Climate Hysteria Overlooks The Key Part Of The Equation

I have been consistently critical of climate alarmism and the billions wasted on misjudged climate policies, but I think most critics of my views on this don't really understand the position of people like me. I believe they assume that, either; a) I'm trivialising the empirical forecasting of climate scientists, b) I don't under Navier-Stokes equations, or c) I'm dismissive of the dangers of climate change on the spurious pretext that the vast majority of people pushing the agenda are such incompetent thinkers.

But that's not it at all. I do take the empirical forecasting seriously, I do understand Navier-Stokes equations, and fallacious ad hominem reasoning is not my game.

So, I'm not an adversary up to this point, because I'm also fully seized of the high likelihood that there are significant climate issues to solve. The data models suggest there will be an increase in floods and droughts, sea level rises, a changing ecosystem, and the need to adapt to some regional disruptions as the earth's temperature increases.

But after this point of small concordance, our harmony ends - because if you are a climate alarmist, activist, or just generally behind the financially exorbitant environmentalist policies, then I'm afraid you are missing too much of the bigger picture. Even if we ignore the fact that simulated atmospheric and ocean conditions based on computational fluid dynamics increases in margins of error the further forward we try to project (and we shouldn't ignore that, but let's be generous and do it anyway), computational fluid dynamics is not the tool for assessing economic change, technological change and climate change combined, over time. If you only focus on the latter one of the three, it's an anaemic, sub-standard equation.

For that reason, the proffered formula for spending so many billions on future climate change mitigation now is so unbalanced, it's astounding it persists unquestioningly. The formula for taking such drastic action now would have to be this: analysis of a reasonable margin of error taking into account the possibilities of chaotic anomalies in the Navier-Stokes models, and a projected model of the curve of human progress during the same timeframe, alongside which, a red queen-type of projection justifying why the arms race is won by the climate-over-human-ingenuity forecast not human-ingenuity-over-climate forecast.

And that has never been propounded, not once, ever, by anyone, as far as I can tell. It's the second part of the equation - the projected model of the curve of human progress during the same timeframe - that always gets missed. Both have potential chaotic perturbations, but the climate alarmism model speculates with billions of pounds of sunk costs without any regard for the progression curve of humans within that frame period. In layman's terms, the choices made are roughly; spend billions now and regulate the oil industry out of the market and have no regard for future progression, or spend the money today on a more prudent allocation of resources, and expect that, because of several good reasons (we'll be smarter, richer, more technologically astute in the coming years, and because we already adhere to the law of parsimony), we'll have far far far less trouble solving these problems than the misguided people of today think.

Sunday Faith Series: Are We Alone In The Universe? 5 Questions On Alien Life

 

The two best known examples of a systematic attempt to evaluate the probabilities of finding alien life in the universe are the Fermi paradox and the Drake equation. They were set up a few decades ago, but were proffered to calibrate probabilities based only on modelling our galaxy (no further). Given the less sophisticated technology, they were largely speculative equations - assessing the rate of star formation, the number of stars with planets, and the number that are likely habitable. The trouble is, given that there are 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone, and around 100 billion galaxies, both the Fermi paradox and the Drake equation proved inadequate to the cause of assessing the fraction of planets with life, and the odds of life becoming intelligent, and even more so the odds that intelligent life becomes communicative.

A few years ago, the Breakthrough Listen project was launched, heightening our search for other life in the universe by searching planets that orbit the million stars closest to Earth and the hundred nearest galaxies. This was the biggest and most sophisticated search we've ever had, and has, for me, elicited 5 questions:

1) What are we likely to find out there?
Here's a hunch - we won't find anything. The universe existed for around 10 billion years before the earth began to form some 4.6 billion years ago, therefore if there is intelligent life on other planets much of it is likely to be a lot more advanced than we are as many of the planets we search will be older. While this comment makes a lot of assumptions about a similar evolutionary story (see below), if you imagine how much more advanced we'll be in just 500 years, consider how much more advanced a civilisation could be that had extra thousands or even millions of years to evolve.

2) Are we better of not finding each other?
If such life does exist, it would perhaps be advanced enough to have been able to find us by now. Perhaps they are watching us; perhaps they are so ultra-sophisticated that they have no need to communicate with us, rather like how we earthlings have no need to communicate with ant colonies. Or perhaps if they stumble upon us they might see us as enough of a potential threat to challenge their supremacy in time. In which case they might wipe us out, rather like how heads of empires used to have their armies wipe out groups of peasant radicals that saw themselves as revolutionaries and future over-throwers of the ruling elite.

Alternatively, perhaps alien life out there is less evolved than we are. In which case, mutatis mutandis, judging by the way that we earthlings have treated those who are less-capable and less-powerful than us, if there were such creatures in the universe that are less developed than us, it might be better for them if we never find them.

3) What might aliens look like?
This is an intriguing question. Presumably any other life in the universe would share the commonality of having evolved from carbon-based origins (silicon is unlikely). That is to say, given that science shows that regeneration occurs most optimally at moderate temperatures, and with an increased amount of chemical variability, carbon based life is much more probable than any other kind of base. One presumes creatures on other planets would have had a primordial soup of some kind - therefore one wonders if natural selection on their planet would produce anything like us. Given the fecundity of qualities like wings, eyesight, vocal expressions, a central nervous system, memory and the intelligence to find food and outcompete rival species - all of which are so fecund that they've evolve multiple times independently on our planet, one wonders whether evolution on other planets would select for those same qualities. If we did find life on other planets, It wouldn't be surprising to me to see them possessing many (if not all) of the above qualities.

4) What if we miss life by arriving at the wrong time?
I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone ask this question - but it is worth considering, particularly after the news that Kepler, NASA space telescope, has discovered a planet in the Milky Way similar to Earth. NASA said the Earth-like planet, named Kepler 452b, orbits a star similar to Earth's sun over the course of 385 days, and is located 1,400 light-years away from Earth.

The reason I mention our timing is that even if we do find a planet habitable for life, we have to catch it at the right period of its cosmological evolution. Kepler 452b is 6 billion years old, making it roughly 1.5 billion years older than earth - and it is getting rather hot apparently - just as our own planet will be in several billion years’ time. Given what I said above about how biological evolution selects for fecund qualities and traits that increase the odds of genetic propagation, that 6 billion year period may well have engendered a reasonably high level of intelligent life, only to be gradually discontinued as Kepler 452b gets hotter and hotter, meaning that by the time we discovered it all trace of intelligent life has gone the same way as the evaporated oceans.

5) What are the ramifications for Christians?
Finally, a question I pondered a few years ago is whether or not the discovery of alien life on other planets might affect our religious faith. The first point of note is that in my experience atheists are bound to find a way to elicit the wrong accusations on this one. That is to say, when broaching the question of whether we are alone in the universe or whether there is life elsewhere, one ought to be mindful, first off, of the way that either answer (‘yes’ and ‘no’) is used by the atheists (rather dishonestly and disingenuously, as it happens) against Christianity. They say that if we are the only life in the whole universe then that must prove that our being here is merely the result of the sheerest fluke. If, however, there are other planets which contain life of some kind that must prove that we are not the special creation that the Bible claims we are. Both contentions are, of course, equally spurious - but it is easy to see how atheists like to have it all their own way. 

So what if we did find sophisticated life on another planet, then, complete with language, intelligence and complex multivariate societies like we have on earth - how would that affect our faith? I think it's a very good question. Suppose they had evolved no concept of God, and had had no incarnation, death on the cross, and resurrection in their history at all - how might you respond to that as a Christian? Could it simply mean that they are another branch of God's creation that do not require the same kind of salvation we do, or perhaps (highly questionably) no act of salvation at all? Or might the absence of God on their planet lead us to wonder if our own religions are simply human inventions? Or, alternatively, might we stick to our faith and accept that there are things we don't understand, and accept perhaps God has not yet chosen to reveal Himself to that planet? After all, sophisticated God-fearing aliens that arrived on our planet 20,000 years ago might think the same about earth.

Personally, my faith is built on so much by way of experience, evidence, cognitive consideration and emotional conviction that I don't think the discovery of a completely God-less civilisation on another planet would shake my faith very much. Of course, the first reaction might be for us to wonder if their being bereft of the good news constitutes an urgent need for us to go share it with them (as per Matthew 28:19-20). But that in itself brings another interesting hypothetical question: is telling the good news to a planet full of people currently unapprised of Jesus actually good news for them or is it bad news? For one presumes that if they had no knowledge of God, they could have no knowledge of sin and their need for salvation. Are they better off remaining ignorant so they are not indicted for their lack of accepting Jesus as their saviour? Would telling them be a bit like taking a deadly pandemic to their planet and then trying to provide them with the cure? Or would not telling them be like leaving them to a pandemic they already have and refusing to take them a cure?

The problem St Paul tells us in Romans 3:11 is that on earth “there is no one who understands, and no one who seeks God”, so imagine how much more this would be the case on a planet that had never even evolved the concept of God. Or might it be the case that just as God has clearly revealed Himself in the natural world (Romans 1:20) and has set eternity in the hearts of all people (Ecclesiastes 3:11), that there is no such thing in the universe as being wholly unapprised of God?

This blog post has been much more about questions than answers. I am of the view that sometimes questions are more interesting than answers - so hopefully they are questions that got you pondering with interest.

Counterintuitive Economics: Why People Are Often Confused About High Prices

 

High costs are not necessarily good or bad; it depends entirely on how things are being measured. The cost is what the consumer sacrifices when they decide on a transaction. If I want solar powered garden lights, I pay the cost; if I want my roof fixed, I pay the cost. Now, suppose there are three types of light I like - spike lights, bollard lights and meteor shower lights. Suppose my preferential order is meteor shower lights, spike lights and then bollard lights. If I buy meteor shower lights, I sacrifice the opportunity to enjoy spike lights and bollard lights - and that forgone experience, plus the retail price of the meteor shower lights, is the cost I incur for my favourite lights. If I love spike lights nearly as much as meteor shower lights, then my cost of choosing meteor shower lights is higher than if I don't really like spike lights then bollard lights at all.

Now, which position of the two do you think is most beneficial to you? Evidently, it's the first option - the one in which you like spike lights nearly as much as meteor shower lights. Even though the first option is a higher cost, it's more preferable than option 2, where you are indifferent to the other 2 options. The take home economic wisdom here is that the better your range of choices, the higher your cost in choosing your favourite, but the higher quality the thing usually (but not always) is.

This can be applied to many other walks of life - employment offers, marriage offers, dating, holiday offers, and so on. Let's take online dating. Suppose you have two scenarios. In the first scenario, you have the choice of dating Fantastic Fay and Amazing Amy. Let's suppose overall quality (looks, intelligence, personality, kindness, trustworthiness, wit, occupation, etc), can be measured out of 100, and say Fay is 95 out of 100 and Amy is 92. The cost of choosing Fay over Amy is 92. In the second scenario, you have the choice of dating only Fantastic Fay or Reasonable Ruby, who scores 63 to Fay's 95. Assuming that you'd rather date Ruby than be single, choosing to date Fay costs you 63. In other words, the cost of choosing Fay over Ruby in scenario 2 (where Amy doesn't exist) is 29 points cheaper than choosing Fay over Amy in scenario 1 (where Ruby doesn't exist).

Clearly, if you date Fay in both scenarios, you're as intrinsically well off in each scenario, but you're not as extrinsically well off in each scenario, because your next best option is better in scenario 1 than in the scenario 2. That is to say, the cost of being in scenario 1 is higher than scenario 2, but it's still better to be in the higher cost scenario. To see why, suppose Fay takes a job abroad, and your relationship ends abruptly just as it begins. You're gutted, but now you look at your next option. In scenario 1, it's Amy at 92 points, whereas in scenario 2, it's Ruby at 63. You are better off in the higher cost scenario (scenario 1), even though here, 'higher cost' is synonymous with 'a more preferable scenario'.

All this we've covered constitutes one of those counter-intuitive things about economics - things that are true yet few people believe because on the surface they appear false. After all, how can the option we don't choose cost anything? That's not how we ordinarily measure cost. When we go shopping in the supermarket and buy £100 worth of goods, we don't think up a bill in our heads of all the items we neglected to buy, and what that opportunity cost amounted to. But to understand opportunity costs in relation to consume and producer surpluses means understanding that as the options get better and more plentiful, so do the costs.

I deliberately saved this one until last, but here's a scenario that should make all the above even more plainly obvious. If you're told you can go to a car showroom and pick a free car of your choice as you have the winning ticket, it would be easy and not feel very costly to go and pick out the Lamborghini if it was alongside rusty old bangers. You would hardly give what you left behind a second's thought. But if you had to select a car from a range of superb, luxury cars of all different kinds, you'd take a lot longer to choose one, and you'd spend more time thinking about the ones you left behind. That's an understanding you should bring to the considerations around high prices. 

Sunday Faith Series: An Interesting Observation About Adam & Eve

Humans are culturally primed to take responsibility for their own misdemeanours. If Celia in Liverpool is caught speeding, we wouldn't expect Carol in Newcastle to get sent the speeding fine. If Jack in Bristol assaults someone in a nightclub, it would be unfair if the judge gave Tom in Manchester a prison sentence. The story of Adam and Eve, then, even when one takes it as a myth intended to convey powerful truths about humankind (as I believe we are meant to take it), is an interesting illustration of what it means to be humans under sin.

Taken literally, it would be a silly story; one man sins, and because of that original sin the imputation falls on everyone who lives. That's even more unfair than my illustration of Carol in Newcastle getting the speeding fine for Celia's offence. It's more like Carol in Newcastle getting the speeding fine for someone who was caught speeding before she was even born.

How are we supposed to take the Adam and Eve story then? I have a rule about reading scripture - I think it all has to be read through the lens of the grace of Christ on the cross. Every book and every chapter is bound to be read anaemically unless understood in relation to God's awesome grace - even the difficult parts. With that in mind, here's a suggested way to view the Adam and Eve story. We know from our present day lens of understanding psychology, biology and neuroscience just how inevitable it is that people will make a mess of things in life. Our heredity, or psychological damage, our emotional weaknesses and the other numerous human shortfalls are now understood to be key components in how we screw up. Or to put it another way, the world is full of things that are bound to make us fall.

In contrast, the scene set for Adam & Eve is a paradisiacal backdrop, where we're told none of these earthly afflictions would have been a danger to them. They had no insecurities, no other people to damage them or bring out the worst in them. But yet even in paradise, susceptible to none of these faults, they were disobedient - they chose 'self' over choosing God - the primary sin that leads to all other sinning.

Perhaps the primary message the story is conveying is that if paradisiacal Adam and Eve can slip up under their conditions, it shows just how hopeless our attempts are at avoiding sin. If even the two safest people ended up sinning, it is quite unsurprising that relatively unsafe people like us were always going to sin. But with that comes the realisation of how the grace lens is brought to bear on our affliction. We are all so naturally screwed by ourselves that the only possibility antidote for us is the same antidote for paradisiacal Adam and Eve - the love and grace of God, given to us through the death and resurrection of Christ as a free gift that we had no chance of earning.

On The Curious Nature Of Incuriosity

I’ve known quite a few people over the years who are largely incurious about pretty much all of the most interesting things available to humans to ponder deeply. They live a fairly contented life, where family, work, friendships, running a household and some leisure time take up virtually all of their time and mental energy. But deep and profound questions and considerations about God, reality, existence, the universe, life, philosophy, morality, consciousness, free will, etc are met with, at best, a brief but transient spark of curiosity, and, at worst, blithe disinterest.

I’ve always found this strange, on at least two counts:

1) Those deep and profound considerations are really the elixir of life’s purpose, joys and wonders, not mere adjuncts to the story

2) It’s near-certain that, with the right balance, your family life, work life, friendships, home life and leisure time are greatly enhanced, not compromised, by an interest in the deep and profound considerations of the world

Consequently, then, if being curious seems to be much more beneficial than being incurious, why do so many people prefer incuriosity over curiosity? One obvious possibility is that being curious requires a lot of effort that being incurious does not, so most people choose not to bother. Another possibility is that curiosity takes you on a journey that engenders more internal mental anguish than simply leaving well alone. Yet another possibility is that curiosity leads to more knowledge and more opinions, and therefore the likelihood of more epistemological conflict with others.

All three of those possibilities seem mutually plausible – they tap in to the human tendency to act according to the law of parsimony (the law of least effort). In order to think competently about something, you need to have learned lots of facts, and also how to reason well, and when faced with that, parsimony can probably seem quite seductive.

But incuriosity is to our detriment. I’ve often pondered whether people can be taught or encouraged to be more curious. I’m pretty sure that once people begin to learn and discover more, their curiosity compounds like interest. I should imagine it’s unlikely that you can comfortably know lots and not want to know lots more. Consequently, perhaps the most influential curiosity is the nascent curiosity – helping create the spark from which all fires can burn. Or perhaps, we have to get excited about thinking big before we can even start thinking small. It may be, as Antoine de Saint-Exupery said, that if we want people to build ships, we don’t get them gathering wood, collecting tools, and assigning tasks – we, instead, teach them to “yearn for the vast, endless sea.”.

 

Sunday Faith Series: Christianity - Genius or Madness?

There are two common binary considerations associated with Christianity - one is: Is it true or false? - and the other is: Is it good or evil? I prefer to frame it a different way by asking; Is it genius or madness? If it is madness, it is probably false and evil too, whereas if it is genius, it is probably good and true. Hang on, I hear you object - why can't it be a work of genius in its moral proclamations, but not in the least bit true when it comes to its claims of Jesus' divinity?

It's a fair question. Telling us to love our neighbour as ourselves, and to be charitable, compassionate, kind and morally excellent is hardly wisdom that could not have been thought up by an excellent human. But as C.S Lewis reminds us in his 'Lord, liar or lunatic' trilemma, Jesus made claims to have co-equality with God, so as long as we accept that the scriptures are an accurate portrayal* then Christ couldn't have been thoroughly excellent if He either a) told so many lies about being God, or b) was under so many false misapprehensions.

Christianity is based on the proposition that Christ is God in human flesh - not a mere man. Therefore, to consider Christianity as true or false, or good or evil, means to consider it in terms of genius or madness. If God loves us, and can see that by ourselves we are all pretty wretched, ego-stroking, status-mongering, selfish creatures, then there may be a certain genius to the creation story - one that even the world's greatest human genius probably wouldn't have the imagination or audacity to think up.

Consider the story. Thanks to His penchant for autonomy and volition, God creates a world full of humans, and gives us the freedom to be ourselves. In being human, we learn, we grow, we slip, we fall, we have joy and gladness and pain and hardship - the whole rich tapestry of experience. Yet constrained by the limitations of being human, God knows that the only way we can reach the destiny for which we were created is to have help - rather like a teacher helps a pupil, or a parent helps their child. God's cosmic story is that He would be born into this world in a backwater village in ancient Palestine, live as we live, suffer immense pain and torture, die under the most horrific circumstances and then demonstrate through the resurrection that bodily death is not the end.

It sounds a strange way to bring justice to the creation story - and I remember it certainly sounded positively bizarre before I became a Christian. But a God who helps us to salvation and to renewal by nailing all our sins to the cross, and inviting us into His kingdom with love and grace, may just be demonstrating the work of a Divine genius - the work of such genius, in fact, that no group of people would be crazy enough to make it all up and proclaim it as the pivot around which the rest of existence revolves.

Surely an ordinary man or a woman, even if they were a genius, wouldn't have thought of such a peculiar thing - it makes for strange consideration at a human level. Why couldn't God have just forgiven us without needing to come down to earth and suffer as a man? Perhaps He could have chosen that method - but the idea of a God who loves us enough to put Himself in our shoes, live all the earthly hardships that we live, and suffer grief, pain, humiliation loss and death for us might just be so something so ingenious that ordinary humans would never entertain it.

You may object that that kind of reasoning could justify all sorts of nonsensical ideas about God. We could just as easily envisage a God who became a five dimensional object, or a God who juggled 100 balls with one hand for a year - the imaginative possibilities are endless.  But hold on, the alternatives may be endless, but they do not have the same gravitas as the real accounts of Christianity. It takes something quite remarkable to change the whole course of human history in the way that Christianity did, and to inspire such a multitude of creative excellence - theology, apologetics, literature, poetry, art, music, architecture, and so on. And let us also not forget the numerous martyrs that died for their faith by standing up to oppressive authorities and refusing to renounce their beliefs. This Christian faith is no ordinary thing. I have no inclination towards false dichotomies or faulty trilemmas - but it seems to me that such an extraordinary thing is either the work of a Divine genius or else it is utter madness.

I won't deny that the idea of an infinitely good God seeing everything we do and knowing our thoughts and our intentions better than we do sounds very much like madness. I also won't deny that the idea of Heaven being a gift earned for us by Jesus on the cross also sounds a bit like madness too. The first one sounds a bit like madness because it involves God as some kind of surveillance camera in the sky from whose attention we can never escape. And the second one sounds a bit like madness because it means that our bad deeds are not quantifiable in terms of desert - so a genocidal dictator and a nice lady volunteering in a charity shop can both be with Jesus in paradise by accepting God's free gift.

But once we conflate the two 'mad' ideas, we see them both in a more enriching way, as two complementary sides to the same golden coin. So much so that even our day-to-day sins - like uncharity, a bad temper and selfishness are up for continual re-examination when we have a relationship with God. But on the other hand, our continual efforts to improve and be better people are part of the grace-centred relationship with God too. So while God sees everything we do, and knows our thoughts and our intentions inside out, He views us not as reproachable sinners but as forgiven sinners. He sees us as sharing in the victory that Christ's free gift won for us on the cross. 

* Not everyone accepts this claim, of course - but given that faith in God involves faith in the accurate propagation of His word, it's a bit of a moot objection.

How Future Humans Will Look Back On Climate Change

Most benefits accrued in the future begin with an immediate short-term cost. To have a successful business, you have to take a risk and invest capital; to have a pretty garden, you have to cultivate it or pay someone else to do it; to get fit, you have to exercise, and so on. Even when you learn something, you have to pass through a period of ignorance or error in order to gain knowledge. Great progress usually begins with birthing pains.

The same can be said of our industrial period, from about 1850 to the present day, and a few decades henceforward – we’ve done a remarkable job increasing the living standards and material prosperity of humanity, and the effects on the climate have been one of the inevitable costs of that. We could have done better, of course, but on balance, we’ve done amazingly well to engender this great enrichment, and we’ll continue to do even better. Throughout this journey, we’ve made the transitions in terms of energy consumption, as we’ve learned how to be even more efficient, and we’ll keep learning, and keep getting more efficient still. We have technological prowess that our great-grandparents wouldn’t have thought possible – and our own grandchildren will make even greater advances than we can possibly imagine today.

When future humans look back in history on our society, I’m fairly certain they will view this generation’s preoccupation with climate change for what it really is (was). They will be incredulous about our worry; they will be shocked by the short-sightedness and lack of perspective; they will be horrified at how much money we spent on it, when it could have been so much more wisely spent; they will see it for what it was – a temporary, monomaniacal, mass-propaganda, peddled by self-interest groups who could gain billions from the indoctrination, and swallowed hook, line and sinker by the public (and, as a consequence, politicians and the media alike). They will be mortified that so many people got so easily sucked in, and that they couldn’t subject climate change to the proper cost-benefit analysis it required, in order to see it with a more appropriate sense of perspective.

But, more so, they will look back with pride and a sense of accomplishment at how adroit we were at passing through the cult of Gaia, and how scientifically and technologically astute we were at giving the religion of climate alarmism its redundancy notice, as we advanced ever further into the next phase of our progression-explosion, at an even greater rate than any of the previous advancements. Future humans will look back at our climate problems with a far more enlightened evaluation, just as we look back at problems our ancestors faced, and pay regard to the fact that they are problems we have left in the past and have learned how to overcome.

Despite the mass-hysteria, many of us today are appalled at the damage done by climate alarmism. In the future, we’ll reach a point where almost everybody is.