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Making electricity from burning wood is bad for the economy and the environment My column in the Times on 20 June 2013:   In the Energy Bill going through Parliament there is allowance for generous subsidy for a huge push towards burning wood to produce electricity. It’s already happening. Drax power station in Yorkshire has […]

In the absence of predators to control lesser predators, people have a role My article in the Times on 13 June 2013   ‘We are as gods and have to get good at it,” the Californian ecologist and writer Stewart Brand said recently. Worldwide there has been a sea change in the ecological profession. These […]

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 […]

It’s what politicians will do unbribed that’s the bigger scandal My Times column here. I have a confession to make. Last week I held a meeting with representatives of three organisations and offered to raise an issue for them in the House of Lords. They claimed they were charities seeking a smidgin of funding to […]

By Simon Fisher and Matt Ridley Simon Fisher and I have published a Perspectives article in Science magazine.   From Science magazine: by Simon E. Fisher and Matt Ridley (Simon E. Fisher, Department of Language and Genetics, Max Planck Insti- tute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen 6525 XD, Netherlands. 2Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud […]

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 […]

Global warming will probably be a net benefit for several decades Update: I have added a reply to a critic of the article below. I have an article in the Times on the implications of a new estimate of climate sensitivity: There is little doubt that the damage being done by climate-change policies currently exceeds […]

Why influenza keeps failing to live up to pessimistic forecasts My latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal is on infleunza:   Here we go again. A new bird-flu virus in China, the H7N9 strain, is spreading alarm. It has infected about 130 people and killed more than 30. Every time this […]

A speculative idea that we could be the history of life’s second chapter My latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal is on life in space: A provocative calculation by two biologists suggests that life might have arrived on Earth fully formed—at least in microbe form. Alexei Sharov of the National Institute […]

Private innovation in currencies is a good thing I have a column in the Times on bitcoins and their implications for private money Bitcoins — a form of digital private money — shot up in value from $90 to $260 each after Cypriot bank accounts were raided by the State, then plunged last week before […]