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Matt Ridley
Caution should be applied to predictions as well as to risks Tim Black has an excellent article in Spiked about the hypercautious European reaction to the Icelandic volcano in April: We have since discovered that the maximum density of ash (100 micrograms of ash per cubic metre) over the UK during the ban was one […]
Matt Ridley
Canadian style The Globe and Mail (Toronto) has made a nice new version of my “handaxe and mouse” image to illustrate their review of The Rational Optimist
Matt Ridley
Around 7,000 years ago it was much, much warmer all around the globe. There’s a lot of debate about the `Medieval Warm Period’. But I’ve always been intrigued by the warm period of 7,000 years ago, known as the Holocene Optimum, and I have been doing some digging to find out just how warm it […]
Rational Optimism on the radio
Matt Ridley
Everything from star signs to slavery and coals to Newcastle Listen to my interview on NPR’s Leonard Lopate Show and an MP3 of my interview on PM with Marc Colvin, in Australia
Matt Ridley
Bacteria that live in the clouds and the prospect of controlling the weather My good friend Dave Sands is not only a brilliant biologist — I cite him in The Rational Optimist arguing for genetic modification to improve the quality rather than the quantity of food — but a very fine poet. He’s profiled in yesterday’s […]
Matt Ridley
Pollution from driven cars has fallen so fast it is now below that of parked cars in 1970 One small fact in my book has caught several readers’ attention: Today, a car emits less pollution travelling at full speed than a parked car did in 1970 from leaks. My source for this remarkable statistic was […]
Guardian interview: ‘We can overcome disease, poverty and climate change
Matt Ridley
Jon Henley interviews Matt Ridley: The Rational Optimist is, essentially, about progress: how, of all the species on earth, only humans have managed so radically and completely to change the way they live. Animals, even the most intelligent ones, have not thus far known “economic growth” or “rising living standards” or “technological revolutions” (or, indeed, […]
Matt Ridley
Generous praise from Dominic Lawson Here. This inspiring book, a glorious defence of our species, explains why: it is a devastating rebuke to humanity’s self-haters.
The Rational Optimist in the Wall Street Journal
Matt Ridley
Human take-off after 45,000 years ago followed the invention of exchange I have a long article in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal. It tries to explain how the sophistication of the modern world lies not in individual intelligence or imagination. It is a collective enterprise. Nobody-literally nobody-knows how to make the pencil on […]
Organisms must compete in Nature’s jungle
Matt Ridley
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 […]
