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The Red Queen versus Craig Venter’s new cell Here is why Craig Venter’s new organism carries absolutely no fears for me: the Red Queen. Evolution is a treadmill. People speak about artificial life forms getting loose and running amok. But that’s not how life works. It’s a jungle out there. Nature is continually trying new life forms […]

John Tierney writes in today’s New York Times: Doomsayers beware, a bright future beckons John Tierney reviews The Rational Optimist in today’s New York Times:   Every now and then, someone comes along to note that society has failed to collapse and might go on prospering, but the notion is promptly dismissed in academia as happy talk from a […]

Humans’ capacity for solving problems has been improving our lot for 10,000 years. Don’t think it will stop now The Sunday Times printed an edited extract of the book on 16 May.  

Gas is great stuff People love to talk about the energy industry in voices of gloom and doom. The oil’s running out, the lights are going out, the pollution’s getting worse. But pause to consider the good news. Like shale gas. Over the past decade, a wave of drilling around the world has uncovered giant supplies […]

These are a bit premature, but the book’s available next week in the US, week after in the UK The Economist LA Times

Science gets polarised when people only read their friends’ caricatures of their enemies’ views As own goals go, this was a stunning shot.                       Science magazine published a letter from 255 scientists (few of them climatologists) complaining in remarkably strong tones about the recent escalation of […]

Buying organic food may make you feel superior, but stop pretending it is better for the planet The quantity of cereals harvested in the world has trebled in 40 years [correction: nearly trebled in 50 years!], but the acreage planted to cereals has hardly changed at all. (graph from my book) That remarkable achievement is […]

People are not only spending a longer time living, but a shorter time dying. My good friend the evolutionary biologist and expert on old age, Tom Kirkwood, has made a splash in my local newspaper, The Newcastle Journal, by writing to all three British party leaders to ask them to emphasise the positive rather than the […]

Bad news from oil spills has been getting rarer, though that may be of little comfort right now The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a horror, for people and for wildlife. It will surely cause huge damage. It is a reminder that for all the talk of global impacts, the worst environmental […]

The myths of green energy I’ve admired Robert Bryce’s work since he did such a great job of exposing the biofuel boondoggle inGusher of Lies. Now he has a new book, which I have just kindled, on the myths of green energy, called Power Hungry. He summarises his argument in the Washington Post. One fact that […]