Yeah, the Cato Institute is clearly honest.
Douglas Fischer reports for the Daily Climate:
A new “addendum” to be released as soon as this week purports to update with the latest science a 2009 federal assessment on the impacts to the United States of climate change.
The addendum matches the layout and design of the original, published by the U.S. Global Change Research Program: Cover art, “key message” sections, table of contents are all virtually identical, down to the chapter heads, fonts and footnotes.
But the new report comes from the libertarian Washington, D.C.-based Cato Institute. And its findings – that science is questionable, the impacts negligible and the potential policy solutions ineffective – are more a rebuke than a revision of the original report and of accepted science both then and today.
“It’s not an addendum. It’s a counterfeit,” said John Abraham, an associate professor at the University of Saint Thomas in Minnesota who studies clean power sources. “It’s a continued effort to kick the can down the road: A steady drip, drip, drip of fake reports by false scientists to create a false sense of debate.”
The 2009 assessment, titled Global Change Impacts in the United States, was presented to Congress as the federal government’s best assessment of the science and potential impacts. It is part of an ongoing effort by the National Climatic Data Center to assess the state of climate change science.
The Cato Institute bills its report as a “primary reference and a guidepost for those who want to bring science back into environmental protection.” In the introduction to a review copy obtained by DailyClimate.org, Cato president Ed Crane wrote that the effort “grew out of the recognition that the original document was lacking in scope and relevant scientific detail.”
The Cato report does its share of omitting, however, as well as selectively picking data and reviving long-discredited data and arguments…
