The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved the hands of its “Doomsday Clock” forward 30 seconds, putting it at 2 minutes to midnight, the nearest to nuclear Armageddon that it’s been since its creation in 1947. There can be only one response to such an alarming development: “What a load of hooey!”

There’s nothing remotely “scientific” about this politically-motivated publicity stunt. It’s just one more fashionable excuse to slam President Trump as a dangerous loose cannon who’s likely to plunge the world into nuclear war. I’m old enough to remember hearing the exact same thing about Ronald Reagan, and he brought down the Soviet Union without firing a shot. Do you seriously think the threat of nuclear war is worse now than at the height of the Cold War? That’s not a Doomsday Clock, it’s a Trump Derangement Syndrome-meter.

The fact is that nobody can predict whether a nuclear attack is any more or less likely this year than last year. That clock’s hands have been moved back and forth for 70 years, and no nuclear bombs have dropped in all that time. With North Korea now developing nukes, it might depend on whether Kim Jong Un starts the day in a bad mood because he’s out of Froot Loops. And these would-be crystal ball readers masquerading as scientists have no idea whether he’d be more likely to launch because Trump warned him he’d be obliterated if he did or less likely. Frankly, if I had to guess, I’d pick the latter. But that doesn’t stop them from offering a lot of backseat driver criticism of Trump and unsolicited liberal foreign policy advice of the exact same appeasement variety that led to North Korea having nukes in the first place.

Despite the scary name, I wouldn’t let the so-called Doomsday Clock affect your mood. If you spend any time thinking about it, you’ll realize that it’s more of a Cuckoo Clock.

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