Showing 1 - 10 of 16
Iran: Drought, incompetence, revolution?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 22/11/2025
» Twenty years of strict sanctions on Iran by both the United States and the United Nations did not bring down the regime of the ayatollahs. Half a dozen major waves of non-violent protest involving several thousand deaths have not brought it down either. Even last June's massive bombing campaign by Israel and the US did not bring it to heel.
Deportations and walls in the US and Europe
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 31/08/2024
» Fortress America and Festung Europa (Fortress Europe) are just starting to take shape; bare outlines of what they will have grown into ten years from now. But the trend is almost unstoppable, and it will be very ugly when it's finished.
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.
Argentina must break its vicious political cycle
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 15/11/2023
» Bertolt Brecht lived in Germany, not in Argentina, and he has been dead longer than he was alive, but his famous question applies to the Argentine election next Sunday: "Would it not be simpler if the government dissolved the people and elected another?"
Heat waves and tipping points as world warms
Gwynne Dyer, Published on 23/07/2023
» 'What we're seeing is climate impacts that scientists thought would accompany certain temperatures happening far more rapidly, with far more devastating effects than had been forecast," said Dr Simon Nicholson of the Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment at American University.
A temperature spike in the sea spells doom
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 06/05/2023
» There is a fever raging in the ocean. Last month it was worst off the eastern coast of North America, where the sea surface temperature was as much as 13.8C higher than the 1981-2011 average for this time of year. Not only was that a record; it was an astounding leap upwards: more than double the previous record.
Why this year's COP26 isn't going to deliver
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 30/10/2021
» 'The world is on a catastrophic pathway to 2.7°C of heating," said UN Secretary General António Guterres. "There is a high risk of failure of COP26." That's the global climate summit that meets every five years (but was postponed last year because of the pandemic) to plot a course away from climate disaster. And it really isn't looking good.
It's volcanoes, tsunamis and risk at La Palma
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 09/10/2021
» 'Don't bother your pretty head about it" is the prevailing media take on the risk of the volcanic eruption on La Palma in the Canary Islands turning into a mega-tsunami disaster. The media definitely over-hyped that risk when it was first suggested 20 years ago, so now they have to work the other side of the street.
Donkeys finally twig to climate change message
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 26/07/2021
» Zeitgeist is a slippery word. At best it's just a fancy German way of saying "the spirit of the times"; at worst it is only pretentious noise. So maybe we should say "inflection point" instead. I think we are passing through an inflection point.
Killer 'Wave-7' heat getting far more common
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 09/07/2021
» First the "heat dome", with temperatures in the mid-to-high forties Celsius in many parts of western North America for up to a week (49.6°C in Lytton, British Columbia). Then, when the forests were tinder-dry, came the wildfires (which wiped Lytton out). From northern California to northern British Columbia, the records were being broken every day.