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.