Biblical proof that Global Warming is a scam . . .
Genesis 8:22, “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and
cold and
heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”
SCIENCE FOR SALE: THE GLOBAL WARMING SCAM
Alaska is melting, at least according to the New
York Times. Forests are dying, thawing permafrost is causing pavements to
buckle, and Native American villages are crumbling. Times reporter Timothy
Egan broke this sensational story in the June 16 Sunday edition, complete with
color pictures of the buckling highways and eroding shorelines. The cause of
all these problems, according to Egan, is a seven-degree-Fahrenheit rise in
the average temperature in Alaska over the past 30 years. He attributed the
higher temperatures to global warming or Mother Nature's "prolonged mood
swing," implying that it might be reversible. But he quoted scientists at the
University of Alaska at Fairbanks saying the changes were due to "indisputable
climate warming."
Editorially, the Times didn't equivocate. It declared that Alaska is now experiencing the long-anticipated effects of global warming. Columnist Bob Herbert, its chief doomsayer, used the Alaska report to excoriate the Bush administration for its lack of "urgency" on global warming. The Times is miffed that the President "unsigned" the Kyoto Treaty and prefers voluntary measures to reduce the putative cause of the warming-greenhouse gas emissions.
On July 8, a Times editorial praised California's legislature for passing a law that will require automakers to cut emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). The editorial declared this was "unquestionably the most important step" in curbing greenhouse gas emissions since Bill Clinton signed the Kyoto Treaty in 1997. It cited warnings by "mainstream scientists" that climatic, environmental, and economic catastrophes will result if global warming goes unchecked. Citing Egan's June 16 article, it said, the "astonishing seven degree increase" in temperatures in Alaska shows "what we all have to look forward to…unless the Bush administration follows California's example."
But what used to be regarded as the paper of record got the Alaska warming story wrong. Alaska's average temperature did not rise by seven degrees over the past 30 years. The Times ran a correction saying that it was 5. 4 degrees Fahrenheit, citing a study by the Center for Global Change and Arctic System Research at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks (UA/Fairbanks). But the Center's, and the Times', number was still too high, according to Prof. Gerd Wendler at the Alaska Climate Research Center.
Prof. Wendler says it is still "too great by a factor of two for the 1971 to 2000 period." He bases this on National Climate Data Center information, gathered from four "first class weather stations" professionally serviced by the National Weather Service. His calculations have been replicated and verified independently. Professor Wendler asked the Times for a correction on June 18, but it has failed to run one or explain why it was sticking to the contested number.
On the Internet, Tech Central Station attributed the warming trend to a spike in temperatures during the Great Pacific Climate Shift in 1976-1977, a pattern that has been repeated over the past 100 years. Subtract those years, and there is no warming trend after 1977. Professor (emeritus) Sue Ann Bowling, a climat-ologist with the Atmospheric Sciences Faculty at UA/Fair-banks, confirmed to AIM that the Pacific climate shift caused a "step change" in temperature trends around 1976-1977.
Both Wendler and Bowling were mystified by the
Times' num-bers. Wendler speculated that his colleagues at the Center for
Global Change may have used an earlier time period or numbers from other
stations. Other scientists, speaking anonymously, think that the Center for
Global Change may have fudged the numbers to support its projections of future
change, which have temperature increases in Alaska doubling or even tripling
by 2100.
Wrong Numbers, Wrong Consequences
If the corrected numbers in the Times article are off by a factor of two, does that mean that the Times' predictions of catastrophic consequences are equally wrong? For the Times, along with environmental activists, left-liberal politicians (and Senator John McCain) and those "mainstream scientists" the Times likes to quote, it doesn't really matter. When it comes to global warming, for this group "the debate is over."
Likely presidential candidate Senator John Kerry, D-Mass., in his opening statement at a recent congressional hearing, captured the mood of this group by saying that it is now "time to shift the focus from the science to the solution of climate change." By solution, Kerry means mandatory reductions of CO2 emissions and other curbs on industry, particularly automakers. Politicians like Senators Kerry, McCain and Lieberman have all climbed on the global warming bandwagon, and one source claims that twice as many climate change bills were introduced in the 107th Congress as in the previous two sessions combined. State officials, like California Governor Gray Davis and the Democratic attorneys general of 10 other states are all impatient with Washington's emphasis on voluntary controls. They want President Bush to support new legislation to curb emissions.
Activists applaud these measures, but would
prefer to launch a "new industrial revolution" to fundamentally transform the
way we "power the global economy." This means "new fuels, new engines, new
industrial processes, and new ways to generate electricity" (but not nuclear
power). They urge Americans to "adjust to new realities" or go the way of the
dinosaurs. You can tell how serious the issue is getting when trial lawyers
start speculating about filing class-action lawsuits seeking damages on behalf
of individuals or even countries that claim they have suffered from the
effects of global warming.
But the science on global warming, and its putative causes, is by no means settled. The earth's atmosphere has both warmed and cooled over the centuries without any human activity being responsible. Dr. S. Fred Singer, president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), points out that a study of CO2 and temperatures over the past 11,000 years that was analyzed in both Science and Nature in 1999 found that the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere tends to follow, not precede, a rise in temperature. Dr. Singer reminds us that "the bulk of the temperature rise in the 20th century took place before 1940, while most of the CO2 emissions took place after 1940 and coincided with a slight climate cooling between 1940 and 1975." The satellite temperature readings from 1979 through June 2002 have risen at the rate of only 0.1 degree Fahrenheit per decade or 1.0 degree per century.
The global warming advocates rely on projections
of the earth's surface temperatures derived from computer models to support
their claims that we are facing disaster if we don't take decisive action to
reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. The increase projected for the 21st
century is 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit compared to an increase of 0.7E to 1.4EF in
the 20th century. Advocates, like the authors of a recent National
Research Council report, claim that, "warming trends are most clearly marked
by surface temperature measurements-which have been recorded daily at hundreds
of locations for more than a century." Critics don't dispute that some warming
has occurred. They say the surface temperature data are not a reliable measure
of the increase, citing the poor coverage of oceans and higher latitudes and
the location of many stations near urban areas, making the data susceptible to
an "urban heat island effect."
Satellite Data More Convincing
AIM has repeatedly pointed to the value of data collected by microwave sounding units that fly on a constellation of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) polar-orbiting satellites. These TIROS-N satellites record temperature fluctuations in the lower troposphere (up to about 5 miles) and the lower stratosphere (about 9-12 miles up), where the effects of greenhouse gases should be most apparent. As the NRC report concluded, "if global warming is caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, it should be evident not only at the earth's surface, but also in the low-mid troposphere."
But it isn't. As noted above, satellite data show a 0.1EF increase per decade since 1979, when the program was started-a dramatic difference from the surface temperature trend. The satellite data correlate with those collected by weather balloons using completely different sensors. The coverage is global and extends over oceans and surface areas where land-based systems are infrequent. Measurements are taken in atmospheric layers above the effects of urban heat islands. The satellite sensors are calibrated by NOAA's practice of putting new birds in orbit before older satellites are retired. But global warming advocates generally ignore satellite data. During the Clinton years, as reported in the January-A 2000 AIM Report, Dr. D. James Baker, the Undersecretary of Commerce who headed NOAA and "owned" the satellites, ignored these data because they refuted the global warming hypothesis.
For global warming advocates, the chief culprit is greenhouse gas emissions, and especially CO2, produced by burning fossil fuel. Deb Callahan, President of the League of Conservation Voters, a Washington-based political action group that funds "pro-environment" candidates, says "carbon dioxide pollution" is to blame for all the problems. Another advocacy group, Environmental Defense, labels carbon dioxide "global warming pollution." This simply reflects the consensus of global warming advocates who point to human activity, especially fossil fuel burning, as (mostly) responsible for the warming trends.
To its credit, the Bush administration has tried to slow down the global warming propaganda machine. James Mahoney, the new Assistant Secretary of Commerce who is the deputy chief of NOAA, used his recent congressional testimony to remind the Senate that "substantial uncertainties remain to be addressed" in global warming science. He said scientific knowledge about "specific cause-effect relationships" is only beginning to emerge. Nevertheless, the Bush administration has embraced the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 18% over the next decade. The administration prefers voluntary methods, but it still pours billions of dollars into climate change research.
Richard S. Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT, disputes the link between climatic change and CO2. In 2001, he testified before a Senate committee that past major climatic changes were either "uncorrelated with changes in CO2 or were characterized by temperature changes which preceded changes in CO2 by hundreds or thousands of years." Lindzen argued that there is no demonstrable linkage between growth in CO2 generation and major climatic change of the type forecast by global warming advocates. Others stress that if CO2 emissions really are the culprit, then temperatures in the troposphere should be warming faster than surface temperatures. The satellite data show the reverse is true.
A central problem with global warming theories is
the reliance on two large computer models to project impacts of warming and
greenhouse gas emissions on the environment. These two models, according to
the critique, vastly exaggerate the atmosphere's sensitivity to increasing CO2
and cannot replicate other variables like clouds or water vapor that also
impact climates. Most damaging, the models fail to accurately simulate
recorded experience when put to the test, so many wonder why these models
should be used to support policy making on climate change.
The dirty secret is that global warming is driven more by the search for funding than the search for scientific truth. "Big science" was adrift in the early 1990s, like many other beneficiaries of the Cold War, and was desperate to sustain its federal funding. Global warming had all the key attributes of the next big cause. It could be used to frighten the politicians and the public, using threats of catastrophic consequences to extract billions of dollars for research to prevent it. The science was immature, and the door was wide open to all sorts of proposals and projects by scientists promising solutions. High-performance computers were the tools, and the projects promised to be long-term and career-sustaining. Getting funds was easy. As MIT Professor Lindzen has noted, "saving the planet" had a nice ring to it and seemed to portend big bucks at the end of the global warming rainbow.
By the early 1990s, there was a convergence between the proponents of big science and the left-oriented activist community. Many of the Left's old myths and socialist dreams had collapsed with the demise of the Soviet Union, and many seized on global warming as another path to reining in Big Business and reducing the standard of living and comfort level of the average American. Global warming also offered another avenue for leftists to continue their "blame America first" campaign. Advocacy groups constantly reminded citizens that it is the U.S. that is largely to blame for greenhouse emissions. For example, a newly released study by Environmental Defense blames the U.S. for generating 25% of the world's carbon dioxide and says that American cars and light trucks alone emit more carbon dioxide than almost all the other nations of the world combined. Environmental Defense says driving a car, especially an SUV, is the most egregious sin one can commit from a pollution standpoint. Since Americans have demonstrated they won't cut emissions on their own, big government will have to step in and impose curbs and controls on autos and industry in general. Clearly, advocacy groups and lobbyists had found a new hot-button issue to support their fund raising.
Global warming fanatics found powerful allies
in the Democratic Party, and especially then Senator Al Gore. Government
control and public opinion were the levers needed to implement the global
warming agenda. Activists would need to capture key policy jobs in those
federal agencies with science portfolios, like the Energy Department, the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and NOAA. Once secured, these jobs
would give activists control of the key levers of influence over the
scientific community-research grants and federal funding of national labs and
universities. They knew that they could always buy scientists who would turn
out scientific studies and research reports that would help them shape and
mold public opinion.
The Clinton/Gore victory in 1992 opened that door. President George H.W. Bush's refusal to personally attend the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and his reluctance to accept binding agreements on carbon dioxide curbs gave the Clinton/Gore team another issue in their campaign to show that "President Bush was out of touch with the people and their daily concerns."
Once in power, Al Gore, a strident environmentalist, began to remake the government bureaucracy in his image. His life experience in Washington had taught him the value of the old Washington truism, "personnel is policy." He established a White House Climate Change Task Force and placed his former legislative aide, 29-year old Kathleen McGinty, in charge of a new White House Office on Environmental Policy. He put her on the National Security Council, the new National Economic Council, and the Domestic Policy Council as a symbol of the importance of environmental policy in the Clinton White House. McGinty would be in charge of seeding the government bureaucracies with "greens" and was reputed to have an enemies list of Bush holdovers. Former NASA chief scientist Robert Watson, a Gore favorite, became associate director in the White House Office of Science and Technology (OSTP). Gore brought in other "green" lawyers and lobbyists to populate the new White House positions.
He installed his former legislative director,
Carol Browner, as the new EPA administrator in 1993. Under Browner, EPA became
the central coordinator of the federal global warming campaign, dispensing
funds through a variety of inter-agency committees and programs. At the
Defense Department, the position of Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for
Environmental Security was established, and the CIA established a task force
to apply national technical means (satellite collection platforms) to monitor
world environmental issues. Tim Wirth, a former Democratic senator from
Colorado, became Undersecretary for Global Affairs at the State Department. He
led all U.S. negotiations on climate change. As a senator, Wirth had
proclaimed that it didn't matter if the science of global warming was right or
wrong, the economic and environmental policies would be right for America.
The fate of Bush appointee William Happer, a highly respected Princeton physicist, is symptomatic of Gore's remaking of the bureaucracy. Happer had been asked to stay over until a new Assistant Secretary of Energy could be appointed, but he quickly ran afoul of Gore and his climate control group in the White House. Happer had initiated a research program to test the various ozone depletion theories then in vogue and had found that the empirical results were not matching the theory's predictions. When he told a House committee that "there probably has been some exaggeration of the dangers of ozone and global climate change," White House officials promptly fired him. Gore had already decided that ozone depletion would damage crops and increase the rate of skin cancer.
Robert Watson had predicted that an ozone hole would open up over Kennebunkport, ME, President Bush's vacation home. Happer had publicly ridiculed Watson's suggestion and so Happer was almost certainly on McGinty's enemies list. Happer, in a later interview, correctly identified the Clinton/Gore approach as "politically correct science." The huge amounts of funding made available by Clinton/Gore ensured that the new administration would get the "answers" on global warming it was seeking. Happer said that science was being turned on its head. Instead of science driving policy, policy now determined the results it wanted and then paid scientists to come up with them.
Also, at the Energy Department, a staff lawyer from the Natural Resources Defense Council, another Washington-based environmental advocacy group, became Secretary Hazel O'Leary's chief of staff and then went on to become an assistant secretary, with control of over $1.3 billion annually in climate-change funding. The Energy Department doled out billions of dollars in global warming funding to its National Laboratories, which had convinced the department that many of its computer models used to develop nuclear weapons were applicable to climate modeling. In addition, the Department funded university research grants and scholarships in the various climate-change academic disciplines.
The largest Energy project is the Atmosphere Radiation Measurement (ARM) project, run by Sandia National Laboratory along with the other nuclear weapons design laboratories. The ARM program even has its own air force; it uses a fleet of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and propeller-driven aircraft to collect cloud data at three sites: Oklahoma, the western Pacific Ocean, and Alaska's North Shore. The Department recently signed an agreement with Australia to begin data collection at Darwin. Congressional skeptics have wondered what, if anything, these programs have to do with nuclear weapons, but they continue to fund them nonetheless.
Over its two terms, the Clinton administration
pumped nearly $20 billion into global warming science and technology
initiatives. By 2002, the EPA website advertised that more than a billion
dollars was still available for grants for the purpose of reducing greenhouse
emissions.
As part of its campaign to mold public opinion, the EPA sponsored regional conferences throughout the United States to dramatize the potential impacts of climate change. In May 1999, for example, the EPA visited South Florida and the Florida Keys to warn local residents of the potential impacts for their region of global warming. Local EPA officials, area activists and outside speakers told attendees that global warming is real and that their area would be particularly hard hit. One local activist told the conference that global warming represents "the largest single threat to our planet that we know of, including a nuclear holocaust." A professor of environmental health from Columbia University predicted an outbreak of water-borne diseases like malaria as the sea level rises in the wake of global warming. A "hurricane expert" predicted a 50% increase in hurricanes in that year alone. (In fact, the number of hurricanes decreased in 1999 in comparison with past years.) Others predicted that the Everglades would disappear, as would safe drinking water and clean air.
Global warming advocates also had a reliable ally in the mainstream media. In most cases, the media simply report research findings and results handed to reporters in government news releases and interviews. The more provocative and alarming the reports, the more likely they are to find their way onto the front page. The Alaska report on the dramatic impact of warming was funded by NOAA, Department of Interior and National Science Foundation grants. Rarely do reporters challenge the "science," and rarer still do they present global warming as anything other than an accepted fact among scientists.
The media have helped create the false
impression that the vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is a
serious threat that calls for drastic action. Agreement with this seems to be
a litmus tests for Times reporters covering science. One such reporter,
Kenneth Chang, answered a question on the Times Internet site about global
warming by saying that it's a complicated subject, but 97% of all scientists
think it is real and is caused by CO2 emissions. He said there are
uncertainties in the science, but he admitted that he tries to write his
articles on global warming from the majority viewpoint. Nevertheless, he had a
good article in the Times last April that corrected the impression given by an
earlier story by another reporter that global warming was affecting
Antarctica. Chang reported that the interior of Antarctica is actually
cooling, and he gave credit to the satellites that provided this information.
They are rarely mentioned by the Times and other media.
Send the enclosed cards or your own cards or letters to Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr., Chairman and Publisher of the New York Times, to Bo Jones, Publisher and CEO of the Washington Post and to an editor of your choice.
NOTES FROM
THE EDITOR'S CUFF by Reed Irvine
THE EXPOSURE OF DEEP-SEATED CORRUPTION IN A NUMBER OF AMERICA'S LARGEST corporations and some of the big accounting firms that are supposed to guarantee the accuracy of business balance sheets has produced a pall of disillusionment and suspicion that has spread over other institutions. These include government and the news media. A survey of 1,365 adults conducted by the Pew Research Center in July that was released on August 4 found that the public's trust of business, the news media and the government has declined since last November.
The Pew news release sums up its findings saying, "President Bush's approval ratings have slipped, support for increased regulation of business is up and Americans are less confident that the government is giving them the straight story about terrorism. At the same time public criticism of the news media, which abated in response to coverage of the 9/11 attacks, is once again as strong as ever. The favorable glow from the media's post-9/11 performance has completely disappeared. As the media's focus has shifted away from terrorism, Americans regard news organizations with the same degree of skepticism as they did in the 1990s."
FIVE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE NEWS MEDIA DEALING WITH ACCURACY, WILLINGNESS TO correct mistakes, professionalism, patriotism and bias produced these percentages for Nov. '01 and July '02. In every category except professionalism and patriotism, the figures in July are virtually identical with those in a survey taken just before 9/11. The ratings for professionalism and patriotism are a little higher now than before 9/11.
| November | July | ||
| 1. | Usually get the facts straight Usually report inaccurately |
46 45 |
35 56 |
| 2. | Try to cover up mistakes Willing to admit mistakes |
52 35 |
67 23 |
| 3. | Highly professional Not professional |
73 12 |
49 31 |
| 4. | Stand up for America Too critical of America |
69 17 |
49 35 |
| 5. | Are politically biased Are careful not to be biased |
47 35 |
59 26 |
GLOBAL WARMING PROVIDES MANY EXCELLENT EXAMPLES OF THE MEDIA'S FAILURE TO get the facts straight, correct their errors and avoid political bias. Notra Trulock calls attention to many of these in this AIM Report. The most persistent error is the refusal of most journalists to recognize and report what the satellite temperature data have demonstrated since 1979-that there is no significant change in the warming trend since then.
Most of the journalists who cover this subject persist in giving the public the impression that virtually all the scientists in the world agree that greenhouse gases are causing the planet to warm at an accelerated rate. They do this by reiterating it as a fact and by citing in their stories mainly those scientists who profess to believe this. Unfortunately, the same temptation that has caused the corruption in the business world has corrupted science in recent decades. That is the lure of big money. Billions of dollars in grants are available to those who hold out promises of proving that we face dire catastrophes if we don't take drastic action to stop the globe from overheating. It is naive to think that this has no corrupting effect.
THIS TEMPTATION WAS DISCUSSED IN "THE GREENHOUSE CONSPIRACY," A 1990 DOCU- mentary produced in Britain. Several scientists were interviewed who told of financial pressure exerted against those who did not accept the warming theory. Dr. Sherwood Idso of the U.S. Conservation Service said, "A lot of people are getting very famous, very well-known and very well-funded as a result of promoting the disastrous scenario of greenhouse warming." Dr. Reginald Newell of MIT commented, "My suspicion is that if one has a crisis like this, it's easier to gain funds for the profession as a whole." When he wrote a paper pointing out flaws in climate models, he was warned that his funding would probably be cut, and it was.
Dr. Patrick Michaels of the University of Virginia, whose articles critical of the global warming scenario had been regularly rejected by scientific journals, commented, "I would have been more successful had I said the world is coming to an end." Dr. Michaels is still fighting the good fight for scientific integrity along with many other climatologists who have resisted selling their souls for big grants from the government. If these scientists accept anything from industries, such as coal mining, to sustain their research and publications, their work is denigrated by those who are lavishly supported by government agencies that have bought the global warming theory.
THE MEDIA ALSO PLAY AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN CORRUPTING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. THIS was implied by Dr. Stephen Schneider of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who made the switch from warning of a coming ice age to warning of global overheating early on. The February 1990 Reader's Digest said of him, "He admits many uncertainties about global warming. Nevertheless, to gain public support through media coverage, he explains that sometimes 'scientists have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and make little mention of the doubts we may have.'"
Schneider demonstrated that he is good at this when he was interviewed for an NBC Dateline segment that aired on Feb. 21, 1997. He said, "Almost everybody agrees that we've changed the gaseous envelope of the atmosphere. The balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on climate." Asked about the odds of sea levels rising one to three feet over the next century, he said, "I think that rising sea levels are very probable. In fact, they're already a fact."
THE 1995 REPORT OF THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE COULD BE cited to support Schneider's claim that the evidence suggests there is a discernible human influence on climate. That, too, illustrates the corruption of science. The language that had been approved by the working group and the plenary session of the IPCC had clearly said, "Few, if any, would be willing to argue that unambiguous attribution of change to anthropogenic effects has already occurred or was likely to happen in the next several years....no study to date has positively attributed all or part of change to anthropogenic causes."
This was altered by a few individuals assigned to publish the report. They succumbed to pressure from influential governments, including the U.S., that were eager to get mandatory limits on carbon dioxide emissions. It was done surreptitiously without proper consultation. However, they did not change the statement that refutes Schneider's claim that rising sea levels are already a fact. The report said, "There is as yet no evidence of any acceleration of sea level rise in this century, nor would any necessarily be expected from the observed climate change to date."
THE MEDIA'S FOCUS ON CORRUPTION IN THE BUSINESS WORLD IS UNDERSTANDABLE IN view of the scandalous conduct that finally burst the speculative bubble on Wall Street, but more attention should be paid to the root cause of the problem-the failure to teach children moral values. Gross dishonesty that can cause serious injury, injustice, inequities, waste, loss of confidence, disillusionment and the metastasizing of corruption is rampant in America. In 1985, I started Accuracy in Academia because I had become convinced that what budding journalists were learning in college was responsible for much of the bias and the lack of concern for honesty and accuracy in journalism. That is still true, but as far as honesty is concerned, one has to dig deeper. Eleven Marine Corps second lieutenants have just been discharged for cheating on a test. They didn't learn that in the Marines. Cheating is rampant in our schools and is even encouraged by some teachers. That must change.
AMITAI ETZIONI, A PROFESSOR AT GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY AND AUTHOR OF "The Moral Dimension," recently had an article in The Washington Post titled, "When It Comes to Ethics, B-Schools Get an F." Etzioni taught ethics at the Harvard Business School in 1987-89. The school had received a gift of $20 million to fund the teaching of ethics. The faculty debated this at length. Etzioni says, "Reactions ranged from distrust to outright hostility." A finance professor who was teaching students how to increase profits by breaking implicit contracts was worried. A marketing professor pointed out that much of what they were teaching was a form of dissembling, such as increasing sales by putting small items in large boxes.
An economist was opposed, saying they were there to teach science, not ethics. A course was begun, but it was one to be gotten out of the way as quickly as possible, Etzioni says. His students told him repeatedly that companies could not afford to be guided by ethics; they would lose out to ruthless competitors. This was what they were being taught. He tells of a study of 2,000 graduates of the 13 top business schools. It found that studying for an MBA weakened their moral character. The percentage who said maximizing shareholder value was a corporation's prime responsibility went from 68 percent when they entered the MBA program to 82 percent by the end of the first year. The lesson I see in this is that moral values must be taught beginning in grade school. Graduate school is too late.
