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In-Depth Information
director of the University of Maryland's Department of Atmospheric
Science and Meteorology, disagreed with both Schneider's science and
his popular approach. Landsberg was particularly critical of Schneider's
“use of climatic models for predictions to guide public policy.”
23
Quoting
widely respected global circulation modeler Joseph Smagorinsky, Lands-
berg reminded Schneider that “crude or premature estimates can be very
misleading in providing guidance or such far-reaching decisions and may
be far more damaging than no estimate at all.”
24
He emphasized Smagorin-
sky's warning that “we should be wary of basing broad national or inter-
national decisions on hand-waving arguments or back-of-the-envelope
calculations.”
25
Conservative scientists like Landsberg attacked Schneider primarily
for prematurely and recklessly venturing into policy and popular culture
with highly uncertain scientific conclusions, but they also objected to his
left-leaning policy proposals. In what Canadian climatologist F. Kenneth
Hare called “devastatingly naïve” policy recommendations, Schneider
advocated an array of progressive measures that would expand the size
and power of the federal government.
26
Schneider semiseriously proposed
a fourth branch of government, the “Truth and Consequences Branch,”
a scientific body charged with studying and providing information on
the long-term impacts of current policies and actions. He also called for
a government-funded U.S. grain reserve, various global environmental
treaties, an international inventory and collective control of nuclear mate-
rials, and a more equitable distribution of development aid and technology
between the First and Third Worlds. In short, he proposed a new national
and international order based on science and reason, but one also implic-
itly infused with his own internationalist liberal values.
“This is a risky game for a younger man to play,” cautioned Hare in
his otherwise laudatory review of
The Genesis Strategy
in the
Bulletin of the
American Meteorological Society,
“and he takes his professional life in his
hands when he does so. For there is a widely held view that scientists ought
to stay out of politics. . . . We are a conservative profession. . . . Schneider
will not lack for criticism and even abuse for having written this topic.”
27
As Hare and other sympathetic colleagues feared it would, Schneider's
book drew criticism from higher-ups at NCAR who, according to Schnei-
der, did not find his style appropriate for an NCAR research scientist.
28
His
appearances on television, and particularly on
The Tonight Show
, further