If Barack Obama were a conservative Republican, his science czar -- John Holdren -- would be a household name by now.

Yet, his ultra-radical views have hardly raised an eyebrow in Washington.

Even so-called conservative Republicans in the Senate voted with their colleagues to confirm Holdren earlier this year.

They may not have had any idea whom they were endorsing.

According to reports now leaking out, Holdren is a co-author of a 1977 text book that discussed in detail some very fringe, frightening, science-fiction-worthy ideas for limiting world population: forcing single women to abort or adopt out their babies; sterilization capsules for anyone reaching puberty; and putting chemicals in water and major foods to sterilize masses of people.

What if a Republican had said that? Wouldn't Anderson Cooper be all over him?

To implement such ideas, the authors imagined a "Planetary Regime," a world government that would police natural resources and population. And nations would have to surrender part of their sovereignty to an "armed international organization, a global analogue of a police force."

Perhaps not surprisingly, the three authors -- Holdren and Paul and Anne Ehrlich -- all deny everything. You're just misreading a 30-year-old book, they say.

Right.

Or perhaps someone in the night changed their book to talk about "involuntary fertility control" and "a program of sterilizing women after their second or third child."

Whoever it was that wrote the book under Holdren's and the Ehrlichs' names expressed only one regret about the notion of involuntary fertility control: "Unfortunately, such a program ... is not practical for most less developed countries" where doctors can't be there at a birth to then sterilize the woman.

Senators did ask Holdren about earlier doomsday predictions -- and, in response, Holdren said he still holds to the possibility that global warming could wipe out one-sixth of Earth's human population by 2020, "one we should work energetically to avoid."

They should have asked him how. The answer might have been most interesting. He did tell the Associated Press in April that an option of last resort is to inject more pollution into the upper atmosphere to block the sun's rays and cool Earth.

That's your science czar, ladies and gentlemen.