2023-24 Stanford Continuing Studies Class Offerings

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A fundamental tenet of geological thinking is uniformitarianism—the idea that the natural laws and processes occurring today operated in the past. 

Whatever has happened, can happen. Climate change is happening now, and it has been happening on Earth for 4.6 billion years. 

Humans have accelerated the pace of climate change in recent times, but are these anthropogenic drivers significant when compared with the natural forces that affect Earth? Are the climate change signals we see now just business as usual on our planet? How do the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, and the biosphere respond to internal and external forces? How can these signals inform us about what to expect? 

We’ll travel through time to learn about the big events in the history of our planet in order to understand how climate affects life and life affects climate. Using these observations as a framework, we will then interpret models of future climate change on a human timescale to better comprehend what to expect in our lifetimes and those of our children and grandchildren.

Winter Quarter 2024

How does Earth work? 

Theories of Earth’s origin, its place in our solar system, and its possible future states have radically evolved over decades of scientific research. Less than a century ago, dominant paradigms held that continents were immobile, mountains formed by vertical crustal motion, and we had no explanation of why earthquakes and volcanoes occurred where they did. Further, geologists and astronomers were struggling with the paradox that new data suggested that Earth was older than the universe. 

This course is designed to help us understand how Earth’s physical, chemical, and biological systems have worked together to create and sustain a habitable planet. We will briefly examine some of the most important revolutions in geoscience to understand how the solid Earth and its atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere systems interoperate, how these systems evolved to their present state, and what the long-term future looks like. Along the way, we will learn how old the Earth is; understand how and when the continents formed; infer what makes the plates move; and explain the geographical distribution of oceans, volcanoes, and earthquakes. Most importantly, we’ll discuss modern thinking about climate change, mass extinctions, and biological evolution on a geological timescale.

Summer Quarter 2023 – July 18 to August 29