Scientists say pronouncements of US president and global tensions have brought new ‘time’ forward by 30 seconds

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The election of Donald Trump and wider geopolitical turbulence are so dangerous that the scientists behind the Doomsday Clock have pushed it forward to 2 minutes and 30 seconds before midnight.

The new “time” means experts at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists believe the earth is closer to imminent peril than at any point in the last 64 years.

The clock, an indicator of the world’s vulnerability to nuclear, environmental and political threats, was set at 3 minutes to midnight – with midnight being the apocalypse – in 2016.

“The current political situation in the US is a particular concern,” said theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss at a press conference in Washington DC on Thursday.

“The Trump administration needs to state clearly and unequivocally that it accepts that climate change is caused by human activity,” added Krauss, explaining that although some global progress such as the Paris accord was made last year, 2016 was the hottest year on record.



Several of Trump’s cabinet nominees are climate sceptics, such as Mick Mulvaney as head of the Office of Management and Budget, which Krauss notes “foreshadows the possibility they will be openly hostile to even modest efforts to combat climate change.”



But climate change isn’t the only issue. Nuclear weapons, particularly those held by the United States and Russia and the testing of weapons by North Korea, and tensions in Syria, Ukraine and Kashmir all making the world a more dangerous place than it was last year.

Thomas Pickering, who serves on the board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, noted that both during the election campaign and in Trump’s first days in office he “engaged in casual talk about nuclear weapons”. Bulletin scientists noted on multiple occasions throughout the Thursday morning press conference that “words matter, words count”.

“Loose but dangerous rhetoric have become almost commonplace,” said Rachel Bronson, the executive director and publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

The scientists called on Congress and the Trump administration to embrace science in their policymaking, particularly around issues of climate change.

“Policy that is sensible requires facts that are facts,” said Krauss.

The closest the clock, symbolising the threat of apocalypse, has ever come to striking midnight was in 1953, when it was timed at two minutes to midnight.

In that year the US took the decision to upgrade its nuclear arsenal with the hydrogen bomb, “a weapon far more powerful than any atomic bomb”.

In 2015, the clock was brought two minutes forward, taking it to three minutes to midnight. Last year it remained unchanged, but scientists warned this was still “far too close”.

The Bulletin was founded by US scientists involved in the Manhattan Project, which developed the world’s first nuclear weapons during the second world war.

In 1947, they established the Doomsday Clock to provide a simple way of demonstrating the danger to Earth and humanity posed by nuclear war. Today, the Bulletin is an independent non-profit organisation run by scientists.