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. The last time the Doomsday Clock was at three minutes to midnight was 1983, when "U.S.-Soviet relations were at their iciest," according to the Bulletin.
Since its creation in 1947, the Doomsday Clock has been adjusted only 18 times, ranging from two minutes before midnight in 1953 to 17 minutes before midnight in 1991. The last time the Doomsday Clock minute hand moved was in January 2012, when the Clock's minute hand was pushed ahead one minute from six to five minutes before midnight.
The final paragraph of the statement from the Board warns: "In 2015, with the Clock hand moved forward to three minutes to midnight, the board feels compelled to add, with a sense of great urgency: 'The probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon.'"
These failures of political leadership endanger every person on Earth." The opening paragraph of the statement from the Board reads as follows: "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.
#Doomsday 3 minutes to midnight full
The full statement from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board - in consultation with its Board of Sponsors that includes 17 Nobel Prize laureates - is available online at. The Board also outlined action steps that will need to be taken "very soon" in order to avert catastrophe. The shift of the Doomsday Clock hands to three minutes to midnight is the first such adjustment to be made in three years. 22, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ - Warning that "the probability of global catastrophe is very high" unless quick action is taken, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board today 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. See the full statement from the Science and Security Board on the 2018 time of the Doomsday Clock.WASHINGTON, Jan. They can seize the opportunity to make a safer and saner world. They can demand action to reduce the existential threat of nuclear war and unchecked climate change. They can insist on facts, and discount nonsense. Leaders react when citizens insist they do so, and citizens around the world can use the power of the internet to improve the long-term prospects of their children and grandchildren. But there is a flip side to the abuse of social media. The world has seen the threat posed by the misuse of information technology and witnessed the vulnerability of democracies to disinformation.
The opportunity to reduce the danger is equally clear. The warning the Science and Security Board now sends is clear, the danger obvious and imminent. It is two minutes to midnight, but the Doomsday Clock has ticked away from midnight in the past, and during the next year, the world can again move it further from apocalypse. The failure of world leaders to address the largest threats to humanity’s future is lamentable-but that failure can be reversed.
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