One of the President-elect’s last announced appointments to his “Green Team” is his official science advisor: the MacArthur Grant winning physicist John Holdren. Holdren advised the Obama campaign on climate and energy earlier this year and at one point was designated as a surrogate spokesman on those issues for the candidate. Dr. Holdren was president of The American Association for the Advancement of Science. from 2006 to 2007, and is well known for his work on energy, climate change, and nuclear proliferation. He’s a passionate fighter of global warming (a term he has long maintained is misleading). Growing up in San Mateo, CA, he was a classmate of mine from grades 4 to high school. One of the nice guys,. and always the smartest!
Here in Baristaville, it’s been a banner year for local environmentalists. First it was Montclair’s “Green Sweep.” Then, Bloomfield’s leading environmental activist, Nick Joanow, wins his first council seat. Joanow, who gets sworn in next week as the township newest councilman, applauds the President Elect’s latest selection as “….good news. We need all the help that we can get. The last eight years have been a disaster.”
from EcoRealty

35 replies on “Climate Change In D.C. and Baristaville”

  3. Finally, an adminstration that values science. It is incredible that anyone can still be so boastful about being the kind of jackass who drives one of those things, JP.

  5. Nellie,
    That’s the most funny thing I heard this morning.
    They also probably believe that Bush did a good job, that there is something like clean coal and that global warming is still controversial among Scientists.

  6. I personally do not like Hummers because the are way too w-i-d-e for many residential roads, in these parts, allthough the Hummer pick-up truck is pretty neat looking, recalls my Tonka Truck Toy pick-up of many moons ago. However, I have yet to find ANY snow, nor any ice that my wife’s Jeep Cherokee could not be victorious over, and it gets 22 miles per gallon and is cheap to insure.

  7. They need a Hummer in Maine, Nellie?
    What on earth did all those hardy Maine folk do before Hummers were invented?
    I think they drove cars.

  8. Modernists, the ad agency in Boston that does all the ads for Hummer, has all kinds of demographic and psychographic data on that market. Need is not even on the list of reasons someone buys a vehicle like that.

  9. Albeit respectfully, I think it’s wise to point out that the jury of necessity remains out on the wisdom of Montclair’s “Green Sweep.” The environmental concerns of Mayor Fried in particular may be shared by many posters here, but so far, as a politician, he seems a bumhler headed for mild buffoon status.
    As for Holdren pictured above, the beard, the carefully tousled salt-and-pepper hair, even the checked sport coat, it is as if someone on the Obama administration called down to Central Casting and said “Send us someone who can convincingly play an environmentalist scientist greatly concerned about global warming.” But that hardly affirms his ability.
    As for you, jerseygurl, it never takes much to set you off and posting totally wrongheadedly yet offering up your nonsense as dogma, now does it? “Finally an administration that values science?” I think all previous administrations have valued science as it suited their own purposes, including those of Zachary Taylor and William McKinley.
    Stalin’s administration, too, famously much “valued” science. So do be careful what you wish for.

  11. Cathar, the current administration’s record speaks for itself. Stalin? Taylor? How do you expect anyone to take you seriously?

  12. Actually, I believe Hummers are most popular in the flatter subtropical suburbs with the best malls. And the owners are often afraid to take them out in bad weather because they might get dirty.
    Regarding science, I’m all in favor of it. I am especially fond it’s applied uses, such as painkillers during root canal, antibiotics during major infections, and gravity at all times.

  14. wow, the luddite douchebags are in pseudo scientific full throat. Let’s return to the halcyon pre industrial times!
    Don’t worry they are coming.

  16. Let’s hope that Obama’s new team delivers on their promise of change. We’ll have a better idea this time next year, perhaps sooner if we are lucky. Nick, keep fighting the good fight.

  17. Let’s hope that Obama’s new team delivers on their promise of change. We’ll have a better idea this time next year, perhaps sooner if we are lucky. Nick, keep fighting the good fight.

  18. Prof, I doubt you are serious. I was reviewing the practical value of science, not whether or not someone invented gravity.
    I might have added that the study of paleontology might be useful when seeking to understand Sarah Palin or her husband Biff.

  19. town crier,
    I think its rather obvious by the cabinet choices by our Pres elect that he is nothing more than a hack liberal Chicago politician. I think when he woke up the day after the election he was scared to death cause he knew he didn’t have a clue what to do. He spoke in glowing rhetoric about ‘change’ but had no friggin idea of what he was gonna do if elected.
    I wonder if Chris Matthew’s still has the tingling in his right leg?

  20. town crier,
    I think its rather obvious by the cabinet choices by our Pres elect that he is nothing more than a hack liberal Chicago politician. I think when he woke up the day after the election he was scared to death cause he knew he didn’t have a clue what to do. He spoke in glowing rhetoric about ‘change’ but had no friggin idea of what he was gonna do if elected.
    I wonder if Chris Matthew’s still has the tingling in his right leg?

  21. town crier,
    I think its rather obvious by the cabinet choices by our Pres elect that he is nothing more than a hack liberal Chicago politician. I think when he woke up the day after the election he was scared to death cause he knew he didn’t have a clue what to do. He spoke in glowing rhetoric about ‘change’ but had no friggin idea of what he was gonna do if elected.
    I wonder if Chris Matthew’s still has the tingling in his right leg?

  23. Well, Iceman, you could be right. Only time will tell. But you can’t possibly believe that McCain, the man who held up Joe the Plumber as a national hero, would have put us on the right track. You can’t possibly believe that the republican administration had us on the right trajectory. Time for change.

  25. Sure thing Prof.
    The GOP will be trotting her out regularly and keeping her fresh in the hearts and minds of “real” Americans. I therefore have my eyes on her and the whole pathetic campaign.

  26. “The GOP will be trotting her out regularly and keeping her fresh in the hearts and minds ———-”
    I can only hope!

  29. Perlstein,
    You know, you’re like a pit-bull with its (your) teeth mashed together, ripping flesh and growling…….
    Let it go. Get out of your corner, my man. See the world.
    The evil Repubs are in exile.
    YOUR. GUY. WON.
    Jeez, can’t you be gracious and look forward at all the peace and love Obama has already brought the world.
    Or will you continue to live in September/October 2008?

  30. I invite Baristavillians to step outside today — glorious! — and join me in the fight to hasten global warming. The penitents who want you to suffer in the cold of last week fail to tell you about the increase in arable land that will come as great swaths of Canada, Siberia, Northern China, etc., become more hospitable. Agricultural yields should increase as the temperate zone spreads north. Look at the projections and cower in fear at the prospect of New Jersey’s climate becoming more like that of Virginia or the Carolinas (gasp!).
    But you must act now! Our collective efforts to make the planet a warmer, nicer place have been failing for a decade. The cooling we have experienced is intolerable. So, again, get outside today and embrace the future that could be if only we try harder.

  31. Right on appletony, I’ll do my share by taking the long way to Church this morning.
    And then I’ll make sure to leave at the end of the Jets game today so, along with the thousand others leaving Giants Stadium, I can let my exhaust waft into the air as I sit in traffic….
    Just doing my fair share.

  32. I’m so glad that Joanow was elected. He’s attended every town council meeting for the past couple of years and has tried to set them straight on Bloomfield’s developmental strategy, recycling, and saving of monies.
    Yeah Nick!

  35. padre_pio, why don’t you just spend the rest of the year sharpening the barbed wire you roll around with in a closet, then spend next year doing it.

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