OUT ON A LIMB: Surprise: The “Smartest” People Are Actually Painfully Stupid.

Anyway, today’s Harvard Gazette arrives with some joyful news: Science is back! After four dreadful years of the “anti-science” Trump, we are now going to see, with Biden, the restoration of “science” to its rightful place in the formulation of public policy. This news is right there in the lead story, headline and sub-headline: “Is science back? Harvard’s Holdren says ‘yes’/Ex-Obama adviser says, unlike Trump, Biden and Harris will embrace factual analysis.” From the first paragraph:

[T]he incoming Biden-Harris administration has moved quickly to reinstall science as a foundation for government policy after four years of a president who disdained accepted scientific wisdom on subjects from wildfires to hurricane tracks, climate change to COVID-19.

The Gazette has learned that “science is back” by their usual method, which is by interviewing the leading Harvard professor on the subject. In this case that is John Holdren. Do you remember him? Holdren’s current title is “Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and professor of environmental science and policy in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.” But before that he was “[A]ssistant to the [P]resident for science and technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy,” a position in which he served for the entire eight years of the Obama presidency. You may remember that Holdren was confirmed unanimously by the Senate in March 2009, after minimal scrutiny of his background.

Finally, Holdren may get his shot to fight global warming by firing rockets full of pollution into the upper atmosphere.