The Doomsday clock is closer to Midnight than ever before at 89 seconds until midnight. What does this mean to all of us? Luckily we don’t have to worry too much about this. The clock isn’t necessarily a countdown until our end. It is more based on different factors to say how easily we could reach the end. Though we are likely not to all die too soon it still isn’t a good thing because of the reasons why it is calculated so high.
The Doomsday clock is run by the bulletin of atomic scientists. Within this group there are 10 people selected that decide on it annually. The group calculates the time left by looking at many easily measured statistics and some other factors that make it harder to decide which is why it takes them a whole year to decide. The clock also doesn’t just go down but also can go up if things get a little better.
The first factor that is used to help calculate the “time” is by assessing nuclear threats. To decide on this they look at how many countries have atomic weapons and also how many there are. This also looks into if any of these countries are in conflict and would change it even more if both of those countries have access to nuclear bombs. They will also look into other wars to a lesser degree but do use them for the calculation.
The next factor that they use to determine the amount of “time” the planet has left is climate change. This can be determined by the amount of change from years before as well as for various factors from the current year. Some of these climate change factors are carbon-emissions, ocean acidification, sea level rise from melting ice caps, and the pace of efforts to counter all of these poor changes to the world.
One more way that the doomsday clock is decided is by looking into which disruptive technologies are coming out. This is an interesting type of consideration but it means if a technology like artificial intelligence comes into play and could cause a large spread of misinformation, too much power to go to people that would use it poorly, and if there could be any large risks to the people of our planet and its many nations.
