The Next Ten Years Are Going to Be Ridiculous

Scientific and technological progress is accelerating so quickly that I regularly reassure my readers that the coming decades will bring unprecedented scientific, technological and economic progression on a scale so prodigious that they won’t be able to believe it. The trouble is, given that most people who most urgently need to hear this don’t read my blog - on account that statistically most people in the world don’t read my blog - the message of encouragement isn’t getting out there fast enough.

According to research I’ve read, current trends even in just AI show capacity growing more than 25× per year, vastly outpacing human research growth. Even if these rates slowed by a factor of 100, the combined cognitive labour of humans and AIs would still expand far faster than anything in history, potentially delivering hundreds of years of innovation within a single decade. Rapid gains in computational capacity, algorithmic efficiency, model scaling, and inference costs all contribute to the next phase of what I call the progression explosion, which will trigger a corresponding unprecedented surge in technological development, robotics, and industrial output.

There may, of course, be fresh things to contend with, with such acceleration - like misaligned AI, power concentration, entrenched authoritarianism (which is, alas, already happening), and other challenges posed by advanced digital minds. But they will probably be a spit in the ocean compared with the huge potential benefits - especially extreme abundance, medical breakthroughs, and rapid scientific and material progress.

And as I’ve blogged about before, these advances will create unprecedented possibilities for solving long-standing “future problems” like climate change. If AI-driven research acceleration really does condense centuries of innovation into years, then technologies we are still working on - ultra-efficient batteries, carbon-negative industrial processes, fusion breakthroughs, and advanced materials for energy storage - will arrive with prodigious application far sooner than most people imagine. Rapid scientific iteration, combined with autonomous experimentation, would allow AI systems to explore billions of design possibilities for catalysts, solar materials, carbon-capture membranes, and so forth, before you can say “Greta Thunberg hates cheeseburgers served at BP Garages”.

 

Cosmic Open-Endedness

 

When we consider mathematical patterns describing our cosmos, it is worth exploring the question; is the cosmos mathematically open-ended - that is, does it resist compression into a finite description? This can be a misleading question because - assuming the cosmos is spatially finite - how can it be both open-ended and finite? But there’s a subtle yet important thing to grasp, because 'open-ended' should not evoke a picture of the physical cosmos stretching into the far horizons of infinity, like a cave that just seems to get bigger and deeper the more we enter it (although analogically that seems to be somewhat true of our observable cosmos too through a scientific lens). No, it is a mathematical term about whether or not the cosmos has patterns that can stretch to infinity (stress; patterns, not physical properties), and can be finitely characterisable. The answer is, we don’t know whether or not the cosmos has patterns that can stretch to infinity, but we do know that if they follow rules expressible by a finite description, then the system would count as “closed” in the algorithmic sense.

If we look at a pattern, we may try to extend it to infinity based on its observed order; if the extension is fully predictable and can be described by a finite algorithm, then in that sense the cosmos could be considered algorithmically “closed” - though this would still leave us far short of complete knowledge, of course. It is a subtle concept to grasp: that a pattern extending indefinitely can sometimes allow for a finite description.

However, there is a practical problem that likely prevents a definitive theory of such closure. When searching for patterns in the cosmos, there is no guarantee how far a pattern reliably extends before it is overtaken by another, more complex pattern. Perhaps the pattern we have inferred only applies for a limited range, then shifts according to some higher-level rule. Even if we identify this higher-level rule, it may itself be limited, replaced in turn by yet another overarching pattern. With this potential succession of pattern changes, the cosmos reveals itself as a tapestry of staggering mathematical depth and intricacy, where patterns layer upon patterns in a hierarchy of ever-expanding complexity.

But it’s even deeper than that because, given previous writings on the nature of mathematics and how the cosmos unfolds as a monument to mathematical majesty (see my side bar), the physical creation is, to all intents and purposes, effectively mathematically “open-ended,” because at best our efforts can yield only local, provisional theories, where each is but a fleeting glimpse into the infinite web of mathematical structure that underlies all of physical reality.

Let me explain it another way, for clarification. Consider that every time our "window" on the cosmic patterns increases we find that we require a new or more complex algorithm to describe the broader patterns; in effect, the pattern never stabilises into something describable by a single final, comprehensive algorithm. By the way, this is another reason why I argue in my paper on free will and determinism that determinism and indeterminism are not binary opposites, but part of a spectrum.

As our window into the cosmos gradually expands, the stock of short algorithms would eventually be exhausted, forcing algorithmic descriptions to grow ever longer and more intricate - thereby surpassing human comprehension and reaching a level of complexity that can only be accounted for by the cosmic intelligence underlying mathematics itself. And here we are talking about God - which begs the question: which kind of cosmos would the God of the Bible be most likely to create? Naturally, we can only speculate, but here’s a possible way to do so.

If God created the cosmos as “closed”, He could have created the mathematical engine with fundamental laws that are simple, consistent, and finite in description - a cosmos where patterns can, in principle, be fully captured by finite algorithms. This would be elegant and potentially intelligible - and may be tailored to God’s creative dispensation of exhibiting a cosmos with order and purpose in a background of mathematical wash.

If God created the cosmos as “open-ended”, He could have designed the cosmos to be infinitely rich, with layers of patterns that continually evolve, so that the full scope of cosmic mathematics is never exhaustively describable. This would reflect a depth of creative freedom, leaving room for unpredictability, novelty, and ongoing discovery - and may be tailored to God’s creative dispensation of exhibiting a cosmos with mystery and adventure.

In my view, neither fully satisfies - which may well be why, from our observations, God’s creation appears to deliberately combines both - exhibiting a finite set of fundamental laws (closed at a base level) that give rise to an emergent, open-ended complexity that stretches into a mystery that can only be fully captured by Omniscience Himself.

Everything At Once

 

During the only slow bit in the Thursford Christmas show (the raffle, for those like us, who didn’t have tickets) I was thinking about how, in astronomy, when we look at something very far away, we’re seeing it as it was in the past, not as it is now - like we would if there was a distant mirror suspended in space. And I was thinking about my mum being born 80 years ago, in 1945, and how, if a giant planet-sized mirror orbiting a star roughly 40 light-years from Earth (because light has to go there and back) existed, I could see her on her day of birth (light too faint, interstellar dust, etc, might be a problem, but let’s pretend we’ve solved that issue).

Now, if you think about it, that kind of conceptualisation can act as an analogy for how we temporal physical beings interface with our eternal, timeless God. So, we know from relativity that the universe can be thought of as a four-dimensional spacetime “block”. In that model, all events - past, present, and future - co-exist within a single geometric structure. From within time, we experience periods of it: “now,” “before,” and “after”. But from outside, for God, every moment simply is.

But here’s another fascinating thing, and I think you might know what I mean here; I fancy that our consciousness is a bit like a mirror that reflects the entire block at once, sensing every moment as equally present, equally real, equally vivid, but yet at every moment locked in the present ‘now’ we call the self. Through the mirror, there is a sense in which tomorrow is not really “later” and yesterday is not really “gone.” All of it - the whole history of the universe - is immediately present in the sense that we are made in God’s image and seeped in the Divine plan, like a vast landscape seen in a single glance, where we are always eyeing our past, our present and our potential, and always deeply connected and integrated in the grand narrative.

Because if we pay close attention, we can sense that in being conscious there are always glimmers of the same timeless light that holds all things together, yet always at the same time reflecting hints and yearnings of how much more we can yet become. Because we are beings of sequence who sense eternity, and fragments who are always tapping into the whole; every past, present and future thought, deed, hope, regret, mistake, act of love, and so forth is a small reflection of that greater life in which all our moments are already complete in God’s cosmic narrative.

Perhaps we can consider a symphony to further illustrate. When we listen to it, the music unfolds in time - note after note, movement after movement. The beauty exists through succession: beginnings, climaxes, resolutions, and what have you. That is a bit like how we experience our own lives - as a melody played out moment by moment. But….now imagine the symphony not as sound but as a standing wave - a single vibration that contains within its structure all the frequencies, harmonics, and resonances that the symphony would otherwise express through time. From within the music, we would hear the passing of notes; from outside it, an external cosmic mathematician could see the entire waveform at once - the total pattern of the piece existing simultaneously. That’s the difference between the human, temporal view and the Divine, eternal one. Life for us is living through the music, where God is the whole symphony, perfectly complete, with no need for sequence.

Why God Likes Science & Capitalism

Suppose you're sent off to another universe in a super cosmos-travel machine and you land on the first planet you find with evolved life. The most intelligent species (which closely resemble humans) has evolved a belief in a god they call Z as their main religion, sustained over thousands of years, with hundreds of other religions that have come and gone over the centuries. You look at their recent history and find that for 199,800 of the previous 200,000 years their progression has been slow and steady with mostly subsistence level living, high infant morality, widespread poverty, where the pattern has been very slow steps up a very gentle slope. Then in their last 200 years they fused science and capitalism with industry, improved travel, population increase and more widespread communication, and suddenly those very slow steps up a very gentle slope became very fast steps up a very steep slope of progression. In fairly quick time they saw the diminution of subsistence level living, high infant morality and widespread poverty being replaced with better health, wealth and prosperity. On seeing this you might be inclined to think that their religious belief has at least in some part been inadequate to the task of lifting people into genuine progression.

With that in mind I'll give you some empirically verified evidence of how the world has gone for human beings on earth in the past 200,000 years. For the past 199,800 of those 200,000 years we had low global populations, and humans lived in meagre conditions, with lots of primitivism, low life expectancy and frequent infant mortality. People's earnings stayed around the subsistence levels (save for a tiny minority of aristocracy and ruling classes), and despite our being religious or worshipfully inclined for most of that time, our beliefs had no real impact on human beings at a scientific or economic level. Yes it is true that great works were produced by some great religious minds - but compared with everyone who ever lived they amount to a tiny minority. And while it is true to say that fabulous cathedrals and temples were built in reverence to God - it is equally true that around those great buildings most people were still barely subsisting - and nothing built or designed or written from worshipful inclinations changed that with any real significance.

The point being, Christian belief is based on supernatural and metaphysical truths, and truthful beliefs are extremely valuable to individuals and communities at a devotional and communal level, but it would be false to say that in the past few hundred thousand years religious belief had any significant impact on people's health, wealth and material standard of living, or on their economic and scientific development, when compared with the effect that science and capitalism had, because it didn't. The argument that some great scientific innovators and pioneers were religious won't help here, because it still fails to account for their relative scarcity, or for the thousands of years that preceded them where not much progress was being made.

So, despite the evolution of religious belief and moral ideas, for the past 199,800 of the aforementioned 200,000 years human progression moved at a snail's pace. Then a couple of hundred years ago something changed. People started to become more scientific, more empirically minded, richer, and populations began to increase more rapidly (it's still going on).  It was primarily science and capitalism that caused this sudden cheetah-like sprint of progression. This science and capitalist-based progression can be explained by a simple rule of thumb - people innovate, improve and provide answers to problems - and the more people, the more innovation, improvements and problems solved.  The more ideas and the more people to share those ideas with, the more humans prosper, and the quicker they do so.

Now let's be clear; science and capitalism haven't created a materialist utopia (far from it), nor a panacea against moral ills, and they are not without their negative spillover effects - but their prominence has seen an exponentiation effect that has brought more progression in the past 200 years than in the previous 198,800 years. In those 200 years, earnings, health, wealth, knowledge, scientific and technological capacity, and overall well-being has improved at an astronomical level not seen in any period of time that predated it.

Failure to recognise this puts one in a potentially knotty situation if one is a theist, because purely on the record of human health, wealth, standard of living, economic development, technological and industrial progress, it cannot be denied that the 200 years when science and capitalism have been most prominent have provided a much better record for humans than the thousands of years prior to that when religious belief was most prominent.

This does not, of course, mean that the progress science and capitalism have provided are the only kind of progression available to us - for it would be impertinent to measure human progression in terms of science and capitalism without mentioning the importance of Christianity in the areas of life into which science and capitalism make no real inroads. It stands to reason that the way Christianity enriches us is both locked into the material tenets of life, but also very much locked into metaphysical tenets too.

If things like science and capitalism show themselves to be good vehicles for human progression, or beneficial tools for lifting us out of poverty, curing diseases, feeding the impoverished, communicating globally, and generally enhancing our knowledge of the world, then they are not at odds with faith, and can work alongside Christianity so long as they enacted with a Christ-centred heart. And that's why if God is a God who values the kind of human progression with which we can lift people out of poverty, cure diseases, feed the impoverished, and generally enhance our knowledge of the world, then it seems to me that God must like science and capitalism at its best, as history has shown them to be the two best vehicles to achieve those things.

Fun With God's Physics

I believe God speaks to us about His creative genius through physics (among many other things), but at the deepest layers of reality physics gets pretty weird - so I thought it’d be fun to offer a few highly speculative, quirky interpretations of God’s designs in physics, and the potential deeper meanings they may convey. 

1)    Quantum entanglement shows that two particles can become entangled, such that the state of one is instantly correlated with the state of the other, regardless of the distance between them - which seems to violate classical notions of locality. Perhaps the “instantaneous” effect hints that the universe is a vast, non-local tapestry where separation is an illusion - which kind of taps into another profound human idea, which I believe is valid, that connection is fundamental, and no one is fundamentally separate from anyone else in terms of the cosmic narrative and being infinitely valuable and loved in God’s eyes. 

2)    The wave-particle duality shows that particles like electrons or photons behave both as particles and waves, depending on how you observe them. At the fundamental level, I reject this - I don’t believe that reality decides its form when measured - but one interpretation of this is that God could be illustrating the duality of existence itself, that our observation participates in shaping reality. God might be conveying a lesson: we are not merely observers; we are deep participators in the creation narrative. That’s why reality bends to perception, and perception reflects the eternal dance of forms, or something like that. 

3)    Time dilation in relativity, shows that time moves differently depending on relative speed or gravitational potential. An astronaut traveling near light-speed ages slower than people on Earth. Perhaps God is using time dilation to demonstrate a deeper life meaning that time is not absolute; it is perspective-bound - and that life is a subjective journey of an objective story - and suffering, joy, and understanding unfold differently depending on our vantage point, and all are part of a single continuum of being. 

4)    The multiverse and many-worlds Interpretation. Some interpretations of quantum mechanics suggest that every possible outcome of every event actually happens, each in a separate branching universe. Every decision, every action creates a branching reality, suggesting that all possibilities are equally real and eternally unfolding, which could be true under some conditions. But here’s the rub; God has probably constrained the possibilities to enable just the created universe He wants, and we are living in it. 

5)    Quantum vacuum fluctuations: empty space is not truly empty, of course - it seethes with temporary “virtual” particles popping in and out of existence. God may be hinting that what appears empty or void is teeming with hidden potential. It makes a good cosmic metaphor; even unseen forces shape existence, and what seems like a void or vacuum is full of hidden dynamism waiting to be awakened, much like personhood. 

6)    Quantum superposition is a corker. Until measured, a particle can exist in multiple states at once (as per Schrödinger’s cat). God might have ordained the superposition of physics to show a deeper truth: that everything is potential until you engage with it, and make it manifest in the shape it takes. It’s really quite poetical - our choices and attention collapse the infinite potential into lived experience, and every moment is an act of co-creation 

7)    Wormholes (speculative), where there are theoretical passages through spacetime that could connect distant points instantly. If these exist, then God might be encoding the truth that transcendence is always within reach, and that the depths of human limitation can be bridged by unseen pathways, navigable through deep truthseeking, adventure and courage. 

In all these phenomena, physics can become a kind of cosmic parable, pointing us toward connection, creativity, and transcendence. All a bit of whimsy, of course - don’t take it too seriously, unless it titillates. 😀

 

Good Science, In Good Faith

It's always struck me as absurd that so many people think there is incompatibility between good science and good Christianity. By 'good science', I mean science that does not believe it has anything to say about the truth of Christianity, and by 'good Christianity' I mean a Christian faith that does not seek to distort or deny scientific facts. This wisdom follows a logical path, which says that if x has no bearing on the truth of y, then one (from either side of the argument) cannot use x as an attempt to deny the truth of y. We do not need to refer to arthritis when studying geoengineering, but being an expert in geoengineering doesn't undermine people's experiences of arthritis. We do not need to refer to psychotherapy when studying calculus, but being a mathematician doesn't undermine the qualities of psychotherapy. Similarly, we do not need to refer to the Christian faith when doing science, but nothing we do in science undermines the probability that Christianity is true. How can it? Christianity is true, and science is the most useful experimental tool we have - both are perfectly compatible when engaged with properly.

Unfortunately, many of the most prominent spokespeople for atheism and for Christianity are under the assumption that they have to defend their science against religious faith, or that they have to defend their religious faith against scientism (the mistaken belief that science is only way to render truth about reality). Of course, if you are riddled with the mistaken assumption that science is the only way to render truth about reality, then you are likely to infer the absence of evidence for Christianity; just as if Jack is riddled with the mistaken assumption about the connection between arthritis and geoengineering, he is likely to infer from his studies of geoengineering that claims about arthritis are dubious.

A proper analysis of the situation would reveal that both science and Christianity are underpinned by four primary qualities; truth, mental cognition, mathematics and logic - all of which are instantiated in the person of God. Even if you don't yet believe in God, you should at least attest to the fact that science and Christianity are both underwritten by truth, mental cognition, mathematics and logic, and that science is inadequate for the matter of attempting to supersede or replace religious faith. Scientism's arguments against the existence of God (from Dawkins, Hitchens, Krauss, etc) are like those of a crazed chef, who tries to cook a luxury banquet with only bread and water as ingredients, and then when he hears from the guests that their meal wasn't very tasty, concludes that banquets are not really very luxurious after all.

 

Theistic Evolutionist: An Extraneous Epithet

I personally don't like the term Theistic Evolutionist - it's a term that YECs felt needed to be perpetuated to describe people who, ostensibly, quite naturally accept the empirical evidence presented from independent scientific disciplines throughout the world, and reject the non-factual claims that YECs have made about physical reality due to their clumsy reading of scripture. I'm aware that in a debate, having a labelled group identity can offer some practical utility in identifying who falls into which camp - but I think the term Theistic Evolutionist gives too much regard for what YECs consider to be a valid debating ground.

Denial of evolution (at least, descent with modification over billions of years on earth) has the same kind of lack of credibility as denying gravity, electromagnetism, Newton's laws of motion, Archimedes' principle of buoyancy, Hooke's law, quantum mechanics, general relativity, and so forth. But not only do most YECs support most (if not all) of those scientific theories - even if they do not, they naturally don't have to refer to other Christians as Christian Newtonians or Christian General Relativists or gravitational Christians or Christian electromagnetists. It is always reasonable to assume a Christian you meet is an electromagnetist Christian or a gravitational Christian - it goes without saying, really.

Consequently, what YECs don't realise is that for the vast majority of the world population of Christians, they are simply folk who accept the Bible as the book through which we learn more and more about God and our relationship with Him, and at the same time folk who accept the findings of science as an integral part of acquiring knowledge and understanding the physical world. Referring to such folk as Theistic Evolutionists is really a label invented by YEC folk who don't understand science competently, and who don't interpret scripture with enough competence (if they are even willing to acknowledge it needs interpreting at all – as many aren't) to see that it does not conflict with a scientific understanding of physical reality.

To that end, I wish we lived in a world where we don't have to be referred to as Theistic Evolutionists, in the same way we live in a world where we don't have to be referred to as electromagnetist Christians or gravitational Christians.

Between The Cheats

 

I ran into this very interesting article - The Different Types of Infidelity Which Make Men and Women Most Upset. 64,000 people in the study were asked to imagine:

1) Their partner falling in love with someone else, but not having sex with them.

2) Their partner having sex with someone else, but not falling in love with them.

"The results showed that 54% of heterosexual men would be more upset by sexual than emotional infidelity. The corresponding figure for women was 35%. Women were much more likely than men to be upset by emotional infidelity (65% of women versus 46% of men)."

So, basically, all infidelity (emotional and sexual) is bad and most unwelcome, but heterosexual men are much more likely to be upset by sexual infidelity than women, and heterosexual women are much more likely to be upset by emotional infidelity than men.

Naturally, this is only a common pattern; it does not speak for everyone. But I suspect there is some biological basis behind the claims. As it goes, homo sapiens has been the lone survivor of what is believed to be many other very similar hominin species that died out. As well as many subtle differences (adaptability, environmental factors, social cohesion), the main difference is that we, the surviving species, made a better job of passing on our genes.

Males increased the chances of passing on genes by as much copulation as possible. Females increased the chances of passing on genes by limiting the number of children, in order to be able to raise the ones she had. She would do this best with a supportive male standing by her. The hands of evolutionary biology have thus dictated that to pass on genes, the emotional relationship is more important for females than males, particularly as the mother has to ensure that her children's father is attentive to her and the raising of their children. But equally, males have to guard against female infidelity, lest they get stuck helping to bring up other males' children.

Given the foregoing, we probably have brains that are primed for the above figures to be accurate, where being more upset by sexual infidelity should be much higher for men, and being more upset by emotional infidelity should be even higher for women. We should also expect, then, that for the purposes of self-preservation, couples who work very hard to be monogamous have more chance of a successful and durable union. 

 

Political Physics

 

Much of the book I’ve written called Benevolent Libertarianism uses physics as a supporting lens through which to assess economics, markets and human behaviour in society, because there is a lot of overlap. For example, entropy and economic complexity overlap in that, in thermodynamics, entropy is a measure of disorder or the number of possible configurations of a system; and economically, societies tend toward more complex arrangements (akin to higher entropy), especially in free markets where countless agents interact. Just like in physics, where energy moves toward states of higher entropy, markets evolve toward more decentralised, diverse, and adaptive structures. In most cases, a centralised economy is like a low-entropy system - highly ordered but fragile. And in most cases, a decentralised market economy mirrors high entropy – untidy but resilient.

Another example, Newton’s First Law (inertia) states that objects in motion stay in motion unless acted upon. You can think of institutions and social norms as having "inertia" – in that, once they are established, they tend to persist unless disrupted by significant forces (revolutions, economic crises, technological shifts, and so forth). This principle helps explain the resistance to change in economic systems. One of the catch 22s of libertarianism is that the idea of a libertarian reform is likely to come up against institutional inertia, requiring strong catalysing forces to shift public policy.

You can also observe in physics that phase transitions occur when a system hits a critical point. Similarly, in social systems, network effects (like viral trends, revolutions, or financial panics) behave similarly. A small trigger can cause a systemic shift once a critical mass is reached – and this shows similarities around tipping points in markets or social movements.

I’ve also been fascinated for many years in how power laws or trends in society mirror nature's laws, especially tail end distributions or severe deviations from the mean.  Zipf’s Law is an intriguing one (which I’ve written about before in my paper on parsimony and power laws) - it states that the frequency of an item is inversely proportional to its rank. This applies to language (most common words are used exponentially more often) and cities (a few mega-cities dominate, wealth distribution, online traction, etc). It mirrors distribution patterns in natural systems, such as the size distribution of solar flares or earthquakes – and once you delve into more and more examples of this, as I do in the book, it becomes more and more interesting.

The Pareto distribution (the 80/20 rule – although it’s not always exactly that, of course) crops up everywhere too - from income and productivity to software bugs - and resembles the power-law distribution seen in self-organised systems in physics. In Benevolent Libertarianism, I try to argue for outcomes that enable voluntary rebalancing or opportunity creation without coercive equalisation – what you might say (although I might ditch this if it proves too provocative for a publisher) a kind of capitalism with a heart and a socialism with a head.  We also find with consistency that the value of a network increases with the square of the number of its participants. This applies to markets, social networks, and economies of scale – and it’s similar to gravitational attraction increasing with mass - interconnectedness yields increased (sometimes exponential) utility. One of the fundamental principles that has seen this human progression-explosion in terms of material standard of living is that free markets, open communication platforms and mutual connectivity gain value as participation scales, encouraging more and more organic growth.

At this point, it might have occurred to you that we can also discern political manipulation through a similar heuristic. I believe one of the most interesting things happening right now is that, in greater numbers, the public suspect they are not being told the full truth, but it's hard to come together in a co-ordinated way to challenge it. Discerning political manipulation through the above heuristics is really to be seen as analogical and metaphorical, especially in regard to physics, but I try to make it compelling in the book because sometimes when you have a situation that’s hard to capture in your mind, an analogy or metaphor can help bring about a eureka moment. So, here’s one way you could think of it. In physics, massive objects bend space-time, creating gravitational fields that influence smaller bodies. I think that’s similarly what’s happening with powerful political actors (corporations, lobbyists, governments) – they generate a "field" of influence that bends public discourse, policy direction, and media focus – in fact, it has become its own heuristic for gaining more traction (like Wagner’s law predicts in economics) where there is a kind of "gravitational lensing" effect, where the narrative becomes distorted based on proximity to manipulative political or financial mass. It’s a reliable mechanism for sucking people in. There are, of course, many good and noble cases where that happens in a free market economy, where successful innovators enjoy well-deserved spoils – but here I’m taking specifically about the negative aspects of manipulation into perverse and distortionary narratives. 

I also think there are interesting parallels in societal behaviour and conservation of energy in physics. In physics, energy is never destroyed – it is only transformed or redirected. Similarly, I think in many cases, political pressure or dissent is rarely extinguished; it is redirected or channelled elsewhere. Firstly, this means that suppressing people’s free expressions or dismissing them won’t work if the dissent is strong enough – it will pop up elsewhere, manifested in different forms. You can see with the left, how populist social fervour has been co-opted by establishment figures to maintain power under a new guise of extreme environmentalism, for example. When a bottom-up movement is suddenly adopted by the mainstream, just pay attention and analyse where the original intent is being repurposed, and you’ll probably see the patterns I’m talking about. I suppose, also, if you’ll allow me the grace to push the analogy further, with thermodynamic information theory, the higher the signal-to-noise ratio, the clearer the message. And sadly, socio-political manipulation often gains traction by lowering this ratio by flooding the public with noise (misinformation, skewed reasoning, distractions, hyper-partisan content, galvanisation to an external cause that makes participants look good) to drown out clarity and critical thought.

I think in an age where 1) information is so readily available to nearly everyone, and 2) critical thinking is rarely practiced by the majority trying to process all this information, political discourse becomes more fragmented and unstable as political leaders push for polarisation – a bit like a societal equivalent of the second law of thermodynamics. And unless the energy of reason, logic and empiricism is applied to decrease the entropy, it’s likely to get worse. This feedback loop can be seen as analogous to a system of particles in a confined space. When one particle exerts force, the reaction may cause the system to shift, with some particles moving closer together (strengthening the political base) and others moving further apart (deepening polarisation). The interaction between these forces is not one-directional; it's a constant interplay that politicians and the media can navigate to maintain their position, much like how forces in the physical world create dynamic equilibrium.

It’s surely as plain as day at the moment that the official narratives provided by political leaders and the media is so veiled, biased, and intentionally misleading that we must be close to a tipping point. The system of information that is presented to the public is like a quantum system where the "true" state is elusive and constantly shifting, dependent on the perspective of those who observe it. If you sense the position, the momentum is abstracted, and if you sense the abstraction, you no longer pin it down to straightforward empirical justification – and even in cases when you might, the battleground is a morass of often justifiable resentment and partisans.

Just as the universe operates through immutable physical laws, the political landscape is shaped by forces, both seen and unseen, that guide the movement of ideas, policies, and public opinion – and in this day of technological connectivity, we are probably in the advent of a system of organic resistance and bottom-up networked intelligence that can mount a serious challenge to the hegemonies that have pervaded for so many decades. And while we’ll never get rid of top-down central intelligence – and in some cases, we shouldn’t wish to do so - we may be witnessing the birth of a decentralised, self-correcting force capable of at least challenging legacy power structures in a way that’s not been possible before.

Faith Alongside Science

 

Here’s a really obvious statement that is surprisingly not accepted by a large number of people. The primary arguments for God’s existence are not threatened or undermined by scientific advances one jot. And not only that; there is no way an individual could be thinking logically and rationally and even get close to concluding that primary arguments for God’s existence could even be threatened let alone undermined by scientific advance however far science advanced. Its illogicality doesn’t make it sparse; many high-profile public intellectuals believe in it. But this belief is an embarrassing amateurish one to hold philosophically. The gulf between the obviousness of this statement - ‘It’s so self-evident that it’s absurd to think otherwise’ - and the reality that many still reject it, is one of the most absurd intellectual gulfs in human history.

Here’s a better way to look at the relationship between God as Creator and our scientific advancements. God has created a universe with enough uniformity for us to do science, but enough mystery that the more we discover the deeper the mysteries abound. In that created model, there is also a striking connection between beauty, mystery, psychology and scientific truth, which forms a dynamic and healthy relationship between discovery and humility. Just as a good housemaker wouldn’t need to constantly intervene to make the house not fall down, but would expect the owners to maintain things to preserve its quality, our perfect God is obviously clever enough to have created a smoothly functioning system that operates freely on its own mathematical and physical ordinances, but still leaves room for wonder, awe, and the continual pursuit of understanding, knowing that the more we explore, the more we are reminded of the limits of our own grasp, and the infinite wisdom of the Creator who designed it all.

The Damning Irony of Creationist Parody

 

When it comes to the science, evolution-denying creationists are not just unaware of the errors of the bogus concept of “creation-science”, they are unaware of the broader problem of misunderstanding science itself, especially the nature of Bayesian probability, which is a statistical method where accumulated evidence keeps adding to the overall probability of a hypothesis being true. They are so unapprised of how the whole body of science (physics, chemistry, biology, geology, etc) provides multiplicative validations that they are not aware of just how absurd it is to reject most of mainstream science in favour of their creationist pseudoscience (as you’ll see in a moment, in a preposterous act of intellectually self-sabotaging parody they don’t even know how they are actually rejecting most mainstream science). It’s very easy to apply Bayesian probability to evolution and an old universe regarding how accumulating evidence affects our confidence in the theory. Fossils showing transitional forms, comparative anatomy, nested hierarchies in the phylogenetic tree of life, the coancestry coefficient (genetic relatedness), endogenous retroviruses, vestigial traits and atavisms, embryology, radiometric dating (of the moon rocks as well as the earth), cosmology, light travel and distant galaxies, the cosmic microwave background radiation, the expanding universe and Hubble’s Law, stars in different life stages, nuclear fusion in our sun, spiral galaxies, and so forth. All of these combined demonstrate comprehensively that the universe is billions of years old, and/or that life has been evolving on our planet for several billion years.

Now, not that creation science does proper science, but let’s pretend for a moment that it did. If creationism was true and the universe and earth were only about 6 thousand years old, we would have accumulated a similarly impressive array of evidence like the above. The scientific consensus would show that the Earth’s geological layers are only thousands of years old with no indication of millions or billions of years of sedimentation, radiometric dating would consistently yield ages of thousands of years for rocks, fossils, and meteorites instead of millions or billions, ice cores would show only a few thousand years of accumulation, the fossil record would lack any indication of gradual transitions, with all species appearing suddenly and remaining unchanged, DNA comparisons would not show nested hierarchies or molecular clocks consistent with deep time but would instead suggest all species were created independently, human and dinosaur fossils would probably be found in the same rock layers, light from distant galaxies billions of light-years away would have reached us instantly or the universe would be demonstrably much smaller, the cosmic microwave background radiation would not exist as a remnant of a Big Bang billions of years ago, stars in different life stages would be absent, with all stars appearing to be of the same young age, no supernova remnants older than a few thousand years would be observable, the Earth’s magnetic field would show no signs of past reversals or gradual decay over millions of years, comets and planetary rings would show no evidence of replenishment mechanisms, radioactive isotopes in the Earth’s crust would be consistent with a young age rather than billions of years of decay, genetic diversity in species, including humans, would indicate a severe genetic bottleneck only a few thousand years ago without the expected mutational load of much longer timescales, and nobody alive would laugh at the claim that the Second Law of Thermodynamics poses a barrier to the formation of complex biological systems.

If creationism had got it right about a universe of only a few thousand years old, the majority of the scientific community for the past few hundred years up to the present day would be in full agreement that creationism is correct. Of course, a creationist would just dismiss all that with some ridiculous platitude like “Scientists are just interpreting the evidence through their secular, evolutionary worldview instead of accepting the truth of God's creation.", or “No amount of so-called ‘evidence’ can disprove what the Bible clearly teaches.", or “God's ways are higher than our ways, and scientists are always changing their minds, but the Bible never changes”, completely side-stepping the facts – but I’m sad to say from years of experience that there is little hope of a rational conversation with someone like that.

But for anyone who wouldn’t be so easily manipulated, or who rightly has doubts about the integrity of so-called “creation science”, we might be able to appeal by remembering that creationists do actually know what it’s like to be part of the consensus for mainstream science – they are part of the mainstream in many more ways than they are not. In keeping with the above lists, I assume all (or nearly all) creationists believe that the Earth is spherical, and accept Newton’s laws of motion, the atmosphere protects us from harmful space radiation, water boils at 100°C at sea level, bacteria and viruses cause disease, antibiotics can kill bacterial infections but not viruses, the speed of light is approximately 186,000 miles per second, the laws of thermodynamics govern energy transfer, metals conduct electricity, the heart pumps blood through the circulatory system, photosynthesis allows plants to convert sunlight into energy, earthquakes are caused by the movement of tectonic plates, sound travels faster through solids than through air, combustion requires oxygen, the moon orbits the Earth, objects fall at the same rate in a vacuum regardless of mass, the freezing point of water is 0°C at standard atmospheric pressure, the established principles of aerodynamics, and that friction generates heat when two surfaces rub together. I assume that most of them also accept that Maxwell’s equations accurately describe electromagnetism, quantum theory explains the behaviour of particles at the smallest scales, Einstein’s theory of relativity describes how time and space are interconnected, sound waves require a medium to travel, and that energy cannot be created or destroyed.

So, creationists do mainstream science – they do most mainstream science – they just happen to revert to pseudoscience when it conflicts with their narrow interpretation of the Bible. And if they suggest that the above scientific facts belong in a different category of science to evolution over millions of years, then they are engaging in special pleading - applying one standard of evidence to mainstream science they accept while demanding an entirely different, unreasonable standard for evolution and an old universe. To understand the fabric of the universe properly is to understand that the category distinction is bogus; that there is no separating the scientific facts on the creationist shopping list from all the others – they all nest together in one integrated, consistent, mutually complementary set of laws and facts about the universe that confirm evolution and an old universe, and undermine their own creationist pseudoscience.

For example, they trust Newton’s laws of motion and gravity, which describe not only how objects move on Earth but also how planets, stars, and galaxies formed over billions of years. The same gravity that keeps us grounded explains the orbits of celestial bodies and the gradual formation of planetary systems from collapsing gas clouds - processes that undeniably take way longer than thousands of years. They also accept the laws of thermodynamics, which govern energy transfer and decay, yet reject radiometric dating - even though radioactive decay follows the same thermodynamic principles. The predictable decay of isotopes is used in everything from nuclear power to medical treatments, and those same decay rates allow us to measure the Earth's age at 4.5 billion years, as well as confirm that the Sun has been burning through nuclear fusion for a little bit longer than the earth. Creationists accept Maxwell’s equations, which describe electromagnetism and light, when they utilise electricity, yet they reject one of the strongest confirmations of the Big Bang: the cosmic microwave background radiation. This comprehensively attested residual radiation is electromagnetic in nature, precisely what Maxwell’s equations describe, and it serves as incontrovertible evidence that the universe originated approximately 14 billion years ago. Similarly, creationists acknowledge that the speed of light is a constant 186,000 miles per second, but reject the clear implications of this fact – whereby if light has been traveling at this constant speed, then the existence of galaxies billions of light-years away means their light has been traveling for billions of years, proving an old universe beyond dispute.

In the field of biology, creationists accept that DNA carries genetic information, but deny the molecular clocks that prove common ancestry among species. The same DNA comparisons that confirm paternity in courtrooms or evidence in crime scenes also demonstrate our evolutionary relationship to other primates, with shared genetic markers that could only exist through common descent. They trust the conservation of energy - the principle that energy cannot be created or destroyed - but ignore how this same law governs nuclear fusion in stars, leading to observable stellar lifecycles that unfold over billions of years. We can actually directly observe stars in different life stages, proving that they age and evolve over millions and billions of years, not merely thousands.

And in geology, a subject in which I’m not so well-studied – but I do know that creationists seem to have no issue with the fact that plate tectonics cause earthquakes, yet they reject the undeniable evidence that continents have been drifting for hundreds of millions of years. As any creationist could learn on the fabulous Life On Our Planet series on Netflix, the expansion of the Atlantic Ocean is measurable today at just a few centimetres per year - and basic mathematical calculations confirm that Pangaea, the vast landmass that predates separate continents, existed hundreds of millions of years ago - far beyond the 6,000 year timeline creationists propose. Moreover, I think creationists would acknowledge that radioactive isotopes decay at measurable rates when used in medicine or industrial applications, but they deny those same decay rates when conveniently applied to radiometric dating – which, as it happens, independently confirms an old earth. When they go on their holidays, creationists gleefully accept aerodynamics to explain how planes fly, but fail to apply the same physics to the equivalent laws in space travel and orbital mechanics, which prove the vast distances and timescales of the universe.

From all this, you can see that creationists are participants in mainstream science - they accept most of it and rely on all of it for daily living. Which leads to the inevitably damning question; surely any self-respecting creationist, when faced with the proposition that the only elements of science they happen to reject also happen to be the few that they have been told conflict with a literal interpretation of Genesis, must eventually summon up enough honesty and integrity to admit that they have succumbed to the most absurd selective rejection, and that their unwillingness to reflect on their own Biblical interpretation smacks of gross arrogance, wilful ignorance and the most ridiculous surrender of the mind to indoctrination. In fact, we can go further – the willingness to cling to such a deeply flawed and selectively applied stance, in the face of overwhelming evidence from multiple scientific disciplines (a perverse avoidance of the very principles they otherwise embrace and rely upon in every other area of life, we saw earlier), exposes such a profound intellectual cowardice and satisfaction with foolishness that it ceases to be mere ignorance and becomes an act of pitiful wilful self-deception - a stubborn defiance of reason so extreme that it borders on parody.

Connecting With The Mysteries of Creation

In Genesis 1:3, God's declaration, "Let there be light," is seen as bringing order to creation and illuminating the universe, symbolising the beginning of Divine revelation and the emergence of God’s presence in creation. This is fulfilled in Christ, who declares He is “the light of the world” (John 8:12). Theologically, light is synonymous with Divine revelation, and people have spent centuries grappling with the complex nature of this light, especially around how God speaks through creation, through scripture, through miracles, and through testimonies, and why there is so much mystery and ambiguity about God’s revelations. This formed the main body of a book I wrote in 2012 called The Genius of the Invisible God, in which I laid out why God’s apparent ‘invisibility’ in most of the creation story is not only for our own good, but also a fundamental and exciting part of the narrative’s continuous Holy Spirit revelation after the Incarnation. Like all worthwhile things, the revelation is commensurate with what we put in too – the transformation is commensurate with our willingness to be transformed.

And we shouldn’t find it surprising that metaphysical realities are so mysterious and exhilarating, because even nature’s physical domain is rich in the same qualities. Dig deep into some of nature’s most counterintuitive facts to date, and you’ll find it is similarly steeped in mystery and wonder. When a torch is shone from a moving train, the light travels at the same speed relative to both the train and the ground because the speed of light is constant and unaffected by the motion of its source or observer. Time slows down as we travel faster because, as per special relativity, moving clocks run slower relative to stationary observers to preserve the constant speed of light. Time runs slower the closer you are to a massive object (like the Earth), so time passes slightly faster at higher altitudes where gravity is weaker. Particles can exist in multiple states at once. It’s impossible to precisely measure both the position and momentum of a particle at the same time. When two particles become entangled, the state of one particle instantly determines the state of the other, no matter how far apart they are. Particles can display behaviour characteristic of waves, even when they are observed as discrete particles. Most off the universe is made up of dark matter, which we can't see.

And we’ve found something equally stunning in the past 500 years of new scientific discoveries; the more we’ve discovered, the more the mystery and wonder has deepened further. Increased knowledge has made the universe more mysterious and wondrous, not less. The bigger our intellectual and epistemological landscape, the wider and broader the topological secrets reflect back. Creation has been deliberately partially veiled for now, to ensure that our path to wisdom is an exhilarating journey of faith, humility and discovery. In both the physics of nature and in God’s revelatory unfolding, mystery, awe and wonder are not obstacles, but doorways to deeper understanding and connection with the Creator.

Science & Climate Change - Closing Thought: Myopic Fears, Transformative Solutions

 

These climate discussions we've been discussing this week are about a complex set of considerations involving assessing trade-offs, allocation of resources, forecasting, and so on – and one thing we know for sure from history is that present day analyses that fail to factor in this complex suite of considerations are always woefully sub-standard in their analysis, leaving their protagonists ill-equipped to make prudent decisions and sensible forecasting.

Here’s what else we know. We do know that virtually every time we’ve tried to solve problems without foresight for how we are growing in knowledge and enhancing our capabilities we make errors. For example, in the late 19th century, Manhattan faced a serious "horse problem." Horses were the primary means of transportation, pulling carriages, wagons, and streetcars, and their population created significant issues, like massive amounts of manure, filthy, smelly streets, a disposal of dead horses problem, and the spread of diseases due to the unsanitary conditions. What those concerned didn't foresee was the advent of a transformative technology: the automobile. By the early 20th century, motor vehicles began to replace horses, effectively solving the horse problem in a relatively short period. By the 1920s, cars had become the dominant mode of transportation, and horses were largely relegated to recreational or ceremonial roles.

Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book The Population Bomb predicted that overpopulation would lead to mass starvation and societal collapse, due to insufficient food supply – being myopic about advances in agricultural technologies, including high-yield crops, synthetic fertilisers, and modern irrigation – and how they dramatically increased food production, and ensured sufficient food for growing populations in many parts of the world. And we all know about Malthus’s similarly miscalculated prophecies of doom in the late 18th century, inaccurately predicting that population growth would outpace food production, leading to global famine and societal collapse.

There are so many more examples of this kind. People have thought there was a potential wood crisis without understanding the transition to coal (and later coal and electricity). People have feared urban darkness by failing to see the transition from oil lamps or candles to gas and electric lighting. People have been concerned about a potential telecommunications saturation with increasing population, with not enough insight into how a digital telecommunications revolution made communication scalable on a global level. Early computer scientists worried that the memory storage and processing power of early computers could never scale to meet the needs of more complex tasks – overlooking the invention of transistors, followed by integrated circuits and modern semiconductor technology, that enabled exponential growth in computing power.

These examples, and countless more, reflect exactly what is inadequate about extreme environmentalism, which continues to spread unremittingly like an unhealthy social contagion. It’s not that we need speculative faith that the trajectory of technological and scientific innovation will just eliminate all problems that once seemed insurmountable. But the balance of analysis and reaction is way too far on the myopic side of failing to account for the transformative power of present breakthroughs and of potential of future breakthroughs – largely because the whole thing has been politicised and manipulated to pay scant regard to them. These truths don’t serve politicians’ interests well, they don’t make splashy headlines for the media, they don’t enable the narcissism of virtue-signalling, and they are thinly spread so they are harder to apprehend for people whose considerations and agendas lack sufficient balance, perspective, wisdom and historical knowledge.

Science & Climate Change Part III: Understanding the Limits of Climate Models in Risk Assessment

Following on from part 1 and part 2 in this series, let’s conclude by exploring climate models and risk assessment. On the physical nature of climate change, some scientists argue that climate modelling should be trusted because it is specific and can point to physical laws that are currently observable and constant. Alas, this is only partially true - but even if it were wholly true, that still does not justify such confidence that the world’s extreme and hugely costly reactions to climate change are sensible, balanced and well-conceived. Just because a model relies on physical laws doesn't mean it has far-reaching predictability. The specific weather on any given day relies on physical laws, but it does not have far reaching predictability. The predictions are relatively short-term; in issues surrounding the perturbations of the environment, short-term predictions are not very reliable antecedents for long-term outcomes. Climate change science suffers from the same problem. Trying to rely on long-term predictions by extrapolating current patterns would be a bit like a man from another planet visiting earth for the first time in January and measuring the temperature in Trafalgar Square every day from January 1st through to August the 1st (increasing over the months from freezing up to 28°), and hypothesising that by December the temperature in Trafalgar Square will be 40°. But I don’t suggest that illustration just in terms of future problems – it’s current and future problems plus current and future solutions. Once you factor in responsive and pre-emptive human innovation into the equation, the model is not as unyielding as most environmentalists assume by their narrow projections.

Furthermore, focusing solely on the situation from a purely physical perspective is not helping the so-called climate scientists' cause. No one disputes that the underlying physics behind any purported climate changes gives us empirical objects of study - and few deny that changes will occur, and there will be problems to solve. But the climate change considerations must give more emphasis to how humans will respond to those changes. The environmentalists’ fear of the rate of temperature change - and that its impact on ecosystems, societies, and economies can outpace the ability of ecosystems and human systems to adapt – is highly likely completely backwards. Because what we are dealing with is slow, gradual change in temperature, and a rapid rate of change and adaptability from human ingenuity and natural scientific and technological advancement. Most environmentalists fear x is fast and y is slow, when the reality is almost certainly that x is slow and y is fast.

Yes, it is almost certainly true that climate change is in some parts anthropogenic, but most of what we’ve done industrially and technologically has been to the huge benefit of the human race, not least in the way in which the industrial revolution and consequent progression-explosion of the past 200 years has increased standards of living, life expectancy, prosperity, well-being, knowledge, and the many other qualities that benefit the human race. Don’t forget that our global emissions in the past century have been part of the very same scientific and industrial advancements that have facilitated this extraordinary human progression. To criticise our innovations as being environmentally detrimental is a bit like criticising a vegetable patch for ruining perfectly good soil, or criticising medicine for ruining perfectly good plants.

Professor Richard Tol (do Google his work - there's plenty of it) has perhaps done the most of anyone I've researched to show that when you factor in the economic, the ecological, the humanitarian and the financial considerations, there is an overall positive effect in climate change. He arrived at this conclusion after undertaking 14 different studies of the effects of future climate trends. One of professor Tol's key findings is that climate change would be beneficial up to 2.2˚C of warming from 2009 (when his paper was written). Some say those temperatures may not be reached until the end of the century, some say even longer. The IPCC predicts we will reach that temperature increase by 2080. This means that, far from being a so-called ‘climate emergency’, even at worst case scenario, global warming could continue to be of net benefit for another 60 years. And even if it is the case that global warming will only benefit us for another 60 years (assuming current conditions) then the people who will have to deal with it in 2080 will be about nine times as rich as we are today (assuming economic growth continues on its present trajectory), and more scientifically and technologically advanced than we can possibly imagine. While I'm encouraged by Richard Tol's research, I actually think he slightly underestimates the mood for optimism by making an understated assumption himself. He talks of global warming possibly being a problem by the time the planet undergoes 2.2˚C of warming (in 2080) without paying enough regard to just how much better equipped we'll be in 60 years from now to tackle perceived problems in 2009 (or even today).

This has always been a strange solecism from climate change alarmists too: Look at how the world has gone from 1924 to 2024. Nobody sane thinks that the world's population hasn't benefiting immensely from industrial progression and technological advancements alongside a changing climate during the past 100 years. Given that we are richer and more advanced in this day than in 1924, it’s absurd that so many people are unconvinced that the world's population won't benefit immensely from industrial progression and technological advancements alongside a changing climate in the next 100 years. Moreover, given that we in 2024 have most of the advancements to have been able to solve the majority of economic problems people in 1924 faced, we should be more confident of having similar capacities 60-100 years henceforward, given that we are starting from an even stronger place, and that we have far more people on the planet to help solve the problems that might arise. We seem drastically unfair on ourselves when it comes to forecasting our ability to work together to solve complex problems.

The climate change alarmists' assumption is that because climate change is an emergency, we should be risk-averse, and risk-aversion here means spending more money and resources on tackling climate change in the here and now. But this is faulty reasoning, because risk-aversion should primarily focus on the world’s biggest risks - and the biggest risk of all is not that future (richer) generations will be born into a warmer climate, it is that present (poorer) people are going to be born in a poverty-stricken state where they can’t afford access to cheap, necessary, dependable energy. The way to be rationally risk-averse is to help poorer people become more prosperous - not adopt short-sighted climate change policies that make energy unaffordable for those that need it most.

Here I refer you to a passage about risk in my previous series on climate change risk:

“Risk is assessing the potential costs with known probability. Uncertainty, on the other hand, is not knowing the probability, which means an inability to calculate a risk. If I have to draw a Jack, Queen or King card from a 52 card deck to win £1,000,000 or else die, that is a ‘risk’ because I can calculate the probability (12 in 52). On the other hand, if I have to draw a Jack, Queen or King card from an unspecified pile of cards, and I don't know how many are missing from the pack, then I have ‘uncertainty’. I cannot calculate the probability of drawing a picture card because I don't know if any picture cards have been removed.

Let me make it even clearer with an illustration. Suppose there is a pile of 99 cards - all of which are either a Jack, a Queen or a King, and all three cards are represented. You know that 33 of the cards are Jacks, but you don't know the ratio of Queens and Kings in the remaining 66 cards. You can choose from two scenarios:

Scenario 1: You win £1,000,000 if you draw a Jack, and nothing if you draw a Queen or King. 

Scenario 2: You win £1,000,000 if you draw a Queen, and nothing if you draw a Jack or King.

Which scenario would you prefer? Due to scarcity of information there really is no way to know which scenario is preferable because you don't know the ratio of Queens and Kings - you only know there are 33 Jacks. If you choose Scenario 1 you know you have a 1 in 3 chance of £1,000,000. If you choose Scenario 2 you don't know what chance you have because you don't know how many of the remaining 66 cards are Queens - there could be as few as 1 or as many as 65. Scenario 1 offers you a risk; Scenario 2 offers you uncertainty.

The climate change assessments are generally more like Scenario 2 than Scenario 1 - they involve uncertainties where drastically little is understood about the probability. It was important to mention that before we got under way with the series. In the next part I will look at how mindful we should be of future generations, and what we owe them.”

Rising tides sinking some boats?
Let’s now focus one of the other main messages of the environmentalists - that even small increases in temperature in the next 100 years are going to be disastrous for people living in coastal areas (this amounts to about 650 million people according to a BBC report in 2019). Alas, this prophecy of doom is a presumption they never attempt to justify. Whatever science tells us about the changing climate, the future is far too complex for anyone to know the magnitude of the effect of those changes, how future humans will be equipped to deal with them, and who will be better and worse off. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either mistaken or lying (or perhaps a bit of both).

Suppose the world gets a little warmer in the next 100 years, as predicted. Through today’s lens of analysis, it’s expected to have a net negative effect on places like Ethiopia, Uganda, Bangladesh and Ecuador. But no one talks about the net positive effect it could have in regions of Russia, Mongolia, Norway and Canada, where inhabitants are subjected to harsh winters. But even that’s too simplistic, because you then have the unenviable task of considering what future Norway or future Bangladesh will be like compared to now, and undertake a separate measurement of forecasted temperature increase alongside perceived impact at any given time. This is not a method of analysis that we can undertake right now – and this is something that seems to be almost entirely missing from the climate discussions.

Not only is a forecasted temperature increase alongside perceived impact at any given time very complex, it’s almost certain to be short-sighted and hasty. China in 1965 would be very poorly-equipped to deal with a metre of rising tide compared with the China of now or future China, who could pay for it with loose change. Just as in every decade that has passed recently, global warming has produced both negative externalities and positive externalities, and future global temperatures are too hard to predict in terms of whether or not longer growing seasons and milder winters produce a net cost on the world.

All that said, let’s be generous to the environmentalists and declare that their spectre is wholly accurate (against what my own reasoning says) - that increases in temperature in the next 100 years are going to be disastrous for people living in coastal regions. What might they still be overlooking? Currently we live in a world in which about 71% of our world’s surface area is ocean, where it could rise by half a percent if the ice caps melt very much in the next few decades. Humans have done pretty well in the past few hundred years adapting their industry in a world in which 71% of our world is ocean – so it shouldn’t be so hard to believe that people in the future with more money, greater knowledge and better technology will find it within their grasp to adapt to a world in which 71.5% of the world’s surface is ocean.

Not convinced? Ok, let’s take a worst case scenario - that all of the 650 million people living in coastal regions are going to be negatively affected by rising sea levels in the next hundred years. A few key facts: firstly, almost all of those 650 million people won’t be alive in 100 years, and during that time they and future descendants will have had the capacity to move inland or make the necessary infrastructural changes in response to the very gradual increase in sea levels. During slow, gradual changes, the next 100 years is a long time to make adjustments, especially in a future in which everyone is richer than now and more technologically astute. Remember, environmentalists fear x is fast and y is slow, when the reality is almost certainly that x is slow and y is fast.

We are not sure how many of the 650 million people (and more factoring in population increase and migration to cites) will be affected by rising sea levels, but here's what we do know. If moving inland or making the necessary infrastructural changes would be costly, not moving inland and not making the necessary infrastructural changes will be a lot costlier. It's one thing to discuss the costs of moving inland and making the necessary infrastructural changes and weigh up those against all the benefits and the future capabilities of dealing such things - but it's quite another thing to warn about staying in coastal areas and getting washed away, because that's just not going to happen.

If some relatively short-term extreme changes are the price that future unborns have to pay for living in such a prosperous world (and it's still a big IF), then it is certain that those future unborns will pay those costs, and almost certainly a lot more easily than we can pay them. If rising oceans and dealing with the consequences are not the price that future unborns have to pay, either because we are burning almost no fossil fuels in the future (which is highly likely to be the case) or because climate alarmists have got their predictions wrong, or because future humans have technology that easily helps them adapt to the gradual changes (which is almost certainly going to be the case), then the alarmism has been absurdly wasteful and largely unnecessary, because global market innovation is already doing about as much as it can, and will continue to do so.

The environmentalists frequently seem to be confused by a base rate fallacy regarding what they are doing. Even if we ignore the fact that this level of uncertainty is not an obvious call to action (and we shouldn’t ignore that, but we will for simplicity’s sake), and the fact that these reactionaries have no real clue of the appropriate measure of range of possible outcomes against range of possible actions, they are utterly confused by the concept of ‘doing’. They peddle the narrative along the lines of ‘What we should be doing’ when really they mean ‘What we should be doing now’. And I’m not saying that everything we are doing is reactionary – we are making some terrific progress on a whole range of innovations to help make us greener – but doing reactionary things now for projected future scenarios is hasty and presumptuous because time is inevitably going to reduce the cost of dealing with the problems (because we’ll be richer, and with better technology, and have more information and understanding).

That fact that uncertainty will decrease over time, and our knowledge, resources and richness will increase over time is an argument that, relative to our abilities, the problem will get smaller not larger, and our ability to manage it will get better not worse. If you don’t believe me, and still think we need immediate action otherwise it’ll be too late, you only need remember that this has been said for every decade for at least the past five decades, and with every passing decade we have gained in understanding, reduced our uncertainty, made humanity better off, reduced poverty, increased global trade and prosperity, become greener, and enhanced our technology - and this in spite of the extreme environmentalists, not because of them.

So many people are getting taken in by the doomsday eco-fundamentalism, on the pretext that ‘we have a climate emergency’ (or worse 'the end is nigh') is a consensual view among climate scientists. Climate scientists are experts at understanding the climate (the clue's in their job title) and the problems we are facing, but they are not economists, so they are unlikely to present the full menu of considerations. Climate scientists can tell us about the relationship between our activities and global warming, and they can tell us about how different levels of carbon emissions in the near future are likely to impact on climate change (to a degree, pun intended). But the climate change situation is not simply a matter for the physical sciences, it's largely a matter for economics.

Science is the systematic study of the physical environment within nature. Economics is the science of allocating resources efficiently amidst competing preferences. Science tries to tell us which challenges a region of the Middle East might have to face if the planet is n degrees warmer in 20 years' time. Economics tries to consider the future resources and technology available to change human behaviour in the region. Science tells us what might happen to our ocean levels. Economics tries to consider how our coastal regions will adapt to those changes. Politicised climate science focuses largely on the costs of climate change, and is wilfully myopic when it comes to trade-offs. Economics focuses on the costs and benefits of climate change, and on the complex trade-offs that have been made over the past 150 years of humanity's great material enrichment and unprecedented rise in living standards.

Climate scientists speak of future problems with scant regard for how innovative, collaborative future humans will be economically, technically and scientifically equipped to solve those problems. Isolated, reactionary appeals to the expert climate science consensus are anaemic appeals, because climate science consensus on its own is too a narrow perspective that neglects to include many of the most relevant tenets of the analysis. Let's have more gratitude and more humility - and we can work together to solve these problems with more balance, and less extremism. Imbalanced extremism almost never acts as a force for good, or as a vehicle for efficient problem-solving.