Time to Stop the ‘Doomsday Clock’. – Lawrence M. Krauss
wsj.com
wsj.com
Is it? I had no idea it was still a thing. I associate it first and foremost with fiction. Specifically, Dr. Strangelove: the campy black comedy that's fifty-six (56) years old.
If pushed, I probably would have guessed it was a real thing from the Cold War. Let me be clear: I couldn't have said with certainty that the Doomsday Clock was a real thing.
I had no idea that it was maintained in 2020. It belongs in the era of Burt Ward in tights. "Time to Stop the 'Doomsday Clock' — Because No One Cares" might be a better title.
https://www.wired.com/2018/03/geeks-guide-doctor-strangelove...
I can recommend Ellsberg's book on nuclear war planning if you have difficulties staying awake at night.
Are you implying it's boring?
Edit: Don't downvote jmkni - my fault for wording things strangely.
[A job where you feel that meetings you attend feel like the Wannsee Conference can't be good.]
"If you have trouble staying awake" would be the opposite, and I'd take it to mean the book is positively terrifying.
According to them we have never been closer to doomsday. Not when the Soviet Union got the atomic bomb, not when North Korea attacked, not during the Cuban missile crisis, not during the wars in the middle East with Israel, not during the Berlin crisis on the Tiananmen square protests, and most recently when the US used conventional warfare against a country that supposedly possessed weapons of mass destruction.
No, right now is much closer. (sarcasm)
In 1980, the American Petroleum Institute correctly predicted the current environmental crisis would happen now.
From the report:
"Timescale for significant impact, very roughly 50 years" "1°C Rise (2005): Barely noticeable" "2.5°C Rise (2038): Major economic consequences, Strong regional dependence" "5°C Rise (2067): Globally Catastrophic effects"
They also predict that climate problems will cause global economic growth to halt in about 2025.
There’s no reason to think the trend lines in the report are suddenly incorrect. In fact, current events are well within the error bars of their model.
Averting it requires billions of people to agree to change course, and so far our leaders are doing nothing to make that happen.
It seems much worse than the nuclear scare to me.
Here’s a HN discussion of the API report:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20325359
Here’s a report from the same organization walking through the math:
https://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/...
Of course, much progress has been made in climate modeling since then, and now we’re more sure we’re screwed. On the other hand, since the report is 40 years old, it’s trivial to go back and confirm their predictions were correct so far.
Of course if we overlay that with Kurzweil's singularity in 2045, then all bets are off. To the extent we take such predictions seriously.
Humanity continues to face two simultaneous existential dangers—nuclear war and climate change—that are compounded by a threat multiplier, cyber-enabled information warfare, that undercuts society’s ability to respond. The international security situation is dire, not just because these threats exist, but because world leaders have allowed the international political infrastructure for managing them to erode.
Continued corruption of the information ecosphere on which democracy and public decision making depend has heightened the nuclear and climate threats. In the last year, many governments used cyber-enabled disinformation campaigns to sow distrust in institutions and among nations, undermining domestic and international efforts to foster peace and protect the planet.
"Closer than ever: It is 100 seconds to midnight"
My question is: if there really is a crisis (e.g. nuclear war threat, climate change, etc.), these days, how do you get the general population to notice and act accordingly without fear mongering? I'm not sure I have a better solution, unfortunately.
I tend not to support fear mongering and typically lean on providing education, but that requires time that some situations don't allot for. In the case of the doomsday clock, it makes some sense. The problem is the fear factor has really disappeared and few today experienced the fear of real nuclear threats like those during the peak of the cold war.
Few even know about the clock, or what it represents, or historically represented.
Few understand the existential dangers humanity is under threat from; those that do shout into a void of apathy, hardly even receiving an echo.
Some are patted on the head with a "That's nice dear..." or worse, met with scorn and anger.
The world has forgotten the we have the literal power to destroy ourselves, to make the planet virtually uninhabitable for humanity, if not most of life, by our acts. Some in power have even had the gall to ask why we shouldn't use these weapons we have, otherwise why have them? Ignorant. Fools.
The only way humanity will learn its lesson is by abject overpowering demonstration. Of course, by then, it will be too late. But the lesson will be learned, in the most harsh manner possible.
>Yet there’s a deeper problem. Not only is the Doomsday Clock unscientific; the factors of its setting are now dominated more by policy questions than scientific ones. The former may be important, but claiming the authority of “atomic scientists” is appropriate only for the latter.
...
>But today the clock’s setting is determined more by concerns about how superpowers can engage in arms-control talks, about potentially reckless statements by world leaders, or about what policies would best reduce carbon emissions. These are important questions, but not ones on which scientists can claim special authority.
There was a time when they did have special knowledge, but as he points out, that time has passed.
Or Einstein: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1947/11/atomic-...
https://www.businessinsider.com/what-if-nuke-nuked-hurricane...
Trump has asked in the past why we have nuclear weapons if we don't use them.
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/03/trump-asks-why-us-cant-use-n...
Trump, during a visit to the war memorial in Hawaii - had no idea what Pearl Harbor was about, at least according to one book:
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-pearl-harbor-memorial-...
You don't believe a man this ignorant about such things, who is "commander in chief" and "carries the nuclear football" - ie, he is in command of our entire nuclear arsenal (let that sink in for a second) - you don't believe that the clock moving on a tweet of his nearly taking us to war (or anything of that nature) isn't a reason for it to move?
Scientists discovered ozone depletion. Scientists discovered what caused depletion. Scientists pushed for a political resolution.
Scientists and politicians can be both scientific and political. In fact, our system is better when they're both.
I love Lawrence's books and some of his speeches. I just don't buy this kind of stuff.
Also, "publicity stunt" is "in the eye of the beholder". Not quantitative and unscientific so meh. If doomsday clocks can get people to take action, they should.
If it was as easy as education - we wouldn't need this post or Lawrence saying what he did. We have a society that shuns education as elitism, anti-capitalist, socilist or whatever they believe.