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Matt Ridley
Review of Steven Johnson’s book on innovation My review of Steven Johnson’s book How We Got To Now appeared in the Times: The meteorologist Edward Lorenz famously asked, in the title of a lecture in 1972: “does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?”, and the phrase […]
Matt Ridley
Loyalties are to nation and county, rather than region and continent My Times column on English devolution following the Scottish independence referendum: As part of the 1 per cent of England’s population that lives north of Hadrian’s Wall, I have found the past few weeks more than usually intriguing. It was fascinating to find […]
The ozone hole was exaggerated as a problem
Matt Ridley
Serial hyperbole does the environmental movement no favours My recent Times column argued that the alleged healing of the ozone layer is exaggerated, but so was the impact of the ozone hole over Antarctica: The ozone layer is healing. Or so said the news last week. Thanks to a treaty signed in Montreal in 1989 […]
Whatever happened to global warming?
Matt Ridley
The explanations for the “pause” only make it less threatening in future My op-ed in the Wall Street Journal addresses the latest explanations for the “pause” in global warming and their implications. I have responded to an ill-informed critique of the article below. On Sept. 23 the United Nations will host a party for […]
Government begins as a monopoly on violence
Matt Ridley
It’s an official protection racket My Times column last week was on the historical roots of government: Nobody seems to agree whether Islamic State is best described as a gang of criminals, a terrorist organisation or a religious movement. It clearly has a bit of all three. But don’t forget that it aspires, for […]
Matt Ridley
It’s worked elsewhere My recent Times column was on the stagnation of European economic growth rates: The financial crisis was supposed to have discredited the “Anglo-Saxon” model of economic management as surely as the fall of the Berlin wall discredited communism. Yet last week’s numbers on economic growth show emphatically the opposite. The British economy is […]
Matt Ridley
In a time of widespread violence and disease, good news is no news The Times carried my article arguing that things are still going well for the world as a whole even in a month of war, terror and disease. I have illustrated it with two superb charts from ourworldindata.org, a website being developed by […]
Matt Ridley
In a time of widespread violence and disease, good news is no news The Times carried my article arguing that things are still going well for the world as a whole even in a month of war, terror and disease. I have illustrated it with two superb charts from ourworldindata.org, a website being developed by […]
Gamekeepers are conservationists
Matt Ridley
Grouse moors have five times the wading bird life of other moors My column in the Times on 11th August: Tomorrow sees the start of the red grouse shooting season, a sport under attack as never before, with a petition to ban it, and campaigns to get supermarkets to stop selling grouse meat. As somebody […]
Reasons to be fearful about Ebola
Matt Ridley
This epidemic is not under control My Times column on Ebola: As you may know by now, I am a serial debunker of alarm and it usually serves me in good stead. On the threat posed by diseases, I’ve been resolutely sceptical of exaggerated scares about bird flu and I once won a bet […]
