Guest essay by Noel S. Williams
The Doomsday clock cannot simultaneously measure the threats of nuclear war and climate change.
The board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists recently issued their 2017 Doomsday Clock Statement: it is two and a half minutes to midnight. That’s alarming – the closest the clock has been to midnight since 1953, when the superpowers were testing the hydrogen bomb.
If they are so intent on scaring us silly, their symbolic clock should be accurate, and that’s problematic since it tracks disparate threats with varying degrees of urgency: nuclear war; climate change; and emerging technologies. The scientists’ stated motivation is to apply pressure to governmental leaders by calling on citizens “to express themselves in all the ways available to them.”
Their message would be more potent if they don’t conflate disparate threats. The notion of a single Doomsday Clock that conflates climate change with nuclear war and emerging technologies is convoluted.
The threat of nuclear war is more urgent. The timescales are more amenable to a clock which can be fine-tuned to accommodate specific events: rogue nations conducting nuclear tests; China rattling its sabers; India and Pakistan quarreling over Kashmir; Russia reneging on a deal on the disposal of weapons-grade plutonium; deployment of destabilizing weapons.
Climate change and anthropogenic global warming are a bit fuzzier. A Doomsday clock that purports to measure its trend line cannot be as precise as one that measures the threat of nuclear war. Moreover, the nature of the clock is inherently different: the Nuclear Doomsday clock can go counterclockwise — it has moved backwards with the signing of test ban and nonproliferation treaties, for example.
According to the scientific consensus on the trajectory and causes of global warming, there is no going back; indeed, we may already be at midnight. Even if we stop carbon dioxide emissions now, greenhouse gasses and temperatures will still grow. According to these scientists the arrow of time only moves forward for anthropogenic global warming; all we can do is slow the clock as it ticks inexorably towards a post-apocalyptic dawn.
If the clock measuring the threat of nuclear war can go backwards, but global warming is irreversible, how can they be calibrated simultaneously by the same Doomsday clock?
In 2015, the atomic scientists moved the clock forward two minutes, largely due to climate change: “Unchecked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations, and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals pose[s] extraordinary threats….[C]urrent efforts are entirely insufficient to prevent a catastrophic warming of Earth.” This wasn’t done in isolation, but in relation to previous movements that were based upon a nuclear threat that ticks at a different rate. The timescales of the threats are not concomitant and cannot be consistently measured by the hands of the same clock.
Besides the lack of symmetry, the imminence of the threat of nuclear war is measured in minutes. Decisions about DEFCON alerts are time-condensed as humans evaluate whether the sirens are due to a software flaw, space debris, a flock of geese, a gamma ray burst or, god-forbid, incoming ballistic missiles. The time horizon for a corresponding impact caused by climate change may be hours. (cont…)
The Doomsday Clock is a haunting reminder of some of the perils the human race faces, but even symbolic clocks should have consistent continuity.
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It was a publicity stunt then, and it’s a publicity stunt now.
Is that very cheap clock made in (communist) China?
It’s not even a CLOCK. It’s a picture of a clock. As Duchamp said, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”. They couldn’t even afford a big fake clock with movable hands. It’s no wonder today’s youth can’t read an analog clock. Fake scientists can’t even show them how the hands move around a clock face. Jeez!
At least the “clock” didn’t come from China, it came from Kinkos.
Once again — “who watches the watchmen?”
That was the catch phrase of the movie and the graphic novel, but it is still valid. Who is watching the people who make these reports for their validity?
Nobody — which means there is no validity. It’s like using a scale that hasn’t ever been calibrated.
https://youtu.be/ieQZoY9PQlY
Not sure if this will work,,,,,,
That clock is wrong 730 times a year!
More junk science! Atomic Scientist does that mean they glow in the dark? Of course not! That might be useful!
We need to be clear on what exactly they are saying. First, this is the Doomsday Clock. What they are talking about is total Thermonuclear Armageddon. So clearly, some piddling thing like a regional nuclear war between, for example, Pakistan and India, Iran and Israel, North Korea and anybody, is of no concern. So we see the threat is that of the big H-Bombs going off all over the planet.
Not at all. These Scientific and Military deep-thinkers have clearly discerned a quantifiable cause and effect relationship between Global Thermonuclear War and CAGW. Without a doubt, this puts the Catastrophic in AGW.
With the relationship between CAGW and Thermonuclear Armageddon quantified and measured, one question remains. Is the relationship symmetrical? That is, will Thermonuclear Armageddon cause CAGW. Clearly, such a war will cause extreme local heating in specific areas. But so far, the idea that a Global Thermonuclear War would cause a rise in the overall planetary temperature is an untested hypothesis.
Well put and in fact Global Nuclear War is the antidote to CAGW because after creating a few local hotspots it will bless us with Global Nuclear Winter!
Of course the Warmistas will use the Urban Heat Island effect to say it’s a lot hotter.
TonyL
“But so far, the idea that a Global Thermonuclear War would cause a rise in the overall planetary temperature is an untested hypothesis.”
Agree.
But I would, on the whole, prefer this to Remain an ‘untested hypothesis’.
Like – a little warming [with – not necessarily caused by – higher CO2] is good.
Cooling – less so.
Auto, probably stating the blindingly obvious . . . . . . . .
If one considers and man is contributing to warming, then ‘climate change’ should move the clock back giving more time before the inevitable conflicts caused by the return of the glaciers.
The US will be fine as we gain all sorts of land off our coasts. But Canada is largely under ice. Most of the UK goes.
As these northern countries seek to solve their shrinking land issues conflict is inevitable. Man made global warming, if it exists in any significant amount beyond natural variation (doubtful) it would certainly add time on the doomsday clock.
They look like the mad professors in a 1950s B movie.
As they’ve told us we’ve only got 2 1/2 mins left we haven’t got time to help save the world, so mustn’t panic, just enough time to shag the dog & kick the wife !
As my old granny said –
You only have one life…Live it to the full; Do no harm; Leave the world better than when you came in to it.
6,316 people die each hr…..YOU could be next.
Shave the Whales!
Dilbert, I think, had this first.
/Sarc.
Auto
I think a more operative term than “conflated” would be … “inflated”, as in importance.
This is an era of scientists using scare tactics to maintain funding, is it ?
What happens when daylight saving time comes in?
Easy, we simply adjust the data.
If Donald Trump doesn’t listen to these scientists, then they will have no choice but to move the clock to 2 1/4 minutes to midnight. That will show him! But if he is still obstinate, then we will have to move the clock to 2 1/8 minutes to midnight! That should scare the pants off him then.
See the numbskull Krauss in picture of the doomsday clock? See his climate change garbage get fully rebutted (destroyed) in this video:
Physicist Lawrence Krauss Bombs out on Climate Science:
How do these people keep their jobs? There doesn’t seem to be any accountability. How can professionals be so wrong? They are making public comments that are embarrassing to themselves, their employers and their procession. Where is the accountability?
As ridiculously and immaturely as i can state it. The doomsday clock is stupid. So are the morons posing with it. Jackasses.
The purveyors of fraudulent science are 8 days past ‘dooms day’… and just waking up to that fact now! The strident and progressively louder squealing you hear is the sound of professional piggies fighting for their share of a daily diminishing supply of taxpayer funded AGW slop……
It’s another good day ‘in the news’ for the USA!
I cannot remember any time, what-so-ever, that the doomsday clock was ever taken seriously. Let’s not concern ourselves with groundhog day predictions and making mountains out of molehills. GK
The Tell-Tale Hearts are a better indicator of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change. Adjust your Choice accordingly.
It’s the Doomsday Crock.
I know that people should not be judged by their faces, but perhaps by their facial expression. These guys I would not even trust my house keys for flowering. They have such a bad face, as some reporters at CNN or the German Unity broadcasting.
Hans-Georg, they do look very grim, you are right, but it’s not well known that they were all required to hold a strong dill pickle in their mouths for this picture.
And all the German Unity broadcasters? — forced to keep a forkful of saurkraut packed between the teeth and the cheek, all of them. That’s why they look as they do on TV.
Oups
http://fresh-tattoos.com/wp-content/uploads/images/golden-dali-clock-tattoo-3.jpg
Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day.
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists…… AGW……Hmmmmm.
Oh, Grrreeeaat! Now it’s Atomic Global Warming!!!
Like – Oh m’god! That’ll put a ‘hot spot’ in the ol’ Troposphere, fer sure! Totally!!!
Yes, I was pondering this in another comment somewhere. Weapons of mass destruction — now there’s the REALLY alarming threat of … “global warming’. It would make more sense to divert climate funding to THIS concern.
What does the doomsday clock’s alarm sound like ? It’s a voice that says, Think of the children. No, it’s “cookoo, cookoo, cookoo, think of the children.”
It isn’t official unless they’re wearing white lab coats.
http://www.rockyhigh66.org/stuff/doomsday_clock1.jpg
Somebody do something!
I’m not taking it seriously until its published in a peer-reviewed journal along with the method, raw data and calibration curve
I always thought that clock thing was a stupid gimmick.
Idiots advanced it when Reagan took office, only to see the USSR crumple in a heap.
The same kind of idiots gave O’Dinglenuts a Nobel Pizza Prize.
Where’s the Choomsday clock?
(Stuck on 4:20, probably.)