January 18, 2007, 11:00
The scientists who mind the Doomsday Clock moved it two minutes closer to midnight yesterday - symbolising the annihilation of civilisation and adding the perils of global warming for the first time.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which created the Doomsday Clock in 1947 to warn the world of the dangers of nuclear weapons, advanced the clock to five minutes until midnight. It was the first adjustment of the clock since 2002.
"We stand at the brink of a second nuclear age," the bulletin's board of directors said in a statement. They pointed to North Korea's first nuclear test, Iran's nuclear ambitions, US flirtation with "bunker buster" nuclear bombs, the continued presence of 26 000 American and Russian nuclear weapons and inadequate security for nuclear materials.
Global warming poses a dire threat
But the scientists also said destruction of human habitats wreaked by climate change brought on by human activities is a growing danger. "Global warming poses a dire threat to human civilisation that is second only to nuclear weapons," they said. The announcement was made in news conferences in London and Washington.
"We foresee great peril if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change," Stephen Hawking, a theoretical physicist from the University of Cambridge and a member of the bulletin's board of sponsors, told reporters in London. - Reuters
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