This does not surprise me at all. I've seen it first hand.

I used to work for Schlumberger (think giant multi national company like Halliburton, heavily invested in oilfield data acquisition and production) analyzing and processing geophysical date for oil fields. Also, my dad is a fairly eminent geophysicist who specializes in finding deep oil.

It is absolutely mind boggling how many incredibly intelligent physicists I worked with that denied global warming. It made me sick to my stomach. About anything else these are kind, intelligent guys. But the second global warming comes up so to do the intellectual blinders. My own father who is a walking encyclopedia and knows how anything and everything works still to this day makes jokes about global warming. We actually got into a fight about it on Father's Day because of the news of the giant ice shelf in Antarctica, which I feel bad about but good god. I wish he would get out of the business like I did.

I know he does what he does to support our family but I can't help but feel a deep sense of shame about the way he wasted his talents. There is definitely a culture amongst people in the oil business that involves lying to each other and to themselves. Even for myself it was surprisingly easy to focus on the technical challenges involved in what I was doing and ignore the consequences of those actions.

At least some good things have come out of it like seismograms and an increased understanding of the earths geology I guess.