Big day today folks. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists will move the hands on their famous “doomsday clock”.
Here’s my guess. Climate scientist Steven Schneider will be speaking. We know what he is all about. The Copenhagen Climate Conference failed in December and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. My prediction is that these alarmists will move the clock closer to midnight, citing the Copenhagen “failure” as pushing mankind closer to the brink of “climate disaster” or some such phrase.
Plus, we’ll get to watch them turn the hands of the clock live via webfeed. Such stunning visuals. Yawn. I’ll save you the suspense. In 2007 it was set to five minutes to midnight, to reflect the failure to solve problems posed by nuclear weapons. Today I’m guessing they’ll mention Copenhagen’s failure and list climate change as the next global threat and set it to 4 minutes to midnight. Or…maybe 3, if Steven Schneider scares them enough. UPDATE: my guess was wrong: they moved it back to 6 minutes see here
From the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists press release:
Hands of the “Doomsday Clock” to be moved in New York City and seen live on web for first time ever
8 January 2010
… News Advisory for January 14, 2010 …
Factors In Change to Include Nuclear Proliferation, Weapon Stockpile Shifts, and Climate Change; Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Will Open Event to World With Real-Time Streaming Web Broadcast.
NEW YORK CITY///NEWS ADVISORY///January 14, 2010///The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) will move the minute hand of its famous “Doomsday Clock” at 10 a.m. EST/1500 GMT on January 14, 2010 in New York City. For the first time ever, the event will be opened up to the general public via a live Web feed at http://www.TurnBackTheClock.org.
The last time the Doomsday Clock minute hand moved was in January 2007, when the Clock’s minute hand was pushed forward by two minutes from seven to five minutes before midnight.
The precise time to be shown on the updated Doomsday Clock will not be announced until the live news conference in New York City takes place on January 14, 2010. Factors influencing the latest Doomsday Clock change include international negotiations on nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation, expansion of civilian nuclear power, the possibilities of nuclear terrorism, and climate change.
News event speakers will include:
- Lawrence Krauss, co-chair, BAS Board of Sponsors, foundation professor, School of Earth and Space Exploration and Physics departments, associate director, Beyond Center, co-director, Cosmology Initiative, and director, New Origins Initiative, Arizona State University.
- Stephen Schneider, member, BAS Science and Security Board, professor of environmental biology and global change, Stanford University, a co-director, Center for Environment Science and Policy of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and senior fellow, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
- Jayantha Dhanapala, member, BAS Board of Sponsors, president, Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, and chair, 1995 UN Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Conference;
- Pervez Hoodbhoy, member, BAS Board of Sponsors, professor of high energy physics, and head, Physics Department, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan; and
- Kennette Benedict, executive director, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists subsequently created the Doomsday Clock in 1947 as way to convey both the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero). The decision to move the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock is made by the Bulletin’s Board of Directors in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 19 Nobel Laureates. The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and emerging technologies in the life sciences.
TO PARTICIPATE IN PERSON: Attend the live news event on January 14, 2010 at 10 a.m. EST, at the New York Academy of Sciences Building, at 7 World Trade Center, 250 Greenwich St, 40th floor, New York City. The event will be limited to credentialed members of the news media. For security reasons, all attendees must RSVP in advance by contacting Patrick Mitchell, (703) 276-3266, or pmitchell@hastingsgroup.com.
CAN’T PARTICIPATE IN PERSON?: Reporters outside of New York City who are unable to attend the live news event in person can watch and listen to the news conference via a live Webcast by registering by 945 a.m. EST on January 14, 2010 at http://www.TurnBackTheClock.org/media. A streaming audio replay of the news event will be available on the Web at http://www.thebulletin.org as of 6 p.m. EST/2300 GMT on January 14, 2010.
Yes, yes, yes. And it was set to two minutes to midnight over fifty years ago. Snore.
More alarmism just sets off the BS meter of the average person. Put it 1 minute to midnight and it would be better by far as people simply will not believe it.
Cheers
Michael
Why does factors for change not include planet-killing asteroid/meteorite impacts?
Silly me, of course that kind of source of real abrupt climate change is something that is completely outside human control excepting the theoretical idea that those nasty nukes might actually have some use beyond being an outrageously expensive insurance policy.
Set it to midnight and see what happens, or better yet 1 minute after, shows over folks, nothing to fear, move on and be happy….
As if.
sadly have to miss the webcast –
will be cleaning up the kittties littebox.
Right you kids. I’m going to count to five and then THAT’S IT ! One, two, three, four, four and a half, four and three quarters . . .
Who watches the watchmen ?
Weather vain
It can only get worse as Mexico approaches.
regards
I would guess that they will claim the Climate Change will reduce available resources and thus force wars over the limited strategic resources required for civilization.
So now we are expected to believe that an infinitesimal increase in CO2 air molecules poses as much of a threat to mankind as the tense nuclear standoff known as the Cuban missile crisis. As if.
The “Atomic Doomsday Clock” will surely become a bigger joke than the Nobel Peace Prize.
The extreme AGW alarmists are saying it’s already too late so the clock should now be past midnight. Might as well for all the good it will do. This is really laughable. How come such crackpots have so much say in our world affairs? It’s time to get rid of these loonies and let some real thinkers back in power. I won’t hold my breath though.
“I have lived long enough to have seen many doomsday scenarios painted by people who profited by doing so, but which never came to pass. This has made me a skeptic. Perhaps global warming is an example of the old fable about the boy who cried wolf, but this time the doomsayers are, alas, right. Maybe, but I can’t help noting that some of the prominent global warmers of today were global coolers of not so long ago. In particular, Steven Schneider, now at Stanford, previously at NCAR, about 30 years ago was sounding the alarm about an imminent ice age. The culprit then was particles belched into the atmosphere by human activities. No matter how the climate changes he can correctly say that he predicted it. No one in the atmospheric science community has been more successful at getting publicity. NCAR used to send my department clippings from newspaper and magazine articles in which NCAR researchers were named. We’d get thick wads of clippings, almost all of which were devoted to Schneider. Perhaps global warming is bad for the rest of us, but for Schneider and others it has been a godsend.”
Craig Bohren
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/aprilholladay/2006-08-07-global-warming-truth_x.htm?csp=34
I highly recommend Craig Bohren’s books ‘Clouds in a Glass of Beer’ and ‘What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks?’ for those laymen who want to understand a little bit about atmospheric physics.
“…Fifty days to save the world…” – or should that be a few minutes?
Doomsday clock! Silly buggers.
Is the Doomsday Clock set at Eastern Standard Time or Greenwich Mean Time, because I think it might be about 6 hours ahead.
Climate science has been reduced to meaningless ‘global temperature’ variations expressed in degrees or fractions of a degree C. It is totally useless in deciding future needs and demands of population of a particular region.
CET has most detailed and scrutinised temperature numbers so it could be considered as an acceptable working model:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETt.htm
Let’s consider well documented and currently not disputed period from 1900 to 1950.
Between 1900 and 1925 winter temps went up while summer temps down by similar amount so net annual temp change was close to zero, for period 1925 to 1950 it case was precisely reversed, again total annual change close to zero.
Conclusion: energy consumption requirements, emissions etc due to climate change constant.
Not so, let’s look at the graph again:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETt.htm
During initial period due to warmer winters 1900-1925 heating requirement would be much lower, and if aircon was available, due to cooler summers again energy requirement would be lower.
For subsequent period 1925-1950, winter temps went down and summers up both calling for higher energy consumption (again assuming aircon was available).
Ergo: Climate is cyclical, difficult to predict, impossible to modify.
Task of a climate scientist is to try to predict these REGIONAL rather than GLOBAL trends in climate change and consequently the energy requirements, and of governments to act accordingly through planning, building, transport etc. regulations, in order to limit energy consumption, thus protecting natural resources and reducing pollution.
In the UK (mainly CET area) we were told by the (world renown) Met office to expect ‘barbeque’ (hot) summer and milder than normal winter. As many of us are aware, both predictions were wrong !
What sort of society have we become that chooses to live in a perpertual state of fear. There is a medical term for that – phobia. There are many types, just take your pick. But in today’s mixed up world, they are made up of an ad hoc smorgsborg.
I hope they do set it to 1 minute to midnight, a move that will provoke doomsaying journalists into even more ridiculous hyperbole, with the likes of Moonbiot foaming at the mouth: “Worlds most eminent climate scientists move doomsday clock closer to midnight than ever before. Even during the Cuban missile crisis it was not . . . mankind has thrown away its last means of salvation . . . only draconian CO2 cuts . . . democracy itself is not longer sufficient. . . etc, etc.”
We live in a silly-assed society.
Well, the bell is already tolling, not for an approaching doomsday but for the AGW hypothesis and similar attempts to scaremonger for profit.
This shows that they are getting desperate as time and public sentiment coupled with spreading knowledge is turning against them. So now it is time to splash the headline – CATACLYSM IMMINENT – Scientists today warned of an unavoidable catastrophe due to man (n) made …..bla bla bla.
Of course the headline for when nothing materializes is already printed – INTERVENTION SAVES MANKIND – Disaster was narrowly averted by the timely intervention of dedicated teams of scientists and politicians who’s vision.. . bla bla bla
This is getting to the stage where even an Afghani goat herder can see through it.
Anthony, wouldn’t an engraved atomic doomsday clock make a lovely trophy to be awarded to the year’s most alarming AGW doomsday prediction. It could be named “The WUWT Award.”
Like Ew-3, I will be missing the live feed:
Unfortunately, I have a debilitating hangnail.
Who, precisely, is funding this event?
The silly Doomsday clock says less about the condition of our civilization than it does about the self-appointed doomsayers.
This doomsday clock isn’t gonna be much use to me ‘cos I haven’t worn a watch for 40 years…
But the end of the earth will on on TV – won’t it? And in the newspapers the following day? (Don’t say a word!)
The clock should be set to five past midnight, to show that, like all the other doomsday predictions, this one has expired.
http://www.2think.org/hundredsheep/skeptic/predictions.shtml
I’m happy that scientists are as individuals, interested in ethics, but they are primarily scientists. There’s a confusion when scientists, who’s work should rightly be confined and regulated by ethical issues, start to think of science as a means to impose ethics on the world. That seems to be part of what went wrong in climatology. “The science” was used to make an absolute case for imposing different lifestyles and morals on people.
Not only does it distort the pursuit of truth, but who is to say that these scientists’ ethical outlook is actually the correct one for the world at this time? They are, how shall we put it, “not in the field” of ethical, philosophical, and social, study of development.