Earth *on the meridian through Paris*. The analogy to Greenwich Mean Time is fairly exact. The “world standard kilogram” was a very prized possession in Paris. But technically it was the right solution for so long, and maintaining it was actually a very difficult task that clearly the BIPM were well suited for. Along similar lines, NIST in the US is a very strong institution….and genuinely provides soft power by driving world implementations of many things to meet US standards.

              This is soft power working *well*. When countries with technical leadership are able to pull the rest of the world along with them.

              1. Irony Deficient

                The meter was originally defined as 1/1000 km (yes, that way round),

                No, it wasn’t. To quote article V. of the Loi du 18 germinal an III (Law of 7th April 1795):

                V. Les nouvelles mesures seront distinguées dorénavant par le surnom de républicaines ; leur nomenclature est définitivement adoptée comme il suit :

                On appellera,

                Mètre, la mesure de longeur égale à la dix millionème partie de l’arc du méridien terrestre compris entre le pôle boréal et l’équateur ;

                Are, la mesure de superficie pour les terrains, égale à un quarré de dix mètres de côté ;

                Stère, la mesure destinée particulièrement aux bois de chauffage, et qui sera égale au mètre cube ;

                Litre, la mesure de capacité, tant pour les liquides que pour la matières sèches, dont la contenance sera celle du cube de la dixième partie du mètre ;

                Gramme, le poids absolu d’un volume d’eau pure, égal au cube de la centième partie du mètre, et à la température de la glace fondante.

                Enfin, l’unité des monnaies prendra le nom de franc, pour remplacer celui de livre usité jusqu’aujourd’hui.

                Note that all of these units except the franc were defined in terms of the meter. The kilomètre was defined in terms of the mètre in article VI. of the same law.

        2. General Purpose

          Re: Cop Out

          Well, there are SWIFT, the UN, the EEA, the IOC, WADA.... But if we're keeping score and someone is winning, might that have something to do with persistent diplomacy and co-operation, or being an initiator rather than a Johnny-come-lately?

          1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

            Re: Cop Out

            And not for childishly holding up the process until everyone agrees to the acronym so they can go home

        3. kurkosdr

          Re: Cop Out

          Because French was the de facto international standard language when those organizations were founded.

          1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

            Re: Cop Out

            I think that anything involving 'atomic' time probably post dates French imperial hegemony

          2. J.G.Harston Silver badge

            Re: Cop Out

            You could even say it was the lingua franca.

        4. doublelayer Silver badge

          Re: Cop Out

          The answer varies for each one. For example, there's a pretty good reason English wasn't used to name FIFA. From Wikipedia, when it was founded, its members were Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. No English-speaking countries on that list, but three where French is an official language.

          "Formula One" doesn't look like French to me. The words work pretty well in English. I don't speak French though, so maybe they make marginally more sense there. It was made by the FIA, which is French, which makes sense because it was founded and is still headquartered in Paris.

          FINA is the one example on your list that could work, as it was founded in the UK, although like FIFA, it was founded by a bunch of countries of which one (the UK) had English as an official language and two (Belgium and France) had French.

          Maybe you should ask about things that weren't created by French-speaking countries if you're looking for gratuitous French usage. I'm not sure you'll find as many as you appear to think exist.

        5. SonofRojBlake

          Re: Cop Out

          Fifteen downvotes for asking a question? Harsh.

      2. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge

        BLT

        English, probably US origin...

        Bacon Lettuce Tomato

    4. Justthefacts Silver badge

      Re: Cop Out

      Isn’t that what they’ve done - just rebranded TAI as UTC by removing the leap seconds? So, everybody “keeps using UTC”, but now it all “just works”. Or is it more complicated than that?

      I’ve always thought leap seconds are daft. If you care about exact alignment of your watch to solar midday, walk just a couple hundred meters East and you’re already a second out. Europe is a couple of *hours* wide, in sidereal time.

  2. Neil Barnes Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Didn't someone previously propose

    'stretchy' seconds of variable length to avoid this problem? At least it looks like that idea has gone away.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Didn't someone previously propose

      That was the work-around most big computer users used.

      But it means systems could disagree about the time by up to 0.5 seconds during that day.

    2. bazza Silver badge

      Re: Didn't someone previously propose

      That idea might have gone away for the purposes of civil time keeping, but there are in fact several recognised timescales that do have stretchy seconds (w.r.t. other timescales). There's Barycentric Coordinate Time, and Barycentric Dynamical Time, which are both 4 dimensional reletavistic offsets from Geocentric Coordinate Time, so the length of a second in those varies according to where you are. TGC itself runs at about 2.2seconds per century faster than TAI.

      Basically, when you get right down to it, time is a big complicated thing. Even TAI and everything derived from it (GPS, UTC) is a reletavistic timescale; they had to adjust it back in the early 1970s when it was realised that the difference in altitude (and therefore in the position in the planet's gravity well) of the atomic clocks lead to significant differences, so nowadays TAI is defined at a certain altitude. If you're on top of Mount Everest, your clock will tell a different time to TAI, and your seconds will be different in length. We just don't notice these effects. The only seconds we'd likely agree on would be UT1 seconds.

      Of course, if you keep time in UT1 (GMT), your second's length changes wrt TAI every single day, and you don't know by how much until the next noon! There's also Japanese Traditional Time, where there are the same number of "hours" (6) between sunrise/sunset every day (and between sunset and sunrise). The length of hours changes daily, wrt to UTC hours. See Wikipedia. This made mechanical clocks "interesting", but they did manufacture them. There's even a Japanese guy today making mechanical wristwatches that keep Japanese traditional time. The watch moves the hours marks around on the face as required.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Didn't someone previously propose

        GPS requires taking into account relativity's affects on each satellites clock.

        1. gnasher729 Silver badge

          Re: Didn't someone previously propose

          "GPS requires taking into account relativity's affects on each satellites clock."

          They only have to do that to counter the effect that a perfectly calibrated clock on a satellite changes its speed. So all that happens is that the satellite says "According to my clock, it is 3:24:57.469371 am, therefore in reality it is 3:24:57.469146am".

      2. molletts
        Boffin

        Re: Didn't someone previously propose

        "Basically, when you get right down to it, time is a big complicated thing."

        A big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff, to put it more technically.

        1. bombastic bob Silver badge
          Thumb Up

          Re: Didn't someone previously propose

          "Don't Blink"

        2. bazza Silver badge

          Re: Didn't someone previously propose

          >A big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff, to put it more technically.

          Likely as good a description as any other!

        3. Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch Silver badge

          Re: Didn't someone previously propose

          It's always now everywhere.

          For is it not written, "I was not born yesterday"?

          1. Cheshire Cat

            Re: Didn't someone previously propose

            Ah, that great guru, Mrs Cosmopolite. Always a sagely piece of advice to impart.

            GNU Terry Pratchett

      3. Joe W Silver badge

        Re: Didn't someone previously propose

        The definition of "hours" was (as far as I recall...) similar in Europe. Came down to the correct times for monks to pray during the day and night.

        1. General Purpose

          Re: Didn't someone previously propose

          The monks may have found it useful for prayer-times but in Europe dividing sunrise to sunset into twelve goes back at least as far as the ancient Romans. Of course some still hankered for the old system of only dividing it into two, am and pm, and none of this new-fangled rushing around.

          1. Stork

            Re: Didn't someone previously propose

            I thought it was the Babylonians. They had a base12 system anyway.

        2. ThatOne Silver badge

          Re: Didn't someone previously propose

          > The definition of "hours" was (as far as I recall...) similar in Europe

          The difference is between user-centric time, where time follows user needs and requirements, and the absolute, scientific time, which as we now know is almost as difficult to universally define as the previous "it's about lunchtime" one...

          Yet there is nowadays a strong need to have an universally defined time, making sure time-sensitive tasks (scientific, technical) will work as expected. The old "each town has it's own local time" system only worked because it took days/weeks to go (foot, coach) from one to the other. This changed as soon as trains started connecting places in hours as opposed to days.

          1. aks

            Re: Didn't someone previously propose

            The second is scientifically defined and doesn't vary. It's days that are being fiddled with.

            1. ThatOne Silver badge

              Re: Didn't someone previously propose

              > The second is scientifically defined and doesn't vary

              That might be technically true, but its connection to our reality does vary, which is the reason for all those leap seconds/hours/days/years.

          2. stewwy

            Re: Didn't someone previously propose

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_time -Railway Time

      4. Archivist

        Re: Didn't someone previously propose

        面白い です

        1. Frumious Bandersnatch
          Headmaster

          Re: Didn't someone previously propose

          面白い + です = grammar fail, sorry.

          omoshoroi no desu, otoh ... (or even "omoshirou gozaimasu" if you're a certain kind of purist/pedant)

          1. bazza Silver badge

            Re: Didn't someone previously propose

            Checked with a native Japanese speaker, Archivist got it right... "omoshoroi no desu" is officially clunky, and "omoshirou gozaimasu" is archaic...

            1. Frumious Bandersnatch

              Re: Didn't someone previously propose

              No, what's "clunky" is that the OP:

              * thought that some post was interesting

              * (presumably) reached into his/her knowledge of Japanese and pulled out "omoshiroi"

              * decided to post it using Japanese script (mostly .... that space between the words tells a different story, though; I call cut and paste)

              * added a superfluous attempt at "being polite" (as they imagined they should) (that "desu")

              Other low-effort interpretations are possible, but they mainly revolve around the OP not really knowing Japanese.

              If something is genuinely interesting and you want to express it in Japanese, it's just 面白い (+ Japanese exclamation mark, which I'm not set up for at the moment). Same as "itai", "mazui", "umai", and so on. Tacking on unnecessary "politeness" defeats the purpose and actually sounds sarcastic.

              1. Frumious Bandersnatch

                Re: Didn't someone previously propose

                mmmm... if I could still edit, I'd move that "presumably" up a bullet point...

                oyasumi!

      5. Atomic Duetto

        Re: Didn't someone previously propose

        Cheers.. learned something today, Japanese temporal time (like it)

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Didn't someone previously propose

          mmmmm tempura... Oh, sorry, got a bit distracted there...

      6. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Didn't someone previously propose

        "The length of hours changes daily, wrt to UTC hours." I'm pretty sure there was an XKCD for that?

    3. Schultz
      Stop

      Re: Didn't someone previously propose 'stretchy' seconds

      Great, there goes our standardized system of units. Where is Napoleon when you need him?

      1. stiine Silver badge
        Pirate

        Re: Didn't someone previously propose 'stretchy' seconds

        Sure as hell he isn't in exile on Elba.

    4. gnasher729 Silver badge

      Re: Didn't someone previously propose

      It's called UT1. And it's well alive. And I bet you have no idea when something claims it is UTC whether it actually is UTC, or whether it is UT1.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    An even better example is when you Brits were one meeeeellion seconds in the past compared with us on the Continent, from 1584 to 1752.

    I've been wondering for a while how little this is remembered.

    1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

      We all remember when we die eight days sooner than we should have!

      1. John G Imrie

        I think it was more to do with getting paid weekly but paying the rent monthly. To the point the act of parliament authorising the change talks about how to fix this.

        This explains why the UK tax year doesn't start at the beginning of the month.

        1. Stork

          I thought that was related to Roman new year being in the spring?

    2. simonlb Silver badge
      Trollface

      when you Brits were one meeeeellion seconds in the past compared with us on the Continent, from 1584 to 1752

      I think we are quickly moving in that direction again thanks to Brexit and our current Govenment.

      1. Graham Cobb Silver badge

        Nah - Brexit has put us back in the 1970's... power cuts, strikes, homelessness and pensioners dying due to health service cuts.

        1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

          I think you'll find that is due to a worldwide pandemic. Other European countries are experiencing the same issues, France is at more risk of power cuts for example.

          1. SloppyJesse

            > I think you'll find that is due to a worldwide pandemic. Other European countries are experiencing the same issues,

            > France is at more risk of power cuts for example.

            Not sure you can blame low river levels on the pandemic.

            1. ICam

              > Not sure you can blame low river levels on the pandemic.

              They're held up by a dam of tampons, condoms and wet-wipes that are flushed out with all the raw sewage now...

              1. Twanky
                Facepalm

                Wait. You're suggesting that the French have dammed up the rivers feeding their hydroelectric projects with raw sewage? If that were true their government would be furious.

                see: https://www.hydropower.org/country-profiles/france

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              The main problem in France is that more than half the nuclear stations are still down for maintenance.

              Putin's war is limiting gas supplies to thermal stations.

              1. Twanky
                Stop

                The main problem in France is that more than half the nuclear stations are still down for maintenance.

                Not apparently true. See: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  It's improving slowly, then. The last figures I saw were for September, when 32 of 56 reactors were offline. Now it's "only" 27. EDF is still forecasting restrictions and possible blackouts this winter, depending on gas supplies.

          2. sabroni Silver badge

            Brexit turning out to be a shit show?

            LA LA LA! CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!

        2. Roger Kynaston
          Joke

          Back to the 1970s

          Will that mean that epoch will have to be changed?

        3. Twanky
          Megaphone

          Ah yes, the 70s.

          pensioners dying due to health service cuts.

          Does not accord with the facts.

          https://soundofreason.co.uk/233f2f57-93e4-44b5-a69d-a48b2b0fbc08/UK-1922-2018-ASMR.png

    3. Bill 21

      The UK tax year still ends on April 5th because the taxman refused to lose the days in the year when the calendar changed.

    4. boblongii

      It's not forgotten at all. On Linux (at least) type

      cal 1752

      and have a look at September.

      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Linux

        cool... heh

      2. amacater

        See also the various Swedish attempts to switch from Julian to Gregorian calendar over about 30 years and February 30th ...

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    We fear leap seconds.... Julius added whole eigthy days...

    ... and Pope Gregory thirteen. Sure both of them didn't have to cope with a system built on an old and outdated OS design like Linux.

    It looks that now instead of fixing Linux we have to fix Time.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: We fear leap seconds.... Julius added whole eigthy days...

      I think in their day it was all MVS

    2. Irony Deficient

      Sure both of them didn’t have to cope with a system …

      … built on an old and outdated OS design like Linux.

      Caesar had to cope with reforming the much older and more outdated system of the Republican calendar. His redistribution of days from the leap month to the other months (and his choice of when the new leap day would occur) were arranged so that they wouldn’t break the connections between the frequent sacred and commemorative days throughout the calendar.

      The frequency of the leap month was determined by the pontifex maximus, which was an appointed political position with religious duties. The pontifex maximus would often manipulate when the leap month would occur, to happen more frequently when political allies were in power and to happen less frequently when political enemies were in power. Throughout the seventeen years of the Second Punic War, omens were interpreted such that no leap month should be declared until the war was over; ten years after that war ended, the accumulated timekeeping error was such that calendrical January started in what we know as mid-August.

      1. Dronius
        Coat

        Re: Sure both of them didn’t have to cope with a system …

        Time Lords Leaping....

        https://media.immediate.co.uk/volatile/sites/3/2017/08/95885.jpg

  5. Paul Crawford Silver badge

    It will break other things. Until now you could assume UTC and the Earth's rotation were aligned to 1s or less, so many astronomical or satellite software would use that knowing there is a bound on the error. Not any more, they will have to get the offset value from somewhere.

    While means an internet connection and security implications.

    It also means such systems will break subtly when some muppet changes a web site design or domain name and said offset file is no longer at the same URL, or if they disable some older version of TLS, etc.

    And all because software is being created by people who do not bother to understand time-keeping nor test it.

    1. SkippyBing

      Exactly, I thought computers were supposed to make life easier for people, not the other way around.

      Imagine if this approach had been taken with Y2K, we'd be in 1922 again because it was easier for Meta...

    2. bazza Silver badge

      The astronomers have, unsurprisingly, had a good grip on this for a long time. There is a library of routines, for C (and FORTRAN I think) that properly calculate the differences between timescales, knows about leap seconds, etc. It's called SOFA (SOFtware for Astronomers, available from the International Astronomers Union).

      This, coupled with data from the IERS, can be used to accurately convert between, say, computer time (with it's mostly accurate approximation to UTC) and TAI, UT1, etc. I've written such software myself, downloading data from the IERS as required, and it's quite good fun to see different clocks ticking away at different rates (even if it's varying on a nanosecond scale).

      Anything that's based on SOFA and IERS data will (provided the library is regularly updated) always have an accurate view of time, provided that it can be confident in the time reference it's working from. Computer time is generally OK except for around about leap seconds. GPS locked time is far better, and it's actually quite easy to have a Linux kernel slaved from a GPS receiver getting a very accurate 1PPS and keeping proper TAI time.

      The frustrating thing is that, if everyone used SOFA in the same way that everyone and everything uses the world's sole TZ library, we'd have no problems with leap seconds and no need to change timescale definitions. The "answer" has been sat there for a long time, but very few have cared to adopt it.

      1. gnasher729 Silver badge

        I always wondered if there is actually software (for computers or phones with GPS receivers) that lets you extract the time from GPS? Even with a single satellite, GPS could give you time within I think 20milliseconds (under the assumption that your receiver is close to the earth's surface and therefore any satellite that you receive is less than 12,000 km away), much more precise with 3 satellites, and within nanoseconds if you have 4 satellites without any assumptions.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Yes, there are lots of systems which do that. Many radio and TV stations, and ISP frameworks, get their time that way.

  6. brotherelf
    Facepalm

    I'm sure a certain somebody

    … will offer to build a contraption to adjust the Earth's rotation as needed. Project-named "Fan Base", it will turn out to just be a bunch of hot air, though.

    1. Joe W Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: I'm sure a certain somebody

      The Fanny Company?

      (there's this Boring Company...)

    2. bazza Silver badge

      Re: I'm sure a certain somebody

      What's interesting about the current situation is that no one is really sure why the planet's rotation is speeding up. It seems difficult to see how it can be an orbital / tidal effect. It's not like the moon is suddenly orbiting the planet quicker.

      I think it must be because some dense mass is moving closer to the earth's core. Angular momentum is conserved, so the planet spins faster as a result.

      1. keithpeter Silver badge
        Windows

        Re: I'm sure a certain somebody

        Other suggestions have included; the redistribution of mass caused by glaciers melting and the changes in polar ice coverage; the 2011 Japan earthquake shifting the polar axis (I suppose changing the moment of inertia); an unusually large excursion in the Chandler wobble.

        I like your hypothesis: what happens when the dense mass gets really hot... sci fi story time.

        Icon: Born in-between B1950.0 and J2000.0 but much nearer the former.

        1. Twanky

          Re: I'm sure a certain somebody

          Dzhanibekov.

          (bless you)

          https://rotations.berkeley.edu/a-tumbling-t-handle-in-space/

          I wonder how fast this could happen on a planetary scale? Might be wise to buckle up. We'll need more than leap seconds.

      2. Andrew Beardsley

        Re: I'm sure a certain somebody

        Maybe it is just the population becoming denser?

        /s

  7. Torben Mogensen

    Let it slide

    I don't see much point in leap seconds if the purpose is to synchronize time with the sidereal period of Earth around the Sun. It has no practical relevance, and the new year isn't even at (the northern hemisphere) winter solstice, and midnight isn't at 24:00 except in very few places, so why not let it slide?

    We might as well get rid of leap days too. Yes, this will make the new year slide more quickly from the winter solstice, but why should this matter? It's not like people sow and harvest according to the calendar any more. And time zones. These were introduced because each town had its own time that deviated slightly from neighbouring times. The main motivation for synchronizing time was for planning train schedules. Time zones are now oddly shaped and some even differ only by 30 minutes from the neighbouring zones (and there are more than 24 zones). We could get rid of this complexity by using TAI globally (without offsets). So what if school starts at 14:00 some places on earth and at 04:00 in other places? Yes, the few places that use AM and PM will need to get used to 24 hour time, but this is long overdue anyway.

    And while we are at it, months of unequal length that are not even lunar months is a mess. Let us have twelve 30-day months per year, even if this slides by 5.256 days relative to solstice every year. 360 days is a nice round number of days per year -- it divides evenly into thirds, quarters, tenths, and more. And weeks of seven days do not fit with anything, so let them be six days, so there are exactly five of these per month. Four work/school days before the weekend sounds fine to me.

    1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

      Re: Let it slide

      We could rename the months, what about Vendémiaire, Brumaire, Frimaire, etc.? And just go straight to decimal time.

      1. jmch Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Re: Let it slide

        "We could rename the months..."

        Last time the 2 Caesars starting messing with month names we ended up with "7th Month", "8th Month", "9th Month" and "10th Month" being the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th month!!

        1. Irony Deficient

          Last time the 2 Caesars starting messing with month names …

          … we ended up with "7th Month", "8th Month", "9th Month" and "10th Month" being the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th month!!

          That happened well before C. Julius Caesar’s time. The year-starting-with-January was the last modification of the consuls’ annual term of office in the Republican era, some time before 150 BC. The original year-starting-with-March (when a blob of “unmonthed” days followed December, before the introduction of January and February) ended in the early years of the Republic, in the 5th century BC.

          The renaming of Quinctilis (“5th month”, now known as July) happened after Caesar’s assassination in 44 BC, and the renaming of Sextilis (“6th month”, now known as August) happened in 8 BC, during Augustus’ reign; both were honors from the Senate. Timewise, Caesar introduced the Julian calendar, and Augustus sorted out the misapplication of the frequency of leap days in the Julian calendar.

          For actual imperial messing about with month names, you have to look at the later month name changes that didn’t stick. The most extreme case was under Commodus, who renamed all twelve months with twelve of his own personal names in 192 AD; one of those twelve personal names was Augustus, but I don’t know if his Augustus was the same month as August. (He also renamed the city of Rome after himself; he was assassinated later that year.)

      2. Aladdin Sane

        Re: Let it slide

        Just divide the year into 1000ths.

        Hail the Emperor.

    2. Jonathan Richards 1 Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: Let it slide

      Knowing the sidereal time with precision is important if you're wanting to point an astronomical telescope at a particular point in the sky. The software that points the telescope in the future will have to be told its own position on the geoid, and the UTC, both as now, but also the prevailing drift of UTC from what we used to call GMT, determined by watching for the sun's zenith at longitude 0°.

      This is even more important if you're, say, trying to determine the orbital parameters of some incoming asteroid to see if it's likely to end up in your soup before next Easter.

      1. stiine Silver badge

        Re: Let it slide

        What about tracking 100k LEO satellites so that you can safely launch your new GEO satellite between them safely?

    3. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

      Re: Let it slide

      If we let it slide long enough, the "day shift" will end up rising and taking breakfast after sunset, working through the dark, and then having supper and going to bed before sunrise. I'm assuming people won't want that to happen. So that means some sort of leap; if not seconds then minutes or hours. How long before people want a change, I don't know.

      And, while leap seconds have been few and far between this millennia, they were a lot more frequent in the past. We're spec'd to be able to add two, if needed. (As well as ditch seconds.) But I've just opened up Table 10A of Meeus and there are estimated to be 11 in the two years 1620-21. Morrison's work suggest they are even more numerous than that if you go back into prehistory.

      And melting ice caps (and isostatic rebound in Antarctica) are going to play hell with the earth's figure - although I can't be arsed to think whether there will be a net speed up or slow down of the rotation rate. (But if it goes massively negative, there's the same problem.)

    4. jmch Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: Let it slide

      "Let us have twelve 30-day months per year"

      If it were possible to redesign the week / month / year cycle from scratch Gregory-style this would certainly work better - 6 days a week, 4-day working week. Axe one of the days (I vote Tuesday for the chop).

      Seriously though, having everyone on a universal time won't solve anything. If I'm travelling to Australia, instead of simply adjusting my watch, I have to mentally recalculate my schedule all the time so I'm now working at * 10pm to 7am,, having lunch at 2am etc. The complications won't be resolved, it would be more of a mess. Generally speaking I'm OK with there being a super-precise time that is needed for astronomy, space science, rocketry etc, and a seperate time for 'normal' people who don't need to bother about milliseconds. But as IT people handling logs on systems that perform operations in fractions of milliseconds, it's more likely that we anyway need to keep our computer systems on teh more precise time.

      *indicative values

      1. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: Let it slide

        I vote Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

        1. Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch Silver badge

          Re: Let it slide

          Careful, Chris Hemsworth will be out to get you.

    5. Pirate Dave Silver badge

      Re: Let it slide

      "360 days is a nice round number of days per year -- it divides evenly into thirds, quarters, tenths, and more"

      Great, so we'd have to go through yet ANOTHER rebranding of Microsoft's online services? No thanks. Besides which, they'd be no closer to a goal of 360 continuous days of uptime per year than they are to 365 days, so it's a wash either way.

      And even then, we won't even adopt metric measurements here in the US. Can you imagine us trying to learn new clock times as well? All the old folks would suffer mental breakdowns if the six o'clock evening news was moved to noon. And Jesus himself decreed that The Tonight Show starts at 11:30 PM, sharp.

      No, no, NO. It's better to spend the billions to reprogram all the satellites, airplanes, mainframes, and nuclear reactor control systems to deal better with tiny corrections of time than to screw around with the starting time for Fox and Friends.

    6. adam 40
      WTF?

      Re: Let it slide

      You are suggesting we work 80% of the week where we currently work 5/7ths = 71%.

      DOWNVOTE!!!

      1. that one in the corner Silver badge

        Re: Let it slide

        He is suggesting we get more weekends per year.

        UPVOTE!*

        *multiple exclamation marks, the sure sign of a diseased mind (Pterry)

      2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: Let it slide

        That was the downfall of French revolutionary time. Rather than a day off in 7 you got one day off in 10.

        This forced the French to invent l'automobile so they had something to set fire to in protest

        1. Someone Else Silver badge
          Coffee/keyboard

          Re: Let it slide

          Nicely done! Now stop before I damage something! - - - ->

      3. that one in the corner Silver badge

        Re: Let it slide

        PS

        6 day week, 2 days of weekend means working 2/3 of the time, or 0.666... %

      4. Andrew Beardsley

        Re: Let it slide

        Working 4 days out of 6 is 2/3rds or just under 67%. Sounds like an improvement to me.

    7. doublelayer Silver badge

      Re: Let it slide

      You're proving that you don't understand what time is for.

      "We might as well get rid of leap days too. Yes, this will make the new year slide more quickly from the winter solstice, but why should this matter? It's not like people sow and harvest according to the calendar any more."

      Because "A January day in Australia" means something about the likely weather these days, but if we let January slide around the year, it stops meaning that thing. We use seasons, and having to look at season tables to figure out what was summer a couple decades ago will make things like predictions about weather and proper categorization of that data harder. And by the way, people do plant by the calendar as much as they once did and more in some cases. They always made adjustments for local conditions to optimize the harvest, but the general time of year is still used very often when deciding when to plant, and the main change is increased use of predicted weather which I've already pointed out relies on a calendar that matches the sun, because the sun is the primary determiner of our climate.

      "Time zones are now oddly shaped and some even differ only by 30 minutes from the neighbouring zones (and there are more than 24 zones)."

      Yes, and those could be solved best by making them better match geography. You'll get no argument from me about that and if you ever control the world, I'm happy to give you 24 nicely-sized ones respecting borders and we can reserve a punishment for the guy who decided that China (which needs three time zones) would only use one and it wouldn't even be the middle one.

      "We could get rid of this complexity by using TAI globally (without offsets). So what if school starts at 14:00 some places on earth and at 04:00 in other places?"

      Midnight is the problem. The people around the prime meridian get to be asleep while days change, but everyone else gets the days switching while they're working. If you live in eastern Australia and the days switch at what would have been 10:00, do you stop working in mid morning when Friday ends? It also means that you can describe a time and everyone knows what that means in relation to the day without having to ask you where you were at the time.

      "Let us have twelve 30-day months per year, even if this slides by 5.256 days relative to solstice every year."

      Ah, so you're looking for months to slide around the solar year every five decades, reversing seasons from summer to winter three or four times in a lifetime. If I ever get to assign people to fix the time system, I'm afraid you're ineligible to work on calendars.

    8. ThatOne Silver badge

      Re: Let it slide

      > Time zones are now oddly shaped and some even differ only by 30 minutes from the neighbouring zones

      Time zones are only vaguely connected to local solar time, they are a political/economic thing. Good examples are Europe and China being a single time zone, despite stretching over what should be several different ones.

      1. Stork

        Re: Let it slide

        Not quite. Portugal and the British islands are on WET, most of western and Central Europe on CET(Bornholm hour) and at least Finland and Greece on Eastern European time.

        1. ThatOne Silver badge
          Happy

          Re: Let it slide

          Well, "Europe" is mostly central Europe (Germany, France, Italy, Spain). The UK isn't really Europe (they make sure everybody knows it), and east Europe is politically special. Portugal is the outlier here, probably an attempt to not be like their overwhelming neighbor...

  8. Scott Broukell

    Poids aren't Real

    Just saying.

    <insert joke icon>

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Haven't done the reading to know that much about this, but my knee-jerk reaction is that if Meta think it's a good idea it probably isn't.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    An idea....

    [repost]

    ... why don't we do away with timezones altogether? We all (*) have a device that knows _exactly_ where we are so could easily calculate a precise local time for you. Then all we have to do is indicate exactly where the event is due to occur at its local time and then everyone knows exactly when too!

    So bus/train timetables would factor in the position of the stop/station and maps route finding would know where you are starting from (and what time it is there) and compare that with the place you are going (and work out what time it is there), etc., etc. ...

    There might be a few minor teething problems but I'm sure we could make this work!

    It would have a couple of advantages of spreading traffic and power requirements out a bit as depending on which side of the country you are, you would be doing things at a slightly different UTC (or UT1) time compared to the other side.

    This is a great idea! What could possibly go wrong?

    (*) well, many of us and a rapidly increasing proportion of the human race.

    1. Natalie Gritpants Jr

      Re: An idea....

      So what time is Love Island on? When do the ticket for Ed Sheeran go on sale?

      1. that one in the corner Silver badge

        Re: An idea....

        Both very good points in favour of AdamT's proposal - I'll go with anything that gives us a fighting chance of losing Love Island because its viewers can't figure out when to switch over.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Joke

        Re: An idea....

        Well, I assume these days that most people watch via streaming so that means it can be timed based on your location!

        Similarly, Ed Sheeran ticket timings are based on the location of the venue.

        See, it is a genius idea!

        (But I'll keep adding the Joke Alert icon because, well, some people just aren't ready for these next-level concepts of time and space!)

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. TRT

        Re: An idea....

        What's a year now?

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

  11. Sp1z

    "Even Meta agrees"

    So what?

  12. TRT

    History is an illusion...

    caused by the passage of time.

    Time is an illusion caused by the passage of history.

    *courtesy Douglas Adams.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Time is an illusion

      Lunchtime doubly so.

      1. TRT

        Re: Time is an illusion

        Lunchtime is an illusion caused by the passage of beer.

        1. Dagg Silver badge

          Re: Time is an illusion

          Ah, that explains why the friday lunch hour is always 2 hours long.

    2. Arthur the cat Silver badge

      Re: History is an illusion...

      Time exists to stop everything happening at once, which would be very confusing.

  13. original_rwg
    Coat

    Sign in the shoe repairers

    Time wounds all heels....

  14. Big_Boomer
    Boffin

    Time is not real

    Time is a human invention to give us a mathematical handle on our reality (or what we perceive to be our reality). Therefore whatever changes we decide to make (or put off until someone else has to decide) are just changes to something that does not exist outside our minds. Agreeing to a common standard would be ideal but what possible difference does it make if the sun rises where you are at 06:00 or 12:00 or 23:37:12.842? So long as we know what the "offsets" are we can do the calculations (or our computers can) needed to get on with our lives. The problems we are having are because of decisions made previously that "bind" us to a particular convention, and now they want to change/not change that convention. Either way we will end up with another Millennium Bug level mess that will require time and money to resolve/avoid at some point so who cares what they change/don't change. Trying to base our definition of time on a variable (rotation of a planet, rotation of planet around star, pulse rate of a Pulsar, etc.) is like chasing shadows. Since we have no "fixed" frame of reference we use those as the next best thing, but they are inherently variable so that needs to be taken into account.

  15. chivo243 Silver badge
    Trollface

    Time Lords

    Hmm, that headline had me thinking Dr. Who kind of stuff... Now I know way too much about actual time keeping!

  16. tapanit

    New SI prefixes

    Reading the BIPM resolutions I noticed another one of interest: they finally decided to add new SI prefixes: ronna, ronto, quetta and quecto. Can't wait to see the first announcement of a ronnabyte SSD.

  17. TimMaher Silver badge
    Pint

    It’s always five o’clock somewhere.

    So I don’t care.——->

  18. gnasher729 Silver badge

    I thought about this, and my conclusion is that the only sensible universal times are TAI and UT1. In TAI, every second has exactly the same length, as precisely as can be achieved, and every day has exactly 86,400 seconds. The unfortunate effect is that since earth's rotation is wobbly, TAI drifts away from our sun-based time very very slowly. In UT1, every day has exactly 86.400 seconds. Since earth's rotation is wobbly, the length of a second changes, but but it can measured within 25 microseconds. And that's without error accumulation, there are fresh results every night. Noon (12am) is supposedly the time when the sun is at its highest point over Greenwich, but it is more precise to measure the position of some quasars at night time. If we imagined the sun rotating around the earth every 24 hours, the 25 microseconds difference means we don't fix where the exact centre of the sun is, but +/- 270 meters away.

    UT1 is perfectly fine for setting your watch, running busses, and measuring 100m world records. TAI is good for measuring things needing nanosecond precision. Both would be 100% monotonic and between very accurate and extremely accurate.

    UTC was always rubbish because it has a 1 second jump from time to time, which requires more or less evil workarounds. Currently we insert leap seconds, which is a known cause of trouble. In the future we'd have to skip seconds which is untested and could cause all kinds of new trouble. It would be best to switch all uses of UTC either to TAI or to UT1. In your OS, have functions for TA1, UTC (deprecated) and UT1. Initially let UT1 = UTC if it wasn't available before, then gently move it to real UT1 over a year or so. Add a function for "difference between TAI and UTC" which changes with leap seconds. If someone really wants UTC they can calculate it. If someone needs 100% accuracy they use TAI. 99% of uses are just fine if you replace UTC with UT1. And for the one percent, TAI is better.

    And not to forget, GPS time is TAI plus some fixed offset, which will never ever change. Except it starts all over again every 20 years or so. The offset from UTC changes all the time.

    1. bazza Silver badge

      Certainly, in this day and age it woud be perfectly possible for software to rely on a "UT1-TAI" broadcast, in the same way that everything already uses NTP and is permanently time synced anyway.

      You can programmatically fetch such data already in XML format, if you're interested, from the IERS's web services. Their bulletins will give you a prediction for the length of a UT1 day a year before that day occurs, and these predictions become increasingly certain as the year passes, and then on the day itself there is first a rapid measurement of the actual length of the UT1 day and a few day's later a more accurate final measurement is given.

      Sometimes they go on holiday, and a bulletin is missed, or mistimed. Fetching their data efficiently can be tricky... If a company like Google took a grip of it, it could become a robust service (like NTP is a proper, widely supported service).

      The predictions are quite interesting: sometimes, the initial year-in-advance prediction for a UT1 day length an be up to 0.25 seconds out compared to the final measured value. Sometimes the prediction gets within 0.1 seconds of the final result only in the month or so preceeding the day in question. The difference between the rapid measurement of day length and the final considered view is generally pretty small, but not zero.

      Another problem is that the definition for how a UT1 day is predicted has changed. There's basically two main ways of doing it, different nutation models, one from 1980 and another from 2000.

      1. gnasher729 Silver badge

        Whatever your iPhone, or your computer, or maybe your wall clock uses, you have to update from time to time, because your devices precision is much less than UT1 and much less again than TAI. I wrote some software that needed to track clock changes on iOS; my phone drifted about 0.2 seconds per day, my bosses drifted over 2.5 seconds per day. We used this to identify whether the user had changed the clock and it couldn't be trusted anymore; the 2.5. seconds was too much.

        For changes in the UT1 definition: It doesn't matter really, as long as it is monotonic, changes almost exactly one second every physical (TAI) second, has exactly 86,400 seconds a day, and is almost the same for everyone.

  19. theOtherJT Silver badge
  20. Someone Else Silver badge
    Alert

    So...

    Even Meta agrees with that argument, and earlier this year added its voice to calls for their demise.

    So Zuck's against it. Which therefore means it is good, and must be preserved.

  21. Adrian 4

    More urgent

    Never mind leap seconds. What we need to dump is DST.

    1. swm

      Re: More urgent

      But congress seems determined to keep DST permanently!

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    wait a minute...

    How about waiting to adjust until it's one minute, or some other predetermined amount, off?

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