Using the wind to produce energy is considered by many to be an environmental panacea. Consider the words of Greg Vitali, a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives:

Wind energy is better for the environment than coal, natural gas or nuclear energy. Wind turbines operate pollution free, do not add to climate change and use very little water.

At first glance, this sounds reasonable. After all, wind turbines don’t emit carbon dioxide, so they are not contributing to the horrible “global warming” that is supposed to happen this century. They also don’t seem to consume much. They just sit there, twirling in the breeze, making electricity for us to use. It’s not surprising, then, that wind power is the fastest-growing source of new electrical power in the U.S.

As the video above shows, however, wind turbines do have an environmental impact – they can kill flying animals. Of course, a video of one or two birds being knocked out of the air by a wind turbine is no cause for alarm. The real question is, “How often does this happen?” If a few hundred birds are killed each year by wind turbines, you can legitimately say that their impact on bird populations is relatively low. However, a recent study indicates that more than just a few hundred birds are being killed each year by the turbines that produce wind power.

Dr. K. Shawn Smallwood, an ecologist at the University of California, Davis, reviewed bird fatality reports from wind farms across North America. He then developed a model that would help him estimate the number of bird deaths that would occur each year as a result of wind turbines. His results were stunning. Using the amount of wind power produced in the U.S. in 2012 as his benchmark, he estimated that 573,000 birds would be killed by wind turbines each year! 83,000 of those birds would be raptors, which includes endangered or threatened species like the the California Condor and the Northern Spotted Owl.¹ To me, those numbers are staggering, and since wind power is growing quickly, they will probably increase significantly over the next few years.

Dr. Smallwood’s paper also estimates the number of bats that will be killed by wind turbines, and those numbers are equally alarming. He estimates that 888,000 bats will die from wind turbines every year. This is especially troubling, because there are many endangered bat species. Ironically, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that a single Indiana bat (which is endangered) found in Georgia has caused the delay of $459 million worth of road work, but no wind turbine installations are being delayed over worries about endangered bats!

While it was not surprising to me that birds are killed by wind turbines, I found it odd that bats can be killed by them. After all, bats have a sophisticated sonar system that puts the best human technology to shame. With their sonar, they should have no problem avoiding the rotating blades of a wind turbine. However, according to a study that was done five years ago, a large number of the bat fatalities associated with wind turbines seems to be the result of the low-pressure zones that form near the turbines.²

While the bats can detect the turning blades of a wind turbine with their sonar, they cannot detect the fact that there is a lack of air near them. As the bat flies near the turbines, it flies into a low-pressure zone, which causes trauma to the lungs. This trauma, usually called barotrauma, ruptures the capillaries in the lungs, resulting in internal bleeding. In the study, the authors found that 90% of the dead bats they examined showed signs of this kind of trauma.

Now please don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that wind power is bad for the environment. I have no idea, since Dr. Smallwood’s study is the first one I have seen that tries to estimate the total amount of animal deaths caused each year by such turbines. It’s possible, of course, that his model is wrong. It’s also possible that based on our growing knowledge of the interactions between birds, bats, and wind turbines, we can produce something that makes the wind turbines less deadly to flying animals.

My point is that environmental issues are not as simple as they seem. At first glance, it seems obvious that wind power is an environmentally-friendly way to produce electricity. It doesn’t emit pollution, it doesn’t consume many resources, and it doesn’t produce harmful byproducts. It also doesn’t contribute to “global warming,” or “climate change” as it is now known. However, it does slaughter a lot of birds and bats every year. Until some detailed analyses are done to determine whether or not the positive aspects of wind power outweigh the negative ones, it is clear that we should move more slowly when it comes to large-scale implementation of this supposedly “green” power source.

REFERENCES

1. K. Shawn Smallwood, “Comparing bird and bat fatality-rate estimates among North American wind-energy projects,” Wildlife Society Bulletin 37(1):19–33, 2013
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2. Erin F. Baerwald, Genevieve H. D’Amours, Brandon J. Klug, and Robert M.R. Barclay, “Barotrauma is a significant cause of bat fatalities at wind turbines,” Current Biology 18(16):R695-R696, 2008
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I gave a total of five talks at the convention, including Homeschooling: Discovering How and Why It Works. In that talk, I give lots of statistics regarding students who are educated at home. For example, I discuss the Rudner study, which found that at every grade level, the average homeschooled student scored better on standardized tests than the average privately-schooled student, who in turn scored better than the average publicly-schooled student. It also shows that the average publicly-schooled student lags farther and farther behind the the older he or she gets. From an academic standpoint, then, it is more important to avoid public school in the junior high and high school years than it is in the elementary years.

In addition, I show Rudner’s comparison between students who are homeschooled every year of their K-12 education and those who are homeschooled for only some of those years. While there is no difference (on average) between the two groups in the elementary years, by the time the students are in junior high and high school, those who did not stay in homeschool lag behind those who are homeschooled every year. To me, this indicates that homeschoolers make the most academic gains in the junior high and high school years. I like the Rudner study, because the author was initially a skeptic of home education, thinking that home educators were a bunch of “conservative nuts.”

After I discuss the data related to homeschooled students, I switch to the data related to homeschool graduates. I show several studies that clearly demonstrate that homeschool graduates excel at the university level compared to their publicly- and privately-schooled peers (see here, here, and here, for example). This led to a very interesting question from an audience member.

A homeschooling father asked (I am paraphrasing here): “How do you account for the fact that homeschoolers who leave homeschool in junior high and high school experience educational losses, but when they leave homeschool for college they experience educational gains?” I thought that was a good question, but I have to point out that the comparison is not really valid. After all, the Rudner study showed that when compared to homeschooled students, the students who go junior high or high school have educational losses. The studies about homeschool graduates simply compared homeschool graduates at university to their non-homeschooled peers. They didn’t compare homeschool graduates at university to homeschool graduates who were continuing their education at home. That would be a hard study to do for a variety of reasons.

However, I do think the question is still a good one, because I think it is (in general) not a good idea for a student to leave homeschool to go to a high school, but I think it is an excellent idea for a homeschool graduate to leave home to go to a college or university. Why? I think maturity is the key. When a student is starting high school, he or she is not very mature. As a result, the student is very easily distracted in a school setting. The opposite gender, peer pressure, sports, and all manner of other nonacademic pursuits make it very hard for the student to concentrate on what he or she is learning.

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that the opposite gender, peer group, sports, and all those other things should be avoided in high school. I just think that in schools, they are overemphasized. The students spend far too much time dealing with such distractions, to the detriment of their studies. In a homeschool environment, such distractions should be available to the student, but they should be heavily supervised by the parents and should not become a big part of the “academic day.” That way, the student can mature both academically and socially in a balanced way.

Once students get through those high school years, they have matured a bit. They have a better idea of what they want to do for the rest of their lives, and more importantly, they have a better idea of what’s important in life. As a result, when they go on to college, they are less likely to be distracted by all the other aspects of school life. In addition, the peer group to which they are exposed is (on average) a bit more mature than the one in high school. Obviously, there will still be the partiers and the boozers on almost any campus, but in general, they aren’t as popular or as common as they are in high school, so they are more easily avoided.

Now, of course, if maturity is the key, that should tell homeschooling parents something. Whether or not your child attends university, and when your child attends university, should not be decided based on your child’s age or educational status. Just because your child is 18 or has finished high school, that’s no reason to automatically send him or her to university. Instead, your child’s maturity and goals should determine that. Your child will be more easily distracted at university if he or she is immature and/or has no serious reason for being there.

Please realize that maturity and a reason to be there still won’t guarantee your student will avoid distractions at university! They will just make it easier for the student to avoid such things. Of course, the way to make them even more likely to avoid distraction is to make sure they have a peer group that is focused on important things. I strongly encourage everyone who sends their children to university (public or private) to make sure they are plugged into an on-campus Christian fellowship group like Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, Navigators, Campus Crusade for Christ, etc. I know that I would not have grown nearly as much (spiritually or academically) had it not been for my Intervarsity group at the University of Rochester!

After my very first talk at this convention, for example, a young lady came up to me to tell me that she is a nurse today because of my courses. I thanked her and told her that I was very happy my courses prepared her for college so that she could become a nurse. She immediately stopped me and emphatically told me it was much more than that. She said that before she started using my courses, she hated science. After using my courses, she not only loved science, but she realized that God wanted her to use science to help others. She said she would never have even considered becoming a nurse had it not been for learning science from my courses. I kind of teared up right there and told her I had no idea how I could thank her for telling me that.

Usually, it’s conversations like that one which I enjoy most at these conventions. However, as much as my conversation with this young lady (and many other such conversations throughout the weekend) were a blessing to me, I have to say that the most enjoyable part of the convention was a session I did with the teens. The organizers of the convention wanted me to do something different from a normal presentation, and they actually suggested that I do something related to acting, since they knew I write and perform dramas for my church. However, I told them I had no idea what I would do for a drama workshop, so I suggested a question/answer session.

The organizers decided it was a good idea, so they put it on the schedule and then put out notices telling teens that they would have a chance to ask me any questions they wanted to ask. I had a “backup plan” in place in case there were few (or no) questions, but from the moment the session started, I knew there was no need for it. Not only were there an enormous number of questions (so many that I had to cut them off after an hour and 15 minutes so the next session could start), but the teens were incredibly enthusiastic! Below the fold, you will find three of the excellent questions they asked me, along with a rough approximation of my answers.

What’s the most important reason you believe in creation?

I can’t list just one reason. I believe in creation because of the preponderance of the evidence. There is some evidence for evolution (in the the flagellate-to-philosopher sense). After all, the geological column as presented in textbooks is exactly what one would predict from an evolutionary perspective. Of course, there are many problems with the geological column (see here, here, and here, for example), but nevertheless, it has to be counted as a mark in favor of evolution. In addition, the existence of “shared mistakes” in pseudogenes is evidence of common ancestry, but I find that evidence very weak. Thus, the idea of “simple” life forms becoming more complex over time has some evidence for it, but the evidence is rare and usually rather weak. In addition, there has been a long string of failed predictions coming from the evolutionary hypothesis (see here, here, and here, for example).

When I look at the evidence for creation, however, I find it to be plentiful and strong. The myriad of exquisitely-designed organisms we study in nature provides strong evidence for a Creator (see here, here, and here, for example). The incredible examples of mutualism that we see throughout creation provide strong evidence that nature works according to a pre-planned strategy (see here, here, and here, for example). The many negative feedback mechanisms we see operating on earth indicate that it has been carefully designed (see here, here, and here, for example). In addition, the predictions that creationists have made over the years which have later been confirmed by the data provide strong evidence for creation (see here, here, and here, for example).

So in the end, there isn’t just one thing that makes me believe in creation. I believe in creation because the preponderance of the evidence points strongly towards it.

What’s your favorite thing about being a scientist?

Believe it or not, my favorite thing about being a scientist is learning when I am wrong. I remember the first time this happened to me. I was a graduate student and had produced some data that I thought said something quite remarkable. I presented the data at a nuclear chemistry conference, and at dinner that night, several groups started talking about my presentation. Pretty quickly, four distinct interpretations of the data emerged, and mine was only one of those interpretations. I was first shocked that anyone would come up with an alternate interpretation of my data, but as I thought about it, I realized how cool it was. We decided to collect more data to try to judge which was the better interpretation, and it turned out that mine was wrong! However, the new data allowed me to discover something even more interesting! At least, it’s interesting to a nerd like me.

Since then, I have been shown to be incorrect time and time again, and in each case, I have learned something interesting as a result. A while back, I wrote about another example. Science is about hypothesizing and testing your hypothesis. A scientist will often find his or her hypotheses to be wrong, and a good scientist will be excited to learn that nature isn’t behaving the way he or she thinks it is!

Do you ever regret becoming a scientist?

To me, this was the best question of the session. The answer is, “Yes, from time to time.” When I first seriously thought about what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, I decided to be a concert pianist. However, over time I learned that my fingers are just too short to accommodate the repertoire expected for any serious pianist. Of course, I still play the piano as a hobby. For example, I play for my church when the good pianists aren’t available. People say it’s fun to watch me play, because I get lost in my music, swaying, bobbing my head, and sometimes even singing. At times like that, I do regret the fact that being a scientist has caused me to reduce my time at the keys.

When I learned that I couldn’t seriously pursue piano as a profession, I decided to become a professional actor. However, I quickly decided the lifestyle wasn’t for me. As I mentioned above, I am still involved in the theater. In addition to what I do at my church, I also act in a local community group. Just recently, I played the leading man in an old musical called Sweet Charity. I don’t particularly like the script of the show, but my leading lady (whose first name is Tiffany) was utterly brilliant. There is a scene that happens in a stuck elevator, and it can be one of the funniest scenes you will ever see on stage, as long as it is played correctly. Tiffany was so spot-on that the scene was nearly magical. I do remember once in the middle of that scene thinking that had I not become a scientist, I could have been doing a lot more scenes with incredibly talented actors and actresses like Tiffany.

On balance, however, I can’t think of anything else I would rather do for a living. Not only do I get to learn new things all the time, I also get to learn more about God by studying His handiwork. While I honestly do regret it from time to time, I can’t really imagine enjoying any other career for as long as I have enjoyed being a scientist!

This Archaeopteryx fossil, known as the "Thermopolis specimen," was analyzed chemically. The results were surprising to those who think it is millions of years old (click for credit)

How do you chemically analyze a fossil without destroying it? One way is to use the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL). This instrument produces high-intensity X-rays which are used to illuminate the material being studied. The elements in the material absorb these X-rays, becoming “excited” with the extra energy. In order to “de-excite,” they release that energy with X-rays of their own. The released X-rays are different for each element, so when you analyze the X-rays being emitted by the illuminated fossil, you can determine what elements exist in the fossil, along with their concentrations.

So Roy Wogelius and his colleagues teamed up with some physicists at Stanford University to analyze this incredibly well-preserved Archaeopteryx fossil. The results were surprising, at least to those who think the fossil is 150 million years old.

The researchers first scanned the limestone slab in which the fossil was preserved so as to get an idea of what elements are in the limestone and how they are distributed. They then started scanning the fossil itself, and they found significant differences between the elements found in the fossil and the elements found in the surrounding limestone. For example, the fossilized bones, claws, skull, and teeth had similar concentrations of calcium, which were all much lower than the concentration of calcium found in the limestone itself. Conversely, the concentrations of zinc, phosphorus, and sulfur were all greater in the fossil than in the surrounding limestone.³

What does this tell us? Well, here’s what the authors say is their most striking result:

…elevated Zn levels associated with the skull and other bones have persisted over geological time and most likely, along with phosphorous and sulfur, are remnants of the original bone chemistry.

So even after a supposed 150 million years, there is still a lot of the original chemistry from the bird itself. While this is amazing, I thought the other thing they discovered was even more incredible. When they looked at the levels of phosphorus in the rachises (feather shafts) that are preserved in the limestone, they found that the levels were once again quite different from the surrounding limestone. Instead, they were very similar to the levels found in the rachises of birds that are currently alive!

This is really surprising, because it has always been thought that the feathers we see in these Archaeopteryx fossils are just impressions left behind in the surrounding limestone. However, that’s not what these results indicate. As the authors state:

Here we present chemical imaging via synchrotron rapid scanning X-ray fluorescence (SRS-XRF) of the Thermopolis Archaeopteryx, which shows that portions of the feathers are not impressions but are in fact remnant body fossil structures, maintaining elemental compositions that are completely different from the embedding geological matrix.

So in the end, the fossil seems to have remnants of the original chemistry of the bones, claws, skull, and teeth. More surprisingly, it even has remnants of the original feather shafts!

This kind of analysis, combined with the results of several other fossil analyses, provide strong evidence that such fossils are not millions of years old.

REFERENCES

1. Gerald Mayr, Burkhard Pohl, and D. Stefan Peters, “A Well-Preserved Archaeopteryx Specimen with Theropod Features,” Science 310:1483-1486, 2005.
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2. Paul Selden and John Nudds, Evolution of Fossil Ecosystems, Manson Publishing 2012, p. 159.
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3. U. Bergmann, R. W. Morton, P. L. Manning, W. I. Sellers, S. Farrar, K. G. Huntley, R. A. Wogelius, and P. Larson, “Archaeopteryx feathers and bone chemistry fully revealed via synchrotron imaging,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107(20):9060–9065 2010. (available online)
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A portrait of Eratosthenes, who lived from 276 BC to 194 BC (public domain image)

Somewhere around 200 BC, a man named Eratosthenes learned that at noon on the Summer Solstice in Syene, a man looking down a deep well would see no light in the well, because his shadow would block all the sunlight. He reasoned that this meant the sun was directly overhead in the city of Syene at that moment. Well, he lived in Alexandria, which was about 500 miles south of Syene. He measured the length of a pole’s shadow in Alexandria at noon on the Summer Solstice and from that determined the angle at which the sun shined on Alexandria when the sun was directly overhead in the city of Syene.

Why would Eratosthenes do this? Well, like all ancient natural philosophers (including the Christian ones who would come a few hundred years later), he understood that the earth is a sphere. If you are under the mistaken impression that most ancient people thought the earth was flat, you need to realize that this is a textbook myth that is repeated over and over again but is nevertheless quite false. Since he knew that the earth is a sphere, he used his measurement to reason that the distance between Syene and Alexandria is about one-fiftieth of the distance around that sphere. He then took the known distance between Syene and Alexandria and multiplied by 50 to get the total distance around the earth. The unit he used to measure distance (the stadium) had different definitions at the time, but assuming he used the one that was typically used for long journeys, his measurement was correct to within 2% of today’s accepted value.¹

Does that surprise you? It shouldn’t. In today’s culture, we think of ancient people as ignorant savages, but in fact, many of them were incredibly intelligent. According to at least one geneticist, they were probably more intelligent than we are! In a two-part series published in the journal Trends in Genetics, Dr. Gerald R. Crabtree states:²

I would wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000 BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions, with a good memory, a broad range of ideas, and a clear-sighted view of important issues.

How can Dr. Crabtree make such a seemingly absurd statement? He argues that our intellectual abilities are governed by all sorts of genes. In fact, based on some studies that have been done on X chromosome mutations that lead to intellectual deficiencies, he produces a conservative estimate that human intelligence is influenced by 2,000-5,000 genes. Based on estimates of mutation rates in the human population, he suggests that this collection of genes must have been affected by many mutations over the past three thousand years. Indeed, he suggests:

…it is very likely that within 3000 years  (120 generations) we have all sustained two or more mutations harmful to our intellectual or emotional stability.

In his estimation, then, harmful mutations have collected over the years, reducing our intellectual ability. But why hasn’t natural selection weeded them out? He answers that in the second part of his two-part series.³ He suggests that once we started living in high-density societies, catching diseases from other people was much more likely to cause someone to die than were intellectual deficiencies. As a result, natural selection worked mostly on the genes that govern our immune systems, not on the genes that governed our intellectual abilities. In addition, societies tend to make people who are intellectually deficient more survivable, because a society can “find a place” for those who would probably die on their own. This sheltered people from the effects of natural selection when it came to intellectual deficiencies. As a result, natural selection could not get rid of the mutations related to intelligence; thus, people simply aren’t as intelligent now as they were 3,000 years ago.

While the good doctor’s proposal is an interesting one, I am not sure he makes his case. Indeed, in the same journal, another geneticist (Dr. Kevin J. Mitchell) argues against his position, pointing out studies that seem to indicate that intelligence-related genes are not sustaining a high mutation load. He also argues that the complex social interactions used in societies actually produce increased intelligence in future generations.⁴ As he concludes:

Thus, despite ready counter-examples from nightly newscasts, there is no scientific reason to think that we humans are on an inevitable genetic trajectory towards idiocy.

I honestly don’t know who has the better arguments here. I do think that Adam and Eve had mutation-free genomes, which would tend to imply that everything about them was better than we are today. At the same time, however, the Creator has designed our genomes to be adaptive, allowing the human population to change over time to meet our changing needs. As a result, even if we are carrying around some mutations in our intelligence-related genes, it’s not clear that we are significantly less intelligent than our ancient ancestors.

I do hope that more research is done on this question, because I find it incredibly interesting. If nothing else, I hope it helps to dispel the absurd notion that ancient people were intellectually inferior to us!

REFERENCES

1. Kelly Trumble, The Library of Alexandria, Clarion books 2003, p. 24
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2. Gerald R. Crabtree, “Our fragile intellect. Part I,” Trends in Genetics, 2013, http://dx.doi:10.1016/j.tig.2012.10.002
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3. Gerald R. Crabtree, “Our fragile intellect. Part II,” Trends in Genetics, 2013, http://dx.doi:10.1016/j.tig.2012.10.003
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4. Kevin J. Mitchell, “Genetic entropy and the human intellect,” Trends in Genetics, 2013, http://dx.doi:10.1016/j.tig.2012.11.010
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