Sunday, June 21, 2009

Unscience advisor to the President

"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind;"
Lord Kelvin.

The morning NPR carried a longish talk by John Holdren, newly appointed science advisor to President Obama. Dr. Holdren is a global warmer, and spent his air time pushing for "a comprehensive energy bill" what ever that may be.
Not once did Holdren mention a number. No mention of degrees of temperature rise, inches of ocean rise, years before it happens, cost, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere (past, present, and hoped for), number of "alternate energy" plants to be built, nothing.
Nor did he enlighten us on how a "comprehensive energy bill" was going to fend off global warming, and by how much. He offered no scientific evidence that global warming is happening. It's been chilly all spring and I am expected to believe global warming is happening? Nor did he explain how a man made CO2 concentration of 50 parts per million is significant compared to a water vapor concentration of 10,000 parts per million. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas just as strong as CO2. Nor did he mention that global temperatures dropped by a fraction of a degree since 1999.
This science advisor didn't bother to present any science. He's not scientific, he's political. If this is a quality of science advice available to Obama, we are in deep doo doo.

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