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Doomsday Clock inches closer to midnight

Kennette Benedict, executive director of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, unveils the New Doomsday Clock at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington on Wednesday. PHOTO: EPA

The hand of the Doomsday Clock pushed two minutes closer to midnight on Wednesday -- a stark warning from prominent scientists that the world is nudging closer to a nuclear apocalypse or environmental disaster.

The iconic clock, which now reads 11:55, is meant to symbolize the likelihood of a global cataclysm, and its ticks have given the clock's keepers a chance to speak out over the dangers they see threatening the Earth.

The clock's move comes amid persistent fears over the nuclear standoffs with Iran and North Korea -- and the increasingly urgent warnings over global warming.

"The dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons," said Kennette Benedict, the director of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Stephen Hawking, the renowned cosmologist and mathematician, told the press that global warming eclipsed other challenges facing the planet, such as terrorism.

"Terror only kills hundreds or thousands of people," Hawking said. "Global warming could kill millions. We should have a war on global warming rather than the war on terror."

This is the first time that the bulletin, founded in 1945 as a newsletter distributed among physicists concerned by the possibility of nuclear war, has explicitly addressed the threat of climate change.

"We are transforming, even ravaging the entire biosphere. These environmentally driven threats -- threats without enemies -- should loom as large as did the East-West divide during the Cold War era," said Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society, Britain's academy of science.

"Unless they rise higher on international agendas, remedial action may come too late," he said.

The decision to move the clock is made by the bulletin's board, which is composed of prominent scientists and policy experts, in coordination with the group's sponsors, who include Hawking and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke.

Despite the organization's new focus on global warming, the prospect of nuclear war remained its primary concern, the bulletin's editor, Mark Strauss, said before the announcement.

"It's important to emphasize 50 of today's nuclear weapons could kill 200 million people," he said.

The organization floated a variety of proposals to help control the threat of nuclear proliferation by rogue nations. They also repeated their call to nuclear nations to whittle down their arsenals and reduce the launch readiness of their weapons.

Other panelists, including Lawrence Krauss, a physics professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, criticized the use of military means to deal with nuclear proliferation, emphasizing the use of multilateral diplomacy.

"If we want to address proliferation we want to do it in a unified way, and not with the sole country acting preemptively," Krauss said.

The Doomsday Clock's hand has been moved 18 times.
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