Professor Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, one of the world's top scientists on global change and the global warming debate, will speak at the University of Colorado at Boulder Feb. 17.
Schneider's talk will focus on the contrasting goals of the media, politicians and scientists in defining the probable extent and outcome of global climate change.
He will discuss the consensus arrived at by many scientists regarding climate change, the uncertainties involved and will put the media and political debate into the context of government policy responses. The talk is free and open to the public at 7 p.m. in room C250 of the Ramaley Biology Building.
A former researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Schneider is a biological sciences professor at Stanford, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Studies and professor of civil engineering. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1992 for integrating and interpreting the results of global change research through teaching, lectures, committee work, Congressional testimony, media appearances and research.
His current global change research includes climate change, global warming, food, climate and other public policy issues and the ecological and economic implications of climate change. He also is involved with modeling paleoclimates, the consequences of the greenhouse effect and the environmental consequences of nuclear war.
Schneider has served as a consultant to a number of federal agencies and White House staff during the Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton admistrations.
He received his doctorate in mechanical engineering and plasma physics from Columbia University in 1971, and studied the role of greenhouse gases and suspended particulate matter on climate as a post-doctoral fellow at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Greenbelt, Md.
Schneider was a member of NCAR's scientific staff from 1973 to 1996, co-founding a research effort called the Climate Project. He also founded the interdisciplinary journal, "Climate Change," in 1975 and continues to serve as its editor.