Posted on 01/16/2014 11:27:07 AM PST by 12th_Monkey
The iconic Doomsday Clock remains poised at five minutes until midnight, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announced today (Jan. 14).
The clock is no doomsday device — rather, it's a visual metaphor for the danger of a "civilization-threatening technological catastrophe." Every year, the board analyzes international threats, particularly nuclear arsenals and climate change, and decides where the minute hand on the Doomsday Clock should rest. The closer it is to midnight, the closer the world is to doom.
"As always, new technologies hold the promise of doing great good, supplying new sources of clean energy, curing disease, and otherwise enhancing our lives. From experience, however, we also know that new technologies can be used to diminish humanity and destroy societies," the board wrote. "We can manage our technology, or become victims of it. The choice is ours, and the Clock is ticking."
The Doomsday Clock is the invention of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, a publication started by some of the researchers who worked on the atomic bomb. The wife of one of these researchers, Martyl Langsdorf, was a painter. In 1947, she illustrated the first Bulletin cover to feature the Doomsday Clock — set at that point at 11:53 p.m.
Langsdorf died in March 2013, but her creation lives on. In January 2012, the Bulletin's board set the minute hand of the clock at 11:55 p.m., one minute closer to midnight than the previous year. The decision was made based on the current state of nuclear arsenals around the globe as well as accidents such as the Fukushima nuclear meltdown that occurred in 2011 after a major earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Biosecurity is also taken into account, with the creation of an airborne strain of H5N1 flu worrying scientists in 2012.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Does anyone know if their is a Doomsday fiscal clock besides the national debt one???
Sad 70s peacenik relics who got a free ride in the insipid Parade magazine every Sunday, scaring the wits out of the same biddies who believed the Janet Cook ‘heroin boy’ and Y2K stories.
Peace and safety!
That's kind of a stretch for the "doomsday clock," isn't it?
It’s a left leaning BS organization comprised of pseudo intellectual let’s all hug barking moonbats.
Seesm to only advance when republicans are in office.
And that farther away it is, the less attention these kooks get. So plan on it always foretelling our "doom" just around the corner.
“we have always been at war with eastasia”
next to be added, explosive diarrhea.
he shoots and scores.....
At least 6 hours of that clock are taken up by the lie and scam of globull warming.
How about adding Near Earth Asteroids? Far more credible threat than the global warming lie.
I'm betting that those "endangered species" Bald Eagles are real happy about that clean wind energy.
The “Doomsday Clock” isn’t even right twice a day.
Good grief — the leftists who go this thing started must be in their 90s by now.
“I would only agree that a symbolic clock is as nourishing to the intellect as a photo of oxygen is to a drowning man”.
- Dr. Manhattan
I believe they put it to 2 minutes in the ‘80s when Reagan deployed medium range missiles in Europe.
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