But, he said a temperature increase of that magnitude was enough to bring the world out of the last ice age, and it will be enough to "radically transform" the Earth's surface in the future. Some people might not feel alarmed when they see those numbers they might normally experience that kind of temperature swing in the course of a single day, Kartha said. "We move the clock hand today to inspire action."įor instance, if nothing is done to reduce the amount of heat-trapping gasses, such as carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere, Earth could be 5 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit (3 to 8 degrees Celsius) warmer by the end of century, said Sivan Kartha, a senior scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute. "We are not saying it is too late to take action but the window for action is closing rapidly," Kennette Benedict, executive director of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said in a news conference this morning in Washington, D.C. Each year, the magazine's board analyzes threats to humanity's survival to decide where the Doomsday Clock's hands should be set.Įxperts on the board said they felt a sense of urgency this year because of the world's ongoing addiction to fossil fuels, procrastination with enacting laws to cut greenhouse gas emissions and slow efforts to get rid of nuclear weapons.
Rather, the clock is a visual metaphor to warn the public about how close the world is to a potentially civilization-ending catastrophe. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists doesn't use the clock to make any real doomsday predictions. It's the first time the clock hands have moved in three years since 2012, the clock had been fixed at 5 minutes to symbolic doom, midnight. 22) to push the minute hand of their iconic "Doomsday Clock" to 11:57 p.m. Frustrated with a lack of international action to address climate change and shrink nuclear arsenals, they decided today (Jan. But it’s moved backwards in the past, and it can today as well.That's the grim outlook from board members of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The bottom line: The Doomsday Clock is as close as it’s ever been to midnight. The complete timeline of the Doomsday Clock is here. 2007, 5 minutes to midnight, for the first time, the Bulletin includes climate change as a reason for moving the hand.1991, 7 minutes to midnight, the Cold War is over and there are hopes for disarmament.1984, 3 minutes to midnight, tensions between the U.S.and Soviet Union signed the Partial Treaty Test Ban. 1953, the last time the clock was at 2 minutes to midnight.1947, the clock debuts at 7 minutes to midnight, to illustrate how urgent addressing nuclear war would be.Notable moments in Doomsday Clock history: Others echoed similar concerns: “We have been lucky to avoid conflict through intentional or accidental means, but recent posturing and the false alarms in Hawaii and Japan show our luck is about to run out if we don’t move quickly,” Beatrice Finn, the executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, said in a statement. “To call the world nuclear situation dire is to understate the danger - and its immediacy,” said Bulletin chairs Lawrence Krauss and Robert Rosner in an op-ed published in The Washington Post. They also cite a dangerous disregard for climate change reflected in the Trump administration, which has initiated some rollbacks of fossil fuel regulations and dropped out of the Paris climate accord. and North Korea trade insults on Twitter. Why they moved it: According to the Bulletin, there has been an escalation of nuclear tension as the leaders of the U.S. These scientists feel the risk of annihilation is as great today as it was then. and Soviet Union had just tested hydrogen bombs. Why it matters: The last time the clock was this close to midnight was in 1953. Originally, it only showed nuclear threats, but in recent years, climate change has moved the clock. The clock was created by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to illustrate how close humans might be to the end of the world.
As of 10am this morning, the Doomsday Clock stood at two minutes to midnight.
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