UPDATE 2: Thanks to this post, the deniers finally conceded that “the rate of atmospheric CO2 growth has been increasing” — but in a callous, error-riddled post, WattsUpWithThat cheers on the preventable calamity.

UPDATE 1:  I had a good conversation with the co-author Didier Sornette.  This was a draft analysis:  They made a numerical mistake in one of the footnotes and used some inapt wording in a couple of places, none of which changes the main conclusion about CO2 concentrations.  They will be revising the paper and I will make some changes below.

Recent climate science is unequivocal that human civilization is on the precipice.   Climate science also finds that we are pouring carbon dioxide pollution into the atmosphere at an unsustainable rate.  A 2008 Nature Geoscience study found that humans were boosting CO2 levels 14,000 times faster than nature, overwhelming slow negative feedbacks.

That study found, “the mean long-term trend of atmospheric CO2 levels is no more than 22 p.p.m.v. over the past 610,000 years.”  Humans have run up CO2 levels 100 ppm over the last two centuries!  The author of that study noted, “Right now we have put the system entirely out of equilibrium”

It turns out that a purely mathematical analysis, “Evidence for super-exponentially accelerating atmospheric carbon dioxide growth,” comes to a similar conclusion.

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Opposing Republican efforts to forbid climate regulations, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) said Tuesday that the science of manmade climate change is “unequivocally true.” Rockefeller, a strong defender of his state’s coal industry, spoke out on the Senate floor against an amendment submitted to a small business bill by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) that would strip the Environmental Protection Agency of the ability to regulate greenhouse pollution.

McConnell introduced the amendment, drafted by global warming denier Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), as Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) passed companion legislation out of the House energy committee with unanimous Republican support. After stating that the EPA is “created to regulate carbon dioxide emissions,” as the U.S. Supreme Court found, Rockefeller described his arguments with coal-industry climate deniers:

I have been saying to the West Virginia Coal Association — which for the most part doesn’t believe in climate science, they don’t believe there’s a climate problem — I have been saying to them for a number of years that that’s wrong, in my judgment. The science is true. The science is unequivocally true.

Watch it:

Rockefeller is swimming against the toxic tide of science denial in Congress.

Unfortunately, Rockefeller himself is living in a land of economic fantasy. He supports legislation to establish a moratorium on climate action by the EPA until after the 2012 elections. He argues that would give the coal industry more time to develop economically viable carbon capture and sequestration technology. It is nonsense to believe that the coal industry would develop major technological breakthroughs in a few years without any economic incentive to do so, without any regulatory mandate or price on carbon pollution. As Rockefeller is a self-described “mature public servant,” perhaps he’ll accept the unequivocal economic reality too, and stop his dangerous fight against climate action.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that the US Congress has entered the intellectual wilderness, a sad state of affairs in a country that has led the world in many scientific arenas for so long. Global warming is a thorny problem, and disagreement about how to deal with it is understandable. It is not always clear how to interpret data or address legitimate questions. Nor is the scientific process, or any given scientist, perfect. But to deny that there is reason to be concerned, given the decades of work by countless scientists, is irresponsible.

That’s from a strong editorial in the journal Nature, “Into ignorance” (subs. req’d).  Here’s more:

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UPDATE 4:03 PM:  “U.S. Calls Radiation ‘Extremely High’ …:  The chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave a significantly bleaker appraisal of threat posed by the Japanese nuclear crisis than the Japanese government, saying on Wednesday that the damage at one crippled reactor was much more serious than Japanese officials had acknowledged and advising to Americans to evacuate a wider area around the plant than ordered by the Japanese government.”

… the Fukushima Daiichi plant, seen in a satellite photo at 9:35 a.m. Wednesday.

Japan’s nuclear crisis intensified on Wednesday after the authorities announced that a second reactor unit at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant in northeastern Japan may have ruptured and appeared to be releasing radioactive steam.

The break, at the No. 3 reactor unit, worsened the already perilous conditions at the plant, a day after officials said the containment vessel in the No. 2 reactor had also cracked.

That’s from the 1 pm EDT NY Times banner story,  ”Peril and Confusion at Nuclear Plant.“  Here’s more:

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I’m not certain anybody can follow the gyrations of The Breakthrough Institute (TBI) anymore.  Over the last few years, it has attacked essentially every plausible solution to our energy and climate problems — and anyone who tries to end our status quo energy policies.

Now, in the span of a few weeks, it has gone from attacking clean energy standards and energy efficiency, especially efficient lighting, to proudly defending those crucial strategies.  If TBI doesn’t even read its own reports, should we?

Readers have long asked me to update the term “jumping the shark” — especially since the term is really supposed to apply only to “the point in a television program’s history where the plot spins off into absurd storylines,” and I have often been using it for institutions that were not serious to begin with.  Certainly another new Breakthrough Institute article can’t be said to be jumping the shark (see TBI’s attack on energy efficiency backfires and Debunking TBI’s attacks on Obama, Gore, Waxman and Markey, Rachel Carson (!), and top climate scientists).

That’s where Charlie Sheen comes in.

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Today, the Environmental Protection Agency released rules to put strong new limits on toxic power plant emissions — critical in protecting the health of Americans and cleaning up the air we breathe.  CAP’s Susan Lyon has the story.

These long-awaited clean air guidelines are a huge victory for our Americans, our health, and our economy, and they are one of the largest steps forward toward protecting the health of our kids in a generation.  They will curb the dangerous coal- and oil-fired power plant toxic emissions that have gone entirely unchecked for too long.

We are currently being exposed annually to 386,000 tons of 84 dangerous pollutants that are uncontrolled, despite being classified as “air toxics.”  The new air quality standards will protect Americans against life-threatening air pollution from power plants that are spewing these air toxics with no limits.  The rules will work to stem some of these dangerous air pollutants, as noted previously:

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Clean-tech: a decade of explosive growth with more to come

What a difference a decade makes. Once shunned as an industry only a tree-hugger could love, clean-tech has blossomed into an economic heavyweight, according to a report from research firm Clean Edge Inc.

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Media Matters reported Monday that the right-wing media kept pushing for accelerated permitting of nukes and removal of “obstacles” even in the wake of Japan’s nuclear crisis.

Now ThinkProgress has compiled a video of GOP Senators’ “frighteningly blas© and contemptuous attitude towards the severity of nuclear power’s dangers and the regulations necessary to address them”:

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Last year, the New York Times revealed that petrochemical billionaire David Koch was among a small group of multibillionaires quietly promoting a presidential candidacy for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Today, a report by investigative journalist Peter Stone states that Koch actually hosted Romney last summer for one of his first large fundraising parties.  ThinkProgress has the story.

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In 2009, Congressional Budget Office director Doug Elmendorf testified that “a relatively pessimistic estimate” for the economic impact of warming of 4°C by 2100 would be three percent of U.S. GDP. With even more radical warming of 6°C (11°F), the impact would be five percent, he said

In an exclusive interview with ThinkProgress’s Brad Johnson, leading climate economist Nicholas Stern found Elmendorf’s testimonyto be “ludicrous”:

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