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The not so good old days I heartily recommend a new book called “And the Band Played On” by Christopher Ward, a friend of mine. It’s a best-seller already in the UK. It’s about his grandfather, who was the violinist in the band that played as the Titanic sank. But it’s not about the sinking, […]

After 13 years, everybody sensible now knows the GM crops were good for human beings and the environment too. But admitting it is hard. The Scientific Alliance newsletter has an interesting update on GM food. The public no longer feels the visceral fear of these crops that they did 13 years ago, even in Europe. But […]

Two environmental trends headed in a good direction Update: I failed to make clear that negative numbers in the drought severity index implies worse droughts. The two findings below contradict each other. Here is another “greening”, of the Sahel:     On the day that a famine is declared in Africa — thanks as much […]

A fetish with carbon is driving up the price of electricity and destroying jobs Here’s (belatedly) a piece I published in the Times last week.   British Gas is putting up the cost of heating and lighting the average home by up to 18 per cent, or about £200 a year. Indignation at its profiteering is […]

3D printing may one day work for stem-cell-derived kidneys and concrete building parts My l atest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal is on 3D printing: Serendipity works in curious ways. Earlier this month, on the day before I read news of the successful implanting of a synthetic windpipe grown with a […]

Mark Lynas engages me on several issues Mark Lynas’s new book The God Species contains a few pages that dispute my account of ocean acidification in particular. Mark kindly alerted me to this and asked for my reaction. The result was an exchange, which Mark has put up on his blog here, which I mirror here. I […]

Brian Eno, the musician and writer,  is more positive as a result of reading The Rational Optimist: “That kind of marks the change I’ve felt in the past year or two. I wouldn’t end an album like that now,” he says. Drums Between the Bells has a loose, funky feel; it ends with the words, “Everything […]

My latest Mind and Matter column for the Wall Street Journal is on the strange phenomenon of contagious cancer in dogs and Tasmanian devils, and whether it could happen to us. Elizabeth Murchison is speaking about this at the TED Global meeting in Edinburgh next week.     The human body is a teeming city of […]

The film of the book Frank Dikotter’s fine — and vital — book on Mao’s Great famine won the Samuel Johnson prize. But you can see a short film and a discussion about my book on the BBC Culture show here (from minute 17.17 onwards). It’s an honour to have made it to the shortlist.

Nic Lewis’s discovery of a statistical alteration applied by the IPCC lends strong support to lukwarming Nic Lewis’s discovery of a statistical alteration applied by the IPCC lends strong support to lukwarming   As most people know, I am a lukewarmer — somebody who accepts carbon dioxide’s full greenhouse potential, but does not accept the […]