Folwell Lecture in Political Science and Pre-Law

David Archer, PhD, will present the 2023 Folwell Lecture in Political Science and Pre-Law "The Global Warming Climate Event: A View from the Earth System."

The forecast for future anthropogenic climate change is grounded in paleoclimatology, the reconstruction of Earth's climate history.  Although global warming probably won't be as severe as some of the natural changes in the past, placing the future in the context of the past makes the future more frightening for me, rather than less.  Lessons from the past are that climate impacts of fossil fuel carbon disposal in the atmosphere will last essentially forever, from our mortal point of view, that sea level rise will ultimately be vastly worse than projections we read about in the newspapers for the year 2100, and that the impacts on the Earth's climate system could have an existential impact on human society.  So now what?  Most proposals for meeting the Paris Agreement 1.5 degree Celsius maximum global warming target rely on "negative emissions": actively removing carbon from the atmosphere, which would be very expensive and take decades to see a resulting cooling of climate.  The other alternative, until recently kind of taboo to talk about among climate scientists, is a temporary fix called "solar radiation management" geoengineering, for example blowing sulfur into the stratosphere to scatter sunlight and cool the planet down.  This shocking proposal is a moral hazard if it enables further reliance on fossil fuel, it has potential climate impacts with winners and losers that could fuel conflict, and there is no present-day means of governance of an effort like this.  I can't predict the future but I will describe the conversations I'm hearing and reading.  

Biography
David Archer, PhD, has been a professor in the Department of The Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago since 1993.  He has worked on a wide range of topics pertaining to the global carbon cycle and its relation to global climate, with special focus on ocean sedimentary processes such as CaCO3 dissolution and methane hydrate formation, and their impact on the evolution of atmosphere CO2.  He teaches classes on global warming, environmental chemistry, and global geochemical cycles.

The Folwell Lecture in Political Science and Pre-Law
The Folwell Chair Endowment was established by the late Jane Folwell, an energetic volunteer and generous benefactor for educational, health and community groups and initiatives. Folwell's interest in political science and pre-law originated from her 30-year career as a Congressional staffer in the U.S. House of Representatives and in the United States Senate. Her husband, Frank, was a highly respected Quad City businessman and philanthropist who passed away in 1997.