The risk of nuclear war may be far lower now than in 1984 during the height of the Cold War, but the iconic Doomsday Clock stands once again at three minutes to midnight, in part because the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists thinks climate change poses new and significant risks to the future of our planet.

The magazine also insists (despite the "new world order" famously announced by President George H.W. Bush) that the threat of nuclear weapons has not gone away, which is another reason why its famous clock -- devised in 1947 -- inched two minutes closer to "doom," CNN reported.

"Today, unchecked climate change and a nuclear arms race resulting from modernization of huge arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity," said Kennette Benedict, executive director of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. "These failures of leadership endanger every person on Earth."

The closest the Doomsday Clock has ever been to midnight was two minutes, which occurred in 1953, when the hydrogen bomb was first tested.

"It is now three minutes to midnight," Benedict said at a news conference in Washington according to USA Today. "The probability of global catastrophe is very high. This is about the end of civilization as we know it."

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which "sets" the symbolic timepiece, was founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first nuclear weapons in the Manhattan Project.

The last adjustment of the Doomsday Clock dated back to 2012, when it moved ahead from six to five minutes to midnight, also in response to nuclear proliferation and climate change.

"Human influence on the climate system is clear," the Bulletin's Richard Somerville said Thursday. "Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer than any preceding on record."

Still, even the Bulletin's executive director offered a glimmer of hope in the midst of her pessimistic announcement, the Guardian noted.

"We are not saying it is too late to take action," Benedict said. "but the window to take action is closing rapidly."

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