Obama names Holdren chief science advisor

President-elect Barack Obama named Harvard physicist John Holdren, a former Ploughshares Fund grantee, to the position of director of the White House Office of Science and Technology, a move that bodes well for sound policymaking on nuclear weapons and climate change.  "A physicist renowned for his work on climate and energy, Holdren...has been one of the most passionate and persistent voices of our time about the growing threat of climate change," Obama said in announcing Holdren’s appointment.  Holdren was an outspoken critic of science policy under the Bush Administration.  Prior to his tenure at Harvard, Holdren directed the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley, where he conducted groundbreaking work on the disposition of weapons plutonium in Russia, with Ploughshares Fund support.