Jeff Schweitzer (born 1957) is an American non-fiction author, scientist, political commentator and proponent of scientific skepticism. His published works are largely devoted to the interrelationship between politics, morality, religion and science. He is a blogger for The Huffington Post.
Schweitzer was born and raised in Southern California. Schweitzer began his scientific career in the fields of marine biology and neurophysiology. He earned his Ph.D. from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. [1] Schweitzer joined the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California, Irvine in 1984. [2] [ failed verification ] While at U.C. Irvine, Schweitzer was selected in 1986 to participate in the Science, Engineering and Diplomacy Fellowship program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1991 Schweitzer was appointed as the chief environmental officer at the State Department's Agency for International Development. [3]
Schweitzer is the founder of the multi-agency International Cooperative Biodiversity Group Program, a U.S. Government effort to promote the conservation of biodiversity through rational economic use of natural resources. In 1992 he was appointed to the position of assistant director for International Affairs in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy [4] which is an Executive Office of the President of the United States.
Schweitzer was responsible for providing scientific and technological policy advice and analysis directly to Vice President Al Gore and the director of the OSTP. He worked with President Bill Clinton’s cabinet and 22 U.S. Government technical agencies, and with countries throughout the world, in biology, physics, chemistry, geophysics, agriculture, oceanography and marine sciences. He helped establish the permanent Global Forum on Science and Technology at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [5] to promote greater international scientific collaboration.
Schweitzer identifies with the moderate left wing of the Democratic Party. According to Schweitzer, “History has shown that Democrats offer stronger support for science than Republicans." [6]
His book, Vote To Save The Planet, was a collection of short articles intended to inform voters about the benefits of electing Barack Obama/Joe Biden and the disadvantages of electing John McCain/Sarah Palin in the 2008 Presidential Election. His criticisms of McCain/Palin were also a major focus of his Huffington Post articles during that time.
Schweitzer contends that the GOP is hostile to environmental regulation, and claims that Republicans and Tea Party enthusiasts have recklessly and irresponsibly attacked reasonable attempts to clean our air. [7]
Schweitzer describes himself as a rationalist. He rejects the use of the term atheist, which means without god, because "we cannot be without something that does not exist". He further rejects the idea that his belief system can be defined as the negative of another belief system. According to Schweitzer, "The world should be divided between rationalists and 'arationalists'". [8]
Schweitzer argues that war, overpopulation, poverty, destruction of the environment, intolerance, and indifference to the needs and rights of other life forms all result, to a large extent, from an obsolete religious moral code. Schweitzer claims that the very foundation of our moral code is fundamentally flawed; that the current code of ethics predominant in modern societies, shaped largely by divine command theory (most religion, especially Western religion), is based on false promises of eternal salvation or threats of damnation, not on a morality inherent to the human condition.
Schweitzer and his wife, Sally Schweitzer, live in Central Texas, moving there following his service at the White House. Schweitzer is a pilot who owns and operates his personal aircraft. He and his wife Sally are avid scuba divers, often travelling the globe to explore new wildlife.
Oceanography, also known as oceanology, sea science and ocean science, is the scientific study of the oceans. It is an Earth science, which covers a wide range of topics, including ecosystem dynamics; ocean currents, waves, and geophysical fluid dynamics; plate tectonics and seabed geology; and fluxes of various chemical substances and physical properties within the ocean and across its boundaries. These diverse topics reflect multiple disciplines that oceanographers utilize to glean further knowledge of the world ocean, including astronomy, biology, chemistry, climatology, geography, geology, hydrology, meteorology and physics. Paleoceanography studies the history of the oceans in the geologic past. An oceanographer is a person who studies many matters concerned with oceans, including marine geology, physics, chemistry, and biology.
Harald Ulrik Sverdrup was a Norwegian oceanographer and meteorologist. He served as director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Norwegian Polar Institute.
William Aaron Nierenberg was an American physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project and was director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography from 1965 through 1986. He was a co-founder of the George C. Marshall Institute in 1984.
Charles David Keeling was an American scientist whose recording of carbon dioxide at the Mauna Loa Observatory confirmed Svante Arrhenius's proposition (1896) of the possibility of anthropogenic contribution to the greenhouse effect and global warming, by documenting the steadily rising carbon dioxide levels. The Keeling Curve measures the progressive buildup of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere.
Roger Randall Dougan Revelle was a scientist and scholar who was instrumental in the formative years of the University of California, San Diego and was among the early scientists to study anthropogenic global warming, as well as the movement of Earth's tectonic plates. UC San Diego's first college is named Revelle College in his honor.
Project Mohole was an attempt in the early 1960s to drill through the Earth's crust to obtain samples of the Mohorovičić discontinuity, or Moho, the boundary between the Earth's crust and mantle. The project was intended to provide an earth science complement to the high-profile Space Race. While such a project was not feasible on land, drilling in the open ocean was more feasible, because the mantle lies much closer to the sea floor.
Walter Heinrich Munk was an American physical oceanographer. He was one of the first scientists to bring statistical methods to the analysis of oceanographic data. Munk worked on a wide range of topics, including surface waves, geophysical implications of variations in the Earth's rotation, tides, internal waves, deep-ocean drilling into the sea floor, acoustical measurements of ocean properties, sea level rise, and climate change. His work won awards including the National Medal of Science, the Kyoto Prize, and induction to the French Legion of Honour.
The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is a department of the United States government, part of the Executive Office of the President (EOP), established by United States Congress on May 11, 1976, with a broad mandate to advise the President on the effects of science and technology on domestic and international affairs.
Sallie Watson "Penny" Chisholm is an American biological oceanographer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is an expert in the ecology and evolution of ocean microbes. Her research focuses particularly on the most abundant marine phytoplankton, Prochlorococcus, that she discovered in the 1980s with Rob Olson and other collaborators. She has a TED talk about their discovery and importance called "The tiny creature that secretly powers the planet".
Paul Halpern is an American author and Professor of Physics at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia.
Ralph Arnold Lewin was an Anglo-American biologist, known as "the father of green algae genetics". He was born in London and later moved to America. He also was known as a poetry author.
Charles F. Kennel is an American plasma physicist and former Associate Administrator of NASA. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and won the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics in 1997. In 2009, he was advertised by NASA Watch as a potential pick by Barack Obama as the next NASA Administrator.
Henry William Menard was an American geologist.
Kenneth A. Farley is a noble gas isotope geochemist and Professor of Geochemistry at the California Institute of Technology. He holds the W. M. Keck Foundation professorship and was the chairman of the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at Caltech from 2004 to 2014. Farley specializes in the study of the accumulation of cosmic dust in seafloor sediments through analysis of the presence of Helium-3, and in the isotopic composition of mid-oceanic and volcanic island basalts. Farley earned a B.S. in chemistry at Yale University in 1986 and his Ph.D. in geochemistry at the University of California, San Diego in 1991 under the guidance of Scripps Institution of Oceanography geochemist Harmon Craig. In 2000, to recognize the innovative and potentially beneficial nature of his research, Farley was awarded the National Academy of Science Award for Initiatives in Research. He is a member of both the National Academy of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Since 2013 he has been project scientist for NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission.
Wheeler James North, born in San Francisco, California, was a marine biologist and environmental scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the California Institute of Technology. He is best known for his pioneering work to understand the ecology of California’s coastal kelp forests, and pioneering work in biomass fuels and the sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Christopher F. Chyba is an American astrobiologist and Professor of Astrophysical Sciences and International Affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.
Richard Joel Wassersug was an Honorary professor in the Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences at the University of British Columbia. He was also an adjunct professor in the Department of Medical Neuroscience at Dalhousie University with a cross appointment in the Department of Psychology. In addition, he is an adjunct professor at The Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health & Society (ARCSHS), La Trobe University.
Judith Munk was an American artist and designer associated with Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She was inducted into the San Diego Women's Hall of Fame posthumously, in 2008.
Sethunathasarma Krishnaswami (1945–2015), popularly known as Swami, was an Indian geochemist and an honorary scientist at the geosciences division of the Physical Research Laboratory. He was known for his studies on low temperature geochemistry and was an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy, The World Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India, American Geophysical Union, Geochemical Society and European Association of Geochemistry (2003). The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Earth, atmosphere, ocean and planetary Sciences in 1984.
George G. Shor Jr. was an American marine geophysicist. His entire career was at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. He began his career working with the Mohole Project, an ambitious project that attempted to drill to the Mohorovičić discontinuity from deep-ocean regions.