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The Doomsday Clock Is Reset: Closest To Midnight Since The 1950s (npr.org)
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has taken the unprecedented step of moving the Doomsday Clock ahead 30 seconds, taking the world to two-and-a-half-minute to midnight. The scientists said Thursday that several factors weighed heavily in their decision, particularly climate change denial by people in power -- they cited U.S. President Donald Trump -- and talk about more nuclear weapons. From a report on NPR: The setting is the closest the clock has come to midnight since 1953, when scientists moved it to two minutes from midnight after seeing both the U.S. and the Soviet Union test hydrogen bombs. It remained at that mark until 1960. "Make no mistake, this has been a difficult year," Rachel Bronson, executive director and publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said as the new setting was announced Thursday.
"Over the course of 2016, the global security landscape darkened as the international community failed to come effectively to grips with humanity's most pressing existential threats, nuclear weapons and climate change ... This already-threatening world situation was the backdrop for a rise in strident nationalism worldwide in 2016, including in a U.S. presidential campaign during which the eventual victor, Donald Trump, made disturbing comments about the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons and expressed disbelief in the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change."
It isn't meaningless metric. It is a great piece of elitist propaganda that indicates how they like things at that moment. Whenever someone is against the globalist agenda they advance the clock, and when Obama took over, they love it, and moved it back a bit. Even though Obama pissed off Russia and gave Iran a clear path to Nuclear weapons, none of that mattered.
It is what it is, propaganda, and as such it has meaning,
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
It's a published opinion of a group of scientists, it's their way of summing up to the world how they think we are doing in terms of not self-destructing our way of life.
The meaning in 1953 was: within 2 minutes we could go from the status-quo to a post-nuclear-holocaust world with little or no chance of de-escalation along the way. I think the meaning is similar today, but with some caveats and nuances thrown in about global warming increasing political tensions among nuclear powers, etc.
Just because they are scientists, that doesn't mean they are calling it science. If a scientist eats a cheeseburger, that's not science either.
Compare it to DEFCON, except it's civilian and non-actionable.
One study predicts that the Persian Gulf will be uninhabitable due to increase temperatures by 2100. The people living there will have to move to cooler areas, wear environmental suits or die off.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/27/world/persian-gulf-heat-climate-change/index.html
Silicon Valley will be under four feet of water by 2100, as it was built on a flood plain. No one yet is talking about building miles of levees to keep the water at bay.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/22/silicon-valley-sea-level-rise-google-facebook-flood-risk
"Basically it does nothing except signifies how unhappy the people who run it [ie, scientist] are with the current political climate [ie, blithe talk of using nuclear weapons]." Make more sense now?
Tumbled? What a load of ultra-right propagandist bulls**t (a.k.a. Fake News). The Mexican dollar got slightly stronger yesterday, and after the announcement, it weakened to almost precisely where it opened yesterday. It is still considerably stronger than it was a week ago, and there's no indication that it is continuing to get weaker as a result of cancelling the meeting with Trump.
In other words, there was a bit of pure statistical noise that resulted in a tiny change that happened to coincide in timing with the cancellation. The market didn't really react to that at all, and anybody who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves. Any trade war between the U.S. and Mexico will have little effect on the relative values of our currency, because we both rely on each other pretty heavily. What it will do is lower the dollar of both the Peso and the Dollar against all other world currencies.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
This exactly. And beyond that, who exactly is going to nuke who? Russia is happy with our new president. China may get pissed at him because the days of them screwing the US are over, but unless they want to write off $1,130,000,000,000 in US debt that they own, along with $500B/year of very lucrative trade with the US, they will suck it up. China is not stupid, they have 200 nukes, the US has 2,000.
The only real hazard right now is the 10 year clock that started when Iran signed the nuclear deal, which guarantees a terrorist fanatic regime nuclear capability in 10 years. Those crazy bastards want to watch the world burn and are happy to set the fire.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/us/politics/some-agencies-told-to-halt-communications-as-trump-administration-moves-in.html
Longtime employees at three of the agencies — including some career environmental regulators who conceded that they remained worried about what President Trump might do on policy matters — said such orders were not much different from those delivered by the Obama administration as it shifted policies from the departing White House of George W. Bush. They called reactions to the agency memos overblown. On Wednesday, Douglas Ericksen, a spokesman for the E.P.A., said that grants had been only briefly frozen for review, and that they would be restarted by Friday.
“I’ve lived through many transitions, and I don’t think this is a story,” said a senior E.P.A. career official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media on the matter. “I don’t think it’s fair to call it a gag order. This is standard practice. And the move with regard to the grants, when a new administration comes in, you run things by them before you update the website.”
first off, we gave them NOTHING, except what they were owed. That money was being held from the Iran Hostage Crisis and under reagan, we agreed PRIOR that it belonged to Iran and could NOT be used for hostage or other items. So, our sitting on it was useless.
Per international laws, namely, nuclear related, everything that they had done up to that point, WAS LEGAL. They were doing NOTHING ILLEGALLY. So, getting a 10 year delay was about as good as it was going to go.
As to the sanctions that Obama had gotten on Iran, well, we saw what happened with sanctions on Iraq. Most nations agreed, and then ignored them after some time. Hell, many American businesses with nice GOP contacts, were busy trading with Iraq.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's a fact that Donald Trump has said some scary stupid shit about nuclear weapons. It's not just speculation to reason that the President of the US might act in accordance with his stated positions.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists did not change the position of the clock just from speculation, or because they "don't like Trump." They did so based on their observations of world events, including those surrounding Donald Trump. TFA quotes the Board:
Over the course of 2016, the global security landscape darkened as the international community failed to come effectively to grips with humanity's most pressing existential threats, nuclear weapons and climate change ... This already-threatening world situation was the backdrop for a rise in strident nationalism worldwide in 2016, including in a U.S. presidential campaign during which the eventual victor, Donald Trump, made disturbing comments about the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons and expressed disbelief in the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
The position of the clock was not changed during the Cuban Missile Crisis. From the Bulletin's FAQ page:
Were the hands moved during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962? No. They were not moved during the 10-day crisis because too little was known at the time about the circumstances of the standoff or what the outcome would be. In fact, after the crisis, US and Soviet leaders installed a direct telephone line for communication, and within months signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty outlawing underground nuclear weapons testing—the first treaty addressing the nuclear weapons threat. On the basis of these steps, the Bulletin set the clock back from seven minutes to midnight to 12 minutes to midnight in 1963.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Really? We are now in more danger of all-out nuclear war than during Cuban Missile Crisis?
The position of the clock was not changed during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
He didn't say they did. He asked if we are really in more danger now than during the crisis when Russia was actually putting live nuclear missiles a very short distance off our shores.
From the Bulletin's timeline page, we were 7 minutes away in 1960 (before the crisis), and 12 minutes away in 1963 (after). Today, we are supposedly 2.5 minutes away. The clock is set to indicate that we are in much more danger of an all-out nuclear war today than when Russia was putting nukes on an island run by a dictator in Russia's pocket that was just a couple of minutes (90 miles) from the US, and the US was conducting a naval blockade of that island.
I remember the tension back then, the concern that it would turn into war. It was a major issue and a very very major danger that Cuba or Russia would continue and 1962 would end in hostilities.
In addition, the clock was not changed in April of 1961 when the failed invasion of the Bay of Pigs happened, which was a major impetus for the later missile crisis.
Having the clock one third of the distance today than during that time of active political hostility and military action is just pathetic, and is an irrational demonstration of a political hatred, not a scientific fact. The clock's position is not one of serious analysis of threat, it's based on "OMG DJT and we hates The Donald...". Just one factor that is being ignored in this "analysis" is that the proposed Secretary of State has worked with and knows the Russian leadership, so he understands them better than HRC ever could. But because he actually knows them he's a bad choice, as if we should select someone who has read books and briefing papers about the Russians but never spoken to them personally.
It is propaganda promoting fear and hatred, and if it were a conservative organization doing it towards the previous President there would be a public outcry of "racism".
The excuse from their FAQ page is nonsense. "We didn't know it was happening, so we didn't change the clock"? Head in the sand. And they ignored the Bay of Pigs which was more than a year prior to the missile crisis. They can't claim they didn't know that happened.
Yes, the sanctions were working..... because the was the purpose of the sanctions .
the purpose wasn't endless punishment, sanction for sanction sake, but to drive them to the negotiating table, and set back their program.
and it worked: they came to the table, and they made a deal, one that verifiably sets them back tremendously.
and we didn't GIVE them anything. it was THEIR MONEY to start with.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
On the other hand President Trump just lost all the senior state department officials.
See. Your opinions here are questionable because you base your beliefs on blind headlines from partisan sites. Then you spew it out as fact for the world to notice.
....
Here is the org chart.
The Undersecretary for Management and 3 others under him resigned.
At this point you can realize that what you just said and your thoughts from what you just believed are really, super wrong when faced with facts, or
You can pretend like it is no big deal and that all the rest of the information you get in that way is fine so there is no need to reevaluate any of your positions on things.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Do you honestly believe that's a risk? On the assumption you aren't trolling, let me explain.
The Earth has a geological-scale carbon cycle. All the carbon in the air and ocean is something like a hundred-thousandth of the carbon in the rock cycle. Venus's atmosphere is not simply carbon similar to what's in our air, oceans, fossil fuel reserves, etc, but the result of all that carbon in the crust being released. There aren't any surface features on Venus more than a few 100 million years old. It's thought that the entire crust melted, recently (geologically speaking), and that this may happen regularly, as Venus doesn't have plate tectonics to allow internal heat to escape via convection.
So, 1, Venus's atmosphere is a result of the crust melting, and, 2, the atmosphere is the least of your worries if the crust melts!
Historical CO2 concentrations on Earth have been 10x what they are today. It certainly wasn't an ice age, but life prospered. In general, plants like CO2, to the point where, in the last warm era, megaflora supported the grazing habits of 40-ton herbivores.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.