The future of the Planet . . . and sadly, how to solve the problem

There's a lot of news at the moment about how we've messed up our planet, and the next two generations are complaining and demonstrating about how we have let them down.  To a certain extent they are right.  I own shares in a company that mines coal and iron ore.  Others have shares in steelworks, and more still have money invested in metal goods.  All the investment in the world contributes to global warming.

But we breathe
Cows fart
Trees burn
Dead animals and plants decay

In Science, (you were probably asleep at the time - I know I was!) you learned about the Law of Conservation of Energy.  You know the one.  When water flows over a waterfall, the water loses Potential Energy, gains Kinetic Energy, and when it gets to the bottom, some heat is given out.  (It's a well-known fact that the water at the bottom of a waterfall is slightly warmer than at the top.)

But that's not the important bit.  There's a bit that almost everyone forgets.  The Law starts with "In a CLOSED SYSTEM . . ."  The Earth is a closed system.  Almost every time energy changes from one sort to another, some heat is given out.  This warms the system, which is the Earth and its occupants.

I am sitting in a cool room.  If I stand in front of the heat pump outside, it feels hot, because hot air is being removed from the house.  In winter, it's the opposite way round.  A century or more ago, a chemical reaction between the fuel and the air (logs or coal) produced heat (and using chemical energy, created carbon dioxide!)

The important part of the Law turns out to be "In a closed system".

The more organisms that we have on this planet, the more energy is changed, more heat is given out and our closed system, the Earth must, by the Laws of Physics warm up.

So, scarily, we have to reduce the number of homo sapiens on the planet.  I say that as a scientist with no hidden agendas, not as a politician.  I was born in 1946 and one billion more people are living on this planet now, all converting energy and producing heat.

Somehow, and I have no idea how, we have to find a way of removing heat from this closed system we call Earth.  How we do it, I have no idea, but if we don't, ecosystems will change including extinctions, the planet will heat up, and the last person will die of suffocation when the oxygen level drops significantly.  Whatever we do, ecosystems will change irrevocably.

Why Christianity?

Recently, I've been reading and writing about my home town in England.

Although Tewkesbury should be well known for many things, above all it is famous for its old Abbey. 

Parts of the Abbey are ancient and go back to its consecration in 1121.  Above anything else, Tewkesbury is well known for its Abbey.  In fact Tewkesbury exists mainly because it was the "service area", the supplier of the Abbey.  Christianity has ruled the town over the last  nine hundred years because of its wonderful philosophy of improving people's morality.  Turning the bad into good.  This is not to say that everyone is saintly.  There would be no need for Laws if everyone was good.  The Ten Commandments would be more than enough to improve people's lives.
In other words, if I can stay fit enough, I shall see if I can endure that huge flight (a day AND a night in the air - about 24 hours!) and attend the 900th Commemoration of its Consecration in 2021.
And yet, even with that potential morality, there have been bad men at Tewkesbury.  A traitor, a rapist, a pirate.  Someone who was hanged drawn and quartered.  And that's only one person from one family!
But there were many many good, tolerant people from Tewkesbury, who chose to ignore the Quakers and Baptists a century before the Act of Tolerance in 1689.  And sadly, many Christian warriors who chose to fight the Crusades.
Those people were Christian because they had all been welcomed into the Church by Christening, or Baptism at a very young age indeed, long before a child was capable of comprehending anything, let alone the tenets of a complex religion.  Good, in the name of Christ does not ring true to me, even though I have a clergyman as a brother-in-law, and I am apparently very distantly related through marriage to a Saint!
Think of it like this.


Say I want to go from the centre of London to the centre of Birmingham.  I could walk, ride a bicycle, a horse, ride in a car, a taxi, or a train, or even an aeroplane, or combinations of these.  I could, thanks to the Grand Union canal, even travel by barge!  If I were in the centre of London, and wished to travel to the centre of Birmingham, I could get there by any modes of transport I chose.  They would all get me there.  Some would be more expensive, slower, more inconvenient, but all would take me from Piccadilly Circus to Chamberlain Square.
And that, I suppose is the source of my doubt.  Can we, as Christians, as Muslims, as Jews, as Buddhists, Hindus, and every other philosophy, criticise each other, when a believer in a car, cannot and will not see that a train may be as good, or do the job properly.  Because religious people, by the nature of their religion believe absolutely in their faith, everyone else MUST be wrong.

Trains?  They're dirty!  Why don't I give you a lift in my car?  My son's been in the back seat - move all his rubbish to the other side.  You'll have to excuse the toffee papers, my daughter has a sweet tooth, and she will NOT take the wrappers away with her.  The car believer thinks his car is clean, just as the train believer ignores the ten minute delays at Milton Keynes and Coventry which makes the train twenty minutes late.

Who is right?  Maybe everyone is, in their own way
Who is wrong?  Maybe everyone is, in their own way.

That's why, if I'm asked my religion, I answer "Undecided"