Inside FRONTLINE Climate Change: Then and Now

October 14, 2008

“There's plenty of really, really dangerous damage we can prevent. Let's get on with it.”
Stephen Schneider, Climatologist, Stanford University

When FRONTLINE first looked into climate change nearly a decade ago, scientists were still divided on how large a part man played in global warming. At the time, Stanford biologist Stephen Schneider was among those arguing most forcefully that human activity was a major factor.

Today, that argument is largely settled -- we've met the culprit, and he's us. As for Professor Schneider, he remains a respected voice in the next, and equally contentious, phase of the debate on climate change, namely, what are we going to do about it?

Does Schneider see the issue differently today than he did eight years ago? As it happens, there's a benchmark -- the professor shows up in both HEAT, and in What's Up with the Weather, the program we did in 2000, in partnership with NOVA. To compare and contrast, see this interview from the earlier program, and this one from HEAT.