SAN FRANCISCO — Stephen Schneider, a Stanford University scientist who served on the international research panel on global warming that shared the 2007 Nobel Prize with former Vice President Al Gore, has died. He was 65.
Schneider died of an apparent heart attack Monday while on a flight from Stockholm to London, Stanford officials said.
Schneider studied climate change for decades and wrote a number of books charting its effects on wildlife and ecosystems in the United States, and later chronicled its effect on the nation’s politics and policy. He advised every presidential administration from Nixon to Obama.
Schneider was an influential and, at times, combative public voice in arguing the manmade causes of climate change, and appeared on news and science television programs, wrote articles and blogged.
In 1992, he received a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation for his research.
“Steve, more than anything, whether you agreed with him or not, forced us to confront this real possibility of climate change,” said Jeff Koseff, a colleague at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment.
Schneider also was a leader in research seeking to quantify future effects of climate change on various areas — from the insurance industry to farming — to help guide policy decisions, said Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences.
