The Doomsday Clock on the cover of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has been ticked ahead two minutes, to show five minutes to midnight — a reflection of how close the world is to destruction by nuclear war.
Except, this time it’s not just nuclear weapons exchanges that figure into the ticking of the Doomsday timepiece: Climatic change is also considered.
“Not since the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has the world faced such perilous choices,” she [executive director Kennette Benedict] said. “North Korea’s recent test of a nuclear weapon, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a renewed emphasis on the military utility of nuclear weapons, the failure to adequately secure nuclear materials, and the continued presence of some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia, are symptomatic of a failure to solve the problems posed by some the most destructive technology on Earth.”
She said this time, nuclear annihilation is not the scientists’ only concern.
“The dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons,” she added. “The effects may be less dramatic in the short term, than the destruction that could be wrought by nuclear explosions, but over the next three to four decades, climate change could cause irremediable harm to the habitats upon which human societies depend for survival.”
In 1991 the clock was set back to 17 minutes to midnight after the Soviet Union and the United States completed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) that led to a significant reduction in atomic weapons for both nations. That is the greatest time to Doomsday calculated since the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists was created in 1947, or in other words, the most hopeful calculation.
Curriculum connections, lesson plans: Especially for Texas students, who demonstrated some lack of knowledge about the U.S.’s use of atomic weapons in Japan at the end of World War II, and especially of the agonizing decision President Harry S Truman had to make about using the weapon, this recent heightening of concern can offer opportunities to discuss these issues in current events, outside of the curriculum, emphasizing material that U.S. history courses probably will cover in the coming weeks.
At one time this would have been front page news. Those of us who grew up in the Cold War recall the fears of nuclear war: Radio warning drills, “duck and cover” drills, best-selling books and movies like Fail Safe and On the Beach, and Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Compounded by war in Vietnam and a draft that plucked people up for military service, entire generations’ views toward world affairs were shaped by fear of atomic bombs and nuclear war. What should we teach children today about what we learned from those decades of fear?
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Two points. First, even assuming one accepts global warming, advancing the Doomsday Clock based upon it is ludicrous. Try here for an intelligent discussion: http://www.volokh.com/posts/1169131766.shtml . Second, did Truman really “agonize” over whether to drop the Bomb? Not my area, but it doesn’t sound right based on what I remember from my readings.
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People were pretty anxious about world affairs even before the Doomsday Clock moved up — Public Agenda’s Foreign Policy Anxiety Indicator (http://publicagenda.com/foreignpolicy/foreignpolicy_sidebar.htm) stands at 130 on a 200-point scale. Eight in 10 Americans say they worry about a terrorist attack using biological, chemical or nuclear weapons (47 percent worry “a lot”). The public also gives the government mediocre grades for stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. Even fewer give the government high marks for fighting global warming.
Check it out at:
http://publicagenda.com/foreignpolicy/foreignpolicy_sidebar.htm
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