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3 weeks ago | 
marklynas.org | Mark Lynas
International waters, also known as the high seas, make up 61% of the ocean and cover 43% of Earth’s surface — amounting to two-thirds of the biosphere by volume. They have been exploited since the seventeenth century for whales, and from the mid-twentieth century for fish, sharks and squid, depleting wildlife. Now, climate change is reducing the productivity of the high seas through warming and through depletion of nutrients and oxygen.
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3 weeks ago | 
nature.com | Mark Lynas
International waters, also known as the high seas, make up 61% of the ocean and cover 43% of Earth’s surface — amounting to two-thirds of the biosphere by volume. They have been exploited since the seventeenth century for whales, and from the mid-twentieth century for fish, sharks and squid, depleting wildlife. Now, climate change is reducing the productivity of the high seas through warming and through depletion of nutrients and oxygen.
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3 weeks ago | 
marklynas.org | Mark Lynas
Posted on 3 June 2025Written by Mark Lynas This is actually the epilogue from my book, extracted in Geographical magazine. A trip to Hiroshima past Mount Fuji, some karaoke and oysters, memories of 6 August 1945, and a dream of a world without nuclear weapons. For the whole thing, see Geographical magazine. Post navigation
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1 month ago | 
marklynas.org | Mark Lynas
The good news is that we might be about to solve the Fermi paradox. Many have long suspected that the reason why there don’t seem to be millions of talkative aliens out there in space is because when an intelligent civilisation develops the technology to enable interstellar communication it also develops weapons that enable it to quickly destroy itself. So far, we’re matching exactly this trajectory.
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1 month ago | 
newscientist.com | Mark Lynas
The good news is that we might be about to solve the Fermi paradox. Many have long suspected that the reason why there don’t seem to be millions of talkative aliens out there in space is that, when an intelligent civilisation develops the technology to enable interstellar communication, it also develops weapons that enable it to quickly destroy itself. So far, we are matching this trajectory.
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1 month ago | 
marklynas.org | Mark Lynas
By Mark Lynas and Ted NordhausFirst published in the Wall Street Journal, 15 May 2025The world is on the brink of a climate apocalypse—not one caused by gradual greenhouse emissions but by a sudden exchange of nuclear weapons, a possibility made more salient by the current conflict between India and Pakistan. While the long-term effects of emissions are uncertain, we know that a nuclear war would result in an immediate nuclear winter.
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1 month ago | 
wsj.com | Ted Nordhaus |Mark Lynas
Greenhouse-gas emissions get all the attention, but their effect is manageable and unfolds over decades. The world is on the brink of a climate apocalypse—one caused not by gradual greenhouse emissions but by a sudden exchange of nuclear weapons, a possibility made more salient by the current conflict between India and Pakistan. While the long-term effects of emissions are uncertain, we know that a nuclear war would result in an immediate nuclear winter.
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1 month ago | 
lithub.com | Mark Lynas
The day of the war dawns like any other. There is no warning, and across New York people are beginning their daily routines. No air raid sirens wail and no early-warning messages flash on screens. Cars are being backed out of garages in the suburbs, while kids wearing colorful backpacks wait for school buses outside the shops. Harassed moms stuff sandwiches into packed lunches while a million espresso machines grind on kitchen counters.
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2 months ago | 
dailymail.co.uk | Mark Lynas
A week after the first bomb dropped, sparking an all-out nuclear war, the ruins of cities worldwide are still smouldering. In the areas hit directly by the 4,000 explosions in the targeted countries, there is nothing left: the firestorms produced intense heat and virtually all flammable material was consumed. Some 770 million people have been killed and skeletons are everywhere, alongside the haunting shadows left by people who were caught outside during the first blasts and vaporised.
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2 months ago | 
dailymail.co.uk | Mark Lynas
The world has come close to accidental nuclear war many times – most terrifyingly in January 1995. That was when a Norwegian rocket launch, carrying scientific equipment to study the Northern Lights, was mistakenly identified by Russian early-warning stations as a US missile attack. The Norwegian government had notified the Russians about the launch to avoid exactly this kind of confusion, but the Russian foreign ministry had failed to pass this on to the military.
