But at the same time, annual carbon emissions are still increasing. Although the future looks bright, right now things are getting worse. This presents a dilemma for the scientists who set up the Doomsday Clock. Are they going to the promises of the future, or the current state of things?
Pierrehumbert said: “My view, and the view of many of us, is that every year we continue to release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the needle should move slowly towards doomsday,” said Pierrehumbert. But there are only so many times you can move the minute hand closer to midnight. Adding extras can make the Doomsday Clock look amazing, but setting the clock at 99.4 seconds to midnight doesn’t have the punch that its original creators intended.
Counting down to midnight is a good way to think about nuclear war. Either the world is in nuclear war, or it isn’t. There is logic here – a tactical nuclear weapon, for example, is not the same as full-scale nuclear war – but on a much larger scale, nuclear war as the Bulletin’s scientists thought was a serious problem. Climate change is very different. Most scientists agree that there is no clear threshold for disaster when it comes to global warming. Instead, there is a gradual decrease in global disasters and an increase in seasonality, where some climates change suddenly and are irreversible.
These large-scale, low-level events are not well understood, but they are not the only ways in which climate change could seriously damage the planet. As risk researcher Luke Kemp has observed, a warming world cannot withstand other types of threats. It’s hard to imagine people coming back from a terrible pandemic or nuclear war in a world with high temperatures. Climate change doesn’t just bring the threat of doomsday – it’s a multiplicity of risks that increases our vulnerability to all kinds of events.
Pierrehumbert says: “When you’re just starting out, you can think about the weather with a thermometer. But even this analogy has its problems. Can heat represent heat now, or what we have in store for the future? And is there a temperature like midnight—a true point of no return? Pierrehumbert points out that the warming that could make almost half of the people in the world disappear is similar to how the climate will end. We are not moving anywhere near this temperature, but as Pierrehumbert points out, as long as there is enough fuel left to burn, the risk of climate change does not go away.
One aspect of the clock’s image, regardless of perceived threat, is that it keeps us focused on the here and now. Pierrehumbert said: “This was not the time to explain how dangerous nuclear war is this year. It should be a multi-year risk assessment. This is already a problem, and climate change is like multiplying these risks—add to the mix and everything else is just uncertain and confusing in the long run.
Where does this all come from on the Doomsday clock? It’s a powerful reminder that self-inflicted disasters are never far away. But it also minimizes the problems of climate change and how threats are constantly spreading and bleeding each other. Set in a time when we’re faced with many potential disasters – plagues, evil AI, and a world that’s getting too hot – the Doomsday Clock is a warning from a simpler time.
