Okay, I would like to say something, I went with the suggestion of sticking it out a few days. With absolutly know changes I am getting a 6 hour battery life while running multiple tabs in safari, typing up a document in microsoft word, playing music on itunes and I have textedit running to keep open a few things. I have done nothing to solve the battery life problem and it has sorted itself out, I'm going to place the problem on what JoeyR said
If you've just upgraded, there is a lot going on. Give your system a little time to "settle down" first. Battery performance under Mountain Lion should be similar to what you were getting with Lion. Also... some people use real-time virus scanners. As an OS upgrade replaces a significant percentage of your files, a virus scan can also be quite intensive... especially when it happens along with indexing.
I should also mention: I never had snow leapard, I got my Macbook Pro with Lion and it worked great, as does Mountain Lion now. Also, Activity Moniter showed nothing out of the ordinary when I was having the problem.