They called on world leaders to manage the advances so that the benefits are reaped and the dangers countered. Trump’s presidency - the needle has moved ever closer to midnight: 5 minutes in 2012, 3 minutes in 2015, and two and a half minutes last year.Īlong with nuclear proliferation and climate change - which first factored into the setting of the clock in 2007 - the scientists said they were alarmed by the speed of technological change. The clock has been adjusted many times since it debuted in 1947. ![]() That year, Eugene Rabinowitch, a former Manhattan Project scientist who co-founded the bulletin, wrote: “The achievement of a thermonuclear explosion by the Soviet Union, following on the heels of the development of ‘thermonuclear devices’ in America, means that the time, dreaded by scientists since 1945, when each major nation will hold the power of destroying, at will, the urban civilization of any other nation, is close at hand.” Eisenhower unveiled Atoms for Peace, a program intended to convince Americans that nuclear energy could be used to support research, medicine and agriculture and not only to destroy. That was also the year that the Korean War ended - or, some would argue, paused - and President Dwight D. ![]() ![]() The clock was last set at 2 minutes to midnight in 1953, after the Americans and then the Soviets tested thermonuclear weapons for the first time, within 10 months of each other. The scientists added: “To call the world nuclear situation dire is to understate the danger - and its immediacy.” “International diplomacy has been reduced to name-calling, giving it a surreal sense of unreality that makes the world security situation ever more threatening.” pronouncements are real, and when they are mere rhetoric,” the scientists found. “Neither allies nor adversaries have been able to reliably predict U.S. Trump’s disavowal of the Iran deal the hiring of climate-change deniers at the Environmental Protection Agency and the administration’s plans to remake and expand the nation’s nuclear arsenal. The scientists cited, among other destabilizing factors, the harsh rhetoric President Trump has exchanged with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un Mr. The scientists also warned that the sustained reductions in greenhouse gases needed to prevent disastrous warming of the planet had not yet occurred and cited the dangers that technology disruption is causing for democracies, including disinformation campaigns intended to manipulate elections and undermine confidence in democracy. It cited the risks from North Korea’s nuclear program discord between Russia and the United States tensions in the South China Sea the buildup of the nuclear arsenals of Pakistan and India and uncertainty over the Iran nuclear deal. “In 2017, world leaders failed to respond effectively to the looming threats of nuclear war and climate change, making the world security situation more dangerous than it was a year ago - and as dangerous as it has been since World War II,” the bulletin’s science and security board, which oversees the clock, said in a statement. The last time the clock was moved so close to midnight was in 1953, during the Cold War. ![]() The Doomsday Clock, a potent symbol of scientific concerns about humanity’s possible annihilation, was advanced by 30 seconds on Thursday, to 2 minutes to midnight, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced in Washington.
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