Thursday, December 18, 2008

The outlook for science policy in the US just got a little brigher

Obama just named John Holdren, a qualified scientist and ardent science and technology advocate for many years, as his science advisor. See John give a quick science promomotion here

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I watched the linked video. He sounds bright and thoughtful. Hopefully he can help rename the global warming debate to "human causes of climate change". I learned about global warming and cooling cycles in 4th grade science class. Global warming is a fact, evidenced by the lack of glaciers covering Michigan. How much human activity is contributing is up for debate. There's a good discussion here. http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html

mathbionerd said...

I agree that labels are very important, especially to public perception of controversial scientific (and non-scientific) issues. Of course global warming (and global cooling) have occurred in the history of the earth. We need to emphasis the impact of modern humans on global climate change, especially of our abundant pollution - both easily quantified physical trash, such as landfills, as well as aerosol pollution, such as CO, and CO2 emissions.

I just found a book that I think might summarize this quite well entitled,
The Human Impact on the Natural Environment
.

GeorgeRN said...

Although I doubt humans can have much of an effect on global temperatures, it just makes sense to not pollute our environment and to switch to renewable fuels. Even though China, India, and other developing nations may not follow suit, we should not pollute. The OPEC nations may feel threatened by our development of bio-fuels, bummer. The solution is not selling carbon credits which do not decrease the release of CO2 but only transfer money to underdeveloped countries. Instead, those funds should be invested in developing renewable and non-polluting energy sources, which technology could then be shared with the world.
BTW, I like your blog. Thanks for the email.