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In January, the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock was moved forward by two minutes. It now stands just five minutes from midnight, the hour that figuratively signifies the end of civilization. Does that mean you need to worry? It means everyone needs to think hard.
What is the Doomsday Clock? It is a clock that represents a watch on developments like the threat of nuclear weapons (there are 2,000 weapons that can be launched in minutes by pressing a button).
The Clock is maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS), which has 18 Nobel laureates on its board. “The minutes on the Clock are a metaphor for how urgent the BAS believes the world situation to be,” says Kennette Benedict of BAS.
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How many years does a minute on the Clock denote? Benedict says that the minutes are an indication of how quickly one should act. “For example,” he says, “if you think you’ve 5 minutes, rather than 10, to disarm a bomb, you’ve an idea how quickly you’ll have to act to prevent it going off.”
And how do they decide how far the hand has to be moved? That judgement is made by a group of 20 experts. There is no formula. “It is, perhaps,
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like a doctor making a diagnosis. We look at a range of data, as well as past history, and other indicators of the world situation, and come to a broad judgement about the path we seem to be on and how quickly we might damage our socieies - if we dont take steps to intervene,” explains Benedict. This year, another concern has crept into the calculations: climate.
Global warming as a threat to human civilisation is second only to that posed by nuclear weapons. Some of the effects are flooding and desertification. Just these two threaten the habitat and agricultural resources that societies depend on for survival. Drastic climate changes are likely to contribute to mass migrations and even wars over land, water, and other resources (read story on the Sundarbans in this issue). |
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