Obama Selects John Holdren as Science Adviser

Posted by Wonk Room Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:41:00 GMT

As first reported by Science Magazine’s ScienceInsider, “President-elect Barack Obama has picked physicist John Holdren to be the president’s science adviser.”

Holdren is well known for his work on energy, climate change, and nuclear proliferation. Trained in fluid dynamics and plasma physics, Holdren branched out into policy early in his career. He has led the Woods Hole Research Center for the past 3 years and served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2006.

At ClimateProgress, Joseph Romm argues Holden has “more combined expertise on both climate science and clean energy technology than any other person who could plausibly have been named science adviser,” and that this means “Obama is dead serious about the strongest possible action on global warming.”

SolveClimate has a long bibliography of Holdren’s speeches, interviews, and reports online.

One such speech, which lays out how he believes the United States can meet the climate challenge, was given September 13, 2007 in San Francisco: