We all know that this is happening, but I don’t think most of us understand how incredibly effective it is, and how we are losing control of the system. Since our livelihoods depend on our corporate performance, we often find ourselves working to bring about outcomes we may personally detest. The system has a mind of its own.

This is fugue. Its the singularity. We are not helpless before the proverbial science-fiction master computer, we are enslaved to a mindless administrative machine that seeks its own welfare at our expense.

I’m not talking about the natural tendency of everyone to favor policies which benefit them, that is, we all are more likely to think that what is good for us is also best for society as a whole. But as your comments strongly suggest, even those who know what they are promoting is evil continue to do it if it profits them. Sure, we all know criminal behavior exists, but what is terrifying is how we tend to admire and reward it. These criminals are not just mistaken, or even sociopathic. They know better, and so do we, and we still tend to reward them.

Its a sobering thought.

The loyal little toadies parroted the lies they were told loudly and as often as possible, because they were true believers in the cause… they became evangelists for a god that didn’t give a damn about them. And, like Abraham, they were bizarrely eager to sacrifice their children to their god….

What I can’t understand is the knee-jerk reaction to oppose any policy or concept that would adversely affect profits by individuals who do NOT profit directly from the threatened activity. Not everyone who opposed the idea of AGW or carcinogens in tobacco worked for the oil companies or the tobacco industry.

Apparently, the psychological effectiveness of corporate misinformation campaigns is much more successful than their marketing and advertising.

Again, I am reminded of Johnny Reb, rushing to enlist in the Confederate Army to fight for his right to own slaves, even though he himself is unlikely to ever scrape enough cash together to buy one.

By 1997, scientific understanding that human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases were causing global warming led to the Kyoto Protocol, in which the majority of the world’s industrialized nations committed to begin reducing their global warming emissions on a specified timetable. In response to both the strength of the scientific evidence on global warming and the governmental action pledged to address it, leading oil companies such as British Petroleum, Shell, and Texaco changed their stance on climate science and abandoned the Global Climate Coalition.30 ExxonMobil chose a different path. In 1998, ExxonMobil helped create a small task force calling itself the “Global Climate Science Team” (GCST). Members included Randy Randol, ExxonMobil’s senior environmental lobbyist at the time, and Joe Walker, the public relations representative of the American Petroleum Institute.31 One member of the GCST task force, Steven Milloy, headed a nonprofit organization called the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, which had been covertly created by the tobacco company Philip Morris in 1993 to manufacture uncertainty about the health hazards posed by secondhand smoke.32

For violent victimizations, seasonal patterns also vary
depending on the type of crime. Rape and sexual assault
rates and aggravated assault rates are higher in the summer
than in most other seasons. In comparison, simple assault
rates are higher in the fall than in other seasons, and robbery
victimization rates show no seasonal patterns. Intimate
partner violence exhibits regular seasonal fluctuations with
rates highest during the summer and lowest during the
winter. Rates of violence involving weapons and violence
resulting in serious injury are higher in the summer than in
the winter and spring seasons; however, the fall rates are not
significantly different from the summer rates.

At the risk of sounding really dumb…the reason is not at all clear to me. Was the professor just trying to make a point, or am I missing something really obvious?

One thing is certain: in June 1988, when NASA scientist James Hansen told a congressional hearing that the planet was already warming, Exxon remained publicly convinced that the science was still controversial. Furthermore, experts agree that Exxon became a leader in campaigns of confusion. By 1989 the company had helped create the Global Climate Coalition (disbanded in 2002) to question the scientific basis for concern about climate change. It also helped to prevent the U.S. from signing the international treaty on climate known as the Kyoto Protocol in 1998 to control greenhouse gases. Exxon’s tactic not only worked on the U.S. but also stopped other countries, such as China and India, from signing the treaty. At that point, “a lot of things unraveled,” Oreskes says.
But experts are still piecing together Exxon’s misconception puzzle. Last summer the Union of Concerned Scientists released a complementary investigation to the one by InsideClimate News, known as the Climate Deception Dossiers (pdf). “We included a memo of a coalition of fossil-fuel companies where they pledge basically to launch a big communications effort to sow doubt,” says union president Kenneth Kimmel. “There’s even a quote in it that says something like ‘Victory will be achieved when the average person is uncertain about climate science*.’ So it’s pretty stark.”

*“Victory will be achieved when average citizens “understand”
(recognize) uncertainties in climate science.”
—internal memo by the American Petroleum Institute , 1998