On April 1, 2009, the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, paid for full page ads to run in five major newspapers: the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times. These ads denied the scientific consensus that global warming is a real, urgent problem, and were signed by over 100 "scientists." Quick research, however, revealed that many of the signers are on the furthest fringes of scientific thought - one linked the theory of evolution with Nazism, while another denied that smoking cigarettes contributes to cancer.
John Passacantando wrote to Cato's president, Edward H. Crane, asking him to distance his organization from these anti-scientific claims:
Edward H. Crane (via email: ecrane@cato.org)
Founder and President
CATO Institute
1000 Massachusetts Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20001-5403
April 16, 2009
Dear Mr. Crane,
Your organization has made many important contributions to the
American political debate, particularly when it sticks to its mission:
“to increase the understanding of public policies based on the
principles of limited government, free markets, individual liberty,
and peace.” Yet CATO veers wildly of course when it broadens its
mission to include countering mainstream science, not with alternative
peer reviewed research and experiments but with those few scientists
who take industry money and do the bidding of coal and oil companies
and utilities.
Your Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies, Dr. Patrick Michaels does
just that and it discredits CATO and its mission. Michaels has a long
history of countering mainstream scientific conclusions on global
warming with his own skeptical rhetoric or out of context research.
His latest stunt in your organization’s name has been to run ads in
national newspapers on March 30, 2009 telling President Obama that he
is wrong to believe that "Few challenges facing America and the world
are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond
dispute and the facts are clear." Supporting Michaels’ refutation of
the President is a long list of Ph.D. scientists, supposedly to ad
heft to his contrary opinion. Unfortunately for your organization’s
reputation a minimum of research shows the list to be wrought with
professional global warming naysayers and discredited academics.
Between the signer who espouses the view that chlorofluorocarbons are
the cause of any warming trends, and the ones who dabble in known
pseudoscience, to the one who attacks evolution, drawing frequent
connections between evolution and Nazism, these so-called scientists
are fringe, to say the least. Michaels has taken CATO to interpret
libertarianism as inclusive of crackpot science. You, Mr. Crane,
should separate your organization from Michaels and his destructive
agenda before it does further damage to CATO’s reputation.
Sincerely,
John W. Passacantando
He's stolen your air and now he wants your money...