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

Zeno

[Sebastopol]

This is so stupid. I'm a lefty eco groovy person, but this is just pathetic. Almost as sad as Heston's "From my cold dead hands" battlecry.

It just puts emphasis on the moonbats on the left, and ammo for Faux News, rather than addressing the issues in a non sensationalist way.

Sigh.

Re:Zeno

[Anonymous Coward]

They're just trying to stay relevant. We all forgot about them when the Cold War ended, and they crave attention again.

Re:Zeno

[93 Escort Wagon]

They're just trying to stay relevant. We all forgot about them when the Cold War ended, and they crave attention again.

You may have been joking/snarky/whatever, I'm not sure; but in all seriousness - I'd completely forgot about these guys and their "doomsday clock" until I saw this Slashdot story!

Re:Zeno

[timeOday]

So we can sit here and take turns throwing feces at the idea of a doomsday clock, or we could have an interesting discussion on whether it is possible to meet the world's future energy needs(?) without destroying the environment and/or nuclear proliferation.

Re:Zeno

[Sponge Bath]

There's no reason we can't do both. I'm certain we can meet our energy needs, but maybe not our energy wants. Now where is that clock... *fling* *splat*

Re:Zeno

[Baloroth]

The real problem is that the clock wasn't intended to represent things like climate change. The entire idea was to show how close we were to the world ending tomorrow. Climate change and the like won't end the world tomorrow. The clock really only even makes sense in the context of nuclear war or other dramatic world-changing events (Doomsday). It isn't called the "Doomcentury" clock for good reason.

Re:Zeno

[Curunir_wolf]

Maybe not ours but is life really defined by humans?

Yep, it really is. I mean, who will be around to define it after we're gone?

Re:Zeno

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe not ours but is life really defined by humans?

Yep, it really is. I mean, who will be around to define it after we're gone?

Eloi and Morlocks, I'd imagine.

Re:Zeno

[poetmatt]

Why is it part of any political spectrum? what kind of a US centric shitpost is that? I'd say the doomsday clock is significant at doing what it does for the reasons it does, which are not at all political.

How about the fact that the world is generally on a decline? Economies falling due to greed and corruption, change being stifled, advancing our society via positive means being directly subverted by greed. That isn't part of $political-stance and is a part of that is that being on a decline long enough does equal significant military outcomes of negative effect.

While it is labeled as doomsday, it is a honest enough indicator of "how's the world doing overall?".

Re:Zeno

[BenSchuarmer]

That's when Dick Clark goes on TV live from Time Square.

Re:Zeno

[ubrgeek]

Couldn't we use the feces to meet our energy needs?

Re:Zeno

[CapOblivious2010]

I seriously wonder what would happen if the US got nukes launched at it ... (snip)... We definitely wouldn't want to launch ours back to avoid MAD.

Do you know how MAD works? The whole point is that we are very public about being batshit crazy, and we definitely WOULD launch ours back. Lots of them. So launching a nuke at the US is just a slightly indirect way of committing mass suicide. MAD is insane logic, no question about it - but it's been a big part of keeping the US and USSR from using nukes on each other for over half a century. As insane as it might be, it works.

There's even a MAD argument AGAINST missile defense - as long as the US can't defeat incoming missiles, we're very unlikely to start a nuclear war. Likewise for Russia or whoever. But if anyone COULD defeat missiles, they wouldn't fear a nuclear war nearly as much, and they might even be tempted to start one. So a workable missile defense arguably makes the overall situation MORE dangerous, not less.

Now granted, MAD works better when your enemy is a large country who values their lives - it gets a bit iffy when your enemy is a small band of religious wackos who don't much care whether they're dead or alive, as long as they've made their point.

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.

Re:Zeno

[ancientt]

Spitballing here, so I freely acknowledge there are probably many issues I haven't thought through...

How about we sell lots of safe nuclear generators to Iran? I am interested in nuclear power because it has a tremendous potential for meeting energy demands, but I also acknowledge that creating safe nuclear plants that aren't a precursor to nuclear weapons requires a high level of technical expertise. The US and China and other highly developed countries have the expertise but face a lot of public opinion inertia. Maybe we should try to produce the generators in a box (google Hyperion) and sell them to Iran with built in safety precautions. Alternatively, set up a treaty to develop thorium reactors there, which I believe are hard or impossible to weaponize.

Either way, we could help them meet their energy goals while protecting the global interest of preventing them from developing weapons. As a side effect, we would get to use the pro-nuclear government there as a safety proving ground for new technologies. They want to take the risks and we need to show that the new technologies are safe and feasible, so we have coinciding interest, which can make a strong bond for peaceful trade.

Re:Zeno

[shutdown -p now]

Now granted, MAD works better when your enemy is a large country who values their lives - it gets a bit iffy when your enemy is a small band of religious wackos who don't much care whether they're dead or alive, as long as they've made their point.

MAD only works when it's really mutually assured destruction, and said destruction is complete (or nearly so, enough for all practical purposes). You can't have MAD between U.S. and Iran, or between U.S. and DPRK, because those countries couldn't significantly hurt U.S. with what they have - at best they could nuke a city or two (and even then that assumes some efficient delivery vehicle), whereas U.S. can nuke them out of existence entirely.

Re:Zeno

[SETIGuy]

Depends how we go. Triggering an ice age could leave some descendants of the great apes around, but as a family the great apes have been a pretty dismal failure with only 7 species in 4 genera. I'd be pretty surprised if any survive. Triggering excessive heating might even be worse for large animals. Nuclear exchange followed by nuclear winter would probably get rid of large species. I would guess your best bet is a small burrowing omnivore. Temperatures underground might be moderated with the possibility of better access to fresh water. Once the climate stabilizes for a while we've got half a billion years of viability left in the planet, so something we would consider intelligent might evolve.

Of course if we trigger a runaway greenhouse, the point is moot. If there are bacteria in mantle rocks or deep crust, they might survive for a while. Once the water is baked out of the mantle and plate tectonics stops, that's all she wrote.

People who like humans might consider either one to be sad.

Re:Zeno

[SgtXaos]

Aside from a few million pounds (?) of it we have shot into space, all the metal that was here is still here. At some point, when the naturally available materials are simply too costly to mine, someone will figure out a good way to mine the landfills and dig those "gone" materials back up.

Re:Zeno

[CapOblivious2010]

I think nuking even "just" a city or two (say, NYC + DC) would count as "significantly" hurting the US. If US planners believed that DPRK had a couple of nukes and a delivery mechanism of some sort (ICBM or suitcase, whatever), I think it would SIGNIFICANTLY discourage them from attacking DPRK, especially w/ nukes.

Re:Zeno

[shutdown -p now]

The trick is being able to nuke in response even after you are nuked first. If all you have is, say, half a dozen ICBMs, then your enemy just nukes their locations with their first strike, and that's it. Not to mention that a few ICBMs can be shot down quite easily.

That's why early on sheer numbers were very important for MAD - you had to have enough strategic bombers that at least some would get in the air and get through to enemy's cities; and later on, subs became important as an effectively invincible retaliatory strike mechanism.

Re:Zeno

[MobyTurbo]

Iran was offered safe nuclear power, i.e. that Russia or some other neutral country would do the producing of the fuel. Negotiators many times offered that as the main condition to lifting of sanctions in exchange for them stopping producing the stuff that's refine-able into nuclear weapons. Iran said no, we have to for "national pride" make it ourselves. Either they have a heck of a lot of national pride over making Uranium-235 of a grade better than what's needed for power reactors, or they are trying to acquire nukes. I suspect the latter.

Re:Zeno

[rainer_d]

Consensus is that DPRK/Iran may (!) have enough material to build a single nuclear bomb (if at all) in the near future.
AFAIK, neither nation has ICBMs - as such, the device would have to be used as in a conventional bombing attack: delivered and brought to explosion on-site.

It would be very effective in killing as many people as possible in one swoop - but ultimately lead to an even more brutal strike-back.

In a way, this is some sort of MAD.
KJU and MA know this - they have to appear just crazy enough to let us think they could do it - but without actually painting themselves into a corner in such a way that they have no other option.
It's much more complicated and much more dangerous than the game US and USSR used to play. It's a bit like the Cuban Missile crisis - but performed twice a year...

But moving the Doomsday clock one minute is OK IMO. That DPRK/Iran theater is just a distraction from the economic problems we have.

Eventually

[mpeskett]

Sooner or later they're going to box themselves into a corner - they only have so many discrete 1-minute steps they can take before they find that the world is more fucked up than they thought possible, but somehow still carrying on.

Then what? Leave it at 1-minute to midnight, or edge ever closer in smaller and smaller increments?

Re:Eventually

[Anonymous Coward]

"Today, the Doomsday Clock moved from 11:59:59.98 to 11:59:59.99, signaling that once again, scientists have proved that there are no simple metaphors that can't be abused beyond the point of utility."

Re:Eventually

[ArsonSmith]

"A symbolic clock is as emotionally reassuring as a picture of oxygen to a drowning man." -Dr. Manhattan

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

[ElectricTurtle]

This is what happened to (neo-)Malthusianism. Every generation since Malthus has predicted disaster at some invented threshold, and over and over these thresholds are surpassed. Humanity is immeasurably adaptable, precisely because when the crunch comes previously impossible things are made possible by that adaptability.

I think that this move is particularly disingenuous and calls into question the group's whole integrity considering that the real, global effect of Fukushima has been nation after nation scaling back and drawing down nuclear power. I personally think it's retarded, but nonetheless it should be counted as one the most major changes in direction in the nuclear power industry in a generation, and this group thinks it has the opposite effect? There's just no pleasing some people, obviously.

Re:Eventually

[bughunter]

Well perhaps the clock metaphor isn't doing them service anymore if the majority of reactions are to the metaphor than the message.

Ultimately the point is, "we're going to pollute ourselves into the stone age." If that bit is being lost because the clock metaphor is becoming trite, then perhaps they should look for a new analogy.

This being slashdot, I think you know what I'm driving at...

Re:Eventually

[timeOday]

Malthusian catastrophe is:

Hong Kong residents living in cages

China's One Child policy, and millions waiting for days in swamped transportation arteries for a shot at seeing their families once per year.

The downfall of multiple governments triggered by rising food prices

The German quest for lebensraum from 1939-1945.

Now, you could argue those are all matters of resource allocation, rather than shortages per se. But what I see in the world is that as resources become scarce, they are distributed less equitably, not more.

Re:Eventually

[Hentes]

Which is exactly not the behaviour you would expect from a clock. The metaphor is flawed.

Re:Eventually

[Anonymous Coward]

"Doomsday Yardstick" doesn't exactly have the same ring to it.

Re:Eventually

[Gnavpot]

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

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

Interesting graph. It shows that the world was a safer place in the early sixties when the Cuban Missile Crisis almost started World War III.

How many simultaneous nuclear power plant failures would it take to end the world in the same way a WW III would have done?

What is the probability of all those failures happening now vs. the probability of a WW III happening in 1962?

Re:Eventually

[ElectricTurtle]

HK generally speaking has fairly high standard of living, and the exceptions that exist are the same sort of exceptions that exist everywhere, just with a different culture spin (I don't see anybody whining about the Japanese pod hotels... just doesn't have the same dramatic impact of cages). Density is so high there because everybody wants it. There's plenty of empty space in the world, but people don't want to be in empty space. They want culture and amenities, and will go to great lengths to stack themselves on top of those.

Fertility rate has seen massive drops in almost every nation over the last several decades, so China's draconian measures are redundant to the world norm.

Blaming Arab Spring on food prices is utter nonsense. All the nations "afflicted" with these revolutions had one thing in common: single-party dictatorships in power for decades. People were not fighting over the price of rice, they were fighting because these states had imprisoned and killed their family members. That's what's happening in Syria right now. The most generous way this could be bent to your perspective is that it was the government response to popular discontent about economic issues that catalyzed these revolutions. But where these economic issues have afflicted states with more open governments revolutions have not occurred. It is the combination of poor government and poor economic conditions, not economic conditions alone, that result in these events.

The German situation was entirely political and doctrinal. Germany had in fact completely rectified its post-WWI economic issues before the opening of WWII. The whole German population could have lived in comfort and peace if it weren't for the political motives of Hitler and the rest of NSDAP leadership. (This is leaving out the more or less imminent thread presented by Stalin, where there is generally a consensus among historians that if Hitler hadn't started the war, Stalin would have in his stead.)

So yes, none of these constitute Malthusian catastrophe, especially since none have impacted more than a nation here or there (WWII I don't even count for the reason above.)

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:Eventually

[LordKronos]

Which is exactly not the behaviour you would expect from a clock. The metaphor is flawed.

Flawed? Please, I'll take their clock any day. So it moves backward on average 1-2 times per decade. Big deal. My clock has to do it once per year.

so close!

[quaketripp]

A few more minutes and we can start playing "2 minutes to midnight" by Iron Maiden!

Mission creep

[Anonymous Coward]

I have it on authority, that next year's doomsday criteria will include sasquatch sightings.

Safe for a century and a half

[nman64]

So, a doomsday clock that started at 11:53 in 1947 is now at 11:55... based upon that rate of advancement (2 minutes per 65 years, obviously ignoring any other adjustments), we should be safe for over a century and a half. I've heard far more alarming predictions than that. Nothing to see here.

Re:Safe for a century and a half

[syousef]

So, a doomsday clock that started at 11:53 in 1947 is now at 11:55... based upon that rate of advancement (2 minutes per 65 years, obviously ignoring any other adjustments), we should be safe for over a century and a half. I've heard far more alarming predictions than that. Nothing to see here.

Personally I find it very alarming that a group of nuclear scientists can't even make a clock that doesn't work at a consistent rate. Perhaps what they need is to invent an atomic clock ;-)

Oblig.

[Wraithlyn]

The whole point of a doomsday clock... is LOST if you keep it a secret!

WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL THE WORLD, EH?

MAD

[SirGarlon]

Now granted, MAD works better when your enemy is a large country who values their lives - it gets a bit iffy when your enemy is a small band of religious wackos who don't much care whether they're dead or alive, as long as they've made their point.

Just to recap, "MAD" stands for "Mutually Assured Destruction." If the enemy is a small band of religious wackos they can't get enough nukes to destroy a major country. One city, sure; ten cities, maybe; destroy the country, no way. So they can do some damage but not destroy their target. Likewise they are hard to locate and easy to disperse. You'd be surprised how useless nukes are against a moving enemy whom you can't locate to within a few miles' radius. So the whole MAD strategy becomes irrelevant. Neither side can destroy the other but they can nuke each other ... maybe multiple times. This is why nuclear proliferation is scary: it changes the stable MAD scenario to an unstable one where there is no deterrent to small-scale nuclear exchange.