The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved its symbolic Doomsday Clock closer to midnight, indicating that the likeliness of a human-caused apocalypse has increased since last year.
The Bulletin adjusted the clock to reflect human-caused threats such as nuclear weapons and accelerated global warming.
The clock is now set at 100 seconds to midnight. It’s the first time the clock has been set within the two minute mark.“We have normalized a very dangerous world in terms of the risks of nuclear warfare and climate change,” Robert Rosner, chair of the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board, said in a public briefing.
Scientists move Doomsday Clock closer to midnight
Being a child of the Atomic Age and the Cold War, I grew up with the winds constant fear of a nuclear end of the world. I eventually learned that the Doomsday Clock was more political than scientific: If the US did something that may have upset the Soviet Union, then the BSA would start screaming about the End of the World, but iof the Soviets did something truly stupid, they would go on mental vacation.
But in some cases, the threat of shit going south was very real which strikes me as unreal that Robert Rosner, somebody who was pretty much alive and 15 years old at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis erupted. We are talking about planes fully loaded with nuclear bombs in the air, missile silos and trains, manned with crews about to open their target packages and take out cities all over the world. For almost 2 weeks, we were half a hair’s breadth away from glowing in the dark for a couple of millennia with roaches and scorpions being the top animals on Earth, and the morons at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists think farting cows, and plastic straws are actually a bigger threat and we are about to die in 100 seconds .
So a group that hasn’t been anything close to relevant since the fall of the Berlin wall tries (again) to get their picture in the paper and get some funding. How many people under the age of 40 have even heard about them?
The “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists” was started by a number of leftist refugees (i.e they lost their security clearances for their communist sympathies) from the Manhattan Project that wanted to ban Atomic (later Nuclear) weapons. Despite claims to the contrary, there was very little science, and quite a lot of politics. The whole “Doomsday Clock” thing was a dramatic way of pushing nuclear disarmament (perhaps even unilaterally).
They always moved the clock up when a Republican was president and if they moved it back at all, it was only when a Democrat was president. They about soiled themselves when Reagan (the man who coined the term “Evil Empire”) actually got the Soviets to agree to meaningful and verifiable arms reduction.
With end of the cold war, and with no credible nuclear threat to make them relevant, they shifted to “Climate Change” as the doomsday cause of the week. I’m not sure who is on the editorial board these days, I’m not even sure if any true scientists are on the board. Those that founded the magazine have long since died or retired, but the “Bulletin” still trades on their reputations.
I love how it shifted from “The USA and USSR are about to nuke each other” to any man made disaster.
And why is it 100 seconds from midnight if global warming is still 12 years out?
They are stealing Greta’s thunder…… Shame, Shame.