Progress: John Holdren Admits We Still Don’t Understand How Nature Works

I wanted to hit the sack but a video clip in English of some excerpts from an interview of John Holdren by German intellectual paper DIE ZEIT. Click here::

http://www.zeit.de/wissen/2011-03/holdren-chefberater-obama

At about the 3:40 mark, Holdren is asked what will be the sciences of the future and the challenges. This takes him to climate change:

We are fortunately getting better, and we need to get better at understanding some very big systems, science systems issues including for example the science of ecosystems, the formation and fertilisation of soil, the pollination of crops, the regulation of climate. All of these things I think sometimes get lost in the discussion of the importance of infotech and nanotech and biotech. We need to understand how the parts fit togther, how they work because we are not yet remotely ready technologically to make planet earth into a speceship where all systems are designed by engineers. We still need nature, We need to understand how it works.”

I thought the science was settled. But  Holden now admits that we still need to understand how it all fits together – how it works. So how CO2 controls linearly controls the temperature, we we keep seeing in their charts, is a bit puzzling to me.

7 responses to “Progress: John Holdren Admits We Still Don’t Understand How Nature Works”

  1. DirkH

    He managed to not mention population control. Whow. From this interview you’d think he never collaborated with Ehrlich.

  2. DirkH

    Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung (Federal Office for materials research) (We do have many public institutions) says the battery used in that record breaking electric vehicle (a “kolibri” Lithium battery) does have the purported capabilities.
    You know, that vehicle that did the drive from Munich to Berlin without recharging.

    http://auto.t-online.de/rekord-elektrofahrt-die-batterie-war-einwandfrei/id_45408212/index

    DBM Energy, the makers of the battery, plan further tests starting in June.

    1. Bernd Felsche

      Note the caveat: Only a few cells tested; not the whole battery.

      Also, no note to say that they tested the claim to be able to re-charge fully in 6 minutes claimed earlier on. Maybe they couldn’t find a power outlet capable of supplying the necessary 800+ kW. IIRC, it’s an 80 kWh battery in the car.

  3. R. de Haan

    Fortunately for us we do know how John Holdren works!

    Luboooooooos

  4. John Blake

    “We don’t understand how Nature works”– nor will we ever, as Kurt Godel, Edward Lorenz, Benoit Mandelbrot, proved many decades back. Asininity, thy name is Holdren.

    Alas, we know all too well how Paul Ehrlich, John Holdren, Keith Farnish, and their Green Gang of climate hysterics work. If beauty is truth, an uglier set of scoundrels exists only in psychotic imagination.

  5. mindert eiting

    We need to understand how nature works. Nice summary of centuries of science. The next time they may interview me, because I have a lot of similar trivialities to offer. Does he really think that planet earth can become a spaceship where all systems are designed by engineers? I have read somewhere that Ronald Reagan once told his Israeli hosts that he helped to liberate the Jews from the German concentration camps. Yes, he did in Hollywood!

    1. DirkH

      That story sounds a little as if it had been processed by journalists.

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