White House science adviser discusses next two years

Just over a month after the midterm elections, President Obama’s science adviser took the podium in San Francisco at the American Geophysical Union meeting. John Holdren, a physicist and climate scientist, said the White House is making strides in improving the nation’s science and technology policies. Later that week, Holdren’s Office of Science and Technology Policy released long-overdue federal guidelines for scientific integrity. Science News contributing editor Alexandra Witze excerpted his comments from a lecture and later press briefing at the AGU meeting.

How do you respond to criticism that the federal government was slow to request and use outside expertise after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill?

In the first few days of the spill, I made a number of calls to leaders of major marine science organizations in the country to see what resources and insights and scientific capabilities they could bring to bear. Within the first few days, the White House was convening meetings. Very quickly task forces were set up that reached out into the academic community and the private sector community.

It was a huge challenge. I’m not saying we got everything right at every moment. Certainly there were disagreements about priorities, about approaches, about specific resources. That’s inevitable in any problem of this scale and complexity and with a wide variety of different people. But overall, this actually was handled remarkably well given the magnitude of the mess and its complexity.

To: Jet Jaguar; NorwegianViking; ExTexasRedhead; HollyB; FromLori; EricTheRed_VocalMinority; ...

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2 posted on 01/03/2011 8:40:52 AM PST by Nachum (The complete Obama list at www.nachumlist.com)

This guy is very clear that Obama intends to do a lot without legislation. He will govern by fiat, which is to say that he will rule rather than govern.

We need to re-assert the Constitution.

Exactly. bttt

4 posted on 01/03/2011 8:50:57 AM PST by Matchett-PI (Trent Lott on Tea Party candidates: "As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them" 7/19/10)

5 posted on 01/03/2011 9:07:07 AM PST by FrankR (The Evil Are Powerless If The Good Are Unafraid! - R. Reagan)

My hope is therefore we will be able to keep much of this out of the domain of poisonous partisan politics and get quite a lot done.

Impossible since you have no intention of dropping the very partisan kook-fringe-left pseudo-science you believe in.

6 posted on 01/03/2011 9:37:26 AM PST by SteamShovel (Beware the RINO-VIRUS...It will kill the TEA Party movement.)

In a saner civilization Dr. Holdren would be categorized more accurately as a simple kook. At best, he's a mad scientist.

Only in this present Obamacized Surround is there any place at the table for this creep.

7 posted on 01/03/2011 9:44:57 AM PST by Prospero (non est ad astra mollis e terris via)

The Department of Scientificness.

Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.

8 posted on 01/03/2011 10:44:47 AM PST by The Comedian (Government: Saving people from freedom since time immemorial.)

To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Arthur Wildfire! March; Berosus; bigheadfred; ColdOne; ...

John Holdren then asked for a live chicken to sacrifice. Thanks Nachum.

9 posted on 01/04/2011 6:43:46 PM PST by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)

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