Climate Articles
Dear Rachel Carson,
Happy birthday on the 103rd anniversary of your birth. Wish you were here. There's so much to tell you about the oceans since you left this world 46 years ago.
Tens of thousands of young women and men have gone into science since your pioneering work. Their cumulative efforts have vastly increased our understanding of the marine world.
Exciting new technologies-deep-towed cameras, sonar, submarines, remotely operated underwater vehicles, free-swimming autonomous underwater vehicles-are illuminating the abyss in ways not even your fertile mind could have imagined.
Entire ecosystems you had no idea existed are now explored on a daily basis, including hydrothermal vents (discovered 1977), cold seeps (discovered 1984), and whale falls (discovered 1987).
One of the greatest scientific endeavors of all time, the Census of Marine Life-now drawing to a close after a decade of intensive effort to find as many lifeforms in the seas as possible-has added 17,500 new species to the catalogue of 230,000 species of marine animals known at the close of the 20th century.
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MN professor eviscerates Monckton in must-see video
"The number of errors Chris Monckton makes is so enormous it would take a thesis to go through every single one of them."
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (TVMOB) is a shameless purveyor of hate speech and anti-science disinformation (see links below).
Nonetheless, you rarely sees such a thorough debunking of an anti-science disinformer as this astonishing point-by-point evisceration put together by John Abraham, an engineering professor at St. Thomas University in St. Paul, MN.
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Meltdown: Why ice ages don't last forever
BACK in 1993, a boy playing football near Nanjing, China, suddenly fell through the ground. He had inadvertently found a new cave, later named Hulu, which has turned out to be a scientific treasure chest. Besides two Homo erectus skeletons, it contains stalagmites that have helped solve one of the greatest mysteries in climate science: why the ice ages came and went when they did.
For more than 2 million years, Earth's climate has been oscillating wildly. Immense ice sheets slowly advance across northern lands, then suddenly melt away to leave the planet basking in a relatively brief period of warmth before the ice creeps back again. Climate scientists have long suspected that these glacial cycles are triggered by changes in our planet's orbit. Yet while this theory has had many successes, it fails to explain one critical fact: why the ice ages end every 100,000 years or so. "It's a big problem," says Larry Edwards of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
Edwards is part of a group of researchers who may finally have the answer, thanks to Hulu and other nearby caves. If their conclusions are right, then the greatest ice sheets of the past were remarkably vulnerable, melting away when there was just a glimmer of extra sunlight. But what have stalagmites in China got to do with the vast ice sheets that covered much of Europe and Siberia, and North America?
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Scientists explain global chill
Paris - The rapid decline of mammoths and mega fauna after humans spread across the New World may explain a bone-chilling plunge in global temperatures some 12 800 years ago, researchers reported on Sunday.
The 100-odd species of grass-eating giants that once crowded the North American landscape released huge quantities of methane - from both ends of their digestive tracks.
As a heat-trapping greenhouse gas, methane is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
It was not enough to trigger runaway global warming. But when all that gaseous output suddenly tapered off, it caused or at least contributed to a prolonged freeze known as the Younger Dryas cold event, they argue.
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Climate Scientists Claim 'McCarthy-Like Threats,' Say They Face Intimidation, Ominous E-Mails
Climate scientist Michael Mann says he has received hundreds of them -- threatening e-mails and phone calls calling him a criminal, a communist or worse.
"6 feet under, with the roots, is were you should be," one e-mail reads. "How know 1 one has been the livin p*ss out of you yet, i was hopin i would see the news that you commited suicide, Do it."
"I've been called just about everything in the book," Mann, who runs of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, told ABC News. "It's an attempt to chill the discourse, and I think that's what's most disconcerting."
Mann is not the only one. The FBI says it's seeing an uptick in threatening communications to climate scientists. Recently, a white supremacist website posted Mann's picture alongside several of his colleagues with the word "Jew" next to each image.
One climate scientist, who did not wish to be identified, told ABC News he's had a dead animal left on his doorstep, and now sometimes travels with bodyguards.
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Space-Age Sustainability
NASA's Sustainability Base will bring space-age technology back to earth to reduce maintenance costs and make tenants happier
A "very conventional, so-last-century building" is how Steve Zornetzer, associate center director at NASA Ames, described initial designs for the new research center in Moffett Field, CA. Earlier, the Ames center had won NASA's Renovation by Replacement competition, for which NASA's 10 centers had submitted proposals to build a new facility. Nevertheless, Zornetzer thought that the project team wasn't delivering innovation or new technology.
But when Bill McDonough of William McDonough + Partners (WM+P) gave a presentation at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, drawing on the connections between cradle-to-cradle design and the technologies NASA develops to support life in space, he caught Zornetzer's attention. "I thought, 'Why can't we build the most advanced, greenest building in the federal government, as only NASA can, and incorporate the technologies we've developed for space and bring them back to earth?' " So the project team switched gears, and Zornetzer gave the facility new direction.
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Paper Bags or Plastic Bags? New Proposals Like Neither
Three years ago, San Francisco was the first city in the country to ban the ubiquitous plastic shopping bag, but it was quickly followed by Palo Alto and Oakland. These cities, and the Bay Area generally, were at the forefront of the movement to keep single-use, filmy carry-out bags out of landfills, out of the bay and out of the innards of marine mammals.
But now cities are reconsidering, in part because of lawsuits filed by opponents, but also because too many shoppers in San Francisco and Palo Alto simply shifted their carry-out purchases to paper sacks, which have environmental costs of their own. Plastic bags are still a target, but the bulls-eye is now widening to cover paper bags, too.
"We saw in the experience of San Francisco and other cities that a plastic-bag ordinance pushes consumers to use paper," explained a San Jose City Council member, Sam Liccardo, "which in many instances is as bad or worse than plastic, when you consider the water, energy and natural resources involved in production, and the transportation costs, and of course, consuming trees."
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The non-hype about climate change (and malaria)
A look at two new studies and how the media has misled both the public and the sloppy authors of the Nature study
There are many reasons why the public doesn't understand how dire the climate situation is. We have a well-funded disinformation campaign, generally poor messaging by scientists, and many progressives and environmentalists who have been persuaded to downplay talk of global warming risks.
And we have dreadful coverage by the status quo media. The media fails in countless ways, but one of its most insidious failings is to play up the occasional study that seems to suggest the threat of human caused global warming has been overblown.
Much as the media has been providing a false balance in its choice of experts to quote, creating the misimpression that there is a much greater debate among climate scientists on key issues than there really is, the media has been providing a false balance in its choice of articles to write about - and then, typically, utterly misframing the results. Such is the case with the big malaria study in Nature.
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Iowa College Implements Ambitious Energy Conservation Program
Luther College, an undergraduate institution in Decorah, IA, has launched a comprehensive new program aimed at reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent, as well as reducing overall energy consumption.
Developed in conjunction with engineering firm Sebesta Blomberg, with funding from the Rocky Mountain Institute, the program's energy efficiency goals include a 3 percent per year overall reduction in use through investment in more energy-efficient equipment and an additional 2 percent per year through energy awareness education.
"The really unique part of Luther's plan is the focus on energy reduction through culture change. We hope to achieve a two percent reduction through education," said Maren Stumme-Diers, Luther's assistant sustainability coordinator. "I don't know of any other schools that have set this type of goal. Most schools focus on conservation through improvements in energy efficiency technology."
In addition to the program's overall goals, the college has set forth several short-term goals it plans to achieve by December 2010, including:
* Installing a system that allows the college to track real-time energy use and communicate that information on campus to the college community;
* Launching a targeted educational campaign that focuses on one main topic per semester;
* Completing the installation of additional meters to monitor the consumption of electricity, steam heat, and water in all major campus buildings;
* Developing a team of students to foster the implementation of energy conserving measures on campus; and
* Ensuring campus-wide participation and commitment to energy conservation.
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Saving Energy Means Getting the South on Board
Coal-fueled region uses more energy per capita and pays less for it than the U.S. overall.
The American South is not known for its energy conservation. Coal is plentiful, and electricity is cheap.
Washington, D.C., and 16 Southern states from Delaware to Texas use 44 percent of the total energy consumed in the United States but account for only 36 percent of the country's population. The South is responsible for 41 percent of U.S. carbon emissions.
Of course, it also has an outsize industrial base, too. The South accounts for slightly more than half the industrial energy use in the nation, most of it from iron and steel, pulp and paper, oil refining and chemicals manufacturing. And while that helps account for greater per capita use, it can also create greater opportunities for savings.
Twelve of the 16 Southern states rank in the bottom half of the U.S., and nine of them rank in the bottom third on the 2009 State Energy Efficiency Scorecard, an annual publication of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy.
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Climate Fears Turn to Doubts Among Britons
LONDON - Last month hundreds of environmental activists crammed into an auditorium here to ponder an anguished question: If the scientific consensus on climate change has not changed, why have so many people turned away from the idea that human activity is warming the planet?
Nowhere has this shift in public opinion been more striking than in Britain, where climate change was until this year such a popular priority that in 2008 Parliament enshrined targets for emissions cuts as national law. But since then, the country has evolved into a home base for a thriving group of climate skeptics who have dominated news reports in recent months, apparently convincing many that the threat of warming is vastly exaggerated.
A survey in February by the BBC found that only 26 percent of Britons believed that "climate change is happening and is now established as largely manmade," down from 41 percent in November 2009. A poll conducted for the German magazine Der Spiegel found that 42 percent of Germans feared global warming, down from 62 percent four years earlier.
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Reinventing Fire: Video
We are engaging powerful partners across four key sectors-buildings, transportation, industrial design and electricity-to understand and vault the barriers to shifting from fossil fuels to efficiency and renewables. Although that transition will take decades to complete, and not all its details can be fully foreseen, big gains can start now.
Reinventing Fire will focus on opportunities in the next five years that can profitably jump-start the journey toward a fossil-fuel-free economy. (Help us make Reinventing Fire a reality.)
Our Most Ambitious Work Yet
Building on our 2004 synthesis "Winning the Oil Endgame," RMI's goal with Reinventing Fire is to change minds and clarify choices by showing what exists, what works, what makes sense and what makes money. We aim to move the conversation from "it's impossible" and "how much will it cost?" to "here's how" and "how can we invest?"
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As Arctic sea ice shrinks faster than 2007, NSIDC director Serreze says, "I think it's quite possible" we could "break another record this year."
Watts and Goddard seem in denial: "We are still about six weeks away from anything interesting happening in the Arctic."
The big climate news up north is the Arctic double stunner: Sea ice extent (area) is now below 2007 levels, while the even more important metric of ice volume hit a record low for March (according to the Polar Science Center).
Data from both the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) show Arctic sea ice extent shrinking below the level of 2007 at a rapid pace:
Canada's Globe and Mail headlines their story, "Arctic sea ice heading for new record low." The latest satellite information shows ice coverage is equal to what it was in 2007, the lowest year on record, and is declining faster than it did that year.
"Could we break another record this year? I think it's quite possible," said Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.
"We are going to lose the summer sea-ice cover. We can't go back."
… Dr. Serreze said winds, cloud cover or other weather conditions could slow the melt, but he points out that the decline is likely to speed up even more in June and July.
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Women's Role in a Warming World
An Untapped Resource in Climate Adaptation
In June climate negotiators will reconvene in Bonn, Germany for an interim meeting to discuss the working text of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, the international treaty that aims to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent climate change's worst effects. A relatively new aspect of this conversation is how women can help adapt to climate change and their unique circumstances when it comes to the issue. They are severely affected by climate change yet underrepresented and not engaged in solutions.
Women are likely to be hit harder by climate change than men due their social roles and the simple fact that a majority-as much as 70 percent-of the world's poor are women. As a result, they are much more devastated by natural disasters than men. One researcher concludes that women are 14 times more likely than men to die in a natural disaster such as a tsunami. Experts predict climate change will only exacerbate such inequities.
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Perennial Grass Miscanthus Shows Promise as Energy Crop While Lowering Atmospheric CO2
ScienceDaily (May 21, 2010) - An article in the current issue of Global Change Biology Bioenergy reveals that Miscanthus x giganteus, a perennial grass, could effectively reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, while lowering atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Using a simulation tool that models the future global climate, researchers predict that the carbon that is released into the atmosphere from the loss of natural vegetation will be paid back by Miscanthus within 30 years.. Previous estimates for other liquid biofuels, such as corn ethanol, were estimated to take 167 to 420 years to pay back their carbon debt.
The global concern over climate change has challenged researchers to explore ways to mitigate the damage we are doing to our environment. They are looking more closely at energy crops, like Miscanthus, to replace our need for fossil fuels like natural gas and oil, which raise atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
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Push to teach "other side" of global warming heats up in Colorado's Mesa County
GRAND JUNCTION - A national group that thinks global warming is "junk science" and that teaching it is unnecessarily scaring schoolchildren brought its first petition effort for "balanced education" to Mesa County Schools on Tuesday night.
Rose Pugliese, an unsuccessful candidate for a District 51 school board seat in the last election, presented a petition with 700 signatures to the board asking that science teachers stop giving lessons on global warming.
Pugliese, a 32-year-old Grand Junction attorney and activist in Tea Party and conservative Republican groups, also presented a petition with 600 signatures demanding Mesa County schools keep political views out of classrooms.
Pugliese's efforts have made her the poster girl for the group Balanced Education for Everyone and have pinpointed Mesa County as a national test case for keeping the teaching of humans' influence on global warming out of science classes.
"It (global warming) is not a proven scientific theory. There is not evidence to support it," Pugliese told the board, generating applause from about 40 Tea Party and other conservative group members who filled the room for the first school board petition battle over this issue in the country.
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Global CO2 Emissions To Rise 43 Percent By 2035: EIA
The world's emissions of carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil, and natural gas should rise 43 percent by 2035 barring global agreements to reduce output of the gases blamed for warming the planet, the top U.S. energy forecaster said on Tuesday.
Global emissions of carbon dioxide from the fossil fuel sources should rise from 29.7 billion tonnes in 2007 to 42.4 billion tonnes in 2035, the Energy Information Administration said in its annual long-term energy outlook.
Much of the rise will occur in rapidly growing developing countries like China and India where electricity demand is expected to soar.
"With strong economic growth and continued heavy reliance on fossil fuels expected for most of the non-(Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) economies under current policies, much of the projected increase in carbon dioxide emissions occurs among" those developing countries, the EIA report said.
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Will REDD Preserve Forests
Or Merely Provide a Fig Leaf?
The tropical forest conservation plan, known as REDD, has the potential to significantly reduce deforestation and carbon dioxide emissions worldwide. But unless projects are carefully designed and monitored, the program could be undercut by shady dealings at all levels, from the forests to global carbon markets.
It could be the cheapest way to save the planet from climate change. Western governments and corporations want to shut down a major source of carbon dioxide emissions by paying the people who destroy forests to desist. But the dream could turn into a nightmare, in which Western polluters use their carbon credits to evade cutting emissions at home, while the promised benefit to the atmosphere is lost in a mire of conflict and corruption.
The plan is called REDD, for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. It has backing from big oil and forest tribes, the World Bank, and blue-chip environment groups like the Nature Conservancy. Right now, REDD looks to be the only positive outcome likely to emerge from this December's Cancun climate conference, the successor to last year's failure in Copenhagen. If it happens, a new global business of carbon conservation in forests could soon be worth tens of billions of dollars a year.
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Global warming "natural" for one in 10 - survey
SINGAPORE, May 27 (Reuters Life!) - Nearly one in 10 people believe global warming is part of a natural cycle of events, and nothing to really worry about, an alarming increase on the figures from two years ago, according to a global poll.
Although a third of respondents to the survey of more than 13,000 people this year said they were very concerned about climate change, 9 percent said they weren't, up from 4 percent when the same survey was conducted two years ago.
"The issue of climate change has continued its rough ride," said Steve Garton of market research firm Synovate which, along with German media company Deutsche Welle, conducted the poll in 18 markets from the United States to Australia.
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Climate Watchdog Denies 'Hippie Agenda'
The precarious state of the economy has come to dominate the way European governments make decisions. That means tougher times – and a good deal of frustration – for policymakers whose job is to advocate potentially costly action aimed at tackling climate change.
A case in point is Connie Hedegaard, the European Union commissioner for climate action, who felt compelled to say at an economic forum in Brussels on Tuesday evening that she was not pursuing "a hippie agenda."
Ms. Hedegaard was reacting to ferocious criticism over her plans to go ahead and issue a report on Wednesday on whether the European Union should cut emissions by 30 percent by the end of the decade or stick with the current agreed-upon goal of cutting by 20 percent.
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Greenland's Uplift: Evidence Of Rapid Ice Loss
Scientists at the University of Miami say Greenland's ice is melting so quickly that the land underneath is rising at an accelerated pace.
According to the study, some coastal areas are going up by nearly one inch per year and if current trends continue, that number could accelerate to as much as two inches per year by 2025, explains Tim Dixon, professor of geophysics at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS) and principal investigator of the study.
"It's been known for several years that climate change is contributing to the melting of Greenland's ice sheet," Dixon says. "What's surprising, and a bit worrisome, is that the ice is melting so fast that we can actually see the land uplift in response," he says. "Even more surprising, the rise seems to be accelerating, implying that melting is accelerating."
The research was published in Nature Geoscience. The idea behind the study is that if Greenland is losing its ice cover, the resulting loss of weight causes the rocky surface beneath to rise. The same process is affecting the islands of Iceland and Svalbard, which also have ice caps, explains Shimon Wdowinski, research associate professor in the University of Miami RSMAS, and co-author of the study.
"During ice ages and in times of ice accumulation, the ice suppresses the land," Wdowinski says. "When the ice melts, the land rebounds upwards," he says. "Our study is consistent with a number of global warming indicators, confirming that ice melt and sea level rise are real and becoming significant."
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Stunning NOAA map of Tennessee's 1000-year deluge
15 sites had rainfall exceeding maximum associated with Hurricane Katrina landfall
What is a 100 year flood? A 100 year flood is an event that statistically has a 1% chance of occurring in any given year. A 500 year flood has a .2% chance of occurring and a 1000 year flood has a .1% chance of occurring. The map below relates [the] amount of rainfall that fell to the chances of that amount of rain actually occurring.
Climate Progress has been documenting the woefully underreported Tennessee deluge of 2010 aka Nashville's 'Katrina'. It was an off-the-charts extreme weather event that human-caused global warming set the table for and almost certainly made more intense, as a leading climate scientist explained to me (interview to be posted next week).
But I didn't understand just how unprecedented this superstorm was until I saw the above map from the Office of Hydrological Development at NOAA/NWS. I have never seen a map like this before, but then that may be because there simply aren't many events to rival this one. Look at the red streak, which is the area hit by a greater than 1000-year deluge. And look at how much of western Tennessee was slammed with a greater than 500 year downpour. This is the "high water" of Hell and High Water.
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On attribution
How do we know what caused climate to change – or even if anything did?
This is a central question with respect to recent temperature trends, but of course it is much more general and applies to a whole range of climate changes over all time scales. Judging from comments we receive here and discussions elsewhere on the web, there is a fair amount of confusion about how this process works and what can (and cannot) be said with confidence. For instance, many people appear to (incorrectly) think that attribution is just based on a naive correlation of the global mean temperature, or that it is impossible to do unless a change is 'unprecedented' or that the answers are based on our lack of imagination about other causes.
In fact the process is more sophisticated than these misconceptions imply and I'll go over the main issues below. But the executive summary is this:
* You can't do attribution based only on statistics
* Attribution has nothing to do with something being "unprecedented"
* You always need a model of some sort
* The more distinct the fingerprint of a particular cause is, the easier it is to detect
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Criminalizing the Science You Don't Cotton To
Researchers fear that a lawsuit aimed at the developer of the "hockey stick" temperature map is actually a political salvo at science.
Virginia's recently elected attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, has his hand in just about every divisive issue of the day. He is leading his own charge against the constitutionality of the health care bill, he is suing the Environmental Protection Agency to block it from regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and he is tussling with state universities over whether they can bar discrimination based on sexual orientation.
But the local fight with potentially the broadest reach is the one Cuccinelli has picked against a single scholar - Penn State climatologist Michael Mann.
Mann is the author of what's known in climate research circles as the "hockey stick graph" that charted rapidly rising temperatures in the 20th century. He came to wider attention last November as one of the researchers at the heart of the "climategate" e-mail controversy.
Critics accused Mann and other scientists of manipulating data to portray a climate threat that doesn't really exist. Their research, though, has since been cleared by Penn State, as well as the University of East Anglia, from which the disputed e-mails were originally stolen.
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Global Floating Ice In "Constant Retreat": Study
The world's floating ice is in "constant retreat," showing an instability which will increase global sea levels, according to a report published in Geophysical Research Letters on Wednesday.
Floating ice had disappeared at a steady rate over the past 10 years, according to the first measurement of its kind.
"It's a large number," said Professor Andrew Shepherd of the University of Leeds, lead author of the paper, estimating the net loss of floating sea ice and ice shelves in the last decade at 7,420 cubic kilometers.
That is greater than the loss of ice over land from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets over the same time period, highlighting the impact of warming oceans on floating ice.
Ice melt ebbs and flows from winter to summer. The report's calculations referred to the net loss over the past decade.
"There's a constant rate of retreat (annually)," said Shepherd. "It's a rapid process and there's no reason why it won't increase over the next century."
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The Message from the Glaciers
It was not so long ago that the parts of the globe covered permanently with ice and snow, the Arctic, Antarctic, and Greater Himalayas ("the abode of the snows" in Sanskrit), were viewed as distant, frigid climes of little consequence. Only the most intrepid adventurers were drawn to such desolate regions as the Tibetan Plateau, which, when finally surveyed, proved to have the planet's fourteen highest peaks. Because these mountains encompass the largest nonpolar ice mass in the world-embracing some 46,298 glaciers covering 17 percent of the area's land and since time immemorial have held water in frozen reserve for the people of Asia-they have come to be known as "The Third Pole."
There was a time when the immensity of such larger-than-life features of our natural world as oceans, deserts, mountains, and glaciers evoked awe and even fear. These days, however, these once seemingly eternal and invincible aspects of our planet's architecture are on the defensive. And only belatedly are we beginning to understand how fragile and interconnected they actually are with myriad other elements of planetary life.
Through new scientific data, scholarly articles, books, NGO studies, and media reports, we now know that the melting of polar ice will lead to rising ocean levels and the inundation of many heavily populated areas in vulnerable lowland countries. But we are only beginning to become acquainted with the less-well-known consequences that are starting to flow out of the majestic arc of mountains that begins in Inner Asia with the Tianshan Range in western China and then wraps itself around the western tier of the Tibetan Plateau as it becomes the Hindu Kush in northern Afghanistan. It then joins the Karakorum in northern Pakistan to become the Himalayas above Nepal, Bhutan, and India before ending with the Hengduan Range in southwest China.
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Everest sherpa: Global warming makes climbing hard
KATMANDU, Nepal - A Nepalese Sherpa who climbed Mount Everest for a record 20th time said Tuesday that the melting of glacier ice along its slopes due to global warming is making it increasingly difficult to climb the peak.
"The rising temperature on the mountains has melted much ice and snow on the trail to the summit. It is difficult for climbers to use their crampons on the rocky surfaces," Apa told reporters after flying to Katmandu on Tuesday.
Apa, who uses only one name, reached the 29,035-foot (8,850-meter) summit on Saturday for the 20th time, beating his own previous record.
The 49-year-old first climbed Everest in 1989 and has repeated the feat almost every year since. His closest rival is fellow Sherpa guide Chhewang Nima, who has made 16 trips to the summit.
Apa said when he first began climbing Everest, there was hardly any rocky surface on the trail to the summit. Now, he says, the trail is dotted with bare rocks.
The melting ice has also exposed deep crevasses, making it dangerous for climbers.
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Economist: 'Strategic thinking' lacking on climate
Grinnell, Ia. - President Obama has pandered to oil and coal interests while failing to craft a specific plan to wean the world from climate-disrupting fossil fuels, a leading global economist said Monday.
"Even if we don't have all the answers yet, we need a sense of direction," Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute, told The Des Moines Register before his commencement address at Grinnell College. "What we have instead is politics as usual."
Sachs said Obama has failed, as previous administrations have, to craft a detailed plan to replace coal and oil as major fuels over time.
There isn't enough oil in Alaska or in the coastal United States to meet the nation's long-term energy needs, he said. Yet much discussion has focused on opening those areas to exploration, instead of on the need for a comprehensive plan to move the world to other fuels, he said.
"This is sadly exemplified by the president's announcement, just weeks before the Gulf oil spill, that he was opening up the offshore drilling," said Sachs, a professor of sustainable development who received an honorary degree from Grinnell.
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