Climate Change Past, Present and Future: A Story of Earth, Air, Fire and Water

Peter Sinclair Town Hall Lecture by David Hendry 

Our planet’s climate has always been changing, but whereas in the past that has been due to natural forces (sun’s radiation; evolution of photosynthesis; plate tectonics; massive volcanism; space impacts etc.), now it is primarily anthropogenic (emissions of greenhouse gases). We trace climate change and mass extinctions over the last 500 million years; then the Ice Ages for 800,000 years; the 18th century Industrial Revolution; developments of fossil fuels, electrical energy and an understanding of the "greenhouse effect" in the 19th century, and the present situation. Earth, Air, Fire and Water enter the story twice: first their role in creating climate change; second, their potential roles in avoiding it, leading to both a strategy for achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by around 2050 and tactics for its implementation.

When: Wednesday 19 February 2025, 16:00-17:00.

Where: virtually on Zoom.

To secure your place, please register. Further information will be sent to your email address closer to the time of the event.  The lecture is intended for a general audience and is open to all.

About the speaker

David F. Hendry, Kt, is Co-director of Climate Econometrics and Senior Research Fellow of Nuffield College and previously Professor of Economics at Oxford University and Econometrics at LSE. He has held visiting appointments at the Cowles Foundation Yale University, University of California at Berkeley & San Diego, and Duke University, was Leverhulme Personal Research Professor and ESRC Professorial Research Fellow at Oxford, where he was Chairman of the Economics Department from 2001—2007. He was knighted in 2009; is an Honorary Vice-President and past President, Royal Economic Society; a Fellow, British Academy, Royal Society of Edinburgh, Econometric Society, Academy of Social Sciences, Journal of Econometrics and Econometric Reviews; a Founding Fellow, International Association for Applied Econometrics and an Honorary Fellow, International Institute of Forecasters. He is also a Foreign Honorary Member, American Economic Association and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received eight Honorary Doctorates, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the ESRC, and the Guy Medal in Bronze from the Royal Statistical Society. His research interests span econometric methods, theory, modelling, and history; computing; empirical economics; macro-econometrics; climate econometrics; and forecasting. Together he has published more than 200 papers and 25 books and has a Google Scholar h-index of 100. The ISI lists him as one of the world’s 200 most cited economists and he is a Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate. He jointly founded the Econometrics Journal and has been Econometrics Editor of the Review of Economic Studies and the Economic Journal, as well as an editor of the Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics.

About the lecture series

The Peter Sinclair Town Hall lecture series features world class economists presenting their research and its real world implications to an audience of academic economists, economics students, and the wider community. The lectures are diverse in topic but united in that they bring the lens of economics to real world issues, demonstrating how economics can be both useful and a force for good in understanding and shaping the world. The lecture series is inspired by and commemorates Emeritus Professor Peter Sinclair, whose breadth of knowledge, curiosity, and kindness inspired his students and colleagues immeasurably.