Via the Beeb:

Experts assessing the dangers posed to civilisation have added climate change to the prospect of nuclear annihilation as the greatest threats to humankind.

As a result, the group has moved the minute hand on its famous “Doomsday Clock” two minutes closer to midnight.

The concept timepiece, devised by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, now stands at five minutes to the hour.

The clock was first featured by the magazine 60 years ago, shortly after the US dropped its A-bombs on Japan.

Not since the darkest days of the Cold War has the Bulletin, which covers global security issues, felt the need to place the minute hand so close to midnight.

I remember as a child being much impressed by the “Doomsday Clock.” The fear of a nuclear World War III was very real to my sensitive soul, as it was no doubt to many others during those Cold War decades. And if all of these incredibly smart scientists and experts were saying that the clock stood just a few minutes away from the darkest midnight there could ever be, then surely that was something to take very seriously indeed.

In my old age, I’ve come to understand that any clock whose hands travel both forwards and backwards is one by which you would be ill-advised to set your watch.

…

Addendum 5:56 pm: Thanks to Mike W. who sent this link to Jay Nordlinger in the NRO who is playing a similar riff. He beat me, time-wise. However, he seems to agree with the egg-heads that we might be in the “most perilous period since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” In what way was that period so perilous (other than for the unfortunate residents of those cities)? We were the only ones with the bomb! It illustrates the inherently anti-American nature of the dumb-ass Doomsday Clock. Pardon my French.

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