Stephen Schneider (scientist)

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This article is about the climate scientist. For other people with this name, see Stephen Schneider (disambiguation).
Stephen H. Schneider
National Academy of Sciences (2002)
Scientific career
FieldsClimatology
InstitutionsStanford University
WebsiteHome page

Stephen Henry Schneider (February 11, 1945 – July 19, 2010)

Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a Senior Fellow in the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Schneider served as a consultant to federal agencies and White House staff in the Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama
administrations.

Schneider's research included modeling of the

South Australian Government of Premier Mike Rann on climate change and renewable energy policies.[2] In ten years South Australia
went from zero to 31% of its electricity generation coming from renewables.

An annual award for outstanding climate science communication was created in Schneider's honor after his death, by the Commonwealth Club of California.[3] The Stephen Schneider Memorial Lecture of the American Geophysical Union honors Schneider's life and work.[4]

Early work

Schneider grew up on

plasma physics.[5] Schneider studied the role of greenhouse gases and suspended particulate material on climate as a postdoctoral fellow at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Schneider was awarded the Marshall Scholarship
.

In 1971, Schneider was second author on a

radiative transfer model
to examine the competing effects of cooling from aerosols and warming from CO2. The paper concluded that:

[I]t is projected that man's potential to pollute will increase six- to eightfold in the next 50 years. If this increased rate of injection of particulate matter in the atmosphere should raise the present background opacity by a factor of 4, our calculations suggest a decrease in global temperature by as much as 3.5 K. Such a large decrease in the average temperature of Earth, sustained over a period of few years, is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age. However, by that time, nuclear power may have largely replaced fossil fuels as a means of energy production.[6]

Carbon dioxide was predicted to have only a minor role. However, the model was very simple and the calculation of the CO2 effect was lower than other estimates by a factor of about three, as noted in a footnote to the paper.

The story made headlines in The New York Times. Shortly afterwards, Schneider became aware that he had overestimated the cooling effect of aerosols, and underestimated the warming effect of CO2 by a factor of about three. He had mistakenly assumed that measurements of air particles he had taken near the source of pollution applied worldwide. He also found that much of the effect was due to natural aerosols which would not be affected by human activities, so the cooling effect of changes in industrial pollution would be much less than he had calculated. Having found that recalculation showed that global warming was the more likely outcome, he published a retraction of his earlier findings in 1974.[7]

In a 1976 book The Genesis Strategy he discusses both long-term warming due to carbon dioxide and short-term cooling due to aerosols,[8] and advocated for adopting policies that are resilient to future changes in climate.[9]

Media contributions

Schneider was a frequent contributor to commercial and noncommercial print and broadcast media on climate and environmental issues, e.g.,

British, Canadian and Australian Broadcasting Corporations.[10]

Schneider commented about the frustrations and difficulties involved with assessing and communicating scientific ideas. In a January 2002 Scientific American article, he wrote:

I readily confess a lingering frustration: uncertainties so infuse the issue of climate change that it is still impossible to rule out either mild or catastrophic outcomes, let alone provide confident probabilities for all the claims and counterclaims made about environmental problems. Even the most credible international assessment body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has refused to attempt subjective probabilistic estimates of future temperatures. This has forced politicians to make their own guesses about the likelihood of various degrees of global warming.[11]

In 1989, Schneider addressed the challenge scientists face trying to communicate complex, important issues without adequate time during media interviews. This citation sometimes was used by his critics to accuse him of supporting misuse of science for political goals:

On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This 'double ethical bind' we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both. (Quoted in Discover, pp. 45–48, October 1989.)

For the original, together with Schneider's commentary on its misrepresentation, see also American Physical Society, APS News August/September 1996.[12]

Honors

Waist high portrait of three middle aged people in the library of what could be a boat or other confined space.
Schneider (right) with Thomas Lovejoy and Marina Silva
  • 1991 AAAS Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology.[13]
  • 1992
    MacArthur Fellow
    "Genius Award".
  • 2002 Elected to the
    National Academy of Sciences
    .
  • Chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Section on Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Sciences (1999–2001).
  • The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to which Schneider made very significant contributions, shared in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Personal

Schneider was married to the biologist Terry Root.[14] Schneider was a survivor of an aggressive cancer, mantle cell lymphoma. He documented his struggle to conquer the condition, including applying his own knowledge of science to design his own treatment regime, in a self-published 2005 book, The Patient from Hell.[15] He died unexpectedly on July 19, 2010, after suffering a pulmonary embolism while returning from a scientific meeting in Käringön [sv], Sweden.[16][17]

Selected publications

See also

References

  1. ^ Martin, Douglas (July 20, 2010). "Stephen H. Schneider, Climatologist, Is Dead at 65". The New York Times.
  2. ^ "Stephen Schneider – Adelaide Thinkers in Residence". Government of South Australia. 2011. Archived from the original on 2014-02-05. Retrieved 2019-10-17.
  3. ^ "James Hansen on Climate Change". C-SPAN.org. December 4, 2012. Retrieved 2019-10-17.
  4. ^ "Stephen Schneider Lecture". American Geophysical Union. 2019. Retrieved 2019-10-16.
  5. PMID 16249332
    .
  6. S2CID 43228353
    .
  7. ISBN 978-0-85265-229-9
    , pp. 24–27. "When he redid the maths, the balance between warming and cooling now tipped strongly towards warming."
  8. ^ Stephen H. Schneider and Lynne E. Mesirow, The Genesis Strategy: Climate and Global Survival, Plenum, April 1976. Quotes (accessed 22 October 2014)
  9. Genesis
     41-42, who advises the Pharaoh to store harvest from years of abundant harvest to prepare for years of famine.
  10. ^ Santer, B. and Ehrlich, P. 2014. Stephen Schneider: a biographical essay. Washington D.C.: National Academy of Sciences.
  11. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0102-61
    .
  12. ^ Schneider S. H. (August–September 1996). "Don't Bet All Environmental Changes Will Be Beneficial". APS News. American Physical Society.
  13. ^ "AAAS Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology, 1991".
  14. ^ "Stephen Schneider, a leading climate expert, dead at 65".
  15. ISSN 0041-5537
    .
  16. ^ "USAToday July 19, 2010".
  17. ^ Rogers, Paul (19 July 2010). "Stanford climate scientist Stephen Schneider dies at 65". The Mercury News. Retrieved 7 May 2021.

Further reading

External links

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