Doomsday Clock at the shortest distance to midnight ever

[eplanit]

It's time to heed the calls to finally retire the theater of the clock. Its symbolic meaning has been stretched too far:

1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/time-to-stop-the-doomsday-clock...

2. https://thefederalist.com/2016/01/27/retire-the-doomsday-clo...

3. https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2018/01/26/why_its...

[anakaine]

When the clock is almost always midnight, surely we are either on the cusp, or the time is set incorrectly. Although there are many things wrong I'd argue that we are nowhere near as bad off as during the peak of the cold war, for example.

[mc32]

Side note, I think they used the wrong gauge for the metaphor. An hourglass gives a better sense of time “running out” a fuel gauge also does a better job than cyclical pointers (that have no natural end)

[makerofspoons]

While originally the Clock represented the threat of the power struggle between superpowers, it's important to note that factors such as climate change and bioterrorism are now factored into setting the Clock. The Clock's current position was explained as follows:

'On 23 January 2020, the Clock was moved further, to 100 seconds (1 minute 40 seconds) before midnight, meaning that the Clock's status today is the closest to midnight since the Clock's start in 1947. The Bulletin' executive chairman, Jerry Brown, said "the dangerous rivalry and hostility among the superpowers increases the likelihood of nuclear blunder... Climate change just compounds the crisis".'

I think many can appreciate that the lack of appreciable action on climate change is at least as worrisome as the the threat of a nuclear exchange and it is looking increasingly likely we will miss our 1.5-2 degree targets.

[teruakohatu]

Since 1991, so almost three decades, it has only been moved back once, and then only by 1 second.

[oh_sigh]

The Doomsday Clock is a PR piece for a group of politicized scientists.

The threat of a nuclear catastrophe is higher now than it was during the Cuban missile crisis? That doesn't ring true.

[pupppet]

This shouldn't be downvoted. There is absolutely no way we're in greater danger at this very moment then we were during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

[dhosek]

It's not just nuclear catastrophe that's being measured.

>"Midnight" has a deeper meaning to it besides the constant threat of war. There are various things taken into consideration when the scientists from The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists decide what Midnight and "global catastrophe" really mean in a particular year. They might include "politics, energy, weapons, diplomacy, and climate science"

[geofft]

Wikipedia says that the group setting the clock didn't meet during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It seems they publish the clock annually.

It seems entirely reasonable that we're in more danger now than at sampled points before/after the Crisis - after all, it proved that the US and the USSR could manage to not blow each other up. There are more nuclear-capable powers today headed by less sensible men.

Also: "Because, you see, the clock is not a gauge to register the ups and downs of the international power struggle; it is intended to reflect basic changes in the level of continuous danger in which mankind lives in the nuclear age, and will continue living, until society adjusts its basic attitudes and institutions to the challenges of science."

[bArray]

How seriously should this be taken? It doesn't feel as if we're much closer than we have been?

[tomschlick]

About as serious as the stories Scientology sells.

[kaonashi]

Virus pandemics affecting global trade, climate change is starting to build steam and become irreversible, right-wing ethnocentric parties are taking over in much of the developed world.

How can you not take it seriously?

[S_A_P]

Can we reference self fulfilling prophecy here? Subject-Expectancy Effect? I am all for taking stock of our world and trying to fix problems. But IMHO, seeing things like this is apt to make people say "FK IT, BURN IT DOWN!!!"

[tedunangst]

It's interesting that the precision of the clock increases as we approach midnight.

[simonsarris]

Zeno's Doomsday Clock.

[powerbroker]

The good news is that we will be about 23 hours away from midnight in a few days.

[ErikAugust]

A clock probably isn't a very accurate device for measuring how close we are to Doomsday.