When the solar manufacturing company Solyndra went bankrupt last September after receiving a $527 million loan guarantee, it sparked a politically motivated congressional investigation into the White House’s handling of the program — an “investigation” that critics admitted would “stop on election day.”

After acquiring 300,000 documents, holding a dozen hearings and official meetings, issuing two subpoenas, and spending more than a million dollars on the investigation, members of Congress failed to present any evidence of political wrongdoing.

Congressional critics have “not shown the loan was granted as a result of political favoritism, despite repeated campaign-trail claims,” reported The Hill.

That didn’t stop special interest groups from spending millions of dollars on television ads this campaign season to trump up the Solyndra bankruptcy and spread “over-the-top, ultimately ridiculous” claims about clean energy programs.

According to a ThinkProgress analysis of independent advertisements from Kantar Media’s CMAG system, outside conservative groups spent $10.78 million on presidential campaign ads between April 1 and Oct. 1 of this year specifically attacking the Solyndra loan or mentioning Solyndra as part of a broader attack on clean energy stimulus spending.

The ads were purchased by the American Energy Alliance, the American Future Fund, the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, Karl Rove’s Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, and Let Freedom Ring.

However, the impact of those Solyndra ads on American voters mirrored the outcome of the yearlong congressional investigation into the company: minimal to nothing.

Despite the millions of dollars spent on Solyndra-related television spots over the last five months, polls show that a majority of American voters still don’t know about the company or are indifferent.

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll from early October showed that 58 percent of registered voters are unaware of Solyndra. The poll also found that one-quarter of registered voters had a negative view of the company and 15 percent had a neutral view.

A day earlier, Hart Research released a poll conducted for the Solar Energy Industries Association showing that 67 percent of registered voters are either indifferent about Solyndra or have heard nothing recently about the company. At the same time, 70 percent of voters said they would support more government incentives to help develop the solar industry.

In addition, an April poll from the Pew Research Center found that 52 percent of Americans believe that “alternatives” to fossil fuels are the most important energy priority for the country, with 39 percent saying coal, oil, and gas should be top priorities. That poll also found that conservative Tea Party males — many of whom would never vote for a moderate candidate to begin with — are the only voters likely to view some level of government support for clean energy negatively.

Special interest groups might be buying millions in clean energy attack ads. But voters sure aren’t buying them.

The wave of money promoting lies and hyperbole on clean energy has pushed the political conversation around energy to the extreme. But the actual impact is limited. Americans still overwhelmingly support clean energy, despite what well-armed political groups say.

Industries that support a higher number of “green” workers who are making goods and services more environmentally friendly have experienced a higher rate of growth over the last decade than industries with fewer green jobs.

That’s according to a new study from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which analyzed data on the green workforce from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The BLS data, which was released in March, documented 3.1 million green jobs nationwide in renewable energy, water management, recycling, and various positions that help improve the efficiency and environmental footprint of a company or institution.

BLS defined green jobs as:

Jobs in businesses that produce goods or provide services that benefit the environment or conserve natural resources; or, jobs in which workers’ duties involve making their establishment’s production processes more environmentally friendly or ensuring that they use fewer natural resources.

The agency’s figures were given little attention in the mainstream press and were ridiculed by Republicans for including a broad array of positions in transportation, manufacturing, and waste services.

However, Ethan Pollack, a senior policy analyst with EPI, believed there was more to the data set. So he looked at how environmental and efficiency initiatives were impacting job growth in various sectors.

Pollack found that for every percentage point increase in the “green intensity” of a particular industry, annual job growth in that sector increased by 0.034 of a percentage point between 2000 and 2010.

Pollack also compared the green intensity of industries with BLS employment projections through 2020, finding that industries working to make their processes more efficient and their products more environmentally friendly will likely see a 0.019 percentage point increase in employment over industries that do not.

“The conversation around green jobs has become polarizing,” said Pollack on a conference call Wednesday. “But the concept of green jobs should not be polarizing. We’re trying to depoliticize this issue and show that green jobs are all around us.”

The analysis also found that states with a higher penetration of green jobs saw slightly faster economic recoveries after the recession than states with fewer green jobs. However, this trend is heavily influenced by stimulus funding, which played a major role in continuing investment momentum in the clean energy industries.

This is consistent with last year’s Brookings Institution green jobs study, which found that the “clean economy” grew by 8.3 percent during the height of the U.S. economic downturn between 2008 and 2009 — almost double the overall economy during that period.

Traditionally, green jobs have been defined strictly within the clean energy sector. But that industry is only one piece of the overall shift toward a more sustainable economy. In their respective reports, Brookings and BLS tried to define those jobs as providing a broader array of goods and services that make operations more environmentally friendly — offering a better representation of how businesses and institutions will make the transition.

This latest report from EPI shows that the deeper the “greening” goes in industries, the more jobs are created.

According to a new analysis of data released last year, American newspapers are far more likely to publish uncontested claims from climate deniers, many of whom challenge whether the planet is warming at all and are “almost exclusively found” in the U.S. media. The study was published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

The researchers were trying to answer three important questions: Is climate denial and disinformation as prevalent in the newspapers outside America? Is it mostly right-wing papers publishing these pieces? And what types of skeptics are being published in different countries?

In all three categories, the U.S. emerged as a unique leader in promoting climate denial in the press.

The newspapers surveyed were Folha de São Paulo and Estado de São Paulo in Brazil; People’s Daily and Beijing Evening News in China;  Le Monde and Le Figaro in France; The Hindu and Times of India in India; the Guardian/Observer and the Daily/Sunday Telegraph in the United Kingdom; and the New York Times and Wall Street Journal in America. The researchers looked at stories between 2009 and 2010, when the so-called “climategate” story was unfolding. They also compared their findings to coverage in 2007, when the IPCC released its assessment of climate science.

In both periods, the percentage of articles containing voices questioning human-made global warming in the U.S. were dramatically higher than other countries. Here’s a chart illustrating 2009 coverage:

The US newspapers had the largest number of articles in percentage terms (34%) which contained skeptical voices over the period examined, and nearly double the next country which was the UK at 19%. The Chinese newspapers came next with 7% of all articles, although the figures were taken from a low base. India and France followed with roughly 6%, with Brazil last at 3%. So, despite the high number of articles in the Indian and Brazilian press covering the issue, a very low percentage of these included skeptical voices.

So did the political leaning of a newspaper influence its coverage? It’s actually a very mixed picture. When factoring in non-opinion articles, the researchers actually found slightly more articles quoting climate skeptics or deniers in left-leaning newspapers than in right-leaning papers. But when looking at opinion pages, the articles tend to fall within traditional ideological camps — with far more right-leaning publications featuring “uncontested” skeptical voices than left-leaning ones. While France and the U.K. experienced a similar trend, the U.S. was the leader in this area as well:

In conclusion, we can say that from our sample, there is little evidence for much difference in the percentage of articles containing skeptical voices between left-leaning and right-leaning or centrist newspapers in Brazil, France and India. However, in the USA and the UK, where skeptical voices generally appear in much higher numbers, the differences are more marked. The strongest evidence for a distinction between left-leaning and right-leaning newspapers can be found in the opinion pages in France, the UK and the USA, where right-leaning newspapers are much more likely to include uncontested skeptical voices.

So what kind of voices are being published in these papers? The findings here are also mixed. The researchers break down skeptics into three categories: Those who completely deny the planet is warming (trend skeptics); those who accept that the planet is warming, but question if it’s caused by humans (attribution skeptics); and those who falsely claim that increasing CO2 emissions and a warming planet will be a good thing (impact skeptics).

In Brazil, China, France, India, and the U.K., we see a mix of skeptics in the second and third categories who accept that the planet is warming, but question the cause and impact. In the U.S., we see a different trend: a much greater number of deniers who believe that there is no evidence that the planet is warming. (The researchers attribute this to the prominence of  Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the most outspoken climate denier in Congress, who often appears in news stories).

Such results would support the view that the USA is particularly notable for the presence of skeptics who question the need for strong climate change policy proposals.

The study, while only covering newspapers and only looking at two short time periods, shows that American climate denial is unique and more prevalent than in other countries, and that ideology does influence how the topic is covered. From the report’s conclusion:

There is some evidence for arguing that there is a strong correspondence between the political leaning of a newspaper and its willingness to quote or use uncontested skeptical voices in opinion pieces. The distinction between news pages and opinion pages is important as much of the skepticism in found in the latter category. In right-leaning newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal and the Telegraph, there is very little uncontested skepticism in their news reporting.

There is also evidence for seeing a greater presence in the US media of the sort of skepticism which strongly attacks the scientific legitimacy of climate change policy proposals compared to all the other five countries (with the notable exception of the U.K.).

Along with the U.K., Australia is another country seeing American-style climate denial in the press. A recent analysis from the Australian Center for Independent Journalism found that 73 percent of articles and opinion pieces published in 2011 on a proposed carbon price were negative.

“Some of Australia’s leading newspapers have been so negative in their reporting of the Gillard government’s carbon policy it’s fair to say they’ve campaigned against it rather than covered it,” concluded the author of the report.

Big Bird might have been one of the most popular trends on Twitter during the first presidential debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. But as the discussion of domestic issues unfolded, #climatesilence got some play as well. Sadly, not because the candidates broke their silence on the issue.

Here are two tweets that summed up the lack of attention to climate change:

And this one from climate activist Bill McKibben:

If you watched the real-time reaction to the debates, the disappointment among folks within the energy and environment community over the lack of attention to climate was palpable. Even with 160,000 signatures delivered to PBS’s Jim Lehrer calling on him to ask the candidates about climate change, the issue was completely ignored during the 90-minute conversation — continuing a long streak of silence throughout the campaign.

Apparently, neither of the candidates has been watching the polls showing that climate could be a major factor in how undecided and independent voters cast their ballots.

Energy issues were sprinkled throughout the debate, however. The mentions were focused mostly on domestic drilling and clean-energy spending.

Obama stuck to his talking points about developing “new sources of energy,” repealing billions in tax credits for the oil and gas industry, and supporting an “all of the above” energy strategy. He made fluffy statements about supporting clean energy, but no specific claims that called for fact checking.

Romney, on the other hand, made a number of more specific, misleading, and inaccurate statements on the issues:

1. “[G]asoline prices have doubled under the president.”

When Obama came into office, he was dealing with the impact of the greatest financial crisis and economic collapse since the Great Depression. That’s why gas prices were so low; demand had declined substantially. Even the Cato Institute and The Wall Street Journal have pointed out this obvious fact: “When Mr. Obama was inaugurated, demand was weak due to the recession. But now it’s stronger, and thus the price is higher.”

Here’s a chart that shows what happened to gas prices during the recession:

And as many analysts have pointed out, presidents have little control [PDF] over oil and gasoline prices: Oil prices are set on the global market, which is controlled by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, a cartel. High oil prices are responsible for high gasoline prices: The cost of crude oil accounted for 64 percent of the cost of a gallon of gas in September 2012.

2. “[A]ll of the increase in natural gas and oil has happened on private land, not on government land.”

Under Obama, domestic energy production has soared: The number of oil drilling rigs has quadrupled in number over the past three years. This has brought U.S. oil imports to the lowest level since 1996. And the Congressional Research Service issued a report [PDF] showing that oil production on federal lands was up slightly in 2011 compared to 2007. In addition, the oil and gas industry is sitting on more than 7,000 approved permits [PDF] to drill on public and Indian land, but companies haven’t yet begun exploring or developing those areas.

3. “[A]bout half of [the clean energy companies that] have been invested in [via the stimulus bill] have gone out of business.”

This is blatantly false. In this statement, Romney is conflating the Department of Energy’s loan-guarantee program with all clean energy companies economy-wide. And even when isolating the loan-guarantee program that supported the bankrupt solar company Solyndra, an independent investigation led by Sen. John McCain’s former finance chairman found that these investments will cost $2 billion less than initially expected. That’s because most of the loan guarantees are going toward companies developing large-scale electricity generation projects with long-term agreements for the energy.

[Editor's note: Michael Grunwald, who literally wrote the book on the stimulus package, estimates that about 1 percent of the stimulus-funded clean-energy firms failed, not 50 percent. "Seriously, that was the lie of the night," he said.]

4. “[I]n one year, you provided $90 billion in breaks to the green energy world.”

This is also a piece of masterful spin, though not an outright lie. Since the stimulus package was passed, the Department of Energy has put $90 billion toward grants, loan guarantees, R&D programs, competitive prizes, and demonstration projects — everything we need in order to build a foundation to allow clean energy to scale. They are not all tax breaks and they were not all implemented in one year as Romney claimed. And according to the Government Accountability Office (h/t Washington Post), fossil fuel subsidies outnumbered clean energy investments 4 to 1 before the stimulus package was put in place.

What have these clean energy investments spawned? Renewable electricity production has doubled in the last four years; we’ve built some of the most innovative “first of a kind” renewable energy projects in the world; content sourced from domestic wind manufacturing has doubled; we’ve created more than 100,000 direct and indirect jobs in the solar industry; and we’ve leveraged $100 billion in private investments.

Daniel J. Weiss, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, contributed to this piece.

Now that renewables are receiving some of the same incentives that fossil fuels have enjoyed for nearly 100 years, we’re suddenly being inundated with calls for a purely “free-market” approach to energy development from politicians on the right and companies concerned about the growth of clean energy.

Their arguments make for good sound bites. But if we take a look at the history of energy development in the U.S., it’s very clear that we’ve never had a truly “free” market. In fact, all of the technologies that dominate our energy system today were given special incentives by the government in order to get them to commercial scale.

According to a recent report from the venture capital firm DBL Investors, the U.S. coal, oil, gas, and nuclear industries have cumulatively taken in more than $630 billion in tax credits, land grants, research and development (R&D) programs, and direct investments from the government. That far surpasses the roughly $50 billion in government renewable energy investments (wind, solar PV, solar thermal, geothermal, biofuels) through these same mechanisms over the decades, according to the report.

But when renewable energy is given similar incentives — helping double the penetration of non-hydro renewable electricity since 2008 — the energy free-marketeers come out of hiding and lament how we’re supposedly “picking winners and losers.”

The Republican Party’s platform released this week is a perfect example:

Unlike the current Administration, we will not pick winners and losers in the energy market-place. Instead, we will let the free market and the public’s preferences determine the industry out-comes. In assessing the various sources of potential energy, Republicans advocate an all-of-the-above diversified approach, taking advantage of all our American God-given resources. That is the best way to advance North American energy independence.

Sounds pretty straightforward. However, the RNC’s platform is very bullish on maintaining use of coal, a resource that is declining in the U.S. because of … current market forces.

According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), we’ve seen a 20 percent drop in coal generation over the last year. That decline has been “primarily driven by the increasing relative cost advantages of natural gas over coal for power generation in some regions,” wrote EIA.

But when market forces move in the wrong direction for coal supporters, that is apparently when it’s okay for government to intervene. According to the RNC’s platform, the party wants to use the strength of government to “encourage the increased safe development in all regions of the nation’s coal resources.”

So there you have it. When the government encourages renewable energy, that’s called picking winners and losers. But when the government encourages coal — an increasingly expensive resource that has become an environmental nightmare — that’s “the best way to advance North American energy independence.”

And the picture becomes even more complicated when looking at the forces behind the boom in gas production. In fact, the fracking technologies people love to hold up as a miracle of the free market were made possible through years of government investment.

A 2011 investigation from the Breakthrough Institute showed that the natural gas industry was able to commercialize fracking technologies only after decades of tax credits, government R&D programs, government assistance with mapping, and partnership with companies entering commercial scale.

A geologist from Mitchell Energy, a leading company that pioneered fracking, put it this way: “I’m conservative as hell. But the “[Department of Energy] did a hell of a lot of work, and I can’t give them enough credit for that.”

The examples of government assistance to help commercialize energy technologies goes on and on.

And most people only know about the ones that are easy to track. There are other embedded subsidies — things like land giveaways to coal companies or tax exemptions — that are hidden below the surface. Here are a few examples, as illustrated by this subsidies iceberg infographic from Earth Track:

Click to embiggen.

This long history of assistance to energy technologies is completely lost in the current debate.

The latest political dust-up is over support for wind through the production tax credit (PTC), a performance-based incentive crafted by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that provides wind farm owners with a credit of 2.2 cents for every kilowatt-hour of electricity produced.

The credit is set to expire at the end of the year. Since it was introduced, the U.S. wind industry has been able to drop costs by 90 percent [PDF]. However, because of suppressed natural gas prices (again, helped by decades of tax credits, commercialization partnerships, and R&D programs), the wind industry says it needs the tax credit for a couple more years in order to give investors certainty. If the credit expires at the end of the year, the industry could shed up to 37,000 jobs [PDF], according to a report from Navigant Consulting.

Extending the credit has very strong bipartisan support. After all, 81 percent of wind is installed in Republican districts nationwide. But there has been growing resistance from a band of free-marketeers who claim that the tax credit distorts the market, thus preventing Congress from extending the incentive for a year or two more. (Ironically, many of these same critics consistently vote to preserve permanent tax credits worth billions of dollars for the most profitable oil companies in the world).

At the same time, companies like the nuclear-heavy utility Exelon are pushing Congress to abandon the tax credit. Here’s what the company’s CEO said in a recent statement:

These groups agree that it is now time for federal government to stop picking energy technology winners and losers through subsidies like the PTC and to allow market forces and state and local renewable portfolio standards to work.

Exelon has a pretty substantial wind portfolio worth 900 megawatts of capacity. However, most of its portfolio — 93 percent — is made up of nuclear power plants. But if it were not for the immense support for nuclear through loan guarantees, government-backed insurance, waste containment programs, and cost-recovery allowances for cost overruns over the last five decades, we wouldn’t have much of a nuclear industry in this country.

But here’s something more remarkable: Even while warning about “picking winners and losers,” Exelon executives have gone to the government to request loan guarantees and tax credits for its other operations.

In 2007, Exelon President Christopher Crane testified to Congress in favor of new loan guarantees for the nuclear industry. Of course, without these loan guarantees and government-backed insurance programs, no private investor would finance a nuclear plant in this country.

And just this year — two days after saying the production tax credit for wind should be ended — it was reported [sub req'd] that Exelon would receive tax credits for two hydropower projects it had under development.

We desperately need an honest conversation about energy incentives.

In order to smooth out this complicated picture, there are some analysts and political leaders who say we should get rid of all subsidies to all technologies and let the free market hash it out. That’s an appealing argument to many. But it completely ignores the embedded impact of a century of support to fossil fuels and 50 years of support to nuclear.

It also ignores a more fundamental problem: Our climate is reaching a tipping point and we don’t have time to waste in transitioning away from carbon-based fuels. Period.

Most supporters of clean energy agree there will be a time to phase out incentives that are currently helping boost the industry. There are a lot of disagreements about exactly how and when it should be done, but that conversation is well underway as the cost of renewables continues to fall.

As we drudge through this political season and listen to the calls from selective free-marketeers on “picking winners and losers,” let’s remember how we got to where we are in the first place.

And more importantly, let’s remember where we’re trying to go.

George Monbiot has a new piece in the Guardian titled “The day the world went mad,” which looks at the underwhelming reaction in the press and political sphere to the Aug. 27 announcement of record Arctic ice melt.

As Arctic sea ice faces a death spiral due to human-caused global warming, Monbiot points to the complete lack of attention: Instead of focusing on the Arctic, a British parliament committee on climate change debated building new runways for Heathrow Airport; meanwhile in the U.S., the Republicans were holding a convention celebrating fossil fuels and the party’s active denial of climate change:

I wonder whether we could be seeing a form of reactive denial at work: people proving to themselves that there cannot be a problem if they can continue to discuss the issues in these terms … When your children ask how and why it all went so wrong, point them to yesterday’s date, and explain that the world is not led by rational people.

Well, not everyone was ignoring the insanity of the situation. Speaking on Current TV’s coverage of the National Republican Convention, Al Gore had some strong words for the press:

The whole North polar ice cap is disappearing in  front of our eyes. Twelve massive million-dollar-plus climate-related disasters … and they keep coming … Just as [the media] did not report the truth about the proposal to invade Iraq, we are not getting the accurate impression about this challenge that we have to face. To stop putting 90 million tons of global warming pollution up into the atmosphere every single day … They aren’t only doing nothing about it, there’s hardly any discussion about it. It drives me crazy.

Watch it:

Here’s the full transcript:

When the Senate voted to go to war in Iraq, 77 percent of the American people believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attack. And yes, the administration put that impression out there, but where was the news media? Where were the responsible members of the Republican party in the House and Senate, and why weren’t more Democrats standing up to that upright falsehood?

The underlying point I’m making is we have serious problems in our democracy and all of the blame put on George W. Bush — I’m not defending him in any way, believe me — but I think sometimes that misses the larger point that our democracy is indeed in trouble. And all of us have an obligation to try to fix it … Global warming is real. And they refuse to connect those dots … We have the whole country suffering from this massive drought. West Nile virus is directly connected to the conditions that global warming has made worse. The whole North polar ice cap is disappearing in  front of our eyes. Twelve massive million-dollar-plus climate-related disasters … and they keep coming.

Just as they did not report the truth about the proposal to invade Iraq, we are not getting the accurate impression about this challenge that we have to face. To stop putting 90 million tons of global warming pollution up into the atmosphere every single day … They aren’t only doing nothing about it, there’s hardly any discussion about it. It drives me crazy.

On his radio show today, Rush Limbaugh suggested that the government manipulated hurricane forecasts in order to force Republicans to cancel a day of their national convention, saying the model “allows them to do it.”

“The hurricane center is the regime; the hurricane center is the Commerce Department. It’s the government. It’s Obama,” Limbaugh said.

In reality, the National Hurricane Center forecast is, roughly, what you get if “you average together the track forecasts from” several models, most of which are done by other organizations, in some cases other countries. Obama would have more luck using his apparently omniscient powers to alter the course of the hurricane itself than somehow trying to rejigger the storm tracks from all these different models, which are publicly available and updated continuously.

Limbaugh communicated his absurd theory on this imaginary scheme while simultaneously claiming “I’m not alleging conspiracy.”

His latest conspiracy theory matches the absurdity of his claim from last July, when he said the heat index was “manufactured by the government” in order to convince the American people that it’s hotter outside.

Listen to Limbaugh’s paranoid rant on hurricane forecasting:

Here’s part of the full transcript (emphasis added):

So this whole thing has been politicized, as the Democrats politicize everything, and that’s why we are talking about it. Now, I want to remind you: All last week … And, no, at no time here am I alleging a conspiracy. At no time. With none of this am I alleging conspiracy. All last week what was the target? Tampa. What was going on in Tampa this week?

The Republican National Convention. A pretty important one, too. Introducing the nominee, Mitt Romney. It’s only after the convention that Romney can actually start spending all of this money that he’s raised, so this convention is very important. It’s a chance to introduce Romney to a lot of people who don’t know him yet. And I noticed that the hurricane center’s track is — and I’m not alleging conspiracies here. The hurricane center is the regime; the hurricane center is the Commerce Department.

It’s the government.

It’s Obama.

And I’m noticing that that track stayed zeroed in on Tampa day after day after day. And the Republicans react to it accordingly over the weekend, canceling the first day of the convention. What could be better for the Democrats than the Republicans to cancel a day of this?

… Again, I’m alleging no conspiracy. I don’t want anybody thinking I’m going somewhere with this. I’m just telling you what happened.

I’m sharing with you my thought process, ’cause I know full well that if you give these people the slightest chance and they’re gonna turn this into Katrina and they’re gonna scare the hell out of New Orleans and they’re gonna revive, “Bush doesn’t care about people” and revive all of it. They’re gonna politicize everything ’cause they do it. And now they had the model runs allowing them to do it.

Now they had these model runs allowing them to start scaring the hell out of people in New Orleans and make political connections to Bush.

It was all there.

I’m afraid Limbaugh isn’t all there …

Jane Lubchenco. (Photo by NASA.)

One of America’s top science officials says the current onslaught of extreme weather in the U.S. is raising awareness of climate change among Americans.

Speaking at a university forum today in Australia, Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said Americans are increasingly connecting the dots between climate change and the severe heat, drought, wildfires, and storms hitting the country. The Associated Press reported on her comments, made at the University of Canberra:

“Many people around the world are beginning to appreciate that climate change is under way, that it’s having consequences that are playing out in real time and, in the United States at least, we are seeing more and more examples of extreme weather and extreme climate-related events,” Lubchenco told a university forum in the Australian capital of Canberra.

“People’s perceptions in the United States at least are in many cases beginning to change as they experience something first-hand that they at least think is directly attributable to climate change,” she said.

Lubchenco’s comments are backed up by actual research. According to a recent poll conducted by the National Survey of American Public Opinion on Climate Change, an increase in extreme weather has increased Americans’ understanding of climate change — bringing public acceptance of the problem to the highest level since 2009.

The Colorado wildfires rage on. (Photo by USAF.)

This is the third statement on the link between climate change and extreme weather made by a high-level U.S. official in the last week. Speaking about the devastating Colorado wildfires on Monday, Undersecretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment Harris Sherman told the Washington Post that “the climate is changing, and these fires are a very strong indicator of that.”

And while touring the damage from wildfires this week, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano also warned about the influence of climate change on the intensity of fires: “You have to look at climate change over a period of years, not just one summer. You could always have one abnormal summer. But when you see one after another after another then you can see, yeah, there’s a pattern here.”

However, even while officials draw the connection to climate change — thus increasing the number of people who say it’s a problem — a poll released earlier this week by the Washington Post and Stanford University shows that the issue has fallen behind local air and water pollution as the most important environmental priority for Americans.

Why the change in priority? Because political leaders — particularly President Obama — are not talking about the issue enough in America. (Case in point: Lubchenco’s comments were made in Australia, not in the U.S. And it took a trip to Australia last November for Obama to make strong comments about climate change — and he’s said almost nothing about the problem directly to Americans since then.)

The Washington Post offered some interesting anecdotes on the administration’s messaging problem:

The findings, along with follow-up interviews with some respondents, indicate that Washington’s decision to shelve action on climate policy means that the issue has receded — even though many people link recent dramatic weather events to global warming. And they may help explain why elected officials feel little pressure to impose curbs on greenhouse gas emissions.

“I really don’t give it a thought,” said Wendy Stewart, a 46-year-old bookkeeper in New York. Although she thinks warmer winters and summers are signs of climate change, she has noticed that political leaders don’t bring up the subject. “I’ve never heard them speak on global warming,” she said. “I’ve never heard them elaborate on it.”

Michael Joseph, 20, a student at the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, said he sees extreme weather-related events such as the Colorado wildfires and the derecho storm that struck Washington on Friday as “having something to do with climate change.” But, like Stewart, he added, “I don’t really hear about it that much.”

Even with this poor messaging, the Washington Post poll found three-quarters of Americans believe the Earth is warming and that governments must act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. One wonders how dramatically demand for action would increase if high-level officials continued to be as blunt as climate scientists about the problem.

Photo by Roger Barone.

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney begins a five-day bus tour today. He’ll cross six different states, focusing on economic issues and the “ordinary concerns of the American people.”

As he has throughout the campaign, Romney will likely talk about why he doesn’t believe that clean energy is good for the country. In recent months, the Romney campaign has attacked American renewable energy companies, lied about the clean energy stimulus, and called American green jobs “illusory” — even with 64,000 clean energy jobs in his home state of Massachusetts.

In fact, those jobs are far from illusory. In the six states that Romney plans to visit on his bus tour, there are nearly half a million green jobs across a diverse range of sectors like wind, solar, land conservation, green buildings, and waste-to-energy.

According to 2010 data compiled by the Brookings Institution, there are 418,512 green jobs in the states on Romney’s bus tour. Below is a breakdown of the number of jobs and wage figures as documented by Brookings:

• New Hampshire: Home to 12,886 green jobs. The annual median wage for a green collar worker in New Hampshire is $2,116 more than the median wage for a blue collar worker.

• Ohio: Home to 105,306 green jobs. The annual median wage for a green collar worker in Ohio is $3,566 more than the median wage for a blue collar worker.

• Pennsylvania: Home to 118,686 clean jobs. The annual median wage for a green collar worker in Pennsylvania is $2,327 more than the median wage for a blue collar worker.

• Wisconsin: Home to 76,858 clean jobs. The annual median wage for a green collar worker in Wisconsin is $2,025 more than the median wage for a blue collar worker.

• Iowa: Home to 30,835 clean jobs. The annual median wage for a green collar worker in Iowa is $2,399 more than the median wage for a blue collar worker.

• Michigan: Home to 76,941 clean jobs. The annual median wage for a green collar worker in Michigan is $2,564 more than the median wage for a blue collar worker.

As the Brookings Institution figures show, these jobs pay more, offer more export opportunities, and are growing at a much faster rate than the rest of the economy. More importantly, nearly half of all these jobs are held by workers with a high school diploma or less.

Jobs that benefit the environment are increasingly becoming a part of “ordinary” life in America. As Romney begins his bus tour, will he continue to call these jobs “illusory?”

Max Frankel contributed to this story.

Beneath an innocent pastime lies a radical agenda to destroy America.

Americans for Prosperity (AFP) now sees children flying kites as a major threat to society.

Earlier today, I opened my email box to find an uproarious AFP promotion for protests in Asbury Park and Ocean City, N.J., this Friday.

What are they so upset about?

An event so dastardly and maniacal, it has the potential to tear down everything we love about our freedoms as Americans. I almost couldn’t stomach it when I found out more.

Yes, it’s “extremist” kids flying kites in support of offshore wind energy.

Don’t worry, AFP is on the case (as explained on their website, accompanied by a picture of a smoking wind turbine):

You heard that right! Friday is “Global Wind Day” and environmental extremists throughout New Jersey will be celebrating by flying kites at beaches along the Jersey Shore and calling for more and more of our tax dollars to be used to subsidize their crazy offshore wind pipe dreams!

AFP will be going toe to toe with the environmental extremists to combat their radical agenda and tell the truth about the costs of offshore wind.

Yes, that’s right. With monetary assistance from the Koch brothers, AFP will be going toe-to-toe with these kite-flying kids who represent such a threat to the free market.

Here’s how the Sierra Club describes the event in support of Global Wind Day: “We’ll be gathering at a beach near you for a kite-flying rally and celebration of NJ’s offshore wind potential. Bring your family, friends and kites.”

The horror!

In order to combat these “extremist” families and their kite-flying antics, AFP is throwing in all the resources it can — chartering six buses (yes, six) to bring people in from around the state.

How will this battle unfold? Will the crusading free-marketeers be able to withstand this beach full of radical children? Tune in Friday on Global Wind Day …