Doomsday Clock says 3 minutes to midnight. Again

+Comment The famous Doomsday Clock, which has been showing anywhere between 17 and two minutes to midnight since 1947, has advanced to three-minutes-to for the third time – on this occasion due to a perceived increase in the menace from human-driven climate change.

The organisation which runs the Clock, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, issued this statement on Thursday:

IT IS 3 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

Despite some modestly positive developments in the climate change arena, current efforts are entirely insufficient to prevent a catastrophic warming of Earth. Meanwhile, the United States and Russia have embarked on massive programs to modernize their nuclear triads—thereby undermining existing nuclear weapons treaties. The clock ticks now at just three minutes to midnight because international leaders are failing to perform their most important duty—ensuring and preserving the health and vitality of human civilisation.

As its name suggests, the Bulletin was originally founded by scientists who had worked on the first atomic weapons and was intended to inform the world of the dangers of nuclear war. The clock has previously reached three minutes to midnight - midnight indicating that armageddon is under way - in 1949, when the Soviets acquired atomic weapons, and in 1984, when a low point in US-Soviet relations occurred.

Since the end of the Cold War the clock has gone as far back as 17-minutes-to. The Bulletin has also decided to widen its remit to include worrying about climate change, to the point where it counts the famous NASA scientist and anti-carbon activist James Hansen among its board.

Now, in the judgement of the Bulletin, the risk to humanity is as great as it was during the great confrontations of the Cold War, when a strategic nuclear weapons exchange appeared likely in the immediate future.

Comment

While it is true that the US and Russia are seeking to modernise their atomic armouries, this is mainly because the existing weapons are mostly very old. Realistically it's plain that the risk of global thermonuclear war is nothing like as severe right now as it was during various periods of the Cold War.

Therefore it's plain that most of the renewed menace indicated by the Clock is deemed to emanate from climate change. The assertion is being made that humanity, right now this instant, faces the same level of danger from climate change that it would face from the imminent detonation of many tens of thousands of nuclear warheads all over the planet.

That assertion will probably not do much to change the minds of those who tend to see climate-change campaigners as a bit prone to alarmism. ®