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Matt Ridley
The myths of green energy I’ve admired Robert Bryce’s work since he did such a great job of exposing the biofuel boondoggle inGusher of Lies. Now he has a new book, which I have just kindled, on the myths of green energy, called Power Hungry. He summarises his argument in the Washington Post. One fact that […]
First Rational Optimist lecture
Matt Ridley
Matt will be in New York giving a talk at the New York Academy of Sciences on the evening of 19 May. Speaking about `How prosperity evolves’ and selling books. Feel free to spread the word.
Matt Ridley
Never underestimate the experts’ ability to get things wrong Seth Roberts has read three new books about how emperors are often more naked than people tell them they are. I’ve read two of those books and had much the same reaction. The trust-the-experts inertia of the financial markets described by Michael Lewis in The Big […]
Matt Ridley
Commerce has been the source of more virtue than glory or courage or faith Read this, taken from Roger Crowley’s brilliant book Empires of the Sea: Everyone employed chained labour — captured slaves, convicts, and, in the Christian ships, paupers so destitute they sold themselves to the galley captains. It was these wretches, chained three or […]
Matt Ridley
Volcanic ash particles are not like burglars: linear dose dependent. John Brockman’s Edge site has lots of short essay-lets on what the ash cloud episode means. Maybe because of the way it was reported in the USA, remarkably few of the commentaries seem to get that it was a huge buearucratic over-reaction to a theoretical model […]
Matt Ridley
Technology reduces human impact The always perceptive Indur Goklany has turned his attention to IPAT, the formula by which some environmentalists insist that human impact (I) gets worse if population (P), affluence (A) or technology (T) increases. This simple formula has become highly influential, but it fails to explain why human well being keeps increasing as […]
Matt Ridley
Neanderthals may have contributed a few genes to posterity after all Tantalising clues have been emerging for some time from human genomes that Neanderthals may have contributed a few genes to posterity after all. That `we’ mated with `them’ occasionally. The clues come in the form of widely differing DNA sequences that seem to converge […]
Printed books might give people new ideas, says pope
Matt Ridley
Shock news. Internet not all bad. David Brooks in the New York Times has news of a contrarian finding about the internet: Gentzkow and Shapiro found that the Internet is actually more ideologically integrated than old-fashioned forms of face-to-face association – like meeting people at work, at church or through community groups. You’re more […]
Matt Ridley
The volcanic ash panic is just the latest example of risk misjudgment I am no expert on jet engines, but my suspicions from the very beginning that the European authorities were over-reacting to Iceland’s ash cloud are hardening with every day. Of course flying into an actual ash plume is dangerous, but that does not […]
Matt Ridley
Climate science inquiries are only exacerbating the damage to science’s reputation Bishop Hill is doing a great job of following the various inquiries into the climate emails. The unthoroughness, biased membership and gullibility of the Oxburgh and Russell inquiries has the effect on a lukewarmer like me of driving me further into the sceptical camp. […]
