Category archive: John Holdren

The Clear Thinking blog is on hiatus and will return with new posts on July 18, 2011. Meanwhile, here’s an oldie originally posted November 11, 2009. By Chuck Rogér Shortly before the 2008 presidential election, Senator Barack Obama said that “when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” He also said taxation “comes [...]

Using real science to dismantle the pretend science of global warmists

You’d think that with so many very cold, snowy winters, as well as objective climate research finally being conducted, that global warming zealots would give it a rest. Here’s a January 12 National Snow Analysis satellite image from the National Weather Service showing the United States 71% covered in snow. (Hat tip to Anthony Watts [...]

Some people never learn. Even conservatives fall for bunk on occasion. The American Enterprise Institute’s Steven Hayward wants to “bring corporate, university, and government scientists together to tackle big energy problems…” Hayward essentially follows the fallacy put forth by Obama during his presidential campaign. In the Obama-Biden plan, “Investing in America’s Future,” Obama proposed to [...]

Pushing Junk Science on Children

Originally in American Thinker, October 6, 2010. Humans have angered Mother Nature. Our species must stop multiplying, give up our addiction to huge-screen HDTVs, stop eating so many steer, and travel on twenty-pound electric tricycles forty miles at a time between charging stations. Otherwise, we are doomed. This is a story about the ruling class [...]

Another global warming alarmist calls for civilization to move backwards

As noted in my 9-7-10 post, Financial Times has become a hangout for advocates of global warming alarmism. In today’s post we discuss the latest installment in FT-hosted  lunacy. University of Oxford professor of energy Dieter Helm makes [free registration required] two absurd statements to open his recent FT article. See if you can detect [...]

Shortly before the 2008 presidential election, Senator Barack Obama said that “when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” He also said taxation “comes down to values.” Seventy years earlier in “Their Morals and Ours,” Communist Leon Trotsky promoted “the greatest possible happiness for the greatest possible number.” Before that, John Stuart Mill [...]

The progressive worldview: looking at diamonds and seeing coal dust

Sometimes you have to wade through a bit of bog before finding solid ground. That boggy feeling struck as I began to read Columbia Professor Edmund Phelps’s recent article, “Economic Justice and the Spirit of Innovation,” in which the professor claims that “the prevailing view on the left” tolerates “inequalities of income” as long as [...]

Bear skins and stone knives

Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided to every human being. Spoken by King Hopey-Changey? Close—written by John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Obama science adviser, a man who influences climate change and health care [...]