Doomsday Clock pushed back 1 minute

NEW YORK, Jan. 14 (UPI) -- Scientists in New York Thursday pushed the symbolic Doomsday Clock's hand back to 6 minutes to midnight, citing hope in nuclear weapons and climate change.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which maintains the clock, said the group, which includes 19 Nobel laureates, moved the hand back 1 minute because of "a more hopeful state of world affairs."

Leaders of countries with nuclear weapons are working to trim down their arsenals, and industrialized and developing nations are pledging to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the bulletin said.

Washington's "orientation toward international affairs brought about in part by the election of (U.S. President Barack) Obama," is also a key to the "new era of cooperation," the bulletin said.

It said Obama was taking a "pragmatic, problem-solving approach" to global challenges.

The world is "poised at a unique time, with hope and opportunity, and we can't blow it," theoretical physicist and cosmologist Lawrence Krauss, co-chairman of the bulletin's board of sponsors, said at a New York news conference at the National Academy of Sciences near the World Trade Center site.

Bulletin secretary-treasurer Lowell Sachnoff added, "Global warming is more of a threat than nuclear war."

The bulletin, which created the clock in 1947, first set it at 7 minutes to midnight, or "catastrophic destruction." It has adjusted it 19 times since then.

In 1953, after Washington and Moscow tested the first hydrogen bombs within six months of each other, it moved the clock to 2 minutes to midnight. In 1991, after Washington and Moscow signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, it pushed it back to 17 minutes before midnight.