Slashdot Mirror
Doomsday Clock Could Move
Lasrick writes The ominous minute hand of the 'Doomsday Clock' has been fixed at 5 minutes to midnight for the past three years. But it could move tomorrow. The clock is a visual metaphor that was created nearly 70 years ago by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, whose Board of Governors boasts 18 Nobel laureates. Each year, the Bulletin's Science and Security Board assesses threats to humanity — with special attention to nuclear warheads and climate change — to decide whether the Doomsday Clock needs an adjustment. The event will be streamed live from the Bulletin's website at 11 am EST.
Who really wants to end the world in Chicago?
If you tune into the stream, and the background music turns out to be Barry McGuire's Eve of Destruction... head straight to your fallout shelters forthwith.
#DeleteChrome
Scientists are finally of a consensus that yes, indeed, it is time to rock.
One could understand and expect that intellectually stimulating discussions among 18 Noble prize laureates will yield to unspecified doomsday due to the climate change. Or, in reality, this became a free networking event with good food and interesting contacts, all under the guise of saving the humanity.
Meanwhile, this year alone in violent death there were approx 2 thousands of casualties in Nigeria, approx 1 thousand of casualties in Ukraine and Iraq. There are real wars that are being waged at this time.
In United States from cancer and cardiovascular diseases almost 4 thousands of Americans are dying every day. Not that the death is avoidable, but proper nutrition, exercise and lifestyle can prolong life by a decade for many.
So what exactly is the purpose of ever-frozen clock showing the risk of super-fast destruction combined with super-slow climate change risk for some reason commingled and culminating to decision to keep 5 minutes to the noon.. So why exactly 18 Nobel prize laureates are gathering to decide if it is 6 minutes or 4 minutes to the end of the world.
How about using talents and energies on real problems, identified using old fashioned scientific method called prioritization, in IT world knowing as function "sort".
For all the use and meaning the clock has. The clock doesn't reflect the world state as much as it does their directors political aims of the moment.
For all the hype... even if islam rules the world it will just be change in the world, not the end of it. They are not the first ideology of their kind, and won't be the last to rule a large chunk of the planet.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
http://youtu.be/Y6ljFaKRTrI
They could at least reduce the hyperbole. It would be pretty hard to doom the Earth without going through several decades that just suck, first.
Gently reply
No idea who the researchers are, and I don't have an agenda. I linked to Wikipedia!
I have read about some of these studies before, on the web, and in fairly lay publications like New Scientist. I have no idea if they are wrong, true, or just some vast liberal conspiracy by left-leaning scientists to irritate their conservative colleagues!
I was only prompted to reply because the original poster saw it as political "fear" propoganda from "the left", and I saw it quite differently. Which made me think of these studies... make of them what you will!
The clock has actually moved back and forth over the years. Why do *you* think a minute will come off this year?
What happens if the doomsday clock sees its shadow again?
That clock is worse than the one in Windows that tells you how long it will take to install something.
Well - it's already 22 minutes past midnight.
We passed midnight in 1945.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Don't confuse the hipster doom lovers who follow every movement of the clock with those who set the clock. It's maximum 'optimistic' setting came after the fall of Communism, and lasted through the Nineties to 9/11.
A serious question here, has the clock EVER been moved backwards? I mean, every time I hear about it, it's some PR stunt moving it forwards. But I've never seen a press conference where they joyously moved it back. It seems like at the end of the Cold War, it should have been moved WAY back. But I don't recall them ever doing it. And if this "clock" only moves in one direction and can never acknowledge progress, then it's a complete joke. It's like that annoying friend who can only think of things to bitch and moan about, even when he wins the lottery.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I live in a DMT-1 time zone, so it's only just before 11 pm here.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Yes, it has. I believe it was after the Berlin Wall came down and the USSR broke up.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Well, AC thinks they will scrap another minute because they are fear-mongering lefty scientists. If they add time, then he is wrong. But I would have to agree that if they take a minute out, then they are just fear mongering, or trying to make a political statement about the environment. In truth, nuclear devastation is a real threat to life as we know it and could happen in a matter of minutes. climate change is an affect to the climate which could take decades to have any noticeable affect, although we measure it daily. Not that the climate isn't important, but it doesn't justify changing the nuclear doomsday clock. Yes, it is the nuclear doomsday clock, and has been since 1947. The word "Climate: did not show up in the reasons behind adjusting the time until 2007, despite the fact that man had been affecting the climate since before the idea of the clock arose.
If they need to make a Climate change clock and set it to 100 years until Climate Change midnight, that is fine, but there is no reason to hijack another clock that already has a stated purpose.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
It goes up and down all the time.
So if a minute comes off, it's just fear mongering. And if one or two goes on? We pat ourselves on the back and ignore it? Seems like we get to ignore it in both cases!
Good point about climate change though. I also noticed they had moved beyond just the nuclear threat. I suppose it is called the Domesday clock, not the "Nuclear Threat Clock", but I kind of agree it should stick with what it was established for.
(btw: I think climate change is a real threat, but there are lots of existential threats other than nuclear weapons and climate change.)
Interesting mix of themes in that song, thanks...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Every time those scientists haul out the clock metaphor I lose a ton of respect for them.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C...
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
It's #612.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
IronMaiden link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
So it's 11:04 EST now, and no live feed. I'm taking this to mean the clock was advanced past midnight, and we're all actually dead now.
I'm guessing you didn't read the article... "The clock's hands retreated to 11:43 p.m., 17 minutes to midnight, in December 1991, after the world's nuclear superpowers signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty."
The doomsday clock was about nuclear war originally. When they added climate change (now that global thermonuclear war seems extremely unlikely) it was a desperate attempt to keep the clock somehow relevant. It's not. At least not unless Putin gets even crazier.
Five minutes before Midnight? I always thought it was nearly lunchtime!
Perhaps if these scientists had adopted a digital clock face with military time it wouldn't have been so confusing.
Have gnu, will travel.
Yeah, but a single nuclear blast or two just sucks. It would take a LOT of nukes to destroy the world, and there are far fewer missiles now than when the Doomsday clock started. It seems extremely unlikely the Mideast would get into Mutually Assured Destruction.
Gently reply
It could also stay still and "move" can mean "move backwards", so the title is sensationalist at best.
Er Galvão Abbott - IT Consultant and Developer
It's more that the clock reflects the current global political climate.
Ie when Pakistan and India, both nuclear powers, are duking it out, the clock goes closer to midnight.
I strongly suspect that the announcement is due to strong rhetoric from russian leadership - I believe recently either Putin or one of his lackeys declared that they could "raze" the US. There's also been increasingly aggressive "patrols" by Russian bombers along the US and Europe, the recent sub incident in Sweden, and of course the invasion of Ukraine.
Please help metamoderate.
I hadn't realized it had gotten as high as 17. The number is arbitrary, of course, at this point it's tricky to remember that decade between the START treaty and 9/11 where we genuinely didn't expect the world to come crashing down on our heads.