Chris Schneidmiller
NS&D Monitor
1/22/2016
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on Tuesday will update the minute hand of its famous Doomsday Clock, alerting the world to a greater, easing, or possibly unchanged threat of global annihilation.
Last January, the clock was moved from five minutes to midnight to three minutes, which the Bulletin linked to unrestrained climate change, massive nuclear stockpiles around the world, and ongoing modernization of those arsenals.
The Doomsday Clock was established in 1947 by the publication formed by veterans of the Manhattan Project. The symbolism is clear – the closer the minute hand is to midnight, the closer the world is to doom (at least according to the experts who set the clock; in this case the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board and a Board of Sponsors that features 16 Nobel laureates).
While the focus was long on the nuclear threat, it now also encompasses dangers including climate-changing technologies, developing biotechnologies, and cyberthreats “that could inflict irrevocable harm, whether by intention, miscalculation, or by accident, to our way of life and to the planet,” according to the Bulletin website.
While the press release announcing the clock change gave no specifics on which way it might go, it said “Recent Global Tensions and Climate Change Developments” would be among the factors. The Bulletin specifically noted Cold War-like tensions between the United States and Russia, the threat of climate change, and North Korea’s latest nuclear test earlier this month.
“I would predict they would move it one minute further back from midnight,” predicted nonproliferation expert Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, on Thursday. He cited the recent Paris Agreement, in which close to 200 nations agreed to steps to curb climate change, and the now-implemented Iran nuclear rollback as reasons for at least limited optimism. “This is a safer world now,” Cirincione said.
Tempering that optimism are factors including Russia’s nuclear posture and the recently announced finding that 2015 was globally the hottest year in the historical record, Cirincione added.
James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, forecast the clock would remain steady at three minutes to midnight. “Climate change news is good; nuclear news is bad,” he said by email, specifically citing Russia’s nuclear posture and some worrisome nuclear modernization programs in China, Russia, and the United States.
Acton, though, argued that the Bulletin has pushed the clock too close to midnight in recent years. The Doomsday Clock was previously moved to three minutes to midnight in 1949 and 1984. “I simply don’t accept that the world is as dangerous today as then – although I am in no way an optimist; I am deeply worried about nuclear risks and believe they are increasing,” he stated.
The Bulletin will formally announce the time at 1:30 p.m. EST Tuesday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The event will also be streamed at http://clock.thebulletin.org/2016.
