Is Doomsday Nearer?

WASHINGTON, D.C.: In 2015, unchecked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations, and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity, and world leaders have failed to act with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from potential catastrophe. These failures of political leadership endanger every person on Earth.

The statement above underlines the most recent shuffling of needles on the imaginary but interesting Clock devised by some scientists who have been apprehensive of man-made and other disasters looming over the planet. What they predict is symbolic of the Armageddon that the world is moving towards, thanks to all those nuclear tensions, and environmental apocalypse.

In 2015, the Clock’s hand moves forward to three minutes to midnight. This symbolic chronology instrument has been maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1947 and its movements are significant as the closer to a setting of midnight it gets, the closer it is estimated that a global disaster will occur.

The board has added a streak of great urgency this time with the announcement underling that the probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board has cited unchecked climate change and global nuclear weapons modernization as the basis for their decision to move the minute hand of the historic Doomsday Clock forward two minutes.

The shift of the Doomsday Clock hands to three minutes to midnight is the first such adjustment to be made in three years.

So if the tick-tock in your mind about the Clock and its radius has already started, here’s a quick primer:

What is Doomsday Clock?

It is not an actual clock but is kind of a Noah’s intuition alarm bell. It attempts to keep hinting the world of a countdown warning of possible political related global catastrophes like a nuclear war or climate change emergency. It has reportedly been maintained since 1947 by the members of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, advised by the Governing Board and the Board of Sponsors, including 18 Nobel Laureates. So, it’s simple- the closer these folks set the Clock to midnight, the closer some key scientists around us are supposedly believing that the world is to global disaster.

Where does it toll?

It hangs on a wall in a Bulletin's office in the University of Chicago, as per some accounts.

What makes it tick?

This could have started when the Chicago Atomic Scientists participated in the Manhattan Project. After Nagasaki, the co-founder Hyman Goldsmith was compelled to think of taking a collective idea forward and asked artist Martyl Langsdorf to design a cover for the magazine's June 1947 issue. It was way back in 1947, probably because of and during the Cold War, when the Clock was started at seven minutes to midnight and was subsequently advanced or rewound per the state of the world and nuclear war prospects. Its setting is handled by the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. What is interesting is that the Clock is not set and reset in real time as events occur; but the huddle of scientists and wise-men instead respond to each and every crisis as it happens. Possibly ensuing meetings that the Science and Security Board do twice annually to discuss global events in a deliberative manner.

Does the Clock move only forward?

No. In 1947, the initial setting of the Doomsday Clock was done and soon afterwards, in 1949 it moved 4 steps, when the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, officially starting the nuclear arms race.

But in 1960, it reversed 5 steps, in response to a perception of increased scientific cooperation and public understanding of the dangers of nuclear weapons (as well as political actions taken to avoid "massive retaliation") when the United States and Soviet Union cooperated.

It rewinded five steps back in 1963 too, when the United States and Soviet Union signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty, making an effort towards limiting atmospheric nuclear testing. In 1969, three steps back for Clock happen, when almost every nation of the world, barring India, Pakistan, and Israel, signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

However, since 1995, it has only moved forward mostly, like in 1998, when Both India (Pokhran-II) and Pakistan (Chagai-I) tested nuclear weapons or when the United States and Russia ran into difficulties in further reducing stockpiles. or in 2006, after North Korea tested a nuclear weapon in 2006.

In 2012, lack of global political action to address global climate change, nuclear weapons stockpiles, the potential for regional nuclear conflict, and nuclear power safety pushed the clock one step forward and the latest developments in 2015 are showing two steps forward for reasons like global climate change, nuclear weapon stockpiles and geo-political tiffs.

So far, the safest point on the Clock has been spotted in 1991, when the clock was moved to 11.43 p.m. or 17 minutes to midnight. Notably, the clock gained several minutes after the U.S. and the Soviet Union signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in the same year. As to the riskiest spot, it was in 1953, when the clock was set to 11.58 p.m. or just 2 minutes to midnight aligning to the testing of thermonuclear devices by the U.S. and the Soviet Union, within nine months of one another.

Did someone design it specifically?

After Martyl L, wife of Manhattan Project research associate and Szilárd petition signatory Alexander Langsdorf, Jr., it was in January, 2007, that designer Michael Bierut, who was on the Bulletin's Governing Board, redesigned the Clock to give it a more modern feel.

Martyl Langsdorf, who also worked in various media including painting, printmaking, drawing, murals and stained-glass design, apparently made the leap from the art world into the controversy over atomic bombs through her husband, Alexander Langsdorf Jr., who was a nuclear scientist and during World War II. He reportedly helped develop the atomic bomb, then joined other scientists in trying to persuade President Truman not to drop it on Japan. He was significant to have helped to start the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the advocacy group formed in 1945 by Manhattan Project scientists to warn the public of the dangers of nuclear weapons and power.

The design of the Doomsday Clock entails four dots and two lines also evoke the traditional imagery of the apocalypse (the cry at midnight) and the countdown to zero hour, as reckoned by some experts.

"It's such an intuitively tension-building image," graphic designer Michael Bierut, had uttered when updating Langsdorf's design in 2007.

Why is the Clock being touched again?

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 17 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.

As per a press statement shared, in unveiling the change to the Doomsday Clock, Kennette Benedict, executive director of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said: “Today, unchecked climate change and a nuclear arms race resulting from modernization of huge arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity. And world leaders have failed to act with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from potential catastrophe. These failures of leadership endanger every person on Earth. Based on their observations, the members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board find conditions in the world to be so threatening that they are moving the hands of the Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight. It is now 3 minutes to midnight.”

Sivan Kartha, a member of the Science and Security Board, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and senior scientist, Stockholm Environment Institute, added “Global greenhouse gas emission rates are now 50 per cent higher than they were in 1990. Emission rates have risen since 2000 by more than in the previous three decades combined. Investments have continued to pour into fossil fuel infrastructure at a rate that exceeds $1 trillion per year, with additional hundreds of billions of dollars in continued fossil fuel subsidies. We can and must turn this around.”

As to the subject of Nuclear stress-o-meter, Sharon Squassoni, a member of the Science and Security Board, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and director and senior fellow at the Proliferation Prevention Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies, drills it as follows: “Since the end of the Cold War, there has been cautious optimism about the ability of nuclear weapon states to keep the nuclear arms race in check and to walk back slowly from the precipice of nuclear destruction. That optimism has essentially evaporated in the face of two trends: sweeping nuclear weapons modernization programs and disarmament machinery that has ground to a halt. Although the United States and Russia no longer have the tens of thousands of nuclear weapons they had during the Cold War, the pace of reduction has slowed dramatically in recent years, well before the crisis in Crimea. From 2009 to 2013, the Obama administration cut only 309 warheads from the stockpile.”

What do scientists want to convey?

As per the Board: Despite some modestly positive developments in the climate change arena in the past year, reflecting continued advancement of renewable energy technologies, current efforts are entirely insufficient to prevent a catastrophic warming of Earth. Absent a dramatic course correction, the countries of the world will have emitted enough carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by the end of this century to profoundly transform Earth's climate, harming millions upon millions of people and threatening many key ecological systems on which civilization relies.”

At the same time, efforts to reduce world nuclear arsenals have stalled. The disarmament process has ground to a halt, with the United States and Russia embarking on massive programs to modernize their nuclear triads—thereby undermining existing nuclear weapons treaties—and other nuclear weapons holders joining in this expensive and extremely dangerous modernization craze, it reiterates.

Richard Somerville, a member of the Science and Security Board, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and a distinguished professor emeritus and research professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, mentions: “Efforts at reducing global emissions of heat-trapping gases have so far been entirely insufficient to prevent unacceptable climate disruption. We call upon world leaders to take coordinated and rapid action to drastically reduce global emissions of heat-trapping gases, especially carbon dioxide. We also urge the citizens of the world to demand action from their leaders. This threat looms over all of humanity. We all need to respond now, while there is still time.”

How exactly?

The statement from the Board includes the following recommended steps:

* Take actions that would cap greenhouse gas emissions at levels sufficient to keep average global temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.

* Dramatically reduce proposed spending on nuclear weapons modernization programs.

* Re-energize the disarmament process, with a focus on results.

* Deal now with the nuclear waste problem.

Do critics agree?

The keepers of the Doomsday Clock have also come under criticism from time to time over many aspects like: the legitimacy of their authority to pronounce judgment regarding clock settings; the ability and level of precision for climate modeling and other forecasting theories; their degree of relevance and potency in auguring political events, such as nuclear wars, terrorist attacks and missile testing, and their implications. This of course is a different bunch of naysayers, and we have not started talking about hordes of those who call Climate-Change threat itself a hoax.