Stop them before they do math again!

The huge profits reported by oil and gas companies would turn into losses if the social costs of their greenhouse gas emissions were taken into account.

That is the conclusion of research by the New Economics Foundation (Nef).

Nef found that the £10bn-plus profits just reported by Shell and BP are dwarfed by costs of emissions associated with their products.

Gee, you mean all those people who used the oil and gas don't share any responsibility and so shouldn't have to pay any of those social costs? That's dumb. But wait! What are the social costs of not having oil and gas? It seems that would be an even larger number given that the world's cities were knee deep in dung and breathing dung dust all summer before oil and gas became the dominant sources of power. The health issues alone would be a huge number. And what about coal?

A report prepared for Defra and the Treasury estimates that each tonne of carbon dioxide emitted costs about £20 ($35) in environmental damage.

"Combining the emissions that stem from BP's direct activities and the sale of its products leads to 1,458m tonnes of CO2-equivalent entering the atmosphere, with a damage bill of £29bn ($51bn)," writes Andrew Simms.

"Subtracting that from the £11bn ($19bn) annual profit it has just reported puts it £18bn ($31bn) in the red; effectively bankrupt.

"The same calculation puts Shell £4.5bn ($8bn) in the red, even as it reports an annual profit of £13bn ($23bn)."

They are obviously brain dead. Had the oil and gas not been used even more carbon would have been emitted from the use of less energy rich fuels such as coal and wood. Moving up the hydrogen ladder to gas was a cornerstone of the UK plan to reduce CO2 emissions before they discovered that the price of gas could rise.

It's a shame that environmentalism seems to attract such stupid people since their statements make it seem as if environmentalism is stupid, too stupid to have any sensible speakers who make rational assertions. This is false. There are lots of smart and sensible environmentalists, they just aren't newsworthy by the degraded standards of the main stream media, especially the beeb.