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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.
This is a meaningless metric. There is no such thing as doomsday. The World is not a clock. You are OK. Breathe out.
Make some arbitrary metric from an infinite series of divisible time units, politicize it, and call it "science".
And no, "advancing" the "clock" is hardly an unprecedented event.
And people call eschatology a dubious methodology.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
"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."
Climate change changes resource availability. Particularly water. If areas that once had water no longer have water that will put stress on their economy potentially making them less politically stable.
If natural disasters increase linked to climate change, certain seas may no longer be feasible to collect oil from. Perhaps flooding from rising sea levels will cause areas to be evacuated causing widespread homelessness and unrest.
Climate change has upset the status quo many times over history. Encouraging the Vikings to leave Scandinavia and invade Europe. The mass migrations of populations throughout Europe, the so called "barbarian invasion" of Rome. Dynasties have been overturned in China with links to climate change, or natural disasters.
Climate change whether man made or natural always upsets the status quo... but now we have nuclear weapons.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The US military recognizes that global warming puts stress on people and governments. Human life can prosper with a changed climate, but it can't always continue in-place. People may have to move, because their current habitation may no longer be habitable. If that movement requires crossing national borders, it becomes an international incident.
That's why global warming advances the Doomsday Clock - its side-effects on national sovereignty and politics.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I have no respect for these guys; they simply use their scientific credentials to promote their own political prejudices. These people are so ignorant, they still believe in a Malthusian catastrophe.
I think The Onion puts it pretty well:
Doomsday Clock Pushed To One Minute To Midnight After Arby’s Threatens Launch Of 3-Cheese Jalapeño Beef ’N Bacon Melt
http://www.theonion.com/articl...
This was embarrassing.
The Mexican president canceling a meeting in a huff? Not so much.
This is a *Doomsday* clock, yes? As in, something that measures how close we potentially are to Doomsday - that is, an event that leads to the total extinction of the human race.
Can anyone - anyone! - say with a straight face that we are closer to that scenario right now than we were, say, at the height of the Cold War? That was a period when two nuclear superpowers were genuinely considering launching thousands of nuclear warheads at each other; where one bad day might literally end the species.
I don't disagree with the assessment that the world has become less stable recently. I think the prospect of some rogue dictator or terrorist group setting off a nuclear bomb is high and increasing. However, the retaliatory aspect is missing: If Russia had nuked New York, America would have levelled Russia in response. One nuke would have lead to thousands. But if, say, ISIS nukes New York... what target is there to hit back at? Any response would almost certainly be in the form of conventional weapons. There would be chaos and war, sure, but not outright extinction.
The truth is, we are waaaaay further away from Doomsday than we were in the '60s.
-- Note to Mods: There is a good reason there's no "-1 Disagree" option. --
God, it sickens me that I have to defend trump, but there is so much BS on this. :
It amazes me that so few on the far left pay attention to what is really happening.
1) Putin is invading numerous areas for controlling them. Putin shows that he has no issues with taking what is not his. That is OK.
Putin threatens the west with nuclear war, and that is OK.
Trump (and unknown) gets into office and then we have nuclear war issues that are as bad as 1953.
2) China is not only emitting 3-5x the amount of CO2 that America does, but they continue to grow at a frightening rate (check OCO2, not chinese gov numbers).
Trump gets in and says that he will help Coal. Yet, wind already costs less to run than coal does or can. And solar continues downward. IOW, coal really can not be expanded.
Then Trump is talking about letting America export oil/nat gas. That will increase America's nat gas on the market, BUT, all it will do is lower the prices elsewhere. IOW, it will not increase the burning of it, or any more CO2.
So, exactly why is this moved now, and why is this blamed on Trump?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So, this is basically like when they awarded a Nobel prize first to Al Gore and then to Obama (in his first year in office) just to make sure to remind everybody how much they hated George Bush (and Republicans in general)?
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
And you don't think fucking over the next few generations by unrestrained CO2 emissions, thus creating vast costs for them to pay for, isn't passing on a debt?
How about this. We use market forces to fix the problem, slap a price on carbon, and then we start solving the problem now. Screw the carbon credits and all that nonsense. Charge $200 a ton for emissions across the board.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
when daylight savings time ends.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
"Hillary was openly hostile with Russia, and while I doubt it would have reached the point of increased risk of nuclear war, Russia still has real nukes, so you never know. Trump on the other hand is, if anything, too friendly with Russia."
Consider very recent history. George W. Bush ran his whole campaign in 2000 on a "compassionate conservative" platform, including that we needed to put America first, not being involved in foreign adventures, stop telling other countries what to do, etc. But he was a dimwitted cowboy wannabe who had no capacity for a real commitment or follow-through to that. He surrounded himself with belligerent neocons like Cheney and Rumsfeld and gave them incredible power. He spent the summer of 2001 saber-rattling at China which turned out not to be the actual brewing threat. Then we did suffer an actual attack on 9/11 and bam, within 24 hours he's freaked out and flipped to the exact opposite; global alliances, regime change, and a philosophy of first-strike invasions if needed around the globe. Before his term was done he'd started two separate intercontinental wars -- one having entirely nothing to do with the attack on us -- which have proved to be the longest in American history, and still not done after almost two decades now.
That is the proven historical result of a fundamentally dumb, belligerent, yahoo, volatile commander-in-chief. It's easy to predict; this is the standard reaction of a chaotic, short-attention-span bully. Sometime in a quiet space ask yourself this: Is Trump truly more or less volatile than George W. Bush?
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
No, it's been moved forward because the man who is now president of the United States of America, a very heavily armed nuclear power, that has stated it is "at war" with terrorism, where terrorism is sourced from a fairly distinct group of countries, has said:
And in response to this remark by interviewer Matthews...
Trump said:
That's a "holy shit, the man is outright insane" remark. Period. That's not why we make them. We make them because of MAD; which is to say as a deterrent against others using them. Russa, China, even stupid little North Korea shoots them off, then we guarantee we will shoot ours off in response. IOW, whoever uses them gets to meet their own particular sky-daddy. Or hellspawn, as the case may be.
In response to interviewer Bolling, who said, in the context of using nuclear weapons:
Trump responded:
In both cases, after he said these things, he walked them back. However, he said them, and given the usual word salad he spews, they have to serve as a window into his attitudes. You can only pick out individual remarks in Trump's meanderings; he presents incoherent verbal streams when taken more than a sentence at a time (which is why Twitter kind of works for him... he has to limit his remarks to 140 characters. It provides the structure he is incapable of providing for himself.)
Interviewer Dickerson:
Trump responds:
Let's just be perfectly clear about this: No sane person wants the USA to be "unpredictable" about its policy for use of nuclear weapons. This is a window into the fact that Trump is a fucking idiot. Not just any fucking idiot, but THE fucking idiot with his finger on the button. He's insane.
This is the root of the problem. Trump's obviously not like previous presidents. So people are paying very, very close attention to what he says. And there are times when what he says is very, very worrisome. As above.
So yes, there's a reason people are thinking we're closer to the use of nuclear weapons, and that reason isn't a dislike of Trump; it's just actually listening to what the man has said on the subject. A sane person would not make the remarks Trump has made. Simply would not. He is visibly, obviously, and frighteningly batshit. And he's the guy who can shoot them off. If it's North Korea he decides to make glow, or some little Arab country, we might not see an escalation; then again, we might. Perhaps if we fire, Israel will too; perhaps Russia will feel it needs to step in. Pakistan. India. Etc.
It's also worth noting that Trump has spent the last two years making severe economic threats in China's direction. China is another nuclear power, and they are not like us in their thinking. It is not wise to severely piss off people you do not understand -- and it is patently obvious that Trump does not understand China at all. I mean, quite aside from the demonstrated fact that he doesn't understand why we have nuc
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.