Opinion by Anthony Watts, originally published on Townhall,com
From 1947 to today, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, keepers of the “doomsday clock”—a holdover from the atomic age and Cold War—has predicted doom by moving the hands of a prop clock closer to or further away from midnight. Midnight represents a global doom disaster in progress.
In a breathless press release on January 23, which included a cameo from former California governor and climate activist Jerry Brown, the group announced that due to “climate change,” the world is 20 seconds closer to midnight, standing at 100 seconds (1 minute 40 seconds) before midnight.
Photo by Lexey Swall Photography, courtesy of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
The scientists announced:
Civilization-ending nuclear war—whether started by design, blunder, or simple miscommunication—is a genuine possibility. Climate change that could devastate the planet is undeniably happening. And for a variety of reasons that include a corrupted and manipulated media environment, democratic governments and other institutions that should be working to address these threats have failed to rise to the challenge.
In essence, they are saying nuclear war and climate change are equivalent threats. Such a comparison is mind-bogglingly ridiculous.
Consider that climate change has no “hair trigger” like nuclear catastrophe does. Some despot or dictator who obtains a nuclear weapon is entirely different from the slow change of climate over 100 years.
Yet, these supposedly learned scientists have embraced the hype of “climate emergency” as if it was on par with a nuclear hair trigger. Lamenting the lack of action and interest in climate change, they write:
Lip service continued, with some governments now echoing many scientists’ use of the term “climate emergency.” But the policies and actions that governments proposed were hardly commensurate to an emergency. Exploration and exploitation of fossil fuels continues to grow.
Because all governments don’t sense an “emergency” and have not pulled the plug on electricity grids powered by fossil fuels, the Atomic Scientists are in despair.
They would actually like us to believe that we are presently in more danger of global apocalypse than during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Really? Ask yourself this: Do you feel like climate change may burn your town to a crisp any day now? Do we need to implement “duck and cover” exercises for school kids in case the boogeyman of climate change sweeps down and attacks a city?
The threat comparison between nuclear war and climate change is patently absurd—there’s really no other way to describe it.
Interestingly, it wasn’t until 2007 that “climate change” became a main target on the radar of the atomic scientists. That was one year after Al Gore released his widely viewed scary movie known as An Inconvenient Truth. Since then, “climate change” has been listed as a doomsday factor in each of the eight clock adjustments.
It’s almost as if they swapped one boogeyman for another. Yet, look at the history of the doomsday clock:
Comparing “climate change” to the intensity of all the other threats, it seems completely out of place and of far less magnitude and urgency. Despite 73 years of predicting doomsday proximity, it has never materialized.
So again, with such a track record, ask yourself: Do you feel more threatened by nuclear Armageddon, or the possibility that it might be a little bit warmer next year?
Anthony Watts is former television meteorologist and Senior Fellow for Environment and Climate for The Heartland Institute. He operates the most viewed website on climate in the world, WattsUpWithThat.com
Wait, I’m having trouble understanding the clock graph. The way I’m reading it, the Cuban missile crisis had no effect on the clock, but the Paris Climate agreement led to a worsening of the danger. Overall, the graph suggests we are in greater peril due to the climate deal than the missile crisis.
Oh wait, that makes perfect sense. The Paris thing was a deadly trap.
“And for a variety of reasons that include a corrupted and manipulated media environment, democratic governments”
So, the media environment has been corrupted and manipulated against Climate Change? Oh, let’s see the evidence on that one, or is it mere projection? And, again, the swipe against democracy.
A question occurs to me about these here (w)horologic poseurs. How many such personalities that seemingly speak for atomic scientists via this periodically published bulletin are quite understandably proposing nuclear energy sourcing take up the slack for any decline in reliable fossil-fueled electrical generation, as a ‘mushrooming’ (so to speak) of unreliable ‘renewable’ sources is so welcomed? I imagine that actual atomic scientists would covet rather better representation!
Yes–I always enjoyed that song ” The Merry Minuet” by the Kingston Trio.
Really enjoyed their instant success.
News yesterday included that the last member, Bob Shane, had passed away at age 85.
As a septuagenarian just starting to learn guitar, my initial goal has been to learn Dave Guard’s Scotch and Soda. This may be the appropriate theme song to relieve these “scientists” anxiety.
Speaking of which:
Isn’t that a contradiction? Is there a serious scientific paper that supports the concept of a tipping point?
Where are the ethical “consensus” scientists that should be saying “we have a problem, but please tone it down; there is no evidence of an emergency. How can you be a “learned” scientist and still believe this trash?
Fmaj7 Fm6
Scotch and soda, mud in your eye.
C A7 D7 G7
Baby do I feel high, oh me oh my
E E7
do I feel high.
Not your typical beginner song, but more power to you.
They don’t make ’em like that anymore. Pre-boomer.
Well we know climate change/warming/emergency/et al is the cause of everything bad – so why not causing clocks to move to midnight? It’s worse than we thought.
We’re closer to the Apocalypse now than in 1962 when the whole of the RAF’s ‘V’ force was bombed up, fueled up at 5 minutes readiness waiting for the phone call to push the tit on the fast start compressors during the Cuba crisis….
(See https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/pdfplus/10.3366/brw.2012.0037)
Well that would be the most Fragrant Bovine Excrement wouldn’t it…
If we’re still here doomsday is still in the future. Since that’s a once and done kind of thing the condition of ‘not happened’ has no relevance to if or when the doomsday singularity will occur. Further, if it had already happened it would be finished and done, so how could we expect an encore? Not possible at all.
From the WikiPee page on the ‘Atomic Scientistis’
“The decision to move the hand of the Clock is made by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board, which meets in person twice a year, with subcommittees meeting more often; the announcement of the decision is made each January. Each November, just prior to the Science and Security Board’s fall discussion, the Bulletin hosts an annual dinner and meeting in Chicago.”
Three meeting/meets and one dinner in that paragraph.
Quite a social little bunch of non-profits, aren’t they.
At the end of the photo-ops and media freak show, the atomic scientists stuck the clock in the trunk of the fossil fuel powered limo and the chauffeur drove them home to have their dinner steaks.
Makes me think of California’s “Big One” earthquake predicted to happen in the next 30 years for the last 60 years. It will probably happen, just a question if I’ll be alive to see it, from far away.
For many, there will be much gnashing of teeth when Jesus returns.
“there will be much gnashing of teeth when Jesus returns.”
A good day for dentists & the tooth fairy then
The tooth fairy will return before Jesus.
“100 seconds to midnight”… The Twilight Fringe: a secular faith, religion, and ideology. Followed by the dawn of a new day.
And now we have a doomsday Climate Emergency clock?
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/12/23/climateemergency/
Groundhog Day for doomsters.
This allegory is probably the dumbest one ever invented to alarm. As stated here “https://slate.com/technology/2018/01/what-the-doomsday-clock-doesnt-tell-us.html” there is no methodology for this nonsense. No one even knows which is the start time. Doing the maths, if the start is set to Earth’s approximate formation date (4800000000 yrs), 100 seconds mean that we still have 11 111 111.1 yrs to enjoy. If the beginning is the dawn of Homo Sapiens (aprox. 250 000 yrs), we still have 578.7 yrs of joy. If the beginning if the Hiroshima bomb release, we are indeed in trouble!!! Should I kill myself now? 😉
As a simple metric on the modern Nuclear threat they were useful. Selling out to the climate power grab they have jumped the shark and lost what little credibility they ever had.
As the bank robber said to Dirty Harry about his .44 magnum, I gots to know. Turns out the gun was not loaded.
So is it just going to sit there at 100 seconds to midnight forever now? What else can move it backwards – we stop burning coal and gas for electricity, stop all of our fossil fueled transport and stop eating meat (all agriculture in fact, vegan or not!) Is that what will take it for the hand to be moved back and not forward?
I’m not concerned about climate change – it happens, it’s real, I don’t deny climate change, I question the “cause” – CO2, yeah nah. I’m more concerned about undetected asteroids on a collision course to Earth, a drop in the solar energy and global cooling, massive solar flares, pandemics, (coronavirus is just the latest blip at mother nature trying to wipe us out – wait till she gets the formula right, that will certainly push us closer to doomsday than a 1.5-2.0°C temp increase on the global average.
There are so many things outside human control that can erase us in the blink of an eye, but no, CO2 has us all doomed forever at 100 seconds to midnight.
My wife just asked:
“Does that mean there’s no school tomorrow?”
Because Teacher’s need to know!
If you’re in Australia, then there’s no school tomorrow because it’s Saturday.
This boils down to two rational options:
1) The Atomic Scientists who control the clock are a bunch of fruit-cake alarmists.
2) The Climate Change scare is nothing but a dressed-up scam on humanity.
I suggest it is both, as they are non-exclusive options.
I think it’s clear: The absurdly named “atomic scientists” running the clock are a bunch of quacks looking for attention AND climate change alarmism is crock of s#!%. (can I say “shit”?)
And I’d love the opportunity to tell them that to their face and ask them to defend their position.
I guess you can say that, but does it further the discussion ?
The entire discussion is not worth horse manure and it’s from a bunch of quacks* (not real “atomic” scientists.).
So there’s no point discussing it (a doomsday clock) further if one wants to remain rational.
But if you u.k.(us) want to go willy-nilly down that rabbit hole to a Climate Wonderland filled with irrationality and lies…. go for it.
*Quack – a “fraudulent or ignorant pretender to medical skill” or “a person who pretends, professionally or publicly, to have skill, knowledge, qualification or credentials they do not possess; a charlatan or snake oil salesman”. Those “atomic scientists” are surely quacks when it comes to climate change and their alarmism. They might have had some skill in the past on nuclear armageddon and the effects of nuclear weapons, but in climate, they are quacks… if they are even scientists at all.
Yes it does. If the idea that climate change is about to destroy humanity gets debunked, people might stop wasting money on “renewables”.
Unless of course, the idea of CACC (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change) is a scam perpetrated for the purpose of usurping control of government.
SR
“CACC (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change)”
I keep imagining a cat coughing up a hairball.
Yeah, increase by about 2.5% …. there were 81 comments and yours made 82 and mine makes 83.
u.k.(us) : “I guess you can say that, but does it further the discussion ?”
There are now 113 comments and you generated 5 including this one so now an increase of nearly 5%. I don’t understand the trigger but the results are real!
Okay look: Climate Change is sapping and contaminating our precious bodily fluids.
“Do we need to implement ‘duck and cover’ exercises for school kids in case the boogeyman of climate change sweeps down and attacks a city?”
Well, I do believe the schools have our kids more frightened today about climate change than they ever were during the height of the Cold War.
Even if a war started, it would never have had anything with these children’s behavior.
But if a CO2 something climate something starts, anything they ever did that released CO2 (so anything they ever did) would have contributed to it.
They would be (very slightly) guilty of it.
Very different.
Thanks to all the arms reduction, I think we can only destroy the world 1 or 2 times over, versus the many more during the 80s when the media and Hollywood were 100% sure Reagan’s speeches were going to trigger WWIII.
So I’m a lot less worried now.
What I feel most worried about is a world, a global Establishment that is incapable of handling incremental but significant change in any way other than crying wolf. Seriously: are we only capable of any sort of response by screaming ‘Doomsday!’?
That is like saying that as parents, you are incapable of intervening to stop a curious 3 year old endangering themselves by climbing up toward a cooker loaded with hot oils; you would only react as your child were literally about to run into a busy main thoroughfare; or you would only go see your mortgage loan company when you were down to your last 10 dollars rather than six months previously after a recession made you redundant.
Seriously: society is completely degenerate if that is the case.
Discussing incremental change is just as important as discussing overwhelming events.
You know: things like slow but steady erosion of coastal cliffs; slowly rising winter temps causing disease in certain mountain forests; populations continuing to rise to levels making life uncomfortable; that sort of thing.
If we cannot do that, we are dysfunctional people, dysfunctional societies and dysfunctional nations.
The politicization of the ‘Doomsday Clock’ is evident in the fact that they haven’t set it back in nearly 30 years. Compare that to their pre-1990 behavior, when the clock regularly moved backward and forward depending on world events.
Thankfully, their 30-year run of alarmism is almost over, as they are literally ‘running out of time’ in terms of their ability to move the clock forward. They’ve only got four more of these 20-second moves left before they bump up against midnight. I guess they could switch to 10 second increments, then 1 second increments, and eventually work their way down to nanoseconds, but at some point even the people involved must realize that it is time to stop crying wolf.