Tag: Doomsday Clock

Doomsday clock at 100 seconds to midnight; world ‘stuck in an extremely dangerous moment’

Doyle Rice – January 20, 2022

It’s still only 100 seconds to midnight.

Ongoing nuclear risks, the threat of climate change, disruptive technologies and the seemingly endless coronavirus pandemic have brought us as close to doomsday as we’ve ever been, according to the annual Doomsday Clock announcement Thursday in Washington, D.C.

The countdown point is the same as last year’s. The clock remains closer to destruction than at any point since it was created in 1947.

The 2022 Doomsday Clock statement explains that the “decision does not, by any means, suggest that the international security 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.”

Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said the clock “continues to hover dangerously, reminding us about how much work is needed to be done to ensure a safer and healthier planet. We must continue to push the hands of the clock away from midnight.”

Each year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a nonprofit group that sets the clock, decides whether the events of the previous year pushed humanity closer to or further from destruction. The clock “conveys how close we are to destroying our civilization with dangerous technologies of our own making,” according to the group.

The closer to midnight we are, the more danger we’re in, according to the bulletin. The clock uses the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and a nuclear explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity and the Earth.

The furthest the clock has been from midnight was 17 minutes in 1991, at the end of the Cold War.

https://www.usatoday.com

Doomsday Clock stands at 100 seconds to midnight, World ‘remains in an extremely dangerous moment’, Closest ever to Apocalypse

ETH – January 21, 2021

(OPINION) Doomsday is as close today as it was yesterday, according to a hypothetical timepiece known as the Doomsday Clock; for the second year in a row, the clock’s hands hover at 100 seconds to midnight — the hour of humanity’s destruction.

However, it’s still not too late to turn back the clock’s hands and make the world safer for people worldwide, said “timekeepers” with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS). Representatives of the nonprofit announced the clock’s new time on Thursday (Jan. 20), at a virtual press event, which you can watch on Live Science.

The past year included “several bright spots and many disturbing trends,” including the alarming rise of online misinformation that curbed progress in mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic and hindered strategies for addressing climate change, BAS President and CEO Rachel Bronson said at the press event.

The 2022 Doomsday Clock statement explains that the “decision does not, by any means, suggest that the international security situation has stabilized. On the contrary, the clock remains the closest it has ever been to the civilization-ending apocalypse because the world remains stuck in an extremely dangerous moment.”

Rachel Bronson, president, and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said the clock “continues to hover dangerously, reminding us about how much work is needed to be done to ensure a safer and healthier planet. We must continue to push the hands of the clock away from midnight.”

“It’s an imperfect metaphor,” Michael E. Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University, told CNN, highlighting that the clock’s framing combines different types of risk that have different characteristics and occur in different timescales. Still, he adds it “remains an important rhetorical device that reminds us, year after year, of the tenuousness of our current existence on this planet.”

https://endtimeheadlines.org

The ‘Doomsday Clock’ and ‘tick-tocks’ to annihilation

Wallace B. Henley – February 3, 2021

According to the “Doomsday Clock” we are only 100 “seconds” from the “midnight” of apocalyptic doom.

This is not the pronouncement of a wild-eyed fortuneteller, crazed would-be prophet, or frenzied alarmist, but a worldwide conglomerate of scientists and policymakers. They assemble annually to assess global threats and fragility, and endurance limits for the planet, its inhabitants, their societies, and civilizations.

The vehicle by which the experts reveal their carefully reasoned estimate of the approach of “Doomsday” is the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS). On January 27 BAS announced its findings virtually (ironically, due to COVID, one of the threat-accelerators that hasten the tick-tocks to annihilation).

The BAS experts tell us that we are closer to the end than at any point since the “clock” was presented in 1947. This is only the second time the “clock” has been this close to the midnight of global extermination.[1]

“With wide-spread mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic… little progress in eliminating nuclear weapons; and insufficient mitigation of destructive climate change, the BAS decided to hold the clock at the present, perilous time, and a warning and ‘wake-up call,’” declared the BAS.[2]

https://www.christianpost.com

Doomsday Clock moves closer than ever before to midnight

Andrew Weil – January 24, 2020

It is now 100 seconds to midnight. That was the ominous warning scientists laid out Thursday as the Doomsday Clock, a metaphor for how close humanity is to self-destruction, was moved 20 seconds closer to midnight.

The clock is now the closest its ever been to midnight, indicating humanity is closer to apocalypse than it’s been since the clock’s creation in 1947.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved the clock backward and forward 23 times since its debut to illustrate threats to humanity and the planet.

“In so doing, board members are explicitly warning leaders and citizens around the world that the international security situation is now more dangerous than it has ever been, even at the height of the Cold War,” the Bulletin said in a statement.

In 2018, the clock was set at two minutes from midnight, which tied 1953 for the closest it had been in its history.

In making its decision to inch the clock closer to midnight, the group explained Thursday in a statement that humanity “continues to face two simultaneous existential dangers—nuclear war and climate change—that are compounded by a threat multiplier, cyber-enabled information warfare, that undercuts society’s ability to respond.”

https://www.9news.com