Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
stoked resentment. Adversaries at NCAR later tried to deny Schneider's
bid for promotion to senior scientist based, at least in part, on their distaste
for his popular science. Schneider maintained his favored status among
well-respected and progressively minded scientific leaders at NCAR, such
as William Kellogg and Walter Orr Roberts; but as a colleague recalls,
“even at NCAR, Steve was pretty isolated for a while because of that
book.”
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climate, food, and the environment
Internal disputes over “good science” and the limits of scientific advocacy
did not play out in a vacuum. Behind the internal disputes that alienated
Schneider lay a familiar anxiety about the relationship between climate
science and environmental advocacy. In the 1970s, climate scientists' advo-
cacy for more research on global climate change developed in tandem with
an international environmental movement focused on global environmen-
tal degradation, and it was this international movement that provided the
context for scientists' forays into environmental politics. In the late 1960s
and early 1970s, scientists who studied elements of climate and weather
sought to apply their basic research to a global environmental crisis that
included practical problems of energy use, agricultural waste, industrial
pollution, and ecological change. It was these types of practical issues— or
a subset related specifically to climatic variability— that most concerned
climate scientists in the 1970s.
At the time, the most important practical problem related to the climate
and climatic change was food supply. Over the course of the 1960s, the
world's population had continued to grow at an alarming rate, but techno-
logical developments in agriculture allowed the world to provide for these
new inhabitants. The “Green Revolution”— the application of technologi-
cal advancements in agricultural science to developing-world food produc-
tion— alongside generally favorable weather, made feeding new mouths
possible.
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In the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, a series of climatic
and meteorological anomalies led to alarming food shortages. In the Afri-
can Sahel region, four consecutive years of drought produced collapses in
the regional food supply. The shortages resulted in large-scale migrations,
social unrest, and starvation. In 1972, the Indian monsoon came a week
late, stressing a food infrastructure already operating on a thin margin. A
