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Neither Neanderthals nor a volatile climate caused innovation 42,000 years ago On his blog, A Very Remote Period Indeed, Julien Riel-Salvatore discusses his recent paper about Neanderthals and innovation: I’m quoted [in the press release] as saying, among other things, that this study helps ‘rehabilitate’ Neanderthals by showing that they were able to develop some of […]

Mankind enhances natural productivity as well as eats it I have just found at Spiked Online Brendan O’Neill’s superb recent essay on whether the earth is finite, and I heartily recommend it. Here’s a sample: Over the past 200 years, Malthusians have tended to look at people as simply the users-up of scarce resources. They have […]

This is not the best of all possible worlds Here is my latest Wall Street Journal column. It led me into the etymology of the word `optimism’ and the realisation that at first it meant almost the opposite of what we now mean by it, namely that the world was at its `optimum’ and could not […]

Tropical forests became more diverse during the warm episode of 55m years ago. A new paper in Science casts further doubt on the usefulness of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) as a warning of what we face from man-made carbon emissions. Tropical rain forests became more diverse, not less, during the warm spell. The paleontologist […]

Here is the letter that David MacKay sent me following my article in The Times and to which I replied. (I have gone to weblinks for his charts and in one case come up with a slightly different version — the sea ice graph I could not find the exact one he included so I have […]

Only possible in a market economy Don Boudreaux has a lovely essay in the Christian Science Monitor (interest declaration: he mentions my book) in which he makes the point people often miss about markets, that they encourage diversity rather than one-size-fits-all solutions: Contrast the multitude of different market-generated and voluntarily adopted ideas with the ideas of […]

Three fellows of the Royal Society concede my arguments There is a hilarious letter in today’s Times from three FRS professors about my recent artilce on ocean acidification. Despite conceding the factual truth of my article in detail, they tell me to brush up on chemistry then give no examples of me getting anything wrong. […]

Are Arctic ice and the PETM really the best arguments for dangerous climate change? UPDATE: David MacKay’s letter is now up in a separate post here   Some weeks ago I wrote an article for The Times about why I no longer find persuasive the IPCC’s arguments that today’s climate change is unprecedented, fast and dangerous. […]

Some greens have seen the light on nuclear power and GM food. It’s a start. Update: I’d like to add one thing to the story below. Stewart Brand, who I know and admire, played a prominent part in the Channel 4 film. He’s not a `convert’ to these views. He has always been strongly pro-GM […]

Learning lessons from the 1980s I have an article in The Times today (behind a paywall) on ocean acidification. Here’s the gist: Today in Beijing an alliance of scientists called Oceans United will present the United Nations with a request for $5 billion a year to be spent on monitoring the oceans. High among their concerns […]