Dr. Jane Lubchenco: The Stephen Schneider Award

Climate Denial, Education, and Politics

Naomi Oreskes, Professor of the History of Science, Harvard; Co-author, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco to Global Warming
Joe Romm, Founding Editor, Climate Progress; Author, Language Intelligence: Lessons on Persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
Eugenie Scott, Chair, National Center for Science Education

The story of human-caused climate disruption includes tales of distortion and deception that date to the Cold War. That history is told in a new documentary film from Jeff Skoll based on the book Merchants of Doubt. More recently, the battle for public opinion about global warming has also played out in conflicts over teaching climate in schools. In the political realm, most Americans accept climate change and want action, but that attitude is not reflected in Congress. This opening discussion will explore the messaging wars over climate with a historian, an educator and a leading communicator.

Climate One Minute Stories
 
Michael Mann, Professor of Meteorology, Penn State University; Author, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines
Ben Santer, Climate Researcher, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 
 
Dr. Jane Lubchenco: The Stephen Schneider Award
 
Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D. Ecology, Harvard; Former Administrator, NOAA; Former President of AAAS
Alex Bakir, Director of Business Development, Planet Labs
 
As droughts, fires and rising temperatures continue to make headlines, 2014 is on track to be another record year for extreme weather. No one has had a better view of raging weather than Jane Lubchenco. While she ran the NOAA, the country experienced nearly 800 tornadoes, suffered Super Storm Sandy and other major hurricanes, raging floods and tsunamis. Scientists say that burning fossil fuels increases the likelihood of such weird weather and is having devastating impacts on oceans. What does the latest science say about climate impacts on the U.S. economy and ecosystems? How did science become a political issue? We’ll discuss these questions and more with the person who led the creation of the most ambitious National Climate Assessment ever conducted.
 
Dr. Lubchenco will receive the $15,000 Stephen Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication, awarded each year in memory of the late Stanford scientist Stephen H. Schneider. Dr. Schneider was a founding father of modern climate science, a fearless communicator and the first member of the Climate One Advisory Council. He passed away in 2010. Shortly thereafter Climate One established the award to recognize people who create new understanding in the physical and social sciences and communicate their discoveries to a broad public. Previous recipients are Richard Alley of Penn State University, former NASA scientist James Hansen and Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank.

 

December 16, 2014