Nuclear Winter Revisited

Tuesday, April 10, 2007
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
(Pacific)
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Speaker: 
  • Stephen H. Schneider

Stephen Schneider is the Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, co-director at CESP, co-director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources, and professor by courtesy in the Department of Civil Engineering.

Schneider's current global change research interests include food and climate and other environmental and science public policy issues; ecological and economic implications of climatic change; integrated assessment of global change; climatic modeling of paleoclimates and of human impacts on climate, e.g., carbon dioxide "greenhouse effect" and environmental consequences of nuclear war. He is also interested in advancing public understanding of science and in improving formal environmental education in primary and secondary schools.

He has served as a consultant to federal agencies and-or White House staff in the Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations. In 1998, he became a foreign member of the Academia Europaea, Earth and Cosmic Sciences Section. Schneider was elected chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences Section on Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Sciences (1999-2001) and was elected to membership in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in April 2002. He was a member of the scientific staff of NCAR from 1973-1996, where he co-founded the Climate Project.

Schneider was honored in 1992 with a MacArthur Fellowship for his ability to integrate and interpret the results of global climate research. He also received, in 1991, the American Association for the Advancement of Science/Westinghouse Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology, for furthering public understanding of environmental science and its implications for public policy.

He has authored or co-authored over 200 scientific papers, proceedings, legislative testimonies, edited books and book chapters; some 120 book reviews, editorials, published newspaper and magazine interviews and popularizations. In 1975, he founded the interdisciplinary journal Climatic Change and continues to serve as its editor. He is also the editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather and author of The Genesis Strategy: Climate and Global Survival; The Coevolution of Climate and Life; Global Warming: Are We Entering the Greenhouse Century? and Laboratory Earth: The Planetary Gamble We Can't Afford to Lose, among others. He is a frequent contributor to commercial and non-commercial print and broadcast media on climate and environmental issues.

Schneider received his BS and MS in mechanical engineering at Columbia University and his PhD in mechanical engineering and plasma physics from Columbia University in 1971.