The President’s Science and where he gets it

There are a lot of people who comment on climate change and global warming, both in blogs and in the com-media (as Dr. Krauthammer refers to the Media, most of whom are, indeed, comedic – if you find arrogant stupidity funny).

I’m sorry to say that the Obama Administration’s highest ranking authority on matters of Science, Dr. John Holdren, is a disgrace to his position as Chair of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). I say so in defense – not that he needs my defense – of Prof Roger Pielke Jr, a professor at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Prof Pielke maintains an online blog: http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/

which I commend to you as a reliable source of information. Prof Pielke testified in Summer 2013, with other scientists, before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. In February, 2014, Dr. Holdren contradicted Prof Pielke’s testimony to the committee, dismissing Prof Pielke as being “…outside the scientific mainstream” as regards a link between climate change and extreme weather. Pielke denied such a link, a link often claimed by Holdren and President Obama himself. During his February golf trip to California, President Obama directly blamed the drought there on climate change. As Pielke says:

The bottom line here is that this is an extremely poor showing by the president’s science adviser. It is fine for experts to openly disagree. But when a political appointee uses his position not just to disagree on science or policy but to seek to delegitimize a colleague, he has gone too far.

It’s amusing that Holdren was previously close to Teresa and John Kerry. I guess we know where Secretary Kerry gets his knowledge of environmental policy. It’s also amusing to read John Holdren’s opinion from February, 2009, that because of climate change, we were going to lose the ice cover on the Arctic Ocean – all year:

…if you lose the summer sea ice, there are phenomena that could lead you not so very long thereafter to lose the winter sea ice as well. And if you lose that sea ice year round, it’s going to mean drastic climatic change all over the hemisphere.

Such is the environmental expertise informing the Obama Administration – stupid and dishonest.