Barack Obama has announced that physicist John Holdren and marine biologist Jane Lubchenco will take up two of the top scientific posts under his administration.
John Holdren will be Executive Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the president’s science adviser. Jane Lubchenco will be in charge at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which runs much of the government’s research into global warming.
This pair of appointments points to a major change in science policy from that under George W Bush, whose senior figures frequently dismissed advice from scientists, preferring to paint global warming as an imaginary leftie-plot.
UPDATE: There’s extensive coverage of this news today (Sunday) in front page stories in The Observer and Independent on Sunday, including the key earlier Energy Secretary appointment.
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15 Comments
Now those are two smart appointments: a brilliant move to give a marine biologist such high profile post given the importance of the oceans and just how thoroughly we’re wrecking them.
Do keep up Mark. Yes, we were all very pleased to hear that Obama seemed to be appointing some serious sciency people, back when Steven Chu was appointed. Sadly, that’s out of fashion now; as much as I’m glad Obama is taking the climate seriously, I’m much more interested, right now, in feeling a bit disappointed that gays seem to be the lucky people chosen to be thrown under the bus in the name of triangulation, what with the recent announcement that Rick Warren is to give the invocation at his inauguration.
May be out of fashion for you Andy, though I’m not sure that means no-one else is allowed to take an interest in science appointments any more 🙂 (indeed the story was headline news on the radio station I was listening to earlier today).
The Rick Warren story is interesting and very controversial. Fancy writing a piece for LDV on it?
Obama is already proving the naysayers wrong. It is not possible to say, as it might have been 6 months ago, that he is pretty words & nothing else. He has made respectable policy announcements & surrounded himself with some top people… a few regrettable types who had to be included for political reasons, notwithstanding.
Yes, I am confident that the cynics will be dumbfounded by Obama’s performance. I was expecting competent 1990s-style centrism but I think I will be setting my standards higher now.
Those, like me, who admire what Amerrica stands for & represents will be gladdened by the president-elect (& ashamed of our own & the EU’s failure to live up to it). Also, I can’t help being delighted that we’re getting our own back on the right-wing droolers who sneered 🙂
The climate is changing – always has and always will. Someone came up with the idea that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is causing warming. The media and masses loved the concept. The politicians loved it, because it was a basis for election. The scientists loved it because they could get lots of money for research grants. However, a few thousand scientists decided to test the hypotheses, and found it sadly lacking in any real evidence. In fact, the more evidence that was measured, the more it disproved the hypothesis. The cause was a combination of many other factors, yet to be defined. They yelled at the top of their voices to warn everyone. However, scientific speedhumps were not allowed to get in the way this runaway vehicle thundering along the path of economic ruin. Somewhere along the way, Obama jumped aboard. There is a fight to be fought, and it doesn’t matter if we have the wrong enemy, or indeed, any enemy at all. I just hope the vehicle runs out of fuel before toppling over a cliff of certain destruction.
On the other hand, he’s just chosen Rick Warren to give the opening prayer at his inauguration. Nice.
Mark: Thanks for suggesting it, but to be honest, I’m not sure I’d have much more to say about it than I just did.
R James: You’re talking drivel.
I would make the effort to back up my statements, but I don’t see why I should when you didn’t.
Isn’t it odd?
David Icke regards Cheney, the US oil industry and the people behind them as the greatest fount of evil in today’s world.
Yet he claims that global warming is an Illuminati scam aimed at giving government more control over our lives.
Strange then, that the Illuminati seem to agree with Icke.
Am I missing something?
Only the endless capacity of some people to believe whatever is necessary to legitimise their carrying on doing whatever they want to, regardless of other people.
Andy Hinton,
You’re just another person who says “I won’t bother backing it up”, because you can’t. I repeat, can anyone produce any evidence that increased CO2 has caused significent global warming? Remember CO2 has increased 5% in the past 10 years, yet there’s been no warming. The CO2 signature 10km above the tropics as predicted by the models can’t be found. There’s no evidence to suggest positive feedback is stronger than negative feedback from any greenhouse effect from CO2 (remember the IPCC models depend on positive feedback). Do I need to back these up, or are you at least up to date with all this?
I’m happy to preserve our resources, and reduce harmful pollution (which doesn’t include CO2 – an essential gas for plant life), but for the right reasons – global warming isn’t one of them.
Amusingly, Holdren appears to have been one of the fools who advised Paul Ehrlich on his famous losing bet with Julian Simon, so he has a track record of being alarmingly wrong on key issues. His background is in plasma physics, not climate.
Whereas Bishop Hill knows it all, & one day the world will regret having not listened to “sceptics” like him.
So will Clegg appoint Ben Goldacre of http://www.badscience.net/ as a scientific adviser?
This is a good look at John Holdren if you want to see his overview on climate.
http://usclimateaction.org/userfiles/flash/Holdren.html
It’s from the American Response to Climate Change Conference held at The Wild Center in the Adirondacks this June.