Michael Oppenheimer
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Michael Oppenheimer is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School and the Department of Geosciences at Princeton University. Prior to joining Princeton he was Chief Scientist with Environmental Defense, where he managed the Global and Regional Atmosphere Program. Prior to his position at Environmental Defense, Dr. Oppenheimer served as Atomic and Molecular Astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Lecturer on Astronomy at Harvard University. He received an S.B. in chemistry from M.I.T., a Ph.D. in chemical physics from the University of Chicago, and pursued post-doctoral research at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
His interests include science and policy of the atmosphere, particularly climate change and its impacts. His research explores the potential effects of global warming, including the effects of warming on atmospheric chemistry; on ecosystems and the nitrogen cycle; on ocean circulation; and on the ice sheets in the context of defining “dangerous anthropogenic interference” with the climate system. Alternative approaches to decision-making on problems of global change and the role of the precautionary principle inform his investigations.
He has served as a lead author of the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and has authored more than 60 articles published in professional journals and is co-author (with Robert H. Boyle) of a 1990 book, Dead Heat: The Race Against The Greenhouse Effect.
Oppenheimer has appeared with actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio on The Oprah Winfrey Show, as well as other television programs such as the 2006 Discovery Channel show entitled Global Warming: What You Need to Know, with Tom Brokaw. Oppenheimer appeared on the 12 February 2007 episode of The Colbert Report.
