![]() (That figure seems to come from a Congressional Budget Office report from December 2013.) She said the United States has good rhetoric on nuclear nonproliferation, but at the same time is in the midst of a $335 billion overhaul of its nuclear program. Russia is upgrading its nuclear program, India plans to expand its nuclear submarine fleet, and Pakistan has reportedly started operating a third plutonium reactor, Squassoni said. Sharon Squassoni, another board member and director of the Proliferation Prevention Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said nuclear disarmament efforts have "ground to a halt" and many nations are expanding, not scaling back, their nuclear capabilities. But, he said a temperature increase of that magnitude was enough to bring the world out of the last ice age, and it will be enough to "radically transform" the Earth's surface in the future. Some people might not feel alarmed when they see those numbers they might normally experience that kind of temperature swing in the course of a single day, Kartha said. "We move the clock hand today to inspire action."įor instance, if nothing is done to reduce the amount of heat-trapping gasses, such as carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere, Earth could be 5 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit (3 to 8 degrees Celsius) warmer by the end of century, said Sivan Kartha, a senior scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute. "We are not saying it is too late to take action but the window for action is closing rapidly," Kennette Benedict, executive director of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said in a news conference this morning in Washington, D.C. Each year, the magazine's board analyzes threats to humanity's survival to decide where the Doomsday Clock's hands should be set.Įxperts on the board said they felt a sense of urgency this year because of the world's ongoing addiction to fossil fuels, procrastination with enacting laws to cut greenhouse gas emissions and slow efforts to get rid of nuclear weapons. Rather, the clock is a visual metaphor to warn the public about how close the world is to a potentially civilization-ending catastrophe. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists doesn't use the clock to make any real doomsday predictions. It's the first time the clock hands have moved in three years since 2012, the clock had been fixed at 5 minutes to symbolic doom, midnight. 22) to push the minute hand of their iconic "Doomsday Clock" to 11:57 p.m. Frustrated with a lack of international action to address climate change and shrink nuclear arsenals, they decided today (Jan. Raymond Pierrehumbert.That's the grim outlook from board members of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “There is no more time to waste,” said board member and University of Oxford Prof. The full statement lists a number of actions needed to make the world safer, and urges people to press their governments for action. However, the Bulletin has always emphasized that the clock is not intended to make people fearful, but rather to spur them to action. Though it was first created in response to nuclear weapons, the clock reckoning now includes climate change and “disruptive technologies,” such as bio- and cybersecurity. Today, the Doomsday Clock is located at the Bulletin offices in the Keller Center, home to the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. ![]() Two years later, in 1947, artist and Bulletin member Martyl Langsdorf created the iconic Doomsday Clock to signal how close humanity was to self-destruction. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was created 77 years ago by a group of concerned Manhattan Project scientists, many based at the University of Chicago, shortly after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Raymond Pierrehumbert, board member and University of Oxford Professor In their decision, the Bulletin cited disinformation, global security threats including ‘nuclear saber rattling,’ lack of actionable climate policies, disruptive technology and insufficient worldwide COVID-19 response. Positive developments in 2021 failed to counteract negative, long-term trends.” “We are stuck in a perilous moment-one that brings neither stability nor security. ![]() “The Doomsday Clock is holding steady, but steady is not good news,” said Sharon Squassoni, professor at George Washington University and co-chair of the Bulletin board that sets the clock. For the second year in a row, the organization determined that not enough progress has been made to move the hands back.Īccording to the Bulletin’s statement, the decision does not suggest that the situation has stabilized: “On the contrary, the Clock remains the closest it has ever been to civilization-ending apocalypse because the world remains stuck in an extremely dangerous moment.” In 2020, the Bulletin set the hands of the clock at 100 seconds to midnight, moving them forward from two minutes.
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