Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

The Bulletin's July magazine explores "Water, ice, snow, and the next phase of the climate crisis." Read the introduction by Dan Drollette Jr: https://lnkd.in/e7sFGyge As the planet warms up, glaciers melt, springs run dry, and brooks evaporate. Plants, animals, and human beings face grave danger. But it is not too late to act.

"All the same, as with previous attacks on US presidents, conspiracy theories quickly blossomed, and they were anything but genteel. The information environment of 2024 is radically different than what existed during earlier US assassinations and assassination attempts. The shooting of Trump was quickly followed by an enormous barrage of speculation and outright invention across social media platforms, from smaller outlets firmly planted in the far-right side of the US political spectrum—including Gab, Parler, and Trump’s own Truth Social—to Elon Musk’s X (nee Twitter) and other larger sites." "An attempted assassination and the conspiratorial disinformation that followed" by Bulletin editor-in-chief John Mecklin. Read more: https://lnkd.in/e8eFuvf3

Blurring the distinctions between nuclear arms control advocates, disarmament advocates, and abolitionists has harmed abolitionists by hindering their ability to bring contemporary social justice movements into the anti-nuclear struggle. "Clear distinctions between disarmament and abolition are needed to better define abolitionists’ work and to allow for more visionary organizing," writes writer, educator, and organizer Jasmine Owens. "A nuclear disarmament framework seeks to eliminate all types of nuclear weapons and to establish monitoring and verification safeguards to ensure no state is secretly trying to (re)build a nuclear arsenal. A nuclear abolition framework goes beyond the audacious but narrow goal of eliminating nuclear weapons; it strives to upend the systems of oppression that support and are supported by nuclear weapons." Read "The false equivalency of nuclear disarmament and nuclear abolition" below: https://lnkd.in/eYV2hxqe

"While climate change isn’t necessarily increasing the overall number of hurricanes, scientists have found evidence that storms are now becoming fiercer, gaining in strength quicker and even moving more slowly. Hurricanes are drawing their power from warmer oceans, while also unleashing more severe bouts of rainfall due to the extra moisture held in the Earth’s atmosphere due to global heating. Rising ocean heat poses new threats in terms of damaging hurricanes—some scientists have called for a new 'category 6' classification to be added to storms above 192mph—but also to the vast network of life, including humanity, which depends on the marine expanse that covers 70 percent of the planet." "The oceans are heating so fast, some scientists call for a new 'Category 6' hurricane classification," by Oliver Milman. Available to read on the Bulletin thanks to our collaboration with Climate Desk. https://lnkd.in/erYe8i4f

"Militaries have used chemical weapons in more than a dozen civil and international conflicts, yet they have not generally secured decisive victories or profoundly changed the course of those conflicts. There is one war, however, that complicates the conventional wisdom on chemical weapons: the protracted Iran-Iraq War. In that conflict, chemical weapons were arguably decisive in allowing Iraq to reclaim the upper hand in the conflict and forcing Iran to agree to the UN resolution to bring an end to the war." "Throughout the conflict, Iraq’s use of chemical weapons was a blatant violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925, which prohibits the use of chemical and biological weapons in war. Despite these violations, the response from the international community, including the UN Security Council, was tepid and inconsistent. This lack of decisive action was mainly due to the geopolitical dynamics of the time. Iraq was seen by many Western powers, including the United States, as a counterbalance to the revolutionary government in Iran." Read the new article, "Iraq once devasted Iran with chemical weapons as the world stood by. Governments still struggle to respond to chemical warfare," by Peyman Asadzade, postdoctoral fellow with the Project on Managing the Atom and the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. https://lnkd.in/evTQhzZg

The newest edition of the Bulletin's magazine arrives next Monday, July 15. Get ready to read and subscribe today: https://lnkd.in/eWwvqDxj Subscribers have access to new magazine editions as well as the Bulletin's archives, containing every article published since 1945. The archive includes interviews with and articles by landmark figures such as Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Jennifer Doudna, John F. Kennedy, Stephen Hawking, Fiona Hill, William J. Perry, Christine Todd Whitman, Mikhail Gorbachev, and multiple Nobel laureates.

"Policy makers in the Middle East and North Africa should work to ensure lab biosafety and biosecurity by raising awareness of risks and developing ethical standards and codes of conduct, as well as improving laws and regulations. Globally, this work is unfinished. In the MENA region, policies and training related to pathogen research, including gain-of function work, remains uneven." "Middle East and North African countries need better rules for gain of function pathogen research," by Nisreen AL-Hmoud. https://lnkd.in/epqp4CdR

"As the U.S. races toward a post-carbon future in which nuclear energy could play a key role, policymakers, energy experts, and community leaders say dealing with the inevitable waste isn’t a technical problem, but a social one. Engineers know how to build a repository capable of safeguarding the public for millennia. The bigger challenge is convincing people that it’s safe to live next to it." The United States' "85 interim storage sites hold more than 86,000 tons of [nuclear] waste, a situation that’s akin to leaving your trash behind the garage indefinitely." What lessons can be learned from the processes of siting permanent nuclear waste storage facilities in Finland and Canada? "The thorny social problem of permanent nuclear waste storage," by journalist Austyn Gaffney. Available to read on the Bulletin thanks to our collaboration with Climate Desk. https://lnkd.in/eixSRzGT

The Bulletin welcomes Rose Gottemoeller and Manpreet Sethi to its leadership. Gottemoeller, the Former Deputy Secretary General of NATO, will join the Bulletin’s Board of Sponsors. Sethi, a Distinguished Fellow and head of the program on nuclear issues at the Centre for Air Power Studies, will join the Science and Security Board. “Both of these leaders have spent significant portions of their lives working to reduce nuclear threats,” said Bulletin President and CEO Rachel Bronson. “It is an honor and a privilege to have their dedicated support.” Read more: https://lnkd.in/e3xCjNBF

"Physicists have been central to imagining, developing, constructing and advancing nuclear weapons ever since the idea of a nuclear chain reaction came to Leo Szilard in 1933. Over the subsequent 90 years, physicists have also been an important force in global efforts aimed at confronting the nuclear threat they created, through the promotion of nuclear arms control and disarmament. Since the end of the Cold War, however, the physics community has been relatively absent as analysts, activists, and advocates contesting nuclear weapons policies. Meanwhile, the Cold War-era nuclear arms control regime has mostly collapsed, a nuclear arms race led by the United States, Russia, and China is underway, and all nine nuclear-armed states are recommitting to nuclear deterrence for the foreseeable future. In response, in October 2023, a group of 50 physicists from 20 nations gathered for a three-day workshop at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy—'The Increasing Danger of Nuclear Weapons: How Physicists Can Help Reduce the Threat.' The objective of this workshop was to brainstorm on how to mobilize the international physics community to engage in advocacy for nuclear threat reduction. This discussion resulted in the formation of an international working group to help foster this mobilization." "Nuclear danger is growing. Physicists of the world, unite!" by Curtis T. Asplund, Zia Mian, Stewart Prager, and Frank von Hippel of the Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction. https://lnkd.in/ePzMtm3E