Matt Ridley

Biologist, columnist | Author of Red Queen, Genome, Rational Optimist, the Evolution of Everything, How Innovation Works, Viral and Birds, Sex and Beauty.

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

In my lecture at @NIH, at the invitation of @NIHDirector_Jay, I explained why I changed my mind from thinking the lab leak theory of covid origins was unlikely to thinking it was almost certainly true.

Please watch and assess the evidence yourself.

https://t.co/7QBeGJT3yY

[Dustin @r0ck3t23]

Marc Andreessen just named the lie that held for a hundred years and is collapsing in real time.

We gave authority to the people who explained things. Not the people who built them.

And nobody questioned why.

For a century, builders created and journalists translated. The public accepted it because complexity demanded a middleman.

But the middleman was never the expert. The middleman was the channel.

And we mistook the channel for the source.

Andreessen: “You set it loose and it will write you literally a 30-page answer. This is basically like a textbook on any topic.”

Any topic. Infinite depth. Zero cost. No gatekeeper.

He has a name for what comes next. Practitioner media.

Andrej Karpathy doesn’t sit across from a journalist. He turns on a camera and teaches the world how the architecture works. No filter. No editorial framing. No one deciding what you’re ready to hear.

The press calls it dangerous.

They are not protecting the public. They are protecting the bottleneck that gave them power.

The critic always needed the creator. The creator never needed the critic.

They just had no other way to reach the world.

Now they do.

[Daniel Hannan @DanielJHannan]

This, from @K_Niemietz, is the best piece you will read today.
“For Extinction Rebellion/Just Stop Oil/Greta Thunberg-type climate change activists, the argument that pushes their rage button is that Britain contributes less than 1 per cent to global CO2 emissions. They hate that argument like nothing else in the world. If they had to choose between stopping climate change, and stopping people from saying that Britain doesn’t contribute much to climate change, they would undoubtedly choose the latter.”
https://t.co/4NiLfbSwoa

[Judith Curry @curryja]

This is so obscene. In the US, young adults currently in their 20s were exposed to outrageous alarmist propaganda, and many are still traumatized by this

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

Yes!

[Kyle Smith @rkylesmith]

Who among you has read AN INSTANCE OF THE FINGERPOST?

[DonKeiller @KeillerDon]

The Met. Orifice is lying to you.
Again.
Its models are using RCP8.5 scenarios which the IPCC say are “implausible”.
#ClimateCrisis
#Climatescam

[Jan Jekielek @JanJekielek]

“We were far too tough in the pandemic on ordinary people, and we were not nearly tough enough on labs.”

Matt Ridley says the most important lesson we should have learned from Covid has been completely ignored:

Biolabs require much closer monitoring.

“I would like to see the world give quite a tough time to biology laboratories that work on viruses in terms of monitoring what they’re up to.”

“I do not want to see ordinary human beings told… that the moment we snap our fingers, we’re gonna impose curfews, and we’re gonna close schools, and we’re gonna stop you leaving your home.”

@mattwridley

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

In both cases it would be more accurate to say that climate change and Covid are “partly man made”.

I don’t mean to imply the virus is entirely synthetic or that there is no natural climate change.

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

Many people insist covid was a natural zoonosis but that climate change is a man-made catastrophe.

Others assert there was no virus causing covid or there is no human influence on climate.

I think Covid was real and man made but lockdowns were a mistake.

And that climate change is real and man made but drastic climate policies are a mistake.

[Net Zero Watch @NetZeroWatch]

Game, set and match to Coutinho.

[Kristian Niemietz @K_Niemietz]

"Every twenty years, give or take, the British Left rediscovers the wealth tax. They rediscover it with the bright-eyed conviction of a Labrador rediscovering a tennis ball under the sofa, and with roughly the same level of new information."
https://t.co/s02PfNA6uZ

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

Owned...

[Claire Coutinho @ClaireCoutinho]

This is so worryingly misinformed from a taxpayer-funded public servant.

The price of wind is not falling, as you can see from this chart it is in fact *rising.* The 2025 price should actually be 12% higher as the contract length was extended to 20 yrs ie it is rising steeply. This years auction looks set to be no cheaper than last years.

These prices are before you include systems costs (grid, balancing etc) which are also rapidly rising to the tune of tens of billions.

Clean tech is great. But the growth of renewables is because they are backed by consumers being locked into very high prices for decades. Much higher prices than our competitors’ energy prices. No wonder wind developers want to build here. That is not growth based on economic optimism but on huge billpayer subsidies and it will only deter electrification which is a much bigger deal for emissions.

Nuclear would actually give us the cleanest air because it doesn’t require gas back up. Unlike wind and solar which also uses up to 3000 times the land and are blanketing some of our most beautiful wild landscapes. However you have been a long standing critic of nuclear and are currently making it harder and more expensive to build in the UK.

A huge problem that we have in climate policy is supposedly impartial leaders like the CCC and Natural England are using dodgy data and dodgy facts to favour their own ideologies.

Who is holding them accountable?

[Human Progress @HumanProgress]

Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich had opposing views of humanity.

Ehrlich saw each additional person as a claimant on scarce resources.

Simon saw them as a possible problem-solver who could improve life for everyone. Simon's view proved more prescient.
https://t.co/jGYF1PsDKZ

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

@pollsstar Yes but once messaging got easier, things grew quieter again...until today

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

I thought the days were past when train journeys were spoiled by men yelling things like "I'm on the train...can you hear me now?...not sure why I called you...obviously this is very confidential but we should see EBITDA of one point three".

These are verbatim quotes.

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

@BWalkerTTAGGG 😂

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

Many people insist covid was a natural zoonosis but that climate change is a man-made catastrophe.

Others assert there was no virus causing covid or there is no human influence on climate.

I think Covid was real and man made but lockdowns were a mistake.

And that climate change is real and man made but drastic climate policies are a mistake.

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

Great catch

[Maurice Cousins @MDC12345678]

.@ECIU_UK apparently "less than 1%" is a decisive argument when you're opposing the North Sea...

...but a logical fallacy when you're defending Net Zero.

Consistency would be nice!

[Tim Worstall @worstall]

Good grief. £5 million turning up in your or my bank account would also trigger the bank to send it off for examination. That's what the law says they need to do. No, really, that's the way the entire system is set up. That the bank sent it for review is wholly a non-story.

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

I used to say things like this about science too. I still do about most science. But I was lied to so blatantly over Covid origins and climate alarmism that I now know science does change its line because it lied.

[Simon Maechling @simonmaechling]

Science doesn’t change its mind because it lied.

It changes its mind because it learned something new.

A belief that never changes isn’t science. It’s ideology.

[Daniel Hannan @DanielJHannan]

Che Guevara, enthusiast for the gulags, torture chambers and secret police on which communism rested, was caught and shot 50 years ago #OTD.

[Peter Clack @PeterDClack]

The Earth is greening at a rate never seen before in all recorded history.

Global crop yields have risen 15–20% since 1960, almost entirely attributable to CO₂ fertilisation (Idso, 2013; IPCC AR6 WG1 Ch5). Famine deaths have fallen over a time when the world's population doubled — and CO₂ deserves much of the credit. We have CO₂ to thank for this explosion in plant life and agriculture.

NASA satellite studies reveal a more than 18% increase in global leaf area in 40 years; the largest gains in India and China (from CO₂ fertilisation). Warmer temperatures are lengthening the growing seasons. This is a feature of rising levels of water vapour and cloud cover around the world.

Every 100 ppm increase in CO₂ typically boosts plant growth by 25–50% in all non-water-limited conditions. My analysis draws on 776 studies from 1993–2019, showing an ideal average CO₂ level of 550 ppm delivers a 38% increase in global biomass.

It's an astonishing windfall for life on earth, chiefly from CO₂, a trace gas at 420 ppm (or 0.04%). It also has a secondary benefit for life by contributing to baseline levels of warmth around the planet, along with water vapour and other trace gases with similar properties, like methane (1,920-1,930 parts per billion).

Higher CO₂ gives a net benefit to life on Earth.