Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), now the senior senator from the Appalachian state after Sen. Robert Byrd’s death this year, rebuked his state’s climate deniers at a forum about the future of coal on Wednesday. West Virginia’s politics are dominated by coal interests, including the mountaintop removal giant Massey Energy run by right-wing climate denier Don Blankenship. Many of the state’s top politicians are in denial about the costs of coal pollution, even as mountains are destroyed, children poisoned, and towns washed away. Rockefeller told coal supporters should stop “pretending climate change doesn’t exist“:

People think they are protecting coal by pretending climate change doesn’t exist or that (by saying) carbon capture and storage is not needed. But burying one’s head in the sand is not a solution and can only backfire. Denying the problem of climate change may feel good in the short term, but in the long term, it only locks in an existing infrastructure for other fuels like natural gas and will cost coal miners’ jobs.

Rockefeller “said such thinking will put the state behind the rest of the world in embracing new energy technology, and could lead to coal losing out to natural gas as the major energy supplier of the future,” WVNS TV’s Walt Williams reported. Rockefeller said “it is a natural instinct for people to ignore a problem hoping it would go away, but it won’t in this case.”

Responding to the propaganda campaigns by Massey Energy, the West Virginia Coal Association, FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, American Solutions for Winning the Future, and other coal-powered front groups, Rockefeller said he’s not on the “bandwagon” that “climate change is a myth”:

I’m concerned that powerful voices in West Virginia continue to argue that climate change is a myth. I’m not on the same bandwagon that some of you are. I am really concerned that these voices are so loud, dominant (and) shaping public opinion.

“The question is not should we try to address climate change,” he said. “The question is what tools should we develop to tackle it,” supporting the Obama administration’s efforts to jumpstart American carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology.

Unfortunately, Rockefeller is still attempting to delay action on global warming pollution, with his proposal to suspend Environmental Protection Agency rules and his support for Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) amendment to deny that greenhouse gases are a pollutant. Ironically, as the Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. notes, establishing limits on coal pollution are critical for creating a domestic market for CCS technology, allowing the United States to compete with the current market leaders in Europe and Asia.

Before his death, Byrd demanded that the coal industry get real about the costs of mountaintop removal, telling it to end the “fear mongering, grandstanding and outrage.” Opposing the Murkowski amendment, Byrd said that to “deny the mounting science of climate change is to stick our heads in the sand,” and “the regulation of greenhouse gasses is approaching, whether done by Congress or by regulation, despite naysayers who rail about the non-existence of climate change.”

One hopes that Rockefeller will continue to honor the legacy of Sen. Byrd by standing up for the real interests of West Virginians, instead of the short-term interests of its handful of coal millionaires.

UPDATE:  National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) director Mark Serreze slammed the anti-science disinformers yesterday:

There are claims coming from some communities that the Arctic sea ice is recovering, is getting thicker again. That’s simply not the case.  It’s continuing down in a death spiral.

Every bit of evidence we have says the ice is thinning.  That means there’s less energy needed to melt it out than there used to be.

Certainly the latest analysis from the  Polar Science Center bears that out:

Arctic sea ice volume, extent, and area continue to shrink apace as we approach the dramatic end to this year’s melt season.  The NSIDC tells me extent dropped to 4.76 million square kilometers today — which is below the majority of even the most recent expert predictions logged with the Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH).

Here’s one of the sea ice graphs on the web I haven’t posted before, from the University of Bremen (click to enlarge), one of the resources that SEARCH recommends:

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US citizens face economic problems that are all too real, and the country’s future crucially depends on education, science and technology as it faces increasing competition from China and other emerging science powers….  Yet the public often buys into anti-science, anti-regulation agendas that are orchestrated by business interests and their sponsored think tanks and front groups.

That’s from a powerful editorial published today by the journal Nature titled, “Science scorned” (subs. req’d).  It is an important message that, apparently, few science journals and leaders in this country have the guts to spell out.

Then again, Nature is not merely one of the top journals in the world, it is one of the rare publications of any kind that understands what we are up against — see Nature: “Scientists must now emphasize the science, while acknowledging that they are in a street fight.”

Here are extended excerpts from this must-read piece:

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The chattering class predicts this will be the year of the Tea Party because its members feel more passion about their issues. Despite repeated blows to its moral during the past year, the climate action movement must not lose its passion — or this November’s elections.

Guess blogger Bill Becker is Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project,

On November 2, America’s attention will focus on the mid-term elections for Congress. But those of us who believe government must act against global climate change had better pay attention to another set of races:  the election of 37 governors and scores of state legislators.

In the years ahead, the people we elect to our 50 statehouses may be more important than the people we elect to Congress.

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UPDATE:  Whoriskey replies below.

Guest blogger Kate Gordon is CAP’s VP for Energy and Climate Policy.

In yesterday’s Washington Post, Peter Whoriskey argues – predictably for the Post these days – that making lightbulbs more efficient puts Americans out of work.  The last US-based GE factory to make old-school incandescent lightbulbs is going out of business, and here is Whoriskey’s explanation:

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… much of China’s clean energy success lies in aggressive government policies that help this crucial export industry in ways most other governments do not. These measures risk breaking international rules to which China and almost all other nations subscribe, according to some trade experts interviewed by The New York Times.

On Clean Energy, China Skirts Rules

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Beginning last week, the oil industry launched a national astroturfing effort called “Rally for Jobs.” The events, which are being held across the nation, are backed by right-wing billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. They launched a nearly identical campaign last summer that was widely mocked for its obvious astroturfing after it was revealed that 15 of the 21 Energy Citizens events were actually planned by oil industry lobbyists.

ThinkProgress attended one of the rallies yesterday in Canton, Ohio and reports on what happened.

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BP is an extreme greenwasher (see “Should you believe anything BP says?“).  Its lies to the public, government, and itself have had catastrophic consequences (see The three causes of BP’s Titanic oil disaster: Recklessness, Arrogance, and Hubris).

So naturally, when students in California return to school this fall, they will have a brand new environmental curriculum developed, in part, by BP.  Think Progress has the amazing story:

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