Lawrence M. Krauss: The Doomsday Clock Keeps Ticking
Last week, on behalf of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, I announced that the Doomsday Clock -- established in 1947 by scientists who had worked on the first atomic bomb in 1945 -- was to be moved back by one minute from its previous setting of five minutes to midnight -- five minutes to Doomsday. As of Jan. 14, it reads six minutes to midnight....
Here are [several] wrongheaded notions that keep the clock ticking:
The Cold War is over.
Russia and the U.S. possess more than 10,000 nuclear warheads, and what's more, each country has perhaps 1,000 warheads on hair-trigger alert, ready to launch within 15 minutes of a perceived attack. This is a recipe for disaster and no longer has any strategic purpose, because the two superpowers are no longer basing their defense on mutually assured destruction....
The United States would never again be first to use nuclear weapons against a civilian population.
The U.S. continues to reserve the right to use nuclear weapons first. There is no rational, moral, tactical or strategic purpose for the first use of nuclear weapons, and we need to recognize this fact in our strategic defense policy....
"Limited nuclear war" is, in fact, limited.
Recent studies have concluded that even a limited nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India, for example -- involving perhaps 100 warheads -- would significantly disrupt the global climate for at least a decade and would kick at least 5 million tons of smoke into the stratosphere....
Every little bit helps, but turning the Doomsday Clock back by one minute is cold comfort. We need to follow Einstein's dictum and change our modes of thinking. It's the only way we can stop the ticking once and for all.