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.
Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.
There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.
Maine’s clean energy legislation has spurred more than $2 billion in local investment and created at least 2,500 jobs in the Pine Tree State. That isn’t stopping some state lawmakers from trying to weaken and kill these laws, as the local political puppets do the will of their fossil fuel masters, the Koch brothers.
A quick reminder: there’s a coordinated national campaign to dismantle renewable portfolio standards (RPS) at the state level. Behind the campaign is the American...
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Comments
OK I'll kick of answering the question
Will Cato Dupe Journalists with Counterfeit Gov't Copycat?
What's the betting that David Rose will bring this up in the Mail, he has a habit of bringing up undigested matter expecting others to swallow it.
Michaels must now be beyond the pale WRT accredited respectable scientists, i.e. those still engaged in science and not advocacy. People like him should be called out by the professional scientific bodies and they could start by suing for breach of copyright although I suspect there are layers of lawyers in place.
Those lawyers and also PR organisations which enable such examples of pushing denial and who insulate the deniers from academic and other forms of censure were decried by Robert Proctor in his probable future classic, 'Golden Holocaust', pp. 444-445, about the shenanigans of the tobacco industry and such enablers.
After all we have seen that Michael Mann has rolled a ball aiming for a strike. Let's knock a few more down after all hockey is so twentieth century.