I have been alerted to an informative, much-needed detailed 2012 Cato Institute asssessment of the 2009 US government report “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States. See also Judy Curry’s excellent post on the Cato report at Cato’s Impact Assessment
The web page that links to this 2009 US government report starts with the grandiose claims that [highlight added]
This web page will introduce and lead you through the content of the most comprehensive and authoritative report of its kind. The report summarizes the science and the impacts of climate change on the United States, now and in the future.
and
In addition to discussing the impacts of climate change in the U.S., the report also highlights the choices we face in response to human-induced climate change. It is clear that impacts in the United States are already occurring and are projected to increase in the future, particularly if the concentration of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continues to rise. So, choices about how we manage greenhouse gas emissions will have far-reaching consequences for climate change impacts. Similarly, there are choices to be made about adaptation strategies that can help to reduce or avoid some of the undesirable impacts of climate change. This report provides many of the scientific underpinnings for effective decisions to be made – at the national and at the regional level.
The new report, to be published by Cato this fall, is titled
“ADDENDUM:Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States”
with Patrick J. Michaels as Editor-in-Chief. I have been fortunate to know and respect Pat since we meet at the University of Virginia during my tenure there in the 1970s and early 1980s. This Cato report is a very important new addition to providing policymakers with a more robust perspective of climate science. It is refreshing to see a much more objective assessment than prepared by Tom Karl and others in the federal government.
