The World Remains Five Minutes From Midnight

Lasrick writes "The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announces whether their Doomsday Clock has been moved with this open letter to President Obama, outlining progress on a number of fronts, but also detailing what still needs to be done to avoid various threats to humanity." From the article: "2012 was a year in which the problems of the world pressed forward, but too many of its citizens stood back. In the U.S. elections the focus was "the economy, stupid," with barely a word about the severe long-term trends that threaten the population's well-being to a far greater extent: climate change, the continuing menace of nuclear oblivion, and the vulnerabilities of the world's energy sources."

Comments

Doomsday clock

[AG the other]

I've been seeing reports of this so called clock for a long time and I can't help pointing out that so far, for thousands of years, every single prediction of the end of the world and humanity has been wrong.

Re:Doomsday clock

[p0p0]

It's not really a prescription. It's more symbolic, since it is decided by a group of persons on when and where to move the hands of the clock.
Whether there is physically a clock, or if it is all symbolism I'm not entirely sure.

In the end (ha!) the clock has lost most of it's shock value and is mostly ignored.

Re:Doomsday clock

[k6mfw]

every single prediction of the end of the world and humanity has been wrong.

Let us hope such predictions continue to be wrong. All it takes is just ONE to be right and then no more predictions are necessary.

Re:Doomsday clock

[DigitAl56K]

The Doomsday clock isn't predicting the end of the world, it's symbolic and reflects an assessment of the state of potentially many topics that pose a serious risk to our civilization. The closer the clock is to midnight, the worse condition we're considered to be in, all things considered. The clock moves forwards and back depending on the problems of the world, what we're doing about them, what we've committed to do about them, etc. etc.

If the clock were at midnight the world would not necessarily end, but we'd be in very bad shape (maybe imminent nuclear war, loss of energy supply, etc.)

Re:Doomsday clock

[fustakrakich]

The clock is a lie

Re:Doomsday clock

[icebike]

Thank you captain obvious.

Its not like any of us would have stumbled on that symbolism in 66 years since they started making their predictions.
We are all so dense you know.....

Re:Doomsday clock

[DigitAl56K]

Maybe you should look at the post I was replying to, which certainly did conflate the doomsday clock with predictions of the end of the world.

Re:Doomsday clock

[hawguy]

I've been seeing reports of this so called clock for a long time and I can't help pointing out that so far, for thousands of years, every single prediction of the end of the world and humanity has been wrong.

Well, of course every prediction of the end of the world and humanity has been wrong - you wouldn't be able to make that observation otherwise.

Re:Doomsday clock

[jcr]

Why address long term goals? Like the tea party and their cronies always say. Long term thinking?

Obviously you have no idea at all what the Tea Party is all about. Piling on debt without end is not long-term thinking.

-jcr

Re:Doomsday clock

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok people, let's all take a deep breath, and just agree that their clock metaphor, be it symbolic or predictive, is goddamned retarded.

We've been within, what, 15 minutes of "super ultra awful zomg the sky is falling we're all doomed just shit yourself now", for the better part of a century. That's the longest FUD-whine in history.

Re:Doomsday clock

[guttentag]

It's a symbol that has been used for 66 years by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago to draw attention to the Global Thermonuclear War edition of the fiscal cliff. It started out at 7 minutes to midnight before the Cold War started and the hand was moved whenever they wanted to draw attention to moves by governments that the directors of the bulletin deemed good or bad with respect to the threat of a nuclear apocalypse. The furthest it has ever been from midnight was 17 minutes after the U.S. and U.S.S.R. signed START.

In 2007, with the Cold War long over and no nukes traded between India and Pakistan, people had become desensitized to minute changes (such as "we're moving the hand one minute closer to midnight because you haven't signed any new treaties promising to disarm additional weapons... So you'd better start signing treaties or we're going to scare people with our big symbolic clock") it was repurposed to also draw attention to climate issues that could also bring about apocalyptic scenarios.

Unfortunately, most people don't know that, and the clock has little meaning for the general public. Like the March of Dimes (which was founded to eradicate polio -- mission accomplished, and good luck getting a straight answer from them on where your money goes now...) it became a self-important PR Zombie in search of a purpose for its once-massive mobilization abilities. Climate change is important, but this is the 21st century. They need to find a more informative way to inform people, because no one knows what the hell a minute means in terms of the climate cliff. Tell them to use more sunblock and less freon... Something concrete. Not a meaningless abstract clock symbol.

Re:Doomsday clock

[amorsen]

Obviously you have no idea at all what the Tea Party is all about. Piling on debt without end is not long-term thinking.

Piling on debt without end is what the Tea Party is all about. The Tea Party movement has made many Republicans promise to never raise taxes. There are no realistic options to balance the US budget or repay the debt without raising taxes at all for anyone.

Re:Doomsday clock

[Cryacin]

The trouble with the tea party is that they suffer from the tragedy of commons. Their myopic view is that people of higher income should in fact be paying less tax. Just ask Mitt Romney.

And certainly crazy spending on things like war also suffers from the broken window fallacy. Also, just paying a living wage to the poor without educating them falls into the same bucket.

Again, elections mean that the fruits of one's decisions must mature within less than 4 years. Any longer, and you're probably just aiding the enemy. Or does the tea party now think that the democrats are not their enemy?

In the long term, you're up for re-election anyway.

Re:Doomsday clock

[jcr]

Piling on debt without end is what the Tea Party is all about.

What's your next guess?

The Tea Party has consistently argued for spending cuts. If you imagine that the debt can be addressed by increasing taxes, then you have no conception of the scale of the problem.

-jcr

Re:Doomsday clock

[amorsen]

If you imagine that the debt can be addressed by increasing taxes, then you have no conception of the scale of the problem.

Read what I wrote. The debt problem cannot be addressed without increasing taxes. Obviously spending cuts are necessary too, they may in fact end up doing most of the job, but they cannot stand alone. The Tea Party has effectively prevented reaching a solution, and therefore they are for piling on debt without end.

Re:Doomsday clock

[amorsen]

Bullshit. Entitlement reform would require little or no tax increases to reduce our debt. Typical bleeding heart crap.

Show me a proposal without tax increases that would not cut deeply into the things that Republicans cannot afford to cut, like Medicare/Medicaid for retirees or defense. It has to be something you can get the average rural white American on board with.

Re:Doomsday clock

[LordLimecat]

Except according to wikipedia this adjustment was not because "we're worse off", it was adjusted because nothing had changed and apparently a statement needed to be made:

Lack of global political action to address.....
So if it wasnt already clear that this is a stupid arbitrary soapbox, here you go.

Re:Doomsday clock

[epyT-R]

The tea party's position is the complete opposite of the one you label them with. I like how you assume the level of expenditure we have now is some kind of foregone reality that must exist. You don't manage budgets solely by caving to demands for more money and then raising taxes/borrowing to pay for them. Sometimes you have to reduce expenditures. Of course, what's needed for that are the balls to say 'No,' among other things, but we have nothing but pantywaisted 'team players' in washington these days. You reek with bias.

Who've been the ones demanding the tax payer fund all sorts of mostly useless bullshit over the last 50 years? The democrats have the ideological mandates for the centralization and control of power, and the neo-con republicans push for exemptions for big money, leaving us with the bill. That leaves the tea party and/or the libertarians fighting for individual control over our money and our civil rights. They are NOT about the government spending money.. Where do you get your information?

Re:Doomsday clock

[Austerity Empowers]

Because it's more bullshit than symbolic. You do as they want you to do, the clock moves further from midnight. You do what they don't want and/or ignore their issues, and they move it closer.

How close we really are to doomsday is not measured here, there's no accurate and unbiased measure of things as diverse and unrelated as nuclear proliferation and climate change, there can't be. If there was we'd ride that sucker like the fiscal cliff, right up to the very last second for DECADES. It seems like we're much further away though than when I was a kid (and my parents would say they felt mere seconds away). Our problems right now seem far more practical such that if we do not solve them, then nuclear war or resource exhaustion become far more likely scenarios.

Re:Doomsday clock

[toddestan]

The Tea Party says they want spending cuts, but when pressed for details they either have nothing or only offer sound bites that sound good but account for only a tiny amount of the total spending.

Re:Doomsday clock

[phantomfive]

I don't think that's accurate, the tea-party motto is "taxed too much," not "pay no taxes."

In general, these are people who are unhappy with how their taxes are being spent. They didn't like the bank bailout, they didn't like the stimulus that followed, and they didn't like what was looking like a giant expansion of the government into healthcare.

And honestly, I can't say I disagree. Personally, I think we need to stop spending so much on the military, and a lot of people were upset about the banks, that was kind of the idea behind OWS, too.

Re:Doomsday clock

[tnk1]

Although the focus on people who make more money paying less taxes is a little skewed, people should probably note that when you have sole proprietorships where the owner of a business declares their business revenues as "income", those people might well declare a million dollars a year on their taxes. That doesn't mean that the million dollars is theirs, but instead is used to pay salaries and other business expenses.

Point being, just because you make a million dollars, it doesn't mean that you're buying yachts with it, or that you're actually rich. Part of that money may well be used to pay someone else's salary.

Of course, there is a point where it ceases making sense to be a sole proprietorship, but there are a lot of small business owners who will report more than 250,000 dollars on their taxes, which is where Obama Administration starts calling you "rich". In fact, that's a fairly small business.

Re:Doomsday clock

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea behind OWS is that the rich are raping this country, and that the wealth disparity has grown so great, that so much of our nations wealth is locked up in the hands of so few that it is now impossible for the country to ever be prosperous again.

If taxes are lowered for the rich, and a rich man save a millions dollars for the year, what happens? That million dollars goes into an off shore account, or buys a bunch of gold or something. No real benefit to our economy. Now take that million dollars and give it to 300 poor people or so equally, and you have hundreds of things being bought, cars bought, computers bought, couches, beds. That money benefits the economy and makes the whole country more prosperous. And the majority of it goes back to the rich men anyway, but along the way creates jobs, and lets poor people sleep on beds that are not 20 years old, pays for a laptop for a kid going to college. Guess what, if we took 80% of the wealth from the richest people in the country, our economy would be fixed over night, and those rich people would still have more money than they could ever hope to spend.

The bank bailouts are just a symptom of a system that the wealthy have spent decades molding so that no matter what happens they win, and everyone else looses. They are playing a childish greedy zero sum game with the lives of millions of Americans, for no particularly good reason. They were able to do this because of ignorant republicans and now truly stupid tea party garbage. They should suffer and so should their enablers equally suffer for this monstrous sin.

Re:Doomsday clock

[dryeo]

Income is usually what is left after paying employees and other business expenses. Make $265,000, hire a new employee for $20,000 and now you made $245,000.
This is why high taxes bring prosperity, businesses including sole proprietorships are motivated to reinvest their money in their business rather then declare it as income and pay it as taxes. Now with super low taxes businesses are hoarding or gambling their money rather then spending it.

Re:Doomsday clock

[neyla]

True, but there's 1440 minutes in a day, so five minutes to midnight is 99.35% which is a insanely high score.

Basically, by using a clock they claim to be using a 0-1440 scale and that the present value is 1435, but in actual reality, they're only using the last ten minutes of that scale, so the actual scale is 0-10 with a current value of 5.

Re:Doomsday clock

[servies]

As a Dutch person I can only say: yawn...
If you really think that just a modest spending restraint is the solution to the US debt, then you're an idiot...
The only solution to the US debt is a tax raise and a significant spending restraint.
If you don't get it by now: You're in it till over your heads... It's a miracle you can still breathe...
As a Dutch I really don't get it: more than 50% of the US population is against a tax raise for the 'filthy' rich which only constitutes a maximum of 3% of your population... Why do those (more than) 50% care for those 3%, they certainly don't care for you?....
If those 3% can raise their wealth by driving that 50% into poverty they certainly will do so... The other way around will never happen...
Btw, my taxrate is about 40%, those 'filthy' rich in the US don't even pay half of that with all the shortcuts they can make...

Re:Doomsday clock

[silentcoder]

>I guess the point is that they have all been wrong but people keep making them. They never seem to learn about predictions not working.

A major factor ignored by this thinking is this: the vast majority of "doomsday predictions" are NOT in fact pessimistic claims of "The end is nigh" (especially today). And this lumps genuine scientific concerns in with "Mayan prophecy" idiots - as if they have anything in common.
In fact the vast majority of doomsday prophecies both today and right back to ancient times (compare all the ones in ancient writings like the Old Testament) are self-unfullfilling prophecies. The very PURPOSE of making the prophecy is to prevent itself from coming true: they are not saying "we are all going to die" - they are saying: "repent or face the consequences" - with the sincere hope that people will, in fact, repent.

Take an easy example - in the mid-90's when we became aware of Y2K problem computer scientists predicted massive chaos if it wasn't fixed. They were not saying "the world is going to end" - they WERE saying "fix the problem OR the world is going to be in trouble".
So we fixed the problem - millions of techs around the world who worked very, very hard fixing computers to solve that problem before it happened - and we almost entirely averted the crisis. What was left was one nuclear plant that shut down and a few minor inconveniences (like a centenarian born in 1903 who was told she couldn't vote in the 2004 elections because the system thought she was only 1 year old).

Many people subsequently claimed that the whole thing was overblown. It wasn't. The problem and it's potential impact was very, very real - it didn't happen because we invested time, money and ingenuity enough to solve it IN TIME.

So this spouting-line completely ignores all the doomsday prophecies that MAY or WOULD have come true except that people DID "repent".

The closest the doomsday clock ever got to midnight was 2-minutes two midnight during the Cuban Missile Crisis (this is what inspired the Iron Maiden song: 2 minutes to midnight). It was an accurate prediction of the level of threat of nuclear war at the time. The world has never been at so high a risk of a nuclear war since, and so the clock has never been there again.

Now whether the doomsday clock is a good or bad way to represent the IDEA of the risk to the population can be debated, but to imagine that "because the world has never ended, it obviously never will" is er... fucking stupid.

Re:Doomsday clock

[TheRaven64]

As the other poster pointed out, taxable income is, effectively, the same as profit. It is income minus all allowable business expenses. That includes things like equipment purchase and maintenance, building hire, employee salaries and so on. The thing you pay income tax on is the income after this. If you're taking home $250K per year after paying all of these expenses, I think you can be said to be very comfortably off. If you can save up enough to buy a new house (outright, with no mortgage) every two years then you're doing very well. Of course, that's before taxes. Now, if you have a decent accountant (and, don't forget, you pay him out of the pre-tax income) and want to buy a house then you'll probably have the company buy it with a mortgage and do some juggling so that the acquisition is a loss (with the extra loss carried forward to the next tax year) and so you end up with the company buying the house out of pre-tax profits.

Re:Doomsday clock

[amorsen]

I know the Tea Party movement does not want the government to spend money. However, they are not acting on that. They are not asking Republicans to promise to cut expenditures or even to not add new ones. Instead they are demanding that Republicans promise to never increase taxes.

Tea Party is all about leaving the bill to the future generation.

Re:Doomsday clock

[BrokenHalo]

I hope you are young enough to watch our country turn into a modern and civilized society.

Sir, I would like some of what you are smoking.

I am now over 50, and the primary reason why my wife and I have never had kids is because there is little to no hope of there ever being a sound world into which to bring them.

Re:Doomsday clock

[ChrisMaple]

What makes you think Republicans can't afford to cut Medicare/Medicaid?

Here's what to do: end medicare/medicaid immediately. For all people not already qualified to receive Social Security due to age, raise the age limit 1 year for every 3 years the person is below the current age limit. End Social Security disability payments immediately. Restrict the FDA to controlling purity only. Restrict the SEC to fraud only. End highway funding. Close the EPA, return its functions to the states. End farming subsidies, close the Agriculture Department. End all social programs run by the Defense Department. End all foreign aid. Sell off federal parks or cede them to the states they are located in. Close the Interior Department. Close the department of Labor. Close HUD, end all housing subsidies. Close Department of Health and Human Services. Close the Department of Transportation, end all transportation subsidies and turn airport control over to private or municipal organizations. Close the Department of Education and deport its higher level management. Close the Department of Energy and jail its higher level managers. Close the Department of Homeland Security and turn its few valid functions over to the FBI, CIA, or state organizations, as appropriate. End support of the UN and deport all foreigners therein. Close the Small Business Administration and turn its valid functions, if any, over to the states. Severely limit and cripple the Commerce Department. End federal restrictions on and support of payments to those unemployed. End ALL off-budget discretionary spending. End all emergency relief, and add a Constitutional amendment making it illegal. Close the National Infrastructure Bank.

The above will cut the Federal Budget by about 60%, and by more as the debt is paid off and Social Security is phased out. In about 60 years, the burden of federal expenditures will be about 20% of what it is now.

The alternative is universal poverty and despotism.

Doctor Manhattan

[Anonymous Coward]

"...I would only argue that a doomsday clock is as nourishing to the intellect as a picture of oxygen to a drowning man."

Climate change?

[phantomfive]

If AGW is the worst thing facing humanity, then we're currently in a REALLY good situation.

What's the biggest danger to humanity? Probably nuclear winter, still.

Re:Climate change?

[PerMolestiasEruditio]

The biggest and fastest growing threat to humanity is disease and religion (including anti-human greens). Think 12 monkeys or "The White Plague" (frank herbert).

in 2011 a researcher invented a flu strain with human mortality of probably about 50%. A small number of motivated nut jobs, perhaps even a single person with a couple of million dollars could probably replicate this with far less visibility than for example nuclear weapons programs. There are a large number of highly educated people in the world who would like to wipe or cut down the human population by a large degree.

Even a worst case global nuclear war is unlikely to kill so many. There is nowhere on the planet more than 2 days travel away. Nowhere to hide, and no means of preventing such a thing coming to pass if released in a mobile 1st world population centre with millions of motivated individuals desperate to escape an epidemic.

Re:Climate change?

[terec]

There are plenty of viruses in the wild with high mortality rates and every combination of incubation period and contagiousness you can imagine; none of them have wiped us out yet. It seems to take a bit more to create a global pandemic, and nobody knows how to do it.

Sooner or later, there will be a serious pandemic, something that will wipe out a significant percentage of humanity. There are genetic traces of such past disasters, and we see them in animals occasionally. But it won't be cooked up deliberately, and it won't be the end of humanity or even civilization, because we have effective countermeasures.

Re:Climate change?

[Alioth]

Nuclear winter is a bit of a misnomer - it's more like nuclear months-long night. In the event of a large scale exchange (let's imagine a 1980s scenario where the Soviets and the West exchange 3000 megatons worth), in the months after the exchange due to stratospheric soot injection, at mid day the lighting conditions would be that of a moonlit night.

Go out on a moonlit night. Imagine that's how light it will get for a significant period of time. Very few people will survive that. Imagine that it happens at the start of the growing season.

This was discovered independently by Soviet and US climate scientists in the 1980s. Since then, with better models, we've tried to model a nuclear winter again and found it is likely even worse than what the 1980s research revealed. In particular the consequences of a hypothetical war between Pakistan and India, exchanging a total of 50 Hiroshima-sized weapons on populated targets, and the result would be a "nuclear autumn" that would cause enough cooling to cause a reduction in the growing season in North America by 60 days and disruption to the climate for a decade.

they switched the meaning.

[gl4ss]

it makes the clock bullshit. it will never be even 23 pm. and now it's totally useless as indicator for following how the nuke situation is going.

the number is just pulled out of the ass, status quo remaining the same has pushed it closer to midnight several times. but moving it to half past eleven or whatever wouldn't be right because "they don't want to give the wrong message that you shouldn't be afraid".

Re:they switched the meaning.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its like the terrorist colour thing. They want you worried or they don't have a point.

Desensitization

[girlintraining]

It's not a terribly good model. Since it came out it hasn't moved very much compared to the total time represented (24 hours, of which it seems to have always been in the last 15 minutes -- or about 1% of the available time). It's not unlike making a global warming map and then plotting it on a scale from -400F to +4000F... You get a straight line. You need to calibrate it to the min/max values you're actually seeing within that range, which would be more like -60F to +170F.

One wonders if this isn't a case of a bunch of scientists getting together and showing us a gimmick that show's were perpetually at the edge of an imaginary cliff, but has no real value visually or comparatively.

Re:Desensitization

[DigitAl56K]

It's not a terribly good model. Since it came out it hasn't moved very much compared to the total time represented (24 hours, of which it seems to have always been in the last 15 minutes -- or about 1% of the available time).

Look at the clock face as presented on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The range _is_ 15 minutes.

Also, perhaps the overall risk hasn't changed too much. There has been ongoing war, proliferation, food scarcity, fuel scarcity, pandemics, global warming, economic collapse in major nations, terrorism, drugs, etc.

but has no real value visually or comparatively.

Line more to the left, things are going better. Line upright, things are going bad. Or perhaps they hope that people will read the reasons they give instead of just looking at the graphic for 2 seconds, I don't know..

This is a stopped clock

[icebike]

This "doomsday clock" hasn't ticked in years. The Atomic Scientists bulletin has used it for every Cause célèbre since the day it was invented. No amount of change will ever move those hands again, because there will always be another issue to adopt, another bandwagon to jump on, another social issue to champion.

Once the threat of nuclear war subsided from the fever pitch of the 60's, they, like most anti-everything protest movements, had to find other horses to ride, preferably one that couldn't reject them. So climate change it is. And cyber technologies!!

And if we don't heed them, we are reminded (annually it turns out) that We are DOOMED, Doomed I tell you!.

Re:This is a stopped clock

[TapeCutter]

Living without fear and ignoring existential threats are two different behavious. The first requires faith in your fellow man and personal courage, the second requires a lobotomy.

I know! I know!

[PPH]

Somebody forgot to wind the clock!

Not even close

[Anonymous Coward]

"The economy, stupid" was James Carville's coining for Bill Clinton's campaign of two decades ago. Obviously this last election was nothing about the economy, else the president who presided over it wouldn't have gotten re-elected. These chaps may be geniuses of atomic science but they make asses of themselves with the totally ignorant comment about current American politics.

Re:UNITS!!!!

[TsuruchiBrian]

I guess I would expect something like nuclear doomsday to follow an exponential distribution. So that would mean the units is time, but it is the time which before which there is a 50% chance of the event happening. So 5 minutes would mean there is a 50% chance of it happening before 5 minutes and a 50% chance of it happening after 5 minutes at every point in time. The odds that nuclear doomsday was actually 5 minutes is almost 0 given how many "5 minutes" have passed in 60 years. If you set the mean to 60 years, then that means that the fact that we avoided a nuclear doomsday for this long means we were as lucky as someone who guesses a coin flip correctly (a bit more believable).

Bah!

[kaatochacha]

This clock has always bothered me, since I have no idea of the scale. Does it run from 12:01 AM to Midnight, or do they only use 11 PM to Midnight? Maybe they only ever move this thing between five minutes to midnight and one minute to midnight. I have no way of understanding the meaning of it, it's random. They might as well say "doomsday clock set to five sevenths.

I'm certainly no doomsday clock aficionado...

[perceptual.cyclotron]

... but my impression was always that the time on this particular doomsday clock was not meant to represent 'time to doom', nor even 'likelihood of doom', but rather something to the effect of 'margin of error for doom'. i.e., "given the present circumstance, how big of a mistake do we need to make to seriously fuck shit up?" This isn't prophesying, nor is it inconsistent that it hasn't much changed over the years. It is simply a reaffirmation that the potential for great harm remains, and very little effort would be required to tip that scale... According to these guys, 5 minutes worth – but how about we don't dwell too much on the metaphor?

Re:Two questions

[amorsen]

We do not know for sure that ocean life is doomed because of increasing CO2 levels. It is a plausible theory and past extinction events certainly provide reason to worry, but it is not a scientific certainty. Also note that the ocean is not yet close to turning acid, it is going from quite alkaline to somewhat less alkaline.

As to the geoengineering question, I would think it rather obvious why we are not doing it. It is not necessary yet, and playing with the climate is risky. It would be nicer to stop playing with the climate (stop net CO2 emissions) instead of adding even more uncertainty.

I bet that deliberate geoengineering with measurable effects will happen, perhaps even within 10 years. Once it becomes clear that CO2 emissions are not stopping quickly enough, it will be necessary and people will demand it.

Birth defects

[tepples]

Like the March of Dimes (which was founded to eradicate polio -- mission accomplished, and good luck getting a straight answer from them on where your money goes now...)

In the mid-1960s, the March of Dimes changed its mission to the prevention of birth defects. See Initiatives after polio.

Re: polio

[girlinatrainingbra]

It's just a symbol meant for PR and to draw attention. As for polio, it's mostly eradicated in the majority of the world thanks to the dead ( formalin inactivated) virus vaccine invented by Salk (founder of the Salk Institute here in La Jolla, next door to UCSD) and to the weakened live virus invented by Sabin (not as well remembered here in La Jolla). Polio still runs rampant in Nigeria and north central Africa and Pakistan (check out the colorful distribution heatmap on the wikipedia article about poliomyelitis), but the March of Dimes' activities are limited to the USA.

Re:Doomsday clock Climatechange climatechange yadd

[riverat1]

The difference between the depth of the Little Ice Age and the Mid-20th Century was about 1 degree C. If you add another 3 - 9 degrees on top of that in a couple of centuries where will you end up?

We have no choice but to accept the climate change that is already built into the system which will take 10's to 100's of years to fully manifest itself. But we can reduce the rate of change (eventually to zero) by actions we take now and make the ultimate end point less extreme. I have no doubt that homo sapiens will survive as a species. We're very adaptable living in climes as diverse as the Kalahari Desert and the high Arctic. But whether our civilization will be able to support 7+ billion humans is an open question.

It's been bullshit for longer than that

[Sycraft-fu]

The fact that it has always been "right next to doom" is all the evidence you need of that. There have been massive changes in the world, particularly regarding the likelihood of total nuclear war, and it budged hardly at all. It has been "the boy who cried wolf" for a long time now.

It may have started with good intentions about really showing people how close we were to nuclear war, but it has long since just been a random scream about doom with no basis in reality.

Whoever wrote this....

[DeeEff]

Doesn't know shit about economics. The world is a several billion year old depreciated asset. A simple replacement analysis will show you that the most economic thing to do is use everything for what it's worth and replace it sometime in the next decade.

Seriously, it's like you guys don't want to be part of the 1%.

Re:Economy tied to Global Warming.

[Dcnjoe60]

fossil fuel use has driven human progress and extended human life.

Actually, there is no data to support that hypothesis. Average life expectancy had been increasing before the abundant use of fossil fuel. Most scientists beleive it has more to do with adequate food and clean water sources versus fossil fuel itself. This is evidenced in areas where there are not adequate food sources and life expectancy is low. After food and water, the next major influence on life expectancy was pharmacology.

While fossil fuel may contribute to these things, it has not been the driving agent on extending human life or even progress if one takes into account the history of all humankind.

Re:Economy tied to Global Warming.

[Dcnjoe60]

Neglect your economy and everything else suffers. Basically humanity's progress forward slows and our long term we do more damage to the planet by being forced to rely on dirty technologies for longer. They are the ones who are short sighted.

That should be neglect your environment and everything else suffers. Just ask China. The economy is predicated on the environment. If the economy destroys the environment either locally or regionally (let alone globally), then the economy fails in those areas. You cannot have an economy without people to support it. If the evironment on the production side of the economy is not conducive to people thriving, then you cannot produce and your economy will falter.

So, if you neglect the environment, then eventually, progress slows, quality of life declines and all sorts of other negative social problems arise. All of this happens with the economy, too, but, the economy is not the base of the pyramid, it is about midway up.

Because they are idiots.

[DarthVain]

I've seen several perfectly rational intelligent friends of mine vote Conservative up here in Canada. When I tried to explain to them they they are in essance voting against their best interests, as they all work for Unions when clearly the Conservatives were anti-union, all I got was denial. They explained to me that there was nothing anti-union about them, it was all just made up by other political parties, etc...

In any case, people can be idiots. There are any number of reasons why people vote like idiots. Some don't know the issues. Others are just ignorent and don't care, or ambilivent. This is compounded by political parties that intentionally lie, mislead, change positions, say whatever it takes to get the vote, etc... Even someone paying attention can have a hard time, though if you pay attention long enough you see what is generally going on (BS). Many people identify with a particular idology, and even if it is fairy tales, will hold onto that like grim death regardless of reality (Ann Rynd, etc...), but you could easily go for the far left as well. This is my belief, and even if it is totally contrary to my personal interest I will vote that way. Also there is perception believe it or not. Up here in Canada for example, it is a pretty sad truth that you just have to drive around a bit to see how different economic groups vote generally. Downtown poor, NDP (left), Suberbia rich, Conservative (right), smattering all over is liberal (centre-left). So do you want to be assoicated with the poor and downtroden, or the successful rich? I have no doubt some simply vote a certain way simply for status. "Well I voted conservative!" (i.e. I am wealthy, or I am going to be soon, etc...). In many cases, I would also say it is pretty sad, but Old people make up a very big demographic. I would say a large percetage of them vote the same way every election, as they made their mind up about a "party" 30 years ago. Never mind what they stand for now, what the current issues are, or how the party may have changed significantly, it doesn't really matter.

Anyway I am sure there are other reasons why people make idiotic decisions regarding voting, but it isn't limited to the US, though I would say their system magnifies the situation. I think it is partially the fault of the political parties. However more fault is with the people not holding them accountable when they basically lie through their teeth for votes, and then get all disenchanted with the process as a result, decide to not pay much attention or take it lightly when really it should be treated as a big decision. Education and civics classes for youth might help eventually.