January 23, 2020  - The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, an organization that has been taking the doomsday temperature since the explosive culmination of the Manhattan Project announced that the doomsday clock was now 100 seconds to midnight. By their measure, this is the closest we’ve ever been to apocalypse. The preface to the January statement underlines the heft of the Bulletin’s pronouncement: The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and disruptive technologies in other domains.

Some context on the doomsday clock: in 1947 (7 minutes), the year after the US nuclear testing program began, violence exploded between Hindus and Muslims in Calcutta, the French massacre 6,000 Vietnamese. It’s closer than it was in 1963 (12 minutes), the year after the US and the USSR tested record numbers of nuclear bombs, and the cuban missile crisis nearly set off nuclear war.  It’s closer than it was in 1972 (12 minutes), two years after National Guard shot four students at Kent State University, a year after the Camden riots, during the peak of the Troubles in Ireland, a year after the UN signed a treaty banning public use of psychotropic substances.

Since 1991, the clock has, in stops and starts, been moved closer to midnight. It’s been five minutes or less away from the apocalypse since 2012.

For last 20 years, issues regarding climate change have been cited continuously as the reason for approaching the looming destruction of humanity. The decision to move the clock to 100 seconds to midnight this January cited three main reasons: political tensions with nuclear consequences, weak responses to climate change, and the spread of disinformation. Events like the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, Jair Bolsonaro’s slow action on Amazon rainforest protections, as well as an overall lack of progress on carbon mitigation strategies from high-emissions UN members all made the list of rationales for the forecast that humans are seconds away apocalypse

There is such thing as evil

It’s hard to argue with there being bad actors in the world. Individuals and organizations are out there that would like to see the world burn, so long as they get their way. The consequences of their actions and the attempts to thwart them are easily visible, should one care to look

Disinformation, too, is rampant. A Pew Research poll from 2019 suggests that misinformation is a bigger problem for at least some of the US public than climate change, illegal immigration, racism, or sexism.

YouTube, Google, Twitter, Facebook, have all taken steps in an attempt to slow the spread of “fake news,” but frailties in the definition of what “fake news” actually means only serve to further inflame debate. Political cleavages between the left and right are driven by what statement of facts you take to reflect the “truth.” Throw in emotional identification about what it looks like to be a good person, and you’re left with a divide between the left and the right that often results in a complete inability to communicate.

In this climate, it is almost heretical to ask both sides to lay down their arms and have a conversation. Here at demystifying Science, we will provide a home for nuanced conversation. Through the scientific study of phenomena, we will make an attempt to clarify what, exactly, is happening on the planet, how we know that it’s happening, and what sorts of interventions could work.

Next up: What do emissions really mean?