Dr. Laird Thompson, not your usual "Oil guy"

This was the speaker I was dreading all semester. I was imagining a guy with some southern accent, one of those leather cords tied around a blue shirt collar, maybe even a cowboy hat. So when Dr. Thompson stepped up with his Texan accent, I feared a long lecture about what oil can do for us.

I'm glad I was wrong.

I think I was kind of bored at the beginning of the lecture, though. I know how oil was formed so to hear him describe the misconceptions of "dino oil" made me chuckle. The different formations of oil deposits, like salt domes, fault traps, and "oil bumps", was pretty interesting, too. The history of fossil fuel use and how we got to where we are today was eye-opening.

But in general, just to hear someone who's worked in the oil business talk about how to live greener lives seemed so... odd. I mean, I've heard of people hired to assess the environmental impacts of oil companies, by oil companies, but just assumed they were similar to scientists being paid by an organization to skew their experiments to report what their employers wanted to hear in the first place. To hear Dr. Thompson exclaim that this last administration was the worst possible in regards to energy production was encouraging. It's lectures like this that make me wish my conservative housemates were in this class, just to open their eyes to the world.

I can't say there were any points I disagreed with, or at least nothing I wrote down or remembered. Maybe we should have a conservative, pro-oil speaker come to class one of these days, just for the ability to criticize their thinking =)

Joe Medeiros, the sequel!

250,000 people added to this planet every day...
116 square miles of rainforest destroyed every day...
15 million tons of carbon added to the atmosphere every day...
And perhaps the worst statistic of all, 50-100 species, gone, forever, every day...

Joe Medeiros may as well have been using a loud speaker, because those words shattered my ear drums. It's figures like this that makes the idea of sustainable living on this planet material for a sci-fi flick. I mean, seriously, we're going to reach the tipping point in our lifetime if nothing is done, and then what are we going to do?

If your house was in the middle of burning down, would you go back in and install a smoke detector?

I must be a bleeding heart liberal environmentalist, because everything that Joe said spoke to me. It bugs me about our world standing, having such a small percentage of the world's population and still using a good chunk of its resources. I've never left the continent, so I haven't seen how people live overseas, but I doubt other countries are blind to these statistics. I know if I were in their position, I would be fighting for change. I wonder if, or when, the next World War happens, if it will be over resources?

Actually, with the way we are heading, the next World War will probably be just that, the World warring against us. Like any other species which maximizes its carrying capacity, we will be no different.

Jane Haproff, why the YouTube lecture?

Before I begin this post I'll acknowledge that I am probably unfairly jaded towards Jane simply based off her topic: RELIGION and the environment. I personally am fairly anti-religious, and believe the world would be better off without religion of any kind. That being said, and since I recognized this early into her lecture, I tried to still remain objective throughout her speech.

I still think the lecture itself was probably the least informative or mind-opening of the semester, though.

The first question I have is this: WHY exactly did she feel the need to show us TWO videos off YouTube on the biblical version of genesis? Although most people probably haven't read the section itself, I feel the five minutes of lecture on the 7 days probably were suffice to describe the event, a visual aid was not needed. And why not show any videos of the other religious ideals of creation? I didn't see anything about pagan goddesses giving birth to the world, or Egyptians and their beliefs of creation by Ra, the sun god. I could only view her lecture as skewed towards some variant of Christian faith, as most religious topics today seem to be, and it didn't help my opinion of the topic.

On day 3 God created "seed-bearing plants"? Please. Flowering, seed-bearing and fruit-bearing plants didn't appear in the fossil record until 100 million years ago. Ferns, conifers, and many different varieties of extinct flora thrived long before these divine creations appeared.

I was the one that spoke out against her in class on her definition of "Karma". She was totally wrong, and I felt it necessary to correct her lest she misinform the 150 or however many students in this class that were watching her. To clarify again, her ideas of Eastern Karma were actually western ideas, ones that only appeared within the last century. In the Easter view, you do good in this life to improve your stature in the next life. In the Western view, you do good to be repayed in good in this life only. Your place in the cycle of reincarnation is non-existant, since more people in western cultures believe more in the Christian ideals of Heaven and an afterlife.

She also couldn't answer my question about Islamic Terrorism being an oxymoron. All in all, this was the first class I left in an almost upset mood. The very topic, "Religion and the Environment", wasn't really covered. It would have been better called "Religious views on creation". I think next time actually having a discussion on methods and plans by different religious organizations to help or hinder the environment might make a better lecture. Recently the pope declared pollution a sin, but I never heard her mention that once, or anything about the effectiveness of his declaration, seeing as not many Catholic organizations have changed their environmental policies since.

I don't know, I'm probably being too hard on her, but I was nowhere near as entertained, enlightened, or excited over her lecture as I have been with speakers past. Any other thoughts?

Frank DeCourten, an earth-warming lecture

"The history of science is littered with the carcases of dead ideas."

I LOVED this quote, although I didn't write down whom he quoted it from. I agree with Mr. DeCourten's idea that science is an evergrowing, everchanging field, and that it needs to be just like that to function properly. Today we know the world to be spherical, hundreds of years ago we thought it flat. Tomorrow we could discover something totally different, beyond our wildest imaginations, but until we do we'll continue with what we know best. I often get in arguments with people that exclaim science to be nothing more than "theories", but this class has helped me a great deal to show that that's actually a good thing.

The five main points that Frank highlighted for us are scary to consider, especially the part about global warming getting worse. I was skeptical to a degree about all the doomsaying drafted up by climate scientists lately and overemphasized by the media, imagining maybe it was all just worst case scenario studies, but Frank's lecture helped me understand we ARE living in a worst case scenario right now. I tried to take the most detailed notes of his charts and diagrams to show my roomates at home whom are often completely uninterested in scientific studies. It made one of them step back and go "wow".

Even when he broke down climate change in the future decades and its impact on California my jaw continued to drop. A 7.5 degree increase worldwide by the end of the century is pretty much doomsaying, but we need to prepare for it. I think the time for disbelieving the world is in trouble is over, and we'd either better make plans for living on the moon and mars or fix what we have now quick.

I suppose the last few days I've become the doomsayer myself. I've brought up conversations about this lecture and global warming to my roomates, relatives, friends and coworkers. Most people immediately got into defense mode and shrugged off what I had to say as nothing more than any other media source. I think disinterest through overexposure might be the hardest obstacle to overcome when it comes to convincing people we have a problem. On the other hand, when wine graps start dying off before they can be made into wine, people might notice THAT.

Lynn Medeiros, radical feminist

Of course I mean that in the best possible way! I loved Lynn's speech, and although history itself isn't a main interest of mine, I think I'll try to take at least one class from her. The highlight of her lecture was something she said at the end, asking the class: "Do you believe in equality for everyone?" and upon noticing some hands weren't raised "So tell me, why do YOU want to be treated differently?" I've used that line twice now over the weekend in political blogs concerning Prop 8, and no one yet has answered me =)

In fact I think the introduction of Proposition 8 during her lecture distracted me from the other subjects she talked about. Of course the one day I leave my notebook at home and I can't take effective notes to recall on. She was definitely engaging. Keeley is active and mobile and vocal, but Lynn trumped her that day. It was exciting.

Why does anyone believe what they believe?

I've always considered myself a "nature geek". Growing up, my father was very restrictive in what tv I was allowed to watch, and having only 6 or so channels, my preference became the old school nature documentaries on PBS. Wild America, Nature, or any kid-version thereof. I new the lifecycle and habits of the pacific octopus by fourth grade, and got to debate with a teacher when they read a story in class! Still to this day I find myself preferring channels like Discovery, Animal Planet, and Science over mainstream television. And since it seems more and more people have begun watching the same lately, I can say I was a nature geek before it was cool.

I was also forced to play outside a lot. Well, not forced, but had my parents not been attentive in making sure I spent more time outside than in, I probably would have grown up differently. I also lived in the boonies of Auburn, so there wasn't much interaction I might have had in a city environment. I was the last stop on the bus route and still had to walk a good distance home. Even in highschool, since we claimed to live in one school district but really didn't, I had to trek home quite a bit on foot. It gave me more of an appreciation for nature than taking 30 min to drive through it.

I've also been to 48 of the 50 states. My parents were leather crafters up until i was 11, and I've been to nearly every state fair. I guess getting out of your home state can give you an appreciation for how big the world is. In high school I went to Costa Rica for 9 days, most of which were spent in the cloud forests. Amazing country, and it gave me a chance to feel and experience what I had watched on tv for so many years. My mom even sold her car so I could go, which made it all the more important to me.

And since we weren't much of a pet family, I had to make do with what I could find or catch. I spent all four years of high school raising generations of praying mantises as pets, from tiny larva to full adult. I grew a venus flytraps, and would cross polinate their three-foot tall flowers with a paintbrush. I've had pet garter snakes, turtles, jumping spiders, all the weird and creepy. I think I can understand better than most that life does come in all forms, and I get just as emotionally attached to seeing a mother spider and her nest of eggs hanging in the corner of my garage as someone does walking by the pet store and seeing all the puppies. Except that I'll go out of my way to catch some sort of insect to feed her, whereas pet store goers aren't usually allowed to feed the animals.

After I turned 11 my mom went back to being a veterinarian, further emphasis being put into my head that life with animals was so important. I heard all sorts of stories at the dinner table about people either being cruel or kind to their pets.

All this past gives me my great appreciation for life and the environment today. I Tivo nature programs and science channel documentaries when most others are watching American Idol. I want to visit the forests and savannah of Africa, the unexplored depths of New Zealand, and the Barrier Reefs of Australia. Human history interests me little compared to the millions of years of natural history this planet has to offer, and that keeps me in the belief that protecting the future of that history is vastly more important than we'll ever understand as a species.

Vernon Martin, an eye-opening lecture

Environmental Ethics is a class I'm considering taking in either the Summer or Fall of this year. The topic seemed interesting when I was going over the course catalogue, and after Prof. Martin's lecture I am now thoroughly intrigued. His introduction with the dollar bill as nothing more than a representation of money helped explain where he was going with his topic.

The part of his lesson concerning the evolution of advertising was interesting, too. I always try to analyze what I see on television, especially the things that DON'T appeal to me, to see where the producers are coming from and what target audience they are trying to reach. I guess psychology is just as fascinating as environmental studies for me.

There wasn't anything I didn't agree with or didn't understand from the lecture. He was a good speaker and put together his presentation well. About the only negative connotation I could assign him was his final drawing where he told us all to list words in a circle around the word "Nature" representing what it means to us personally. The discrepency I had was I put the word "complex" down on my list, and when he flashed his list up on the screen he had put "simple". I suppose a philosohy professor might not be as well-versed on the complexities of the natural world as an environmental studies major =)

He was also pretty hot, too...