"We had three years where global emissions were essentially flat. 2017 was a slight uptick. We wondered if it was a blip. It's not. This increase in global emissions is real and more difficult to address than I expected," says Stanford Earth's Rob Jackson.
Coal remains the planet's top source for electricity. As global carbon emissions continue to rise, “the clock is ticking in our struggle to keep warming below 2 degrees," says Stanford Earth professor Rob Jackson.
Geological sciences PhD candidate Zack Burton's is featured for distilling presentations into poems. Poetry, he says, is a perfect way to convey science in the internet age. Like everything else online, “poems are bingeable.”
“The climate consequences are catastrophic. I don’t use any word like that very often. But we are headed for disaster, and nobody seems to be able to slow things down," says Stanford Earth's Rob Jackson.
“As a measure of climate change, the dailies (temperature records) will tell you more about what’s happening,” said Chris Field of Stanford. “The impacts of climate change almost always come packaged in extremes.”
“Fast-food beef, often shipped from the tropics, can release carbon from deforestation. Belching cattle are one of the biggest methane sources from human activities," says Stanford's Rob Jackson.
Microscopic particles unleashed by the nuclear plant's explosions may pose an under-recognized health risk – a discovery that has been not very welcomed in Japan, says Rod Ewing of Stanford Earth.
"We just had to kind of bite the bullet and say, 'OK, if you're making cement or steel, you are capturing and sequestering that CO2,'" says Stanford Earth professor and Precourt Institute for Energy director Sally Benson.
For Jenny Saltzman, Director of Outreach Education at Stanford Earth, “the weaving of science and spirituality has always been something of interest, of beauty.”
“When people say we ought to present two sides, they’re saying we ought to present a side that’s totally been disproven along with a side that has been fundamentally supported by the evidence,” says Stanford's Chris Field.
"With respect to tornadoes, we have limitations both in the observational record and in our modeling capabilities," says Noah Diffenbaugh. Researchers are now closing those gaps, thanks to radar observations of tornadoes over the past couple decades.
Scientists are close to monitoring the greenhouse gas emissions of individual cities, according to Stanford Earth professor Rob Jackson, and soon after should be able to trace emissions to individual sources.
"These floods are tangible, annoying, and they happen all the time in some communities," says Stanford Earth PhD student Miyuki Hino, lead author of a new study analyzing the fiscal impact of nuisance flooding in Annapolis, Maryland.
In GEOPHYS 90: “Earthquakes and Volcanoes,” students learn about the fundamentals of natural disasters, their effects on human society and the application of the scientific method.
“The evidence is totally overwhelming that in fact these greenhouse gases, through their effects on climate change, do endanger public health and welfare,” says Stanford Earth professor and Woods Institute director Chris Field.
Stanford's Chris Field describes the review process that formed the basis of last year’s National Climate Assessment, which concluded that continued burning of fossil fuels is harming the planet.
