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Good news is gradual, bad news sudden
Matt Ridley
The bias towards bad news is getting worse, and affecting how we act My Times column on the how pessimism bias affects the way we think: ‘Deadly new epidemic called Disease X could kill millions, scientists warn,” read one headline at the weekend. “WHO issues global alert for potential pandemic,” read another. Apparently frustrated […]
Britain’s housing crisis is caused by the wrong kind of regulation
Matt Ridley
Restricting whether you can build, rather than what, drives up prices My Times column on Britain’s housing crisis: Sajid Javid, the Housing (etc) secretary, is right – and brave — to go on the warpath about Britain’s housing crisis in his new national planning framework, to be launched today. Britain’s housing costs are absurdly high […]
The Russian role in the nuclear winter theory
Matt Ridley
A defector says the KGB boasts about starting the now-debunked scare My Times column on the Russian encouragement and perhaps origin of the now discredited theory of “nuclear winter”: So, Russia does appear to interfere in western politics. The FBI has charged 13 Russians with trying to influence the last American presidential election, including […]
Shale is the real energy revolution
Matt Ridley
Shale gas and oil have banished peak oil, revived industry and changed geopolitics My Times thunderer column on shale gas and shale oil and Britain’s opportunity: Gas will start flowing from Cuadrilla’s two shale exploration wells in Lancashire this year. Preliminary analysis of the site is “very encouraging”, bearing out the British Geological Survey’s […]
Censorious millennials are the new Victorians
Matt Ridley
A tendency towards intolerance and denunciation is all the more baffling because it harks back to an illiberal past My Times column on how the censorious and prudish young are a bit like Victorians: I am sure I am not alone in finding the cultural revolution that we are going through difficult to understand. […]
Matt Ridley
The row over Treasury forecasts — and the FBI v Trump saga — show how often unelected officials overstep the mark My Times column on the impartiality of public servants: Last week saw political eruptions on either side of the Atlantic about a similar issue: whether government officials are neutral. The row over the leaked […]
New diagnostic devices will save lives and money
Matt Ridley
A revolution in protein and DNA testing meets UK reluctance to test My Times column on the revolution in protein and DNA diagnosis: As happens in the media, the excitement generated last week by the headline that cancer could be detected in the blood was overdone. The results announced in Science magazine are a long […]
The green plan should use human ingenuity
Matt Ridley
Top down command is not the way to improve the environment My Times column on the government’s 25-year plan for the environment: The government’s 25-year environment plan is more than a piece of virtue signalling, despite its chief purpose being to persuade the young to vote Conservati(ve)onist. It is full of sensible, apolitical goals […]
The mysterious cycles of ice ages
Matt Ridley
Orbital wobbles, carbon dioxide and dust all seem to contribute An expanded version of my recent Times column on ice ages: Record cold in America has brought temperatures as low as minus 44C in North Dakota, frozen sharks in Massachusetts and iguanas falling from trees in Florida. Al Gore blames global warming, citing one scientist to […]
Artificial intelligence will be a symbiosis, not a replacement
Matt Ridley
History shows that technology augments more than displaces My Times column on AI and jobs: In the early 1960s, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there was a disagreement about what computers would achieve. One faction, led by John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky, championed “artificial intelligence”, believing that computers would gradually replace human beings. […]
