Not-So-Nutty Professor
Professor Stephen Schneider’s Stanford University office looks as if it might implode if one more book is added to its already voluminous contents. Every shelf is filled. Piles of precariously balanced publications rise like man-made stalagmites from the floor. My camera crew staggers around the stacks and columns, somehow managing to set in place the gear needed for the interview. When at last we begin, the professor, a member of the university’s Department of Biological Sciences and a Senior Fellow with the Stanford Institute for International Studies, speaks with the conviction born of a man who has done his research. As the author of eight books on various aspects of global climate change, he knows his subject matter by heart.
“If I speak in front of a group of say, 500 people, I ask how many have ever had a fire in their house,” he says, staring intently into the camera. “Usually, a few hands go up. Then I ask how many have fire insurance. Every hand raises. “Why is it, then.’ I ask, ‘that you are willing to gamble with the planet’s one life support system when the odds are much greater that it will suffer the consequences of global warming than the chance that your house will burn down?’”
The professor has an unusual talent for an academician. He knows how to translate complex scientific data into terms that laymen can grasp. More than that, he has the ability to motivate his listeners to eschew despair for constructive action. On two aspects of the topic, he is uncompromising. First, the debate is over, he says. Or at least it should be.
“My colleagues are amazed when they hear someone say, ‘I don’t believe in global warming.’ Their reaction is the same as mine. ‘What do you mean you don’t believe? This isn’t a matter of belief, it’s a matter of evidence.’”
Then there is the matter of what the evidence reveals. Professor Schneider says this part of the debate is also no longer debatable.
“Global warming is the collective result of billions of individual decisions to use the atmosphere as an un-priced sewer to dump our wastes.”
There are, of course, “natural” factors that come into play in the rise of the earth’s atmospheric temperature by an average of 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the past few decades. Clearly, modernization is the primary culprit. The January 2007 conclusions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change confirm both of Schneider’s contentions. The Convention’s web site (http://unfccc.int/2860.php) makes it clear.
“Against the background of the most conclusive scientific evidence to date that the warming of the climate system is unequivocal and accelerating, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Yvo de Boer, calls for speedy and decisive international action to combat the phenomenon.”
A tad more bureaucratic in language than that used by Professor Schneider, but unambiguous. Instead of a mere 10 rise in average global temperatures, the Convention predicts increases between 30 degrees and 100 degrees. Those searching for hard data beyond the anecdotal can glean the troubling facts from the Convention’s scientific and verifiable documentation.
As dreary as it all sounds, Professor Schneider says there is reason for hope. While we cannot put the carbon and other greenhouse gas genies back into their industrial bottles, we can slow the rate of change.
“We can invent our way out of this problem exactly the way we invented our way into it. There will be new jobs and new businesses, if we have the collective political will to act.”
It is not inconsistent to address climate change and to improve the economic prospects of people everywhere, according to Schneider. The key words in the professor’s optimism are “political will.” As we all wait increasingly breathlessly for a political sea change, glaciers continue to melt, the oceans continue to rise, and storms grow more intense. All this as the planet moves closer each day to recalling our invitation to remain in stewardship.
“If I speak in front of a group of say, 500 people, I ask how many have ever had a fire in their house,” he says, staring intently into the camera. “Usually, a few hands go up. Then I ask how many have fire insurance. Every hand raises. “Why is it, then.’ I ask, ‘that you are willing to gamble with the planet’s one life support system when the odds are much greater that it will suffer the consequences of global warming than the chance that your house will burn down?’”
The professor has an unusual talent for an academician. He knows how to translate complex scientific data into terms that laymen can grasp. More than that, he has the ability to motivate his listeners to eschew despair for constructive action. On two aspects of the topic, he is uncompromising. First, the debate is over, he says. Or at least it should be.
“My colleagues are amazed when they hear someone say, ‘I don’t believe in global warming.’ Their reaction is the same as mine. ‘What do you mean you don’t believe? This isn’t a matter of belief, it’s a matter of evidence.’”
Then there is the matter of what the evidence reveals. Professor Schneider says this part of the debate is also no longer debatable.
“Global warming is the collective result of billions of individual decisions to use the atmosphere as an un-priced sewer to dump our wastes.”
There are, of course, “natural” factors that come into play in the rise of the earth’s atmospheric temperature by an average of 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the past few decades. Clearly, modernization is the primary culprit. The January 2007 conclusions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change confirm both of Schneider’s contentions. The Convention’s web site (http://unfccc.int/2860.php) makes it clear.
“Against the background of the most conclusive scientific evidence to date that the warming of the climate system is unequivocal and accelerating, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Yvo de Boer, calls for speedy and decisive international action to combat the phenomenon.”
A tad more bureaucratic in language than that used by Professor Schneider, but unambiguous. Instead of a mere 10 rise in average global temperatures, the Convention predicts increases between 30 degrees and 100 degrees. Those searching for hard data beyond the anecdotal can glean the troubling facts from the Convention’s scientific and verifiable documentation.
As dreary as it all sounds, Professor Schneider says there is reason for hope. While we cannot put the carbon and other greenhouse gas genies back into their industrial bottles, we can slow the rate of change.
“We can invent our way out of this problem exactly the way we invented our way into it. There will be new jobs and new businesses, if we have the collective political will to act.”
It is not inconsistent to address climate change and to improve the economic prospects of people everywhere, according to Schneider. The key words in the professor’s optimism are “political will.” As we all wait increasingly breathlessly for a political sea change, glaciers continue to melt, the oceans continue to rise, and storms grow more intense. All this as the planet moves closer each day to recalling our invitation to remain in stewardship.
No comments:
Post a Comment