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Technology is often the mother of science, not vice versa
Matt Ridley
Britain is good at science, but poor at turning technology into industry My Times column is on the relationshio between science and technology, especially in the UK: The chancellor, George Osborne, made a speech on science in Cambridge last week in which he contrasted Britain’s “extraordinary” scientific achievements with “our historic weakness when it comes to […]
Why most resources don’t run out
Matt Ridley
Economists versus ecologists and the limits to growth My Saturday essay in the Wall Street Journal on resources and why they get more abundant, not less: How many times have you heard that we humans are “using up” the world’s resources, “running out” of oil, “reaching the limits” of the atmosphere’s capacity to cope with […]
We can’t wreck the climate unless we get rich, but if we get rich, we won’t wreck the climate
Matt Ridley
The Paradox behind assumptions of economic growth My Times column is on economic projections for the year 2100. In the past 50 years, world per capita income roughly trebled in real terms, corrected for inflation. If it continues at this rate (and globally the great recession of recent years was a mere blip) then it […]
Britain’s employment and productivity puzzle
Matt Ridley
Unemployment rose less then fell faster than expected My column in last week’s Times was on the rise in employment, reforms to welfare and the productivity puzzle in Britain: Successful innovations are sometimes low-tech: corrugated iron, for example, or the word “OK”. In this vein, as Iain Duncan Smith will say in a speech […]
Matt Ridley
James Lovelock recants his alarmism My review for The Times of James Lovelock’s new book, A Rough Ride to the Future. This book reveals that James Lovelock, at 94, has not lost his sparkling intelligence, his lucid prose style, or his cheerful humanity. May Gaia grant that we all have such talents in our […]
Matt Ridley
Global warming looks like it will be cheaper to cope with than to prevent My Spectator article on the IPCC’s new emphasis on adaptation: Nigel Lawson was right after all. Ever since the Centre for Policy Studies lecture in 2006 that launched the former chancellor on his late career as a critic of global warming […]
Matt Ridley
Easterly’s book on aid and autocracy My review of William Easterly’s book The Tyranny of Experts for The Times: Imagine, writes the economist William Easterly, that in 2010 more than 20,000 farmers in rural Ohio had been forced from their land by soldiers, their cows slaughtered, their harvest torched and one of their sons […]
Matt Ridley
Easterly’s book on aid and autocracy My review of William Easterly’s book The Tyranny of Experts for The Times: Imagine, writes the economist William Easterly, that in 2010 more than 20,000 farmers in rural Ohio had been forced from their land by soldiers, their cows slaughtered, their harvest torched and one of their sons […]
There is no simple explanation for the missing airliner
Matt Ridley
Only implausible explanations remain My Times column is on the missing airliner and Occam’s razor. The tragic disappearance of all 239 people on board flight MH370 in the Indian Ocean has one really peculiar feature to it: none of the possible explanations is remotely plausible, yet one of them must be true. The usual […]
Muting the alarm on climate change
Matt Ridley
Even with exaggerated assumptions of sensitivity, the IPCC has to down-grade alarm The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will shortly publish the second part of its latest report, on the likely impact of climate change. Government representatives are meeting with scientists in Japan to sex up—sorry, rewrite—a summary of the scientists’ accounts of […]
