John Tierney on Obama science czar John Holdren’s 1971 prediction of an impending ice age:

I confess that I don’t quite understand Dr. Holdren’s particular 1971 vision of global warming — why would nuclear fuels be contributing to it? — but let’s not get bogged down in details. What interests me are not the disaster specifics but rather Dr. Holdren’s tendency to foresee worst-case situations that require new public policies. (In the 1970s, he and Dr. Ehrlich discussed controlling population by giving sweeping powers to a new “Planetary Regime.”) I’ve previously written about criticism that a climate-change report from the White House and federal agencies exaggerates the threat of natural disasters. Does Dr. Holdren have a worst-case bias in his interpretation of data?

Well, Holdren was right. An ice age did envelop the planet in the early part of this century . . .