Slashdot Mirror
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.
I thought it was almost lunchtime.
Have gnu, will travel.
Attention-seeking peaceniks is more like it.
They are a graphic for about a half dozen logic fallacies.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I think this idea of the Doomsday clock being soooo close to midnight reveals just how useless a measurement of crisis it actually is. They're suggesting that a global nuclear holocaust has never been more likely? More likely than during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Than when the president of China urged President Nixon to join him in nuking Russia? Closer than when Pakistan and India took turns testing nukes underground in the early 2000's? All of those years of the cold war where both the US and USSR had nuclear-armed bombers flying all around?
The only location where a nuclear event is likely to take place would be in North Korea: If any event took place, it would have to be a limited attack by the North Korea, prompting a US response. But that isn't to suggest an entire global nuclear winter would necessarily follow.
This is nothing but attention-seeking for the organization behind the clock and in no way measures the actual threat of a nuclear doomsday.
>> 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
Hmmm...2 away minutes = global nuclear destruction in 1953 but 2 away minutes = incremental climate changes and a possible limited exchange (over North Korea, etc.) in 2018. Why are the goalposts moving?
To hell with this 2 minutes and 2 seconds to midnight. Lets just roll the damn thing right on up to midnight and see what happens! Common Hippies, make my day! Lets set that fucker right on midnight!.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
There was a Democrat in the White House then. It tracks closer to midnight when a Republican is there and further when a Democrat is. It should be named the Liberal Angst Clock.
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.
Pretty sure they also use it for climate change and other crazy shit instead of just nuclear war.
It's kind of like when your teacher/parent demanded you do something by the time they counted down from 10. But when you still hadn't done it by the time they got to 1, they started with ever smaller fractions.
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.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
And the cherry, the US, the Country FOUNDED on the principles of freedom, drops to 21....well done....
http://theweek.com/speedreads/... [theweek.com]
I have a hard time taking any analysis that ranks Germany, Canada, and the UK above the US. Hate speech laws. Arrests for tweets and facebook posts. Compelled speech... Not exactly bastions of personal freedom and civil rights. Any report that thinks countries that employ those laws are free are delusional and fundamentally flawed in their analysis.
I honestly would not trade my citizenship of the US for with any other nation on Earth. The US has it's problems no doubt but the protections for individual liberty are still foundational. I can say what I want and I can defend my right to say it myself without the government.