The smears begin

By hrynyshyn on December 22, 2008.

It didn't take long for the Competitive Enterprise Institute to begin dissembling about John Holdren, President-elect Barack Obama's new science adviser. On his blog, the CEI's Chris Horner dismisses Holdren's soon-to-be ex-employer, the Woods Hole Research Center, as "an environmental advocacy group." This is nonsense, as a simple check of the center's scientific output would show.

I first ran into the WHRC in the late 1980s, while living and working in Woods Hole. Back then, the center was a recent offshot of the Marine Biological Laboratory's Ecosystems Research Center. Founder George Woodwell left the MBL in 1985 to pursue a line of research that wasn't quite in line with the MBL's mission. But it was a line of legitimate scientific research, and to call it mere advocacy is just plain insulting.

I also remember Woodwell, in 1990, estimating that preventing serious climate change would require a 75 percent reduction in fossil-fuel emissions. Woodwell is still writing about such stuff. And good thing, too. Both he and Holdren are respectable scientists who deserve better than to be slandered by a free-market advocacy group like the CEI.

Tags
Climate

More like this

Hillary Clinton, please consider global warming with KXLP

The following letter to Secretary Clinton was released a short while ago. It will be delivered later on this week. Also later on in the week, there will be a place where you can add your comments. Also, there will be a related piece in Rolling Stone's next issue (this week).

There are two types of scientists...

Assigning any group to one of just two categories is usually little more than an exercise in stereotyping. What do you do with someone like Francis Collins, for example?

Two incontrovertible things: Anthropogenic Global Warming is Real, and the Wall Street Journal is Political Rag UPDATED

The Wall Street Journal has published one of the most offensive, untruthful, twisted reviews of what scientists think of climate change; the WSJ Lies about the facts and twists the story to accommodate the needs of head-in-the-sand industrialists and 1%ers; The most compelling part of their argu

Climate Change and the Integrity of Science redux

Nearly two years ago, Science magazine published the following Lead Letter, signed by 255 members of the U.S.

Maybe they followed the lead of this blog and did a survey on what slanderous names to call those who don't blindly believe "the right way". You sure know a few things about insulting people who don't believe "the right way", eh James?

'Your Ma' (why do I believe the poster is a 300+pound closeted gay male republican?) doesn't seem to understand the difference between telling lies, which is what horner excels at, and honest, caustic, ridicule of opinions that run counter to established science.

You have to be kidding! I doubt that you really expected the Competitive Enterprise Institute to tell the truth and expose themselves for the liars and manipulators they really are. I sure didn't.

I was wrong. The gay bashers are not the common sensicals. The gay bashers are the agw religious zealot whack jobs. witness my own blog. my bad.

I should think that good work is a fine advocate for science. May Woodshole go on advocating for science as they have in the past for centuries into the future.

It's sort of like like the "Reality has a Liberal bias" idea. Good science DOES tend to advocate for the environment.