• OPINION

  The gigantic 'anomaly' in climate change

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 30/03/2024

  » It was bound to happen some time, and the time could well be now. We know that when there was strong warming on our planet (like at the end of the last Ice Age about 11,000 years ago), there were sudden big leaps in the global temperature. It wasn't a smooth process at all.

• OPINION

  New UN climate report clutching at straws

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 27/03/2023

  » The final report of the United Nation's climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has come out at last. The desperate optimism that characterised the last few volumes (this is part four of four) has frayed away to almost nothing.

• OPINION

  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.

• OPINION

  The benign sociopath that is Elon Musk

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 02/11/2022

  » Elon Musk is that rarest of things, a benign sociopath, and therefore a person of considerable value to the world. He has just made a mistake that could ruin his long-term plan, for his purchase of Twitter is almost bound to end in tears. The sharks are always circling the very rich and highly geared, and I find myself worrying about him.

• OPINION

  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.

• OPINION

  Despite claims, Russia unlikely to take Ukraine

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 13/12/2021

  » I must admit that I googled the plot of the 1997 film Wag the Dog before starting to write this. It's a dark comedy about a US president facing a sex scandal whose staff invent a completely fictional war in the Balkans to draw the media's attention elsewhere. But sex scandals are not the Biden administration's style.

• OPINION

  Tigray split risks ending Abiy's 'empire'

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 05/07/2021

  » Most analysts thought it would take a year or two of guerilla war for the rebels in Tigray to drive Ethiopian federal forces out of their state, but it has only taken eight months. "The capital of Tigray, Mekelle, is under our control," Getachew Reda, spokesman for the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), said last week.

• OPINION

  Taiwan is still in China's web of war games

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 27/01/2021

  » Most news agencies reported on Sunday that China sent large groups of fighters and bombers into the Taiwanese airspace two days in a row. Much fluttering in the dovecote: the Chinese are testing the resolve of newly installed US President Joe Biden.

• OPINION

  Pantomimes, Brexit and Boris Johnson

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 22/10/2020

  » The British pantomime is a traditional Christmas entertainment in which stock characters face imaginary dangers and audience participation is encouraged ("He's behind you!"), but the play never frightens the children and it always has a happy ending.

• OPINION

  Unravelling Iran's nuclear 'threshold' game

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 29/07/2020

  » 'A glance at the history of nuclear weapons manufacture shows that all 11 countries that wished to build bombs did so within three to 10 years," wrote Yossi Melman, intelligence and strategic affairs correspondent for Israel's Haaretz newspaper, on Sunday. So why, he asked, has Iran failed to do so after more than 30 years of trying?

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