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London - The end of the world brought about by nuclear war is now just five minutes away, according to the latest ‘Doomsday Clock’ time check, announced Wednesday.

Keepers of the clock, set up in 1947 to show how close humanity is to wiping itself out, moved the minute hand two minutes forward from seven towards midnight.

The clock’s original intention was to warn of the threat of nuclear apocalypse, but it is now almost equally influenced by the looming danger of climate change, British and US scientists said.

The directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists magazine, who set the time on the Doomsday Clock, said in a statement, ‘We stand at the brink of a second nuclear age.’

‘Not since the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has the world faced such perilous choices,’ it added.

It listed North Korea’s recent test of a nuclear weapon, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and a renewed US emphasis on the military utility of nuclear weapons as new dangers.

Furthermore, the failure to secure nuclear materials, as well as the continued presence of some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia, were symptomatic of a ‘larger failure to solve the problems posed by the most destructive technology on earth.’

‘As in past deliberations, we have examined other human-made threats to civilization. We have concluded that the dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons.

‘The effects may be less dramatic in the short term than the destruction that could be wrought by nuclear explosions, but over the next three to four decades climate change could cause drastic harm to the habitats upon which human societies depend for survival.’

The decision to move the clock’s minute hand forward was made in consultation with a board of sponsors that includes 18 Nobel Prize winners.

Filed under: Nature, Science by lrenz