Posted on 04/15/2007 11:56:22 PM PDT by neverdem
Sixty years ago, a group of physicists concerned about nuclear weapons created the Doomsday Clock and set its hands at seven minutes to midnight. Now, the clock's keepers, alarmed by dangers like climate change, have moved the hands to 11:55 p.m.
The news wasn't all bad. After all, the 1947 doomsday prediction marked the start of a golden age. Never have so many humans lived so long -- and maybe never so peacefully -- as during the past 60 years. The per-capita rate of violence, particularly in the West, seems remarkably low by historical standards. If the clock's keepers are worried once again, their track record suggests we're in for even happier days.
But one novel twist gives me pause. When the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced earlier this year in Washington that it was adjusting the clock, it was joined in a transatlantic news conference by scientists at the Royal Society in London. One of them was the society's president, Martin Rees, a new breed of doomsayer.
Rees, a cosmologist at Cambridge and Britain's astronomer royal, doesn't just issue gloomy predictions. He doesn't just move the hands of an imaginary and inscrutable clock. (Its keepers have never explained what one of their minutes equals on anyone else's clock or calendar.)
No, Rees is braver. He gives odds on doomsday and offers to bet on disaster. In his 2003 book, "Our Final Hour," he gives civilization no more than a 50 percent chance of surviving until 2100.
Rees is not a knee-jerk technophobe -- he expects great advances as researchers around the world link their knowledge -- but he fears that progress will be undone by what he calls the new global village idiots. He's sure enough of himself to post an offer on Long Bets, a clever innovation...
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
All great civilizations reach an apex and then fade.
Overshoot and collapse anyone? Paging Jared Diamond.
How is preparing for a manmade Epidemic different than preparing for a natural one?
One wonders if the reason they say 50/50 is that it’s about the same chance a democrat will win the presidency in 2008
I have a %100 chance of being dead by 2100...so’s I ain’t worried.
Art Bell’s guest this morning said an asteroid will hit in about 25 years. If we don’t find a new planet to pollute, that’s it for the human species.
“...but he fears that progress will be undone by what he calls the new global village idiots.”’
I think he is wrong. It will be undone by cowards and their cowardice NOT not idiots and their idiocy.
I guess that leaves me with only five more minutes to screw some hot chick before we all go.
(sarc alert)
It isn't but there's one man made epidemic that's staring them in the face and they don't even know it, it's called world population growth!!
When I was a kid in the 70s it was 4.2 billion, now it's something like 6.2, how the hell did that happen in so little time? sorry but the world hasn't got the resources to cope with that and all the immigration it entails.
Let's move the hand forward to 11:56...
You need to look at some more recent numbers. Many nations are no longer reproducing at replacement rate.
sorry but the world hasn't got the resources to cope with that
There is a word to describe people who think that. Wrong.
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