Doomsday Clock Holds at 5 'Til Midnight

[Tuesday Afternoon]

By Live Science Staff | LiveScience.com

The hands of the infamous "Doomsday Clock" will remain firmly in their place at five minutes to midnight — symbolizing humans' destruction — for the year 2013, scientists announced today (Jan. 14).

Keeping their outlook for the future of humanity quite dim, the group of scientists also wrote an open letter to President Barack Obama, urging him to partner with other global leaders to act on climate change.

The clock is a symbol of the threat of humanity's imminent destruction from nuclear or biological weapons, climate change and other human-caused disasters. In making their deliberations about how to update the clock's time this year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists considered the current state of nuclear arsenals around the globe, the slow and costly recovery from events like Fukushima nuclear meltdown, and extreme weather events that fit in with a pattern of global warming.

"2012 was the hottest year on record in the contiguous United States, marked by devastating drought and brutal storms," the letter says. "These extreme events are exactly what climate models predict for an atmosphere laden with greenhouse gases." [Doom and Gloom: 10 Post-Apocalyptic Worlds]

more at link:
http://news.yahoo.com/end-near-doomsday-clock-holds-5-til-midnight-232147095.html

[AverageJoe90]

1. TBH, I gotta be honest; The Doomsday Clock.....

Has become a bit of a joke over the past few years. At no time, under any plausible scenario, will humanity ever be at risk for destruction(extinction, really.), under climate change in any time frame we can solidly conceive of.....yes, even the worst case ones.

I mean, come on, is Ralph Nader running this operation or what? If I were running the B.A.S., I'd have put it back to something like 10 minutes to midnight...perhaps even quite a bit more than that. SMH.....

[Tuesday Afternoon]

2. good lord man, did you think I meant it serious? did I make it wrong turn somewhere...

where the hell am I anyway.

[AverageJoe90]

7. Well, this is the Lounge.....

You'll have to forgive me if I misunderstood your intent, then. I've been around way too much nuttiness lately(long story.)......

[Tuesday Afternoon]

8. is OK ~

[pscot]

3. Paleobiologists think otherwise

They say that homo sapiens had a near death experience about 60,000 years ago. Our numbers may have dropped as low as a few thousand individuals as a result of adverse climate conditions. A change in the weather bailed us out. Now it's starting to look like a change in the weather may take us out.

[AverageJoe90]

4. You got a few things wrong here.

It was the Toba that caused the bottleneck and that was 72k years ago, not 60k(though it's eruption may have indeed shifted the weather patterns around for a while, which certainly may not have helped.). And in fact, the most reliable estimate was somewhere around 100,000 individuals(it may have been slightly lower than that. But it certainly wasn't as low as a few thousand, or we WOULD have been wiped out.).

[pscot]

10. Often wrong, but never in doubt...

The Toba theory is a speculative attempt to explain wht the genetic record seems to show. Here's Wikipedia which summarizes other, more technical sources:

Research on many genes finds different coalescence points from 2 million years ago to 60,000 years ago when different genes are considered, thus disproving the existence of more recent extreme bottlenecks (i.e., a single breeding pair).[3][6]

On the other hand, in 2000, a Molecular Biology and Evolution paper suggested a transplanting model or a 'long bottleneck' to account for the limited genetic variation, rather than a catastrophic environmental change.[7] This would be consistent with suggestions that in sub-Saharan Africa numbers could have dropped at times as low as 2,000, for perhaps as long as 100,000 years, before numbers began to expand again in the Late Stone Age.[8]

I hope this doesn't get me banned from the lounge.

[AverageJoe90]

11. Well, alright, but it's never a bad idea to be a little skeptical sometimes, though.

The thing is, here, is that only sub-Saharan Africa is mentioned. And given that part of the world has long been dangerous for humans anyway, and that we'd spread out quite a ways by 60,000 B.C.E., and that it doesn't give any specific time frames, either, well, you be the judge.....

[pscot]

12. I know it's hard to keep up

The science is changing rapidly. Here's the latest:

Until now, theories held that modern humans spread from Africa 100,000 years ago. New data, however, suggest that their migration occurred only 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, explains anthropologist Ted Goebel, at Texas A&M. Additionally, he believes the spread of modern humans in eastern Europe and Russia occurred earlier than previously thought.

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20070011185812data_trunc_sys.shtml

[AverageJoe90]

13. It's just one study, though.

In fact, didn't most theories say we first came out of Africa, like, 200k years ago instead of 100k?(Or at least, that's what I learned growing up, anyhow)

[In_The_Wind]

5. I guess we'll be looking at a few changes.

[IMG][/IMG] [img][/img]

[AverageJoe90]

6. Nice picture. n/t =)

[Tuesday Afternoon]

9. thermodynamics trumps economics.

[Eagle_Eye]

14. Let's go for it

[Tuesday Afternoon]

15. cool

what page did you find this thread?