John Holdren Claims New Ice Age Likely

John Holdren, Obama's Science Czar, believed that the earth was cooling due to urban air pollution, dust from agriculture, and volcanic ash. He said this caused a 0.2 degree C cooling over the last 25 years. He noted that this seems small, but only a 4C temperature drop is needed to start a new ice age. He said that a 1% increase in low altitude cloud cover would decrease the temperature by 0.8C. We are feeding this effect by adding man-made condensation nuclei to the atmosphere with jet contrails and by other means. Finally, we are changing the earth's reflectivity by urbanizing, deforestation, and enlarging deserts. This is what he wrote in Global Ecology: Readings Toward a Rational Strategy for Man in 1971. The sixth chapter of the book was his essay with Paul Ehrlich, called Overpopulation and the Potential for Ecocide.

You can read a bit more about it at Climate Depot. Marc Morano reminded everyone about this. John Holdren was also one of the first to become an alarmist claiming the likelihood of man-made global warming, which is why he holds his position with Obama. Marc Morano evaluates him thusly:

My personal opinion is that Holdren is a “doom peddler” who latches onto the nightmare-scenario-du-jour — overpopulation, nuclear holocaust, global cooling, global warming (all of which he’s trumpeted at various points in his career) — and then wildly exaggerates it in order to scare the public into adopting his politicized “solutions.”

Holdren does indeed seem to fit that modus operandi very well. While Chicken Little was quickly seen to be ridiculous, John Holdren always seems to escape that fate to rise Phoenix-like once again to scare the public with another doomsday scenario. Somehow the doomsday just never arrives, but meanwhile, Holdren gets lots of attention. He is clearly an effective gloom and doom con-artist, which makes him just the kind of man one would expect Obama to draw upon for advice.