BBC: Steven Hawking explains why the Doomsday Clock is now 2 minutes closer to midnight

[BurtWorm]

In a nutshell, we are at the dawn of a Second Nuclear Age, Hawking says, and this is accompanied by "a deteriorating state of human and world affairs," in particular with relation to climate change.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/player/nol/newsid_6270000/newsid_6272300?redirect=6272369.stm&news=1&nbwm=1&bbram=1&bbwm=1&nbram=1

[Taxloss]

1. Ironically, I was reading

an article earlier this week - either in the LRB or the NYRB,* damn my memory - said something along the lines that it was comforting that the Doomsday Clock was still at 7 minutes despite the DPRK tests. Spoke too soon, whoever it was!

*On edit: It was on Metafilter. Damn my attempt to appear smart and pseudish. I done read it on thar internets.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

2. All nuclear weapons should be made illegal and destroyed.

No country has a right to use them.

[kimmerspixelated]

3. that's right! No One!

[Missy M]

4. You are absolutely right....

the madness has to stop and until all nuclear weapons are illegal and destroyed the world will never be safe.

[Lord Byron]

5. That will never happen

Someone will get the brilliant idea to conceal them.

[WI_DEM]

6. I thought it was because W has his finger near the button

[Double T]

7. So if 'WE' don't destroy 'OUR' planet's environment and climate first.............

'WE' will definitely nuke each other to death. Pitiful.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

9. nuclear winter a solution to global warming.

[Double T]

11. Sure....... we'll have a global inferno

[misanthrope]

14. It astonishes me...

...when I hear people talking about things like the colonization of Mars and I take account of the world around us right now. Initially, we don't possess anything close to the technology needed to make such an effort possible and won't for centuries. Planning around such a thing is akin to counting on bonobo chimpanzees to start fashioning bows and arrows.

But foremost of the barriers to such lofty goals is the fact that our self-destructive habits are on the verge of catching up with us in spades. Quite frankly, I don't see how Western Civilization is going to make it to the 22nd Century intact.

Our species is currently so primitive, brutish, myopic and selfish, I can't say we deserve to be infecting the rest of the universe with our presence.

[onecent]

8. I had never heard of the doomsday clock until this past few weeks...

I feel like I've been living under a rock, and wondered why I haven't known about it.

This is credible??? I mean, should we really be scared out of our wits?

[lumberingbear]

10. I believe the the "Doomsday Clock" has been around since....

1947.

[jpak]

12. It's been around since 1947 and devised by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

to keep the horror of nuclear war in the public eye.

and, yes - we should be scared shitless...

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

13. Or just hide under our desks.