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 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 the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's (DPRK) first nuclear test, Iran's nuclear ambitions, US 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.

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.

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.

source: China Daily /Agencies