2 minutes closer to a resumption of above-ground nuclear tests?

Pure speculation as usual and some past minute-to-midnight settings that don't seem to make sense according to what was going on in the years listed.

https://thebulletin.org/three-minutes-and-counting7938

"The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has been published continuously since 1945, when it was founded by former Manhattan Project physicists after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists of Chicago."

Minutes to midnight by year:

2015 - 3 (Naive in 1991)
2012 - 5
2010 - 6
2007 - 5
2002 - 7
1998 - 9
1995 - 14
1991 - 17 (Cold war is over!)
1990 - 10
1988 - 6
1984 - 3
1981 - 4
1980 - 7
1974 - 9
1972 - 12
1969 - 10
1968 - 7
1963 - 12 (Year after Cuban Missile Crisis?!)
1960 - 7
1953 - 2
1949 - 3
1947 - 7

Somehow I fail to make the author's attempted connection between global warming and nuclear weapons. If anything it been shown that a nuclear war might be the antidote to global warming. Remember nuclear winter.....

Bob

bobkrech said:

Somehow I fail to make the author's attempted connection between global warming and nuclear weapons. If anything it been shown that a nuclear war might be the antidote to global warming. Remember nuclear winter.....

Bob

Click to expand...

I don't think the author is trying to make a connection between global warming and nuclear war. The doomsday clock is a measure of threats, these are two unrelated threats that are being considered.

bobkrech said:

Somehow I fail to make the author's attempted connection between global warming and nuclear weapons. If anything it been shown that a nuclear war might be the antidote to global warming. Remember nuclear winter.....

Bob

Click to expand...

However, there would be temporary and localized cases of extreme warming during the primary thing they're worried about.

Frankly, I don't think what they're worried about would ever happen between the major nuclear powers. An accidental launch or very limited tactical exchange, maybe. Beyond that would take a madman on at least one side.

Winston said:

However, there would be temporary and localized cases of extreme warming during the primary thing they're worried about.

Frankly, I don't think what they're worried about would ever happen between the major nuclear powers. An accidental launch or very limited tactical exchange, maybe. Beyond that would take a madman on at least one side.

Click to expand...

Or a man protecting our precious bodily fluids...

Cl(VII) said:

Or a man protecting our precious bodily fluids...

View attachment 252669

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"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room."

"Mandrake, have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water?"
"Well, no, I can't say I have."
"Fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face."

I ran across this article, and it reminded me of Bob's earlier post about nuclear winter.

https://www.slate.com/blogs/future_...entists_say_apocalypse_is_getting_closer.html

It talks about how the doomsday clock is these scientists attempt to characterize the existential threat to civilization from all threats. The original idea for the clock was inspired by the threat of nuclear war, and for most of the time since then, nuclear war has been the main existential threat. But now they also try to consider other things they see as existential threats to civilization --- climate change and bio-weapoms.

The article touches on the same thing Bob was joking (I think) about above. Global warming and nuclear war are both threats for the same reason in a way --- they both pose the threat of climate change on the scale that our civilization might have trouble surviving. Nuclear war would of course be a disaster due to the immediate effects of the bombs and radiation, but the true existential threat would be due to nuclear winter --- a form of extreme climate change.

The article then goes on to talk a little bit about the relative dangers of these two things, including the likelihood of each happening. On the one hand, an all out nuclear war would certainly end our civilization, but there is no certainty that a nuclear war will happen. Maybe such a war will happen, maybe nuclear weapons will never be used again, maybe a limited war, or a one-off attack, or anything in between --- the future is not certain. In the case of global warming, it is pretty clear it is happening. So the certainty is much higher for global warming.

It thought it was interesting take. And the point of the doomsday clock is not just a depressing reminder of how close these scientist think we maybe be to doom --- the point is a reminder that there are things we can do to move the clock back.

....where's Major Kong?

"Mr President we cannot allow a mine shaft gap"