What are the primary, most important, or most limiting resources that human civilization depends on? Material resources are certainly significant. We need to build our civilization out of something, and we always seem to be facing a crisis of “peak” whatever—peak oil or peak helium—as our demand for a resource begins to outstrip our supplies. Land is also in limited supply. There is only so much land on Earth on which to grow our food, build our homes, and contain our industries. It would also be nice to leave some land for the other 10 million or so species that we share the planet with. I would argue, however, that the primary resource, the one resource to rule them all, is ideas. With science and technology, we have, so far, been able to overcome all our other resource limitations.

In the modern world, science and society often interact in a perverse way. We live in a technological society, and technology causes political problems. The politicians and the public expect science to provide answers to the problems. Scientific experts are paid and encouraged to provide answers. The public does not have much use for a scientist who says, “Sorry, but we don’t know”. The public prefers to listen to scientists who give confident answers to questions and make confident predictions of what will happen as a result of human activities. So it happens that the experts who talk publicly about politically contentious questions tend to speak more clearly than they think. They make confident predictions about the future, and end up believing their own predictions. Their predictions become dogmas which they do not question. The public is led to believe that the fashionable scientific dogmas are true, and it may sometimes happen that they are wrong. That is why heretics who question the dogmas are needed.
As a scientist I do not have much faith in predictions. Science is organized unpredictability.

Airplanes have become another battleground in the climate wars. Because of the large carbon footprint of air travel, environmental groups are increasingly pushing to make us feel “flight shame”—guilt for the carbon emissions produced anytime we fly. This is a troubling movement. (...)

Even if we were willing to sacrifice all of these things, staying off airplanes would not have the dramatic impact on climate change we might imagine. Even if every single one of the 4.5 billion people getting on any flight this year stayed on the ground, and the same happened every year until 2100, the rise in temperatures would be reduced by just 0.05°F, equivalent to delaying climate change by less than one year by 2100.