Nuclear, climate perils push Doomsday Clock ahead

Reuters
By Will Dunham
Wed Jan 17, 2:22 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The scientists who mind the Doomsday Clock
moved it two minutes closer to midnight on Wednesday -- symbolizing the
annihilation of civilization 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,
U.S. flirtation with "bunker buster" nuclear bombs, the continued presence
of 26,000 American and Russian nuclear weapons and inadequate security
for nuclear materials.

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 civilization 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,"
theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking of the University of Cambridge, a
member of the bulletin's board of sponsors, told reporters in London.

'VILLAGE IDIOTS'

Cambridge astrophysicist Martin Rees added that while the Cold War
confrontation between two nuclear-armed superpowers is over, the
world is closer than ever to having nuclear bombs used in a localized
war or by terrorists in a city center.

"A global village will have its village idiots," Rees said.

Kennette Benedict, the bulletin's executive director, dismissed the notion
that by touting the threat posed by global warming, the scientists had
diluted their message about the nuclear peril.

Many scientists predict dire consequences from global warming, including
higher sea levels that over time could swamp coastal regions, more severe
storms and worse wildfires. Human activities like burning of fossil fuels
contribute to warming, they contend.

Physicist Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland
said if humankind fails to change course on global warming, "there's a great
possibility that the Earth in the year 2100 will only dimly resemble our planet
today -- and as it has existed over the past 500,000 years."

The bulletin's scientists moved the clock two minutes forward in 2002, to
seven minutes until midnight, following the September 11, 2001, attacks
on the United States.

The bulletin was founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who
had worked on developing the first nuclear bomb, and it is now overseen
by some of the world's most prominent scientists.

The bulletin created the clock in 1947, two years after the United States
ushered in the nuclear age by dropping atomic bombs on two Japanese
cities at the end of World War Two, to symbolize the urgent nuclear
dangers confronting the world.

It now stands at the closest to midnight since 1984, when it was three
minutes to midnight amid a deepening Cold War.

It has been adjusted 18 times in 60 years. It was set as close as two minutes
to midnight in 1953 after the United States and Soviet Union tested hydrogen
bombs, and as far as 17 minutes to midnight in 1991 at the Cold War's end.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070117/us_nm/doomsday_clock_dc_4

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