Warning. Doomsday Clock has gone one minute forward.

Why are they wrong?

Now THAT is a dumb question.

They are wrong because there is no valid way to assess the degree of risk. They are making it up.

That high quality kind of "science" is usually reserved for the Global Climate Change Faithful.

Oh? Why do we even have the pentagon?

What's the point if you can't assess risk.

ANOTHER dumbass question. Wow.

We have a Pentagon because we CAN assess specific risks AS existing, you moron.

That doesn't mean we can calibrate the likelihood to the point of using a minute hand as a marker. We have nowhere near that kind of predictive power.

Scientists noting a risk and assessing the risk as having gotten bigger is all well and good, but not "scientific."

Maybe it's actually just past noon. The risk still exists, but the imminence is nowhere near as full as they claim. Or, maybe not.

The point is, THEY are merely making a wild-assed guess-timation and relying on their status as "smart" people to lend their assessements an aura of credibility that it doesn't actually merit.
 
THIS muthafuckin' broken clock is NOT right twice a day.

It is not right once a day.

It is never right.

clock_with_no_hands.jpg

That's not a clock so it can't be a broken clock.
 
Hey, the clock was minute from midnight while GWB was president.


What happened? Obama won the election and the leftist--oh, I mean the "enlighten scientist" pushed it back!

Doomsday clock is a propagandist plot that suggest "The further right America goes, the closer we are to the end of the world!" Doomsday clock setters can kiss my A$$
 
They pushed it up largely because of the recent biological modification of an avian flu.

That is an anti excuse. Influenzas mutate wildly every year. Part of the reason you have to get a new flu shot every year is that there are several new strains. Some of which are scarier, more virulent and contagious than others.

This is like saying that the sun rose again this morning, meaning we are just that much closer to it than we were yesterday.

60% fatality rate when contracted, incurable as of now, is airborne.

Right now considered the most dangerous virus on the planet. It was recently genetically engineered from the avian flu.

Every country on earth capable of advanced biochemistry has made an airborne avian flu strain, the recent news was just an effort that went public. They said it was easier then they thought, an indication that it is not far away from naturally mutating, we have been expecting a flu pandemic and this is it, 20 years at the most is all we have.
 
That's an opinion not a proof, just like the setting of the clock is an opinion. Who's more likely to be wrong on this point, people studying the issue or a knee-jerk response because they're "liberal"?

Konrad,
One problem is that this "clock" has gone from trying to assess the risk of global nuclear/thermonuclear war, to a whole range of other possibilities as well, while most of the scientists connected with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists are theoretical physicists. Some of these other issues which have been added would appear to be outside the area of their professional expertise. The implication of that is that this is informed speculation, at best, and guessing based on a political agenda, at worst. I see nothing in that, that would be better informed than the speculation of any other reasonably well-educated person.

As for reality, yes, there are any number of scenarios for the destruction of civilization, some natural, some man-made, and some (like a pandemic) which could be either. The natural ones (asteroid strike, EMP from a massive solar flair, supervolcano eruption, and possibly climate change), we can do little about, in any case. The same may be true of a naturally occurring pandemic, which is at least as likely as one caused by, say, bio-terrorism. Life is fragile, human civilization is a tenuous affair, and neither comes with a guarantee. Even IF we could magically get rid of all the nukes tomorrow, and IF we could magically get rid of all "greenhouse emissions" tomorrow, there is absolutely no guarantee that nature won't get us, or at least most of us, eventually. No one gets out of this world alive, so everyone might as well make the best contingency plan they can for any event which might be survivable, and then enjoy today; no one can guarantee ANY of us tomorrow.

All they do is put a clock on their bulletin. What's the problem? So, they included other risks. Sure life is tenuous. The clock is just an opinion on how humans are effecting it.

It's not a problem;but, as you say, it is only an opinion, like any other opinion. There's no reason to be especially alarmed about this one, or to give it more weight than another set of opinions.

Now, as Occupied just noted, it's entirely possible, even likely, that an avian flu (or something similar) may naturally mutate into an easily human transmissible variant. That could happen six months from now, or twenty years from now. The current state of medicine cannot protect us from such a pandemic,(especially with a viral pathogen). Something with a 60% mortality rate would not be an extinction-level event, but it would destroy civilization as we know itThose with luck and a good survival plan will survive, and life will go on, though it will be a very different life. There's little that can be done about it, in any case, except to take whatever precautions the state of the art permits.
 
That is an anti excuse. Influenzas mutate wildly every year. Part of the reason you have to get a new flu shot every year is that there are several new strains. Some of which are scarier, more virulent and contagious than others.

This is like saying that the sun rose again this morning, meaning we are just that much closer to it than we were yesterday.

60% fatality rate when contracted, incurable as of now, is airborne.

Right now considered the most dangerous virus on the planet. It was recently genetically engineered from the avian flu.

Every country on earth capable of advanced biochemistry has made an airborne avian flu strain, the recent news was just an effort that went public. They said it was easier then they thought, an indication that it is not far away from naturally mutating, we have been expecting a flu pandemic and this is it, 20 years at the most is all we have.

So admittedly the risk assessment isn't exactly off.
 
FIVE minutes to midnight?

Doesn't make a very good heavy metal song...
 

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