WASHINGTON- On Wednesday President Obama released details of a new national offshore oil-drilling plan that would greatly expand oil leasing far beyond that which was ever authorized by the Bush administration. Prime polar bear habitat in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas off Alaska, opened for leasing under the Bush administration, would remain open to development, while large swaths of the Atlantic Coast and eastern Gulf of Mexico would be opened for the first time.

“This announcement is unfortunately all too typical of what we have seen so far from President Obama — promises of change, a year of ‘deliberation,’ and ultimately, adoption of flawed and outdated Bush policies as his own,” said Brendan Cummings, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Rather than bring about the change we need, this plan will further our national addiction to oil and contribute to global warming, while at the same time directly despoiling the habitat of polar bears, endangered whales, and other imperiled wildlife.”

Oil development in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, home to all of America’s polar bears, is strongly opposed by conservation groups as no technologies exist to clean up oil spills in icy waters. Oil development in the Beaufort Sea would likely also be visible from the shores of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Today’s plan would allow existing leases in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas to move forward while the remainder of these areas would be subject to additional leasing following further environmental studies.

The only bright spot in today’s announcement was that a lease sale proposed in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, within critical habitat for the North Pacific right whale, the world’s most endangered whale, would be cancelled. However, important habitat for the similarly endangered North Atlantic right whale would be opened in its stead.

The Center for Biological Diversity and other organizations filed a court challenge to the 2007-2012 offshore oil leasing plan issued by the Bush administration. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia set aside that plan for failing to adequately assess the environmental impacts of opening up areas off Alaska to drilling. Today’s announcement comes partially in response to that court ruling.

Earlier this year, Obama’s Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar approved Shell’s plans to drill this summer on existing leases in the Beaufort and Chukchi. Litigation against that plan is ongoing.

“Short of sending Sarah Palin back to Alaska to personally club polar bear cubs to death, the Obama administration could not have come up with a more efficient extinction plan for the polar bear,” added Cummings.

A new study by the Center for Integrated Manufacturing Studies at Rochester Institute of Technology indicates that the use of E20 fuel, which blends 20 percent ethanol with gasoline, reduces the tail pipe emissions of hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide, compared with traditional gasoline or E10 blends. In addition, the research team found no measurable impact to vehicle drivability or maintenance in conventional internal combustion engines.

The data illustrates the potential benefits of E20 as a tool in reducing overall vehicle emissions at a time when many states and the U.S. Department of Transportation are considering policies that would increase the ethanol percentage in standard gasoline.

“Currently, numerous commercially available gasoline brands contain 10 percent ethanol,” notes Brian Hilton, senior staff engineer at the center, a component of the RIT’s Golisano Institute for Sustainability, and part of the research team. “There have been concerns raised that any increase in blend would negatively impact standard internal combustion engines, however our data shows that vehicle performance remained constant, while carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon emissions were decreased even over E10 blends.”

The RIT team, which was also led by Brian Duddy, a senior program manager at the Center for Integrated Manufacturing Studies, worked with the County of Monroe, N.Y., to test the use of E20 in 10 older gasoline vehicles that were not designed for ethanol fuel mixtures. The study utilized service vehicles used by the county, which logged over 100,000 miles on E20 fuel and were analyzed periodically both for emissions and overall wear and tear on the vehicle. The fleet showed an average emissions reduction for carbon monoxide of 23 percent as well as a 13 percent reduction for hydrocarbon emissions, compared to conventional gasoline, with no measurable stress on vehicle operation or mechanics.

The study results were published in the Journal of Automobile Engineering and are being used by the Environmental Protection Agency to promote the federal Renewable Fuel Standard program. This effort has mandated an increase in the volume of renewable fuel required to be blended into transportation fuel from 9 billion gallons in 2008 to 36 billion gallons by 2022. The RIT team is continuing to work with Monroe County to convert their entire conventional gasoline fleet to E20 and will provide additional analysis on the impact of ethanol on long-term vehicle durability.

Resources The following are the key sources of data and information contained on this page: IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Summary for Policymakers IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Technical Summary NOAA Paleoclimatology

The Earth’s climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about seven thousand years ago, marking the beginning of the modern climate era —and of human civilization. Most of these changes are attributed to the very small changes in the Earth’s orbit changing the amount of solar energy the Earth receives.

“Scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal.”
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is very likely human-induced and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented in the past 1,300 years.¹

Earth-orbiting satellites and other technological advances have enabled scientists to see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate on a global scale. Studying these climate data collected over many years reveal the signals of a changing climate.

Certain facts about Earths climate are not in dispute:

• The heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases was demonstrated in the mid-19th century.² Their ability to affect the transfer of infrared energy through the atmosphere is the scientific basis of many JPL-designed instruments, such as AIRS. Increased levels of greenhouse gases must cause the Earth to warm in response.

• Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that the Earth’s climate responds to changes in solar output, in the Earth’s orbit, and in greenhouse gas levels. They also show that in the past, large changes in climate have happened very quickly, geologically-speaking: in tens of years, not in millions or even thousands.

The evidence for abrupt climate change is compelling:

Aitutaki atoll: Vulnerable to rising sea levels	Global sea level rose about 17 centimeters (6.7 inches) in the last century. In the last decade, however, the rate of rise nearly doubled.3
The Keeling Curve shows a pattern of steadily increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since 1958.	Levels of Carbon Dioxide are higher today than at anytime in past 650,000 years. Scientists reconstruct past climate conditions through evidence preserved in tree rings, coral reefs and ice cores. For example, ice cores removed from 2 miles deep in the Antarctic contain atmospheric samples trapped in tiny air bubbles that date as far back as 650,000 years. These samples have allowed scientists to construct a historical record of greenhouse gas concentration stretching back hundreds of thousands of years.
The effects of climate change will likely include more frequent droughts in some areas and heavier precipitation in others.	Global surface air temperatures rose three-quarters of a degree Celsius (almost one and a half degrees Fahrenheit) in the last century, but at twice that amount in the past 50 years. Eleven of the last 12 years (1995-2006) are the warmest since accurate recordkeeping began in 1850.4
	The oceans have absorbed much of this increased heat, with the top 700 meters (about 2,300 feet) of ocean showing warming of 0.18 degrees Fahrenheit since 1955.
Flowing meltwater from the Greenland ice sheet	The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have shrunk in both area and mass. Data from JPLs Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show Greenland lost 150 to 250 cubic kilometers (36 to 60 cubic miles) of ice per year between 2002 and 2006, while Antarctica lost about 152 cubic kilometers (36 cubic miles) of ice between 2002 and 2005.
The disappearing snowcap of Mount Kilimanjaro, from space.	Mountain glaciers and snow cover have declined on average in both hemispheres, and may disappear altogether in certain regions of our planet, such as the Himalayas, by 2030.5
	Many species of plants and animals are already responding to global warming, moving to higher elevations or closer to the poles.
	Precipitation and evaporation patterns over the oceans have changed, as evidenced by increased ocean salinity near the equator and decreased salinity at higher latitudes.6

References

¹ IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Technical Summary
² In the 1860s, physicist John Tyndall recognized the Earths natural greenhouse effect and suggested that slight changes in the atmospheric composition could bring about climatic variations. In 1896, a seminal paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first speculated that changes in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect.
³ IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Summary for Policymakers, pp. 5, 7
⁴ ibid., p 5
⁵ ibid
⁶ IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Technical Summary, p. 48