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.

A top official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) rejected claims by environmental activists that the outbreak of tornadoes ravaging the American South is related to climate change brought on by global warming.

Greg Carbin, the warning coordination meteorologist at NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, said warming trends do create more of the fuel that tornadoes require, such as moisture, but that they also deprive tornadoes of another essential ingredient: wind shear.

“We know we have a warming going on,” Carbin told Fox News in an interview Thursday, but added: “There really is no scientific consensus or connection [between global warming and tornadic activity]....Jumping from a large-scale event like global warming to relatively small-scale events like tornadoes is a huge leap across a variety of scales.”

Asked if climate change should be “acquitted” in a jury trial where it stood charged with responsibility for tornadoes, Carbin replied: “I would say that is the right verdict, yes.” Because there is no direct connection as yet established between the two? “That’s correct,” Carbin replied

Formerly the lead forecaster for NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center, Carbin is a member of numerous relevant professional societies, including the National Weather Association, the American Meteorological Society, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the International Association of Emergency Managers. He has also served on the peer review committee for the evaluation of scientific papers submitted to publications like National Weather Digest and Weather and Forecasting.

This evaluation by a top NOAA official contradicted pronouncements by some leading global warming activists, who were swift to link this season’s carnage to man-made climate change.

“The earth is warming. Carbon emissions are increasing,” said Sarene Marshall, Managing Director for The Nature Conservancy’s Global Climate Change Team. “And they both are connected to the increased intensity and severity of storms that we both are witnessing today, and are going to see more of in the coming decades.”

Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, an activist and author who believes industrialized societies expend too much money and energy combating global warming, instead of focusing on more immediate, and easily rectifiable, problems, doubted the tornadoes have any link to warming trends.

“We’ve seen a declining level of the severe tornadoes over the last half century in the U.S.,” Lomborg told Fox News."So we need to be very careful not just to jump to the conclusion and say, “Oh, then it’s because of global warming.’”

In fact, NOAA statistics show that the last 60 years have seen a dramatic increase in the reporting of weak tornadoes, but no change in the number of severe to violent ones.

For many, the high casualties of 2011 recalled the so-called “Super Outbreak” of April 1974, which killed more than 300 people. “You have to go back to 1974 to even see a tornado outbreak that approaches what we saw yesterday,” W. Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), told Fox News.

Asked earlier, during a conference call with Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley about the possibility that climate change is playing a role in the tornado outbreak, Fugate shot back: “Actually, what we’re seeing is springtime. Unfortunately, many people think of the Oklahoma tornado alley and forget that the Southeast U.S. actually has a history of longer and more powerful tornadoes that stay on the ground longer—and we are seeing that, obviously, in the last week and yesterday.”

ICECAP NOTE: kudos to an honest scientist. Like most operational forecasters at the SPC, NHC and NWS, Greg looks at facts not theory or ideology or climate models. He is exactly correct, tornadoes decrease during decades with warming and increase during cooling periods like the 1950s to 1970s. This is because when winters are colder the warming of spring brings enhanced contrast and instability and produce stronger jet streams and stronger storms. Whatsmore during La Ninas (which occur more frequently and last longer when there is cooling - cold PDO), more moisture from a warmer Gulf of Mexico is available for these storms and heat and dry air intrusions from the southern plains dry areas typical of La Nina add one more important element.

As expected the liars clube are out in full force at Grist and elsewhere. See this excellent recap of the alarmist claims versus realist real scientist replies here. Also Howie Bluestein and others would not attribute the outbreak of climate change in this HUFFPO piece but they managed to get it in the title.

See Marc Morano on the very predictable alarmist claims - reminds of Rahm Emanuel’s You never want a serious crisis to go to waste’.

Morano: ‘The idea that our SUV’s are causing severe tornadoes is no better than in 1450 when Aztec priests encouraged people to sacrifice to the gods to end severe drought. We are going back to a primitive culture where we actually think we can affect the weather...Nobel prize winning economist Thomas Schelling wished for ‘horrid things’ like a lot of tornadoes in order to convince people of man-made warming. This is just purely a propaganda tool. It is shameful’