American Elephants

Well, we now have indications about the new administration’s policy on “global warming”.  Obama has nominated Harvard physicist John Holder to be his director of the White House Office of Science and Technology. Holder is a true believer.  A year ago in a speech at Harvard, he said:

Global warming is a misnomer, it implies something gradual, something uniform, something quite possibly benign, and what we’re experiencing is none of those.  There is already widespread harm…occurring from climate change.  This is not just a problem for our children and grandchildren.

He seems not to have noticed that the earth is cooling, and has been for the last decade, that solar activity has declined.  In that same speech, he presented a list of the top ten options.  Number one was “limiting population”.  Number two was reducing per-capita GDP.  His goal is equal per-capita carbon emission rights across the world — so the U.S. could emit just twenty times as much as Ecuador, although we produce 144 times the goods and services. He’s opposed to nuclear power too.  So much for our economy.

For the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) he has nominated Jane Lubchenco, another true believer. She is concerned that even when the world shifts away from fossil fuels, the oceans will continue to soak up carbon dioxide and become more acidic.

She wants to reduce overfishing, cut back on nutrient runoff and create marine reserves to protect marine life.  It doesn’t seem to occur to her that there has been much higher concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere in the past, and marine life has survived just fine.

What fish seem to like are  the artificial reefs created by offshore oil platforms.  Fishing tours head right for the platforms for that is where the fish are to be found.  The nutrient runoff probably comes from increased planting of crops intended for biofuels like ethanol.

This is very bad news.  Time for advice and considerable dissent.