Is it the end of the world as we know it? Not yet, but we are two minutes closer. 
 
 The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists reset the hands of the "Doomsday Clock" on Thursday, ticking two minutes closer to the ultimate demise of the human race. 
 
 As of Thursday, the clock was set at three minutes to midnight. Since January 2012, the hands of the clock had been set at five minutes to midnight. The minute hand moved forward, for the first time in three years, due to rising nuclear concerns and increasingly dire climate science findings. 
 
 "The possibility of global catastrophe is really very high," said Kennette Benedict of the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences. "The choice is ours and the clock is ticking." 
 
 The clock is set at the further level since 1984, the height of the Cold War, making the current status the second closest the world has been to midnight in the 68 years of the clock. The only time it was moved closer was when the Soviet Union began work on a hydrogen bomb in 1953. 
 
 The lack of progress in nuclear disarmament and U.S. and Russian in modern nuclear weaponry makes nuclear disaster an ongoing threat, according to Benedict. 
 
 Now nuclear war is not the only concern on the minds of the scientists behind the clock. Climate change threats are playing an increasing role in how the clock is set. 
 
 "Human influence on the climate system is clear," said Richard Somerville of Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, speaking during the briefing, "Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer than any preceding on record." 
 
 The warmest year on record globally was 2014, and 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all occurred since the year 2000. 
 
 A poll taken before the clock was set on Thursday revealed that 73 percent of the public believed the hands should be moved closer to midnight, while 27 percent felt the hands should be adjusted further from the moment of doom. 
 
 The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project. The group subsequently created the Doomsday Clock in 1947, using midnight to symbolize apocalypse and the countdown to zero to convey threats to humanity and the planet. 
 
 "Climate change and increasing concerns about nuclear weapons are the main factors influencing the decision about any additional adjustment that may be made to the Doomsday Clock," said the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in a statement ahead of the announcement. 
 
 The decision to move the minute-hand of the Doomsday Clock is made by the Bulletin's Board of Directors in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 17 Nobel Laureates. The clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world's vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change and emerging technologies in the life sciences. ||||| Symbolic clock is now at three minutes to apocalypse, the darkest hour for humanity since the cold war 
 
 The symbolic doomsday clock moved to three minutes before midnight on Thursday because of the gathering dangers of climate change and nuclear proliferation, signalling the gravest threat to humanity since the throes of the cold war. 
 
 
 
 It was the closest the clock has come to midnight since 1984, when arms-control negotiations stalled and virtually all channels of communication between the US and the former Soviet Union closed down. 
 
 2014 officially the hottest year on record, US government scientists say Read more 
 
 “It is now three minutes to midnight,” said Kennette Bennedict, the executive director of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, announcing the two-minute shift toward the midnight hour. 
 
 The move came as scientists sounded a warning about climate change for the second time in three years. The last move of the clock hands, from six minutes to five minutes to midnight, in 2012, was also because of climate change. 
 
 As the scientists noted last Thursday, 2014 was the hottest year in 130 years of systematic record keeping. Nine of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000. 
 
 But the scientists suggested that the greater danger lay in the failure of leaders to recognise and act on climate change. 
 
 “Stunning government failures have imperiled civilisations on a global scale,” Benedict said. “World leaders have failed to act on a scale or at a speed to protect humanity from catastrophe.” 
 
 The greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change have risen more since 2000 than in the three previous decades combined, Richard Somerville, a research professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said. Even so, he observed, negotiators had steadily lowered their ambitions for a global climate deal. 
 
 Meanwhile, the scientists said, global efforts to reduce nuclear arsenals have slowed since 2009, and all of the nuclear powers were expanding reactors and weapons programmes. 
 
 US Senate refuses to accept humanity's role in global climate change, again Read more 
 
 The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the symbolic clock in 1947 to indicate the cold war threat. In 1991, when the threat of nuclear annihilation receded with the end of the cold war, the clock stood at 17 minutes to midnight. 
 
 But it was now moving closer to the apocalypse because of climate change. “We are not saying it is too late to take action, but the window to take action is closing rapidly,” Benedict said.
– 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.