![]() ![]() Tensions with the Soviet Union during the Reagan years moving things ahead to just three minutes from doom, before the dramatic post Cold War improvement in 1991, when 17 minutes separated us from the end.Though much was made of the conflagration between John F. ![]() The Vietnam war caused the hands to creep closer again, to seven minutes in 1968, before President Nixon’s 1972 brokering of the SALT and ABM treaties-limiting strategic arms and anti-ballistic missiles-pushed them back to 12 minutes. #3 minutes to midnight cuban missile crisis installstraight, leading them to install a hot line between the Kremlin and Washington and to sign the Partial Test Ban treaty. The 1962 Cuban missile crisis actually pushed things back further still, to 12 minutes, because the near-nuclear war seemed to scare both the U.S. The hands edged back to seven minutes to midnight over the next few years, as Washington and Moscow avoided direct clashes during such flash-point moments as the 1956 Suez Canal crisis. and the Soviet Union testing thermonuclear weapons, in which the explosive power comes not from atomic fission, but hydrogen fusion-the same titanically energetic process that powers the sun. The 1953 jump to two minutes was in response to both the U.S. But the fact is, the Bulletin has been a respected arbiter of how grave the nuclear threat has been since the clock was first created in 1947 and the hands were set at seven minutes to midnight. There is admittedly more than a little of melodrama in holding so somber an event to set the non-existent hands on a non-existent clock. “If we push the climate to the opposite of an Ice Age,” Kartha said, “we have no guarantee that the environment will remain hospitable to human life.” Five degrees added to present global temperatures could be disastrous. “Since that time, greenhouse gases have increased six-fold and the Earth has warmed by 1 degree Celsius.”Īs a reminder to climate deniers who argue that 1º C hardly sounds like much, Kartha not only stressed that the thermometer is climbing higher still, but that it took only a drop of a handful of degrees to plunge the world into the last Ice Age, and just a five degree increase in temperatures to thaw the planet back out. In 1953, the only other time the hands had stood at two minutes to midnight, “the idea of human-caused climate change was a subject of mere academic curiosity,” Kartha said. ![]() The argument for the climate’s role in moving the doomsday clock’s hands-a factor that was added to the Bulletin’s deliberations only in 2007-was made by Silvan Kartha, another Bulletin board member and a senior scientist at the Stockholm Environmental Institute. ![]() But now, Kim has said his country would demonstrate a new nuclear capability and he would press ahead even without sanctions relief.” Trump’s unorthodox approach might bring the country to the negotiating table. “In North Korea there had been hope that Mr. “Since the United States withdrew from the nuclear agreement, Iran has been steadily stepping up its nuclear activity,” said Sharon Sasquoni, research professor at The George Washington University and a member of the Bulletin’s board. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |