The Doomsday Clock Is About to Tick, And We've Never Been So Close to Midnight

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will update the clock in less than 24 hours.

At 100 seconds from midnight, the human race could destroy the world with technologies of its own making.

The hands are close to midnight. It will be its 75th anniversary and there is little hope of it winding back.

The 75th anniversary of the Doomsday Clock will be announced at 10:00 a.m. The time is atEST.
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The details are here.
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Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

The clock was designed to draw attention to nuclear conflagration. The scientists who founded the Bulletin in 1945 were less focused on the initial use of "the bomb" than on the irrationality of storing weapons for the sake of nuclear hegemony.

They realized that if one bomb was enough to destroy New York, there was no need for more bombs.

Nuclear destruction is the most probable and acute threat to humanity, but it is only one of the potential catastrophes that the Doomsday Clock measures. The Bulletin puts it this way:

The clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world's vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and disruptive technologies.

I feel a kinship with the clock makers. Among those who formed and joined the early Bulletin were my mentors, including the man who profoundly influenced how I see my own scientific discipline and approach to science.

Climate change and its root causes of over-consumption and extreme affluence will be included in their warning in 2022, as well as weapons of mass destruction.

Many of the threats are well known. Toxic waste and commercial chemical use are all pervasive. There are tens of thousands of large scale waste sites in the US alone.

When Hurricane Harvey hit the Houston area, these sites were extremely vulnerable. An estimated 2 million kilograms of airborne contaminants were released, 14 toxic waste sites were flooded or damaged, and dioxins were found in a major river at levels over 200 times higher than recommended maximum concentrations.

It was just one major metropolitan area. The risks to toxic waste sites are growing due to climate change.

The Bulletin has become more focused on the rise of artificial intelligence, robotic weaponry, and other technologies.

The movie clichés of cyborgs and "killer robots" tend to hide the true risks. Gene drives are an early example of biological robotics. Gene drive systems that spread through normal pathways of reproduction but are designed to destroy other genes or offspring of a particular sex are created by genome editing tools.

Climate change and income.

Climate change is a threat in its own right, but it is also connected to the risks posed by other technologies.

Genetically engineered viruses and gene drives are being developed to stop the spread of infectious diseases carried by mosquitoes, whose habitats spread on a warming planet.

Once released, such biological "robots" may evolve capabilities beyond our ability to control them. Social collapse and conflict could be caused by a few misadventures.

Climate change can cause chemical waste to escape from confinement. Highly dispersed toxic chemicals can be picked up by storms and distributed into rivers and estuaries.

The result could be the displacement of people and the creation of chemical refugees.

The clock is being reset.

What of humanity's ability to imagine and strive for a different future, given that the Doomsday Clock has been in place for 75 years?

The role of science itself is part of the problem. It helps us understand the risks of technological progress, but it also drives that process in the first place. The same cultural and political processes that influence everyone affect scientists as well.

In 1947, the "Father of the atomic bomb", J. Robert Oppenheimer, described the vulnerability of scientists to manipulation and their own naivete, ambition and greed.

The physicists have known sin, and this knowledge can't be erased, even in a crude sense.

If the bomb was how physicists came to know sin, then perhaps those other threats that are the product of our addiction to technology and consumption are also how others come to know it.

The threats are interrelated and remind us of the Doomsday Clock.

Jack Heinemann is a professor at the University of Canterbury.

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