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.
tallbloke (07:23:27) :
Michael Mann has his own version of the clock:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/files/2010/01/manns-doomsday1.jpg
>>>
Funny !
They rolled it back because WWT exposed them If WWT didn’t exist, they would have rolled it forward. Facts don’t matter to these people, the agenda does,
BBC: 14 January 2010
The end is nigh?
April E. Coggins (23:02:00) :
They rolled it back because WWT exposed them If WWT didn’t exist, they would have rolled it forward
That is true. WUWT now is by far more read that many “convenient” MSM and they realized that they were exposing the credibility (any left?) of their founding members and not only that but involving many of these past figures in present scandals as “Climate Gate”, and last but not least, inadvertedly whistleblowing the origins, ideology and history of a modern conspiracy for attaining the goal of a world government.
John Hooper (15:42:55) :
That sounds very nice. But if we’re so quick to dismiss every scientific institution in the world, and all the science behind them, including the one that put man on the moon, why should anyone believe the small handful of lesser credentialed “scientists” we put forward?
The NASA that put man on the moon is not today’s NASA, and GISS is only a small part of NASA.
Fear results in income. Witness churches, including the Environmentalism Faith. Witness the absolutely astounding marketing of Swine Flu vaccine.
Having once been responsible for programs assuring the flight readiness of some 600 nuclear armed cruise missiles, I was concerned about “what hast thou wrought.” I subscribed to the Bulletin for decades while Von Hippel was still alive. The Bulletin, though, was one of a host of venues used as justification by people who live in fear and I tired of the incessant Hegelian format.
As we can see, like the Millerites of the 19th Century and many 20th century prophets, Armageddon just isn’t rushing to happen…so people can’t just up and say “I told you so” (were they alive to do so after any one of the calamities they worship).
Even today, multi-millionaire morons like Danny Glover have the temerity to blame the Haitian horrors on our neglect to respond to the “One World Government” nearly foisted off on us by Obama and the other statists.
One of the great marketing specialists was a bit off on the rate suckers are born. It is far greater than one per minute.
Smokey
Tsk Tsk
Tallbloke
The trouble with the Appeal to Authority Fallacy defence is when such authorities are expert signatories validating your opponent’s argument. They’ve been hauled in specifically to do that job because they’re bodies we’d normally trust. We can’t judge the opponents’ argument ourselves because it’s beyond our expertise. We need to call on a third party we trust.
Meanwhile, our proponent’s arguments are roundly vilified, and distanced, by all authorities except for free enterprise groups, tabloid journalists and a smattering of scientists the general public has never heard of.
We have to ask our audience to ignore the respected authorities because of a massive conspiracy and believe us instead. And ignore any dodgy campaigns our sponsoring think tanks and scientists have been involved in previously, as they’re irrelevant.
And if our proponents can’t convince any of these authorities, why should our audience listen to us, and not the names they recognize and trust?
On top of that, our opponents’ argument is relatively consistent. Temperatures are trending upwards due to man made CO2. We must cut emissions.
Ours is all over place. We can’t even agree whether there’s a current warming trend, let alone what’s causing it. We seem to be grasping at whatever straws present themselves and believe it all on faith.
Take ClimateGate for example. We’re meant to believe it proves there’s been a massive conspiracy to show warming where none exists. Yet, most of the scientists allied to our position have already conceded warming has taken place and are concerned with other details of the theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming
Richard Lindzen, one of our best, is tarnished by his famous refusal to accept that smoking is connected to lung cancer. And he’s not alone there.
All I’m saying is I see a lot of crowing in these forums but out in the real world it’s still business as usual. Your energy bills will still be rising.
Your first mistake is using Wiki as a source.
John Hooper (10:08:25) : An uneducated man is very easily detected here. You are crystal clear to all of us.
John Hooper (10:08:25):
What’s all this talk about “we” and “ours”?? Who do you think you’re fooling?
You’re about as skeptical as the unemployed Phil Jones.
Go back to realclimate, or I’ll have to use this on you: click
Smokey, your spray should be called “Troll-B-Gone!”
“Smokey (12:03:33) :
What’s all this talk about “we” and “ours”?? Who do you think you’re fooling?
You’re about as skeptical as the unemployed Phil Jones.
Go back to realclimate, or I’ll have to use this on you: click”
I’m skeptical alright. Skeptical that you know what you’re talking about any more than the jackasses on the Real Climate forum. This whole subject is a circus of armchair experts name-calling and parroting sensational soundbytes.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and the theory that there’s a world wide conspiracy that’s fooled every scientific establishment, university, government and journal is a pretty big pill to swallow. Even bigger than the theory of AGW itself.
You’ll need to work a lot harder than to call everyone who points this (obvious point) out to you is a troll. It’s the question that’s on every journalist’s mind.
“”” tallbloke (03:31:26) :
5 mins to midnight? Great, time for a nightcap. Yawn…
Stephen H Schneider is a biologist by qualification.
Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies
Professor, Department of Biology
Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment
Professor, by courtesy, Civil and Environmental Engineering.
At Stanford University, otherwise known as global warming central. “””
Well supposedly Stephen Schneider is the father of “climate sensitivity”; which by declaration establishes for all time, that the earth’s temperature is a logarithmic function of the atmospheric CO2 abundance.
Unfortunately, there is no record of simultaneous temperature and CO2 abundance; for which this logarithmic relationship can be shown to exist.
Nor is there any Physical cause and effect relationship between CO2 abundance, and temperature; which theorizes such a logarithmic relationship. Evidently our entire history of actual measured temperature, and CO2 levels does not even yet reach 1/2 an octave of CO2 increase; yet even for theis restricted range, there is no logarithmic connection. The annual baseline CO2 per ML data, is monotonically increasing; but not so the mean temperature of the planet, which wanders aimlessly up and down.
This BAS bunch is about as credible as the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Total fruitcakes all of them. Do those BAS bunch need salvation from their self imposed guilt complex, at maybe having been involved in some way in the Manhattan Project ?
Hooper,
I gave you the benefit of the doubt, but your response has convinced me otherwise. Using your standards, no theory or hypothesis, which is what AGW truly is, could ever be challenged since the establishment, by definition, will always defend the status quo. As to the skeptics being all over the map, are you seriously suggesting that the AGW camp isn’t? What about the famed Mr. Hansen’s seaside office? Remember, Manhattan was supposed to be flooded by now. Tibetan glaciers completely melted by 2035? An ice free arctic by last year or was it the year before? All them poor poley bears is drowning too due to the ice free arctic. You know, the ones with the increasing census. What was that about extraordinary claims again? It’s not the skeptics that are making them.
And as to tainted organizations diluting the AGW skeptics’ message, how about Holdren’s malthusian past? Seriously, a White House science advisor that completely lost it in his 60’s, 70’s and 80’s predictions. How many americans were supposed to have starved by now? Seems to me that Lindzen’s foibles can’t get any worse than that. What was Al Gore’s electricity bill last month? How much carbon has he put into the atmosphere in the past year compared to the average american? How much money has Pachuri made off of his connections to TERI? What you fail to comprehend is that I don’t need a vast conspiracy, left-wing or otherwise, to be suspicious. Motivated self-interest, vanity, greed, and a massive egocentric investment in the outcome from a quite small group of people (look at the incestuousness of the peer group as pointed out by Wegman) amplified by a larger group that couldn’t care less about the message but see the value in twisting the hypothesis to their political agenda can do the job just fine thank-you-very-much.
So yes, stick to the AGW message and don’t confuse it with others, but don’t try to tell me with a straight face that the econuts of the world, and that includes central figures in the AGW hypothesis, aren’t just as fringy as the Ayn Rand fanatics.
Kary Mullis.
brc (02:18:09) :
Um if this clock was for nuclear destruction, shouldn’t it stay at that? Or did their pet headline maker die a natural death after years of fearmongering?
That’s funny, brc, I was just thinking the same thing as I came to your post. I was a member of BAS, or at least a suscriber, back when they had the nuclear clock. They’ve just chosen to continue their “business model” using another prop. We’ve never seen that one before, eh?
John Hooper (10:00:12) :
Some serious credentials on that committee: more than a dozen Nobel Laureates. If only we on the skeptical side could come up with just one.
Who cares? Linus Pauling won two Nobels in Physics, iirc, and he died defending mega doses of Vitamin C as a cancer preventative or cure, after it was tried in experiments and studies time and again and failed to do anything.
Around the same time there was a Japanese scientist who I think actually committed suicide after he’d done a study indicating Vit. C slowed cancer in rats but it couldn’t be reproduced. There wasn’t any mention that he’d faked anything in his study, it just couldn’t be verified. But now you get more and more money and fame for doing poor studies, not to mention the Nobels.
Me, I’m going to take the Bertrand Russell elixer of life. He got to where for a long time into his 90’s he was living off of seven double scotches, or something, twice a day.
Here’s another one (besides Kary Mullis): Ivar Giaever
The Hippy Dippy Doomsday Clock
http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2010/01/hippy-dippy-doomsday-clock.html
A good write-up today (Jan. 24, 2010) by statistician William M. Briggs over at Pyjamas Media:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/good-nuclear-doomsday-clock-turned-back-bad-board-didnt-factor-in-iran/
It’s verrrrry interesting that there are a number of AGW promoters on the clock board.