NEW YORK, April 15, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- In the wake of the March 2011 Tohuku earthquake and tsunami, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists pushed the symbolic Doomsday Clock one minute closer to midnight last January, to reflect the world's lack of progress with battling climate change and nuclear weapons.
To address this concern, the Jeffrey Epstein Foundation, which funds science research, is organizing a second world conference called Coping with Future Catastrophes to be held most likely in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
The first conference took place last December in the US Virgin Islands and brought together a prestigious panel of scientists to identify the greatest threats to the Earth. Such threats include acts of bioterrorism and high-energy chain-reactions.
The conference included Marvin Minsky, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, Martin Nowak, Professor of Biology and Mathematics at Harvard University and Lawrence Krauss, Professor of Physics at Arizona State University.
Lawrence Krauss, who also serves as co-chair of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists' board of sponsors, stated that, "The major challenge...in the 21st century is how to meet energy needs for economic growth... without further damaging the climate ... and risking further spread of nuclear weapons..."
"We need to identify the greatest threats to our Earth," Minsky summarized, "but we also need to prioritize them."
The list of prioritized threats, assembled at the first conference will be refined at the second conference, and will host a larger panel of international scientists. "We intend to cast a wider global net," Jeffrey Epstein remarked, "and cover a wider range of fields including bio and genetic engineering."
The goal of this second conference however is to also begin the process of setting up a non-governmental agency to monitor the list and work on preventative measures.
"So far, there are hundreds of organizations, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency or the World Health Organization, that monitor potential threats but they tend to focus on one field of study," Minsky affirmed. "There's a great need for an international organization to collect data from all of these groups, to prioritize looming disasters and to establish preventative measures."
http://www.jeffreyepsteinfoundation.com
SOURCE The Jeffrey Epstein Foundation
