Coal baron Don Blankenship, the CEO of Massey Energy, perhaps perturbed by the recent opprobrium received by BP CEO Tony Hayward, wants to remind us that he is still the most evil man in America. The explosion of the Blankenship’s Upper Big Branch mine after deliberate safety violations killed 29 miners in the worst coal disaster in 40 years, but the news was overshadowed by BP’s Deepwater Horizon explosion weeks later. Massey Energy is the leading practitioner of mountaintop removal mining, which has led to ecological catastrophe in four Appalachian states, but BP’s blowout hit four states and the Gulf of Mexico.

In an interview with the New York Times, Blankenship argued that climate scientists are clinically insane, blowing up mountains doesn’t harm the environment, renewable energy and over-regulation caused the Bush recession, and critics of his social Darwinism are really just socialists. Up is down in Blankenship’s world: destroying mountains for their coal helps the environment while environmentalists harm the environment.

Blankenship’s words of wisdom on mountaintop removal:

“When the job is finished and reclaimed and revegetated, I think it would be hard to argue any meaningful or extensive damage to the environment.”

“Surface mining provides the funding to make improvements in people’s lives. And that is more important than the small afterdamage of the environment, if you can say that is even damage.”

Blankenship’s words of wisdom on global warming:

Anyone who says they can tell you the temperature of the earth in a hundred years, you should put a straitjacket on them. They don’t have any idea. It’s almost humorous that a country that can’t predict its budget deficit in a year could predict the temperature in a hundred years. The problem with the world’s climate is that it’s impacted by a lot of things. We all know that.

Watch it:

Blankenship’s philosophy of life — the power of denial:

It’s good to be villainized by people who don’t understand and that are wrong. United Mine Workers was a long time the most violent union in America, they committed violence against us, and we beat them, we wouldn’t expect them to like us. Some people believe in CO2 so strongly it trumps every other thought that they’ve got, so we wouldn’t expect them to favor coal mining. Some people believe that the country should be socialized so they are opposed to free enterprise. I mean, you have to have your own beliefs, your own core beliefs, your own strengths and do what you think is right. You can’t do what others believe is right, you have to do what you believe is right.

Watch it:

“There has to be pragmatism in what we do,” Blankenship argues, where “pragmatism” means denying the reality of anything that prevents him from destroying the planet and others’ lives for cash.

During two Iowa town halls last week, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) put his natural penchant for outlandish statements on display. Prior to calling President Obama a “Marxist” who “does not have an American experience,” King fielded a number of questions about energy and climate change. His responses revealed a man not just skeptical of climate change, but downright hostile to science in general.

King began by contending that the 97% of scientists who support the evidence behind manmade climate change are “frauds.” He then proceeded to call the notion of manmade climate change “not rational” but “a religion” like “the modern version of the rain dance”:

KING: Every civilization, according to this Professor Brown, has not only always paid attention to the weather. Every civilization has tried to affect and change the weather. So whether it’s the Chinese seeding clouds, whether it’s some of the industrialized nations in the world trying to get together for cap-and-trade to try to reduce the CO2 emissions. You know, this might be the modern version of the rain dance.[...] It’s not rational, it’s a religion that we’re up against. I mean that from the broadest sense of the word. It’s something you can’t necessarily prove.

King later admitted that he doesn’t just disagree with taking steps to combat climate change, but he fundamentally opposes climate change science. King recoils at the fact that most GOP leaders agree with the science, arguing instead that “you don’t ever give up a premise unless you happen to believe that they’re right. And we should not concede the science of this.” He proceeded to put his minimal scientific understanding on full display, agreeing with a constituent who was “amazed” that people faulted carbon dioxide when it’s the main ingredient plants use to produce oxygen:

KING: They have not made that scientific case. I have always argued against the science. Some of our leadership have said “don’t argue the science.” They get pollsters in and coach us. I’m not very coachable…(laughing)…But I’ve said “you don’t ever give up a premise unless you happen to believe that they’re right.” And we should not concede the science of this. And they say, “you should just argue the economics, not the science.” Well, no. They were wrong on the science[...]

CONSTITUENT: Do you realize that carbon dioxide is the main ingredient plants use with sunshine to make oxygen and sugars for us to eat and for animals. What’s the matter with carbon dioxide? It’s amazing to me the way some of these people think.

KING: I agree with you. There have been many times in the history of the planet that we’ve had higher concentrations of CO2 than we have here today. There are a couple of German engineers that took that theory apart and proved it wrong in a lab. I’ve read through that, but I’d have to go back to school for a half a year or a year to tell you I followed every bit of their rationale. But the presumption of the Greenhouse Effect is at least, from what I saw, was pretty convincingly rebutted.

However, instead of using science to predict and fight climate change, King advised instead that we turn instead to the Bible. Given that rising sea levels are threatening to swallow up entire nations, that may not be such bad advice:

CONSTITUENT: It’s got nothing to do with carbon dioxide. It’s got to do with socialization [sic]. Just like their tax on energy. That’s got nothing to do with our benefit. Where’s this tax go to that they’re wanting to spend for their supposedly bad things we got ahold of? Where does it go to? And who’s blamed?

KING: I think you make an important point. I know that there is a good number of them that believe that the science says that the earth is getting warmer and we can control it. Some of them really believe it. Control is a big part of it. I finally found a book that I’d been looking for – one to help me figure out what’s going on – and the answers are in the Bible.

Listen here:

Massive Coral Mortality Following Bleaching in Indonesia

The Wildlife Conservation Society has released initial field observations that indicate that a dramatic rise in the surface temperature in Indonesian waters has resulted in a large-scale bleaching event that has devastated coral populations.

WCS’s Indonesia Program “Rapid Response Unit” of marine biologists was dispatched to investigate coral bleaching reported in May in Aceh — a province of Indonesia located on the northern tip of the island of Sumatra. The initial survey carried out by the team revealed that over 60 percent of corals were bleached.

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Republicans embrace pro-pollution, anti-science candidates

GOP candidates for Senate are rushing to pander to their extremist anti-science Tea Party base by denying even our most basic understanding of climate science.  Most notably we’ve seen the dumbing down of Carly Fiorina.  The Politico has an article today that examines this trend:

Fueled by anti-Obama rhetoric and news articles purportedly showing scientists manipulating their own data, Republicans running for the House, Senate and governor’s mansions have gotten bolder in stating their doubts over the well-established link between man-made greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.

Yes, the center-right publication feels obliged to open their piece by repeating the absurd charge, which it itself dismisses later, “Four independent reviews have concluded that the so-called “Climategate” e-mails stolen last fall from a United Kingdom research unit showed nothing more than a frank discussion among scientists working through large and complicated sets of data.”

The piece has a long list of GOP candidates — including Sharron Angle (NV) and Ken Buck (CO) — expressing varying degrees of scientific denial and pro-pollution palaver.  The most anti-scientific statements came this week from Ron Johnson, Republican from WI, who called scientists and all those who believe in human causes of climate change, “crazy.” As Think Progress reports:

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I’ve been thinking about writing a post along these lines, when someone far more knowledgeable on the subject beat me to the punch.

Here is a Grist post by Robert J. Walker, the former president of Handgun Control, Inc. (now the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence), who “helped to lead the fight for passage of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 and the 1994 federal assault-weapons ban”:

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This is a Wonk Room cross-post.

The American Petroleum Institute (API) “” the lobbying giant of the oil and gas industry that also writes its own rules “” is continuing its work to keep oil industry profits high as the American worker suffers. API demonizes any effort to cut the industry’s billion-dollar subsidies as “energy taxes” that “destroy jobs.” In fact, API chief economist John Felmy has claimed a report commissioned by the Center for American Progress finds that “$1 billion increase in oil and natural gas industry taxes destroys 5,000 jobs,” quoted in an API blog post:

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Our favorite climate de-crocker, Peter Sinclair has a new video that features someone who may be smarter than all the other anti-science disinformers [combined?]:

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