ASM100 Windmills, Angry Atheists, and Why the Big Bang is Just Marketing

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windmills angry atheists and why the big bang is just marketing all that and more on this week's episode of ask science

[Music]

welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast now in its 100th episode the two year anniversary of the show happened this week this is episode 100 honestly i can't believe it i get to do this for a living so hey thank you for making my life possible but uh enough sappy stuff what do you say let's get it started [Applause] [Music] here we are 100 episodes in and uh what do you know i have to tell you about tour stops so here's where i'll be in the next few weeks of course you can go to asksciencemike.com and click on events to see where i'll be throughout the year but here's some things in the immediate future this week i am giving a seminar on building a podcasting platform as part of the writing for your life webinar series rachel held evans will also be a part of that talking about i think dealing with criticism and hate mail really which sadly she has more experience with than i do thanks patriarchy and then january 29th i'll be in mableton georgia at vining's lake church february 1st i'm giving a talk at google's campus the main campus in mountain view that will also be streamed to google offices worldwide so if you work for google i'll be talking about god and science and the brain and all those topics covered in my book finding god in the waves i'll be uh at the first presbyterian church in fort smith arkansas starting february 5th but there for a full week with a week's worth of advanced events so uh if you're anywhere near fort smith lots of chances to come uh spend a lot of time with me and and we're gonna do a lot of things i'll talk at church we'll talk about storytelling we'll do a round table we'll do an ask science mike live so that'll be a packed week february 15th i'll be at northwest nazarene university just outside of boise idaho so this will be the first science mike idaho stop so i'd love to see you idaho folk there and february 19th i'll be in chapel hill north carolina for ask science mike live so that's everything in january and february there's a bunch of dates in march as well and more coming for the rest of the year so again go to asksciencemike.com click on events to learn more about where i will be and when also a lot of book reviews have been coming in lately on amazon so i really appreciate those of you that take the time to go and review the book after you've read it on either amazon or goodreads or anywhere you know i've seen some people rate it on ibooks and places like that but obviously amazon and goodreads reviews make the biggest difference in helping people discover the book or make a decision to buy the book if they've never heard of me or don't listen to the podcast which believe it or not most people don't listen to this podcast it's the funniest thing when i meet people after events and like i'm sorry you know i had i hadn't heard of you before my friend invited you invited me to your event and i'm you know most people haven't heard of me or the show which you know when we're in this little community together sometimes it that doesn't seem as true but i never lose sight of that so uh lots of events coming up uh thanks for reviewing the book and a hundred episodes in we're just gonna do a straightforward in studio four question ask science mike it's been a while so here's the first question hey science mike i have a question because every time i take a long drive here in colorado i pass thousands of windmills and i hear from some sources that these windmills are not actually beneficial in an economic way and they're not really that beneficial in a scientific way for the production of energy or the saving of the environment they're just there for looks and to make people feel good so what is the actual science behind windmills are they economically a valid way to collect energy and are they a good way to save the environment and help us get away from fossil fuels well that's a fantastic question and incredibly timely considering uh well this show will come out just after president-elect donald trump is inaugurated as president trump and i think i can say and my trump supporting listeners would agree that donald trump's administration is different than the obama administration on clean energy and climate change donald trump has called climate change a hoax perpetuated by the chinese and frankly as an environmentalist i was in no way satisfied with the pace of progress addressing climate change from the obama administration so we're going from mediocre to terrible in terms of dealing with climate change and its effects on humanity and renewable energy including wind energy sits at the very center of that conversation and many questions that are sent to the program uh are a a clever google away from one or two articles that will really illuminate the topic but if you google questions about the environmental or economic impact of wind energy the first 20 or 30 pages of google results are dominated by media spinsters and think tanks and extremely biased sources of information both for and against wind power so i could see that if someone was media literate you might unless you devote a lot of time and research to the topic come to a place where you feel like this is an unanswerable question because everyone's just slinging bias at you everybody's being very selective about the timing of the studies they share even if they're valid studies people who are against wind power and and pro fossil fuels tend to cite older studies in regards to the efficiency or cost efficiency of wind power but wind advocates frankly tend to minimize the role that uh government subsidies it not just in america but worldwide play in the success of wind power at becoming cost effective or cost equivalent with fossil fuels so i'm going to unpack it as well as i can without doing a full one hour episode on wind power so let's look at it this way when we compare wind energy to other sources of power generation or energy we find that wind power has very little environmental impact when compared to other forms of energy generation so wind does take a lot of space but wind farms can be used for other purposes so people can hike people in denver know this like you can hike right under wind turbines livestock can graze under wind turbines so the space doesn't have to be exclusively devoted to power generation which is not true of other forms of energy generation we also understand that there are absolutely no greenhouse emissions during use for wind turbines after a turbine has been manufactured and installed there is no more greenhouse gas emission associated with its use now there is of course greenhouse gas emission as you build wind turbines and the blades for a large windmills but that's true of everything humans build today everything we build involves the release of fossil fuels in or greenhouse gases as a result of burning fossil fuels uh in direct environmental impact it is true that windmills kill birds and bats that is true the turbines spin and either changes in air pressure or a direct strike with a turbine blade does kill some birds and bats but not in numbers that threaten local populations and frankly that it's a small problem that's getting smaller newer windmill technology for example when the wind is spinning there's blowing very slowly which is the time that many strikes happen especially with bats uh those those those blades will not turn they'll remain motionless which doesn't really affect the output of the turbine but does increase bird and bats safety so very little economic impact from wind now in terms of efficiency if we measure the efficiency in terms of how much energy is put into a windmill versus how much we get out compared to other forms of energy windmills fare pretty well especially recently newer turbines are more efficient and they'll get up you know 45 48 efficiency which sounds low but is really in line with most other forms of power generation it's easy to burn coal coal burns readily but a lot of the power the energy released by the active burning coal is simply released from a factory or from a power plant as waste heat it's not actually used to generate electricity so you know in terms of efficiency wind power is in line with fossil fuel production it's in line with solar production although some recent advances in solar look very very efficient and of course the winter in efficiency is hydroelectric power which can be 85 or more efficient but in terms of total environmental impact you can easily say that wind has a much lower environmental impact than hydroelectric and certainly lower than fossil fuels fossil fuels have a dramatic possibly catastrophic impact on the environment in terms of the economics or cost efficiencies of wind power this is genuinely complicated it's not spent to say this is a complex issue why because all energy supply chains involve some form of government subsidy at different points in the process and this includes fossil fuels coal power oil natural gas all in some way have direct subsidies or tax breaks at different phases of production whether you agree with it philosophically or not the norm today in governments around the world is to use direct subsidy and tax incentive to shape energy policy that's that's standing so you could look at a hypothetical situation in which we did not create tax incentive or direct subsidy for any form of energy what would cost be then and it's almost an unanswerable question because there would be so much market chaos if you suddenly removed all government involvement in energy production even on a fiscal policy standpoint because it's part of the cycle of production now part of the cost expectation of manufacturers and it is difficult to forecast in in a traded commodity like energy where markets would level out on the other side of such a transition um so i can't say in the absence of subsidies what our costs would be so i would say in the current model where there is significant tax incentives associated with wind power um wind it does okay it does okay uh and in places where there's a lot of wind uh you could imagine even without subsidies wind power could be competitive with even the inexpensive forms of fossil fuel production but the the less consistent wind is in a given area the less cost efficient wind power is because you typically have to have supplemental forms of power in order to continue to generate electricity when the wind isn't blowing the same is true for solar solar is an incredible technology in florida in arizona in california places that it's really consistently sunny solar is a great energy a pretty predictable technology but imagine a solar plant in minnesota in february right in ohio where it's so overcast for so much of the year those are places that solar is not going to be as efficient so there's no simple answer it is location dependent now you specifically said in denver wind power in colorado tends to work pretty well and be pretty efficient because wind is relatively predictable in that part of the country which is why you see so many windmills i've i don't see wind mills in tallahassee florida where the wind seldom blows right so um now when we talk about economic impact of fossil fuels or wind we also have to think about the long-term economic impact what would it cost to relocate manhattan or miami or new orleans or all three what would it cost to resettle most of the people living in coastal areas in the eastern united states that would be a tremendous impact an almost incalculable impact and that's a possibility with sea level rise from climate change driven by the burning of fossil fuels of which the generation of electric power plays a significant part if we want to continue to have a society that electricity plays a significant role in where we use powered equipment for agriculture and manufacturing we have to decide what kind of long-term economic outcome we'd like and that's why clean energy advocates favor subsidies because as you subsidize technologies manufacturing scale helps lower the cost and ultimately hopefully you can lower the subsidy but it's it we can't go 100 wind we can't go 100 solar it's going to require a mix of technologies and production methods to continue to supply our energy needs without continuing to pump carbon into the air in an unsustainable way and frankly i think you also have to talk about energy consumption are there things we can do to use less power can we rely more on mass transit can we transition away from inefficient forms of lighting and heating and air conditioning and i think it's not just plausible but likely making significant investments today will ultimately be better for the economy than waiting for severe sea level rise waiting for desertification waiting to move and migrate agricultural activity as rain patterns change that's a serious economic impact so your your folks you talk to who say that when power is for show i don't think that is a claim you can make with a lot of scientific evidence or wind at your back [Music] the next question came in via email and it reads hi mike i have heard the origins of the universe or big bang described as starting from a singular point as small as a sugar cube called the singularity and expanding from that point to create the known universe however i recently came across information stating that understanding the origins of the universe as coming from a single point isn't quite accurate it would be more accurately understood as happening everywhere simultaneously does this just mean that nothing existed initially outside of the singularity so as the expansion happened and space-time was created everything that was being created was experiencing the big bang or is there something even more mind-blowing about it thanks for all you do and for taking the time to explain impossibly complex topics in a way that makes me think even for a short while that i have a grasp of the infinite eric eric is a this is a really good question it's a very commonly misunderstood topic and part of that is because cosmology is difficult and complex and another reason is when scientists say the word universe they don't always mean the same thing here's why the universe technically is everything that exists right so when we talk about a multi multiverse we are not talking about multiple universes but multiple observable universes that can or cannot interact depending on which multiverse model you're talking about uh and when we talk about the big bang and we say the universe we mean the universe the capital u universe everything that exists but when we say the universal is the size of a sugar cube we mean a different universe we mean the observable universe meaning as far as we can see into the sky in big bang cosmology the universe as we know it emerged from a singularity right around 13. billion years ago 13.77 basically but 13.8 close enough for our conversation light travels at a fixed speed so in the time since the universe emerged light has only had a chance to travel so far from our point of observation so there is a point beyond which we can see no farther because light hasn't had time to reach us from that point in space yet that doesn't mean the edge of the visible universe is the edge of the entire universe right so you're i assume even if you're not at some point today you will probably be in a building if you stand in a building with no in a room with without windows or whose windows are closed just because you can't see the street doesn't mean that the street isn't there it just means you can't see it so the observable universe is just the fraction of the universe that we can see okay so the fraction of the universe we can see was the size of a sugar cube before the big bang now here's the thing i'm a big fan of a youtube series called minute physics and the minute physics talks about how the big bang is a terrible name because it implies that the universe banged into something right and that's not what happened a better name for the big bang would be the rapid expansion of the singularity i think i've made that joke on ask science mike live a few times the universe was infinite spatially while it was a singularity it extended forever in all directions but it was also incredibly compressed so for reasons we don't entirely understand at some point this very compressed universe very compressed space started to expand and expanded very rapidly in a process called cosmic inflation and it's still expanding today it never stopped expanding and that created allowed the potential for light which allowed the ability to observe other parts of the universe and we're basically in a bubble from that spatially infinite expansion now you might say well that's mind-bending so is the universe getting bigger yes but it was already infinite and it's still infinite and if you compress the universe it remains infinite because that's how infinite values work now if this is mind-blowing and it probably is if you don't think a lot about cosmology uh go back to our analogy where you're in a room and you can't see outside that room door shut windows are shut if the room started expanding you would be able to measure that you would know the room was getting bigger um and that's what we see in the big bang but you can't assume there's nothing beyond the walls even though you can't see beyond them so basically through predictive models scientists have figured out where the street is and that it is expanding as well uh so that's that's our understanding of the big bang it's not that that there was a compressed point that expanded into a surrounding nothingness or void it's that space itself which is spatially infinite was highly compressed and then started to expand but it's still infinite that's why i love science uh so if you go to sciencemac.com this is really hard to understand without visuals so i've given you two links to two of my favorite videos on minutephysics that specifically discussed the big bang and believe me his cartoon illustrations will help eric thanks for a great question [Music] well i always tell you about new events at the top of the show but i want to tell you about one event that i'm just really excited about obviously i'm excited about every event that i do but this one this one is special to me you know a few weeks back we had an ask biologos episode of the program and uh i'm actually going to be speaking at the 2017 biologos conference in houston texas now this is a relatively small event only a few hundred people can get tickets uh but they are first come first serve so it's not like a vip thing and i don't know if you've ever wanted to see me and nt wright at the same conference or wanted to see me and nt wright and andy crouch uh or scott mcknight or uh if you want to hear worship by aaron nequist who i love um all that you can do at this bio logos conference so if you go to biologos.org or ask sciencemike.com and click on the events tab either one will get you there you can learn more about the conference and the lineup this is an opportunity to hear about science and creation and god from actual scientists and philosophers and bible scholars and one random podcast that you happen to know [Laughter] uh or one random podcaster so really honored to be a part of this event and i'd just love to see you there i'm gonna be there for the full conference not just when i'm speaking so it's a great time if you want to meet me you want to hang out if you want to watch me get my mind blown by what scientists have to say just join me at this year's bio logos conference in houston texas science mike why are new atheists so mean i used to be an atheist skeptic i was a stem professional and one of the things that drove me somewhat away from that world view was when the god delusion came out and i was seeing these articles that took this tone or undertone of superiority and mockery and it's really ugly especially coming from men uh and seemingly all of these authors are men and it's also i really think inhumane and usually fails to address the the human needs that drive religion and mystical beliefs i just read sam harris's book uh waking up i really appreciated some of his insights really didn't appreciate the snark that just gets sprinkled all over the place as a peacemaker can you help me understand forgive this in a way that might make me get more out of these works can you i i'm so glad i found your podcast because i think you're very incisive and also unfailingly kind and generous can you suggest humanist authors i could read who are kind and generous and uh possibly female thank you so much thanks for your work i'm really really enjoying it well internet the questions are just on point this week aren't they i i mean i didn't plan anything special for the 100th episode of the show and it just so happened that really amazing questions got nominated you know andrew i guess was was swinging for the fences as he picked the questions and then the patrons voted on probably the four i would have picked because they were my favorite and um all eight were great but the four that made it are really exceptional so thanks for that question it touches on a lot of things uh first of all yeah i've noticed atheism and skepticism tends to be publicly a very male very white very economically privileged movement that's just demographics i know some atheists will bristle at that characterization it's also not unique to atheism you know there's been an amazing renaissance lately of of evangelical and post evangelical and mainline uh commercially successful books about faith so i think that's great uh but i mean honestly the the it's way easier to be a white author in religious spaces than an author of color in terms of getting a book deal into in terms of how books sell so this is not a problem unique to atheism um but i have noticed the same thing sam harris i'm a huge fan honestly of his work the snark gets to me but not too much i mean so the reason i'm so unfairly kind is i got beat up a lot it's not that i'm like a really nice person it's that i got beat up and picked on and shamed all the time so i don't like to beat up or pick on or shame people i would rather persuade them i would rather be winsome i would rather win them over to a cause or to a movement then shame them into different behavior and one of the things a core here is the role shame plays in social transformation and how effective it is or how ineffective it is at driving social change i think that's an open question in social science i would say in rough rough parts shane can be really good at reinforcing a community that feels like the underdog an atheists are a privileged group demographically but not once they label themselves that way there are real costs to calling yourself an atheist so that they are underdogs in some ways that intersection is uh less privileged than say evangelical or catholic probably more privileged than muslim today although that might not have been the case a few years ago we'll talk about that in the next question um but yeah so you feel like the underdog and then you notice that sometimes shaming people works sometimes but not always sometimes shaming people reinforces uh their existing conclusion but you know if you're an atheist and you used to believe and now you don't believe anymore it can seem very silly that anyone believes in god i obviously based on my work think that reflects an incomplete or unsophisticated understanding of the psychological neurological and cognitive underpinnings of religious faith and just put it out there many atheists listen to the show i hope you don't get upset with me for saying that even there are a few anti-theists who listen to the show the other thing is uh sometimes this is probably not true for you but it's true for many people that when people raise questions either implicitly or explicitly uh about assumptions we associate with our identity we can interpret that as unkind even if their intent is not to be unkind so sometimes it's a misunderstanding it's not a misunderstanding richard dawkins is snarky about faith that's not a misunderstanding but someone like ryan bell who's a a former minister now atheist uh ryan's not snarky at all he's an incredibly big-hearted kind person who's a humanist and an atheist and um one of my favorite people to talk to even though as we talk to each other we don't get any closer to defining god the same way or understanding god the same way or ryan doesn't become more comfortable with using the word god even the way i use it and i don't become uncomfortable using the word god the way i use it but i feel like i understand him as a person and respect his his choices and he does the same with me greta vosper is i guess a post theist more than an atheist but she's very very kind but i think when you look at public sentiment about atheism you start to understand the snark a little bit better how many atheists have experienced rejection from friends or family members they can become defensive and cynical that's human psychology i think that's what happens i also think that kind patient understanding humanists well it's harder to get them on talk shows it's harder to get their blog posts to go viral we don't share other than the occasional cat video or [Music] we typically share the things that make us angry or work us up and that gets fed back to us in the representation we see among skeptics i think most skeptics i know many many skeptics personally a significant portion of this listenership but also of my social life are skeptical people and atheists and free thinkers and they're kind people full stop no qualification i think in the same way that some of us who identify as christian get very disappointed with the figures that gain media prominence and a popular capture the popular imagination for christianity well they don't represent our approach to dealing with others they don't even represent our approach to understanding god or serving christ but they get all the attention i think richard dawkins is a brilliant scientist but i think he made a strategic intentional decision that religion held an undeserved position of privilege in life and in academics and he wanted to tear it down and i respect that choice but that can't be the entirety of a social movement you need more than someone who wants to knock the thing down to drive change and if the goal is to rid the world of religion there must be more varied tactics than insulting the ideas of religious faith and belittle belittling people that that invokes some some really troubling cognitive biases that are counterproductive to what the stated goal is in terms of other authors you could follow i will admit a deficiency in my understanding here most of the skeptical and humanist writers i've encountered are white men and although i've been doing some very intentional reshaping of my media habits in the books i consume that's mainly been in the sciences and in books about faith i don't read as many skeptic or humanist works as i once did so i haven't caught up in that discipline uh in humanism so i i can't give you a good recommendation but hopefully some folks who are listening to the program can so if you want to go to ask sciencemike.com click on episode 100 and recommend some good open-minded non-hostile voices of color and and female voices everybody that would be amazing and thanks for a really lovely question [Music] our final question came in via email and it reads hi science mike i am one among a generation that as a child watched an uncomprehending horror as airplanes flew into buildings on 9 11. unfortunately this shaped my perspective of arab people and the muslim faith for a long time however in college i met several international students from middle eastern countries as well as muslim refugees who were in the process of resettling these people became dear friends and forever changed me i've noticed a disturbing trend on my facebook feed lately man haven't we all otherwise rational kind people are posting anti-muslim messages in videos that imply that it is an inherently violent faith usually i try not to engage in online drama or debates but i'm afraid that silence in these cases would equate to agreement my question is how do we respond to real people that we know expressing racist or islamophobic opinions online is an in-thread comment a private message or asking for an in-person conversation the most effective way to engage and dialogue and challenge their position without alienating them or putting their guard up thanks another really timely question and let's start with a really important point there is no one ideal way to change human minds there is no one ideal way to open people's eyes to issues of justice and peace there's not one way there's lots of ways that will vary in their effectiveness depending on circumstances and psychological makeup of a given person so i've been working on understanding this structure of creating movements that are more effective in creating real change because behind everything we call an issue are real lives actual flesh and blood people who are affected by our beliefs and our behaviors and uh boy does my heart break for muslim americans today it's a frightening point we're at right now and the the way we're vilifying people needlessly is islam a religion of peace or a religion of violence it depends on who you're talking to the way isis practices islam is not peaceful but the way the crusaders practiced christianity isn't peaceful and you could argue that if america is a christian nation the way america practices christianity today is not peaceful how many people in america who identify as christian support drone strikes how many christians don't raise a ruckus when a drone [Music] releases a missile and school children die as collateral damage in pursuit of a terrorist is christianity a religion of peace it depends on how it's practiced you can make a case from our scriptures that sometimes christianity calls people to violent action and most of us would say that's a bad reading of our scriptures in the same way that my muslim friends would say that calls to violence are a bad reading of the koran i do not believe islam is inherently violent why because i know peace-loving muslims i've sat at tables with them to celebrate religious holidays at their invitation i've sat at tables with them just to hang out i've gone to supposedly rough areas around the globe and been safe and unmolested because it's some extremists giving everyone a bad name so how do you get the word out you've seen it the key part of your question is engaging actual muslim people changed your mind about muslims that's that's what did it that's always what does it most effectively but what about for your friends and family who have anti-muslim bias and are outspoken about that you could make an in-thread comment if you make an in-thread comment say that just doesn't sound like my muslim friends you could send a private message and explain that you could ask to talk for an in-person conversation and encourage the person you're talking to to share their experiences and why they're afraid and just let them talk let them talk let them talk let them talk and once they've talked out then respond with your lived experience and just ask them to help you understand why your lived experience is invalid or why it doesn't have some way to inform their position now by using a tone like that i'm advocating a single role in justice building and i've been reading a a book from something called new jim crow organizing dot org which uses some social science and some experience and advocacy to talk about the different roles that happen in social justice movements and movements for change and it basically describes four different roles there's an advocate advocates are people who lobby for change with power structures through the system they go to courthouses they go to court rooms and they argue with the law they make petitions they do legal work toward justice helpers are people that uh really specialize in providing logistical on-the-ground support and help for others and they also tend to be really good at comforting people who have different viewpoints organizers tend to be focused about helping lots of people work together to create bigger change and then there's the rebels the rebels just want to tear the whole thing down because they can't stand injustice anymore and what i'm understanding is that it may take all four of those roles for effective change and we tend to focus on the advantages and disadvantages of them individually for example when we discuss black lives matter most white people only talk about the rebels they don't talk about the advocates or the helpers or the organizers and they critique the way that the rebels work but guess what social movements that don't have rebels don't drive big change so some people need to get in people's faces and yell for movements to work but other people need to listen patiently you see it takes many different approaches to get the work done so maybe you need to figure out are you more of an advocate a helper an organizer or a rebel and then approach helping your friends and family understand what it's like to be a muslim american through that approach but understand you can't do it alone it takes a movement now what i love so much about this picture of advocates helpers organizers and rebels which by the way i'll have a link on asksciencemike.com you can click on it and go buy this very helpful paperback book or ebook yourself and you should what i love about this picture is how it describes the body of christ where many members have different functions but come together to create an effective whole it takes christians working together to do the work of christ some of us are eyes some of us are toes you know i'm probably a follicle [Laughter] but whatever we are we have to band together to help people see with new eyes what god can do in the world well you've done it you've made it through the 100th episode of ask science mike i want to thank you all for listening i want to thank my patrons on patreon for making the show financially possible if you'd like to join them go to asksciencemike.com click on the patreon button to learn more i want to thank greg nordin for producing the program andrew golucky for his work in pre-production and picking the questions to go on to the show and uh man everybody thank you for 100 episodes of ask science mike i'll talk to you next week