The "Doomsday Clock" has been with us since 1947. It is a symbolic construct of the now left-leaning Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a group which "was established in 1945 by scientists, engineers, and other experts who had created the atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project. They knew about the horrible effects of these new weapons and devoted themselves to warning the public about the consequences of using them."
Most people who know of it probably think that the clock's intent is to symbolize how close the world is to the disaster of nuclear war; that was indeed its sole focus for decades. However, the group just moved the clock from six minutes before midnight to five. Wait until you see why, as sympathetically reported on Tuesday by Doyle Rice at USA Today's Science Fair blog:
Doomsday clock moved closer to midnight
Citing ongoing threats from nuclear proliferation, climate change, and the need to find sustainable and safe sources of energy, scientists moved the "Doomsday Clock" one minute closer to midnight on Tuesday.
The clock was moved from six to five minutes to midnight.
The clock is symbolic and has been maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1947. The closer to a setting of midnight it gets, the closer it is estimated that a global disaster will occur.
The group's press release seems to put "climate change" on an equal footing with nukes (bolds are mine; the original release bolded the entire passage):
Faced with clear and present dangers of nuclear proliferation and climate change, and the need to find sustainable and safe sources of energy, world lead(er)s are failing to change business as usual. Inaction on key issues including climate change, and rising international tensions motivate the movement of the clock. As we see it, the major challenge at the heart of humanity's survival in the 21st century is how to meet energy needs for economic growth in developing and industrial countries without further damaging the climate, exposing people to loss of health and community, and without risking further spread of nuclear weapons, and in fact setting the stage for global reductions."
Apparently these alleged scientists are unconcerned about the data-cooking, politicization, collusion, disclosure-dodging, fundamental intellectual dishonesty, and (what should be the most important problem from their perspective) lack of scientific rigor undergirding "climate science," as revealed in the original Climategate emails of 2009 and the Climategate 2.0 emails two years later.
As happens all too often, what once may arguably have a legitimate enterprise was corrupted decades ago. A look at the graph of the clock's movements during the past 60-plus years indicates that the clock got closest to midnight during the administrations of Eisenhower and Reagan and moved further away during the 1960s and 1990s in administrations mostly controlled by Democrats.
In 2007, the group, apparently in search of further relevance, threw its credibility entirely out the window by adding "climate change" as a potentially dire threat to humanity's continuation. Now they're just another bunch of leftist hacks with pretend legitimacy. It ought to rename itself the Bulletin of Co-opted Scientists. USA Today, the Associated Press and others dutifully carry their water.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
