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Doomsday Clock 2024 time update says humanity is as close as ever to global catastrophe
(www.usatoday.com)
TL;DR: it’s at 90 seconds, same as last year.
this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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That thing has been at or past 5 minute to midnight my entire life. Can't live your whole life in fear.
Yeah even you, Boomers.
Every generation past has thought they were living in the end times.
Eventually one generation has to be correct.
This clock has never worked, why believe the fear mongering?
At least a stopped clock is right twice a day. Doomsday clock can't even do that right
Just bullshit fear-mongering
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If the argument is that the long-term trends of humanity are such that we have a significantly higher chance of self-ceasing (an argument that I'd agree with given climate change), then that needs to be stated, especially since the clock has generally been seen as how close we are to imminent destruction.
The question, then, is how to best represent the fact that we're already knee deep in a slow moving global catastrophe, as opposed to on the brink of an imminent one?
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The question remains. The clock is supposed to be about impending doom. Slow moving disasters can include many things and I used climate change as an example. But there are many others. Disease, blight and even an asteroid if it's big enough.
The issue really is that these people don't like the reminder because they don't want to act because they are still comfortable and they know any meaningful action "threatens" their way of life (because they can only think within the box capitalism created for them, making them fear anything outside of it).
They'll tell you they do act until they're blue in the face, but it will come down to things like driving an EV and using a reusable cup at Starbucks. Because it's about making themselves feel better, not fighting the actual problem - same as framing the clock as fearmongering instead of the desperate call to action it has become..
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How many different ways can I tell you guys that a doomsday clock is the most ludicrous and flatly ineffective tool for communicating the stresses we're facing in the 21st century? Do you need me to send you a telegram? Maybe a passenger pigeon? I can have it written in the sky by a biplane if that'll help. Maybe in another language? Hieroglyphics perhaps?
My dude, I studied this. I have two graduate degrees in these subjects. I'm no stranger to the very real problems we're facing as a global species, and in fact I've dedicated my entire career to fighting environmental degradation, often at the expense of my family, my finances, and my health.
A DOOMSDAY CLOCK IS STUPID AND HASN'T HELPED ME OR ANY OF MY COLLEAGUES AT ANY POINT IN OUR ENTIRE PROFESSIONAL CAREERS.
God fucking damn y'all are dense.
Oh yeah the clock is stupid, lol, but we should prepare for collapse by 2030, 2050 at the latest.
Whatever the fuck you do in the comfort of your own basement is your business, chief.
Thank you!
It broke in the 90's. History was "over" so they kind of adjusted the scale, and now that shit's real again they keep having to shave off tiny increments closer and closer to midnight.
We're still way better off than during the Cuban missile crisis, imminent existential risk-wise.
Yeah but the Cuban Missile Crisis was theoretically solvable in a short time period and none of our current problems are.
I guess the crisis itself could be and was, but at the time nobody was really talking about the concept of a cold war, and the nuclear threat stayed heightened for decades. Actually, opinions vary on how long a nuclear-power conflict can reliably stay cold, even now.
AI and nuclear war seem like the main direct threats right now. Climate change will suck and I'll miss coral reefs, but it's not planet killing unless it sets something else more deliberate off. The world looks unstable, but I'm not expecting WWIII this year, and AI isn't going to be very dangerous by 2025 either. The Cuban missile crisis should have ended the world as we know it in the span of a few months. We basically just won a few coin flips in a row; I bet other parallel universes weren't so lucky.
but it's not planet killing
That’s cool except no one is arguing about it killing the planet. What it will do is kill our environment which is the part that determines the survival of our species.
It's not environment-killing either, at least as far as growing wheat and tomatoes is concerned. Environment-damaging, sure, but we could potentially starve a lot of people and keep going (though we shouldn't!), and it's not even clear agricultural output will go down rather than just relocating.
Don't get me wrong, I like having wild animals besides rats and flies, and I don't love the idea of a giant global mass-migration crisis as Bangladesh sinks into the sea and we fight over farmland in what used to be an icecap, so I still think we need to crack down on fossil fuels a lot harder. We're pretty adaptable, though, and some sad little human world will exist on the other side if that's all.
Tell that to the crop failures.
Not only is your opinion absolutely wrong but it’s a dangerous one too because it removes the need to change and to do so quickly.
This is why nothing will ever change and why humans will continue polluting and destroying our habitat.
Humans are fucking stupid.
Crops in western America might fail, but the whole world isn't America. Yields move, and 2023-2024 was a record harvest globally.
Don't take my word for it, there's an actual scientist elsewhere in the thread.
Humans are fucking stupid.
Well, we can agree on that. The human reaction to "the world is ending" is usually giving up. Which is why we shouldn't say that unless the science supports that, which it doesn't quite.
Unfortunately we lost the coin toss that gave us Wilson rather than Teddy Roosevelt for The Great War.
Quit edging us and dooms our day, damnit!
How's that giant LSD psychic squid coming along..?
Coomsday Clock edges closer
Our daily dose of doomerism and fear mongering.
"Could be worse. Could be 89 seconds till midnight."
~ The Glass Is Half Full Person
If we take into consideration that we started the year with a Genocide taking place in Palestine, that doesn't sound surprising to me.
Well, what's it waiting for? Get on with it already!
