World Celebrates 5 Minutes to Midnight

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Numerous countries over the world have, it seems, burst into joyous celebration over the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist's decision to move the Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight.

China has opened celebrations by firing a missile at a satellite, bringing the militarisation of space one step closer and possibly leading to a new arms race in space.

Iran, meanwhile, is partying hard by announcing that they are willing to have a standoff with the US, as well as setting up the material for the next movement of the clock, getting 3000 centrifuges ready for installation.

It is a grand day indeed when nations can band together in enmity to celebrate the world's path to midnight. Looking forward to seeing other nations getting into the spirit of things and contributing the the delightfully gloomy atmosphere that the world enjoys today.

 

Those crackpots have been bitching about their "midnight" for sixty years.

EDIT

Those scientists are fools. In their latest message they didn't realize that they gave everyone the answer. If the U.S. would nuke North Korea and Iran it would stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. As a bonus the mushroom clouds would throw up enough dirt and sand into the atmosphere that global warming would slow down and possibly even give us some global cooling. That would probably move their clock way back.

I need to join a think tank.

 

We could also nuke away US. That way we'd have the biggest owner of nukes and the greatest contributor to global warming dealt with swiftly and the clock would be set back even more!

Seriously though I think this is utter nonsense and fearmongering. These so called "scientists" have no way to measure their claims since they lack all sorts of knowledge required to make any such conclusions and they'd also have to see the future which they can't unless they have constracted a wizard specialized in divination to their service.

It's good to talk about the risks of nuclear weapons and global warming but this kind of doomsday prophecies are not the way to contribute to the discussion.

 

The latter sounds more reasonable if somewhere must be nuked . But absolutely nowhere should be nuked. Maybe scientists are overestimating the situation but IMO, they are more or less right.

 

heh considering that odd weather was one of the reasons to move the clock so close to midnight i find that does scientist ar a bit over the top.

to qoute a danish comedian, if we look at how well so many of us are leving, its hardly more then 15:30.

 

Was just going to ignore this for tonight and go to bed - but then decided that the resposes here annoyed me enough to reply now anyway

I really don't see any problem with how the Doomsday Clock is used. It's a point of discussion, and underline or an exclaimation mark to the problem of the human race managing to kill itself.

You don't need a frigging crystal ball to see that the world doesn't look too good, and that there is in fact a pretty good chance of humanity wiping itself out. Anyone can see that with all the nations waving their nuclear dicks around that there is the possibility of this happening. With more nations than a few years ago doing this - they seemed pretty justified in their conclusions that a nuclear apocalypse is more likely than it was then - not to mention that the whole global warming thing is starting to have noticable effects.

Furthermore - it isn't bull**** doomsday speak in the same way as - say - religious bull**** doomsday speak because it's self correcting for the way in which the world changes. It's not telling us that the world is going to end either, just that the likelihood of such a thing happening is - in their opinion - more or less likely to happen than when they last updated the thing.

Accusing them of fearmongering when they've moved it backwards in the past seems a bit strange. If spreading fear was their aim then they could do it better by not moving the thing at all and just continually screaming 'this changes nothing!!!' whenever a positive turn is taken like any other good doomsday preacher. They don't however - they treat it at least with a nod towards science (though the intent is, of course, political. Getting further from midnight is a show of support for the governments - quite the opposite of spreading fear).

So consider this - why are we talking about the possibility of the end of humanity through nuclear war here? Because of the Doomsday Clock. That's the purpose it serves - to get people talking about the issue. Seeing the lack of threads here of late about this particular problem, I'd like to contest your claim that it doesn't contribute to the discussion - before this there was no discussion on the BoM about it.

Regardless, this topic isn't meant to be just about the doomsday clock. It's about how screwed looking the world is in general. I'd be interested in seeing some actual discussion of other issues (such as, say, China's military buildup + possible space arms race) in addition to bitching about handy rhetorical devices.

 

In another 60 years they will still be moaning about it. If I'm wrong and we are all dead I will accept your "I told you so".

I'm also an optimist. I don't think the world is any more screwed up than it ever has been.

You may be right, but in the never ending fight between man and butterflies it has always been easier for man to kill the butterfly.

 

Aik, if you want to discuss issues then there are far more constructive methods of doing sow than slinging prophecies about the end of the world around.

Anyway I'd have to agree with Snook, there have allways been people with pessimistic views who think all civilization will go under in a matter of decades or or centuries. It's a good idea to address the dangers but living with the thought of everything only getting worse is getting you nowhere.

 

the doomsday clock has been stock between 10-2minutes to midnight for the last 50 years or so. for all i can see it will stay there for the next 50 years. i mean the furthest it has been away from midnight is some 17minutes. so what we can conclude out from this is that the human race is allways near wiping out itself or rather has been it since the invension of the Atomic bomb, sorry but i fail to see where the news in that.

and as warmongering and stupid both irans goverment and Kim jong iils are, i honestly doubt any of them would use nukes unless invaded. to this day, the only country who has used atomic bombs against civil targets is the united states.

global warming has been an issue for years, so freaking out over it now is a bit over the top too.

 

I have only one thing to say: the classic blind arrogance. Throughout the history, it always resulted with kicked asses. And it won't change, no exceptions.

 

The only reason that this method of discussing the issue isn't being effective is because you refuse to help make it so. You've hijacked the topic with a basically irrelevant side issue.

And ffs, I didn't write my previous post for no reason, the entire point of which was to point out how this was not 'slinging prophecies about the end of the world around'.

I fail to see how it isn't news when nations start taking actions which seem to lead to the extinction of the human race. That we're taking more of them than we were a few years ago is certainly news.

Sure - maybe we've always been close - but we do seem to be getting closer than we were a few years ago. Generally not a good sign...

So what exactly makes you think that no one is going to invade them? I can certainly see Iran as a good candidate for invasion, especially seeing the links I put in the original post. It's also quite plausible that the North Korea situation will deteriorate further which could lead to war (though the last news I heard about that was positive).

It's an issue that a lot of people have been ignoring for years also. However, recently we've been able to see the effects of global warming, so naturally it's going to start factoring into things like this. See this link, for instance: http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2099971.ece