Science advisor to the POTUS

John Holdren, professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University, was named Science Advisor to the Obama administration.

This appointment has "conservatives" in a tizzy because of his past associations with Paul Erlich, author of The Population Bomb:

[H]e has been an activist on the ecological left and no friend of free markets. Perhaps more striking is his activism well beyond his own academic specialty, arguing, for instance, that scientists have a responsibility to advance the cause of the elimination of all nuclear weapons and seeking controls on population growth. And he didn’t say all this in the 1970s either—have a good look at the speech he delivered when he assumed the leadership of the AAAS in 2006. It describes a fundamentally activist liberal mentality about the very purpose of science and its place in our kind of society. [Emphasis added]

No doubt Prof. Holdren is a liberal. So what? Since when is science supposed to be a "friend of free markets"? Science is science, facts are facts, even when "free markets" get perturbed. I think we have seen enough "science" from the Republicans, thank you very much.