Desperate for Doomsday
The Herald reports:
The “doomsday clock” symbolising how close humanity is to destruction ticked one second closer to midnight Tuesday as concerns on nuclear war, climate and public health were jolted by US President Donald Trump’s return.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which set up the clock at the start of the Cold War, shifted the clock to 89 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been, a week after Trump’s inauguration.
The clock was last moved to 90 seconds to midnight over nuclear-armed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It was originally placed at seven minutes to midnight in 1947.
“At 89 seconds to midnight, the doomsday clock stands closer to catastrophe than at any moment in its history,” said former Colombian president and Nobel Peace laureate Juan Manuel Santos, chair of The Elders, a group of major former leaders.
The Doomsday Clock has become a pathetic joke. It once was very useful – a sole focus on how close the world was to global thermonuclear war, which could well be planet ending. During the age of the USSR, the clock moved between two minutes to midnight and twelve minutes to midnight. It moved rationally in response to events around treaties and the like.
After the USSR collapsed, the clock sensibly moved to 17 minutes before midnight, and really should have stayed there. The chance of a planet ending nuclear war basically ended in 1990. But they felt they had to stay relevant so they started adding in climate change (this is a society of atomic scientists) and other issues and since 2010 have gone from six minutes to midnight to 100 seconds before midnight in 2020. They then struck a new problem – they used to shift it by minutes or half minutes but they had moved the clock so close to midnight, they couldn’t keep doing that so in 2023 they moved it by ten seconds and in 2025 by one second, which is just pathetic. As if 90 seconds vs 89 seconds is meaningful. It’s just a desperate cry for attention, rather than a useful signal to anyone.
Media keep reporting it, because it was legitimately useful for many decades. But now it should just be ignored as the mutterings of cranky doomsayers.