How technological innovation happens
Matt Ridley
It’s incremental and evolutionary, and it’s often the mother of science The Wall Street Journal carried an extract from my new book The Evolution of Everything. The article caused a lot of interest, and was criticised by some as being anti-science. Nothing could be further from the truth and most of those making this case are not quoting […]
Ancient DNA makes pre-history an open book
Matt Ridley
Mass migrations, mixed matings and rapid evolution are common themes My Saturday essay in the Wall Street Journal: Imagine what it must have been like to look through the first telescopes or the first microscopes, or to see the bottom of the sea as clearly as if the water were gin. This is how students […]
Fossil fuels are not finished, not obsolete, not a bad thing
Matt Ridley
Their energy makes the difference between misery and prosperity This essay appeared in the Wall Street Journal and later in shorter form in the Sunday Times The environmental movement has advanced three arguments in recent years for giving up fossil fuels: (1) that we will soon run out of them anyway; (2) that alternative sources […]
Why most resources don’t run out
Matt Ridley
Economists versus ecologists and the limits to growth My Saturday essay in the Wall Street Journal on resources and why they get more abundant, not less: How many times have you heard that we humans are “using up” the world’s resources, “running out” of oil, “reaching the limits” of the atmosphere’s capacity to cope with […]
Muting the alarm on climate change
Matt Ridley
Even with exaggerated assumptions of sensitivity, the IPCC has to down-grade alarm The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will shortly publish the second part of its latest report, on the likely impact of climate change. Government representatives are meeting with scientists in Japan to sex up—sorry, rewrite—a summary of the scientists’ accounts of […]
Dialling back the alarm on climate change
Matt Ridley
Global warming could be a net benefit during this century My article in the Review section of the Wall Street Journal: Later this month, a long-awaited event that last happened in 2007 will recur. Like a returning comet, it will be taken to portend ominous happenings. I refer to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s […]
I may follow the crowd, but not because it’s a crowd
Matt Ridley
Evidence, not consensus, is what counts My latest (and last) Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal: Last week a friend chided me for not agreeing with the scientific consensus that climate change is likely to be dangerous. I responded that, according to polls, the “consensus” about climate change only extends to the […]
Matt Ridley
Striking a balance between intellectual property and freedom to innovate The economist Arthur Laffer is reputed to have drawn his famous curve—showing that beyond a certain point higher taxes generate lower revenue—on a paper napkin at a dinner with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in the Washington Hotel in 1974. Another economist, Alex Tabarrok of George […]
Matt Ridley
Abiogenic methane made in the mantle from carbonate? My Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal is on abiogenic methane Coal, oil and gas are “fossil” fuels, right? They are derived from ancient life-forms and are nonrenewable, stored energy, extracted from prehistoric sunlight. In the case of coal and most oil, this is […]
TRIM21 turns immunity upside down
Matt Ridley
Unexpectedly, antibodies work inside cells to defeat pathogens My latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal is on a surprising discovery about antibodies and the immune system: It isn’t often that an entire field of medical science gets turned on its head. But it is becoming clear that immunology is undergoing a […]
