Nuclear, climate perils push Doomsday Clock ahead


By Will Dunham Wed Jan 17, 2:22 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The scientists who mind the Doomsday Clock moved it two minutes closer to midnight on Wednesday -- symbolizing the annihilation of civilization and adding the perils of global warming for the first time.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which created the Doomsday Clock in 1947 to warn the world of the dangers of nuclear weapons, advanced the clock to five minutes until midnight. It was the first adjustment of the clock since 2002."We stand at the brink of a second nuclear age," the bulletin's board of directors said in a statement.
North Korea's first nuclear test, Iran's nuclear ambitions, U.S. flirtation with "bunker buster" nuclear bombs, the continued presence of 26,000 American and Russian nuclear weapons and inadequate security for nuclear materials.
But the scientists also said destruction of human habitats wreaked by climate change brought on by human activities is a growing danger.
"Global warming poses a dire threat to human civilization that is second only to nuclear weapons," they said.
The announcement was made in news conferences in London and Washington.
"We foresee great peril if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change," theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking of the University of Cambridge, a member of the bulletin's board of sponsors, told reporters in London.
'VILLAGE IDIOTS'
Cambridge astrophysicist Martin Rees added that while the Cold War confrontation between two nuclear-armed superpowers is over, the world is closer than ever to having nuclear bombs used in a localized war or by terrorists in a city center.
"A global village will have its village idiots," Rees said.
Kennette Benedict, the bulletin's executive director, dismissed the notion that by touting the threat posed by global warming, the scientists had diluted their message about the nuclear peril.
Many scientists predict dire consequences from global warming, including higher sea levels that over time could swamp coastal regions, more severe storms and worse wildfires. Human activities like burning of fossil fuels contribute to warming, they contend.
Physicist Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland said if humankind fails to change course on global warming, "there's a great possibility that the Earth in the year 2100 will only dimly resemble our planet today -- and as it has existed over the past 500,000 years."
The bulletin's scientists moved the clock two minutes forward in 2002, to seven minutes until midnight, following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
The bulletin was founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had worked on developing the first nuclear bomb, and it is now overseen by some of the world's most prominent scientists.
The bulletin created the clock in 1947, two years after the United States ushered in the nuclear age by dropping atomic bombs on two Japanese cities at the end of World War Two, to symbolize the urgent nuclear dangers confronting the world.
It now stands at the closest to midnight since 1984, when it was three minutes to midnight amid a deepening Cold War.
It has been adjusted 18 times in 60 years. It was set as close as two minutes to midnight in 1953 after the United States and Soviet Union tested hydrogen bombs, and as far as 17 minutes to midnight in 1991 at the Cold War's end.

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So, if it was two minutes to doomsday in 1953 and it's five minutes to doomsday now, we have actually pushed "doomsday" back three minutes in the last half century?

Maybe we can push it back even further in the next 50 years!

I can't see any meaning to this "clock" at all.

it's kind of hard to take it seriously when they move it back and forth all the time.

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1984 300SD Turbo Diesel 150,000 miles

OBK member #23

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They kind of ruin their case when they jump on the "global warming is caused by humans" wagon. Hard to take them completely seriously, you know?
.

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-- Paul W. (The Benzadmiral)
('03 Buick Park Avenue, charcoal/cream)
Formerly:
'97 C230, smoke silver/parchment; '86 420SEL, anthracite/light grey; '84 280CE (W123), dark blue/palomino

Yeah nothing has really changed. They should wait to move it until after Iran gets one.

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1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

Perhaps the village idiots are in charge of the clock?

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2009 VW TDI Jetta Sportwagon 172k miles (rear-ended harder than Elton John on 8/4/13. Total loss)

1991 Volvo 240 142k miles (T-boned by a stop sign runner. Total loss)

LOL

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1984 300SD Turbo Diesel 150,000 miles

OBK member #23

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(='.'=) This is Bunny. Copy and paste bunny into your
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I quit watching the evening news a while ago. Don't think I'll pay any attention to the doomsday clock. If anybody here needs something else to worry about, I can hook you right up. No need to go to the doomsday clock for that!

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" We have nothing to fear but the main stream media itself . . . ."- Adapted from Franklin D Roosevelt for the 21st century

OBK #55

1998 Lincoln Continental - Sold
Max 1984 300TD 285,000 miles - Sold
The Dee8gonator 1987 560SEC 196,000 miles - Sold
Orgasmatron - 2006 CLS500 90,000 miles
2002 C320 Wagon 122,000 miles
2016 AMG GTS 12,000 miles

Speaking of "Doomsday" wasn't there a "Doomsday Machine" in an old movie parody? Wasn't it in Dr. Strangelove? Didn't the Russians have one?
(Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind I recall a Doomsday Machine in an old movie. Please, somebody agree with me. Please! )

As a result, I have had a hard time ever since then taking anything with the moniker "Doomsday" seriously!

I think that clock is slow.

Yep - Right movie. 1964: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Perhaps you'll recall:
For more than a year, ominous rumors had been privately circulating among high-level Western leaders that the Soviet Union had been at work on what was darkly hinted to be the ultimate weapon: a doomsday device. Intelligence sources traced the site of the top secret Russian project to the perpetually fog-shrouded wasteland below the Arctic peaks of the Zhokhov Islands. What they were building or why it should be located in such a remote and desolate place no one could say.

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1980 300D - Veggie Burner !

Best Peter Sellers movie ever.

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-justin

1987 300TD, 1987 300TD
2008 R32, 2000 Passat Wagon