Tag: Rachel Bronson

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