Stephen H. Schneider: A Major Passing
[Via Cliff Mass Weather Blog]
Stephen Schneider and Me in 1974 at NCAR, Boulder ,CO
This is going to be a more personal blog than normal and a sad one for me. Yesterday, Stephen H. Schneider, a very prominent climatologist and someone who had a major impact on my career passed away. Steve was one of the key individuals in bringing the issue of global warming to the world’s attention. There are few scientists who are technically at the top of their field, accomplished communicators of science to the public, and conversant with public policy: Steve was one of the them. He was a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, a winner of the MacArthur “Genius” award, a leading participant of the IPCC deliberations on the science and implications of global warming, and a co-winner of a Nobel Prize. Author of a half-dozen major books and hundreds of research papers.
But as important as his accomplishments were that is not what I want to stress here. Rather, I will discuss my personal account of interactions with him and the major impact he had on my career.
After my junior year as an undergraduate at Cornell I was accepted in a summer internship in scientific computing at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). A major part of the summer was working with an NCAR scientist and I was assigned at random to Steve–an amazingly lucky break for me– not that I knew it at the time. He was fairly new at NCAR, having recently graduated from Columbia in plasma physics, and had moved into atmospheric sciences and particularly climate.
Steve gave me a desk in his office and took me under his wing (see picture above). My project was to reprogram a global climate model he had developed and I dedicated myself to that task, staying up many nights until 2 or 3 AM in the morning. And I loved it. Steve made me feel like an equal and we spent hours talking that summer, both in the office and at social stops at his home. One major topic–the essential role of the public scientist and of communicating science to the public. Even then he was becoming the “go-to-guy” for the national press on climate matters, and the media was constantly calling. Listening to him deal with them taught me so much on being an effective communicator.
The results of that summer work led to a paper on the influence of sunspots, volcanic eruptions and CO2 on climate (published in Science Magazine)–still my number one cited publication. We kept in touch after that program and he invited me to come out to work with for a second productive summer, with the work leading to our second paper, mainly on volcanic eruptions and climate.
His influence on a young impressionable future scientist was powerful–I become intrigued by subject of climate and importantly became convinced that scientists must put considerable energy into communicating their subject to the public for a whole collection of reasons.
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Cliff provides a tremendous insight into why so many of us love science. It is not simply because we get to understand Nature, to gather facts, to publish papers. While important, the real thrill comes from interacting with other people who are just as enthusiastic and who are able to excite us in our work.
Scientists are people and like people, we respond to others we work with. In science, though, there are people who are really, really amazing, having the ability to act in ways that smack of Superman. It is not simply their ability to be incredibly smart on a certain topic; there are millions of smart people.
It is their ability to be brilliant on many topics. And to make others WANT to be brilliant also.
The first true representation of this type for me was Richard Feynman at CalTech. He was simply exciting to be around because his giddy interest in understanding infected everything and everyone around him. But I found many others at CalTech who could do the same thing – Richard Dickerson, Harold Grey, Carter Mead, Ed Lewis, Lee Hood.
When I went out into the research world, I kept running across these types, ones whose view of the world was Cyclopean – as in stature, not number of eyes – compared to mine. But they wanted me to try and follow along.
I did not have much personal knowledge of Steve Schneider. I heard him talk once and ran across his name over the years.
But I can tell from the sorts of descriptions of others just what sort of scientist he was. I am truly sad that he is no longer here to help us all move forward.
We are all better because people like him exist.
