An Out-of-Bounds Solution

A multiverse is a speculative spitball of atheist cosmologists who know that the chance of any life-sustaining universe arising is zilch. Thus to explain ours (see, for example, Astronomer Royal Martin Rees in Six Degrees of Freedom) they need a veritable multitude of universes. Ours then falls out by chance as an anthropic curiosity. Evidently, there are no fanciful lengths to which many scientists will not go to avoid Godly explanations. So be it, multiverse or no multiverse, it is has no effect on my belief.

Get as many monkeys as you like, for as long as you like, they will never type Genesis. Certainly not before our universe stretches out into a heatless, lifeless, uniformly dispersed mass of inanimate matter in a hundred or whatever trillion years. Anyway, all this is prologue to my assessment that while a multiverse is a dubious and unscientific proposition (i.e., it can’t be falsified), our very own universe is a provable pair of antipodal halves. Two demi-universes, as it were, manacled together in spacetime yet a psychological gulf apart. Let me not keep you in suspense and explain.

A little while ago I quelled my attention deficit disorder, and watched all of a recent one hour and sixteen minutes presentation by Mark Mills on the futility of the energy transition from hydrocarbons to renewables. Mills is an ace performer. He was formerly a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute where, to my mind, he had the great good fortune to rub shoulders with the wonderful Heather Mac Donald, who debunks the myths excreting from critical race theory as effectively as does Mills debunk the energy transition.

Both Mills and Mac Donald operate in that part of our universe anchored by reason, by facts, by truth, by Dr Jekyll, by Mozart and Beethoven. You know as well as I do that this part has a counterpart, an alter ego, within which people play out their anchorless, Mr Hyde-like, discordant lives. You are reading Quadrant so you occupy the former part of the universe, for which you should be truly thankful, amen.

In a past piece elsewhere I recommended that Chris Bowen be tied down and made to watch the Mill’s presentation. On reflection, it would make no difference. Bowen and his ilk, like Matt Kean, are not for turning. Neither irrefutable facts nor the most mellifluous of arguments will make a dent.

I extracted these numbers from Our World in Data. The numbers go from 1985 to 2023, during which time trillions of dollars have been splurged on subsidising wind and solar power. In 1985 the world’s demand for electricity was estimated at 9,754 terawatt hours (TWh). By 2023 this had increased to 29,479 TWh – a threefold increase. In 1985 coal, oil and gas accounted for 64.4 per cent of electricity generation. In 2023 these fuels accounted for 60.7 per cent. A small decline in percentage terms. However, in absolute terms, the quantity of electricity supplied by coal, oil and gas increased by a factor of 2.845.

As best you can, imagine the future. More electricity-devouring data processing; more people in poor countries demanding more of the good things of modernity; more people and more gadgetry full stop; more EVs even. Will the demand for electricity triple again over the next 40 years? At the least, I reckon. And, if coal, oil and gas are to be defenestrated, where is it to come from? It cannot come from wind and solar, even if there were enough land available to despoil.

In the bounds of current technologies only nuclear can supply the required power without CO2. So if you are dreadfully fearful of so-called greenhouse gasses, and you have a demonstrative nature, you would perforce be protesting in the streets. “What do we want? Nuclear! How much do we want? Lots! When do we want it? Now!”

This isn’t and won’t happen. Not because of the facts. They are clear. But because those who believe in the climate crisis – despite the absence of any compelling evidence – occupy that part of the universe within which facts don’t matter. This can get frustrating for those to whom facts do matter. It can come across as gaslighting. Fear not. There is no malevolence at work – the World Economic Forum and its disciples excepted. We just have nothing much in common except our twenty-three pairs of chromosomes. Psychologically, we are much like Earthlings and Martians in Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! Not nearly on the same page.