Lee Fang wrote this Think Progress cross-post.

Paul Nyden, writing in the Charleston Gazette this Sunday, revealed that Koch Industries “” the massive conglomerate of oil, chemical, manufacturing, timber, hedge fund, coal, and shipping interests run by the right-wing ideologues David and Charles Koch “” has seeded West Virginia with several conservative front groups. Koch foundations provide the cash for anti-government efforts in the Mountain State, including a right-wing “think tank” called the Public Policy Foundation of West Virginia and for free-market faculty members at West Virginia University.

Nyden notes that Russell Sobel, a local economist whose research and writing has been underwritten by Koch fronts, argues against the minimum wage and against mine safety laws:

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Excerpting the book Greening Our Built World

More and more communities of faith””including Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Quaker groups”” are embracing green design and green building. While beliefs, traditions, and practices vary in many respects, care for the earth is a value that transcends religious distinctions and emerges as a common motivation for incorporating environmentally friendly designs into construction projects. Belief in a higher being, respect for creation, and a mandate to care for one’s neighbor are at the core of many faiths. Many religious traditions call upon members to be good stewards of the earth and its resources.

The results of a more qualitative survey in Greening Our Built World of 17 faith-based institutions that have built green buildings reveals a common sense that building green is a way of committing an entire community to the moral imperative to care for the earth and help all people share in the benefits of a healthy, sustainable environment. For a growing number of religious institutions, building green has become not just a cost-effective investment but, more importantly, a way to embody and demonstrate a religious and moral commitment to care for the earth and for life. The process of learning about and undertaking greening, in turn, commonly reinvigorates the religious community. According to Rose McKenney, a faculty member at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma Washington, the presence of the green building on campus is a major recruiting tool for new students.

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Our favorite climate de-crocker, Peter Sinclair has a new video:
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Today, scientists, youth, and coalfield residents came together to protest the coal industry’s destruction of our future in a global day of action. In Washington, DC, top climate scientist James Hansen, who warned Congress of the coming scourge of global warming in 1989, joined over a hundred others who were arrested at the White House for protesting mountaintop removal, which Barack Obama has called an “environmental disaster.” The Rainforest Action Network, which helped organize the Appalachia Rising protest, reports on the arrests:

More than 100 people were arrested today during Appalachia Rising, the largest national protest to end mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining. Arrests included Appalachian residents; retired coal miners; renowned climate scientist, James Hansen; and faith leaders. After a march from Freedom Plaza and a rally at Lafayette Park, more than 100 staged a sit-in in front of the White House to demand President Obama follow his own science and end mountaintop mining.

“In a stark reminder of the national connection to the coalfields,” journalist Jeff Biggers described, “the Obama administration officials looked on from their White House offices, as their electricity came from a coal-fired plant generated partly with coal strip-mined from Appalachia.”

On the other side of the planet, activists “shut down the world’s largest coal export operation” in Newcastle, Australia:

Climate activists brought Newcastle’s billion-dollar coal-loaders to a grinding halt yesterday, suspending themselves midair to effectively shut down the world’s largest coal export operation. Police arrested 41 members of the Rising Tide group, which launched a simultaneous protest at three coal-loader sites at dawn yesterday.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles hit an all-time record 113°, freak floods hit Minnesota and Wisconsin, and Wall Street remains bullish on coal. On October 10, thousands of people around the world will come together in a global day of activism for clean energy.

In the standfirst I will make a fairly obvious pun about the subject matter before posing an inane question I have no intention of really answering: is this an important scientific finding?

In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of “scare quotes” to ensure that it’s clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever.

In this paragraph I will briefly (because no paragraph should be more than one line) state which existing scientific ideas this new research “challenges”.

Oh, this Guardian piece is just too damn good not to reprint in its entirety.  If the Brits had The Onion, Martin Robbins of The Lay Scientist would be their science reporter.  His generic science story continues:

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Solar radiation management (SRM) –  aka ‘hard’ geo-engineering — is, literally, a smoke and mirrors solution to the dangers posed by unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases,.

As science advisor John Holdren resasserted in 2009 of strategies such as space mirrors or aerosol injection, “The ‘geo-engineering’ approaches considered so far appear to be afflicted with some combination of high costs, low leverage, and a high likelihood of serious side effects.”

And, of course, those ‘solutions’ do nothing to stop the consequences of ocean acidification, which recent studies suggest will be devastating all by itself (see Geological Society: Acidifying oceans spell marine biological meltdown “by end of century”).

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The greatest crisis we confront in the 21st Century is not a future environmental crisis predicted by computer models, but a human crisis today that is fully within our power to solve. For too long, too many have been focused on the wrong end game.

For everyone who has voiced a 2050 greenhouse gas goal, we need 10 people and policy bodies working toward the goal of broad energy access. Only once we have a growing, vibrant, global economy providing energy access and an improved human condition for billions of the energy impoverished can we accelerate progress on environmental issues such as a reduction in greenhouse gases.

That would be Gregory H. Boyce Chairman and CEO of Peabody Energy, “the world’s largest private-sector coal company.”  Last week he “outlined a multi-step plan to eliminate energy poverty and inequality by unlocking the power of coal to advance energy security, generate economic stimulus and create environmental solutions.”

Yes, the power of coal needs “unlocking.”  Poor, imprisoned, climate-destroying coal — can anyone set it free from its rampant growth curve?

Boyce can relax.  For everyone who has voiced a 2050 greenhouse gas goal there are 10 people funded by the corporate polluters to shout them down, spread disinformation, or lobby against serious action (see “Dirty Money“).

The rest of us, however, can’t relax because here is the “Peabody Plan”:

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This a TP cross-post.

Millionaire businessman John Raese, running as the GOP Senate nominee to fill Robert Byrd’s West Virginia seat, wants to take the state back to the 19th century. Not only does he want to return capitalism to the era before child labor laws, Social Security, and civil rights laws, he also promotes a pre-industrial vision of science. In an interview with Real Clear Politics, Raese said he has “zero” trust that “human activity is contributing to climate change”:

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Millionaire businessman John Raese, running as the GOP Senate nominee to fill Robert Byrd’s West Virginia seat, wants to take the state back to the 19th century. Not only does he want to return capitalism to the era before child labor laws, Social Security, and civil rights laws, he also promotes a pre-industrial vision of science. In an interview with Real Clear Politics, Raese said he has “zero” trust that “human activity is contributing to climate change”:

The oceans that surround the world produce 185 billion tons of CO2 per annum. Man per annum only produces six billion tons, so what could possibly be the concern? One volcano puts out more toxic gases-one volcano-than man makes in a whole year. And when you look at this “climate change,” and when you look at the regular climate change that we all have in the world, we have warm and we have cooling spells.

Although Raese is well versed in conspiracy-theory talking points, they’re as nonsensical as his desire to abolish the Departments of Energy and Education. Human activity puts about 29 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, well over 100 times as much as all the volcanoes in the world. The oceans actually vent about 332 billion tons of CO2 per year, but also absorb that much. Human emissions have disrupted the balance of the carbon cycle, leading to rising concentrations of greenhouse pollution in the atmosphere. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by 40 percent, and global temperatures are on an inexorable rise, overwhelming any natural cycles.

Far from protecting West Virginia’s coal industry, Raese’s desire to abolish the Department of Energy, kill the Recovery Act, and deny global warming would end federal policy to support advanced coal technology, the only hope for this 19th-century fuel in the 21st century.

See full data on how much energy companies and trade associations spent on oil lobbying for 2009-2010 (.xls)

Oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill makes a pattern in Gulf waters in this AP photo.  Here’s another pattern:  Big Oil and its allies have spent more than  half a billion dollars in lobbying and campaign contributions to stop pollution reductions over the past year an a half.

CAPAF’s Daniel J. Weiss, Rebecca Lefton, and Susan Lyon have the numbers and charts in this cross-post.

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Growth in renewables capacity, annual and five-year average

Renewables Continue Remarkable Growth

By 2010, renewable energy had reached a clear tipping point in the context of global energy supply, concludes the “Renewables 2010 Global Status Report.” With renewables comprising fully one quarter of global power capacity from all sources and delivering 18% of global electricity supply in 2009, the latest release of the definitive assessment of the state of the global renewable energy industry from the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21) details the current status and key trends of global markets, investment, industry and policies related to renewable energy.

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Brad Johnson of The Wonk Room is covering the Clinton Global Initiative.

Speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative on Tuesday, new UN climate chief Christiana Figueres criticized the failures of the Copenhagen talks and said that a comprehensive “big bang” global climate treaty is not possible.

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