Seasoned Veracity

Conserve Your Willpower

In Leadership Journal, John Ortberg shares important information gleaned from a recent book by experimental social psychologist Roy Baumeister.  

Baumeister's findings indicate that we have a finite amount of willpower that gets depleted as we use it. We use the same stock of willpower for all manner of tasks; there aren't separate stockpiles for different areas like relationships vs. physical activities. Willpower, like a muscle, can be built up over time. But in the short term it's easily fatigued.

What are the activities that require willpower? Resisting temptation does, as does persisting in a difficult problem. Making choices requires willpower. Management takes exertion of the will, which is why leading  meetings can be tiring. 

Ortberg gives these suggestions for managing willpower well:

• Know when it is at its freshest and strongest. For many people that's in the morning before it's been drained by the day. Schedule your most critical tasks accordingly.
• Spend it wisely. Don't take on too many life-improvement tasks all at once, even if you pray on them. God works through your will, generally; he rarely gives people a free pass to ignore the laws of finitude he created in the first place.
• Use the tiny bits of willpower you have for the cultivation of right habits. Alcoholics Anonymous is a great example of this; the idea behind it is not to stop drinking through willpower, but to enter into a way of life (the 12 steps) that lead to new habits of thinking and desiring that bring power for sobriety that the will never could.
• Set goals, but not too many. Goals are the first step toward self-regulation. Without a few, we drift. But too many goals always weaken willpower: we worry about them, we get less done, and we suffer emotionally as well as physically. 
• Restore your willpower. This one comes courtesy of the Bible, not Baumeister. God is the great restorer of will. Prayer, solitude, worship and meditation were all intended by God to be done in a way that restores—not depletes—the will. Remember the one act of the will that actually replenishes willpower rather than depleting it—surrender.

 

Sanity About Climate Change

We need to be vigilant to keep our land, air, and waters free of real pollution, particulates, heavy metals, and pathogens, but carbon dioxide (CO2 ) is not one of these pollutants. Carbon is the stuff of life. About fifty million years ago, geological evidence indicates, CO2 levels were several thousand ppm, much higher than now. And life flourished abundantly.

Plants grow better and have better flowers and fruit at higher levels. Commercial greenhouse operators recognize this when they artificially increase the concentrations inside their greenhouses to over 1000 ppm.

Yet there are strident calls for immediately stopping further increases in CO2 levels and reducing the current level. The supposed reason for limiting it is to stop global warming—or, since the predicted warming has failed to be nearly as large as computer models forecast, another rationale for reducing CO2 is now promoted: to stop the hypothetical increase of extreme climate events like hurricanes or tornados. But the frequency of extreme events has either not changed or has decreased in the 150 years that CO2 levels have increased from 270 to 390 ppm.

There have been many warmings and coolings in the past when the CO2 levels did not change. A well-known example is the medieval warming, about the year 1000, when the Vikings settled Greenland (when it was green) and wine was exported from England. This warm period was followed by the “little ice age” when the Thames would frequently freeze over during the winter. There is no evidence for significant increase of CO2 in the medieval warm period, nor for a significant decrease at the time of the subsequent little ice age. Documented famines with millions of deaths occurred during the little ice age because the cold weather killed the crops. Since the end of the little ice age, the earth has been warming in fits and starts, and humanity’s quality of life has improved accordingly.

The earth’s climate has always been changing. Our present global warming is not at all unusual by the standards of geological history, and it is probably benefiting the biosphere. Indeed, there is very little correlation between the estimates of CO2 and of the earth’s temperature over the past 550 million years. The message is clear that several factors must influence the earth’s temperature, and that while CO2 is one of these factors, it is seldom the dominant one.

Let me summarize how the key issues appear to me, a working scientist with a better background than most in the physics of climate. CO2 really is a greenhouse gas and other things being equal, adding the gas to the atmosphere by burning coal, oil, and natural gas will modestly increase the surface temperature of the earth. Other things being equal, doubling the CO2 concentration, from our current 390 ppm to 780 ppm will directly cause about 1 degree Celsius in warming. At the current rate of CO2 increase in the atmosphere—about 2 ppm per year—it would take about 195 years to achieve this doubling. The combination of a slightly warmer earth and more CO2 will greatly increase the production of food, wood, fiber, and other products by green plants, so the increase will be good for the planet, and will easily outweigh any negative effects. Supposed calamities like the accelerated rise of sea level, ocean acidification, more extreme climate, tropical diseases near the poles, and so on are greatly exaggerated.

“Mitigation” and control efforts that have been proposed will enrich a favored few with good political ties—at the expense of the great majority of mankind, including especially the poor and the citizens of developing nations. These efforts will make almost no change in earth’s temperature. Spain’s recent experiment with green energy destroyed several pre-existing jobs for every green job it created, and it nearly brought the country to bankruptcy.

A major problem has been the co-opting of climate science by politics, ambition, greed, and what seems to be a hereditary human need for a righteous cause. What better cause than saving the planet? Especially if one can get ample, secure funding at the same time? Huge amounts of money are available from governments and wealthy foundations for climate institutes and for climate-related research.

Large academic empires, prizes, elections to honorary societies, fellowships, and other perquisites go to those researchers whose results may help “save the planet.” Government subsidies, loan guarantees, and captive customers go to green companies. Carbon-tax revenues flow to governments. As the great Russian poet Pushkin said in his novella Dubrovsky, “If there happens to be a trough, there will be pigs.” Any doubt about apocalyptic climate scenarios could remove many troughs.

In our efforts to conserve the created world, we should not concentrate our efforts on CO2. We should instead focus on issues like damage to local landscapes and waterways by strip mining, inadequate cleanup, hazards to miners, and the release of real pollutants and poisons like mercury, other heavy metals, and organic carcinogens.

Life is about making decisions, and decisions are about trade-offs. We can choose to promote investment in technology that addresses real problems and scientific research that will let us cope with real problems more efficiently. Or we can be caught up in a crusade that seeks to suppress energy use, economic growth, and the benefits that come from the creation of national wealth.

-- William Happer, Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University

(Emphases added. The full article is found in First Things.)

 

Pointed Questions About Global Warming

Is the earth getting warmer? Maybe, but determining this is not a simple and straightforward matter. How many sampling stations for recording temperature readings are necessary to get an accurate picture of the entire globe, and where should they be located? Some geographical locations show warming trends, others do not. (Arctic temperatures have declined over recent decades.) Significant differences exist between land and ocean, city and countryside. Moreover, systematic temperature records exist only for the recent past. Scientists must depend upon “proxy data” for older periods: tree rings, ice cores, mud sediments, etc. On top of this, those responsible for compiling and “adjusting” the measurements have been reluctant to disclose the raw data, or the calculations they have used to “adjust” them. This does not inspire confidence in their conclusions.

If the earth is getting warmer, to what extent is this due to human activity? This is even tougher to measure. We know that global temperatures have fluctuated widely over the earth’s history, long before humanity came on the scene. Measured increases in temperature over the last hundred years have been irregular, and do not correlate with the steady increase in the production of carbon dioxide by the burning of fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide makes up only a minute portion of the atmosphere – about 0.035 percent. What is the relative contribution of atmospheric gases, solar activity, ocean currents and other as yet unknown factors to climate change? We can make educated estimates, but there are too many unknowns to draw certain conclusions.

If the earth is getting warmer, how will this affect life on earth in the future? Here we enter the realm of prediction, and pronouncements become even more uncertain. There is evidence that the earth has built-in ecological balancing factors to compensate for increased temperatures, and these are not reflected in computer models of future climate change. Morevoer, a warmer earth could be expected to produce positive effects as well as negative ones, such as fewer deaths from cold weather and respiratory illnesses, longer growing seasons and greater crop yields. But whether we paint a rosy picture or a dire one, we are dealing in speculation, with a large measure of uncertainty. Meteorologists are often wrong about next week’s weather; possessing far less information, how certain can we be about climate changes occurring fifty years from now?

If the earth is getting warmer, what should be done about it? What can be done about it? And at what cost? These are the crucial questions. Using their own calculations, it isn’t clear that any of the measures proposed by environmental groups to cut greenhouse gas emissions would slow global warming significantly. But it is clear that these measures would have significant detrimental economic effects, falling disproportionately on the world’s poor. It is our Christian duty to care for creation. But it is also our Christian duty to love our neighbors. It is not loving to demand that poor nations forgo the economic development and health benefits that come with access to cheap energy sources, i. e. fossil fuels. The 1.6 billion people who don’t have access to electricity; the two and a half billion people who use wood, waste and dung to cook and keep warm; the 1.3 million people (mostly women and children) who die each year from respiratory diseases because of this – is it right to deny them the benefits we enjoy? Here’s the thing. Consider all the research, funding and effort directed toward dealing with global warming in order to achieve possible benefits for people living 20, 50 or 100 years from now. If all of this attention were directed toward a couple of problems we know a whole lot more about solving – say, providing access to clean water and preventing the spread of malaria, for example – millions of lives could be saved this year, and the next, and every year to come. See An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming.

A couple of final points: (1) Beware of politicians who urge drastic action to combat global warming. They have an incentive to engage in fear-mongering, so that we will vote for them and give them lots of money and power to “save the world.” (2) There is no “consensus” about global warming among scientists, only among people who wish to silence all dissenting voices. Check out the Global Warming Petition Project signed by over 31,000 American scientists stating “there is no convincting scientific evidence that human release of caron dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” The website provides a helpful (though somewhat technical) compilation of scientific evidence about global warming.

Accidental Genesis?

C. S. Lewis points out the absurdity of believing that our existence is merely an accidental by-product of random forces:

"If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents—the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts—i.e., of Materialism and Astronomy—are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It’s like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how a jug was made and why it was upset."

-- "Answers to Questions on Christianity" in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, posted on Kairos Journal.

Science and Politics

As President Obama lifted restrictions on federal funding of stem cell research, he defended "letting scientists do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it's inconvenient." Obama contrasts his approach with that of his predecessor, who supposedly allowed ideology to outweigh science in government decisions. But Obama is wrong, in three ways.

 

First of all, the government has a responsbility to monitor and regulate the activities of scientists, who are not infallible, and like all of us, can be driven by motives of greed or ambition to cross lines that shouldn't be crossed. Laissez faire science is even more dangerous than laissez faire business. If you doubt it, remember the Nazi scientists who experimented on prisoners of war. It is the responsibility of government to address issues of morality, which impinge upon science as upon all human behavior.

Second, funding specific areas of research is not a matter of "letting scientists do their jobs." It is a matter of selecting certain projects over others, and using public funds to promote them. Taxpayers who are offended by stem cell research have a right to object without being labeled "anti-science."

 

Finally, Obama has his own ideological reasons for supporting stem cell research, while ignoring "inconvenient" facts about the destruction of human embryos. Ideology also determines which scientists he chooses to listen to when evaluating the evidence for human influence upon climate change and the predictions of how it will affect our future.

 

In other words, President Obama is no less ideological than President Bush when it comes to issues of science. He only pretends to be. This is not change, only hypocrisy.