Showing 1 - 10 of 16
A lesson in geoengineering for grown-ups
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/12/2025
» A few days ago the European Union's Earth Observation programme, "Copernicus", made a special announcement at the end of its monthly report on the state of the climate. It said that the average global temperature for the past three years (2023-2025) has been 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level. That's the level we were warned that we must never exceed.
It's time to go geoengineering on climate issue
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 05/06/2025
» This is the second anniversary of the arrival of the emergency but practically nobody is mentioning it. Instead people are choosing to worry about more familiar problems like global trade wars, the rise of fascism and genocidal wars. It's kind of a global displacement activity: if we don't mention it, maybe it will go away.
Why I yelled at the TV during Harris's speech
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 28/08/2024
» When you find yourself shouting at the TV, you know it's time to take a break. I reached that point last week, watching Kamala Harris's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, and what I yelled at the screen was, "The enemy is us!"
The mother of all climate feedbacks?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 10/05/2024
» 'Just like this year, last year the heatwave extended from parts of India to Bangladesh and Myanmar, and all the way to Thailand. This year it went further east, into the Philippines. So, it's the same pattern," said Prof Krishna Achutarao of the Indian Institute of Technology. "I do not particularly buy into this idea that El Niño is the cause."
A shocking disclosure from Harry's 'Spare'
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 11/01/2023
» Where do you look when somebody says: "In the age of Apaches and laptops, everything I did in the course of two combat tours was recorded, time-stamped. I could always say precisely how many enemy combatants I'd killed. And I felt it vital never to shy away from that number.
Vinland history: a question of dates, timing
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 28/11/2022
» 'If the 20th century AD were dated at the same resolution as the 20th century BC, the two World Wars would be indistinguishable in time; and the Montgomery Bus Strike might post-date the release of Mandela." So wrote the Exact Chronology of Early Societies' (ECHOES) team of palaeohistorians at Groningen University in the northern Netherlands -- and then they fixed the problem.
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.)
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.
China: No more being Mister Nice Guy
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 04/01/2022
» More than 200 Hong Kong police raided and shut down one of the last pro-democracy news websites in Hong Kong before on Wed of Dec 29, in the latest sign that the Beijing regime will no longer tolerate dissent of any kind. It was total overkill -- a couple of cops with a court order would have sufficed -- but they were 'sending a message' to other "malcontents".
Vulnerability marks 100 years of the CCP
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 30/06/2021
» The Chinese Communist Party is celebrating the centenary of its foundation tomorrow and most people in China accept the origin myth that justifies its dictatorial rule. China was a horrendously impoverished and unequal society in 1921, the official line says, and owes its current prosperity and freedom from foreign rule to the Communist revolution of 1949.