The idea of global warming among the general public used to be just something that was only read about in textbooks, dramatized in movies and discussed on the Discovery Channel.

But the increasingly popular theory among experts that oceans could flood major cities and many animals may go extinct due to the drastic change in climate has woken many people up. Environmental concerns reached the mainstream media with Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

NIU has been addressing the issue in its ongoing Climate Change lecture series in the past three weeks, with more to come. Last night in the Montgomery Hall Auditorium, the third installment took place. Presenting for last night’s talk was Michael Konen, associate professor of geography, who discussed the topic of soil carbon, agricultural land use and global-change relationships.

“I never intended to talk about the issue of climate change when I started my research on soil, but everything comes back to it,” Konen said.

The topic of soils is a complex thing to really talk about, since there’s so much not really known and there needs to be a lot more research in the area regarding soils, Konen said.

“The lectures have gotten bigger and bigger over the past few weeks and has really been ramping up,” said David Goldblum, assistant professor of geography, who is also one of the organizers for the lecture.

The lectures are being put into DVD format, which has taken some time to get them all processed, Goldblum said. It takes about 10 days to get the lectures on DVD. He has also been looking for someone to help get the lectures streamed onto the Internet so more people will be able to learn more about facts involving climate change and get something from it.

Senior geography major Jericho Winter and treasurer of the campus environmental group GLOBE, said the presenters don’t give the audience direct answers, which is perfectly fine, since it leaves everything open.

“This is something that everyone should know about,” Winter said. “It’s all food for thought.”

Sharing Winter’s feelings was junior meteorology major Nick Litzohoff, who thought that attending the lecture would give him some answers to climate change.

“This is something totally new to think about,” Litzohoff said. “Soil, who knew?”

Freshman accountancy major Dawn Degand felt that it was important to show up for this event and see what exactly can be done about climate change. Degand felt like there’s not enough that can be done to fix the problem.

Those thoughts are still unknown, since Konen even noted during the course of his lecture that he wasn’t sure if climate change is good or bad. Only the future can tell us, since science is finally looking at soil.