Here is a perfect example of the employment of propaganda in a mainstream newspaper, the Washington Post.

Notice the picture above from the top of the article, Why are so many Americans skeptical about climate change? A study offers a surprising answer, yet another backlit image of a steam plume, making it look ominously dark and dirty.

“A study” turns out to be Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate change, Justin Farrell, School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, Yale University, edited by Theda Skocpol, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Though there is no link to the study in the article, one can find it behind a paywall at http://tinyurl.com/pg385yv

The article considers corporate funding of “contrarians,” who, the author claims without evidence, create doubt in the minds of the public about the reality of climate change. The author concludes:

…organizations with corporate funding were more likely to have written and disseminated texts meant to polarize the climate change issue. … and more importantly, that corporate funding influences the actual thematic content of these polarization efforts, and the discursive prevalence of that thematic content over time.

Well, there you have it, unnamed corporations fund unnamed organizations that support their interests, and influence the content of their messages. Damned again!

But wait! Here’s another quote from the Washington Post article:

“The report did not examine the impact of outside money on the messages of groups that encourage activism on climate change.”

Ohhhhhhhhh, I see. The study only looked at “contrarian” organizations and their funders, not organizations and funders that support the “consensus” anthropogenic global warming message. The researcher did not bother to find out if organizations that “encourage activism on climate change” also receive corporate funding that “influences the actual thematic content of these polarization efforts, and the discursive prevalence of that thematic content over time.”

As if the study itself wasn’t bad enough, the uncritical, stenographic message of the Washington Post further obfuscates the blatant bias of this article and its author in favor of the totalitarian message of global warming apocalypse.

It kind of makes you wonder doesn’t it? Who profits? If big bad energy corporations are profiting by sowing doubt about global warming, who is profiting by sowing belief in global warming?