Posted on 12/19/2008 7:22:06 PM PST by Free ThinkerNY
It looks like president-elect Obama will name John P. Holdren as his science advisor. Holdren is a professor of environmental policy at Harvard and former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. As Ron Bailey points out, he has been an activist on the ecological left and no friend of free markets. Perhaps more striking is his activism well beyond his own academic specialty, arguing, for instance, that scientists have a responsibility to advance the cause of the elimination of all nuclear weapons and seeking controls on population growth. And he didn’t say all this in the 1970s either—have a good look at the speech he delivered when he assumed the leadership of the AAAS in 2006. It describes a fundamentally activist liberal mentality about the very purpose of science and its place in our kind of society. My favorite part of that speech is his call for ending population growth which, in the published text of the speech, is accompanied by this footnote:
This was the key insight in Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb (Ballantine, New York, 1968), as well as one of those in Harrison Brown's prescient earlier book, The Challenge of Man's Future (Viking, New York, 1954). The elementary but discomfiting truth of it may account for the vast amount of ink, paper, and angry energy that has been expended trying in vain to refute it.
The Population Bomb was the book in which Ehrlich predicted that “in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death,” because all the world’s resources were running out while population was growing out of control, and there was simply no way we could sustain our civilization at modern levels of consumption and growth. Just about every one of the book’s predictions has proven wrong, and its empirical claims and methods have not held up well under later scholarly scrutiny. It certainly made a useful political point for the left, though.
I wonder if all those who complained about the supposed “politicization of science” by the Bush administration will raise worries about Holdren…don’t you?
Yet another kook joins the Osama administration. Great.
One more nutcase to the administration.
It could be rationally argued that Al Gore would have been a more moderate alarmist as an appointment to Obama's Science post.
I notice that his graduate degrees are in aerospace engineering and particle physics. Not ecology. Not environmental science. Not meteorology. Not climatology. Not anything relating to "environmental policy". Must be nice to grab a full professorship in a field in which you have no formal training. Myself, I've always liked taking up space. Maybe they'll make me Professor of Astronomy? I'd be just as qualified as he is.
I bet the guy has a fluff degree. Otherwise he would be waiving it around proudly. Some watered down degree that kinda sounds like it's scientific, but really isn't?
Anyone have a bio on him? Not some Wikipedia self ingratiating nonsense.
“John Holdren, who holds MS and PhD degrees in aerospace engineering and plasma physics from MIT and Stanford, is a specialist in energy technology and policy, global climate change, nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, and science and technology policy. He is a former president of the..... “
OK a real science guy that lives in acadamia. One of them.
LOL,
I noticed that too. The guy’s an expert on everything that’s a contemporary theme: global warming, nuclear non-proliferation......... If tomorrow acid rain makes a come back in the news, I’m sure he’ll be an immediate expert on that too.
People can be extremely book smart; yet, I wouldn’t want many of them setting policy.
Noam Chomsky is a genius in the area of linguistics. He’s also a complete whackjob.
This is certainly no surprise... but it is still VERY INFURIATING!!! As a NOAA Meteorologist I have very few colleagues who believe man is causing global warming. Of course they are all liberals.
Data? Data?? WE DON’T NEED NO STINKING DATA???? Never mind the fact that temps have not risen in recent years and that we are likely headed towards a cooling period.
Hannity is so fond of saying that “journalism is dead”... well real science is also dead. And that is far worse than journalism dieing because journalism can’t set public policy.. only report on it where the death of science means the Obamanazis can try to pass ANYTHING with Queen Pelosi and King Reid going along.. if not pushing it.
In a yahoo article about the appointment
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081220/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama)
the Messiah states:
“Because the truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing resources — it’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology,” he said. “I could not have a better team to guide me in this work.”
What a hypocrite.
ANY thing these morons come up with to combat global warming will do two things:
1. nothing to reduce temps since the sun is responsible
2. destroy the economy.
I know this fellow from many years past. He recruited me to join his academic program when he was still at Berkeley. At the time I was too naive to know better but I instead went elsewhere and got an aerospace engineering M.S. rather than a worthless M.S. in environmental B.S.
Of course, no doubt, those who did study with this idiot think they made exactly the right decision.
By the way, he is a global warming pimp who made news last year claiming that the UN should enact a global income tax to adjust wealth because of global warming and other environmental issues. We need to be careful because this notion might get more publicity now that he's on the Messiah's staff.
Have you noticed that the topic of nuclear weapons was moot until recent? For 10 years our nuclear arsenal concerned few people, now suddenly with all these liberals on the horizon these late 70s themes are making a big comeback of sorts. I'm waiting for people to start chaining themselves to silo fences, or laying themselves across roads blocking the transport of nukes again.
One can hear Joan Baez in the background when listening to the rhetoric of today. One can smell the distinct sweet aroma of liberalism with its defeatism, emasculated men, secularism, and personal minimalist dogma that demands people subordinate themselves to a state.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQr9ezr8UeA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUMwQcMVmnc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhpKmQCCwB8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRGru2CPC4E (A great one, in his own words)
Obama is simply a well spoken black guy that looks clean. He met the minimal standards; born American, over 35, and articulate (implied), unlike Jesse Jackson or some other black leaders that the Democrats pulled up from under some rock earlier. Other than that, he's basically a throwback to the hippie era. Seriously: make love not war, nukes, he inhaled and snorted (ha ha ha...), free love, talk to your enemies..... He's the advocate of the hippie agenda in a suit and he packages it up nicely holding his chin high, but essentially when you listen to what his ideas are, where he's coming from, his so called “change” amounts to things tried many years ago.
John P. Holdren... has been an activist on the ecological left and no friend of free markets... activism well beyond his own academic specialty, arguing, for instance, that scientists have a responsibility to advance the cause of the elimination of all nuclear weapons and seeking controls on population growth.Thanks Free ThinkerNY.
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