Today President Obama announced plans to open new coastal areas to offshore oil exploration and drilling, including in Alaska’s North Slope. He also called for development of “clean” coal.
Obama invoked science to mollify critics of offshore drilling: “We’ll be guided not by ideology but by scientific evidence”. However, this policy shift clashes with climate science. The extraction and use of fossil fuels moves carbon from safe long term underground storage up into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide where it acts as a greenhouse gas, trapping additional heat in the atmosphere.