t may be reaching a bit, but when one of the world’s leading climate alarmists and activists - British author and journalist George Monbiot - declares that he and his environment movement colleagues “are lost” in a world that still believes in what many environmentalists do not believe, namely growth and prosperity, it is almost certain that global warming is in decline as a political issue.

In a column this week in The Guardian, Mr. Monbiot laments the failure of green activists to reach beyond a “set of deep beliefs ...that in some cases remain unexamined.” Mostly, he said, the battle over energy supplies and carbon emissions has plunged the environmental movement into choosing objectives that “are at odds” with one another.

Green predictions of collapse have not materialized as the global carbon-based economic expansion continues. “The problem we face,” he said, “is not that we have too little fossil fuel, but too much.” As conventional oil declines, economies will switch to tar sands, shale gas and coal. If coal runs out, other fossil fuels will take its place. Because the greens can’t get their political and ideological acts together into a world economic view that makes sense, Mr. Monbiot sees the world heading for “environmental destruction.”

Mr. Monbiot’s defeatism in the face of economic and technological reality represents just one aspect of what appears to be a giant shift in the political and economic environment around climate change.

Another portent: Jeff Immelt, the CEO of global industrial giant General Electric, publicly recalibrated GE’s approach to climate issues and government intervention to control carbon emissions. In comments reported this week by Reuters, Mr. Immelt - an outspoken climate-change activist and advisor to President Barack Obama - said: “If I had one thing to do over again, I would not have talked so much about green.”

He also said he was ending his activist support for a comprehensive U.S. energy policy. “Even though I believe in global warming and I believe in the science...it just took on a connotation that was too elitist; it was too precious and it let opponents think that if you had a green initiative, you didn’t care about jobs. I’m a businessman. That’s all I care about, is jobs.” On a national green energy policy, he said: “I’m kind of over that state of arguing for a comprehensive energy policy. I’m back to keeping my head down and working.”

Mr. Immelt’s conversion to job creation as a priority may well reflect broader public and political opinion about climate change and carbon issues. That the public might be somewhat unsure of climate issues is not new, although doubt is certain to be enhanced with a new Science paper published this week that showed that climate change varies from country to country. In fact, since 1980, there have been no signs of warming in Canada or the United States, where temperatures have declined since 1980.

In the Science study, headed by David Lobell of Stanford University, researchers found that climate stability in North America promoted an increase in agricultural production, while warming in other parts of the world may have caused a decline in production of some crops in some regions. On the whole, though, the heavily hedged study concluded that more study is needed.

Uncertainty and ambiguity, a hallmark of climate science, may explain the findings of a survey of British public opinion. Eric Berger, a science writer for the Houston Chronicle, says a recent British poll shows that more people believe the benefits of climate change outweigh the risks than believe the risks outweigh the benefits. Put another way, only about one-quarter of respondents seem to think the risks of climate change outweigh the benefits.

For politicians, the latest developments do not suggest drastic action on carbon will be automatically welcomed by voters. In North America, a lack of warming undermines political motivation. Elsewhere, people are growing aware that if warming is happening, there are winners and losers - so why bring in carbon controls that might increase economic risks.

Meanwhile, green dreams of a carbon-free future are fading as the world’s energy industries continue to develop new fossil-fuel sources. Massive new oil fields have been found in Brazil. The biggest energy revolution is not in solar or wind, as greens might have fantasized, but in shale gas. A review of shale gas prospects, The Shale Gas Shock, by journalist Matt Ridley for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, highlights the astounding prospects for shale gas around the world as a lower-carbon - and much cheaper - source of energy.

All of which drives the George Monbiots of the world to distraction. He posed what he called “an awkward question for us greens,” a question that green ideology is not equipped to answer. “Why hasn’t the global economy collapsed as we predicted? Yes, it wobbled, though largely for other reasons. Now global growth is back with a vengeance: it reached 4.6% last year, and the IMF predicts roughly the same for 2011 and 2012.. Not only does the economy appear to be more resistant to resource shocks than we assumed, but the result of those shocks is an increase, not a decline, in environmental destruction.”

In Mr. Monbiot’s view, however, all human activity produces environmental destruction, which is why few people outside the green movement are buying into what he calls environmental “belief systems.” What people want is what Mr. Immelt has come around describing as his priority: “All I care about, is jobs.” He might have added, prosperity, production, wealth creation.

This article was originally posted at Townhall.com

Unwilling to reign in Washington’s overspending problem, Democrats and their allies on the Left are stuck championing tax increases. Raising the corporate income tax rate - already the highest in the world - or increasing the personal income rate is untenable, leaving Democrats no choice except to try and repeal tax credits and deductions.

With oil and natural gas companies releasing their first quarter earnings this week, look for revenue hungry Democrats and to set their sights on this industry. First out of the gate is the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) which began asking Members of Congress to pledge to raise taxes on American oil and natural gas companies by eliminating a handful of pro-growth deductions. The LCV pledge reads:

“With five biggest public oil companies enjoying $60 billion in profits and Americans struggling with high gas prices, we should no longer force Americans to subsidize oil companies. I hereby pledge to end taxpayer subsidies and handouts for oil companies.”

Let’s cut through the hyperbole. Unlike renewable sources of energy which received $60 billion in taxpayer dollars since 2008, the American government doesn’t give oil and natural gas companies a cent to produce oil. The LCV’s characterization of tax credits and deductions as subsidies is intentionally misleading. A subsidy is when the government takes money from you and gives it to someone else, like a solar company. Allowing a company to keep more of its earned money by employing a tax credit is anything but a subsidy.

You would think from the LCV’s pledge that oil and natural gas companies pay virtually no taxes and are gaming the system for profit. This could not be farther from the truth: paying nearly $100 million a day in income taxes - and $300 billion in total income taxes between 2004-2008 - the oil and natural gas industry’s effective income tax rate is 48 percent, compared to 28 percent for other S&P Industrial companies. And that’s just income taxes, those numbers don’t even include an additional $60 billion in non-income taxes or $350 million in excise taxes paid on petroleum products.

Furthermore, it is worth asking who profits when oil companies prosper. Apart from the 9.2 million people the industry employs, 27 percent of oil companies are owned by pension funds, 23 percent by individual investors, 30 percent by mutual funds, and 14 percent by IRAs. Only 1.5 percent of oil stocks are held by corporate management. This means that if you or your employer has been saving for retirement, well, you are likely part of Big Oil. Gasp!

And then there’s the matter of gasoline prices. As a commodity, oil prices are subject to speculation from investors who access global supply and demand. When you spend a dollar on gasoline, 68 cents from that dollar go towards purchasing the crude oil and 18 cents is used for refining and retailing. The remaining 14 cents is forked over to the government in excise taxes.

If Democrats really wanted to alleviate Americans’ pain at the pump, they could reduce the gasoline excise tax. Revealing their true intention, more revenue, Democrats are arguing for higher taxes on oil and natural gas companies - it is hard to imagine how further taxing oil and natural gas companies would bring down the cost of gasoline.

The truth is Democrats would rather demonize oil and natural gas companies than make necessary spending cuts. Leadership is making tough decisions about which programs to cut, bolster, or eliminate, not which companies to tax.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich asked for it, and now he has it: evidence that so-called “renewable” energy mandates raise electricity costs, subtract jobs and harm the economy.

Earlier this month our organization released a study of Ohio’s Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard, and the findings will not encourage citizens of a state struggling with still high unemployment and stagnant population growth.

If the AEPS is kept, consumers can expect to pay $8.6 billion more for their electricity between 2016 and 2025, while seeing net losses in jobs, annual wages and disposable income because of the mandate.

Ohio’s AEPS requires that the state’s utilities generate 25 percent of their power from “alternative” sources by the year 2025, with half that amount (12.5 percent) required to come from “renewable” sources such as wind or solar.

When he campaigned last year, Kasich said he would support a repeal of AEPS “if it drives up costs to consumers.” An uptick was expected before the law passed, since it contained a provision to cap costs from the mandate to three percent per year. But that stipulation has so many holes in it, that utilities can easily exceed the three percent with other compliance and surcharge mechanisms.

Unsurprisingly, the renewables-driven hidden tax on everyone’s electric bills will flow throughout Ohio’s already beleaguered economy, and will serve as a heavier anchor upon it. Among the findings of our study - conducted by the economists at the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University in Boston - are that Ohio will lose close to 10,000 jobs in 2025 (when the AEPS is supposed to be in full effect), while real disposable income will fall by almost $1.1 billion and net investment in the state will be reduced by $79 million.

Global warming was supposed to be the reason for a broad departure from greenhouse gas emissions (caused by fossil fuels like coal, which generates 84 percent of Ohio’s electricity) in favor of “renewables” like wind and solar. But the weather has failed to cooperate, with no alarming, sustained increases in temperatures, sea level rise or hurricane intensity, as was predicted.

Meanwhile the prescription is really a placebo - or worse. Because of wind’s intermittence, utilities must employ coal- and natural gas-fired generators as backups. Studies have shown that when these fossil fueled power producers are required to constantly ramp up and down, they emit more pollutants (like sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and yes, greenhouse gases) than they would if they ran consistently without wind.

Do Kasich and the General Assembly really need to give repeal of AEPS much more thought?

Also see this video on Prince Charles, Eco-Hypocrite in the vein of Al Gore and James Cameron

The US Congress remains on vacation, thus there has been little political action except for pronouncements by President Obama. He has accused speculators and privately owned oil companies for causing the large increases in the price of crude oil and gasoline, which are expected to go higher once summer begins. Ignoring the failure of prior investigations, he ordered the Justice Department to investigate in the illegal actions of speculators. The prices of gold, silver, and food, are increasing, so the Justice Department may have its hands full. The President refuses to recognize the contributions of his administration to the escalating price of energy, something that he and many key administration officials previously stated they desired.

Although he states that he is in discussions with Saudi Arabia for it to raise production, Mr. Obama refuses to recognize that privately owned oil companies may appear large compared to other privately owned companies. However, in terms of reserves they are small compared with government owned oil and gas companies. According to PetroStrategies, Inc., a 2007 ranking of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, in terms of reserves, placed the largest privately owned company, ExxonMobil, at number 17 with 13,318 million barrels of oil equivalent, far behind number 1 Saudi Arabia Oil, with 303,285 million barrels and, number 2 National Iranian Oil with 300,485 million barrels, etc. No doubt the rankings vary, but these are indicative of the general orders of magnitude.

The president fails to recognize that the rates of return on revenues for integrated oil companies are quite modest when compared with many other companies. According to rankings by Fortune, in 2010 ExxonMobil had profits of $19,208 Million on sales of $284,650 Million for a rate of return on sales of 6.8%. Companies such as McDonald’s, Microsoft, and Google achieved returns of 20% or more.

Mr. Obama is demanding that tax subsidies to oil and gas companies be eliminated and that the increase in revenues be used to subsidize alternative energy producers, thereby increasing taxes on the efficient for the benefit of inefficient producers of energy. Such an effort is nothing but raw political favoritism of certain industries. Please see the discussion on the number of the week.

Already, some international experts are expressing concern of the consequences of the administration’s policies. In “The Ten Inconvenient Truths that shape our new energy world,” published in the European Energy Review, Matthew Hulbert of the Swiss Centre for Security Studies describes why today’s oil markets are driven more by geopolitics than by geology, and there is a sharp disconnect between production, price and fear. Long-held fundamentals no longer exist.

Alarmingly for Americans, he states: “Political risk is just as acute, if not more deadly, in the US than anywhere else in the world.” Perhaps lumping America with Nigeria, Russia, Venezuela, etc. in protection of private property rights may be too extreme, but it gives an indication of the direction of the Administration’s oil policy.

As if on cue, an appeals panel of the EPA ruled that Shell Oil cannot proceed with exploratory shallow-water drilling on vast tracts that it has leased from the Federal government in the Beauford and Chukchi Seas north of Alaska, claiming the exploratory drilling may violate the Clean Air Act - Shell did not consider the emissions of an ice breaker that may be required during these operations. According to reports, Shell spent $2.2 Billion on the leases and a total of nearly $4 Billion during the 5 years it has been planning to explore these regions. Shell may come back another year, but, no doubt, emboldened by these actions, EPA bureaucrats will create other imaginative regulatory obstacles.

Number of the Week: $4 Billion. This is the amount that Mr. Obama claims to be the tax subsidies extended to the oil and gas industry. It is not clear how the amount is calculated. By contrast, in an article referenced in last week’s TWTW, the Department of Energy announced it has given $21 Billion in (not tax) subsidies to the alternative energy industry in the form of loan guarantees. A report by the US Energy Information Administration estimated, in 2007, subsidies to Natural Gas and Petroleum Liquids were $2,2 Billion and to Renewables were $4.9 Billion. Since the stimulus bill of 2009, direct subsidies to alternative energy producers have increased dramatically by orders of magnitude, but for the US these subsidies are not centrally compiled as far as SEPP has been able to determine. (Unlike the US, many nations, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, substantially subsidize gasoline.)

The tax subsidies, “loopholes,” to oil and gas companies are largely in three categories: 1) oil depletion allowance, 2) expensing indirect drilling costs, and 3) a tax credit for taxes paid to foreign nations during foreign operations (foreign tax credit). The first category is a favorite among independent producers (and similar depletion allowances are available for all mineral extraction, timber, etc.). The independent producers can pass the depletion on to individual investors. Since the mid-1970s, the allowance has not been permitted for integrated oil companies. The smaller producers will bitterly fight for this “loophole” and the larger producers will be blamed.

The second category permits writing off indirect drilling costs in the year incurred rather than capitalizing them and writing them off over several years. Closing this “loophole” would only change timing of taking the expense, not total amounts of the so-called tax subsidy. The third category is available for all international companies. Closing this “loophole” would discriminate against oil and gas companies in favor of other international companies such as General Electric.

How low can liberals sink? This low: Think Progress blames the tornadoes that killed close to 300 across the South on those states’ Congressional delegations: “Catastrophic Climate: Storms Kill 292 In States Represented By Climate Pollution Deniers.”

The Congressional delegations of these states overwhelmingly voted (HR 910 and McConnell Amendment 183) to reject the science that polluting the climate is dangerous:

That is typical Think Progress: the votes were not, of course, on whether “polluting the climate"--whatever that means--"is dangerous.” The votes were to overturn the EPA’s carbon dioxide endangerment finding.

“Given that global warming is unequivocal,” climate scientist Kevin Trenberth cautioned the American Meteorological Society in January of this year, “the null hypothesis should be that all weather events are affected by global warming rather than the inane statements along the lines of ‘of course we cannot attribute any particular weather event to global warming.’”

The implication is that this week’s tornadoes were caused by anthropogenic global warming. As regular readers know, my view is that the scientific evidence overwhelmingly refutes the politically-motivated claim that the earth’s climate is warming significantly, and the primary cause is human activity. But put the broader issue aside for the moment. The southern states have always been prone to tornadoes in the spring. Tornadoes existed long before the Industrial Revolution. There is zero evidence--none--that this week’s weather had anything to do with human activity of any sort.

It is ironic that Think Progress quotes Kevin Trenberth for the proposition that all weather events--heat, cold, rain, drought, wind, no wind, you name it--should be presumed to be “affected by global warming.” Trenberth is the very pseudo-scientist who admitted that he and his fellow alarmists have no idea what actually causes the weather, which usually fails to conform to the alarmists’ predictions. Trenberth wrote, in one of the most famous Climategate emails:

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.

Got that? The climate isn’t behaving as Trenberth and his fellow alarmists predicted; they have no idea why; the alarmists’ inability to explain observed weather patterns is a “travesty;” and the data the alarmists rely on is “surely wrong” because their “observing system is inadequate.” What’s the solution? No problem--just ignore the data and presume that “all weather events are affected by global warming.” Sure, that works--if you are a political activist, rather than a scientist.

The AFP offered a saner assessment of this week’s tragic storms: “Tornadoes whipped up by wind, not climate.”

US meteorologists warned Thursday it would be a mistake to blame climate change for a seeming increase in tornadoes in the wake of deadly storms that have ripped through the US south.

“If you look at the past 60 years of data, the number of tornadoes is increasing significantly, but it’s agreed upon by the tornado community that it’s not a real increase,” said Grady Dixon, assistant professor of meteorology and climatology at Mississippi State University.

“It’s having to do with better (weather tracking) technology, more population, the fact that the population is better educated and more aware. So we’re seeing them more often,” Dixon said.

But he said it would be “a terrible mistake” to relate the up-tick to climate change. ...

Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), also dismissed Thursday climate change as a factor in the deadly tornadoes: “Actually what we’re seeing is springtime,” he said. ...

[T]he stronger-than-usual tornadoes affecting the southern states were actually predicted from examining the planet’s climatological patterns, specifically those related to the La Nina phenomenon.

“We knew it was going to be a big tornado year,” he said. But the key to that tip-off was unrelated to climate change: “It is related to the natural fluctuations of the planet.”

Everyone is mistaken sometimes, but Think Progress and similar far-left web sites are unique in that they engage in a systematic effort to mislead their readers in order to advance a political agenda. Reading them makes you stupid.

ICECAP NOTE: Joe Romm at Think Progress likes to quote Jeff Masters of the site Weather Underground (a throwback to the radical 60s). A good meteorologist but with a politically driven agenda when it comes to climate. See Bob Tisdale’s post on WUWT on Jeff’s claim about the Gulf of Mexico being among the warmest April’s ever.

Enlarged image from the data set Masters claims was the basis of his analysis.