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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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!.

I know! I know!

[PPH]

Somebody forgot to wind the clock!

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.

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.

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.

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.