During the 1980s, Schneider emerged as a leading public advocate of sharp reductions of greenhouse gas emissions to combat global warming.

In 2006 Professor Schneider was an Adelaide Thinker in Residence advising the South Australian Government of Premier Mike Rann on climate change and renewable energy policies.

An annual award for outstanding climate science communication was created in Schneider's honor after his death, by the Commonwealth Club of California.

This paper used a one-dimensional radiative transfer model to examine the competing effects of cooling from aerosols and warming from CO2.

If this increased rate of injection of particulate matter in the atmosphere should raise the present background opacity by a factor of 4, our calculations suggest a decrease in global temperature by as much as 3.5 K. Such a large decrease in the average temperature of Earth, sustained over a period of few years, is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age.

In a January 2002 Scientific American article, he wrote: I readily confess a lingering frustration: uncertainties so infuse the issue of climate change that it is still impossible to rule out either mild or catastrophic outcomes, let alone provide confident probabilities for all the claims and counterclaims made about environmental problems.

Even the most credible international assessment body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has refused to attempt subjective probabilistic estimates of future temperatures.

[11]In 1989, Schneider addressed the challenge scientists face trying to communicate complex, important issues without adequate time during media interviews.

And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change.

He documented his struggle to conquer the condition, including applying his own knowledge of science to design his own treatment regime, in a self-published 2005 book, The Patient from Hell.