The Doomsday Clock Is Moved Closer To Midnight 313
Harperdog writes "The Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock from 6 minutes to midnight to 5 minutes to midnight. The Board deliberated on the decision and came to the conclusion based on a variety of events: failure on climate policy, Fukushima, nuclear proliferation, etc. This article is a good explanation of the policy decision. Lawrence Krauss said, 'As we see it, the major challenge at the heart of humanity's survival in the 21st century is how to meet energy needs for economic growth in developing and industrial countries without further damaging the climate, exposing people to loss of health and community, and without risking further spread of nuclear weapons, and in fact setting the stage for global reductions.'"
Zeno (Score:5, Insightful)
This is so stupid. I'm a lefty eco groovy person, but this is just pathetic. Almost as sad as Heston's "From my cold dead hands" battlecry.
It just puts emphasis on the moonbats on the left, and ammo for Faux News, rather than addressing the issues in a non sensationalist way.
Sigh.
Re:Zeno (Score:5, Insightful)
They're just trying to stay relevant. We all forgot about them when the Cold War ended, and they crave attention again.
Re:Zeno (Score:5, Insightful)
They're just trying to stay relevant. We all forgot about them when the Cold War ended, and they crave attention again.
You may have been joking/snarky/whatever, I'm not sure; but in all seriousness - I'd completely forgot about these guys and their "doomsday clock" until I saw this Slashdot story!
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We've all been too busy battling manbearpig to forget about all those nuclear weapons from the 1970s that are supposedly on "hair-triggers"
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Re:Zeno (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe not ours but is life really defined by humans?
Yep, it really is. I mean, who will be around to define it after we're gone?
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Maybe not ours but is life really defined by humans?
Yep, it really is. I mean, who will be around to define it after we're gone?
Eloi and Morlocks, I'd imagine.
Re:Zeno (Score:4, Informative)
Depends how we go. Triggering an ice age could leave some descendants of the great apes around, but as a family the great apes have been a pretty dismal failure with only 7 species in 4 genera. I'd be pretty surprised if any survive. Triggering excessive heating might even be worse for large animals. Nuclear exchange followed by nuclear winter would probably get rid of large species. I would guess your best bet is a small burrowing omnivore. Temperatures underground might be moderated with the possibility of better access to fresh water. Once the climate stabilizes for a while we've got half a billion years of viability left in the planet, so something we would consider intelligent might evolve.
Of course if we trigger a runaway greenhouse, the point is moot. If there are bacteria in mantle rocks or deep crust, they might survive for a while. Once the water is baked out of the mantle and plate tectonics stops, that's all she wrote.
People who like humans might consider either one to be sad.
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Sure, but their absence would preclude it. Just sayin'.
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You can't compare to Rome because when Rome collapse there was NOBODY to step in, thus the dark ages, I'm sure a few come to mind nowadays if the US collapsed, but a recession doesn't equal a social collapse. I seriously wonder what would happen if the US got nukes launched at it though, I don't think its a scenario anybody has really thought through. We definitely wouldn't want to launch ours back to avoid MAD, I wonder as to the state of US missile defense systems, esp since the 2002 exit from the Anti-
Re:Zeno (Score:5, Interesting)
I seriously wonder what would happen if the US got nukes launched at it ... (snip)... We definitely wouldn't want to launch ours back to avoid MAD.
Do you know how MAD works? The whole point is that we are very public about being batshit crazy, and we definitely WOULD launch ours back. Lots of them. So launching a nuke at the US is just a slightly indirect way of committing mass suicide. MAD is insane logic, no question about it - but it's been a big part of keeping the US and USSR from using nukes on each other for over half a century. As insane as it might be, it works.
There's even a MAD argument AGAINST missile defense - as long as the US can't defeat incoming missiles, we're very unlikely to start a nuclear war. Likewise for Russia or whoever. But if anyone COULD defeat missiles, they wouldn't fear a nuclear war nearly as much, and they might even be tempted to start one. So a workable missile defense arguably makes the overall situation MORE dangerous, not less.
Now granted, MAD works better when your enemy is a large country who values their lives - it gets a bit iffy when your enemy is a small band of religious wackos who don't much care whether they're dead or alive, as long as they've made their point.
Re:Zeno (Score:4, Interesting)
Now granted, MAD works better when your enemy is a large country who values their lives - it gets a bit iffy when your enemy is a small band of religious wackos who don't much care whether they're dead or alive, as long as they've made their point.
MAD only works when it's really mutually assured destruction, and said destruction is complete (or nearly so, enough for all practical purposes). You can't have MAD between U.S. and Iran, or between U.S. and DPRK, because those countries couldn't significantly hurt U.S. with what they have - at best they could nuke a city or two (and even then that assumes some efficient delivery vehicle), whereas U.S. can nuke them out of existence entirely.
Re:Zeno (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Zeno (Score:4, Insightful)
The trick is being able to nuke in response even after you are nuked first. If all you have is, say, half a dozen ICBMs, then your enemy just nukes their locations with their first strike, and that's it. Not to mention that a few ICBMs can be shot down quite easily.
That's why early on sheer numbers were very important for MAD - you had to have enough strategic bombers that at least some would get in the air and get through to enemy's cities; and later on, subs became important as an effectively invincible retaliatory strike mechanism.
Re:Zeno (Score:4, Informative)
AFAIK, neither nation has ICBMs - as such, the device would have to be used as in a conventional bombing attack: delivered and brought to explosion on-site.
It would be very effective in killing as many people as possible in one swoop - but ultimately lead to an even more brutal strike-back.
In a way, this is some sort of MAD.
KJU and MA know this - they have to appear just crazy enough to let us think they could do it - but without actually painting themselves into a corner in such a way that they have no other option.
It's much more complicated and much more dangerous than the game US and USSR used to play. It's a bit like the Cuban Missile crisis - but performed twice a year...
But moving the Doomsday clock one minute is OK IMO. That DPRK/Iran theater is just a distraction from the economic problems we have.
MAD (Score:4, Insightful)
Just to recap, "MAD" stands for "Mutually Assured Destruction." If the enemy is a small band of religious wackos they can't get enough nukes to destroy a major country. One city, sure; ten cities, maybe; destroy the country, no way. So they can do some damage but not destroy their target. Likewise they are hard to locate and easy to disperse. You'd be surprised how useless nukes are against a moving enemy whom you can't locate to within a few miles' radius. So the whole MAD strategy becomes irrelevant. Neither side can destroy the other but they can nuke each other ... maybe multiple times. This is why nuclear proliferation is scary: it changes the stable MAD scenario to an unstable one where there is no deterrent to small-scale nuclear exchange.
Re:Zeno (Score:5, Informative)
Holy shit people, The Day After Tomorrow is not a documentary, and shame on all the deluded twits modding you up.
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Something that worries me about what we are doing.
How much oil/fossil resources have we used? How much of the readily available metal ores have we used? Fossil fuels, in time, could redevelop. But the metals? The coppers, the iron, the rare earth metals wouldn't just magically regenerate over time. We are screwing any like successors to the human race (if we fail) in how easy they can develop their own early metalurgy.
We might not be the only sentient, science producing species that evolves on this wor
Re:Zeno (Score:5, Insightful)
Aside from a few million pounds (?) of it we have shot into space, all the metal that was here is still here. At some point, when the naturally available materials are simply too costly to mine, someone will figure out a good way to mine the landfills and dig those "gone" materials back up.
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Agreed. Iran isn't friendly to the West, but it's an advanced country where many (not all) have a pretty decent quality of life and enjoy far more freedoms than those in NK. Iranian people know something about the outside world and is free to travel to (most) other countries. And it seems many do - bumped into quite a lot of Iranians around the place while travelling (particularly in Asia and Europe) and they seem articulate and well-educated.
Compare that to NK where most cannot travel and you are fed, lite
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They're just trying to stay relevant. We all forgot about them when the Cold War ended, and they crave attention again.
That assumes they were once relevant.
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I don't think anybody takes it serious, do they?
Another relic from the cold war...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock [wikipedia.org]
Re:Zeno (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Zeno (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Zeno (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Zeno (Score:5, Interesting)
Spitballing here, so I freely acknowledge there are probably many issues I haven't thought through...
How about we sell lots of safe nuclear generators to Iran? I am interested in nuclear power because it has a tremendous potential for meeting energy demands, but I also acknowledge that creating safe nuclear plants that aren't a precursor to nuclear weapons requires a high level of technical expertise. The US and China and other highly developed countries have the expertise but face a lot of public opinion inertia. Maybe we should try to produce the generators in a box (google Hyperion) and sell them to Iran with built in safety precautions. Alternatively, set up a treaty to develop thorium reactors there, which I believe are hard or impossible to weaponize.
Either way, we could help them meet their energy goals while protecting the global interest of preventing them from developing weapons. As a side effect, we would get to use the pro-nuclear government there as a safety proving ground for new technologies. They want to take the risks and we need to show that the new technologies are safe and feasible, so we have coinciding interest, which can make a strong bond for peaceful trade.
Re:Zeno (Score:4, Interesting)
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I'd say we can consider 11:59 to be reserved for two nuclear powers directly engaging in a (conventional) hot war with one another, or something equally risky in terms of chances of nukes flying. It's not like it only ever moves closer to midnight.
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The only thing they should be caring about is the fatty (a little ironic considering the food shortage issues North Korea has been facing) in charge of North Korea and those nuclear but jobs in Iran
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Climate change is in there because since the fall of the Soviet Union, no-shit world-ending catastrophe just isn't likely. Putin, the Chinese communist leaders, and Obama are all too busy enjoying wealth and power to blow it all up. Same goes for England and France. The lesser nuclear powers don't have what it takes to destroy the world. So to attempt to regains some relevance for the doomsday clock, they threw climate change in there.
Re:Zeno (Score:5, Insightful)
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Couldn't it be argued that climate change would tend to increase the likelihood of military conflict, and thus the risk of nuclear war? That's what I assumed they meant when I saw that in the summary.
Re:Zeno (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is it part of any political spectrum? what kind of a US centric shitpost is that? I'd say the doomsday clock is significant at doing what it does for the reasons it does, which are not at all political.
How about the fact that the world is generally on a decline? Economies falling due to greed and corruption, change being stifled, advancing our society via positive means being directly subverted by greed. That isn't part of $political-stance and is a part of that is that being on a decline long enough does equal significant military outcomes of negative effect.
While it is labeled as doomsday, it is a honest enough indicator of "how's the world doing overall?".
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Because, in the US, the rightwingers don't believe in science.
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This is so stupid. I'm a lefty eco groovy person, but this is just pathetic. Almost as sad as Heston's "From my cold dead hands" battlecry.
It just puts emphasis on the moonbats on the left, and ammo for Faux News, rather than addressing the issues in a non sensationalist way.
Sigh.
I prefer the battlecry, "From my cold dead ass!" a la The Matrix.
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Do you really think that scientists only have a political agenda and no advancements have been done by them? Because that would be hilarious!
You realize that science is the definition of learning about the truth of this world, and that most of the advancements known to man have been done by science (and so by entrepreneours, industrial engineers, theoretical physicists, and many others), right? A scientists is somebody who does science.
If a few of them *do* have a political agenda and don't do "real science
The answer is clear and obvious (Score:2)
Pixie dust.
Listen to us. (Score:2, Funny)
We have a doomsday clock.
Oblig. (Score:5, Funny)
The whole point of a doomsday clock... is LOST if you keep it a secret!
WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL THE WORLD, EH?
Eventually (Score:5, Insightful)
Sooner or later they're going to box themselves into a corner - they only have so many discrete 1-minute steps they can take before they find that the world is more fucked up than they thought possible, but somehow still carrying on.
Then what? Leave it at 1-minute to midnight, or edge ever closer in smaller and smaller increments?
Re:Eventually (Score:5, Funny)
"Today, the Doomsday Clock moved from 11:59:59.98 to 11:59:59.99, signaling that once again, scientists have proved that there are no simple metaphors that can't be abused beyond the point of utility."
Re:Eventually (Score:5, Insightful)
"A symbolic clock is as emotionally reassuring as a picture of oxygen to a drowning man." -Dr. Manhattan
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Now we just need Doc Manhattan to start shredding the riff from Iron Maiden's "Two Minutes to Midnight" while riding a bomb down and i think we'll have all the pop culture references covered
Re:Eventually (Score:5, Informative)
You are aware that sometimes the clock moves AWAY from midnight?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Doomsday_Clock_graph.svg [wikipedia.org]
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Re:Eventually (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is exactly not the behaviour you would expect from a clock. The metaphor is flawed.
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"Doomsday Yardstick" doesn't exactly have the same ring to it.
Re:Eventually (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is exactly not the behaviour you would expect from a clock. The metaphor is flawed.
Flawed? Please, I'll take their clock any day. So it moves backward on average 1-2 times per decade. Big deal. My clock has to do it once per year.
Re:Eventually (Score:4, Interesting)
You are aware that sometimes the clock moves AWAY from midnight?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Doomsday_Clock_graph.svg [wikipedia.org]
Interesting graph. It shows that the world was a safer place in the early sixties when the Cuban Missile Crisis almost started World War III.
How many simultaneous nuclear power plant failures would it take to end the world in the same way a WW III would have done?
What is the probability of all those failures happening now vs. the probability of a WW III happening in 1962?
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It shows that the world was a safer place in the early sixties when the Cuban Missile Crisis almost started World War III.
Sure, because there was a charismatic Democrat in the White House. The "Bulletin of the Chemists" is a purely political organization that has always pushed a moderate Leftist agenda. As political lobbying organizations go they are relatively benign, but they should be recognized for exactly what they are: a group of moderate lefties who figured they could avoid defending their policies on their merits if instead they distracted everyone by "OMG we're all gonna die if you don't follow my plan" rhetoric.
Mu
Re:Eventually (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that this move is particularly disingenuous and calls into question the group's whole integrity considering that the real, global effect of Fukushima has been nation after nation scaling back and drawing down nuclear power. I personally think it's retarded, but nonetheless it should be counted as one the most major changes in direction in the nuclear power industry in a generation, and this group thinks it has the opposite effect? There's just no pleasing some people, obviously.
Re:Eventually (Score:4, Interesting)
Hong Kong residents living in cages [weirdasianews.com]
China's One Child policy, and millions waiting for days in swamped transportation arteries [rottentomatoes.com] for a shot at seeing their families once per year.
The downfall of multiple governments triggered by rising food prices [internatio...wpoint.org]
The German quest for lebensraum [wikipedia.org] from 1939-1945.
Now, you could argue those are all matters of resource allocation, rather than shortages per se. But what I see in the world is that as resources become scarce, they are distributed less equitably, not more.
Re:Eventually (Score:4, Interesting)
Fertility rate has seen massive drops in almost every nation over the last several decades, so China's draconian measures are redundant to the world norm.
Blaming Arab Spring on food prices is utter nonsense. All the nations "afflicted" with these revolutions had one thing in common: single-party dictatorships in power for decades. People were not fighting over the price of rice, they were fighting because these states had imprisoned and killed their family members. That's what's happening in Syria right now. The most generous way this could be bent to your perspective is that it was the government response to popular discontent about economic issues that catalyzed these revolutions. But where these economic issues have afflicted states with more open governments revolutions have not occurred. It is the combination of poor government and poor economic conditions, not economic conditions alone, that result in these events.
The German situation was entirely political and doctrinal. Germany had in fact completely rectified its post-WWI economic issues before the opening of WWII. The whole German population could have lived in comfort and peace if it weren't for the political motives of Hitler and the rest of NSDAP leadership. (This is leaving out the more or less imminent thread presented by Stalin, where there is generally a consensus among historians that if Hitler hadn't started the war, Stalin would have in his stead.)
So yes, none of these constitute Malthusian catastrophe, especially since none have impacted more than a nation here or there (WWII I don't even count for the reason above.)
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The unaddressed aspect in this is that these must necessarily be temporary problems brought about by logistical failings, otherwise no amount of government overturni
Re:Eventually (Score:5, Informative)
Re Fukushima: If you read the statement you'd see that they find the problem arising from Fukushima is that it caused a reduction in the amount of nuclear power being used, leading to increased reliance on burning fossil fuels.
They'd like safer reactor designs, so more people use nuclear power.
So what's that about integrity? You complain about them, without reading what they wrote?
Re:Eventually (Score:4, Insightful)
Well perhaps the clock metaphor isn't doing them service anymore if the majority of reactions are to the metaphor than the message.
Ultimately the point is, "we're going to pollute ourselves into the stone age." If that bit is being lost because the clock metaphor is becoming trite, then perhaps they should look for a new analogy.
This being slashdot, I think you know what I'm driving at...
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This being slashdot, I think you know what I'm driving at...
I believe I do. Car analogy time! That's what you were driving at, right?
So the group of nuclear scientists should instead be adjusting the AC on the car of civilisation, to represent whether nuclear tensions have cooled off or heated up.
Because of course if you turn the heater up too high, chances are you'll get all irritable, fly off the handle at some idiot who doesn't know how to drive, and launch an ICBM strike against that asshole who keeps tailgating you.
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Well sometimes like during the cuban missile crisis, it could have all been over at 7 minutes to midnight.
I liked their reasons much better:
"It is five minutes to midnight. Two years ago, it appeared that world leaders might address the truly global threats that we face. In many cases, that trend has not continued or been reversed. For that reason, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is moving the clock hand one minute closer to midnight, back to its time in 2007."
At some time in the future the world migh
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One one hand I agree with you, sure the world may have looked pretty bad in 1947, but starting it at 5 to didn't really leave them much room for if the situation got worse.
On the other hand, it all depends on what you mean by "carrying on." The world "carried on" through 1939-1945, but that'd probably be at midnight on the clock.
Nothing Scientific about it (Score:2)
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Politics is no place for nuclear weapons policy! :)
(I mean like, you're right, but you're expressing an opprobrium that is totally unjustified. Some dudes say nukes aren't a problem, some dudes do, some dudes sell bomb shelters and iodine tablets, some dudes draw pictures of clocks. Nuclear power is intensively political, and the BAS doesn't really make any pretensions to scientific proof. That's why they're "concerned" in the first place.)
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I don't think they ever claimed that the number of minutes on the Doomsday Clock was a scientifically calculated probability or anything. Even back in 1947, it was intended as a symbolic statement. The only thing that's arguably changed is that it's outlived its usefulness and is no longer an effective statement in the way it used to be.
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so close! (Score:5, Funny)
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Fuck that waiting, I'm going to play it right...
now.
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already on it [youtube.com].
uh huh (Score:2, Offtopic)
Yeah yeah right right.
Nice way to distract everyone from SOPA isn't it?
pre-RTFA Reactions (Score:2)
'As we see it, the major challenge at the heart of humanity's survival in the 21st century is how to meet energy needs for economic growth in developing and industrial countries without further damaging the climate, exposing people to loss of health and community, and without risking further spread of nuclear weapons, and in fact setting the stage for global reductions.'
I've held a very similar opinion for many, many years (as have many others, I'm certain). After reading this quote, I had two immediate reactions, one hopeful and one cynical:
1. I'd like to think that safe, clean fusion power is just around the corner. I've become less convinced of this over the years but am still holding out hope. Can anything else provide the power levels and the energy densities required to sustain a technological urban society's advancement on the Kardashev scale?
2. And we wonder whe
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I'm more inclined to say that this implicit assumption of 'infinite growth' is more part of the problem than anything else. Endless growth is the paradigm of the cancer cell, and not a good model for civilization.
News for nerds? (Score:2)
I was going to ask:
How is this "News for nerds - stuff that matters?"
But it looks like /. dropped that tagline. And a good thing, too, since this is just crap.
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Maybe because the clock is run by nerd types? One of the few truly public venues where nerds get to tell the rest of the world how badly they're screwing things up...
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I realized, belatedly, that it is still in the title. Used to be prominent in the page - as I recall.
Mission creep (Score:3, Funny)
I have it on authority, that next year's doomsday criteria will include sasquatch sightings.
Iran.... (Score:2)
Sounds like... (Score:2)
Sounds like someone needs their pet social experiment to be funded.
Safe for a century and a half (Score:5, Interesting)
So, a doomsday clock that started at 11:53 in 1947 is now at 11:55... based upon that rate of advancement (2 minutes per 65 years, obviously ignoring any other adjustments), we should be safe for over a century and a half. I've heard far more alarming predictions than that. Nothing to see here.
Re:Safe for a century and a half (Score:5, Funny)
So, a doomsday clock that started at 11:53 in 1947 is now at 11:55... based upon that rate of advancement (2 minutes per 65 years, obviously ignoring any other adjustments), we should be safe for over a century and a half. I've heard far more alarming predictions than that. Nothing to see here.
Personally I find it very alarming that a group of nuclear scientists can't even make a clock that doesn't work at a consistent rate. Perhaps what they need is to invent an atomic clock ;-)
Well, they're right. (Score:2)
We managed not to incinerate ourselves (yet) in nuclear fire, but we sure do seem to be doing a heck of a job of destroying the ecosystem that we are a part of, soiling our nests, devouring our resources like locust on steroids, and generally acting with all the foresight of bacteria in a sealed Petri dish.
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Assuming that you ignore the fact that 'the environment' in Western nations is vastly better off than it was in 1947. We don't get thousands of people dying in a London smog these days, for example.
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Maybe Prometheus' Challenge had nothing to do with atomics. Maybe all along it's been how we can stop ourselves from roasting the planet to a cinder.
Unaware (Score:2)
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It also monitors exploding psionic squid. [wikia.com]
I will laugh... (Score:2)
When the clock strikes midnight and nothing happens....
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Professional pessimists (Score:2)
If they had sex with a supermodel they'd be complaining that it ruined their sex life forever.
Stupid PR (Score:2)
Fukushima might have been a disaster, but it's not something that can cause the end of the world. What's the point in including it?
Politics in Science (Score:3, Insightful)
There is nothing scientific about this clock, and most scientists would surely admit it. It is political and is meant to sway public opinion. So what we have here are either a) fake scientists, b) real scientists shooting themselves in the foot, or c) politicians.
The whole point of the scientific method is to be grounded on evidence and be void of any political, social, or even personal biases. I have nothing against this silly clock, but as long as science lends its name to garbage such as this, science will always have a hard time in politics claiming itself to be scientific.
Yawn. (Score:3)
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BST
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BST
More like BS, methinks.
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Fucking Carnot cycle, how does it work?
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When this article makes the rounds on Associated Press, it should really help disperse the 2012 apocalypse bullshit.
Trust me the apocalypse topic just will not die .... especially this year.