Likely Obama Appointee Includes Climate Change Alarmist John Holdren

On the heels of creating a new position for the scandal-plagued and therefore, presumably, unconfirmable Carol Browner to lord over Senate-confirmed cabinet officials in pursuit of the global-warming agenda, the former employer of leading global warming alarmist Dr. John Holdren reports that he “appears to be President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for science adviser.”

At least this will require Senate confirmation. The Senate should consider certain factors, including those detailed in the new book Red Hot Lies: How global Warming alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed.

Although touted as a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, Holdren was admitted through a back door called the “temporary nominating group”, a process which appears designed and has certainly been exercised to gain entry for large numbers of environmental alarmists who, it is fair to presume from this exception, would not gain election through the normal channel.

Also typically styled as a professor at Harvard, Holdren is primarily employed by the Woods Hole Research Center (an environmental advocacy group, not to be confused with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution which is a research organization — both discussed [later in the book]). Despite his outside affiliations and activism he typically instead carries the Harvard tag, lending the institution’s academic prestige to his environmentalist advocacy, thereby embodying a growing tactic of environmentalists using credentials from an academic perch where they may not be all that active to push an activist agenda through other, pressure group perches where they are in fact quite busy.

The vocal Holdren predicted in the mid-1980s that climate-related catastrophes might kill as many as one billion people before the year 2020 but now brushes off inquiries about such failed catastrophism while continuing to sound a similar alarm. He is a longtime collaborator with none other than failed prognosticator of doom Paul Ehrlich, with whom he collaborated to hold a “Cassandra Conference” in 1988 (Cassandra is the lass from Greek mythology whose prophecies were always true and always ignored).

As I note in Red Hot Lies, Holdren’s name also pops up in various, largely successful efforts to elevate taxpayer funding of the global warming industry. Finally, note that Holdren’s recent record includes being enlisted by Scientific American in its clumsy effort to smear and otherwise discredit Bjørn Lomborg.

With a Holdren nomination, the President-Elect will have made his intentions unmistakably clear. This will unleash a policy battle royale and, fortunately, likely the ultimate defeat of the alarmist agenda.