Dr. Robert Howarth
The David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology & Environmental Biology
Cornell University
Website:
http://www.eeb.cornell.edu/howarth/
Areas of Expertise:
Biofuels, Clean Energy, Climate Change, Environment, GHGs, Hydraulic Fracturing, Natural Gas, Renewables, WaterAdditional Areas of Expertise:
Earth system science, biogeochemistry
Robert Howarth is an Earth systems scientist, biogeochemist, and ecosystem biologist. He joined the faculty at Cornell University in 1985 and was appointed the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology & Environmental Biology in 1993. Howarth earned a BA in Biology from Amherst College in 1974 (magna cum laude) and a Ph.D. jointly from MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1979. He then worked as a staff scientist at the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, until 1985. He rejoined the Marine Biological Lab as an adjunct Senior Scientist in 2000, and has had a lab in Woods Hole as well as at Cornell for the past 13 years.
For the past 35 years, Howarth has worked jointly with his close colleague and wife, Dr. Roxanne Marino, running an active research program focusing on how human activity affects the environment, with emphases on global change and on coastal ocean water quality. A particular focus is human alteration of the nitrogen cycle at scales from local to regional to global, including both sources of pollution and their consequences. Howarth also works on greenhouse gas emissions (particularly methane and nitrous oxide) and the ecological consequences of oil and gas development. He was the head consultant for the Attorney General of the State of Alaska on the response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
Howarth is the Founding Editor of the journal Biogeochemistry and was Editor-in-Chief of the journal from 1983 to 2004. He chaired the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Causes and Consequences of Coastal Marine Eutrophication from 1998-2000, co-chaired the International SCOPE Nitrogen Project from 1992 to 2002, directed the North American Nitrogen Center of the International Nitrogen Initiative from 2003-2006, was the lead author on nitrogen pollution for the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2003-2005), and was the chair of the International SCOPE Biofuels Project on environmental effects of biofuels from 2007 to 2011. Currently, he is a consultant to the United Nations Environment Program on sustainable resource use. He has testified numerous times before the US Congress and Senate, as well as the European Parliament, and gave a briefing on coastal nitrogen pollution in the White House during the Bush presidency in 2006.
In 2011, Howarth together will colleagues Tony Ingraffea and Renee Santoro published the first comprehensive analysis of the greenhouse gas footprint of shale gas in Climatic Change Letters and an invited commentary on shale gas in Nature. This work was cited in over 1,500 newspapers globally, winning Howarth an honorable mention as one of “50 People who Matter” in the annual Time Magazine Person of the Year issue for 2011.
In March of 2013, Howarth worked with Mark Jacobson of Stanford and other colleagues at Stanford, the University of California at Davis, Cornell, and elsewhere to produce the “2030 Plan:” a peer-reviewed paper demonstrating how to make the entire state of New York free of fossil fuels and instead develop an energy economy powered entirely by wind, solar, and water.
Howarth has published over 200 scientific papers, reports, and book chapters. His most recent book is the 4th edition of the text Essentials of Ecology (Begon, Howarth, and Townsend), scheduled for release in early 2014.
Recent Posts by Dr. Robert Howarth
Recent Comments by Dr. Robert Howarth
- "Methane is actually more than 100 times more potent as a greenhouse gas for the time it remains in the atmosphere, according to the IPCC (2013). Aver"
EPA’s Methane Rule - "Ms. Hartnett-White's assertion that methane emissions from the natural gas industry fell by 40.4% between 2006 and 2012 is simply not supported by qua"
EPA’s Methane Rule Comes Up Short - "I want to register my agreement with some of Roger Arnold's points, but disagree with others. I fully agree that cheap gas is a very temporary phenom"
Prosperity at Home And Strengthened Allies Abroad – A Global Perspective on Natural Gas Exports - "Because of methane emissions, natural gas is perhaps the most dangerous of all fossil fuels in terms of global warming. And LNG is the worst way to u"
Prosperity at Home And Strengthened Allies Abroad – A Global Perspective on Natural Gas Exports - "I understand Albert Schilling's skepticism: the idea that natural gas is "clean burning" compared to oil and coal has been promoted for decades. And"
Do Fugitive Emissions Undermine Natural Gas? - "The EDF/Texas study measured only emissions at well sites, and was not a full-life cycle analysis. Further, the team followed the lead of the old 199"
Do Fugitive Emissions Undermine Natural Gas? - "We do not need nuclear power as we move forward in the 21st Century. Renewables such as wind and solar will do just fine to replace fossil fuels, part"
Should Nuclear Power Receive Environmental Subsidies? - "With apologies to Mr. Kaplan, I cannot join in his call to use natural gas and liquid biofuels such as methanol and ethanol as the way forward for tra"
Electric and Natural Gas Vehicles — Heads You Win, Tails You Win - "Let's look in a little more detail of the role of methane emissions in the context of using natural gas as a transportation fuel. A 2012 paper from t"
Electric and Natural Gas Vehicles — Heads You Win, Tails You Win - "Mr. Kaplan is wrong in his assertion that natural gas is a desirable fuel for transportation in terms of emissions. Natural gas is composed mostly of"
Electric and Natural Gas Vehicles — Heads You Win, Tails You Win