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Welcome to Matt Ridley's Blog

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Matt Ridley is the author of provocative books on evolution, genetics and society. His books have sold over a million copies, been translated into thirty languages, and have won several awards.

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Matt Ridley's latest book Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19, co-authored with scientist Alina Chan from Harvard and MIT's Broad Institute, is now available in the United States, in the United Kingdom, and elsewhere.

  • Handaxe and mouse

    Published on: Saturday, 29 May, 2010

    Canadian style

    The Globe and Mail (Toronto) has made a nice new version of my "handaxe and mouse" image to illustrate their review of The Rational Optimist

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • Unprecedented warming?

    Published on: Saturday, 29 May, 2010

    Around 7,000 years ago it was much, much warmer all around the globe.

    There's a lot of debate about the `Medieval Warm Period'. But I've always been intrigued by the warm period of 7,000 years ago, known as the Holocene Optimum, and I have been doing some digging to find out just how warm it was. I've come away rather amazed.

    Have a look at this image, which uses stalagmites in caves to estimate ancient temperatures (as graphed by Wilis Eschenbach)

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • Rational Optimism on the radio

    Published on: Thursday, 27 May, 2010

    Everything from star signs to slavery and coals to Newcastle

    Listen to my interview on NPR's Leonard Lopate Show

    and an MP3 of my interview on PM with Marc Colvin, in Australia

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • Seeds of an idea

    Published on: Wednesday, 26 May, 2010

    Bacteria that live in the clouds and the prospect of controlling the weather

    My good friend Dave Sands is not only a brilliant biologist -- I cite him in The Rational Optimist arguing for genetic modification to improve the quality rather than the quantity of food -- but a very fine poet. He's profiled in yesterday's New York Times discussing his latest theory that ice-forming pseudomonas bactera in the air play a central role in precipitation:

    In the last few years, Dr. Sands and other researchers have accumulated evidence that the well-known group of bacteria, long known to live on agricultural crops, are far more widespread and may be part of a little-studied weather ecosystem. The principle is well accepted, but how widespread the phenomenon is remains a matter of debate.

    If true, this could have all sorts of implications.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • The Mustang test

    Published on: Tuesday, 25 May, 2010

    Pollution from driven cars has fallen so fast it is now below that of parked cars in 1970

    One small fact in my book has caught several readers' attention:

    Today, a car emits less pollution travelling at full speed than a parked car did in 1970 from leaks.

    My source for this remarkable statistic was Johan Norberg's 2006 book När människan skapade världen. In a translation he sent me it reads:

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • Guardian interview: 'We can overcome disease, poverty and climate change

    Published on: Monday, 24 May, 2010

    Jon Henley interviews Matt Ridley: The Rational Optimist is, essentially, about progress: how, of all the species on earth, only humans have managed so radically and completely to change the way they live. Animals, even the most intelligent ones, have not thus far known "economic growth" or "rising living standards" or "technological revolutions" (or, indeed, "credit crunches"). Why?

    nterview in the Guardian today:

    "If people are all the same underneath, how has society changed so fast and so radically? Life now is completely different to how it was 32,000 years ago. It's changed like that of no other species has. What's made that difference? Clearly our genes haven't changed; this process has happened far too fast for genetic change. My answer, bringing together my evolutionary knowledge and a lot of economic reading, is this: sex is to biology as exchange is to culture."

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • Sunday Times review

    Published on: Sunday, 23 May, 2010

    Generous praise from Dominic LawsonRead Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • The Rational Optimist in the Wall Street Journal

    Published on: Saturday, 22 May, 2010

    Human take-off after 45,000 years ago followed the invention of exchangeRead Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist, wall-street-journal
  • Organisms must compete in Nature's jungle

    Published on: Friday, 21 May, 2010

    The Red Queen versus Craig Venter's new cell

    Here is why Craig Venter's new organism carries absolutely no fears for me: the Red Queen. Evolution is a treadmill.

    People speak about artificial life forms getting loose and running amok. But that's not how life works. It's a jungle out there.

    Nature is continually trying new life forms on a truly gigantic scale and testing them against each other. Very few get to take over the world even briefly and even they soon succumb to evolving predators, parasites and competitors.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • New York Times reviews The Rational Optimist

    Published on: Tuesday, 18 May, 2010

    John Tierney writes in today's New York Times: Doomsayers beware, a bright future beckons

    John Tierney reviews The Rational Optimist in today's New York Times:

    Every now and then, someone comes along to note that society has failed to collapse and might go on prospering, but the notion is promptly dismissed in academia as happy talk from a simpleton. Predicting that the world will not end is also pretty good insurance against a prolonged stay on the best-seller list.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • Sunday Times seria

    Published on: Monday, 17 May, 2010

    Humans’ capacity for solving problems has been improving our lot for 10,000 years. Don’t think it will stop now

    The Sunday Times printed an edited extract of the book on 16 May.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • Shale to the chief

    Published on: Friday, 14 May, 2010

    Gas is great stuff

    People love to talk about the energy industry in voices of gloom and doom. The oil's running out, the lights are going out, the pollution's getting worse. But pause to consider the good news. Like shale gas.

    Over the past decade, a wave of drilling around the world has uncovered giant supplies of natural gas in shale rock. By some estimates, there's 1,000 trillion cubic feet recoverable in North America alone-enough to supply the nation's natural-gas needs for the next 45 years. Europe may have nearly 200 trillion cubic feet of its own.

    Imagine a source of energy...

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • First reviews of The Rational Optimist

    Published on: Thursday, 13 May, 2010

    These are a bit premature, but the book's available next week in the US, week after in the UKRead Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • Polarised on polar ice

    Published on: Tuesday, 11 May, 2010

    Science gets polarised when people only read their friends' caricatures of their enemies' views

    As own goals go, this was a stunning shot.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • Organic's footprint

    Published on: Wednesday, 05 May, 2010

    Buying organic food may make you feel superior, but stop pretending it is better for the planet

    The quantity of cereals harvested in the world has trebled in 40 years [correction: nearly trebled in 50 years!], but the acreage planted to cereals has hardly changed at all.

    (graph from my book)

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • The bright side of living longer

    Published on: Monday, 03 May, 2010

    People are not only spending a longer time living, but a shorter time dying.

    My good friend the evolutionary biologist and expert on old age, Tom Kirkwood, has made a splash in my local newspaper, The Newcastle Journal, by writing to all three British party leaders to ask them to emphasise the positive rather than the negative aspects of people living longer.

    Our studies are revealing high levels of capability and good quality life among people who are well into their 80s. They are not all in poor health needing high levels of care. Indeed, many view their health as 'excellent' and still live highly independent lives.

    I point out in The Rational Optimist that the average lifespan has increased by a third during my lifetime; life expectancy is increasing globally by 5 hours a day. Kirkwood's Changing Age Charter, like my book, says:

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • Oil spills

    Published on: Sunday, 02 May, 2010

    Bad news from oil spills has been getting rarer, though that may be of little comfort right now

    The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a horror, for people and for wildlife. It will surely cause huge damage. It is a reminder that for all the talk of global impacts, the worst environmental crises are still local ones.

    But it is worth pausing to reflect how rare such terrible oil spills have now become. Here is the data on world tanker spills over the past 40 years:

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • Ill wind

    Published on: Friday, 30 April, 2010

    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 jumps out is how much worse the dependence on foregin powers green energy would be than even oil is:

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • First Rational Optimist lecture

    Published on: Thursday, 29 April, 2010

    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.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • On thinking for yourself

    Published on: Wednesday, 28 April, 2010

    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 Short is much like that in the climate debate described by Andrew Montford in The Hockey Stick Illusion. Roberts's third book is about Bernie Madoff.

    I call these books The Emperor's New Clothes Trilogy. Their broad lesson:Sometimes the "best people" aren't right. Sometimes there's a point of view from which they're glaringly wrong. The Hockey Stick Illusion is about how Stephen McIntyre found this point of view. In No One Would Listen Markopolos found this point of view. In The Big Short several people found this point of view.

    In Monty Python's immortal words:

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • Chiefs, priests and thieves

    Published on: Tuesday, 27 April, 2010

    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 four to a foot-wide bench, who made sea wars possible. Their sole function was to work themselves to death. Shackled hand and foot, excreting where they sat, fed on meagre quantities of black biscuits, and so thirsty they were sometimes driven to drink seawater, galley slaves led lives bitter and short.

    And this:

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • Dilute till safe

    Published on: Monday, 26 April, 2010

    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 and based on a zero-tolerance approach to ash that makes no sense. And it caused real economic and emtoional pain.

    No coincidence that the models were built for radioactivity. Ash, chemicals, fallout and heat are things which are not linear in their risk. That is to say, a very low dose is not slightly more dangerous than no dose. It's no more dangerous. This is not true of burglars and smallpox viruses.

    Here's my contribution to the Edge collection:

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • Down PAT

    Published on: Friday, 23 April, 2010

    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 P, A and T climb ever higher:

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • An ancient matin

    Published on: Wednesday, 21 April, 2010

    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 on common ancestors that lived long before modern human beings came out of Africa 80,000 years ago or so.

    There is good reason to be cautious -- it is possible that it just means lots of very distantly Africans joined the migration -- but now it seems a tipping point is being reached in the debate. The latest study of 600 microsatellite (fingerprint) sequences from 2,000 people is being interpreted as evidence of two separate episodes of genetic mixing between Neanderthals (or heidelbergensis) and ex-African `moderns'. SeeNeanderthals may have interbred with humans.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged:
  • Printed books might give people new ideas, says pope

    Published on: Tuesday, 20 April, 2010

    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 likely to overlap with political opponents online than in your own neighborhood.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • Systematic over-reaction

    Published on: Monday, 19 April, 2010

    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 make a well dispersed haze of ash dangerous.

    It now turns out Europe's reaction was more extreme than America's would have been. And airlines are increasingly calling the bluff of the aviation authorities by doing test flights. Politicians have been characteristically slow and useless. See here:

    The International Air Transport Association...expressed its "dissatisfaction with how governments have managed it, with no risk assessment, no consultation, no coordination, and no leadership"

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • How not to defend science

    Published on: Sunday, 18 April, 2010

    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. If the case for man made global warming needs this much flagrant whitewashing, then maybe, I begin to think, the exaggerations and mistakes are not just the result of sloppiness, but are part of a deliberate attempt to camouflage the truth to keep the gravy train on the track. If the science was any good then it could stand proper scrutiny.

    As Christpher Booker writes:

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • Hold the good news

    Published on: Thursday, 15 April, 2010

    A rare glimpse into how pressure groups try to keep the good news off the front page

    One of the themes in my forthcoming book is that there are huge vested interests trying to prevent good news reaching the public. That is to say, in the ruthless free-market struggle that goes on between pressure groups for media attention and funds, nobody likes to have it said that `their' problem is not urgent and getting worse.

    The lengths that acid rain alarmists in the EPA went to to prevent the result of the NAPAP study reaching Congress before crucial votes in the early 1990s is well documented, and this was when this phenomenon first dawned on me. But now I see it everywhere.

    Journalists rarely challenge pressure groups' claims of urgency and deterioration, because those are the two things that get editors' attention, too.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • No contrails

    Published on: Thursday, 15 April, 2010

    Iceland's volcanic cloud keeps the sky clear of planes: will that cause more nocturnal cooling?

    The sky's bright blue right now, which is weird because I am looking up through a 5,000-metre thick plume of volcanic ash from Iceland. This has stopped all flights in the UK air space and much of northern Europe.

    (As somebody quipped on the radio, `Dear Iceland, we said send CASH'.)

    So there are no vapour condensation trails from jets, which prompts the thought: did anybody ever figure out what con trails do to the climate?

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
  • Let society evolve

    Published on: Wednesday, 14 April, 2010

    Bottom up thinking from a political party at lastRead Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist
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