The Doomsday Clock Just Ticked Closer To Midnight (usatoday.com)

Scientists moved the hands of the symbolic "Doomsday Clock" closer to midnight on Thursday amid increasing worries over nuclear weapons and climate change. From a report: The clock is now two minutes to midnight. "Because of the extraordinary danger of the current moment, the Science and Security Board today moves the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock 30 seconds closer to catastrophe," said Rachel Bronson, president of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. "This is the closest the Clock has ever been to Doomsday, and as close as it was in 1953, at the height of the Cold War." Each year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a non-profit group that sets the clock, decides whether the events of the previous year pushed humanity closer or farther from destruction. The symbolic clock is now the closest it's been to midnight since 1953. It was also two minutes to midnight in 1953 when the hydrogen bomb was first tested.

Comments

DoomedByU

[sdinfoserv]

There was a time when America prided itself in it's technological prowess. A time when we believed science had the potential to solve our problems and propel us into the future. It's sad that we've gone the other way, clutching superstition and paranoia, as a great thinker once predicted: https://www.goodreads.com/quot...
This has historically been a "pro tech" site, which be definition and education should include individuals educated in science... but alas, it's just more politicized, polarized arse holes too willing to jump on the reichwinger "blame libs for all evils" bs....
Your prizes:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
https://worldtop20.org/2017-wo...
http://thehill.com/policy/inte...
And the cherry, the US, the Country FOUNDED on the principles of freedom, drops to 21....well done....
http://theweek.com/speedreads/...

Re:DoomedByU

[pastafazou]

reichwinger? You do know the Nazi party was a socialist left-wing party, don't you? Some of their demands that won them votes and power:
"Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in blood and treasure, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as treason to the people. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits. "
"We demand the nationalization of all trusts. "
"We demand profit-sharing in large industries. "
"We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions. "
"We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class, the immediate communalization of large stores which will be rented cheaply to small tradespeople, and the strongest consideration must be given to ensure that small traders shall deliver the supplies needed by the State, the provinces and municipalities. "
"We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land. "
"We demand that ruthless war be waged against those who work to the injury of the common welfare. Traitors, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished with death, regardless of creed or race. "
"In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people. The curricula of all educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life. The conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the schools from the very beginning. We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State. "
"The State has the duty to help raise the standard of national health by providing maternity welfare centers, by prohibiting juvenile labor, by increasing physical fitness through the introduction of compulsory games and gymnastics, and by the greatest possible encouragement of associations concerned with the physical education of the young. "
" We demand that there be a legal campaign against those who propagate deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press."

Of course, along with all these socialist left-wing proclamations were a bunch of anti-semitic demands as well, which the left-wingers in Germany had no problem supporting at the time.

Re:It's closer now than during Cuban Missile Crisi

[dj245]

I think that their problem is that they continually wanted to protest some action and kept pushing the clock closer, only now they've run out of room and look damned foolish because all of these little political statements have add up to what we see now. As you point out when you look at it in a historical context, it makes you roll your eyes quite a bit. They clearly need to walk the clock back quite a bit and do so periodically when whatever new thing they're worried about fails to come to pass or lead to new cause for concern.

It's even more foolish now. The Koreans are talking to each other, the US has postponed their military exercises in Korea until after the Olympics, and the proxy wars in the Middle East are not as hot as they were a year ago. Ukraine and Crimea have "calmed down" in the sense that nobody in the USA cares anymore.

If anything, they should be setting the clock backwards.

Re:Scientists my foot

[Bootsy Collins]

predominantly scientists who played prominent roles in the Manhattan Project during WW2.

WW2 ended in 1945 and everybody of prominence back then is long dead.

Not sure how that pertains to my answer to your question; but yes, the Manhattan Project (or its precursor) scientists involved in the creation of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists -- Rabinowitch, Szilard, Oppenheimer, Bethe, Urey, etc. -- are gone now, although a few survived until relatively recently (Hans Bethe, for instance, did not pass until 2005).

But even if they were alive, try explaining, why their role in the development of the weapon makes them better experts on matters of foreign policy, military, and psychology, than that of any engineer or a dentist?

Why, in other words, should we value their opinion on how imminent the use of their weapon is over that of an engineer or a dentist?

Do you think, bladesmiths could better predict the imminence of duels, than other contemporaries?

I don't know why you're asking me these questions, since I merely answered the one you posed (about what the basis for the name was), and made no assertions of the sort that your questions seem to imply or defenses of anything the Bulletin has ever published.

The so-called "Doomsday Clock" is undoubtedly the most notorious thing about the Bulletin; but it's a tiny fraction of what they publish and what they argue. In general, and from my experience, the papers/articles published therein which argue for any particular viewpoint on an issue tend to be supported with attempts at logical reasoning built upon a set of claimed evidence. That absolutely does not make any of them right, any more than the many papers that fill scientific journals every week are all correct; and it's completely reasonable to argue that one sees flaws in their reasoning or in the set of facts/axioms/whatever on which their reasoning is based; and I'd be very surprised if any of the principals involved in the publication now, or those who write for it, would argue to the contrary.