Warm regards from the ISYP Advisory Board, on which I serve.
Calculated retreat of the Great Aletsch Glacier during the 21st century. (Figure modified from Jouvet and Huss, 2019). This figure is from an article featured as a 2024 Bulletin magazine highlight, "The Alps’ iconic glaciers are melting, but there’s still time to save (most of) the biggest."
Reposted from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists:
The best of the Bulletin's bimonthly magazine, 2024
By Dan Drollette Jr
Melting glaciers, demagogues, climate crises, fusion bombs, breadfruit trees, and the Greta Thunberg of AI. Each of these subjects was at the center of articles from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' bimonthly magazine in 2024, and each of those articles was among our best magazine articles of the year. Read more, and stay tuned for highlights in upcoming newsletters.
We cannot afford another lost year for food and climate action
By Emile Frisson
Last year, organizers of the annual UN climate negotiations finally got around to dealing with agriculture as a source of carbon, using the occasion to unveil a so-called "roadmap" for bringing the world's food production into line with global climate goals. But has the UN gone far enough? Read more from this highlighted 2024 magazine piece.
BEST OF 2024
Emerging experts of 2024: Fresh thinking about the military (and TikTok)
A naval research analyst. A journalist covering arts and culture. A PhD candidate in international studies. A former Navy helicopter pilot turned military professor. And a master's student in management science and engineering. These were among the emerging experts the Bulletin published in 2024.
Bulletin editor Dawn Stover collected 2024 highlights from our "Voices of Tomorrow" section. Selections are below, and check out the article for more on killer robots and nuclear petting zoos.
Who needs a government ban? TikTok users are already defending themselves
By Hali Mecklin
TikTok will be banned in the United States as of January 19th, unless its Chinese owner sells the platform to an American company—or the Supreme Court (which will hear oral arguments on the case on the 10th) rules that the ban passed by Congress violates the First Amendment. Most users aren't worried about the alleged national security threat, but some are quitting TikTok for a different reason. Read more.
Escalating to de-escalate with nuclear weapons: Research shows it's a particularly bad idea
By Daniel R. Post
Many strategists believe that escalating a conflict—by threatening the "limited" use of nuclear weapons, for example—may be an effective way to compel an adversary to back off. The author's research, however, strongly suggests that escalating a nuclear conflict is much more likely to provoke an adversary into continued resistance and possibly counter-escalation. Read more.
By sending nuclear weapons to the United Kingdom, could the United States be fueling nuclear proliferation?
By Janani Mohan
An air base in the United Kingdom is being upgraded with the expectation that the United States may station nuclear weapons there for the first time in 15 years, as a response to the growing instability caused by Russia's war on Ukraine. Stationing can address near-term security concerns, but expansion of this practice runs the risk of increased proliferation. Read more.
How many people were killed by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Video by Erik English
One of our foremost multimedia publications of the year, the Bulletin released a video based on Alex Wellerstein's research, first published in "Counting the Dead at Hiroshima and Nagasaki." The video features footage of Hiroshima prior to the bombing, generously provided by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, and highlights the difficulty of quantifying the devastating human toll of nuclear weapons. Watch now.