Scientists warn of nuclear apocalypse
Climate change also blamed for Doomsday alert
LONDON -- The world has nudged closer to a nuclear apocalypse and environmental disaster, a trans-Atlantic group of prominent scientists warned Wednesday, pushing the hand of its symbolic Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight.
It was the fourth time since the end of the Cold War that the clock has ticked forward, this time from 11:53 to 11:55, amid fears over what the scientists are describing as ''a second nuclear age'' prompted largely by atomic standoffs with Iran and North Korea.
But the organization added that the ''dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons.''
The Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 as a newsletter for nuclear physicists concerned by the possibility of nuclear war.
''As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth,'' British scientist Stephen Hawking said at a London news conference.
The bulletin's clock, which for 60 years has followed the rise and fall of nuclear tensions, now also will measure climate change, said Mark Strauss, the bulletin's editor.
The clock came closest to midnight -- just two minutes away -- in 1953, after the successful U.S. hydrogen bomb test.
AP