Doomsday Clock now irrelevant

The Herald reports:

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists says Earth is now closer to human-caused doomsday than it has been in more than 30 years because of global warming and nuclear weaponry. But other experts say that’s much too gloomy.

The US advocacy group founded by the creators of the atomic bomb moved their famed “Doomsday Clock” ahead two minutes today. It said the world is now three minutes from a catastrophic midnight, instead of five minutes.

In the 1970s and the 1980s the Doomsday Clock has relevance. At times the world came close to a superpower conflict that could have destroyed the planet. When I was 15 I recall a survey that around half the people my age thought the world could end in our lifetimes. Today I doubt 1% think that.

Claiming we are at the same risk of extinction as during the cold war is nuts.

They justify this by saying they now include climate change. They are the Atomic Scientists!

“The fact that the Doomsday clock-setters changed their definition of ‘doomsday’ shows how profoundly the world has changed – they have to find a new source of doom because global thermonuclear war is now so unlikely,” Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker wrote in an email.

Exactly.