Doomsday Clock moved over nuclear, climate threats

dpa German Press Agency
Published: Wednesday January 17, 2007

London- Internationally-renowned scientists Wednesday
warned of the dual threat to humanity from nuclear weapons and
climate change as the so-called Doomsday Clock was moved forward to
the symbolic "five minutes to twelve."
At ceremonies in London and Washington, 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 following the use of atomic bombs against Japan in
World War II, but it is now almost equally influenced by the looming
danger of climate change, British and US scientists said.

Professor Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University in Britain and
the author of A Brief History Of Time delivered an impassioned plea
at a news conference in London.

Speaking via a computer from his wheelchair, Hawking, who has for
decades been crippled by a form of motor neurone disease, warned of a
grave danger to humanity unless action was taken to make nuclear
weapons obsolete and prevent further climate change.

The world had come "uncomfortably close to disaster on more than
one occasion" since nuclear weapons were last used in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in 1945, Hawking said.

"But for good luck, we would all be dead," he added.

As we stand at the brink of a second nuclear age and a period of
unprecedented climate change, scientists have a special
responsibility once again to inform the public and advise leaders
about the perils that humanity faces," the professor said.

"We foresee great perils if governments and society do not take
action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and prevent further
climate change.

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