All those nukes...
They're still out there.
Doomsday Clock says 3 minutes to midnight. Again
The famous Doomsday Clock, which has been showing anywhere between 17 and two minutes to midnight since 1947, has advanced to three-minutes-to for the third time – on this occasion due to a perceived increase in the menace from human-driven climate change. The organisation which runs the Clock, the Bulletin of the Atomic …
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Friday 23rd January 2015 15:15 GMT Pete 2
Re: All those nukes...
> They're still out there.
In theory, yes.
However, it's 50 years since anyone's put a nuke on a rocket, lit the blue touchpaper and had a successful "boom" - rather than a <phut>, ooops or "oh crap it's heading back in our direction". That means that the last people who did it (assuming they were in their 20's and 30's) are now retired and the people they trained and passed on the "tricks of the trade" to are now getting on and have (presumably) passed on all the folklore to a new generation.
So would a system that was last end-to-end tested half a century ago, with all the subsequent innovation, upgrades, redesigns, changes and cost-cutting have any realistic chance of working? I can't see much hope for it - but I hope nobody reads this and decides to try it out.
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Friday 23rd January 2015 15:22 GMT John Sanders
Re: All those nukes...
"""So would a system that was last end-to-end tested half a century ago, with all the subsequent innovation, upgrades, redesigns, changes and cost-cutting have any realistic chance of working? I can't see much hope for it - but I hope nobody reads this and decides to try it out."""
The engineering and science bits resound yes.
Any modern IT system introduced in the last 30 years not so.
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Friday 23rd January 2015 19:14 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: Pete2 Re: All those nukes...
".....So would a system that was last end-to-end tested half a century ago, with all the subsequent innovation, upgrades, redesigns, changes and cost-cutting have any realistic chance of working?......" IIRC, shortly after the fall of the Iron Curtain, one of the ex-Soviet Republics found itself with dozens of Russian ICBMs, and managed to launch a salvo of four by accident. Thankfully, two failed to launch out of their silos and the other two both failed shortly after launch.
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Saturday 24th January 2015 21:31 GMT David Given
Re: Pete2 All those nukes...
Oo. Got a link? I'd be fascinated to know more.
I've always wondered whether *anyone* has done a proper end-to-end test of a nuclear tipped ICBM. (Probably not.) If nuclear war ever broke out, and it turns out that design flaws in the missiles on all the different sides meant they all failed to work, then it would be hilarious. Also, somewhat of a relief.
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Friday 23rd January 2015 15:36 GMT Martin Gregorie
Re: I don't understand it
Why is it always near midnight? ...in this case because, though things may not get nasty for some time, we're very close to the point where the our fate becomes inevitable no matter what we do in the future.
We're probably already past the sustainable human population, but is anybody taking notice apart from, amazingly, the Pope? And, even he's not about to admit that two kids would be a lot better than three or to promote contraceptives.
I still don't see any serious attempt to de-carbonise energy production outside of China, and even there they're only doing it because their hand has been forced by a country-wide smog problem that rivals Victorian London. Carbon sequestration is a bad joke due to its appalling overall energy efficiency and a severe lack of very long term guaranteed non-leaking storage. No serious attempts at producing enough low or zero carbon energy, such as desert-based solar-electric or thorium nukes, to replace our current sources are evident, which means they're 20-30 years away at best.
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Sunday 25th January 2015 01:09 GMT Kiwi
Re: I don't understand it
Carbon sequestration is a bad joke due to its appalling overall energy efficiency and a severe lack of very long term guaranteed non-leaking storage.
This should make you feel a bit happier. Carbon is quite safe to handle and doesn't need any special storage. You can touch it and eat it if you want with no harm (unless you eat too much). If you want to put it somewhere try in your garden, you might get some interesting results with plant growth that way :)
No serious attempts at producing enough low or zero carbon energy, such as desert-based solar-electric or thorium nukes, to replace our current sources are evident
I love the idea of renewables and nukes, but I think desert solar could be a serious environmental disaster for the area - blocking natural sunlight from large parts of that eco system (yes, even deserts have life!) can't exactly be good for it. Nukes will be much better.
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Saturday 24th January 2015 00:07 GMT DropBear
Re: I don't understand it
Bit of a wind-up indeed - considering I don't ever remember having seen it more that five minutes "away from midnight", I find it difficult to not just bin it straight with the boy who cried "wolf"; much like a terrorist alert that never goes below orange, it just ends up failing to impress anyone...
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Friday 23rd January 2015 15:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
Meanwhile the US Politicians
are voting on the reality of Climate Change.
Vote no and it becomes offical US Policy that Climate Change does not exist.
Perhaps it might be worth sending all those Congress Critters and Senators to places where Climate change is real.
Next they will be voting to make creationism the law in all 50 states and Darwin is branded a blasphemer.
Oh wait...
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Friday 23rd January 2015 16:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: to places where Climate change is real.
Those who Inhabit in the DC Political Ghetto don't know the real world.
Their chauffeur driven limo's with A/C are hardly the best places from which to observe it.
As for those who downvoted the original post I can only hope that your home gets flooded out the next time there is a deluge.
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Friday 23rd January 2015 16:31 GMT Fading
Re: to places where Climate change is real.
I didn't down vote but mightily tempted now - repeat after me weather does not equal climate. Also flooding is a civil engineering problem (well except during Noah's time) there used be a time when humans would find solutions to problems not run around in fear.....
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Tuesday 3rd February 2015 04:13 GMT kiwimuso
Re: to places where Climate change is real.
@ Sorry that handle is already taken.
I think what he meant to say, was that, in the past, they didn't have people who were supposedly intelligent beings, running around over-analysing anything that moved, then claiming that disaster was imminent.
They waited until the problem actually started to manifest itself, i.e. their prime waterfront property got inundated with the rising tide (possibly) so they moved inland a bit further.
Of course, also back then, then was no government to whom they could turn and claim that 'they ought to do something about it", like tax someone else to pay for their stupidity/cupidity/arrogance/etc to actually build an expensive house in an area which just might be affected by water/erosion/etc.
Or not actually building on a cliff-top because of the views and then complain when an earthquake drops several megatons of rock-face from their chosen building site.
Of course, that didn't prevent the soothsayers and other (sometimes religious) doom merchants from predicting the worst, especially if the stars were not in alignment or something.
I was going to add the Joke Alert icon, but I'm not entirely sure whether I am joking or not!!!
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Saturday 24th January 2015 21:17 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: Meanwhile the US Politicians
"Perhaps it might be worth sending all those Congress Critters and Senators to places where Climate change is real."
Surely their own backyard, the USA SE coastal regions where the salt water mango swamps are ought to be showing some signs of change?
Obviously, the solution is to damn all the rivers and stop that water ever reaching the sea. When the bath is full, you turn off the taps. A bit like the mighty Colorado.
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Monday 26th January 2015 10:07 GMT fpx
The Missing Link
The article makes a big deal about climate change but does not say why.
Climate change has the potential to upset agriculture and water management. When enough existing farmland turns to dust and entire countries run out of water, then billions of starving people will look to get their food elsewhere, by all means necessary. When rivers such as the Rio Grande, Nile or Euphrates are pumped dry, the countries downstream will get cranky.
There may enough food and water to go around, globally speaking, but it's not distributed equally, and rearranging distribution has the potential to upset existing power structures. What do you think would happen if the US midwest runs dry and there's no trillions of dollars of deficit spending left for food imports? There's wars already being fought for cheap oil. Future wars will be fought for water.
This may happen regardless of whether climate change is entirely human made, partially human-influenced, natural, or god's will.
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Friday 23rd January 2015 15:48 GMT Paul Kinsler
Re: detonation of many tens of thousands of nuclear warheads
while we're on the on the subject, this in an interesting read:
"Environmental consequences of nuclear war", Physics Today, December 2008 (& note the updated predictions/knowledge of enviro impact therein)
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/ToonRobockTurcoPhysicsToday.pdf
http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday
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Saturday 24th January 2015 14:39 GMT Iain
Re: Ahh the obligatory
As soon as I see a story about the Doomsday Clock, the jukebox in my head involuntarily cues up '2 Minutes to Midnight'
Then I checked to see when it came out, over 30 years ago in August '84. Feeling old now.
In the style of XKCD:
By this September, the song will be closer in time to what it's about (when the Doomsday Clock was at 2 Minutes to Midnight in September 1953) than it is to the present day. Eeep.
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Friday 23rd January 2015 23:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: In situations like this, I find it useful
I have the unsettling music that played at the end of the films as a ringtone. When the Mrs calls me. People of a certain age give me very strange looks. Amazing how films that were never shown are still remebered by even normal, non geeky citizenry. As one who was a kid in the early 80's, when we literally didn't know if we'd be deep fried by an ss20 when we went to bed each night, I laugh at their 3 minutes to midnight. Attention seekers.
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Friday 23rd January 2015 18:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
charlatans
The Doomsday Clock is maintained by the members of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who are in turn advised by the Governing Board and the Board of Sponsors, including 18 Nobel Laureates.
Nobel prizes? For what? Head pointyness? Pffff. Bunch of chancers.
I like to get my climate change science from a trustworthy source such as the Register or Rush Limbaugh.
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Friday 23rd January 2015 19:12 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Yeah, no, fuck this shit!
While it is true that the US and Russia are seeking to modernise their atomic armouries, this is mainly because the existing weapons are mostly very old.
Old my arse. I don't know how retarded one get get in financing the MIC in useless plutonium production but
.... a trillion dollar "revamp" bill (lower end of the scale, this is the MIC of course). And remember, this is money we DON'T have, there already is a hole of 120 trillion+ in the taxpayer's pocket. Strenously denied by progressives. And conservative hawks if it suits them.
.... signed by the Obamacare president who vaguely promised to abolish nukes
.... and which includes reneval of aircraft-delivered weapons that the Air Force doesn't even want in the first place
.... and all meant to equip a super-expensive "triad" of land/air/submarine delivered vehicles, something that makes only sense when seen as a cold-war leftover of inter-service rivalries
.... plus the destabilization of the whole MAD system by "missile shields" of dubious value but which may get dangerously better leading to launch on warning, doomsday machines and other Good Ideas of Lost Civilization of the Galaxy.
leads to the conclusion that the taxpayer may well end up getting a BBQ of epic proportions that will be decidedly bigger than promised. At best he will get radioactive pollution (hey, how is the State of Washington doing with its underground cleanup at Hanford? Salmon already alight in the Columbia River?), maybe a stray nuke pop and definetely a trillion dollar less healthcare and public skools.
Realistically it's plain that the risk of global thermonuclear war is nothing like as severe right now as it was during various periods of the Cold War.
Famous last words of people who are very young or otherwise differently abled. The fun with political situations is that new stuff pops up the next minute. Remember The Caliphate? Yeah, that kind of "new stuff".
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Friday 23rd January 2015 19:12 GMT VultureTX
Climate Change & Humanity not Doomsday
FYI Humanity can lose 97% of the population if it does so selectively and still maintain a civilization that will recover. Or 80-90% if the losses are entirely random. With that massive decrease in population the impact on the biosphere is then negligible and expected to be a millennia long remediation and readjustment.
Why does this matter to "Concerned Scientists"? Well it turns out the West is most unaffected by climate change according to a recent report (and repeated debate), as in third world and other mono power blocks can't adapt to climate change like the Western World can. So yes it then becomes a war game scenario where it you can't stop your opponent, accelerate the climate issues, and your side wins in the long run assuming your infrastructure is flexible and you don't mind the loss of some surface resources.
/war.. never changes
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Saturday 24th January 2015 00:19 GMT VultureTX
Re: Climate Change & Humanity not Doomsday
"Here's one for you, Einstein: Energy sources. Absence Of."
Ask the pentagon, this is why they included Climate Change in their defense planning and definitions for strategic resources.
Personally I figure we will have deployed enough renewable energy sources to support 3% of the world's population.
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Friday 23rd January 2015 20:26 GMT JustNiz
Stupid clock
In its nearly 70 year existence, it has NEVER been set any earlier than 23:43, and its usual state over that whole time is within 10 minutes to midnight. Given a clock displays 12 hours, and that we're even still here, it is VERY clear that the Doomsday Clock massively and systematically over-exaggerates the actual risk of the threats it supposedly quantifies.
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Saturday 24th January 2015 06:53 GMT Vladimir Plouzhnikov
Re: Stupid clock
enough nukes to kill everything on the planet several THOUSAND times over
Not even once.
Yes, plenty to kill most major cities but not nowhere near enough for complete sterilisation;
we really were very close for 50 of those last 70 years.
...and still are for that matter.
And for the rest of the useful life of mankind we'll always be. Because we will always have to work with ever more powerful and dense energy sources and there will always be a possibility of some major screw up (war or accident - doesn't matter). The ONLY insurance is for the humans to spread about widely enough, so that a disaster in one place could not kill us all (i.e. we need to boldly go ... blablabla ... the final frontier).
Therefore, this "clock" is a mind-numbingly irrelevant fear-mongering publicity vehicle which gives precisely zero of useful information and tries to push the public to think in the wrong direction.
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Sunday 25th January 2015 03:35 GMT Mark 85
Re: Stupid clock
Actually, if you had went up the page a few posts, I'm well aware of who has nukes, who's getting nukes, and who wants them and for what purpose. As for history...I lived in my share of it.. the Korean War (too young to remember much except my uncle went there) and then till now. Also raised not one mile from a very large SAC and interceptor base. History... do tell me about it. About diving under the desks at school. Remember "duck and cover"?
But it's still fear-mongering.
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Friday 23rd January 2015 21:53 GMT Infernoz
If this wasn't a farce before, it is now
The degree of predicted Climate change is frankly dubious, and even if it does happen, it is not anything like as harmful as nuclear weapon strikes and can be adapted to using some ideas suggested in the book "Abundance" and other sources.
I think that it very unlikely that anyone would be so stupid as to use nuclear weapons now, given all the observed effects of Chernoble and Fukashima; fallout can travel huge distances and will likely fall on the attackers home too!
In my opinion these scientists are calling false Wolf, so are no worth paying any more attention to.
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Friday 23rd January 2015 22:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: If this wasn't a farce before, it is now
The troublesome scenario has always been the unannounced delivery of a nuclear bomb on a boat or truck. Both India and Pakistan have the arsenal capability in their own MAD standoff.
You only need the wrong people taking power in a nuclear capable country. They will have the necessary levers to coerce/persuade the technical/scientific communities to cooperate. It doesn't do to count on people not wanting the destruction and pollution that would follow. Religious types in many countries take the Bible literally - believing that the Rapture will follow Armageddon and they will go to heaven as the chosen ones.
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Monday 26th January 2015 15:00 GMT Tom 13
Re: If this wasn't a farce before, it is now
Climate change, yeah that's a money grabbing farce.
Atomic clock "scientists" cry wolf? Absolutely. They've were a Soviet front group when founded and never left their roots even if the old union is gone.
Likelihood of nuclear war? This one I'd actually rate higher than it has been in my lifetime and I'm getting to be an old fart. But not for the reasons the idiots running the clock focus on. Right now the Iranians are about a year from having nukes. They really are fanatical religious nutters who aren't afraid to use them after they've got them and they really are hell bent on wiping Israel of the map. The Israelis' of course have nukes. So the region is likely to explode when they do. Expect spill over into India-Pakistan who probably also both have nukes even if one of them denies it. At that point the whole thing spins out of control.
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Friday 23rd January 2015 22:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
Comparing wide scale nuclear war to climate change is ridiculous
One will kill millions due to the direct effects of the blast, and billions in the next few years from starvation due to the loss of infrastructure (the deaths from increased cancer rates 10 or 20 years on are a drop in a bucket that won't even matter, as would be the deaths from "nuclear winter" if such a thing actually occurred)
The other will, a century so or now, probably kill millions over the following the centuries, based on some hand waving arguments that a warmer Earth will change climactic patterns causing droughts, floods, and wars for resources.
Even if you fully accept the predictions of AGW, it is not possible to predict what parts of the world that are fertile now will become less fertile, or what parts of the world that are less fertile now will become moreso (but we never hear about any positive impacts, when it is clear there would be some) People have in the past, are currently, and always will fight wars, it is in our nature. Assigning deaths from wars to global warming is like assigning women dying from heart attacks to George Clooney being off the market. There probably are some, but how many is a guessing game.
The human race as we know it can easily survive on a much warmer Earth. There would be some adjustment, and some of that adjustment would cause people to die, but it would be a very minor inconvenience on the level of a piece of gum sticking to your shoe compared to wide scale nuclear war. These "concerned scientists" can stuff it!
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Saturday 24th January 2015 07:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Comparing wide scale nuclear war to climate change is ridiculous
The idea that climate change will extinguish life on Earth is without any scientific basis whatsoever. That takes propaganda to new untapped levels. Not even any point in trying to reason with someone so stupid as to believe that.
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Saturday 24th January 2015 00:40 GMT Boris the Cockroach
Been here before
nothing to see
Working at a military base directly targeted by a 1meg russian nuke all the way though the cold war gives you a different perspective on the whole doomsday clock thing
Best solution we came up with was to lie on the concrete carpark outside the main lab in various obscene positions and wait to have our shadows burned into it.
Well , would give the tourist guides something to gloss over in 1000 yrs time
<guide> ah yes the famous fertility dance these primitives were doing just before they were vapourised...
<kiddie> why does this one look like his arm is stuck up this one's arse?
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Monday 26th January 2015 15:48 GMT Kepler
Re: Dark matter asteroids?
"Don't be a pussy - dark matter is made of wimps."
At last, a joke I got! My compliments, Vladimir Plouzhnikov.
(No idea what book or letters that fellow way above — Michael H.F. Wilkinson — had in mind when he wrote of his book "with some large, friendly letters on the cover". The best I could come up with was the Hebrew letters corresponding to T, N and K (for the TaNaKh), but I'm sure that's not it, and I'm missing something obvious.)
And yet you adopt such a macho attitude!
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Monday 26th January 2015 18:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Dark matter asteroids?
"No idea what book or letters that fellow way above — Michael H.F. Wilkinson — had in mind when he wrote of his book "with some large, friendly letters on the cover"."
"The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams is essential reading to understand many of its references in El Reg and the comments.
The title refers to an iPad style device that acts as a quick reference guide book to all known places and peoples in the Universe. The entry for Earth is "Mostly harmless".
The answer to your puzzlement is - the front of the device has "Do Not Panic" in large letters. Useful advice for any dangerous situation you encounter in your travels.
Other references that you will see on El Reg from the trilogy of at least four books.are:
"Goodbye and thanks for all the fish"
Glasses that go completely dark when there is danger.
The sound of a whale hitting a planet's surface at high speed.
The Infinite Improbability Drive.
Norwegian fjords
Intelligent mice.
Towels
Lemon-soaked paper napkins
" and me with this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side"
"Brain the size of a planet"
"Share and enjoy"
..but above all
"The meaning of life, the Universe, and everything is.... 42"
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