Showing 1 - 10 of 12
Over in Canada, PM Trudeau bites the dust
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 09/01/2025
» Donald Trump excels in every field, including surrealism. Leonard Cohen sang "First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin!", but it's completely outclassed by Mr Trump's "First we take Greenland, then we take Canada!" And he's going to take the Panama Canal too!
Current trends give little hope on climate: Pt 1
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 03/06/2024
» Interviewing 100 climate scientists -- proper in-depth interviews, two cameras, lights, the lot -- is a crash course in coping strategies.
2024: the year it got (really) hot
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 01/01/2024
» The year 2023 has probably been the hottest in the past 10,000 years -- but everybody agrees that 2024 will be even hotter. That's because we are now entering El Niño, the part of a seven-yearly oceanic cycle that heaps extra heat on whatever is already occurring.
COP summits must persist, despite failures
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 14/12/2023
» The key debate on the last day of the COP28 climate summit was about whether or not the conference should endorse a resolution to "phase out" fossil fuels -- or, in a less ambitious formulation, phase them "down" (but not out).
Never mind the climate, just watch the wars
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 02/11/2023
» With practically all the media bandwidth for non-local news taken up by two tribal territorial struggles that would not have seemed out of place in the 15th century AD -- or indeed the 15th century BC -- you may have missed the latest release from the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Gifted James Lovelock was Darwin's heir
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 02/08/2022
» Jim Lovelock was a late bloomer. His first book, Gaia: a New Look at Life on Earth, was published in 1979 when he was already 60 years old. By the time he died last Thursday, on his 103rd birthday, he had written ten more books on Gaia, the hypothesis that has evolved into the key academic discipline of Earth System Science.
COP26: Mixed bag of hope, despair
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 12/11/2021
» It's not too early to assess the success or failure of COP26, the climate summit that began in Glasgow on Oct 31. The first week, while the heads of state are there, is when all the big promises are announced; the second week is devoted to haggling over the details of the deals. So we already know that it hasn't been an absolute failure.
Treachery reigns supreme in the Middle East
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 17/08/2019
» Things have got so complicated in the Middle East that the players are no longer just stabbing each other in the back. They are stabbing each other in the chest, in the groin, behind the left ear -- anywhere that comes to hand. Friends and allies one day are targets and enemies the next.
The Great Dying, the Little Ice Age, and little old us
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 06/02/2019
» The Black Death killed about 30% of the European population in a few years in the middle of the 14th century. A century and a half later the native people of the Americas were hit by half a dozen plagues as bad as the Black Death, one after another, and 95% of them died. The plagues of the "Great Dying" had much less terrifying names like measles, influenza, diphtheria and smallpox, but they were just as efficient at killing.
Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 05/12/2018
» 'Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made," wrote Immanuel Kant in 1784. It is still true.