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Opposition to shale gas is a storm in a teacup The Times has published my op-ed on shale gas: It is now official: drilling for shale gas by fracturing rock with water may rattle the odd teacup, but is highly unlikely to cause damaging earthquakes. That much has been obvious to anybody who has followed […]

A new technique for sterilising certain mosquitoes looks promising After a break of two weeks, here is my latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal: April 25 is World Malaria Day, designed to draw attention to the planet’s biggest infectious killer. The news is generally good. Never has malaria, which is carried […]

A new study confirms that the threat from CO2 is exaggerated A new study of the Great Barrier Reef will apparently confirm what I argued in The Rational Optimist that local pollution and over-fishing are a much greater threat to coral reefs than either climate change or changing alkalinity (sometimes wrongly called acidification). The actual […]

Emma Marris’s fine new book on ecology Belatedly, here is my Mind and Matter column from the Wall Street Journal on 24 March 2012.   In her remarkable new book “The Rambunctious Garden,” Emma Marris explores a paradox that is increasingly vexing the science of ecology, namely that the only way to have a pristine […]

Reader’s Digest on rational optimism April’s Reader’s Digest carries an article on rational optimism, based on an interview with me and extracts from my book: “The world has never been a better place to live in,” says science writer Matt Ridley, “and it will keep on getting better.” Today, in a world gripped by global […]

Did a cosmic impact cause the Younger Dryas cooling? My latest Mind and Matter column for the Wall Street Journal: Scientists, it’s said, behave more like lawyers than philosophers. They do not so much test their theories as prosecute their cases, seeking supportive evidence and ignoring data that do not fit-a failing known as confirmation […]

Maybe I was too pessimistic From the Ideas Market Blog at the wall Street Journal: Last month, the Review columnist Matt Ridley discussed a new book called “Abundance,” by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, which argues that the future will be “better than you think.” (Diamandis is founder of the X Prizes, which reward breakthroughs in technology, […]

My latest Mind and Matter column for the Wall Street Journal is about the possibility that some neurological conditions might be caused by infectious agents — of a sort Might some forms of neurological illness, such as multiple sclerosis and schizophrenia, be caused at least partly by bacteria, viruses or other parasites? A largely Danish […]

My latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal: The island of Gaua, part of Vanuatu in the Pacific, is just 13 miles across, yet it has five distinct native languages. Papua New Guinea, an area only slightly bigger than Texas, has 800 languages, some spoken by just a few thousand people. “Wired […]

To the nearest whole number, the percentage of the world’s energy that comes from wind turbines today is: zero. Despite the regressive subsidy (pushing pensioners into fuel poverty while improving the wine cellars of grand estates), despite tearing rural communities apart, killing jobs, despoiling views, erecting pylons, felling forests, killing bats and eagles, causing industrial […]