I'm familiar with Michael Shermer—a professional skeptic. In fact, editor of "Skeptic Magazine." Neither he, nor all the other skeptics combined, have been able to make "short work" of the possibility--if not probability--of intelligent extraterrestrial species.

Considering the wide latitude that Frank Drake built into the equation, estimating everything on the very, very low likelihood of something favorable to the existence of alien civilizations being the case. Yet, he comes up with a pretty impressive number.

I don't have the time to educate you now, but you might try to learn something about such things as how common stars like our sun are throughout the universe (main sequence, G spectral class) and how common planetary systems are orbiting such stars. And not just main sequence stars.

Many factors that astrobiologist are taking into consideration.

Learn. Do the math.

Don Firth