The IPCC predicts that without additional efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the global temperature (relative to the pre-industrial era) will increase by 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) or more by the year 2100. He agrees with the assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that climate change will likely impose “severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts on humans and ecosystems” over the coming century. But by 2007, the scientists had included possible catastrophic disruptions from climate change in their clock-setting deliberations.Īccording to Thomas Weber, an assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at Rochester, that decision was a sound one. (University of Rochester illustration / Michael Osadciw)Īt the clock’s inception 70 years ago, its creators-Manhattan Project scientists who felt they could not remain aloof to the consequences of their own work-were primarily concerned with the impending nuclear arms race between the US and the Soviet Union. (3) 2017: The second-closest setting to midnight-rise of nationalism, US President’s comments over nuclear weapons (including North Korea), the threat of a renewed arms race between the US and Russia, and the expressed disbelief in the scientific consensus over climate change by the Trump Administration. (2) 1991: The Clock’s furthest setting away from midnight-the US and Soviet Union sign the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), followed by the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26. (1) 1953: The Clock’s closest approach to midnight-the US tests its first hydrogen bomb in November 1952, before the Soviet Union follows suit in August. The Doomsday Clock has moved closer and further away from metaphorical midnight at various times in American history. Goemans worries that if North Korea makes a coercive threat against South Korea or Japan, “it might make sense for the US to try to forestall North Korea from getting that ability.” “Once North Korea combines nukes and their delivery systems, in particular intercontinental ballistic missiles, it would have the ability to retaliate anywhere and anytime,” says Hein Goemans, a University of Rochester associate professor of political science and an expert on why nations go to war. Unsurprisingly, given the urgency of the Bulletin’s current clock setting, the scientists’ agenda this year sounds like a laundry list of modern nightmares: from the state of nuclear weapons in the 21st century and existential cyberspace threats, to the safety of our biodefense and climate change. (The closest the clock ever came to doomsday was in 1953 after the United States and the Soviet Union each conducted tests of the hydrogen bomb, which is far more powerful than any atomic bomb, triggering a 2-minutes-to-midnight setting.) The current setting is the clock’s second closest to midnight since its introduction in 1947. The group of experts on nuclear policy, climate change, and other potential global hazards, is better known as the keeper of the “Doomsday Clock,” the near-universally recognized minimalist representation of the likelihood of a man-made worldwide catastrophe-with midnight marking the terminus, the point of imminent disaster.īack in January, the scientists moved the clock’s minute hand 30 seconds closer- to 2 ½ minutes to midnight-to signal their concern over increasing threats of nuclear weapons and climate change, as well as President Trump’s pledges to impede what the scientists saw as progress on both fronts. See the full statement from the Science and Security Board on the 2018 time of the Doomsday Clock.With tensions running high amidst the continued North Korean nuclear threat, members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists are getting ready for their annual meeting in Chicago on November 6. They can seize the opportunity to make a safer and saner world. They can demand action to reduce the existential threat of nuclear war and unchecked climate change. They can insist on facts, and discount nonsense. Leaders react when citizens insist they do so, and citizens around the world can use the power of the internet to improve the long-term prospects of their children and grandchildren. But there is a flip side to the abuse of social media. The world has seen the threat posed by the misuse of information technology and witnessed the vulnerability of democracies to disinformation. The opportunity to reduce the danger is equally clear. The warning the Science and Security Board now sends is clear, the danger obvious and imminent. It is two minutes to midnight, but the Doomsday Clock has ticked away from midnight in the past, and during the next year, the world can again move it further from apocalypse. The failure of world leaders to address the largest threats to humanity’s future is lamentable-but that failure can be reversed.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |