The world's thickest mountain glacier is retreating, the Sahara Desert expanded by about 10%, and the Arctic's most stable sea ice is disappearing. Ocean temperatures are warmer than they've been at any point in human history, and they're heating up at an accelerating rate. July 2019 smashed records as the hottest month ever recorded on Earth, after a sweltering heat wave baked countries across Europe and then flowed over Greenland, where it melted 217 billion tons (197 billion metric tons) of ice. Globally, the year was the second hottest since record keeping began in 1880, and the past decade was the warmest on record, NASA reported earlier this month. In fact, humanity's disruption of climate on land and in the oceans is 'unprecedented,' according to a report released in September 2019 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body that evaluates the impacts of climate change. Heat waves, ice loss, firesĢ019 also brought alarming new evidence of climate change's momentum, and demonstrated its destructive power.

By blurring the lines between truth and fiction, these technologies disrupt information and trust, introducing 'a dangerous global instability,' Latiff said. armed forces that includes 'preparing for space combat' as one of its primary goals, according to Latiff.Įqually troubling is the growing deluge of 'fake news' (and its support by prominent politicians) and the rise of 'deepfake' footage - digitally manipulated video that is increasingly difficult to distinguish from the real thing. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.Įven space has become 'a new arena for weapons development' with the announcement of the U.S. Air Force major general and an adjunct faculty member with the John J. The development of artificial intelligence (AI) for use in weapons 'that make kill decisions,' and its use in military control and command systems is another new cause for concern, said Robert Latiff, a retired U.S. (Image credit: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) Disruptive technologies The hands of the Doomsday Clock now stand at 100 seconds to midnight. actions against Iran, the events of recent weeks only confirm the board's assessment months earlier: 'that we are rapidly losing our bearings in a nuclear weapons landscape that may expand beyond our recognition,' Bronson said. While the Doomsday Clock was set in November, prior to the U.S. Days later, Iran threatened withdrawal from the nuclear deal, and Trump proposed that the deal's other signatories - Germany, France and the United Kingdom - should also abandon the deal, though they have not done so, Business Insider reported. strike killed Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani on Jan. from a nuclear deal with Iran, tensions between the two nations have simmered. The shadow of nuclear war also hovers over the Middle East since 2018, when President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. and North Korea regarding nuclear weapons reduction have been abandoned, according to Bronson. and Russia are no closer than they were a year ago, and negotiations between the U.S. Prior nuclear treaties are crumbling, new agreements between the U.S. 'Over the last two years, we have seen influential leaders denigrate and discard the most effective methods for addressing complex threats,' Bronson said. In 2019, nuclear and climate conditions continued to deteriorate, and decisions by global leaders not only failed to reduce the damage - they made dangerous situations worse. That threat still exists today, but it has company: catastrophic climate change and disruptive technologies are also considered by BAS in their assessment of whether humanity is safer or more at risk than we were the year before. When the Doomsday Clock was introduced in 1947, the primary threat to humanity was nuclear weapons.

Real time clock seconds