Beginning of the end

Today I had my first final of spring quarter, and what better final should start off the whole trip than my global warming class?

I only took this class to fulfill the core requirement, as 98% of the other kids in the class did. My attendance reminded me of when I took psychology my senior year that began at the ungodly hour of 7 AM. The only demand I placed on myself was that I show up at least once a week. I think I fulfilled that quota pretty more or less for this class, but the only problem was that I actually knew someone in this class. In high school I was blissfully alone in the class, so I could slip in whenever I wanted to and wouldn't care when all the goodie goodies, who thought they would single-handedly be able to reform all the potheads and open up all the football players' true hearts around school because they were taking AP Psychology with a young! and pretty! teacher, would stare daggers at me for blasting light from outside on the power point presentation of sexual repression. So when we did happen to attend class the same day, there would be a whole lot of catching up to do.

In writing.

While the teacher was lecturing.




















The pigs with kites are covering up deep and intellectual conversations we carried on. The actual writing is all the note-taking I did in that class for the day.

Overall, though, I am happy I took this class. We read Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes of a Catastrophe, which was interesting, and well, I guess I won't go and get an SUV now.

The highlight of this class has been, however, the text book the teacher wrote for the class. In a desperate attempt to keep his students' attention at least at home, if he can't even get them to show up for most of his classes, David Archer injected his text book with wit and humor deserving of any stand-up comedian at the finest club in town. He also tried to achieve a homey, conversational tone of voice in his book, which, while heartwarming and inviting, did not do much to make me remember what the silicate weathering disaster was on Venus.

Let's have a look.
concerning the "rich, spectacular, wondrous chemistry" of carbon...
I scoff at the cliche from Star Trek, 'carbon-based life forms' spoken as though this were some sort of novel idea. Perhaps I am close-minded, lacking vision, but I have difficulty imagining life based primarily on any element other than carbon.

The biome response is strong there because the climate change is intense, because of (let's all say it together) the ice albedo feedback.

talking about the Larsen ice shelf...
If the blocks are taller than they are wide, they will have a tendency to tip sideways, expelling the rest of the blocks out to sea and provoking them to tip as well. Kablooey.
Kablooey indeed.

talking about gas compression...
Imagine a wall made of compressible bricks. A row of bricks is thinner at the bottom of the wall, because they are compressed. Batman climbing up the wall would pass more bricks per step at the bottom othan the top.
After laughing about this one for a while, the obvious question came up that why didn't he use a Spiderman analogy instead of Batman?