Holdren to Be Obama’s Science Advisor
December 18th, 2008Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
My suggestion that Chu’s appointment to DOE meant that Obama would not appoint a physicist/energy expert to science advisor was wrong. Harvard’s John Holdren will be science advisor, Science is reporting.
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 Carole 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.
I agree. Expect some conflicts, a prediction I am more sure of than my science advisor handicapping 
December 18th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Well, this would probably mark the first time a Science Adviser has been a guest on late night television.
December 19th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Holdren is an Erlich protege. He’s an I=PAT nut. Can we assume the same scientific rigor for his work with the White House? Well he’s right about one thing — doom may really be at hand, with power in his hands.
December 19th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Stan-
I guess I am an IPAT nut also
But don’t worry too much, for better or worse the science advisor has never really hand much power in any administration as I am sure we will see demonstrated again under Obama . . .
December 19th, 2008 at 11:29 am
I guess I’ve always felt that IPAT was flawed in several respects. First, it is, in my estimate, redundant. What society was technologically advanced and yet not affluent? Perhaps the Soviet Union that sent sputnik into orbit? But just because a country can perform science experiments, it doesn’t make it technocratic. Furthermore, while population and affluence have demonstrable correlations with impact, technology should be seen as means of mitigating the effects of the first two. The technolgy that allowed development of more benign refrigerants to replace freon diminished human impact. Holdren now recognises as much; in 2006 he said “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…”
In any case, Holdren should be an able advocate for science funding, which is really his job anyway, isn’t it? I don’t think that his past and mistaken views on technology, energy shortages and population will have any effect on policy.
December 20th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Oh well, perhaps we’ll have to wait another administration or two to get a biologist as science advisor.
In my experience, the staff at OSTP can weigh in on major policy issues, especially those that cross agencies. During the Clinton administration, I remember food safety (trying to coordinate across agencies with differing responsibilities or develop a new agency as one- a policy Holy Grail that remains undiscovered. However, the advisor himself (has it always been a him? can’t remember) obviously doesn’t necessarily personally weigh in on policy issues outside of his area of expertise.
Of course, the major task for the science advisor is feeding the giant University-National Labs-NIH NSF DOE- Science Machine.
December 20th, 2008 at 9:17 am
This is at the NY Times http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/flawed-science-advice-for-obama/
“Does 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.”
and:
“Roger A. Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado and the author of “The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics,” discussed Dr. Holdren’s conflation of science and politics in a post on the Prometheus blog:
The notion that science tells us what to do leads Holdren to appeal to authority to suggest that not only are his scientific views correct, but because his scientific views are correct, then so too are his political views. “
December 21st, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Roger,
I would expect better than this garbage from a science advisor — http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/08/04/convincing_the_climate_change_skeptics/
Pathetic. Even the logic underlying his argument is faulty. Is he really as poor a thinker as it appears?