The Doomsday Clock – a barometer of nuclear danger for the past 55 years – has been moved one minute further away from the “midnight hour”.
The whole idea of a ‘Doomsday’ clock makes me smile, but the statement that the decision to move the clock back one minute because of a more “hopeful state of world affairs”, made me laugh my socks off.
The Doomsday Clock – a barometer of nuclear danger for the past 55 years – has been moved one minute further away from the “midnight hour”.
The concept timepiece, devised by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) now stands at six minutes to the hour.
The group said it made the decision to move the clock back because of a more “hopeful state of world affairs”.
The clock was first featured by the magazine in 1947, shortly after the US dropped its A-bombs on Japan.
The clock had been adjusted 18 times before today since its initial start at seven minutes to midnight.
Most recently, in January 2007, the clock moved to five minutes to midnight, when climate change was added to the prospect of nuclear annihilation as the greatest threats to humankind.
The concerns then included Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the inability to halt the international trafficking of nuclear materials such as highly enriched uranium and plutonium.
The laughter goes on. NewsRealBlog has done a piece on this entitled: How Barack Obama has Saved the World From Apocalypse. Here is an excerpt:-
It is six minutes to midnight…for the first time since atomic bombs were dropped in 1945, leaders of nuclear weapons states are co-operating to vastly reduce their arsenals and secure all nuclear bomb-making material…for the first time ever, industrialized and developing countries alike are pledging to limit climate-changing gas emissions that could render our planet nearly uninhabitable…[with the election of Barack Obama] a change in the US government’s orientation toward international affairs [have brought] a more pragmatic, problem-solving approach than his predecessor.
Unbelievable! Doomsday is further away than ever because of the Saviour President, Barack Obama!
Tags: News
January 27th, 2010 at 10:33 am
A key component to any weather forecast. But, as with abarometers