Prof. Robert Evans Kopp

My research interests are guided by the recognition that, over the last two centuries, human civilization has become a geological force. We are inducing planetary environmental conditions like those that Earth has not experienced for millions of years. Following the precepts that the present is a guide to the past, albeit an imperfect one, and the past is one of our best maps to the future, I seek to understand different past states of the Earth system and the transitions between them, in order to test models of future global change. The application of Bayesian statistical techniques to questions such as the history of ice sheet volume, sea level, and paleo-CO2 are of particular interest. I also work to quantify human impact on the global climate and the potential of different policies and technologies to mitigate these impacts. I work with integrated assessment models to investigate how best to incorporate the costs of climate change damages and the benefits of climate change mitigation into benefit-cost analysis. I also work on projections of future sea level change, guided by historical and paleo-sea level observations.