TIGER TV ONLINE REPORTER

Steven Schneider, professor of interdisciplinary environmental sciences at Stanford and author of several books, came to the University Tuesday to speak about climate change Tuesday night.

Schneider has devoted his entire career to studying the patterns in climate change and teaching courses on it at Stanford.

Schneider recently had a new book published, Science as a Contact Sport, in which he looks at handling climate change in terms of risk management rather than trying to completely eliminate the problem.

According to Schneider, it is science’s job to evaluate the risks of a situation and society’s job to decide which risks are most important and what we should be putting money towards. This is risk management said Schneider.

Schneider’s lecture focused on real scientific literacy.

“Having real scientific literacy is the ability to understand there are multiple outcomes and those outcomes are shaped in a bell curve,” Schneider said.

The bell curve for climate change has to do with the estimated amount of degrees the temperature should rise in the next few years. At the top of the bell curve is 2 degrees to 2.5 degrees. Then at other ends of the spectrum is less than .5 degrees and more than four to five degrees.

Schneider said that not every outcome of climate change is bad. For example because parts of Greenland have melted the shipping industry has benefited from it because new routes have been created that are shorter and more cost effective. The tourism industry in Greenland has also boomed. Last year 75,000 tourists went to Greenland, said Schneider.

On the other hand, people who own businesses on the coastline are having serious concerns. If the sea level rises anymore coastal infrastructure could have problems with flooding in less they move back. Moving back whole city lines would cost billions of dollars according to Schneider.

All of this is important but why should it matter to an average college student?

“This is their future we’re looking at,” Schneider said.

Here in the south it is a definite concern because of the hurricanes. According to Schneider it is likely storms will intensify even more with further climate change. For us it is important to evaluate our adaptive capacity with structures such as the levies and sea walls.

“It will be decades at least before we can completely settle climate change,” Schneider said.