Stephen Schneider Quotes

We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have... Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.

We are not just scientists, but human beings as well. Like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.

In the early 1970s, the northern hemisphere appeared to have been cooling at an alarming rate. There was frequent talk of a new ice age. Books and documentaries appeared, hypothesizing a snowblitz or sporting titles such as The Cooling. Even the CIA got into the act, sponsoring several meetings and writing a controversial report warning of threats to American security from the potential collapse of Third World Governments in the wake of climate change.

Mark Twain had it backwards. Nowadays everybody is doing something about the weather, but nobody is talking about it.

The dramatic importance of climate changes to the world’s future has been dangerously underestimated by many, often because we have been lulled by modern technology into thinking we have conquered nature. This well-written book points out in clear language that the climatic threat could be as awesome as any we might face, and that massive world-wide actions to hedge against that threat deserve immediate consideration.

We are 25 years too late. If the object is to avoid dangerous change, we've already had it. The object now is to avoid really dangerous change.

The fact that the Antarctica is beginning to look more like it's part of the story, as well.

Even hating myself I still think I'm better than you.

This 'double ethical bind' we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.

I only lie for sex or money or to practice for when I need to lie for sex or money.

Science usually operates in sort of three modes, things that are well established, we know what we're talking about, more highly confident. There are competing explanations, we have a pretty good idea, but we're not sure. And then things are speculative.

There is a strength of conviction that can only come from being 100% wrong.

Scientists are stuck in this belief that we tell people probabilities, not absolute answers.

I wish I could blame my failure on my integrity & refusal to play bullshit games. But the truth is I just play them really badly.

The amount of electricity that has been saved in spite of Vice President Cheney saying that efficiency is only a moral virtue ... and that you need increased supply like ANWR-is two ANWRs worth of energy.