The Doomsday Clock Is Moved Closer To Midnight

Harperdog writes "The Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock from 6 minutes to midnight to 5 minutes to midnight. The Board deliberated on the decision and came to the conclusion based on a variety of events: failure on climate policy, Fukushima, nuclear proliferation, etc. This article is a good explanation of the policy decision. Lawrence Krauss said, 'As we see it, the major challenge at the heart of humanity's survival in the 21st century is how to meet energy needs for economic growth in developing and industrial countries without further damaging the climate, exposing people to loss of health and community, and without risking further spread of nuclear weapons, and in fact setting the stage for global reductions.'"

Comments

Re:Eventually

[Chuq]

You are aware that sometimes the clock moves AWAY from midnight?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Doomsday_Clock_graph.svg

Re:Eventually

[djmurdoch]

Re Fukushima: If you read the statement you'd see that they find the problem arising from Fukushima is that it caused a reduction in the amount of nuclear power being used, leading to increased reliance on burning fossil fuels.

They'd like safer reactor designs, so more people use nuclear power.

So what's that about integrity? You complain about them, without reading what they wrote?

Re:Zeno

[ElectricTurtle]

You need to stop getting your 'science' from B movies. The reason that the Oxygen Catastrophe of the Siderian was able to change the atmosphere and the biosphere was that the cyanobacteria (over thousands of years) kept producing the gas as a product of their metabolism continuously and unopposed. The methane in ice/tundra is ultimately a mostly static value. Even if all of it were released instantly a) it wouldn't account for more than a fraction of a percent of the total atmosphere b) it would be subject to reabsorbtion by all the active environmental forces c) it would not increase further at any higher rate than is already established for lifeforms and geothermal activity that produce methane and d) there is no chance that it would catalyze some kind of methane-based/metabolizing/adapted lifeform because there would not be enough of it. (Among many other reasons.)

Holy shit people, The Day After Tomorrow is not a documentary, and shame on all the deluded twits modding you up.