Science reports:
Strong indications are that President-elect Barack Obama has picked physicist John Holdren to be the president's science adviser.
A top adviser to the Obama campaign and international expert on energy and climate, Holdren would bolster Obama's team in those areas. Both are crowded portfolios. Obama has already created a new position to coordinate energy issues in the White House staffed by well-connected Carol Browner, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and nominated a Nobel-prize winning physicist, Steve Chu, to head the Department of Energy. That could complicate how the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which Holdren will run, will manage energy and environmental policy. "OSTP will have to be redefined in relation to these other centers of formulating policy," says current White House science adviser Jack Marburger.
Holdren had been planning to attend a staff meeting this morning with colleagues at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where he heads the technology and science program. But instead, he flew today to Chicago to meet with the transition team and prepare for the announcement; initial plans are to release the official news of the appointment on a weekly radio program that Obama records and will be broadcast on Saturday. The transition office declined to comment.
Holdren is well known for his work on energy, climate change, and nuclear proliferation. Trained in fluid dynamics and plasma physics, Holdren branched out into policy early in his career. He has led the Woods Hole Research Center for the past 3 years and served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (which publishes ScienceInsider) in 2006.
—Eli Kintisch
Friday, December 19, 2008
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1 John Holdren is a professor at Harvard, but is **primarily** employed by the Woods Hole Research Center.
ReplyDelete2 The Woods Hole Research Center is an environmental advocacy group, not to be confused with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
3 From Chris Horner's Red Hot Lies:
[T]he vocal Holdren, who predicted in the mid-1980s that climate-related catastrophes might kill as many as one billion people before the year 2020 but now brushes away such failed catastrophism with: “That the impacts of global climate disruption may not become the dominant sources of environmental harm to humans for yet a few more decades cannot be a great consolation.” Despite his outside affiliations and activism he typically instead carries the Harvard tag, lending the institution’s academic prestige to his environmentalist advocacy. He also happens to be a longtime collaborator with none other than failed prognosticator of doom Paul Ehrlich. Typical of their doomsaying they collaborated to hold a “Cassandra Conference” in 1988 (Cassandra is the lass from Greek mythology whose prophecies were always true and always ignored).
It is no surprise that it was at the urging of the Sierra Club that Ehrlich produced his seminal work of alarmism, The Population Bomb — in which, as with today’s alarmism, the enemy was “Western society” engaging in “the rape and murder of the planet for economic gain” (recall how Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope cut his teeth at Zero Population Growth). Holdren’s name also pops up in various, largely successful efforts to elevate taxpayer funding of the global warming industry.
h/t: Chris Horner, Planet Gore, http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NGZiMGEzM2MxODRiMTU4NjMzMGIzMjhiMTYzNDkzYTQ=
A John Holdren Reader, by David Sassoon - Dec 18th, 2008:
ReplyDeletehttp://solveclimate.com/blog/20081218/john-holdren-reader
There you can see
Hat tip: Edward John Craig, Planet Gore, http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=M2NmZWU4M2M5MTQ2Mjc2MDdkYmQ4OTM5N2U0MTkyYTE=
Flawed Science Advice for Obama? By John Tierney, The NY Times:
ReplyDeleteDoes being spectacularly wrong about a major issue in your field of expertise hurt your chances of becoming the presidential science advisor? Apparently not, judging by reports from DotEarth and ScienceInsider that Barack Obama will name John P. Holdren as his science advisor on Saturday.
Dr. Holdren, now a physicist at Harvard, was one of the experts in natural resources whom Paul Ehrlich enlisted in his famous bet against the economist Julian Simon during the “energy crisis” of the 1980s. Dr. Simon, who disagreed with environmentalists’ predictions of a new “age of scarcity” of natural resources, offered to bet that any natural resource would be cheaper at any date in the future. Dr. Ehrlich accepted the challenge and asked Dr. Holdren, then the co-director of the graduate program in energy and resources at the University of California, Berkeley, and another Berkeley professor, John Harte, for help in choosing which resources would become scarce.
In 1980 Dr. Holdren helped select five metals — chrome, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten — and joined Dr. Ehrlich and Dr. Harte in betting $1,000 that those metals would be [more expensive] ten years later. They turned out to be wrong on all five metals, and had to pay up when the bet came due in 1990.
Now, you could argue that anyone’s entitled to a mistake, and that mistakes can be valuable if people learn to become open to ideas that conflict with their preconceptions and ideology. That could be a useful skill in an advisor who’s supposed to be presenting the president with a wide range of views. Someone who’d seen how wrong environmentalists had been in ridiculing Dr. Simon’s predictions could, in theory, become more open to dissenting from today’s environmentalist orthodoxy. But I haven’t seen much evidence of such open-mindedness in Dr. Holdren.
Consider what happened when a successor to Dr. Simon, Bjorn Lomborg [...]
Complete text in the NYT blog: http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/flawed-science-advice-for-obama/
Hat tip: Tierney on Holdren, by Edward John Craig, Planet Gore, http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MGY3Nzc1MDQzMjI1MjY1MDEwZTVmZTA3MDA3MzI1ZmQ=
John Holdren to be Obama's Science Advisor
ReplyDeleteRonald Bailey | December 18, 2008, 4:19pm
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/130645.html
Eli Kintisch is reporting at the ScienceInsider blog that John Holdren, who is a Professor of Environmental Policy and Director of Program in Science, Technology, and Public Policy at Havard's John F. Kennedy School of Government will be tapped as science advisor by President-elect Barack Obama.
In his salad days, Holdren was a paid-up member of The Limits to Growth club. For example, in his 1971 Sierra Club book, Energy: A Crisis in Power, Holdren declared that "it is fair to conclude that under almost any assumptions, the supplies of crude petroleum and natural gas are severely limited. The bulk of energy likely to flow from these sources may have been tapped within the lifetime of many of the present population." More recently, Holdren has declared that the world is not running out energy and that even "peak oil" is debatable.
Near the beginning of his career, Holdren introduced with his colleague, perennial population alarmist Paul Ehriich, the concept of the I=PAT equation. Human Impact on the environment is equal to Population x Affluence/consumption x Technology. All of which are supposed to intensify and worsen humanity's impact on the natural world. In the past Holdren has adhered to the common ecologist's disdain for insights from economics in helping solve environmental problems. See for example this excerpt from a co-authored 1995 essay on "The Meaning of Sustainability":
The greatest disparities in interpretation of the relationships between the human enterprise and Earth's life support systems seem, in fact, to be those between ecologists and economists. Members of both groups tend to be highly self-selected and to differ in fundamental worldviews. Most ecologists have a passion for the natural world, where the existence of limits to growth and the consequences of exceeding those limits are apparent. Ecologists recognize that a unique combination of highly developed manual dexterity, language, and intelligence has allowed humanity to increase vastly the capacity of the planet to support Homo sapiens (Diamond 1991); nonetheless, they perceive humans as being ultimately subject to the same sorts of biophysical constraints that apply to other organisms.
Economists, in contrast, tend to receive little or no training in the physical and natural sciences (Colander and Klamer 1987). Few explore the natural world on their own, and few appreciate the extreme sensitivity of organisms -- including those upon which humanity depends for food, materials, pharmaceuticals, and free ecosystem services -- to seemingly small changes in environmental conditions. Most treat economic systems as though they were completely disconnected from the planet's basic life support systems. The narrow education and inclinations of economists in these respects are thus a major source of disagreements about sustainability.
Holdren and his co-authors later acknowledge ecological ignorance about the principles of economics, but don't express any urgency in learning about them.
However, at least with regard to technology, Holdren now apparently sees technology as a solution to environmental problems and human poverty.Holdren in his 2006 inaugural lecture as the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science noted:
Advances in technology help meet basic human needs and drive economic growth through increased productivity, reduced costs, reduced resource use and environmental impact, and new or improved products and services...
The considerable progress that has been made in some important respects (such as in life expectancy, which has been improving virtually everywhere other than sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet Union) has been the result of a combination of economic and social factors, but improvements in technology appear to have been the most important. Among other advances, widespread gains in the productivity of agriculture, which played a crucial role in improving nutrition and health in the developing world, were driven above all by investments in agricultural S&T that yielded, in strictly economic terms, enormous rates of return; and export-led economic growth, providing the means with which the public and private sectors in many developing countries have contributed to lifting portions of their populations out of poverty, has likewise been driven strongly by technology.
While Holdren makes rhetorical gestures toward the private sector, he still seems to think that new technologies arise full-blown from government agencies and university laboratories.
[...]
“The search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us”
ReplyDeleteDave Rochelson posted this on Saturday, December 20, 2008 06:00am EST:
In the latest weekly address, President-elect Barack Obama took a bold stand for making decisions based on science and facts rather than ideology as he introduced leading members of his science and technology team.
Text here: http://change.gov/newsroom/entry/the_search_for_knowledge_truth_and_a_greater_understanding_of_the_world_aro/
TNYT editorial on Mr Obama's nominations: A New Respect for Science, December 22, 2008, page A32
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/opinion/22mon2.html
Holdren on Clean Coal and $7/Ton Carbon, by Roger Pielke, Jr.
ReplyDeletePrometheus, December 29th, 2008
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/holdren-on-clean-coal-and-7ton-carbon-4824
As co-chair of the National Commission on Energy Policy, John Holdren (President-elect Obama’s choice for science advisor) testified before Congress in 2005 (PDF) in support of “clean coal” technologies and putting an initial price on carbon of $7/ton while expanding the use of coal for electricity generation.. These views would appear to place Holdren strongly at odds with the more vocal wing of the climate apocolyptosphere which often calls for a much higher price on carbon and the bulldozing of coal plants. Both ideas may offer some cathartic relief to those espousing them but in reality are politically impossible. Holdren thus displays far more political realism than some of his supporters, setting the stage for some dashed expectations.
It will be interesting to see what views Holdren (and the rest of the climate/energy team) ultimately present, and how these views are received. My guess is that the honeymoon won’t last long.
John Holdren on Global Cooling (Part I in a Series on Obama’s new science advisor, ‘Dr. Doom’). By Robert Bradley
ReplyDeletehttp://masterresource.org/?p=101
John Holdren on Global Warming (Part II in a series on Obama’s new science advisor). By Robert Bradley
http://masterresource.org/?p=102
John Holdren on Mineral/Energy Depletion (Part III in a series on Obama’s new science advisor). By Robert Bradley
ReplyDeleteMaster Resource, January 2, 2009
http://masterresource.org/?p=108
Physical scientists are prone to viewing hydrocarbons as a fixed quantity. Being fixed, this volume must deplete with production. Extraction costs and thus selling prices must rise. The crisis is only a matter of when ["What will we do when the pumps run dry?" asked Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich in 1974 (The End of Affluence (p. 49)] . Physicist John Holdren is no exception to this view.
Reality is quite different from the hard science formulation, however. In a business or economic sense, mineral resources are not fixed, known, or depleting. They are created by entrepreneurship ("resourceship") in a market economy where incentives are present and technology improves. Mineral quantities can and do expand over time as shown by time-series data of estimated world resources.
Social-science understanding of minerals harks back to the functional theory of resources espoused by institutional economist Erich Zimmermann. Zimmermann’s work from the 1930s has been advanced by economists working in the Austrian-school (read real-world) tradition of economics (see here and here).
In 1971, Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren stated:
"Today the frontiers are gone, and the evidence is mounting that technology cannot hold the law of diminishing returns at bay much longer. Resources being stressed today are often being stressed globally; they will not be replenished from outside the ‘system’."
- John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich, ‘Resource Realities’, in Holdren and Ehrlich (eds), Global Ecology, p. 8
And again from 1971 (p. 18):
"The rapacious depletion of our fossil fuels is already forcing us to consider more expensive mining techniques to gain access to lower-grade deposits, such as the oil shales, and even the status of our high-grade uranium ore reserves is not clear-cut."
The two fussed (p. 177) at the "cornucopian dream" of economists whose studies of minerals documented large and growing supplies:
"Economists as a group have been guiltier than most in perpetuating the most dangerous myths of this troubled age … Mineral economists rely on the cornucopian dream, in which advancing technology conjures up ever cheaper minerals while consuming ever increasing amounts of energy and the earth’s crust to do it."
Enter Julian Simon, whose 1981 book, The Ultimate Resource, offered a new way to view the economic interaction of man and nature. Having jettisoned his original Malthusian views in the face of contrary data, Simon challenged Ehrlich and Holdren to a wager on the future price of mineral resources. If prices fell in inflation-adjusted terms, Simon would win; if real prices rose, Simon would pay up.
The 1980 bet on 1990 prices was won by Simon for each of the five minerals chosen by Paul Ehrlich, John Holdren, and John Harte. The story was told to a national audience by John Tierney in an essay in the 12/2/1990 Sunday New York Times Magazine, "Betting the Planet".
Simon’s triumph demonstrated that so-called depleting resources could and did grow less scarce over time, despite increasing consumption. "Depletable" resources expanded from the "ultimate" resource, human ingenuity.
What if the bet had been made for the next decade? What about bets made over a century? Simon would have had the odds in his favor in these situations too, according to a 2005 study by David McClintick and Ross B. Emmett.
Bowing to reality, Holdren would change his argument from private costs/prices to social costs/prices, the latter being hypothetical, what-I-determine-it-to-be, and, potentially, government-corrected. The energy problem was "nuanced," as Holdren explained in a 2002 article in Scientific American, “Energy: Asking the Wrong Question.” The energy challenge was not depletion per se, but “environmental impacts and sociopolitical risks” that could involve “rising monetary costs for energy when its environmental and sociopolitical hazards are adequately internalized and insured against" (p. 65).
So we now have the Obama tee-up where Holdren the neo-Malthusian policymaker can make Holdren the neo-Malthusian theorist "correct." But the new president should think twice about heeding Dr. Doom’s advice–really obsession. Americans are still smarting from $4 per gallon gasoline and want lower, not higher, gasoline, fuel oil, natural gas, and electricity bills.
John Holdren and Anti-Growth Malthusianism (Part IV in a series on Obama’s new science advisor), by Robert Bradley
ReplyDeleteMaster Resource, January 5, 2009
http://masterresource.org/?p=116
If there is one quotation by Obama’s new science advisor that every American should hear, it is this:
“A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States. . . . Resources and energy must be diverted from frivolous and wasteful uses in overdeveloped countries to filling the genuine needs of underdeveloped countries. This effort must be largely political” (italics added).
- John Holdren, Anne Ehrlich, and Paul Ehrlich, Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions (San Francisco; W.H. Freeman and Company, 1973), p. 279.
Holdren’s deep-seated belief of the human “predicament” as a zero-sum game–America must lose for other countries to win–was also stated by him two years before:
“Only one rational path is open to us—simultaneous de-development of the [overdeveloped countries] and semi-development of the underdeveloped countries (UDC’s), in order to approach a decent and ecologically sustainable standard of living for all in between. By de-development we mean lower per-capita energy consumption, fewer gadgets, and the abolition of planned obsolescence.”
- John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich, “Introduction,” in Holdren and Ehrlich, eds., Global Ecology, 1971, p. 3.
Holdren and the Ehrlichs paid homage to the gloomy worldview of Thomas Robert Malthus, who saw “misery or vice” as the necessary equalizer between growing population and the means of subsistence in An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798):
“We find ourselves firmly in the neo-Malthusian camp. We hold this view not because we believe the world to be running out of materials in an absolute sense, but rather because the barriers to continued material growth, in the form of problems of economics, logistics, management, and environmental impact, are so formidable.”
- Paul Ehrlich, Anne Ehrlich, and John Holdren, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, and Environment (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1977), p. 954.
Holdren and Paul Ehrlich put their anti-growth philosophy into a mathematical equation, I=PAT, where a negative environmental impact was linked to any combination of population growth, increasing affluence, and improving technology. This “gloomy prognosis” required, according to the three:
“organized evasive action: population control, limitation of material consumption, redistribution of wealth, transitions to technologies that are environmentally and socially less disruptive than today’s, and movement toward some kind of world government” (1977: p. 5).
Does Dr. Doom still believe all this? I had an email exchange with him on this very point in 2003, and he conceded nothing (see Part V of this series, forthcoming). But perhaps in his upcoming confirmation hearings he can be more forthcoming for the record.
John Holdren on Renewable Energy Problems (Part V in a series on Obama’s New Science Advisor). By Robert Bradley
ReplyDeleteMaster Resource, January 10, 2009
If only to cover their bases, environmentalists have from time to time been forthright about the problems of renewable energies. To his credit, John Holdren has punctuated his energy alarmism with a bit of energy realism in this regard. “There is no energy technology presently known or imagined (solar energy not excepted) with negligible environmental impact,” he said in a 1977 essay, “Energy Costs as Potential Limits to Growth” (Dennis Pirages, ed, The Sustainable Society: Implications for Limited Growth, p. 71).
And more specifically:
"Solar collectors, biomass plantations, and hydroelectric reservoirs can occupy a lot of land; overharvesting biomass can cause deforestation and soil degradation, and processing and burning biomass fuels can pollute water and air; lining mountain ridges and coastal promontories with windmills may offend aesthetic sensibilities; manufacturing photovoltaic cells can involve substantial quantities of toxic substances."
- Holdren, “Solar and Other Renewable Energy Sources,” in Ruth Eblen and William Eblen, eds. The Encyclopedia of the Environment (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), pp. 660-61.
There is an inherent reason why renewables are hard on the environment: the required capital intensiveness to counteract the diluteness of "natural" energy flows. Holdren explains:
"The very dilution of the largest natural energy flows, which makes them seem “gentle” in comparison with nonrenewables, means that large structures (e.g. collector fields, arrays of windmills) ordinarily are required to harness them in interesting amounts. This property tends to mean significant use of land and heavy materials requirements for the collecting systems. Land use for energy systems can preempt other economic activities. . . . Such land use also can disrupt ecosystems and offend aesthetic sensibilities. Extraction, transport, and processing of materials can produce their own hazards to ecosystems as well as to health and safety."
- John Holdren, “Environmental Aspects of Renewable Energy Sources,” Annual Review of Energy, Vol. 5, 1980, p. 248.
Here are some other quotations from the Holdren library on the shortcomings and issues of specific renewables. His criticism of windpower, however, has been scarce given a variety of specific operational and environmental problems that have been experienced with more industrial wind parks:
Solar
“The solar option will not be entirely free of significant impacts. For example, materials requirements for covering large areas with collectors will be significant; extracting and processing those materials will produce some environmental disruption. Extensive land use itself, pre-empting other uses, is a significant effect. Installation of large solar-electric plants in the sunny Southwest would probably encourage extensive industrial and residential development of fragile and scenic desert areas there.”[1]
“Solar energy is unevenly distributed, dilute, and presently expensive to harness.”[2]
“Using sunlight to make electricity with photovoltaic cells remains 3 to 5 times more expensive than fossil-fueled electricity generation, despite very substantial reductions in the costs of photovoltaics over the last two decades.”[3]
“The attractions of sunlight as an energy source have been offset by its diluteness (requiring large collector areas if large amounts are to be captured) and its intermittency (requiring some form of energy storage or back-up supply if energy needs at night and in cloudy weather). These characteristics have tended to make solar energy (and wind, which shares them) more expensive than hydropower and biomass—and, until now, more expensive than fossil fuels.”[4]
“It is nonsense to argue, as [Barry] Commoner does, that no [population] limit could possibly be near because the sunlight reaching the land area of the planet is more than a thousand times the current rate of energy use by civilization. In reality, it is far from obvious that civilization could harness more than a few percent of this flow (which, after conversion to electricity and fluid fuels, would represent a much smaller quantity of usable energy) without intolerable disruption of the critical ecological and geophysical processes that are driven by solar energy.”[5]
Windpower
“Windpower at the best sites has monetary costs not dissimilar to those of new hydro development—in the range of 1 to 1.5 times the costs of electricity generation from fossil fuels—but much smaller ecological impacts.”[6]
“For basic physical reasons, windmills cannot extract all the energy that passes through the swept area. The theoretical maximum is about 60 percent for windmills with horizontal axes, and only a fraction of that theoretical limit can actually be attained by existing machines.”[7]
Hydropower
“Hydroelectric plants are not without adverse environmental and social impacts. The spawning grounds of migratory fishes of commercial and recreational importance, such as salmon, are often destroyed by hydroelectric facilities, or the fishes are prevented from reaching them. Other wildlife habitat and valuable farmland may be destroyed, and long-time human residents forced to move. Seepage from reservoirs can raise a water table and bring subsurface salts with it, impairing the fertility of the soil. Stream conditions downstream from dams can be greatly altered, and estuaries and the associated fisheries can be affected. Rapid fluctuations of river levels with the intermittent operation of the hydro plants—which are especially cherished by utilities for their ability to start rapidly when the need arises—can be especially disruptive.”[8]
“Construction of new large dams for hydropower is arguably the worst electricity option in terms of damage to ecosystems per unit of electrical energy or generating capacity provided. Dam construction alters drastically—effectively consumes—an increasingly scarce ecological resource: free-flowing rivers and the bottomland in river valleys.”[9]
“Unexploited hydroelectric sites are in limited supply, and their development compromises other values.”[10]
“Much of the potential of specific hydroelectric sites is typically destroyed within one to three centuries when the reservoirs fill with silt. No real solution for this problem is yet known.”[11]
Geothermal
“Geothermal energy . . . ranges in its various manifestations from nonrenewable to effectively renewable.”[12]
Biomass
“Biomass fuels that rank next in importance behind fossil fuels as contributors to world energy supply are themselves significant air polluters as well as contributors, in many circumstances, to deforestation and impoverishment or erosion of soils.”[13]
“Biomass energy, if replaced continuously by new growth, avoids the problem of net CO2 production, but the costs of controlling the other environmental impacts of cultivation, harvesting, conversion and combustion of biomass will be substantial.”[14]
References: http://masterresource.org/?p=241
Dr. John P. Holdren: De-development” Advocate is the Wrong Choice for White House. By William Yeatman
ReplyDeleteCEI, Jan 13, 2009
In December 2008, President-elect Barack Obama nominated Dr. John P. Holdren to be White House Science Adviser. The White House Science Adviser heads the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), which “serves as a source of scientific and technological analysis and judgment for the President with respect to major policies, plans and programs of the Federal Government,” according to the OSTP web site.
John Holdren’s 40-year record of outlandish scientific assertions, consistently wrong predictions, and dangerous public policy choices makes him unfit to serve as White House Science Adviser. The Senate should not confirm his nomination.
Full document in PDF: http://cei.org/node/21478
What's the Carbon Footprint of Obama-palooza? By Greg Pollowitz
ReplyDeletePlanet Gore/NRO, Jan 19, 2009
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MWJlMzlhYjllNGM5Zjk1YmE4ZTJkYjJiZTAwODY1ODg=
From ABC News on the stars and wealthy arriving in D.C. for the inauguration tomorrow:
For CEOs and stars arriving by private jet, local airports have shut down entire runways to serve as parking lots for their planes. Officials are prepared to handle hundreds of private aircraft for the long weekend.
No doubt the CEOs and stars voted for Obama because his devotion to saving the world from excessive C02 emissions.
But don't worry, after arriving by private jet, a luxury hybrid will make things right:
The Ritz-Carlton sold a "Politically Correct" package for $50,000, which includes four nights in one of the hotel's suites; two hard-to-come-by seats at the inaugural parade; two tickets to an inaugural ball; a luxury hybrid vehicle with chauffeur on call 24 hours a day; a ball gown and tuxedo from Saks Fifth Avenue; a private in-suite dinner for two at the hotel's restaurant, and more, including a special, inauguration-themed pendant of gold, diamonds, rubies and sapphires valued at $8,000.
John Holdren and "The Argument from Authority" (Part VII in a Series on Obama’s New Science Advisor). By Robert Bradley
ReplyDeleteMaster Resource, January 22, 2009
http://masterresource.org/?p=417
Paul Ehrlich treated his intellectual rival Julian Simon with great disrespect during Simon’s lifetime. Ehrlich refused to debate Simon or even meet him in person. He insulted Simon in print. Ehrlich even scolded Science magazine for publishing Simon’s 1980 breakthrough essay "Resources, Population, Environment: An Oversupply of Bad News," with the words: "Could the editors have found someone to review Simon’s manuscript who had to take off this shoes to count to 20?" (quoted in Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource II, 1996, p. 612)
Such intolerance for reasoned dissent, unfortunately, has also been a trait of Ehrlich protégé John Holdren. After I published my review of John Holdren’s criticism of Bjorn Lomborg in 2003, I emailed Holdren my paper, "The Heated Energy Debate," and alerted him to a new book I had coming out, Climate Alarmism Reconsidered. I also asked why in his course he did not see fit to assign any non-alarmist readings to his Harvard class on environmental sustainability.
I reproduce pertinent parts of our email exchange from September 17, 2003:
Bradley to Holdren, et al.:
I reviewed the Description and Syllabus to your course and thought that the students could benefit from some more critical thinking, which is provided in the attached web-published essay I wrote. I will be revising/expanding this paper for later publication, probably in a book of essays on the Lomborg controversy, and would welcome your specific criticisms. Perhaps the students themselves can delve into it as a project.
… I hope your students can benefit from the best arguments on each side.
Holdren responded:
… What exactly entitles you to the evidently self-applied label of ‘energy expert’? My students can indeed benefit from the best arguments on all sides, but they will not find the best of anything in either your polemics or Lomborg’s.
and
You are of course entitled to (verbally) attack me in any legal way you like, but please don’t then pretend in personal notes to me that we are colleagues, each doing our best to get at the truth…. [Y]ou appear to be … lacking both discernible qualifications in the real world and the ability to tell a good argument from a bad one. I want nothing further to do with you.
I ended our exchange with this response:
My books, and my chapters to other edited books (one co-edited by the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy there at the Kennedy School), should be in your library. I have sent you some of my work before (no acknowledgement) and will send you gratis whatever other of my publishings you do not have and would like to have. [Your assistant] graciously did this for me, and I would hope she could help me again down the road.
I have written a detailed fact-based critique of your work. I am not "your enemy" but a critic of your energy policy analysis and policy recommendations. I am a severe critic of your personal attack on Bjorn Lomborg, and frankly it was the ad hominem part of your criticism that inspired me to drop what I was supposed to be doing and pen "The Heated Energy Debate." …. I strongly feel that your students could read and profit from my essay, and in a "facts are friendly" environment they could even lead you to better clarify what you believe and no longer believe. Such a stocktaking would also be helpful if it was communicated to me so I could update the essay.
I have to insist that you stop attacking the person in place of the arguments…. Your written record is very germane given the way you personally attack your opponents…. Please re-read and re-consider your own quotations over the years that I have reproduced in black and white in my essay…. Discard what you no longer believe, and, if necessary, "nuance" your "energy problem" argument some more. Consider your past and present views in light of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, 1962, 1970, particularly pages 67-68. Drop the elitist, anti-intellectual "argument from authority." Stop being so angry at your critics and enjoy life a little more knowing that the world is not going to Hades! Julian Simon and Bjorn Lomborg–and maybe the present writer–are presenting a different and quite possibly stronger paradigm than that of Paul Ehrlich and yourself."
Close mindedness and diatribes are the last things that are needed in a science advisor. Perhaps Holdren’s approach will change as a public servant (you and Iare paying for part of his salary, right?).
John Holdren in Retrospect (Part VIII on Obama’s New Science Advisor). By Robert Bradley
ReplyDeleteMaster Resource, February 2, 2009
http://masterresource.org/?p=577
Two quotations circa 1971 are germane to a final stocktaking of failed alarmist John Holdren. Both come from the introduction to Holdren and Paul Ehrlich, eds., Global Ecology (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971):
Neither green revolutions, nor population control, nor all the technology man can muster will alone salvage the future. What is required is no less than a revolution in human behavior, one which embodies fundamental reforms in our economic and political institutions, coupled with the wisest technological enterprises, the necessary ingredient of population, control, and a new perception of man’s place in nature (p. 1).
We have been warned by our more cautious colleagues that those who discuss threats of sociological and ecological disaster run the risk of being "discredited" if those threats fail to materialize on schedule (p. 6).
As this series has documented, John Holdren (as Paul Ehrlich) has done much to discredit himself by both his failed forecasts and his angry response to his critics. But the past is over–what about the future? Will Dr. Holdren embrace a challenge culture and make midcourse corrections? Will he temper his temper toward those of us who really care about better, longer living for a growing population, as well as political and economic freedom? One can only hope for the best–but plan for the worst.
Ehrlich's revenge, by Scott Johnson
ReplyDeletePowerline Blog, February 15, 2009 at 8:36 AM
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/02/022847.php
Paul Ehrlich was of course the Stanford scientist and doomsayer who predicted early in the late 1960's that "the population bomb" would soon result in global starvation. Ehrlich then famously made and lost a bet with Julian Simon based on Ehrlich's predicted scenario of resource scarcity. George Will recalls in his column today on the global warming scare:
Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford scientist and environmental Cassandra who predicted calamitous food shortages by 1990, accepted a bet with economist Julian Simon. When Ehrlich predicted the imminent exhaustion of many nonrenewable natural resources, Simon challenged him: Pick a "basket" of any five such commodities, and I will wager that in a decade the price of the basket will decline, indicating decreased scarcity. Ehrlich picked five metals -- chrome, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten -- that he predicted would become more expensive. Not only did the price of the basket decline, the price of all five declined.
Will adds a footnote to this history:
An expert Ehrlich consulted in picking the five was John Holdren, who today is President Obama's science adviser. Credentialed intellectuals, too -- actually, especially -- illustrate Montaigne's axiom: "Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know."
It is a shame that Will leaves the story of Ehrlich's revenge at that. There is much more to the story. In "Politicizing science," John Hinderaker wrote about Holdren this past December, also recalling his advisory role in the Simon-Ehrlich wager:
While nowhere near as famous as Ehrlich, Holdren collaborated with him on two books and several articles, and fully shared Ehrlich's pessimistic theories on the future of the human race. In fact, as John Tierney notes, Ehrlich went to Holdren for advice on which commodities to choose for his losing bet with Simon.
Consistent with these preoccupations, Holdren postures himself today as an expert on "sustainability." In 1995, he co-authored this article, titled "The Meaning of Sustainability: Biogeophysical Aspects," with Ehrlich. Since Holdren is listed as the principal author, it sheds significant light on his alleged commitment to the "de-politicization of science."
Holdren begins by identifying the "ills that development must address." It's a pretty plain-vanilla list: poverty, war, oppression of human rights. Next, Holdren purports to identify the "driving forces" behind these ills. This is where we start to get political. First on the list is Ehrlich and Holdren's old hobbyhorse, "excessive population growth," which is "a condition now prevailing almost everywhere." Next comes "maldistribution," as "between rich and investment poor" and "between military and civilian forms of consumption and investment." (No one here but us scientists, right?)
This is where Holdren can no longer keep his left-wing politics under wraps. He identifies another "driving force" behind humanity's ills: "Underlying human frailties: Greed, selfishness, intolerance, and shortsightedness. Which collectively have been elevated by conservative political doctrine and practice (above all in the United States in 1980-92) to the status of a credo."
There you have it! This is the man upon whom Barack Obama is counting to "ensur[e] that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology."
Will frames his column with recollection of the hysteria about global cooling peddled by elite opinion in the early 1970's. Will collects a number of illuminating quotes on the subject from the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor and others. It's a shame he missed the lament of one of the newsmagazines that we might fail to adopt the obvious remedy of trapping heat by painting the icecaps black.
While Holdren did not have a hand in the global cooling hysteria, in his 1986 book The Machinery of Nature Ehrlich credited Holdren for the proposition that global warming would cause the deaths of a billion people by 2020. Whatever the case -- global cooling or global warming -- paint it black!
JOHN adds: Holdren's confirmation hearing was last week. It was basically a love-fest, and Holdren avoided any reference to his hysterical and partisan past. But Senator Vitter played the role of garden party skunk by asking Holdren about some of his embarrassingly radical moments. Holdren's back-pedaling was amusing:
Dr. Holdren, one of the lines from the president's inaugural address which I most appreciated was his comment about science and honoring that and not having it overtaken by ideology.
My concern is that as one of his top science advisers, many statements you've made in the past don't meet that task, and so I wanted to explore that.
One is from an 1971 article with Paul Ehrlich, titled "Global Ecology," in which you predicted that, quote, "some form of eco-catastrophe, if not thermal nuclear war, seems almost certain to overtake us before the end of the century," close quote. Do you think that was a responsible prediction?
HOLDREN: Well, thank you, Senator, for that -- for that question.
First of all, I guess I would say that one of the things I've learned in the -- in the intervening nearly four decades is that predictions about the future are difficult.
That was a statement, which at least at the age of 26, I had the good sense to hedge by saying, "almost certain." The trends at the time were not positive, either with respect to the dangers of thermal nuclear war or with respect to ecological dangers of a wide variety of sorts. A lot of things were getting worse. ...
VITTER: Given all that context, do you think that was a responsible prediction at the time?
HOLDREN: Senator, I -- with respect, I would want to distinguish between predictions and a description of possibilities which we would like to avert. And I think it is responsible to call attention to the dangers that society faces, so we'll make the investments and make the changes needed to reduce those dangers. [Ed.: What Holdren is saying here is that, like Al Gore, he thinks it's OK to misrepresent scientific data--"almost certain"--in order to alarm the public into doing what he wants anyway, regardless of the science, i.e., turn control of the economy over to the government.]
VITTER: Well, I would call, quote "seems almost certain," close quote, a prediction. But that's just a difference of opinion.
What -- specifically, what science was that prediction based on?
HOLDREN: Well, it was based, in the -- in the ecological domain, on a lot of science, on the evidence of the accumulation of persistent toxic substances in the body fat of organisms all around the planet, on the rise of the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, of sulfur oxides, of particulate matter, on trace metals accumulating in various parts of the environment in large quantities, the destruction of tropical forests at a great rate...
VITTER: Is all of that dramatically reversed, so that this "almost certainty" has obviously been averted?
HOLDREN: Some of it has reversed, and I'm grateful for that. ... We continue to be on a perilous path with respect to climate change, and I think we need to do more work to get that one reversed as well.
VITTER: OK. Another statement in 1986, you predicted that global warming could cause the deaths of 1 billion people by 2020. Would you stick to that statement today?
HOLDREN: Well again, I wouldn't have called it a prediction then, and I wouldn't call it a prediction now. I think it is unlikely to happen, but it is...
VITTER: Do you think it could happen?
HOLDREN: I think it could happen. And the way it could happen is climate crosses a tipping point in which a catastrophic degree of climate change has severe impacts on global agriculture. A lot of people...
(CROSSTALK)
HOLDREN: ...depend on that.
I don't think it's likely. I think we should invest effort -- considerable effort -- to reduce the likelihood further.
VITTER: But you would stick to the statement that it could happen by 2020?
HOLDREN: It could happen.
VITTER: 1 billion by 2020? OK.
HOLDREN: It could.
That's ridiculous, of course. 2020 is a mere eleven years away, the earth is getting cooler, not warmer, and there is no responsible science that suggests the climate could change--getting either colder or warmer--over the next eleven years so as to kill one-sixth of the world's population.
VITTER: In 1973, you encouraged a, quote, "decline in fertility to well below replacement," close quote, in the United States, because, quote, "280 million in 2040 is likely to be too many," close quote.
What would your number for the right population in the U.S. be today?
HOLDREN: I no longer think it's productive, Senator, to focus on the optimum population for the United States. I don't think any of us know what the right answer is.
When I wrote those lines in 1973, I was preoccupied with the fact that many problems the United States faced appeared to be being made more difficult by the rate of population growth that then prevailed. ...
VITTER: Well, since we're at 304 million, I'm certainly heartened that you're not sticking to the 280 million figure.
But much more recently, namely a couple of weeks ago in response to my written questions, you did say on this matter, quote, "balancing costs and benefits of population growth is a complex business, of course, and reasonable people can disagree about where it comes out."
I'll be quite honest with you. I'm not concerned about where you or I might come out, I'm scared to death that you think this is a proper function of government, which is what that sentence clearly implies.
Do you think determining optimal population is a proper role of government?
HOLDREN: No, Senator, I do not. And I did not certainly intend that to be the implication of that sentence. The sentence means only what it says, which is, that people who've thought about these matters come out in different places. ...
VITTER: Final question: In 2006, obviously pretty recently, in an article, "The War on Hot Air," you suggested that global sea levels could rise by 13 feet by the end of this century.
And in contrast to that, the IPCC's 2007 report put their estimate at between 7 and 25 inches. So their top line was 25 inches, about 2 feet.
What explains the disparity?
HOLDREN: ... My statement was based on articles in the journals Science and Nature, peer reviewed publications by some of the world's leading specialists in studying ice, who had concluded that twice in the last 19,000 years, in natural warming periods of similar pace to the warming period that we're experiencing now, in large part because of human activities [Ed.: It would have been nice to see some follow-up on this admission.], sea level went up by as much as 2 to 5 meters per century.
VITTER: The bottom line: Do you think the better worst-case estimate is 25 inches or 13 feet?
HOLDREN: The newer analyses that have been done since the IPCC report came out, indicate that the upper limit for the year 2100 is probably between 1 and 2 meters, and those are the numbers that I now quote, because they are the latest science.
But for Vitter's participation, Holdren's confirmation hearing would have been pretty much worthless.
Libertarian views: The Malthusian Wing of the Party in Power
ReplyDeletehttp://bipartisanalliance.blogspot.com/2009/03/malthusian-wing-of-party-in-power-when.html