Rather, the clock is a visual metaphor to warn the public about how close the world is to a potentially civilization-ending catastrophe. All rights reserved.Ĭorrection: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of Nobel laureates on the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ Board of Sponsors.The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists doesn't use the clock to make any real doomsday predictions. ™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. ![]() “You might not feel it because you’re not doing anything, but we know that public engagement moves (a) leader to do things,” she said.įor climate change, look at your daily habits and see if there are small changes you can make in your life such as how often you walk versus drive and how your home is heated, Bronson explained. What can an individual do to turn back time on the clock?ĭon’t underestimate the power of talking about these important issues with your peers, Bronson said. In 2016, the clock was at three minutes before midnight as a result of the Iran nuclear agreement and the Paris climate accord. Bush’s administration signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the Soviet Union. In fact, the hand has moved farthest away from midnight with a whopping 17 minutes before midnight in 1991, when President George H.W. It’s still possible to move the clock back with bold, concrete actions. At the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson cited the Doomsday Clock when talking about the climate crisis the world is facing, Bronson noted.īronson said she hopes people will discuss whether they agree with their decision and have fruitful talks about what the driving forces of the change are. When a new time is set on the clock, people listen, she said. If the clock is able to do that, then Bronson views it as a success. The clock’s time isn’t meant to measure threats, but rather to spark conversation and encourage public engagement in scientific topics like climate change and nuclear disarmament. “So we never really want to get there and we won’t know it when we do.” “When the clock is at midnight, that means there’s been some sort of nuclear exchange or catastrophic climate change that’s wiped out humanity,” she said. The clock has never reached midnight, and Rachel Bronson, Bulletin president and CEO, hopes it never will. What happens if the clock reaches midnight? “While I wish we could go back to talking about minutes to midnight instead of seconds, unfortunately that no longer reflects reality,” she told CNN. What has always been important is the movement of the clock, not its absolute value.”Įvery model has constraints, said Eryn MacDonald, analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Global Security Program, adding that the Bulletin has made thoughtful decisions each year on how to get the people’s attention about existential threats and the required action. ![]() “It is clearly not a quantifiable scientific assessment, more of a qualitative one. “Now, it ticks in seconds it used to be minutes,” Krauss told CNN. Each year, he said, as the clock nears midnight, scientists would have to gauge how much available “real estate” is left before deciding on how much farther to move the clock. Theoretical physicist and former member of the Bulletin’s Board of Sponsors Lawrence Krauss said it can be difficult to take the clock’s results seriously since it’s been ticking dangerously close to the end of civilization in the last few decades. ![]() Still, he adds it “remains an important rhetorical device that reminds us, year after year, of the tenuousness of our current existence on this planet.” Mann, climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University, told CNN, highlighting that the clock’s framing combines different types of risk that have different characteristics and occur in different timescales. Although the clock has been an effective wake-up call when it comes to reminding people about the cascading crises the planet is facing, some have questioned the 75-year-old clock’s usefulness.
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