REUTERS/Beawiharta
Schneider reportedly died of a heart attack as his flight was landing in London, after a career that was both impressively long and far too short.
Since the early 1970s, the environment specialist had been doing leading-edge research on climate change, earning the respect of colleagues and also of journalists who could trust him to be, not an alarmist or a truth-stretcher, but ruthlessly honest about what we actually know and what we don’t know about the science.
For Michael Lemonick’s full appreciation, visit TIME’s Ecocentric blog.