Showing 1 - 10 of 14
Iran war: One miscalculation after another
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 24/03/2026
» Still not four full weeks into the war, and already Donald Trump's "short-term excursion" -- decapitate the Iranian regime with a surprise attack and impose harsh terms on the defeated survivors -- has morphed into a global economic crisis and a region-wide war that could destroy the wealth of all the countries on both sides of the Gulf. At the very least.
The world is headed towards uncharted waters
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 17/09/2024
» No sirens are blaring, nobody even looks frightened, but they should be. Last week, the world moved into uncharted territory. The "aspirational" goal of never allowing the average global temperature to rise more than 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than the pre-industrial norm (+1.5C) has been breached for a whole year -- and probably forever.
The frog, the scorpion and Hamas
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/11/2023
» Stop me if you've heard this story before. Or rather, don't, because it's relevant to the current situation, and we have to bring the people who don't know the story up to speed first.
Massacres and guns, from the US to Serbia
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 09/05/2023
» Here's how to sound wise when writing a story about mass killings and gun control. Last week saw two such massacres in Serbia (eight deaths and nine deaths, respectively) and only one in the United States (eight killed in a mall in Allen, Texas).
The molecular line between life and death
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 01/03/2023
» 'We are but one very small company [among] many hundreds of companies using AI software for drug discovery and de novo design. How many of them have ... the know-how to find the pockets of chemical space that can be filled with molecules predicted to be orders of magnitude more toxic than VX?" This is a warning that requires a little explanation.
US startup's climate gig stirs up controversy
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 06/01/2023
» It was the moral equivalent of a fart in a hurricane. The "hurricane" was the explosion of the Mount Pinatubo volcano in the Philippines in 1991, which boosted 17 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere.
Will we soon have unlimited clean energy?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 17/12/2022
» Nuclear fusion, the "holy grail" that would finally end all the world's energy problems, has been receding into the future at the rate of about one year per year all my adult life -- it was always "about 30 years away" -- but suddenly we're catching up. Unfortunately, the change of pace comes too late to save us from an acute global climate emergency.
Apocalypse may be just around the corner
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 17/09/2022
» Which would be worse: a global nuclear war with all buttons pressed, or real, self-conscious artificial intelligence that goes rogue? You know, the central theme of the Terminator movies.
What shall we do with climate refugees?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 29/08/2022
» You wait ages for the bus, and then three come along at once. Books are a bit like that, too, although in this case it's only a pair of them, both tackling the question of what to do about all the "climate refugees". (The United Nations' International Organization for Migration estimates that 1.5 billion people may be forced to move in the next thirty years alone.)
Climate change salvation in a vat
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 09/12/2020
» We are putting a final end to the fossil era," said Denmark's climate minister, Dan Jorgensen, last week. What he meant was that the European Union's biggest oil and gas producer is officially getting out of the petrochemical business after 80 years.