Stanford climate scientist Steve Schneider dead at 65

19 July 2010

(Updated 24 July 2010 9:42 a.m. EDT)
A scientist with a knack for communicating to the public dies Monday after a career that was both 'impressively long and all-too short.'

By Douglas Fischer

Daily Climate editor

Stanford climate scientist Stephen Schneider, one of the pre-eminent voices in the climate debate and a rare researcher who argued with wit and passion about the limits of climate science and the need for aggressive response, died Monday of an apparent heart attack while en route to London from a scientific conference in Stockholm. He was 65.

Over the course of his 40-year career, Schneider built the case that the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has dire consequences for the globe. He also studied the policy implications of human-caused global warming, publishing some 400 articles on climate change and society's response.

"Steve did for climate science what Carl Sagan did for astronomy," wrote Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory atmospheric scientist Benjamin Santer.

"The pathway he chose - to be a scientific leader, to be a leader in science communication, and to fully embrace the interdisciplinary nature of the climate change problem - was not an easy pathway," Santer added. "Yet without the courage of leaders like Stephen Schneider, the world would not be on the threshold of agreeing to radically change the way we use energy."
Responsible advocacy and popularization are not, in my view, oxymoronic - but it takes discipline to minimize trouble.
- Stephen Schneider, Mediarology

Schneider advised every U.S. president from Nixon to Obama on global warming and was involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since the beginning. But his contributions extend "far, far beyond his superb science," as Peter Gleick, president and co-founder of the Pacific Institute in California, noted.

"Schneider was perhaps the most important communicator on climate science issues to the public and to policymakers," Gleick wrote in a post on Huffington Post. "He taught us the importance of speaking up in defense of the integrity of science and the public interest."

Scientists, reporters and others from around the world reacted to the news. Here is a collection of remembrances and tributes.

To post your remembrance, or suggest the inclusion of one here, please email DailyClimate editor Douglas Fischer at dfischer [ at ] dailyclimate.org
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