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My latest Mind and Matter column for the Wall Street Journal is on metaphors for the Higgs Boson. In 1993 a British science minister, William Waldegrave, was sitting on a train reading the speech that his staff had prepared for him for a physics conference. Finding the draft “unspeakably dull,” he decided instead to challenge […]

Prospect has published my essay on bioenergy, in which my research left me astonished at the environmental and economic harm that is being perpetrated. Biomass and biofuels are not carbon neutral, can’t displace much fossil fuel, require huge subsidies, increase hunger and directly or indirectly cause rain forest destruction. Apart from that, they’re fine… Here’s […]

I have published the following editorial in City AM, a British financial newspaper: WHEN is a job not a job? Answer: when it is a green job. Jobs in an industry that raises the price of energy effectively destroy jobs elsewhere; jobs in an industry that cuts the cost of energy create extra jobs elsewhere. […]

In a strongly worded editorial in Science magazine this week, Calestous Juma, the director of the Agricultural Innovation in Africa program at Harvard’s Kennedy School, called for a government-led initiative to introduce biotechnology into Africa. “Major international agencies such as the United Nations have persistently opposed expanding biotechnology to regions most in need of its […]

Here’s an article I wrote, published by The Times this week. The anti-capitalists, now more than 50 days outside St Paul’s, have a point: capitalism is proving unfair. But I would like to try to persuade them that the reason is because it is not free-market enough. (Good luck, I hear you cry.) The market, […]

My latest column in the Wall Street Journal is on the purpose of dreams: Chancing last week on a study about the calming effect of dreams on people with post-traumatic stress disorder, I decided to read recent research on dreams. When I looked at this topic about 20 years ago, it was clear that our […]

Here’s a column in The Times, imagining what the world might look  like if the UN’s low-fertilty scenario comes true. The peak is in sight. Even as the population passes seven billion, the growth rate of the world population has halved since the 1960s. The United Nations Population Division issues high, medium and low forecasts. […]

As a science communicator, I found this fascinating. The following is an email that was sent in 2003 by a very senior scientist, Stephen Schneider, to a long list of other senior scientists about an article in a newspaper by an economist. Read it and see what you think of the economist, Ross McKitrick at […]

My latest Mind and Matter column for the Wall Street Journal is about the possibility that big meteorites can trigger volcanic activity: About 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs and maybe two-thirds of all other species suddenly died out. For three decades, the dominant explanation for this mass extinction has been that it was probably […]

My latest Mind and Matter column from the Wall Street Journal: Earthquakes are natural disasters. However much culpability there is afterward about the building standards that may have worsened the death toll or the response of the emergency authorities, nobody is to blame for the actual shock. At least, not normally. An exception is the […]