Showing 31 - 40 of 90
The industrialisation of space
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 11/01/2022
» It will be a bumper year for big space launches to the Moon, Mars, and asteroids, including many manned flights, but the real shocker is the number of satellites and spaceships being launched by private companies.
Prepare for a fossil fuel fire sale
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 26/11/2021
» An article with the innocuous title "Reframing Incentives for Climate Policy Action" slipped out in the scientific journal Nature Energy three weeks ago and got very little attention, presumably because of the hopeless title. But it's not innocuous at all. It's explosive.
Belarus becomes a small storm in a sea of anxiety
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/11/2021
» It's not a tempest in a teapot; it's smaller than that. A few thousand Arabs and Kurds, mostly young men but including women and children, are trapped between Poland, which will not let them in, and Belarusian border guards and militia who will not let them back into Belarus. But the language is getting menacing.
Winter is on the way in Afghanistan
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 10/11/2021
» The first snow of the winter will reach Kabul any day now, and the death rate will start to climb: mostly children, at first, but it will not really be the cold that kills them. The cold will only finish the work that malnutrition began months or years ago -- but the other cause of their deaths will be a different kind of freeze.
Lebanon quickly sinking in more ways than one
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 21/10/2021
» Off the Lebanese coast about 60 kilometres north of Beirut a 104-metre battleship stands vertically, with her bow and some 30 metres of her length plunged into the mud. The seabed is 140 metres down, but you can even scuba-dive on the stern if you are a technical diver. The ship is a bit like Lebanon, for reasons I'll explain later.
Norway, oil and the issue of climate change
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 02/10/2021
» You can see why Saudi Arabia wants to go on pumping as much oil as it can. Oil exports account for 87% of the Saudi government budget and 42% of GDP. The Saudi population, now 35 million, is growing by two-thirds of a million a year, and the country already imports 80% of its food. They'd be starving in a few years if they stopped pumping.
After Merkel, who will fill her 'sensible shoes'?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/09/2021
» Last January Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) were ahead in the German opinion polls by 15 points. She was stepping down after 16 years as chancellor (prime minister), but she was still by far the most trusted politician in Germany. Indeed, she is universally known as "Mutti" ("Mummy").
Aukus sub pact: Here's how an alliance is born!
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 21/09/2021
» When the Sept 11 attacks struck New York and Washington in 2001 and the US armed forces went on full alert, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice immediately got on the direct line to Moscow and told Vladimir Putin not to worry: the United States was not going to attack Russia. Mr Putin replied that he understood, and was standing Russian forces down.
China and the US: Too big to be equal?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 15/09/2021
» Never mind the destruction of the relatively free society of Hong Kong (no emergency airlift like in Kabul, Afghanistan, but the number of people fleeing Hong Kong may ultimately be larger). Never mind the persecution of the Uighurs, or the Orwellian surveillance society that the Communist Party is building, or the tens of millions who died in wars, famines and "cultural revolutions" to bring equality to China.
Sept 11 didn't change the world forever
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 11/09/2021
» 'Changed the world forever' is the most hackneyed phrase in journalism, and if you can get through this week (the 20th anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks) without hearing it half a dozen times you'll be very lucky.