GCR News Summary October 2015

Post Date November 02, 2015
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Banjarbaru wildfire image courtesy of Amirin

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists published former US airman John Bordne’s first-hand account of his commanding officer’s refusal to launch nuclear weapons during the Cuban Missile Crisis. On October 28, 1962, Bordne says the secret US missile site in Okinawa where he served received orders to launch missiles at four targets. Bordne said that even though the launch orders were initially confirmed the officer in charge suspected the orders were a mistake both because the US forces were not at DEFCON1 …

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GCR News Summary September 2015

Post Date September 30, 2015
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Svalbard seed vault image courtesy of Erlend Bjørtvedt under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license (image has been cropped)

In a joint statement ahead of the December Paris Climate Conference, US president Barack Obama and Chinese president Xi Jinping said they would “move ahead decisively to implement domestic climate policies, to strengthen bilateral coordination and cooperation, and to promote sustainable development and the transition to green, low-carbon, and climate-resilient economies”. China announced that in 2017 it would establish a national carbon market covering the iron and steel, nonferrous metals, power …

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GCR News Summary August 2015

Post Date September 02, 2015
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Korean Demilitarized Zone fence image courtesy of Sangmun Shin/Republic of Korea Ministry of National Defense under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license (image has been cropped)

North and South Korea exchanged artillery fire after two South Korean soldiers were injured by land mines. South Korea claimed North Korea was responsible for placing the mines near a South Korean guard post in the Demilitarized Zone separating the two countries. South Korea responded by using loudspeakers to broadcast propaganda across the border. The Centre for North Korea-US Peace’s Kim Myong-chol, who some …

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GCR News Summary July 2015

Post Date August 04, 2015
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Arecibo Observatory image courtesy of H. Schweiker/WIYN and NOAO/AURA/NSF

Iran reached an agreement with the P5+1 countries—the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany—to limit Iran’s nuclear program. The deal requires Iran to reduce its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98% for 15 years. Iran also agreed to cut the number of centrifuges it currently uses to enrich uranium roughly in half and to enrich uranium to no more than 3.7% U-235 (the isotope that powers both nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons). Nuclear …

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GCR News Summary June 2015

Post Date June 29, 2015
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Solar flare image courtesy of NASA/SDO under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license (image has been cropped)

Pope Francis issued an encyclical saying the natural environment is “the patrimony of all humanity” and calling for a “new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet”. Pope Francis warned that we are warming the planet, depleting its reserves of clean water, and destroying its biodiversity:

Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain. We may well be leaving to coming generations debris, desolation …

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GCR News Summary May 2015

Post Date June 01, 2015
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MQ-1 Predator unmanned aircraft image courtesy of the US Air Force/Lt. Col. Leslie Pratt

China has converted some of its long-range missiles to carry multiple warheads. China’s decision to retrofit its missiles with “multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles” (MIRVs) appears to be at least in part a response to the US expanding its missile defense in the Pacific. The US, the UK, France, and Russia already have missiles equipped with MIRVs. The New York Times noted in an editorial that because MIRVs can overwhelm missile defense systems, they increase …

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GCR News Summary April 2015

Post Date May 12, 2015
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US Secretary of State John Kerry addressing the Non-Proliferation Review Conference image courtesy of the US State Department

Angela Kane, the UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, warned that the nuclear powers’ lack of meaningful progress toward disarmament could undermine the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). US Secretary of State John Kerry said at the NPT Review Conference that as of September, 2014 the US had 4,717 nuclear warheads—87 fewer than the year before. Kerry said that the US planned to accelerate dismantling its approximately 2,500 retired warheads by …

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GCR News Summary March 2015

Post Date April 03, 2015
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EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in Lausanne image courtesy of the US State Department

Iran and the P5+1 countries—the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany—worked past a March 31 deadline to reach a framework agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. Iran agreed to limit its uranium-enrichment program to producing low-enriched uranium with 6,104 older-generation centrifuges at a single site in Natanz. Iran also agreed to give up 97% of its existing stockpile of enriched uranium and …

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GCR News Summary February 2015

Post Date March 05, 2015
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US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva image courtesy of the US Department of State

The Global Challenges Foundation published a report on the risks human civilization faces (GCRI’s Seth Baum and Robert de Neufville contributed content to the report). The report identified 12 different areas of risk “that for all practical purposes can be called infinite”. These are nuclear war, global pandemics, climate change, ecological catastrophe, asteroid impacts, super-volcano eruptions, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, synthetic biology, bad global governance, the …

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GCR News Summary January 2015

Post Date February 02, 2015
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Highly-enriched uranium image courtesy of the US Department of Energy

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the minute hand of its “Doomsday Clock” two minutes closer to midnight. The symbolic clock is now at three minutes to midnight, indicating that the Bulletin believes the “probability of global catastrophe is very high”:

In 2015, unchecked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations, and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity, and world leaders have failed to …

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