As we approach the 52nd celebration of Earth Day on April 22nd, it is an opportune time to take stock of our collective progress towards addressing human-induced global warming.  Fortunately we understand better than ever the causes and consequences of recent climate change, and we are amid a world-wide dawn of renewable energy.  In this talk, we summarize the most recent assessments of our global environment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  These assessments provide strong evidence and ample justification for accelerating a comprehensive transition to carbon-neutral or carbon-free power.  Due to delays in starting this transition, the world may also need to weigh more drastic measures to avoid dangerous levels of global warming.  The measures include geoengineering to cool the planet as well as carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere and oceans.  We discuss some of the major upsides and downsides to these contingency plans, and we conclude with basic research underway at Berkeley Lab on new methods to remove carbon dioxide from the climate system.

The Physics Department is excited to announce that the 2022 Robert Hofstadter Memorial lecture will be given by Dr. William D. Collins. Dr. Collins is an internationally recognized expert in climate modeling and climate change science. His personal research concerns the interactions among greenhouse gases and aerosols, the coupled climate system, and global environmental change. 

Dr. Collins is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Physical Society (APS), and the American Geophysical Union (AGU).  He was awarded the AGU’s Tyndall History of Global Environmental Change Lectureship in 2019.  He was a Lead Author on the Fourth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for which the IPCC was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, and served as a Lead Author on the Fifth and recent Sixth Assessments.  His role as Chief Scientist in launching the Department of Energy’s Accelerated Climate Model for Energy (ACME) program was awarded the U.S. Department of Energy Secretary’s Achievement Award on May 7, 2015. Before joining Berkeley and Berkeley Lab, Dr. Collins was a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and served as Chair of the Scientific Steering Committee for the DOE/NSF Community Climate System Model project.

Dr. Collins received his undergraduate degree in physics from Princeton University and earned an M.S. and Ph.D. in astronomy and astrophysics from the University of Chicago. Dr. Collins’ public Hofstadter lecture on Monday, April 11, 2022 is followed by the Applied Physics/Physics colloquium on Tuesday, April 12, 2022. Please join us for these fascinating lectures. For more information contact dmoreau@stanford.edu.