> I think it's a rather weak argument that we should worry about noon being "out of sync" for thousands of years in the future.
Not if you're on the open ocean and need to know where you are, as I was every day for four years during my around-the-world sail. In that case, "noon" had a very specific, and very important, meaning -- each second of clock error equals 1/4 nautical mile of position error (or 1,519 feet).
I emphasize that both sides of this issue have very reasonable arguments.
Then keep solar time as a timezone and switch into that mode when you really need solar accuracy. This is a rather extreme edge case.
And actually, it can easily, very easily, be done by hand, even if we stopped adding leap seconds to UTC. Just keep a log of leap seconds and then apply them to your UTC clock.
Sticking to celestial bodies for time seems pointlessly complicated to satisfy a few edge cases that can be handled in better ways.
Not if you're on the open ocean and need to know where you are, as I was every day for four years during my around-the-world sail. In that case, "noon" had a very specific, and very important, meaning -- each second of clock error equals 1/4 nautical mile of position error (or 1,519 feet).
I emphasize that both sides of this issue have very reasonable arguments.