Author: Stephen Mulkey

Stephen Mulkey is an environmental scientist dedicated to developing undergraduate and graduate programming to build society's capacity for environmental mitigation, adaptation, and resilience. Mulkey was the president of Unity College in Unity, Maine from 2011 through 2015. His leadership and forward-looking vision resulted in Unity College being the first college in the U.S. to divest its endowment from the top 200 fossil fuel companies, and the first college in the U.S. to adopt sustainability science as the framework for all academic programming. Mulkey believes that higher education has an ethical duty to prepare generations of graduates for the extreme sustainability and climate change challenges of this century. After taking his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania, he spent over twenty years as a forest ecologist affiliated with the Smithsonian. Mulkey has served as tenured faculty at three doctoral granting universities.
biosphere carbon management, Climate science, Environmental politics

Geoengineering

Climate interventions are of two forms: those based on natural processes and those based on technology. Nature-based interventions involve the management of forests, agriculture, and wetlands. Technological solutions involve reducing global temperature through interception of solar radiation or direct removal of CO2 through chemical means or with biofuels and carbon capture. In this module we will review the risks and possible advantages of the most likely … Continue reading Geoengineering

Stephen Mulkey
Sticky post
Climate science, Ecological change, Environmental politics, Extreme weather and climate change, Sea level rise

Review of IPCC AR6

This a comprehensive review of the AR6 for my students at the University of Florida. It may be viewed but not downloaded or copied. One error in the narrative is the statement that hurricanes are becoming more frequent. The overall global frequency of cyclones has decreased since the 1800s. Atlantic hurricanes has decreased in the first half of the 20th century but since about 1960 … Continue reading Review of IPCC AR6

Stephen Mulkey
Climate science, Economy, Environmental politics

Economic Models and the Real-World Social Costs of Carbon

Economic theory mandates that it is worth reducing CO2 emissions up to the point where the benefits are equal to the cost. The social cost of carbon is an estimate, in dollars, of the economic damages from emitting one additional ton of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This metric is inextricably tied to the Neoliberal Economics and used by the UN and most governments to … Continue reading Economic Models and the Real-World Social Costs of Carbon

Stephen Mulkey
Climate science, Ecological change, Higher education

Climate change year-end review 2022

This is has been a terrific semester that has included some of the best students of my career. This is my year-end review of the lessons on climate change that have been presented in the three courses that I teach. I hope you find this useful. A correction: the CO2 concentration from NOAA just before the volcano shut down the Keeling laboratory at Mona Loa was … Continue reading Climate change year-end review 2022

Stephen Mulkey
Ecological change

No slack for UF and the methane power plant

Some have objected to my concerns about the new fossil-gas power plant at UF because they feel the administration’s options are financially limited due to the extreme expense of retrofitting the campus to remove dependence on methane to produce steam and chilled water. The new plant is budgeted at $200 million. Secondly, they point out the the new plant could easily be converted to hydrogen, … Continue reading No slack for UF and the methane power plant

Stephen Mulkey
Ecological change

Mission failure at the University of Florida

A version published in the Gainesville Sun 3 September 2021 The mission of higher education is the maintenance and renewal of civilization. This statement comes as an epiphany to many who hear it for the first time. Public higher education in the US has been diminished at the hands of legislatures and business interests who believe that higher education exists solely to serve the economy. … Continue reading Mission failure at the University of Florida

Stephen Mulkey2 Comments