Well, what to say about the major ‘All Things Nuclear’ news for today? Nothing but the media passing along the “Bulletin of Atomic Scientists” (which I have beaten to death over the last 3+ Posts) keeping the Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds with the exception of two articles about Trudeau wrongly using the Federal Emergencies Act against truckers, two stories about the future of ‘fossil fuels’, a couple of nuclear power plant growth, delays, and a couple of concerns, influences from the Russia/Ukraine war. So that leaves only the “Yellowstone Caldera” bonus category, which is an old Art Bell “Cost to Coast” show from May of 2004 that tells us how a Yellowstone eruption could cause a new ice age of which I did not bother to look at the details other than this:
Researcher Robert Felix, who argued that the planet was on the precipice of another ice age. He explained that this could come about as a result of increasing ocean temperatures adding significant moisture to the air followed by the explosion of the Yellowstone caldera, which would reduce the global temperature by 20 degrees, causing significant snowfall around the planet. (The link is Posted below in the ‘Yellowstone Caldera’ category, in case you would like to listen . . .)
Tomorrow will be another day, of course, so we’ll leave today at that . . . ~llaw
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories (including a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links to the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available in tonight’s Post.)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (per above). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available at the end of this Post.
(A reminder, just in case: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
It cited nuclear threat in Russia’s war on Ukraine as well as the Oct. 7 attack in Israel and war in Gaza, worsening climate-related disasters and the …
Well, as I expected the Doomsday Clock stayed where it was, despite the expectations that it would be moved back to 2 minutes. If any of you cared enough to watch the Announcement this morning, you were treated to an expert panel of folks who knew what- and and where-of they spoke. It was truly an impressive presentation.
I can only feel sorrow for those of you who weren’t able to watch it live, but I am reposting it here just in case there were issues that prevented you from watching it or that you’ve changed your mind about the absolute dangers involved in not only ‘all things nuclear’, but also how it relates negatively to ‘AI’, and how fossil fuel energy (all of it including uranium) must go away forever. There is no hope for nuclear power plants to built, and the existing plants must all be shut down because they are a more immediate accidental death threat to all life on Mother Earth than even CO2 and other greenhouse gasses from other fossil fuels, e.g. coal, oil, gas, etc. Also, the possibility exists that both industries could join forces to exterminate most life on Earth much sooner than the “experts” tell us.
And, just know also, that nuclear powered energy will never replace other fossil fuel power plants, partly because the industry is going backward in percentage of power production, and catching up to a useful (if there is such a thing) will never happen because the industry provides less than 10% of electrical production, and new power plants will 15 years to two decades just to come online and if a few of them are lucky enough.
Human and other life remains hanging by the thinnest of threads, but there are a couple of ways we could be bailed out that I’ve been harping about for 519 consecutive days now. All it will take is a change of heart by the masses telling our so-called ‘leaders’ and an accompanying new understanding of what life is all about. “We ain’t gonna stand for it anymore!”.
My lovely little Avatar, Juice, posted the following statement in support of that this morning on Facebook: “ Love, Felicity, Care and Peace go together! Hatred, Chaos, Apathy, and War also go together, sadly. If you have to make a choice, which way of life would you choose? We do have a choice . . . and you and I know who those are who choose the authoritarian way. They are our our self appointed, chosen, or elected leaders. Let’s get rid of them all in this new year . . .” ~llaw
Here’s an explanation with a link to the full statement of Science and Security Board of the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists” if you missed it this morning. If you are interested in the Statement only, the link is in the last paragraph of this “Bulletin” Post . . .
A moment of historic danger: It is still 90 seconds to midnight.
The members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board have been deeply worried about the deteriorating state of the world. Last year, we expressed our heightened concern by moving the Clock to 90 seconds to midnight—the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been—in large part because of Russian threats to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.
Today, we once again set the Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight because humanity continues to face an unprecedented level of danger. Our decision should not be taken as a sign that the international security situation has eased. Instead, leaders and citizens around the world should take this statement as a stark warning and respond urgently, as if today were the most dangerous moment in modern history. Because it may well be.
But the world can be made safer. The Clock can move away from midnight. As we wrote last year, “In this time of unprecedented global danger, concerted action is required, and every second counts.” That is just as true today.
Read the full statement from the Science and Security Board and learn more about the Doomsday Clock: https://bit.ly/3UagBDR
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories (including a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links to the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (There no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (per above). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available at the end of this Post.
(A reminder, just in case: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
Under the Nuclear Regulation Authority’s Guide for Emergency Preparedness and Response, residents in the urgent protective action planning zone (UPZ) …
Be sure to watch the 2024 Doomsday Clock adjustment tomorrow morning if you can! It is live on Facebook beginning at 7:00 a.m. Pacific Time. I have read that the clock will be reset to 2 minutes to midnight, but given the ‘deterrence’ challenges and the verbal threat conflicts going on the past few weeks, perhaps the time will stay the same 90 seconds to midnight. We shall see tomorrow . . . ~llaw
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories (including a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links to the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (There no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (per above). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available at the end of this Post.
(A reminder, just in case: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
The plans for nuclear energy are focussed on small modular reactors (SMRs), which are attracting growing global interest due to their ability to meet …
The operator says electricity supply for the spent fuel pools and other important facilities is secure as it has emergency diesel generators and power …
… war in Ukraine is driving militarization and increased support for NATO nuclear … Threats to use nuclear weapons are not very credible,” Erästö said.
A heartbreaking story from and about the people who have experienced this sad tale from beginning to a very much still open end. It is about those who lived downwind during the nuclear bomb testing at the Nevada Test site from 1951 to 1992.
We are commonly told by governments and the nuclear industry that atmospheric radiation is not a serious health risk. I cannot believe that anyone could possibly believe such a lie and the constant propaganda that humanity is subjected to. What do you think our world(s) of all living things, including Mother Earth herself, would be like during and after a nuclear war? ~llaw
The official trailer of the documentary is linked to the Documentary trailer at the end of the article.. (Click on the link to watch the trailer.)
From:
Documentary ‘Downwind’ shows deadly consequences of nuclear testing on tribal lands
Western Shoshone Principal Man Ian Zabarte, who lost his family members to diseases caused by radiation exposure, says it amounts to racism against Native Americans that the U.S. government detonated more than 900 atomic bombs on his ancestors’ land in secret from 1951 to 1992.
“This is a very serious issue and that’s why I can’t let it go. I can’t move on. People say, ‘oh, why don’t you just let it go?’ Because it’s killing my family. It’s killing my land. It’s killing my people. And that will not stand. It’s being done in secret. And killing Indians in secret will not stand,” said Ian Zabarte, Principal Man of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians, who is pictured in a still from the documentary ‘Downwind’ about radiation poisoning from U.S. nuclear tests.Douglas Brian Miller/Downwind
On Jan. 7, the film “Oppenheimer” snagged five Golden Globe awards. It’s a blockbuster directed by Christopher Nolan about the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945.
But flying under the radar is a documentary called “Downwind,” another movie about nuclear weapons.
Mark Shapiro is the co-director of “Downwind,” he lives in Portland.
Ian Zabarte from Las Vegas is the Principal Man of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians, and is featured in the documentary.
They joined OPB’s “Weekend Edition” host, Lillian Karabaic, to discuss “Downwind” and the tragedy that inspired the documentary.
The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
Mark Shapiro: So we came across a pretty remarkable story. We found out that during the Cold War and into the nineties, from 1951 to 1992, the United States detonated 928 nuclear weapons at the Nevada Test Site, which is about an hour from Las Vegas. And we found that to be remarkable, and the radiation from all those tests impacted communities downwind.
Lillian Karabaic:You co-produced this documentary with Douglas Brian Miller. The documentary came out last summer around the same time as “Oppenheimer.” Can you tell me how you both came up with the idea to make the film and explore that connection?
Shapiro: Both of our families had cancer in our families and were impacted deeply by cancer. And, we felt like this shouldn’t be breaking news, that people should really know that for 40 years in one location, they tested a hundred nuclear weapons larger than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined in some cases, and then over 800 underground weapons tests that also vent into the communities. And I think the biggest thing that surprised us, too, was this giant swath of land the size of Rhode Island, 1,350 square miles, is deeded Shoshone land. So that was another topic that we thought the government really took part in an unforgivable era, and we wanted to expose that.
Karabaic:Ian, one of the things that Mark just mentioned was that the Nevada Test Site sits right on your ancestors’ land, and the U.S. government launched more than 900 tests there. How could that happen?
Ian Zabarte: Well, the United States entered into treaty relationships with the Western Shoshone, the Western bands of Shoshone Nation of Indians in 1863. And that was a time when America’s need was great. So we all ourselves with the union, with the North, to help prosecute the war against the South, our lands, and our resources continue to make this nation the great land it is. Our lands bind this nation together, not just Shoshone, but all tribes and the treaties we entered into.
So, what happened was the United States came into our country in secret. They developed the US nuclear facilities, and they came to our country to test the bombs that they built, and they did this in secret. They didn’t ask our consent. They didn’t tell us what was happening, and we didn’t know the problem. That secrecy is counter to democracy, and we’re all not just the Shoshone; we’re all downwinders, and we’re all living with the burden of the adverse health effects that are known to be plausible from exposure to radiation, in this case, from radioactive fallout.
Karabaic: So one of the things you mentioned is that it’s so secretive. They didn’t tell you they were doing these tests, even if they had treaty access to the land, they certainly didn’t for doing nuclear tests. When did you start to realize the impact of the nuclear tests on your community?
Zabarte: When I was about 18 years old, I returned to the reservation, which is centrally located in the Great Basin, and I saw my family dying, and I didn’t understand why they were dying. My grandfather’s skin fell off. And as we began to understand that the nuclear weapons testing and the fallout came through our communities, I was angry and confused about how this could happen just like everyone else’s. How could this happen?
At the same time, the United States Bureau of Land Management was blaming Shoshone livestock [and] Shoshone ranchers for destruction of the land that was caused by nuclear weapons testing, blaming our livestock, blaming the Indians for destroying the land for the destruction caused by the fallout.
Karabaic:That’s really terrible. One of the things that I saw in the documentary was that the Atomic Energy Commission picked this Nevada Test Site to detonate more than 900 atomic bombs because they said the people living near the site were a “low-use segment of the population.” What came to your mind when you learned about that?
Zabarte: Well, what came to my mind when I learned about that and you start looking further into what they do, they also talked about how they had all of the names for all of the tests selected and picked so that they were not offensive, but 20 of the tests were named for Native American tribes, just like American helicopters are named for the battles wars with Indians that they fought. As I said, we made this nation the great nation it is. We were not conquered. We have five peace treaties with the United States. Our lands bind this nation together.
And what we’re really dealing with is other Americans who think it’s OK to violate, abuse, and exploit Native Americans, and that is racism. This is a very serious issue and that’s why I can’t let it go. I can’t move on. People say, “Why don’t you just let it go?” I said, “Because it’s killing my family. It’s killing my land. It’s killing my people. And that will not stand. It’s being done in secret. And killing Indians in secret will not stand.”
Karabaic:The ongoing effects of suffering, the health effects and dying from this, the U.S. government said, “oh, OK.” And implemented this Radiation Exposure Compensation Act in 1990, and the amount they said was worth compensation for all the health effects was $50,000. Do you think that $50,000 is enough compensation for those who are downwind?
Zabarte: No, it is not. And as I said, we’re all downwinders, and you just don’t know it.
Karabaic: I’d like to play a snippet from the documentary. Here’s Darwin Morgan. He served as the public relations director for the Nevada Test Site from 1996 till 2021. Take a listen.
Darwin Morgan [clip]: We were able to win the Cold War with what we did at the site. It contributed greatly to the winning of the Cold War. You saw that Russia wasn’t able to match what we were doing. And so when it all came to the end, what we did at the Nevada Test Site helped win the Cold War helped assure the security of the United States, the people of the United States. And so nuclear testing contributed to that.
Karabaic: Mark and Ian, what would you take from what Darwin Morgan said?
Shapiro: I think it’s interesting because we talk about the challenges of war and how you handle war, what you’re going to do to prevent war, and I think that Mr. Morgan was talking about the idea that it was served as a deterrent for other countries, not to detonate nuclear weapons. I just think as I look back and Mary Dixon in our film talks about how many nuclear tests are too many. A lot of people think, obviously even the first test in New Mexico was too many. But to continue to do that 928 times when the United States can serve as a model for the rest of the world, it’s irresponsible and unforgivable in my opinion.
Karabaic: Given the popularity of a movie like “Oppenheimer,” what kind of impact do you want to see “Downwind” have on society?
Shapiro: I think there are some things that need to be addressed immediately, including, you mentioned the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. It’s scheduled to sunset in June of this year. So the $50,000 compensation, those amounts won’t be available after June this year unless Congress, they extend the bill, which we hope will happen. As Ian mentioned, is $50,000 enough? I don’t think so. Most people don’t think so, but it’s a start.
The Nevada Test Site is still operational and doing research. They’re still doing things at the Nevada Test Site. So that’s something that I think is unforgivable, given the fact that it’s not American land; it’s Shoshone Nation land, so that needs to be addressed. But we look at our film as the people impacted in the wake of “Oppenheimer,” and as Ian mentioned, we’re all downwinders.
Karabaic: Yeah. Thank you both for joining us. There are a lot of people who have been kept in the dark for a really long time about the impact on Indigenous communities and all of us. I hope that more folks know this history.
Mark Shapiro is the co-director of the documentary “Downwind.” Ian Zabarte is the Principal Man of the Western Bands of Shoshone Nation of Indians. The documentary is streaming online on Peacock,Prime Video, Apple TV, and other streaming services. Thanks for joining us today.
Shapiro: Thank you, Lillian. We really appreciate you having us here.
Zabarte: Thanks again. I appreciate your time.
Click on the link just below to watch the “Downwind” documentary:
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories (including a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links to the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (There are three Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (per above). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There are three Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available at the end of this Post.
(A reminder, just in case: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
Zabarte: Well, what came to my mind when I learned about that and you start looking further into what they do, they also talked about how they had all …
Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warned that Russian troops have planted mines around Europe’s largest nuclear … all of those …
If the war ended in a way in which Russia could claim some measure of victory, that would normalize nuclear blackmail as an instrument of statecraft, …
… nuclear arsenal and by repeated threats of nuclear war against Washington and Seoul. … nuclear attack. In eliminating the idea of a shared sense of …
13:13 · Go to channel · Yellowstone Caldera Magma Affected, Rises After Large 6.1 Earthquake At Mariana Islands. Mary Greeley News New 3K views · 21: …
This story was originally #457 posted on November 21, 2023, and it and a few others help explain why I keep track of the Yellowstone Caldera and others around the world. These kinds of stories are encouraging to me because they could possibly be our salvation, if not from nuclear war, but perhaps from nuclear power plants as well as resolving the CO2 and other green house gasses that are creating a world almost as deathly as ‘all things nuclear’, only on a slower scale to our possible extinction.
If the world’s leaders would only stop thinking about building bigger and more powerful nuclear weapons as ‘fear’ deterrents to nuclear war and the insane idea that nuclear power plants that they also see as eventual potential weapons of mass destruction and are beginning to worship them as a shining star to fight global warning. Instead we should spend the World’s money (contributed by you, by the way) on harnessing the steam of the volcanic calderas around the world. If we do that we might have a fighting chance to survive along with other life forms and planet Earth herself for thousands or even millions of years into the future . . . ~llaw (read on)
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[Why Yellowstone is a bonus Post to this “All Things Nuclear” Nightly Production. It and others could be a way out if we act soon enough.]
To my way of thinking, the Yellowstone Caldera (and others around the planet) may be by far the best chance to foil doomsday, as the ultimately successful solution to forging ahead, forgetting about the world-wide fear of nuclear weapons and nuclear power, as well as fossil fuels and their greenhouse gas global warming effect. It is incorporated into my “Blue Print” plan for destroying all things nuclear “Management”.
As for the Yellowstone Caldera and all the rest of them having their own life-ending potential, at least their devastating capability is not created by the activity of our human selves, and there is also the caveat concerning the ability to cool and control the destructive power of calderas by harnessing and using their natural power production that would reduce their potential to ‘boil over’, making them safer in the long run than we currently believe. Their collective power could comfortably provide enough electricity for the entire planet forever. Yellowstone alone could well support electrical power plants all over both of the American continents for hundreds of years. And there are others, such as the Long Valley caldera in western California, less than 800 miles southwest of Yellowstone. There are also several large calderas in South America. And the largest one of all is located in the Philippines. There are dozens of others around the world, some more active than Yellowstone. And harnessing them for power generation is much easier than one would tend to think. Yellowstone provides an example of how power generation could work by tapping the ready-made steam of calderas that could provide the heat to create electricity all by themselves. I will provide that video in a future Post of “All Things Nuclear”. You can also track it down yourself is you’ve a mind to, which might whet your interests by making the effort to broaden your scope and knowledge of our harrowing world crises from all things nuclear to its cousins, the other fossil fuels.
What follows is a brief primer considering the potential of developing the Yellowstone caldera and other similar calderas to provide all the electrical power we could ever need, and by doing so perhaps saving us in two ways from the 6th Extinction . . .
The following article by Dr. Thomas F. Arciuolo, gives us reinforcing look that the Earth’s human world(s)might well be able to get along without any fossil fuels, including uranium (nuclear fuel). The cooling affect of volcanic activity in the calderas might also allow us to live without fear of devastation from calderas such as the Yellowstone. The question is, though, can humanity buy into such an effort rather than go to war and more wars over who controls the potential natural energy production, needing only a delivery grid system. Could we possibly come together and create a global free energy program without letting greed and greenbacks get in the way? ~llaw
Supervolcano Could Solve the Climate and Energy Crises
SHARE THIS ARTICLE: Yellowstone Caldera Supervolcano: A Solution to the Climate and Energy Crises
Scientists propose a new and revolutionary method to harness the Yellowstone’s supervolcano., and generate enough electricity to power the American continent.
With the dawn of the 3rd decade of the 21st century, humanity is embarking on a 2nd Renaissance.”
— Dr. Thomas F. Arciuolo
MILFORD, CONNECTICUT, UNITED STATES, December 10, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ — The climate crisis poses a major threat to human civilization. Burning fossil fuels to generate energy is the primary cause of this crisis, due to greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, our energy requirements are expected to grow significantly in the future, as would be expected.
At the same time, we face another great crisis. Underneath Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming lies a powerful supervolcano, which has the guaranteed potential for an eruption that will be catastrophic to the entire world.
Researchers Dr Thomas Arciuolo and Dr Miad Faezipour propose a solution to these problems, by harnessing the mighty energy reserve within the Yellowstone Supervolcano to generate clean, emission-free energy.
The team’s proposed technology would generate phenomenal amounts of electricity – enough to power the entire American continent. Their plan would also cool the supervolcano’s magma chamber, preventing a super-eruption. NASA has predicted that cooling the magma by just 35% would prevent such a calamity. The project would also generate thousands of jobs and ensure energy-independence for the USA.
(Note: Concerning jobs creation, the total number of jobs lost would far outdistance the new jobs created. However, there would be thousands upon thousand of alternative jobs created by getting rid of all things nuclear as well as fossil fuel plants, mining reclamation, and ancillary supportive occupations ~llaw)
The proposed copper-based, volcanic energy harvesting technology has the potential to produce triple the USA’s predicted energy requirements for 2050. The excess power could be sold to other countries on the American continent for profit, and to fund the facility’s construction.
Arciuolo and Faezipour’s pioneering technology has been fully simulated, to prove that its methodology is both practical and efficient. The use of volcanoes to generate power has already proved successful in Iceland and Hawaii.
Harvesting energy from Yellowstone’s supervolcano would provide safer and more dependable power than any form of energy used today, including solar, wind, and nuclear. The team’s technology would not only generate huge profits, but it would also prevent a catastrophic eruption, while significantly mitigating the climate crisis and meeting the American continent’s energy needs for the years and centuries to come.
This technology could be adopted globally by other nations to provide a world-wide solution to climate change and energy production.
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories (including a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links to the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual appearing order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available in tonight’s Post.)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (per above). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available at the end of this Post.
(A reminder, just in case: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
So the big news tonight is that North Korea is testing underwater nuclear drones, no doubt killing a whole lot of sea creatures, designed to blow up apparent nuclear armed and powered submarines. I’ve not bothered to read the articles(s) as yet today because the more important and much larger issue is not about local isolated attacks (although serious enough for serious concern), but the more immediate and all-life threatening of ICBM nuclear warheads waiting for a world leader just crazy enough to fire the 1st one, which would immediately begin WWIII.
The larger more ominous thing that bothers me by far the most is the lack of any sign of humanitarian care for the welfare of the planet and all the life that lives on our Mother Earth for their, including our own, survival. Humans seem to be so caught up in the idea of destroying each other that we fail to even consider whether any life will actually exist after a nuclear war. It seems that every nation and every culture in those nations don’t quite understand the reality of the seriously severe nature that nuclear war would descend upon all of us without boundaries of mercy in any country.
We seem to continue to think of War as military men (soldiers) and their conventional weapons fighting against other military men and their conventional weapons — a future war that, like previous wars except one, would not involve the general public. It’s as if the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki never happened, and even if it did, we are somehow immune from such a replay ever happening again, but X-Times stronger with weapons of mass destruction dozens or even hundreds of times greater — especially such an event occurring in an imaginary life-threatening form that a huge percentage of all life (not just human) on planet Earth being eradicated by the effects and after-effects of nuclear war.
Such a war must be stopped before it happens, but at the moment we apparently have no idea whether or not that that will ever happen. I have described over and over again (dozens of times) how there is only one sure way to stop it; and that is for all common ordinary human beings on every continent in every country to come together and demand that our leaders will no longer even consider the possibility or continuing to threaten such a disaster.
At the moment there is apparently no hope unless we, as a species, are somehow prohibited from exterminating ourselves along with most other life, with the intervention of another, stronger, more benevolent life form. There are no other ways so far as I can see.
As I’ve mentioned before a few times earlier in my Posts, I am tempted to turn my future posts here into a serialized story of a novel that I have had in mind and have been drafting for some time that would include the whole idea of avoiding, (along with my “Blue Print” and the ominous story of getting there) of carrying forward the ridiculous concept of human beings turning planet Earth into our own man-made 6th Extinction. I have arrived at this stage of purposefully attempting to making a difference because I no longer believe that trying to convince governments, even in, and maybe because of, our own USA, the common attitude toward ‘deterrence’ as the sole platform to ‘possibly’ prevent a nuclear WWIII. In the case of nuclear deterrence, fear strikes out, not so much as in baseball, but as a defensive poisonous snake . . . ~llaw
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories (including a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links to the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual appearing order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available in tonight’s Post.)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (per above). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available at the end of this Post.
(A reminder, just in case: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
Russia’s foreign minister rejects a US proposal to resume talks on nuclear arms control. Russia’s top diplomat dismissed the United States proposal to …
… war-. North Korea’s Kim hurls nuclear threats as U.S. heads into election year · South Korea Koreas Tensions. North Korea test fires missile touted as …
Yellowstone caldera formed approximately 631,000 years ago due to a large (>1000 km3, or 240 mi3), eruption of rhyolite magma that deposited ash over …
PG&E’s Nuclear Power Plant (the last in California), scheduled for shutdown in 2025, is given an extended life compliments of the Federal and California governments.
Biden administration finalizes a $1.1 billion aid package for California’s last nuclear power plant
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Biden administration has finalized approval of $1.1 billion to help keep California’s last operating nuclear power plant running. The funding is a financial backbone of the plan to keep the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant producing electricity until at least 2030. An earlier agreement to close the reactors by 2025 was voided by the Legislature in 2022 at the urging of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. Newsom says the power is needed to ward off blackouts amid a changing climate. Environmentalists argue California has adequate power without the four-decade-old reactors that they call a safety risk.
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LLAW’s THOUGHTS & COMMENTS :
This breaks my heart for so many reasons I can’t repeat them all hear, but in prior Posts I have explained my concerns about this particular nuclear power plant and its owner/operator PG&E, which I believe has the very worst safety record in the history of all utilities of every kind. And, believe me, it is not just ‘Environmentalists’ who are are arguing against this governmental decision. PG&E has burned up whole cities and blown up a good deal of another in California, and even poisoned a majority of a California town, among dozens of other catastrophes, and has declared bankruptcy several times concerning damages they have created all over California and nearby surrounding states. They have no business operating any kind of public power facility, much less and old decrepit nuclear plant that has already experienced radiation leaks from cracked reactor walls and had been prudently scheduled for shutdown in 2025. But now taxpayers in California and all around the rest of the USA will be paying to extend the potential national nuclear disaster this nuclear power plant and its operator, PG&E, could bestow upon us.
As an aside, the governmental agreement is for five years, but PG&E has already privately asked for a 20 year extension: PG&E files 20-year license renewal application for Diablo Canyon. . . Pacific Gas and Electric earlier this week filed a license renewal application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to extend the lifetime of California’s Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant by up to 20 years. ~llaw
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 5 categories (plus a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and others that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 linked most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (Especially with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual appearing order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera(There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (per above). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available at the end of this Post.
(A reminder, just in case: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
Had you asked around about what nuclear reactor was on deck just one year ago, the resounding response would have been NuScale’s small modular reactor …
In 2022, Biden also joined leaders of the Group of 20 states in declaring that the use of nuclear weapons and threats of their use are “inadmissible.”.
In the 1960s, gentle, pot-smoking hippies believed that a new society could be created, a world filled with peace. The belief that nuclear weapons have changed human nature and made world war impossible, the author, Ward Hayes Wilson, writes, is essentially the same claim those hippies made. Photo credit: Wikiwatcher 1 via Wikimedia Commons.
(See the story, clearly in tune with my own heart, by Ward Hayes Wilson following my personal perspective and comments . . .)
LLAW’s THOUGHTS & COMMENTS :
If we laughed at the hippies in the 1960s, why the hell are we not laughing at the polictal concept of ‘deterrence’ — the concept that nuclear weapons will never be used beyond ‘threat’ level. The ‘60s hippies’ reasoning was no different than the highest levels of nuclear-armed governments today.
For about a year and a half now, I have been preaching each and every night to the multitudes that ‘all things nuclear’ must not only be abolished but also demolished or buried deep underground where none of it can ever be recovered for future use. There are millions of others who feel the same way I do, of course, but the problem is few of us take any positive action toward making that enormous effort to achieve the purpose. It can be done, but it takes a brave new world of a globally united human society to make it happen. I have defined in many other Posts how that could be accomplished. But will we ever listen? And will we ever learn? Do we not understand “reality”?
I have already written in a previous Post my rebuttal to Mr. Kallenborn’s article, and I become more pessimistic about our collective future as time passes, but I will continue on until I know in my heart that such a possibility of eliminating ‘all things nuclear’ will never happen. ~llaw
Following Article courtesy of “The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists” and the author:
A response to Kallenborn: Why realism requires that nuclear weapons be abolished
In a recent piece in the Bulletin(“Why a nuclear weapons ban would threaten, not save, humanity”), Zachary Kallenborn argued that a ban on nuclear weapons would create serious risks, including unrestrained great power war and a hindering of global cooperation. He asserted that continuing to maintain small nuclear weapons arsenals for the foreseeable future is sensible.
What is troubling about this assertion is not so much that Mr. Kallenborn is wrong, but that he seems to have strayed from reality. Mistakes in a discussion about nuclear weapons policy matter because roughly 4.2 billion people depend on those policies for their safety and survival. With so much at stake, the discussion about nuclear weapons demands the highest levels of seriousness and an unflinching insistence on realism. Mr. Kallenborn has missed that mark in at least one important regard.
Nuclear weapons prevent all-out war? Kallenborn writes, “Nuclear weapons place a cap on how bad great power conflict can become and may deter the emergence and escalation of great power war.” In the world of nuclear weapons advocates, this is a common claim, viz. that nuclear weapons prevent large-scale existential wars similar to World War II. For example, John Lewis Gaddis a highly regarded historian of the Cold War, puts it this way: “As the means of fighting great wars became exponentially more devastating, the likelihood of such wars diminished, and ultimately disappeared altogether.”[1] In other words, “great” wars have disappeared altogether, and nuclear weapons are the reason.
This claim is essential for those who wish to keep nuclear weapons. After all, if nuclear weapons can stop World War II-type wars, then it is safe—even necessary—to keep them. If, on the other hand, they can’t, then all-out wars are more likely (because people wrongly think that nothing can go wrong as long as nuclear weapons are present). And when one occurs, the use of nuclear weapons is almost inevitable.
Unfortunately, the faith in the peace-inducing powers of nuclear weapons is wishful thinking. Wars are decided by human beings, and as the history of our civilization demonstrates—Winston Churchill once called it “the dark lamentable catalog of human crime”—human beings have deep-rooted urges to make war. It is not pleasant to insist on this portrayal of human nature, but the stakes require that we be brutally honest with ourselves. We have been fighting wars with dogged persistence for at least 6,000 years. As President John F. Kennedy put it, “[T]he human race’s history, unfortunately, has been a good deal more war than peace.”[2] Every era of history and region of the world has experienced war with disheartening regularity. There are sometimes pauses and respites—sometimes for even a hundred years—but the lust for war always reemerges.
American philosopher William James explained the persistence of war this way, “Our ancestors have bred pugnacity into our bone and marrow, and thousands of years of peace won’t breed it out of us.”[3] War is a tenacious part of our behavior. If humans were to suddenly give up fighting wars, it would be a monumental change—a revolution in human behavior. Losing our taste for war would be to surrender something central to our natures—like renouncing our predisposition for religion, our love of beauty, or our tendency to overeat.
There’s no doubt that the risk of using nuclear weapons can restrain thoughts of war … sometimes. But can the “magic” of nuclear weapons dissuade us forever? Nothing else has. The hopeful (and somewhat naive) belief that nuclear weapons will always prevent all-out wars ignores one important fact: The evidence that supports this claim—the last 78 years—amounts to only 1.3 percent of the evidence. The other 5,928 years tell a different story.
Let’s get real. The claim that nuclear weapons have somehow permanently suppressed the heretofore unquenchable desire for war is not a realist position. Typically, it is idealists who optimistically say that we can change the world by simply changing our hearts. Idealists believe that changing human nature overnight is possible. For example, in the 1960s, gentle, pot-smoking hippies believed that a new society could be created, a utopian world where people would live in communes and value love above all other things. And with this new emphasis on love, there would naturally come a world filled with peace. And we could all hold hands and sing.
If you stop and think about it, the belief that nuclear weapons have changed human nature—what Kallenborn asserts—is essentially the same claim those hippies made. Nuclear believers say that the urge to make savage war has at last been overcome. They say we can now live in peace forever. Our darker, primitive natures will never again overwhelm our sensible, rational brains. There will be no more all-out wars. And they say this utopia of peace has already arrived (just without the singing). But rather than the power of love, it is a tool—a piece of technology—that has wrought this magical transformation.
Sadly, nuclear weapons have not transformed our warlike natures into calm and peaceful ones. Unbridled war, fought with savage abandon, is still likely, perhaps even inevitable. If you doubt that anger and violence are stalking the world, read some headlines. Around the world are sudden fires of passion that leap up first here, then there. War is raging in Europe and the Middle East. With so much hatred around as fuel, is there much doubt that a war that engulfs many nations and many peoples is far off? If you don’t think so, at least some of your neighbors do. An International Red Cross survey asked millennials in 2019 if they thought a worldwide war similar to World War II would happen in their lifetimes. More than 58 percent of respondents in the United States said yes.[4]
The belief that large-scale war has been banished forever by nuclear weapons is nothing more than a dangerous fantasy. All the evidence of history and everything we know about ourselves tells us that our warlike natures cannot change overnight. (That is the sound of genuine realism talking.)
Claims that we can change human nature are unsurprising in the mouths of gentle, pot-smoking hippies. On the lips of nuclear weapons proponents, they are realist heresy. The fact that nuclear weapons advocates can call themselves realists and at the same time claim that nuclear weapons make all-out wars impossible shows that they do not understand the assumptions that underlie their own position. Their “realism” is nothing of the kind.
The problem with relying on nuclear deterrence is that if it can’t be perfect—and perfect for all time—then it is too dangerous to rely on. Who’s to say that nuclear deterrence isn’t like a pressure cooker—able to hold off savage wars for a time, but when the top blows off at last, the destruction will be all the more far-reaching because it was held in for so long? Because of our primitive, warlike natures, nuclear weapons have to go. There are no safe hands for nuclear weapons. That is a reality that we all ignore at our own peril.
[3] William James, “The Moral Equivalent of War,” in War: Studies from Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, ed. Leon Bramson and George Goethals (New York: Basic Books, 1964), p. 23.
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 5 categories (plus a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and others that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 linked most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (Especially with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual appearing order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera(There are two Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (per above). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There are two Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available at the end of this Post.
(A reminder, just in case: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
In the world of nuclear weapons advocates, this is a common claim, viz. that nuclear weapons prevent large-scale existential wars similar to World War …
Threatening a nuclear war of annihilation is one of Moscow’s favorite sports. High level Russian nuclear threats are commonplace. This is particularly …
List and interactive map of current and past earthquakes near Yellowstone volcano. Quakes Felt · Quakes Felt. See quakes that people felt in the last …
Einstein and Oppenheimer During the Manhattan Project
LLAW’s THOUGHTS & COMMENTS :
This Post, copied from the 2018 Doomsday Clock Report, is Posted here tonight as a “historical document” providing important information that applies to our world political and nuclear situation today, and importantly points out what we knew about the presidency of Donald Trump and the virtually single-handed incredible mess he made of the USA’s standing in our own and world politics especially including environmental issues and nuclear threat control, along lines of realistic cooperation, security, influence, and global respect. (I have posted it all here for my own edification, use, and memorialization that helps define how we got where we are today.
It is a long read, but worth everyone’s time for those who are considering another term of presidency for the likes of Donald J. Trump as well demonstrating and clarifying many of the present day issues that immensely concern our World situation today. It is not a fun read, but it is worth every minute you spend absorbing the information and what has become a world of turmoil and uncertainty today.
You are also encouraged to “Watch the 2024 Doomsday Clock announcement coming on January 23rd” ~llaw
2018 Doomsday Clock Statement Science and Security Board
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Editor, John Mecklin
Statement from the President and CEO
The year just past proved perilous and chaotic, a year in which many of the risks foreshadowed in our last Clock statement came into full relief. In 2017, we saw reckless language in the nuclear realm heat up already dangerous situations and re-learned that minimizing evidence-based assessments regarding climate and other global challenges does not lead to better public policies.
Although the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists focuses on nuclear risk, climate change, and emerging technologies, the nuclear landscape takes center stage in this year’s Clock statement. Major nuclear actors are on the cusp of a new arms race, one that will be very expensive and will increase the likelihood of accidents and misperceptions. Across the globe, nuclear weapons are poised to become more rather than less usable because of nations’ investments in their nuclear arsenals. This is a concern that the Bulletin has been highlighting for some time, but momentum toward this new reality is increasing.
As you will see in the discussion that follows, the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board has once again assessed progress—actually, lack thereof—in managing the technologies that can bring humanity both relief and harm. It is my hope that the statement focuses world attention on today’s dangerous trajectory and urges leaders and citizens alike to redouble their efforts in committing to a path that advances the health and safety of the planet.
The Board has provided recommendations for how we might go about achieving this end, and it is urgent that we take heed.
I commend the members of the Science and Security Board for the work they undertake every day to put us on a safer footing. As always, John Mecklin’s talented pen has helped pull together wide-ranging contributions and allowed a large group of engaged experts to speak with one voice. The Bulletin couldn’t serve its proper role without financial support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the MacArthur Foundation, and the many other foundations,
corporations, and individuals who contribute regularly to the Bulletin’s mission. We are deeply grateful for this ongoing support.
It is urgent that, collectively, we put in the work necessary to produce a 2019 Clock statement that rewinds the Doomsday Clock. Get engaged, get involved, and help create that future. The time is now.
Rachel Bronson, PhD President & CEO 25 January, 2018
2018 Doomsday Clock Statement
Editor’s note: Founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock two years later, using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity and the planet. The decision to move (or to leave in place) the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock is made every year by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 15 Nobel laureates. The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and new technologies emerging in other domains. A printable PDF of this statement, complete with the President and CEO’s statement and Science and Security Board biographies, is available here.
To: Leaders and citizens of the world Re: Two minutes to midnight Date: January 25, 2018
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 greatest risks last year arose in the nuclear realm. North Korea’s nuclear weapons program made remarkable progress in 2017, increasing risks to North Korea itself, other countries in the region, and the United States.Hyperbolic rhetoric and provocative actions by both sides have increased the possibility of nuclear war by accident or miscalculation.
But the dangers brewing on the Korean Peninsula were not the only nuclear risks evident in 2017: The United States and Russia remained at odds, continuing military exercises along the borders of NATO, undermining the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), upgrading their nuclear arsenals, and eschewing arms control negotiations.
In the Asia-Pacific region, tensions over the South China Sea have increased, with relations between the United States and China insufficient to re-establish a stable security situation.
In South Asia, Pakistan and India have continued to build ever-larger arsenals of nuclear weapons.
And in the Middle East, uncertainty about continued US support for the landmark Iranian nuclear deal adds to a bleak overall picture.
To call the world nuclear situation dire is to understate the danger—and its immediacy.
On the climate change front, the danger may seem less immediate, but avoiding catastrophic temperature increases in the long run requires urgent attention now. Global carbon dioxide emissions have not yet shown the beginnings of the sustained decline towards zero that must occur if ever-greater warming is to be avoided. The nations of the world will have to significantly decrease their greenhouse gas emissions to keep climate risks manageable, and so far, the global response has fallen far short of meeting this challenge.
Beyond the nuclear and climate domains, technological change is disrupting democracies around the world as states seek and exploit opportunities to use information technologies as weapons, among them internet-based deception campaigns aimed at undermining elections and popular confidence in institutions essential to free thought and global security.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board believes the perilous world security situation just described would, in itself, justify moving the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight.
But there has also been a breakdown in the international order that has been dangerously exacerbated by recent US actions. In 2017, the United States backed away from its long-standing leadership role in the world, reducing its commitment to seek common ground and undermining the overall effort toward solving pressing global governance challenges. Neither allies nor adversaries have been able to reliably predict US actions—or understand when US pronouncements are real, and when they are mere rhetoric. International diplomacy has been reduced to name-calling, giving it a surreal sense of unreality that makes the world security situation ever more threatening.
Because of the extraordinary danger of the current moment, the Science and Security Board today moves the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock 30 seconds closer to catastrophe. It is now two minutes to midnight—the closest the Clock has ever been to Doomsday, and as close as it was in 1953, at the height of the Cold War.
The Science and Security Board hopes this resetting of the Clock will be interpreted exactly as it is meant—as an urgent warning of global danger. The time for world leaders to address looming nuclear danger and the continuing march of climate change is long past. The time for the citizens of the world to demand such action is now:
#rewindtheDoomsdayClock.
The untenable nuclear threat. The risk that nuclear weapons may be used—intentionally or because of miscalculation—grew last year around the globe.
North Korea has long defied UN Security Council resolutions to cease its nuclear and ballistic missile tests, but the acceleration of its tests in 2017 reflects new resolve to acquire sophisticated nuclear weapons. North Korea has or soon will have capabilities to match its verbal threats—specifically, a thermonuclear warhead and a ballistic missile that can carry it to the US mainland. In September, North Korea tested what experts assess to be a true two-stage thermonuclear device, and in November, it tested the Hwasong-15 missile, which experts believe has a range of over 8,000 kilometers. The United States and its allies, Japan and South Korea, responded with more frequent and larger military exercises, while China and Russia proposed a freeze by North Korea of nuclear and missile tests in exchange for a freeze in US exercises.
The failure to secure a temporary freeze in 2017 was unsurprising to observers of the downward spiral of nuclear rhetoric between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The failure to rein in North Korea’s nuclear program will reverberate not just in the Asia-Pacific, as neighboring countries review their security options, but more widely, as all countries consider the costs and benefits of the international framework of nonproliferation treaties and agreements.
Nuclear risks have been compounded by US-Russia relations that now feature more conflict than cooperation. Coordination on nuclear risk reduction is all but dead, and no solution to disputes over the INF Treaty—a landmark agreement to rid Europe of medium-range nuclear missiles—is readily apparent. Both sides allege violations, but Russia’s deployment of a new ground-launched cruise missile, if not addressed, could trigger a collapse of the treaty. Such a collapse would make what should have been a relatively easy five-year
extension of the New START arms control pact much harder to achieve and could terminate an arms control process that dates back to the early 1970s.
For the first time in many years, in fact, no US-Russian nuclear arms control negotiations are under way. New strategic stability talks begun in April are potentially useful, but so far they lack the energy and political commitment required for them to bear fruit. More important, Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea and semi-covert support of separatists in eastern Ukraine have sparked concerns that Russia will support similar “hybrid” conflicts in new NATO members that it borders—actions that could provoke a crisis at almost any time. Additional clash points could emerge if Russia attempts to exploit friction between the United States and its NATO partners, whether arising from disputes on burden-sharing, European Union membership, and trade—or relating to policies on Israel, Iran, and terrorism in the Middle East.
In the past year, US allies have needed reassurance about American intentions more than ever. Instead, they have been forced to negotiate a thicket of conflicting policy statements from a US administration weakened in its cadre of foreign policy professionals, suffering from turnover in senior leadership, led by an undisciplined and disruptive president, and unable to develop, coordinate, and clearly communicate a coherent nuclear policy. This inconsistency constitutes a major challenge for deterrence, alliance management, and global stability. It has made the existing nuclear risks greater than necessary and added to their complexity.
Especially in the case of the Iran nuclear deal, allies are perplexed. While President Trump has steadfastly opposed the agreement that his predecessor and US allies negotiated to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons, he has never successfully articulated practical alternatives. His instruction to Congress in 2017 to legislate a different approach resulted in a stalemate. The future of the Iran deal, at this writing, remains uncertain.
In the United States, Russia, and elsewhere around the world, plans for nuclear force modernization and development continue apace. The Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review appears likely to increase the types and roles of nuclear weapons in US defense plans and lower the threshold to nuclear use. In South Asia, emphasis on nuclear and missile capabilities grows. Conventional force imbalances and destabilizing plans for nuclear weapons use early in any conflict continue to plague the subcontinent.
Reflecting long decades of frustration with slow progress toward nuclear disarmament, states signed a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, commonly known as the ban treaty, at the United Nations this past September. The treaty—championed by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its work—is a symbolic victory for those seeking a world without nuclear weapons and a strong expression of the frustration with global disarmament efforts to date. Predictably, countries with nuclear weapons boycotted the negotiations, and none has signed the ban treaty. Their increased reliance on nuclear weapons, threats, and doctrines that could make the use of those weapons more likely stands in stark contrast to the expectations of the rest of the world.
An insufficient response to climate change. Last year, the US government pursued unwise and ineffectual policies on climate change, following through on a promise to derail past US climate policies. The Trump administration, which includes avowed climate denialists in top positions at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department, and other key agencies, has announced its plan to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. In its rush to dismantle rational climate and energy policy, the administration has ignored scientific fact and well-founded economic analyses.
These US government climate decisions transpired against a backdrop of worsening climate change and high-impact weather-
related disasters. This year past, the Caribbean region and other parts of North America suffered a season of historic damage from exceedingly powerful hurricanes. Extreme heat waves occurred in Australia, South America, Asia, Europe, and California, with mounting evidence that heat-related illness and death are correspondingly increasing. The Arctic ice cap achieved its smallest-ever winter maximum in 2017, the third year in a row that this record has been broken. The United States has witnessed devastating wildfires, likely exacerbated by extreme drought and subsequent heavy rains that spurred underbrush growth. When the data are assessed, 2017 is almost certain to continue the trend of exceptional global warmth: All the warmest years in the instrumental record, which extends back to the 1800s, have—excepting one year in the late 1990s—occurred in the 21st century.
Despite the sophisticated disinformation campaign run by climate denialists, the unfolding consequences of an altered climate are a harrowing testament to an undeniable reality: The science linking climate change to human activity—mainly the burning of fossil fuels that produce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases—is sound. The world continues to warm as costly impacts mount, and there is evidence that overall rates of sea level rise are accelerating—regardless of protestations to the contrary.
Especially against these trends, it is heartening that the US government’s defection from the Paris Agreement did not prompt its unravelling or diminish its support within the United States at large. The “We Are Still In” movement signals a strong commitment within the United States—by some 1,700 businesses, 250 cities, 200 communities of faith, and nine states, representing more than 40 percent of the US population—to its international climate commitments and to the validity of scientific facts.
This reaffirmation is reassuring, and other countries have maintained their steadfast support for climate action, reconfirmed their commitments to global climate cooperation, and clearly acknowledged that more needs to be done. French President Emmanuel Macron’s sober message to global leaders assembled at December’s global climate summit in Paris was a reality check after the heady climate negotiations his country hosted two years earlier: “We’re losing the battle. We’re not moving quickly enough. We all need to act.” And indeed, after plateauing for a few years, greenhouse gas emissions resumed their stubborn rise in 2017.
As we have noted before, the true measure of the Paris Agreement is whether nations actually fulfill their pledges to cut emissions, strengthen those pledges, and see to it that global greenhouse gas emissions start declining in short order and head toward zero. As we drift yet farther from this goal, the urgency of shifting course becomes greater, and the existential threat posed by climate change looms larger.
Emerging technologies and global risk. The Science and Security Board is deeply concerned about the loss of public trust in political institutions, in the media, in science, and in facts themselves—a loss that the abuse of information technology has fostered. Attempts to intervene in elections through sophisticated hacking operations and the spread of disinformation have threatened democracy, which relies on an informed electorate to reach reasonable decisions on public policy—including policy relating to nuclear weapons, climate change, and other global threats. Meanwhile, corporate leaders in the information domain, including established media outlets and internet companies such as Facebook and Google, have been slow to adopt protocols to prevent misuse of their services and protect citizens from manipulation. The international community should establish new measures
that discourage and penalize all cross-border subversions of democracy.
Last year, the Science and Security Board warned that “[t]echnological innovation is occurring at a speed that challenges society’s ability to keep pace. While limited at the current time, potentially existential threats posed by a host of emerging technologies need to be monitored, and to the extent possible anticipated, as the 21st century unfolds.”
If anything, the velocity of technological change has only increased in the past year, and so our warning holds for 2018. But beyond monitoring advances in emerging technology, the board believes that world leaders also need to seek better collective methods of managing those advances, so the positive aspects of new technologies are encouraged and malign uses discovered and countered. The sophisticated hacking of the “Internet of Things,” including computer systems that control major financial and power infrastructure and have access to more than 20 billion personal devices; the development of autonomous weaponry that makes “kill” decisions without human supervision; and the possible misuse of advances in synthetic biology, including the revolutionary Crispr gene-editing tool, already pose potential global security risks. Those risks could expand without strong public institutions and new management regimes. The increasing pace of technological change requires faster development of those tools.
How to turn back the Clock. In 1953, former Manhattan Project scientist and Bulletin editor Eugene Rabinowitch set the hands of the Doomsday Clock at two minutes to midnight, writing, “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.”
The Science and Security Board now again moves the hands of the Clock to two minutes before midnight. But the current, extremely dangerous state of world affairs need not be permanent. The means for managing dangerous technology and reducing global-scale risk exist; indeed, many of them are well-known and within society’s reach, if leaders pay reasonable attention to preserving the long-term prospects of humanity, and if citizens demand that they do so.
This is a dangerous time, but the danger is of our own making. Humankind has invented the implements of apocalypse; so can it invent the methods of controlling and eventually eliminating them. This year, leaders and citizens of the world can move the Doomsday Clock and the world away from the metaphorical midnight of global catastrophe by taking these common-sense actions:
• US President Donald Trump should refrain from provocative rhetoric regarding North Korea, recognizing the impossibility of predicting North Korean reactions.
• The US and North Korean governments should open multiple channels of communication. At a minimum, military-to-military communications can help reduce the likelihood of inadvertent war on the Korean Peninsula. Keeping diplomatic channels open for talks without preconditions is another common-sense way to reduce tensions. As leading security expert Siegfried Hecker of Stanford University recently wrote: “Such talks should not be seen as a reward or concession to Pyongyang, nor construed as signaling acceptance of a nuclear-armed North Korea. They could, however, deliver the message that while Washington fully intends to defend itself and its allies from any attack with a devastating retaliatory response, it does not otherwise intend to attack North Korea or pursue regime change.”
• The world community should pursue, as a short-term goal, the cessation of North Korea’s nuclear weapon and ballistic missile tests. North Korea is the only country to violate the norm against nuclear testing in 20 years. Over time, the United States should seek North Korea’s signature on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty—and then, along with China, at long last also ratify the treaty.
• The Trump administration should abide by the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action for Iran’s nuclear program unless credible evidence emerges that Iran is not complying with the agreement or Iran agrees to an alternative approach that meets US national security needs.
• The United States and Russia should discuss and adopt measures to prevent peacetime military incidents along the borders of NATO. Provocative military exercises and maneuvers hold the potential for crisis escalation. Both militaries must exercise restraint and professionalism, adhering to all norms developed to avoid conflict and accidental encounters.
• US and Russian leaders should return to the negotiating table to resolve differences over the INF treaty; to seek further reductions in nuclear arms; to discuss a lowering of the alert status of the nuclear arsenals of both countries; to limit nuclear modernization programs that threaten to create a new nuclear arms race; and to ensure that new tactical or low-yield nuclear weapons are not built and that existing tactical weapons are never used on the battlefield.
• US citizens should demand, in all legal ways, climate action from their government. Climate change is a real and serious threat to humanity. Citizens should insist that their governments acknowledge it and act accordingly.
• Governments around the world should redouble their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so they go well beyond the initial, inadequate pledges under the Paris Agreement. The temperature goal under that agreement—to keep warming well below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels—is consistent with consensus views on climate science, is eminently achievable, and is
economically viable, provided that poorer countries are given the support they need to make the post-carbon transition. But the time window for achieving this goal is rapidly closing.
• The international community should establish new protocols to discourage and penalize the misuse of information technology to undermine public trust in political institutions, in the media, in science, and in the existence of objective reality itself. Strong and accountable institutions are necessary to prevent deception campaigns that are a real threat to effective democracies, reducing their ability to enact policies to address nuclear weapons, climate change, and other global dangers.
• The countries of the world should collaborate on creating institutions specifically assigned to explore and address potentially malign or catastrophic misuses of new technologies, particularly as regards autonomous weaponry that makes “kill” decisions without human supervision and advances in synthetic biology that could, if misused, pose a global threat.
The failure of world leaders to address the largest threats to humanity’s future is lamentable—but that failure can be reversed. It is two minutes to midnight, but the Doomsday Clock has ticked away from midnight in the past, and during the next year, the world can again move it further from apocalypse. The warning the Science and Security Board now sends is clear, the danger obvious and imminent. The opportunity to reduce the danger is equally clear.
The world has seen the threat posed by the misuse of information technology and witnessed the vulnerability of democracies to disinformation. But there is a flip side to the abuse of social media. Leaders react when citizens insist they do so, and citizens around the world can use the power of the internet to improve the long-term prospects of their children and grandchildren. They can insist on facts, and discount nonsense. They can demand action to reduce the existential threat of nuclear war and unchecked climate change. They can seize the opportunity to make a safer and saner world.
They can #rewindtheDoomsdayClock.
Science and security board biographies
Rachel Bronson is the President and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, where she oversees the publishing programs, the management of the Doomsday Clock, and a growing set of activities around nuclear risk, climate change, and disruptive technologies. Before joining the Bulletin, she served as vice president for Studies at The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, adjunct professor of “Global Energy” at the Kellogg School of Management, and senior fellow and director of Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, among other positions. Her book, Thicker than Oil: America’s Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia (Oxford University Press, 2006), has been translated into Japanese and published in paperback. Her writings and commentary have appeared in outlets including Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, The Washington Post, “PBS NewsHour,” “Charlie Rose,” and “The Daily Show.” Bronson has served as a consultant to NBC News and testified before the congressional Task Force on Anti-Terrorism and Proliferation Financing, Congress’s Joint Economic Committee, and the 9/11 Commission.
Lynn Eden is Senior Research Scholar (Emeritus) at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. Eden is also co-chair of US Pugwash and a member of the International Pugwash Council. Her scholarly work focuses on the military and society; science, technology, and organizations; and US nuclear weapons history and policy. Eden’s Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation won the American Sociological Association’s 2004 Robert K. Merton award for best book in science and technology studies. Her current research and writing (mostly historical) ask how a specific US military planning organization has enabled very good people to plan what, if put into action, could or would result in the deaths of tens or hundreds of millions of people. In other words, how do US military officers make plans to fight and prevail in nuclear war?
Rod Ewing is the Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security in the Center for International Security and Cooperation in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences in the School of Earth, Environmental and Energy Sciences at Stanford University. Ewing’s research focuses on the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle, mainly nuclear materials and the geochemistry of radionuclides. He is the past president of the International Union of Materials Research Societies. Ewing has written extensively on issues related to nuclear waste management and is co-editor of Radioactive Waste Forms for the Future and Uncertainty Underground:Yucca Mountain and the Nation’s High-Level Nuclear Waste. He received the Lomonosov Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2006.
Daniel Holz is an Associate Professor in Physics, Astronomy & Astrophysics, the Enrico Fermi Institute, and the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on general relativity in the context of astrophysics and cosmology. He is a member of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) collaboration, and was part of the team that announced the first detection of gravitational waves in early 2016. He received a 2012 National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the 2015 Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, and the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2016, and was selected as a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in 2017. Holz received his PhD in physics from the University of Chicago and his AB in physics from Princeton University.
Sivan Kartha is a Senior Scientist at Stockholm Environmental Institute whose research and publications for the past 20 years have focused on technological options and policy strategies for addressing climate change, concentrating most recently on equity and efficiency in the design of an
international climate regime. He is a co-Leader of SEI’s Gender and Social Equity Programme, and co-Director of the Climate Equity Reference Project. His current work deals primarily with the economic, political, and ethical dimensions of equitably sharing the effort of an ambitious global response to climate change. Dr. Kartha has also worked on mitigation scenarios, market mechanisms for climate actions, and the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of biomass energy. His work has enabled him to advise and collaborate with diverse organizations, including the UN Climate Convention Secretariat, various United Nations and World Bank programs, numerous government policy-making bodies and agencies, foundations, and civil society organizations throughout the developing and industrialized world. He served as a Coordinating Lead Author in the preparation of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released in 2014, co-leading the chapter on Equity and Sustainable Development.
Elizabeth Kolbert has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1999 and has written extensively on science and climate change to great acclaim. Her most recent book, The Sixth Extinction, won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. Kolbert is also known for her book Field Notes From a Catastrophe, based on her three-part series on global warming, “The Climate of Man,” which won the 2006 National Magazine Award for Public Interest and the AAAS Advancement of Science Journalism Award. She is also a recipient of a Heinz Award (for educating the public about environmental issues) and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Lawrence Krauss (Chair—Board of Sponsors) is the director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University and Foundation Professor at ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration and Physics Department. Krauss is an internationally known theoretical physicist with wide research interests, including the interface between elementary particle physics
and cosmology, where his studies include the early universe, the nature of dark matter, general relativity and neutrino astrophysics. He has written 10 books, including the international bestsellers The Physics of Star Trek, A Universe from Nothing, and his latest book, The Greatest Story Ever Told—So Far, which was released last year. He writes regularly for magazines and newspapers including The New York Times and The New Yorker, and frequently appears on radio and television, as well as, most recently, in several feature films. Among his numerous awards for research and outreach, he was awarded the 2012 Public Service Award from the National Science Board for his contributions to the public understanding of science. Krauss is the only physicist to have been awarded the three major awards from the American Physical Society, the American Institute of Physics, and the American Association of Physics Teachers.
Herb Lin is Senior Research Scholar for Cyber Policy and Security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, both at Stanford University. He is particularly interested in the use of offensive operations in cyberspace, especially as instruments of national policy.
Suzet McKinney is the CEO/Executive Director of the Illinois Medical District Commission. She is the former Deputy Commissioner of the Bureau of Public Health Preparedness and Emergency Response at the Chicago Department of Public Health, where she oversaw the emergency preparedness efforts for the department and coordinated those efforts within the larger spectrum of Chicago’s public safety activities. A sought-after expert in her field, McKinney also provides support to the US Department of Defense, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, to provide subject matter expertise in biological terrorism preparedness to international agencies. She is the author of the forthcoming text: Public Health Emergency Preparedness: Practical Solutions for the Real World, published by Jones & Bartlett Publishers (2018).
Steve Miller is the Director of the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and he is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where he is chair of the Committee on International Security Studies (CISS). Miller is also Co-Chair of the US Pugwash Committee, and is a member of the Council of International Pugwash. Miller co-directs the Academy’s project on the Global Nuclear Future Initiative with the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board Chair, Robert Rosner.
Raymond Pierrehumbert is Halley Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford. He was a lead author on the IPCC Third Assessment Report, and a co-author of the National Research Council report on abrupt climate change. He was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996, which was used to launch collaborative work on the climate of Early Mars with collaborators in Paris. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has been named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the Republic of France. Pierrehumbert’s central research interest is the use of fundamental physical principles to elucidate the behavior of the present and past climates of Earth and other planets, including the growing catalog of exoplanets. He leads the European Research Council Advance Grant project EXOCONDENSE.
Ramamurti Rajaraman is an emeritus professor of physics at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is a founding member and former co-chair of the International Panel on Fissile Materials. He is also currently a member of the Asia Pacific Leadership Network, Council of the Pugwash Conference on Science & World Affairs, the Permanent Monitoring Panel on Mitigation of Terrorist Acts, World Federation of Scientists (Erice, Italy), the Editorial Board of “Science and Global Security,” and of the Board of Governors of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (New Delhi).
His research areas in pure physics include nuclear theory, particle physics, quantum field theory, quantum Hall systems, anomalous gauge theories, and Soliton physics. He has also worked on areas of public policy including higher education, nuclear energy and disarmament. The latter body of work was recognized by the 2014 Leo Szilard Lectureship Award by the American Physical Society. His work covers nuclear weapon accidents, civil defense, India’s nuclear doctrine, minimal deterrence and anti-missile and early warning systems. He has analyzed the Indo-US nuclear agreement and its impact on both India’s civilian nuclear program and its nuclear arsenal. He has written about fissile material production in India and Pakistan and the radiological effects of nuclear weapon accidents.
Robert Rosner (Chair) is the chair of the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board and is the William E. Wrather Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of Astronomy & Astrophysics and Physics, and the Harris School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago. Rosner served as Director of Argonne National Laboratory, where he had also served as Chief Scientist. His current scientific research is mostly in the areas of plasma astrophysics and astrophysical fluid dynamics and magnetohydrodynamics; high energy density physics; boundary mixing instabilities; and computational physics. His policy-oriented work has focused on the future of nuclear power and the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle, as well as various aspects of electrifying the transport sector.
Jennifer Sims is currently a senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and is writing a book on intelligence in international politics. She is also a consultant on intelligence and homeland security for private corporations and the US government. In 2008, the president of the United States appointed her to the Public Interest Declassification Board, which advises the president on the declassification policies of the US government. Sims received her MA and her PhD from Johns Hopkins University’s
School of Advanced International Studies. In 1998, Sims received the intelligence community’s highest civilian award, the National Distinguished Service Medal.
Susan Solomon is the Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was the Founding Director of the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative from 2014-2015. She is well known for pioneering work that explained why there is a hole in the Antarctic ozone layer and is the author of several influential scientific papers in climate science. Solomon received the 1999 US National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest scientific award, in 1999. She has also received the Grande Medaille of the French Academy of Sciences, the Blue Planet Prize in Japan, the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award, and the Volvo Environment Prize. She is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the French Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Society in the UK. She served as co-chair for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fourth climate science assessment report, released in 2007. Timemagazine named Solomon as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2008.
Richard Somerville is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Research Professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. His research is focused on critical physical processes in the climate system, especially the role of clouds and the important feedbacks that can occur as clouds change with a changing climate. His broader interests include all aspects of climate, including climate science outreach and the interface between science and public policy. He was a Coordinating Lead Author of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); the IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize equally with Al Gore. Somerville is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Meteorological Society. He has received both the Climate Communication Prize and the Ambassador Award of the American Geophysical Union, as well as awards from the American Meteorological Society for both his research and his popular book, The Forgiving Air: Understanding Environmental Change.
Sharon Squassoni is Research Professor at the Institute for International Science and Technology Policy, Elliott School of International Affairs, at the George Washington University. Previously, she directed the Proliferation Prevention Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and was a senior scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, both in Washington, DC. She has specialized in nuclear nonproliferation, arms control and security policy for three decades, serving in the US government at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the State Department, and the Congressional Research Service. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the State University of New York at Albany, a master’s in public management from the University of Maryland, and a master’s in national security strategy from the National War College.
David Titley is a Professor of Practice in Meteorology and a Professor of International Affairs at the Pennsylvania State University, and the founding director of Penn State’s Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk. He served as a naval officer for 32 years and rose to the rank of rear admiral. Dr. Titley’s career included duties as commander of the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command; oceanographer and navigator of the Navy; and deputy assistant chief of naval operations for information dominance. He also served as senior military assistant for the director, Office of Net Assessment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. While serving in the Pentagon, Dr. Titley initiated and led the US Navy’s Task
Force on Climate Change. After retiring from the Navy, Dr. Titley served as the deputy undersecretary of commerce for operations, the chief operating officer position at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Dr. Titley serves on numerous advisory boards and National Academies of Science committees, including the CNA Military Advisory Board and the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Dr. Titley is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society and was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
Jon Wolfsthal is director of the Nuclear Crisis Group, an independent project of Global Zero. Wolfsthal served previously as Special Assistant to the President of the United States for National Security Affairs and senior director at the National Security Council for arms control and nonproliferation. During his time in government he was involved in almost every aspect of US nuclear weapons, arms control, nonproliferation and security policy. Previously, Wolfsthal was the Deputy Director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and served for three years as special advisor to Vice President Biden on issues of nuclear security and nonproliferation. He served in several capacities during the 1990s at the US Department of Energy, including an on-the-ground assignment in North Korea during 1995-96. With Joseph Cirincione, he is the author of Deadly Arsenals: Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction. He is a non-resident fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and with the Managing the Atom Project at Harvard University.
Editor
John Mecklin is the editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Previously, Mecklin was editor-in-chief of Miller-McCune(since renamed Pacific Standard), an award-winning national magazine that focused on research-based solutions to major policy problems. Over the preceding 15 years, he was also: the editor of High Country News, a nationally acclaimed magazine that
reports on the American West; the consulting executive editor for the launch of Key West, a regional magazine start-up directed by renowned magazine guru Roger Black; and the top editor for award-winning newsweeklies in San Francisco and Phoenix. In an earlier incarnation, he was an investigative reporter at the Houston Post and covered the Persian Gulf War from Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Writers working at his direction have won many major journalism contests, including the George Polk Award and the Investigative Reporters and Editors certificate. Mecklin holds a master in public administration degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
About the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists engages science leaders, policy makers, and the interested public on the topics of nuclear risk, climate change, and disruptive technologies. We do this through our award-winning journal, iconic Doomsday Clock, public-access website, and regular set of convenings. With smart, vigorous prose, multimedia presentations, and information graphics, the Bulletin puts issues and events into context and provides fact-based debates and assessments. For more than 70 years, the Bulletin has bridged the technology divide between scientific research, foreign policy, and public engagement.
The Bulletin was founded in 1945 by Manhattan Project scientists who “could not remain aloof to the consequences of their work.” The organization’s early years chronicled the dawn of the nuclear age and the birth of the scientists’ movement, as told by the men and women who built the atomic bomb and then lobbied with both technical and humanist arguments for its abolition.
Today, the Bulletin is an independent, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. With our international network of board members and experts, we assess scientific advancements that involve both benefits and risks to humanity, with the goal of influencing public policy to protect our planet and all its inhabitants.
The Bulletin’s website is a robust public and research-oriented source of detailed reports and cogent analysis from the scientists and experts who are directly involved. It receives an average of more than 230,000 visits per month. The bimonthly magazine, which can be found in more than 15,000 leading universities and institutions worldwide, attracts a large number of influential readers. About half of the Bulletin’s website and journal readers reside outside the United States. Half of the visitors to its website are under the age of 35.
The Bulletin’s signature strength is its capacity to synthesize and inform by linking critical issues, treaty negotiations, and scientific assessments to threats represented by the iconic Doomsday Clock. The Clock attracts more daily visitors to our site than any other feature, and commands worldwide attention when the Bulletin issues periodic assessments of global threats and solutions.
In 2007 the Bulletin won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence, the magazine industry equivalent of an Oscar for Best Picture. The Bulletin also was named one of four 2009 finalists for the Lumity Technology Leadership Award, presented by Accenture to a nonprofit organization that is effectively applying innovative technologies. Today, the Bulletin supplements its cutting-edge journalism with interactive infographics and videos, and amplifies its messages through social media platforms.
To advance the Bulletin as a thriving public forum over the next 70 years, we are opening more channels between scientific and policy leaders as we increase our outreach to supporters all over the world. Two partnerships are key to these efforts—one with the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy and the other with Routledge, publisher of our digital journal since January 2016.
2017 IT IS TWO AND A HALF MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT For the last two years, the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock stayed set at three minutes before the hour, the closest it had been to midnight since the early 1980s. In its two most recent annual announcements on the Clock, the Science and Security Board warned: “The probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon.” In 2017, we find the danger to be even greater, the need for action more urgent. It is two and a half minutes to midnight, the Clock is ticking, global danger looms. Wise public officials should act immediately, guiding humanity away from the brink. If they do not, wise citizens must step forward and lead the way.
2016 IT IS STILL 3 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT “Last year, the Science and Security Board moved the Doomsday Clock forward to three minutes to midnight, noting: ‘The probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon.’ That probability has not been reduced. The Clock ticks. Global danger looms. Wise leaders should act—immediately.”
2015 IT IS 3 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT “Unchecked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations, and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity, and world leaders have failed to act with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from potential catastrophe. These failures of political leadership endanger every person on Earth.” Despite some modestly positive developments in the climate change arena, current efforts are entirely insufficient to prevent a catastrophic warming of Earth. Meanwhile, the United States and Russia have embarked on massive programs to
modernize their nuclear triads—thereby undermining existing nuclear weapons treaties. “The clock ticks now at just three minutes to midnight because international leaders are failing to perform their most important duty— ensuring and preserving the health and vitality of human civilization.”
2012 IT IS 5 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT “The challenges to rid the world of nuclear weapons, harness nuclear power, and meet the nearly inexorable climate disruptions from global warming are complex and interconnected. In the face of such complex problems, it is difficult to see where the capacity lies to address these challenges.” Political processes seem wholly inadequate; the potential for nuclear weapons use in regional conflicts in the Middle East, Northeast Asia, and South Asia are alarming; safer nuclear reactor designs need to be developed and built, and more stringent oversight, training, and attention are needed to prevent future disasters; the pace of technological solutions to address climate change may not be adequate to meet the hardships that large-scale disruption of the climate portends.
2010 IT IS 6 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT International cooperation rules the day. Talks between Washington and Moscow for a follow-on agreement to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty are nearly complete, and more negotiations for further reductions in the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenal are already planned. Additionally, Barack Obama becomes the first U.S. president to publicly call for a nuclear-weapon-free world. The dangers posed by climate change are still great, but there are pockets of progress. Most notably: At Copenhagen, the developing and industrialized countries agree to take responsibility for carbon emissions and to limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius.
2007 IT IS 5 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT The world stands at the brink of a second nuclear age. The United States and Russia remain ready to stage a nuclear attack within minutes, North Korea conducts a nuclear test, and many in the international community worry that Iran plans to acquire the Bomb. Climate change also presents a dire challenge to humanity. Damage to ecosystems is already taking place; flooding, destructive storms, increased drought, and polar ice melt are causing loss of life and property.
2002 IT IS 7 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT Concerns regarding a nuclear terrorist attack underscore the enormous amount of unsecured—and sometimes unaccounted for—weapon-grade nuclear materials located throughout the world. Meanwhile, the United States expresses a desire to design new nuclear weapons, with an emphasis on those able to destroy hardened and deeply buried targets. It also rejects a series of arms control treaties and announces it will withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
1998 IT IS 9 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT India and Pakistan stage nuclear weapons tests only three weeks apart. “The tests are a symptom of the failure of the international community to fully commit itself to control the spread of nuclear weapons— and to work toward substantial reductions in the numbers of these weapons,” a dismayed Bulletin reports. Russia and the United States continue to serve as poor examples to the rest of the world. Together, they still maintain 7,000 warheads ready to fire at each other within 15 minutes.
1995 IT IS 14 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT Hopes for a large post-Cold War peace dividend and a renouncing of nuclear weapons fade. Particularly in the United States, hard-liners seem reluctant to soften their rhetoric or actions, as they claim that a resurgent Russia could provide as much of a threat as the Soviet Union. Such
talk slows the rollback in global nuclear forces; more than 40,000 nuclear weapons remain worldwide. There is also concern that terrorists could exploit poorly secured nuclear facilities in the former Soviet Union.
1991 IT IS 17 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT With the Cold War officially over, the United States and Russia begin making deep cuts to their nuclear arsenals. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty greatly reduces the number of strategic nuclear weapons deployed by the two former adversaries. Better still, a series of unilateral initiatives remove most of the intercontinental ballistic missiles and bombers in both countries from hair-trigger alert. “The illusion that tens of thousands of nuclear weapons are a guarantor of national security has been stripped away,” the Bulletin declares.
1990 IT IS 10 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT As one Eastern European country after another (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania) frees itself from Soviet control, Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev refuses to intervene, halting the ideological battle for Europe and significantly diminishing the risk of all-out nuclear war. In late 1989, the Berlin Wall falls, symbolically ending the Cold War. “Forty-four years after Winston Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’ speech, the myth of monolithic communism has been shattered for all to see,” the Bulletin proclaims.
1988 IT IS 6 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT The United States and Soviet Union sign the historic Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the first agreement to actually ban a whole category of nuclear weapons. The leadership shown by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev makes the treaty a reality, but public opposition to U.S. nuclear weapons in Western Europe inspires it. For years, such intermediate-range missiles had kept Western Europe in the crosshairs of the two superpowers.
1984 IT IS 3 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT U.S.-Soviet relations reach their iciest point in decades. Dialogue between the two superpowers virtually stops. “Every channel of communications has been constricted or shut down; every form of contact has been attenuated or cut off. And arms control negotiations have been reduced to a species of propaganda,” a concerned Bulletin informs readers. The United States seems to flout the few arms control agreements in place by seeking an expansive, space-based anti-ballistic missile capability, raising worries that a new arms race will begin.
1981 IT IS 4 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan hardens the U.S. nuclear posture. Before he leaves office, President Jimmy Carter pulls the United States from the Olympic Games in Moscow and considers ways in which the United States could win a nuclear war. The rhetoric only intensifies with the election of Ronald Reagan as president. Reagan scraps any talk of arms control and proposes that the best way to end the Cold War is for the United States to win
1980 IT IS 7 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT Thirty-five years after the start of the nuclear age and after some promising disarmament gains, the United States and the Soviet Union still view nuclear weapons as an integral component of their national security. This stalled progress discourages the Bulletin: “[The Soviet Union and United States have] been behaving like what may best be described as ‘nucleoholics’—drunks who continue to insist that the drink being consumed is positively ‘the last one,’ but who can always find a good excuse for ‘just one more round.’”
1974 IT IS 9 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT South Asia gets the Bomb, as India tests its first nuclear device. And any gains in previous arms control agreements seem like a mirage. The United States and Soviet Union appear to be modernizing their nuclear forces, not reducing them. Thanks to the deployment of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRV), both countries can now load their intercontinental ballistic missiles with more nuclear warheads than before.
1972 IT IS 12 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT The United States and Soviet Union attempt to curb the race for nuclear superiority by signing the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) and the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. The two treaties force a nuclear parity of sorts. SALT limits the number of ballistic missile launchers either country can possess, and the ABM Treaty stops an arms race in defensive weaponry from developing.
1969 IT IS 10 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT Nearly all of the world’s nations come together to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The deal is simple—the nuclear weapon states vow to help the treaty’s non-nuclear weapon signatories develop nuclear power if they promise to forego producing nuclear weapons. The nuclear weapon states also pledge to abolish their own arsenals when political conditions allow for it. Although Israel, India, and Pakistan refuse to sign the treaty, the Bulletinis cautiously optimistic: “The great powers have made the first step. They must proceed without delay to the next one—the dismantling, gradually, of their own oversized military establishments.”
1968 IT IS 7 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT Regional wars rage. U.S. involvement in Vietnam intensifies, India and Pakistan battle in 1965, and Israel and its Arab neighbors renew hostilities in 1967. Worse yet, France and China develop nuclear weapons to assert themselves as global players. “There is little reason to feel sanguine about the future of our society on the world scale,” the Bulletinlaments. “There is a mass revulsion against war, yes; but no sign of conscious intellectual leadership in a rebellion against the deadly heritage of international anarchy.”
1963 IT IS 12 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT After a decade of almost non-stop nuclear tests, the United States and Soviet Union sign the Partial Test Ban Treaty, which ends all atmospheric nuclear testing. While it does not outlaw underground testing, the treaty represents progress in at least slowing the arms race. It also signals awareness among the Soviets and United States that they need to work together to prevent nuclear annihilation.
1960 IT IS 7 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT Political actions belie the tough talk of “massive retaliation.” For the first time, the United States and Soviet Union appear eager to avoid direct confrontation in regional conflicts such as the 1956 Egyptian-Israeli dispute. Joint projects that build trust and constructive dialogue between third parties also quell diplomatic hostilities. Scientists initiate many of these measures, helping establish the International Geophysical Year, a series of coordinated, worldwide scientific observations, and the Pugwash Conferences, which allow Soviet and American scientists to interact.
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 5 categories (plus a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and others that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 linked most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (Especially with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual appearing order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera(There are three Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (per above). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There are three Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available at the end of this Post.
(A reminder, just in case: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
… emergency shutdown of cooling … Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority earlier confirmed there were no abnormalities reported at nuclear power plants …
North Korea’s law change raises threat of nuclear war as it declares South its ‘top enemy’ … threats to start a war may be more than ‘typical bluster’.
The following article is important for several reasons, not the least of which is the coming Doomsday Clock announcement by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on January 23rd when a pittance of 30 seconds will be increased to the Doomsday Clock setting the time at 2 minutes to midnight.
The logic, if you are not a subscriber to “The Bulletin”, will be explained at that time. One has to wonder if that has any significant reasoning at all. Considering that the original mythological 1949 clock was set at 3 minutes to midnight when Russia tested its initial atomic bomb, but more fearfully reduced to 2 minutes in 1953, which means that the 90 seconds in 2023 will be the closet to midnight ever set with 2024 tying 1953 for 2nd. It you are wondering, the longest time setting was 12 minutes in 1963.
The most important thing that I took away from this article tonight, is this cogent statement, which I know and understand very well from personal experience: “The paths for acting individually toward a safer world are many and varied. But all of them require a degree of hope and doggedness.” And so it goes . . . ~llaw
Since it first appeared in 1947, the hands of the Doomsday Clock have moved as close as 90 seconds and as far as 17 minutes to midnight. (Illustration by Thomas Gaulkin)
Introduction: What you can do to turn back the hands of the Doomsday Clock
Every January in recent decades, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set the hands of the Doomsday Clock—a graphic illustration of how close the planet is to the civilization-ending disaster symbolized by midnight.
When the hands of the Clock first moved toward midnight it was 1949, and the reason centered entirely on nuclear war. The Soviet Union had just tested its first atomic bomb, years ahead of when many US government observers had predicted. Nowadays, the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board considers not just nuclear weapons but a range of other existential risks—climate change most prominently, but also threats arising from a host of emerging disruptive technologies—when it decides how close the world is to catastrophe.
Each year, after the Clock is set, Bulletin staffers usually receive a flood of reader correspondence that asks some version of the same question: “But what can I do to turn back the hands of the Clock?”
Consequently, this issue of the Bulletin’s magazine—published just a few weeks before this year’s Doomsday Clock announcement—is devoted to providing at least some answers to that question. Its emphasis is on actions that citizens can take, individually and in concert, to help reduce major global threats. As much as possible, we tried to avoid merely symbolic gestures and focused on how citizens can best influence their leaders to deal responsibly with dangers that could be existential.
To provide a range of choices, we looked for people who have been working to effect positive changes, whether on the local, state, or national arena.
For example, at the age of 15, Sneha Revanur read about the use of biased AI-generated algorithms that threatened the justice process in her home state of California. She enlisted her peers—all in high school or just entering college—in contacting voters, creating informational content, partnering with community organizations, and running phone banks. Together, they helped defeat an electoral proposition that would have enshrined the use of such algorithms in the legal system across the state. Revanur subsequently founded an organization, Encode Justice, to carry on work related to limiting the negative effects of artificial intelligence, as she explains in “Interview with Sneha Revanur, ‘the Greta Thunberg of AI.’ ”
In “Bill McKibben explains what individuals can do to win the climate fight—together,” the longtime climate change activist gives his reading of today’s climate advocacy movements and how people of different ages and backgrounds might effectively fit themselves into them. He also gives his sharp and concise views about recent politics and the transformational power of the ballot box in the battle against climate change.
For a view of effective citizen action from inside the political system, we asked Los Angeles Congressman Ted Lieu about the best ways for voters to influence their representatives on big issues like nuclear weapons and climate change. In the resulting interview “California Congressman Ted Lieu on what you can do about existential threats,” we learned that, among many other ways to get your congressman’s attention, small groups of constituents who simply ask for a meeting with their member of Congress can be effective, even and perhaps especially on the issue of nuclear weapons. “Many members of Congress don’t run for Congress because of nuclear weapons,” Lieu said. “So it’s just an area where I think you can get members of Congress to engage and focus on and think about in a different way, because they may not have a very strongly held belief one way or the other.”
The paths for acting individually toward a safer world are many and varied. But all of them require a degree of hope and doggedness.
As former executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (and a key player in the 2015 Paris climate agreement) Christiana Figueres notes, the world has seen dramatic progress in solar and wind power technology, huge increases in the adoption of electric vehicles and heat pumps, and significant improvements in battery storage—positive developments that have often been overlooked amid a near-constant stream of bad climate news. “The stories of what human beings have achieved by applying stubborn optimism as an input in the face of seemingly impossible challenges never ceases to amaze me,” she writes in her essay, “Why a mindset of stubborn optimism about the climate crisis is needed, now more than ever.”
Indeed, those who believe that they can succeed are usually the ones who do. In Frida Berrigans’s “How my Gen Z students learned to start worrying and dismantle the Bomb,” an experienced activist from a long line of well-known and remarkably successful activists reflects on engaging with the current generation in regard to nuclear weapons—and the urgent need to do so. Hers is a story of connection across generations, and of hope that the hands of the Doomsday Clock can be moved away from midnight. Again. And then again and again. ~Dan Drollette Jr,
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 5 categories (plus a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and others that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 linked most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (Especially with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual appearing order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera(There are two Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (per above). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There are two Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available at the end of this Post.
(A reminder, just in case: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
Existential threats were banished. And a new global feel good factor … Today, Russia and China have been joined by new nuclear, and soon to be nuclear …
… caldera, and Ijen in East Java. Glossary · Glossary. Volcanology … List and interactive map of current and past earthquakes near Yellowstone volcano.
