Hawking:

Doomsday Clock closer to midnight

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
 

The world has nudged closer to apocalypse as a result of climate change and nuclear proliferation, Prof Stephen Hawking and other prominent scientists warned today as the hand of a symbolic Doomsday Clock moved two minutes closer to midnight.

The clock, devised at the dawn of the nuclear age, made official what many now feel in their bones - that the world has edged closer to disaster.

“We foresee great peril if governments and societies do not take action now,” said Prof Hawking.

It was the fourth time since the end of the Cold War that the clock has ticked forward, this time from 11:53 to 11:55, amid fears over what the scientists are describing as “a second nuclear age”, prompted largely by failure to curb the atomic ambitions of Iran and North Korea.

“As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth,” said Prof Hawking, of Cambridge University.

“As citizens of the world, we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day, and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change.”

Prof Hawking described how the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by scientists, including Albert Einstein and those who had worked on the Manhattan Project and were deeply concerned about nuclear weapons, which they called “the most destructive technology on Earth”.

Lord Rees, president of the Royal Society, said the world is now confronted by the prospect of terrorists detonating a nuclear weapon in the heart of a city, “killing tens of thousands along with themselves, and millions around the world would acclaim them as heroes”.

And the way mankind is changing the world, and endangering it, means “we have entered a new geological era, the anthropocene”, Lord Rees said.

He added that 21st century technology, “if optimally applied, could offer immense opportunities, for the developing and the developed world. But it will present new threats more diverse and more intractable than nuclear weapons did.

"To confront these threats successfully – and to avoid foreclosing humanity’s long-term potential – scientists need to channel their efforts wisely and engage with the political process nationally and internationally.”

In 1947 the Bulletin introduced its Doomsday Clock to evoke both the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero).

Since it was set to seven minutes to midnight in 1947, the hand has been moved 18 times, including today’s move. The clock has been as far away as 17 minutes, set there in 1991 following the demise of the Soviet Union, and came closest to midnight — just two minutes away — in 1953, following the successful test of a hydrogen bomb by the United States.

“But for good luck, we would all be dead,” said Prof Hawking.

“As we stand at the brink of a second nuclear age, and a period of unprecedented climate change, scientists have a special responsibility.”

The decision to move the clock is made by the bulletin’s board, which is composed of prominent scientists and policy experts, including 18 Nobel laureates, in coordination with the group’s sponsors.

The clock would now also measure the world’s rising temperatures, said the bulletin’s editor Mark Strauss.

“There’s a realization that we are changing our climate for the worse,” he said.

“That would have catastrophic effects. Although the threat is not as dire as that of nuclear weapons right now, in the long term we are looking at a serious threat.”