"Doomsday Clock" remains at 3 minutes to midnight: scientists

The minute hand of the Doomsday Clock, designed to give the world an easy way to gauge the likelihood that our species will destroy itself, will remain at three minutes to midnight, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said Tuesday.

"The decision not to move hands of the clock in 2016 is not good news," theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss, chair of the Bulletin's Board of Sponsors, told a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. "Unless we change the way we think, humanity remains in serious danger."

The Doomsday Clock is a symbolic clock face, representing a countdown to a possible global catastrophe, such as a nuclear war. The closer the minute hand is to midnight, the closer the scientists believe the world is to a global disaster.

In January 2015, the Bulletin set the Doomsday Clock at three minutes to midnight, the closest it has been to midnight since the height of the Cold War in 1983.

This year, the Bulletin recognized recent progress represented by the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord, but said they "constitute only small bright spots in a darker world situation full of potential for catastrophe."

It said these positive steps have been offset in large part by "foreboding developments," such as increasing nuclear tensions between the U.S. and Russia, acute situation on the Korean Peninsula and high tensions between Pakistan and India.

During the news conference, Krauss specially called attention to U.S. President Barack Obama's nuclear-weapons-modernization program, including U.S. efforts to explore the use of smaller, useable nuclear-tipped missiles capable of attacking underground bunkers, which he said could cost between a hundred billion and a trillion U.S. dollars.

"What message does this send to non-nuclear nations about our intentions?" asked Krauss. "There is no sane strategic use of nuclear weapons, and we need to reduce our nuclear arsenal, not create a new generation of armaments."

To help the clock move back, the scientists urged world leaders to dramatically reduce proposed spending on nuclear-weapons-modernization programs and reenergize the disarmament process, engage with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to reduce nuclear risks, deal with the problem of commercial nuclear waste, follow up on the Paris accord to sharply reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, as well as create institutions specifically designed to explore and address potentially catastrophic misuse of new technologies.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons. The scientists created the "Doomsday Clock" two years later to warn the public about the existential threat to humanity posed by nuclear weapons. The Bulletin considered possible catastrophic disruptions from climate change in its deliberations for the first time in 2007.

The decision to move the clock's time is made by the bulletin's science and security board in consultation with the bulletin's Board of Sponsors, which includes 16 Nobel laureates,

In 1953, following American and Soviet tests of the hydrogen bomb, the clock reached 11:58, the closest to doomsday it's ever been. At the end of the Cold War, in 1991, it was turned back to 11:43, its furthest from doomsday. In total, the clock has been changed 22 times. Enditem