The government's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has appointed Ian Boyd as its chief scientific adviser to replace Sir Robert Watson, who is leaving after five years in the post.
Sir Bobs future plans were not disclosed, Reuters reports.
UK Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman thanked Watson:
“Scientific evidence is absolutely crucial at Defra and helps us make the right decisions on how to protect and improve the environment. I have been immensely grateful for the scientific advice and oversight of all our research by Sir Bob
Spelman must certainly have been most grateful e.g. for this last piece of advice offered by Sir Bob a few days ago at a conference in London:
We have to realise that we are looking at a loss of biodiversity that is unprecedented in the last 65 million years. We are clearly entering the (planet’s) sixth mass extinction
Watson is clearly no novice when it comes to doomsday scaremongering. Already in 1986, when he was empoyed by NASA, Watson was one of those who predicted the "eventual extinction of the human species":
The AP report quotes Robert Watson, then director of NASA’s upper atmospheric program, as warning that earth’s temperature could rise as much as 10 degrees if “air pollution” is not addressed.
“A dramatic loss of ozone over antarctica proves the “greenhouse effect” is real and presages a gradual warming of the Earth that threatens floods, drought, human misery in a few decades and – if not checked – eventual extinction of the human species, scientists warned Tuesday,” states the report.
Watson´s successor appears to be a scientist somewhat less prone to alarmism:
Much of his recent research has focussed upon the effects of sound on marine life and this led to his role as co-chair of the International Quiet Oceans Experiment, a joint initiative of the Scientific Committee for Ocean Research and the Partnership for Observation of the Global Ocean
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