Obama names 4 top science advisers

By Gardiner Harris
Published: December 21, 2008

WASHINGTON: In his selection of four top scientific advisers, President-elect Barack Obama has signaled what are likely to be significant changes in policies governing global warming, ocean protections and stem cell research.
"It's time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America's place as the world leader in science and technology," Obama said in a radio address on Saturday, when he announced the appointments.
John Holdren, a physicist and environmental policy professor at Harvard, will serve as the president's science adviser as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology. Jane Lubchenco, a marine biologist from Oregon State University, will lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which overseas ocean and atmospheric studies and performs much of the government's research on global warming.
Holdren will also be a co-chairman the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology along with the Nobel Prize-winning cancer research Harold Varmus, a former director of the National Institutes of Health, and Eric Lander, a genomic researcher.
"Whether it's the science to slow global warming; the technology to protect our troops and confront bioterror and weapons of mass destruction; the research to find life-saving cures; or the innovations to remake our industries and create 21st century jobs — today more than ever, science holds the key to our survival as a planet and our security and prosperity as a nation," Obama said.

Like Steven Chu, the energy secretary-designate, Drs. Holdren and Lubchenco advocate mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions, which the Bush administration opposed. Both served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Holdren said last year that the world needed to undertake "a massive effort to slow the pace of global climatic disruption before intolerable consequences become inevitable."
Lubchenco has documented enormous dead zones in oceans that have resulted from climate change and has advocated placing vast ocean areas off-limits to fishing and mineral exploitation. In an e-mail message on Saturday, she wrote: "NOAA will play a central role in addressing pressing challenges of our time — stabilizing the climate, restoring ocean health and coastal vitality. Jobs and a healthy environment go hand in hand — and both are enabled by good science."
Varmus is president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Lander is a professor of biology at MIT and helped lead the effort to sequence the human genome.