CLIMATE NEWS AND VIEWS

Our climate News and Views page is dedicated to Dr. Steve Schneider, who died this year in the midst of a celebrated career at Stanford as climatologist and public spokesman for science and the truth of global warming. In addition to his 40 years of leadership in researching, interpreting and acting with the science, he was a friend and mentor to World View of Global Warming from the very beginning. Here are the final words of a caption Steve wrote for my exhibit in 2009-10 at the American Assn for the Advancement of Science:

"Now, because of our population, how we get and use energy, conduct our agriculture and make use of the land, the human effect on climate is measurable and strong. Human activities have driven CO2 in the atmosphere to the highest level in at least 800,000 years, and global temperature is climbing out of the range in which human civilization evolved over the past several thousand years. Sea level rise, water availability, ecosystems, weather extremes and other systems are also moving out of the range of variability that we and many other species are used to. That process could be reversed before exceeding temperature levels of the past 10,000 years if prompt actions to curtail the emissions that create this warming were to become a global political priority." -- Stephen H. Schneider, November 2, 2009