An open letter to President Obama: The time on the Doomsday Clock is five minutes to midnight

[bananas]

I snipped out most of the letter, here's the beginning and the policy recommendations at the end.
The original has embedded links and some items not mentioned in this excerpt.

http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/open-letter-to-president-obama-the-time-the-doomsday-clock-five-minutes-to-midn

An open letter to President Obama: The time on the Doomsday Clock is five minutes to midnight

By Robert Socolow, Thomas Rosenbaum, Lawrence J. Korb, Lynn Eden, Rod Ewing, Alexander Glaser, James E. Hansen, Sivan Kartha, Edward "Rocky" Kolb , Lawrence M. Krauss, Leon Lederman, Ramamurti Rajaraman, M. V. Ramana, Robert Rosner, Jennifer Sims, Richard C. J. Somerville, and Elizabeth J. Wilson | 14 January 2013

Article Highlights

The Bulletin's Science and Security Board announces its 2013 decision to keep in place the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock: It will remain at five minutes to midnight. In this open letter to US President Barack Obama, the Board presents its views on the key issues that affected its decision and provides the president with recommendations to consider in 2013 and throughout his second term.

Editor's note: Founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists subsequently created the Doomsday Clock in 1947 using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero), to convey threats to humanity and the planet. The decision to move the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock is made every year by the Bulletin's Science and Security Board in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 18 Nobel Laureates. The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world's vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and new technologies emerging in other domains.


January 14, 2013

Dear President Obama,

2012 was a year in which the problems of the world pressed forward, but too many of its citizens stood back. In the US elections the focus was "the economy, stupid," with barely a word about the severe long-term trends that threaten the population's well-being to a far greater extent: climate change, the continuing menace of nuclear oblivion, and the vulnerabilities of the world's energy sources. 2012 was the hottest year on record in the contiguous United States, marked by devastating drought and brutal storms. These extreme events are exactly what climate models predict for an atmosphere overburdened with greenhouse gases. 2012 was a year of unrealized opportunity to reduce nuclear stockpiles, to lower the immediacy of destruction from missiles on alert, and to control the spread of fissile materials and keep nuclear terrorism at bay. 2012 was a year in which -- one year after the partial meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station -- the Japanese nation continued to be at the earliest stages of what will be a costly and long recovery.

The stasis of 2012 convinces us, the Science and Security Board, to keep the hands of the Doomsday Clock in place.

<snip>

Next steps. Mr. President, with your second inauguration one week away, we have as much hope for your presidency as we did in 2010, when we moved back the hands of the Doomsday Clock after your first year in office. You have an extraordinary capacity to articulate the global desire for peace and security, and you have the tools to deliver tangible progress. Your Prague speech on nuclear disarmament and your efforts at Copenhagen to coordinate world leaders to slow the onset of climate change are high water marks in their respective basins of activity. We call on you to reinvigorate these initiatives. Specifically:

- Implement your Prague vision to diminish the role of nuclear weapons in US security strategy by committing to cut -- to under 1,000 -- the deployed strategic nuclear warheads.

- Announce an effort to stop all new production and eliminate existing stocks of separated fissile materials, both civilian and military, worldwide. It would greatly strengthen the nonproliferation regime, support nuclear disarmament, and provide the ultimate protection against nuclear terrorism.

- Prioritize climate change at a level that recognizes the gravity of the climate threat. You have the ability to educate and inspire the United States to launch an ambitious response, confront entrenched interests that have forestalled action, and, if Congressional dysfunction prevents legislative action, you are able to use your executive powers to achieve progress on a rational energy and climate strategy for the nation.

- Partner with other world leaders to forge the comprehensive global response that the climate threat demands, based on equity and cooperation across countries. A global solution will only be within reach if the United States commits to doing its fair share by investing at home and globally to curb greenhouse gas emissions, while building resilience in the face of the climate disruption that is now unavoidable.

- Reform the patchwork of federal subsidies, taxes, and other incentives and disincentives so as to encourage large reductions in US greenhouse gas emissions.

[bananas]

1. James Hansen is on the Science and Security Board and co-authored the letter.

If you look at the "By" line, you might recognize some names,
such as James Hansen, Lawrence Krauss, etc.

[NNadir]

3. Jim Hansen has a rather low opinion of the dumb anti-nukes who caused this disaster.

One of the fun things is to hear a rote dogmatic anti-nuke complain about climate change.

Even funnier is when this set of paranoids, cite Jim Hansen.

Apparently, they're so locked into dumb chanting and rote recitation, that they can't be bothered to read Hansen's work, both popular and scientific. For instance, I very, very, very, very, very, very much doubt that there's even one fucking anti-nuke - consistent haters of the world's largest, by far, source of climate change gas free primary energy - who understands what Hansen wrote in "Storms of my Grandchildren." It's on his fucking website, not that there is one anti-nuke who can fucking read or fucking count.

To wit:

Energy efficiency and renewable energy rate first priority in the suite of technologies needed to phase out carbon emissions. But in most countries, phase-out of coal emissions requires also a carbon-free source of baseload electric power that is competitive in price with coal. Until we have another way to meet 21st century energy needs while eliminating coal and carbon emissions, nuclear power appears to be the only option.

The (“3rd generation”) nuclear technology ready to replace the aging 2nd generation reactors in the United States and other counties is inherently safer than existing nuclear power, which already has an exemplary safety record – however, it still burns less than one percent of the nuclear fuel and leaves a long-lived nuclear waste pile. Hansen recommends initiating urgent development of a fourth-generation nuclear power plant. These “fast” nuclear reactors utilize more than 99 percent of the fuel and can “burn” nuclear waste, thus solving the nuclear waste problem that concerns so many.

.

Storms of my Grandchildren web page

We may contrast Hansen's views with people who claim that if <em>anyone</em> at any time is exposed to radiation, it's a far greater tragedy than the 3.3 million people who die every year from air pollution. About half of those people are under the age of five. The total is more than 9000 per day, 377 per hour, about 6 per minute, one every 9 or 10 seconds.

It's not like even one of these deaths has ever stopped an uneducated anti-nuke from burning coal, oil and gas to run servers to express their dire hope that someone, anyone, will die from say, Fukushima, so as to justify with insane paranoid rantings that nuclear power is dangerous.

Rather, knowing zero science, they hold out expensive, wasteful, toxic fantasies about, say, solar energy, which after 60 years of insipid cheering, produces on the entire planet not as much energy as four average sized nuclear plants, with the added benefit of requiring natural gas backup - causing the dumping of huge quantities of methane and carbon dioxide into the anti-nukes favorite waste dump, the atmosphere. And then there's the issue of say, um, nitrogen trifluoride, with a global warming potential of 17,200 units of carbon dioxide, which has increased by an order of 800% in just the last five years, used by the solar industry to manufacture their stupid expensive unreliable cadmium coated glass, because um, before the solar industry took off, there was no nitrogen trifluoride in the atmosphere, and thus it went under the Kyoto regulatory sphere.

While the fucking bizarro anti-nukes lay around on their lazy uninformed asses telling everyone about the grand solar nirvana, which they confidently predict will come to pass (conveniently) after they die, climate change gets more and more unmanageable. 2012 was the second worst year for increases at Mauna Loa ever observed, second only to 1998, the same year the dumb fuck anti-nuke Joe Romm was running the climate office.

Congratulations anti-nuke. You must be very...



very...



very...



proud.

[bananas]

2. 18 Nobel Laureates are on the Board of Sponsors

From the Editors Note:

The decision to move the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock is made every year by the Bulletin's Science and Security Board in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 18 Nobel Laureates.

[PamW]

4. As a result of Obama's START agreement..

Last edited Sat Jan 19, 2013, 02:42 PM - Edit history (1)

As a result of Obama's START agreement, the Senate ratification of Obama's first START treaty agreement is that the Senate passed a ratification that contained the Kyl Amendment, named by Senator Kyl; which made the Senate ratification of the START agreement conditional on Mr. Obama pursuing a modernization of the US nuclear stockpile and increased spending on nuclear weapons:

Questioning Obama's Nuclear Agenda

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Questioning-Obama-s-nuclear-agenda-3329783.php

While most federal agencies are being placed on an austerity diet, the Obama administration's 2013 budget for nuclear weapons activities is more than last year's appropriation and 20 percent higher than President Reagan's largest nuclear weapons budget at the height of the Cold War, adjusted for inflation. If fully funded, Obama's budget will be the biggest nuclear weapons budget in our nation's history.

Under Obama, we will have fewer; but more modern, more accurate, and more deadly nuclear weapons.

One thing for sure; Obama isn't listening to those that wrote the letter.

PamW