'Doomsday Clock' Jumps 2 Minutes

Scientists say it's now 3 minutes before midnight
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 22, 2015 3:27 PM CST
'Doomsday Clock' Jumps 2 Minutes
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists hold a news conference to announce that the Doomsday Clock has been reset to show three minutes until midnight.   (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

The Doomsday Clock may not have moved last year, but today it made up for it: The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announced that the clock jumped ahead two minutes and now stands at three minutes before midnight, reports Mashable. "Midnight," of course, being the end of civilization. The organization cited concerns about the world's nuclear arsenals, but it also placed a big share of the blame for the time change on global warming and what it sees as political inaction to get it under control, reports the Guardian.

"Human influence on the climate system is clear," said Richard Somerville of the Bulletin. "Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer than any preceding on record." This is the closest we've come to the group's Doomsday since the US and the Soviet Union were in the grips of the Cold War in 1984. The only time the clock has been closer to midnight is after the USSR's work on a hydrogen bomb in 1953 set it to 11:58. (More Doomsday Clock stories.)

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