Schneiderâs name came up in December 2012 when the âStephen Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communicationsâ was given to NASA Climatologist James Hansen. The ceremony by Climate ONE at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco united the two men who had been colleagues and friends for decades. Hansen remembered Schneiderâs courage when both were at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies as young men.
In TUC radioâs last program you heard Hansenâs acceptance speech. This â by extension is my credit to Schneider whose name on the press coverage of the award came up only as a quote: âa Stanford professor who diedâ. Nothing about his very unique and holistic view based on his expertise in biology and atmospheric science, his ability to describe how climate and life evolved together â and how that process is falling apart as humans are disturbing the earth. And nothing about his work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and his co-share of the Nobel Price with the IPCC.
I interviewed Stephen Schneider three times and consider each recording a treasure. Here today is my first meeting with Schneider in his office at Stanford in 1998. At that time he was the only scientist I could find who was willing to talk candidly on the record on climate change.
Dr. Stephen Schneider was professor in the Biological Sciences Department at Stanford University and former Department Director at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado. Schneider was also Coordinating Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (2007). Schneiderâs research included modeling of the atmosphere, climate change, and "the relationship of biological systems to global climate change. Schneider is the author of (2009) Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save the Earth's Climate; (1989) "Global Warming, are we entering the Greenhouse Century"; (1997) "Laboratory Earth " and with Randi Londer (1984) "The Co-evolution of Climate and Life" and, as co-author with Michael D. Mastrandrea (October 2010): "Preparing for Climate Change."