Doomsday Clock 2020: Expert warns ‘danger is high’
The annual Doomsday Clock announcement will reveal on Wednesday its potentially troublesome forecast for 2021. Every year the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists gives an update on how close the Doomsday Clock has come to striking midnight. Last year, the clock came within 100 seconds of midnight – the symbolic hour of destruction – marking the closest humanity has come to annihilation since the clock began in 1947.
Justifying their decision, the Bulletin’s scientists said concerns over Iran’s nuclear arsenal, North Korea and climate change have pushed the clock forward.
Before that, the clock has been set to two minutes to midnight since 2018.
Dr Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of the Bulletin, said: “As far as the Bulletin and the Doomsday Clock are concerned, the world has entered into the realm of the two-minute warning, a period when danger is high and the margin for error low. The moment demands attention and new, creative responses.”
Follow Express.co.uk tomorrow to find out whether the Doomsday Clock has moved forward, backwards or will remain at 100 seconds to midnight.
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How to watch the Doomsday Clock 2021 announcement live online:
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will host a press conference on Wednesday, January 27, during which it will reveal is Doomsday Clock update.
The announcement will be broadcast live online on the Bulletin’s website and official Facebook page.
The conference is pencilled in for 3pm GMT (10am EST, 7am PST).
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the conference will be hosted via Zoom this year.
This year’s speakers include former governor of California Jerry Brown, governor of Hiroshima Prefecture Hidehiko Yuzaki, Dr Rachel Bronson and Dr Steve Fetter of the Bulletin’s Science and Security BOard.
Other speakers will include Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the former president of Liberia, and Dr Susan Solomon from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
What IS the Doomsday clock?
Will the Doomsday Clock move this year?
The Bulletin’s scientists consider a number of factors when setting the clock’s time.
The clock was originally conceived as a way of showing how close humans have come to destroying the planet – just two years after World War 2 ended.
Today, scientists consider military conflict, nuclear proliferation, climate change and the world’s collective response to crises.
In light of the coronavirus pandemic and how it was handled by countries like the US and China, odds are Covid-19 will weight heavily on tomorrow’s update.
In particular, America’s handling of the pandemic last year has been lacklustre leading to more than 25 million infections and 420,000 deaths – the highest death count in the world.
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There has also been very vocal opposition to medical expertise from people who have rejected the Covid vaccine as a result of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.
The violent aftermath of the US election is also bound to play a role in 2021’s forecast.
After insurrectionists stormed the US Capitol earlier this month to disrupt the outcome of the 2020 US election, many pundits fear America’s democracy has been strongly eroded.
Man-made climate change also remains a pressing issue though the concerns may be somewhat eased by President Joe Biden rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement as soon as he was inaugurated into office.
However, theoretical physicist Laurence Krauss, whos has been involved with Doomsday Clock in the past, has pointed out the clock is not a scientific measurement of the world’s condition, merely a symbolic one.
In a 2018 interview, he said: “It’s not scientific. Two minutes is not a scientific calculation, like the mass of the proton.
“It’s a number that’s arrived at by a group of people who are exploring each of the questions, then having a huge amount of discussion, and ultimately a convergence on a number. And that number is frankly arbitrary. It’s not a scientific quantity.
That’s why I often say that, from an empirical perspective, what’s important is not the clock’s absolute value but the derivative.
“Are we moving it forward or backward? Is the world getting more dangerous or less dangerous? We can argue about that much more effectively.”
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