Media Watch: Will Cato Dupe Journalists with Counterfeit Gov't Copycat?

onOct 23, 2012 @ 10:39 PDT

Cato Institute, the right wing think tank co-founded by the Koch brothers, plans to release a document this week that has all the appearances of being a government report on the impacts of climate change in the United States – but of course it is not.

The Cato report, titled: “Addendum: Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” uses the same cover design, title and fonts as a report issued in 2009 by the US government’s Global Change Research Program titled: Global Climate Change Impacts in the US.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the Cato fake report and the US government climate impacts report:

As John Abraham, a professor at the University of St. Thomas, puts it best,

“It’s not an addendum. It’s counterfeit. It’s a continued effort to kick the can down the road: a steady drip, drip, drip of false reports by false scientists to create a false sense of debate.”

Read previous coverage of the counterfeit Cato report, which is laughably edited by Pat Michaels, the fossil fuel industry’s paid misinformation mouthpiece.

Check back here to see if any media fall for this obvious ploy to create the appearance of officialdom and real science by the Cato Institute.

By Kevin Grandia

Kevin is a contributor and strategic adviser to DeSmog. He runs the digital marketing agency Spake Media House. Named a “Green Hero” by Rolling Stone Magazine and one of the “Top 50 Tweeters” on climate change and environment issues, Kevin has appeared in major news media outlets around the world for his work on digital campaigning. Kevin has been involved in the public policy arena in both the United States and Canada for more than a decade. For five years he was the managing editor of DeSmogBlog.com. In this role, Kevin’s research into the “climate denial industry” and the right-wing think tank networks was featured in news media articles around the world. He is most well known for his ground-breaking research into David and Charles Koch’s massive financial investments in the Republican and tea party networks. Kevin is the first person to be designated a “Certified Expert” on the political and community organizing platform NationBuilder. Prior to DeSmog, Kevin worked in various political and government roles. He was Senior Advisor to the Minister of State for Multiculturalism and a Special Assistant to the Minister of State for Asia Pacific, Foreign Affairs for the Government of Canada. Kevin also worked in various roles in the British Columbia provincial government in the Office of the Premier and the Ministry of Health. In 2008 Kevin co-founded a groundbreaking new online election tool called Vote for Environment which was later nominated for a World Summit Award in recognition of the world’s best e-Content and innovative ICT applications. Kevin moved to Washington, DC in 2010 where he worked for two years as the Director of Online Strategy for Greenpeace USA and has since returned to his hometown of Vancouver, Canada.