It's Official: Fraser Institute Re-releases Leaked Summary

onFeb 5, 2007 @ 08:28 PST

The Exxon-funded Fraser Institute officially released its Independent Summary for Policy Makers (ISPM) today, confirming that the version leaked here on the DeSmogBlog last week was authentic.

The Institute also announced that it has scheduled an ongoing attack on the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, promising a “Fraser Institute Supplementary Analysis Series” on topics such as “Fundamental Uncertainties in Climate Modelling.”

Still, the denial community is likely to be disappointed with this effort. While hostile analysts were able to imagine serious flaws in the IPCC‘s Third Assessment Report, this “Independent” summary can do little more than cling to the dwindling uncertainty that the IPCC itself defines in the most forthright way.

Perhaps most pathetic are the ISPM‘s “Supplementary Information” sections, in which the Fraser Institute’s “experts” add information that they deem under-reported in the 1,600-page IPCC report. For example, the ISPM reports recent record-breaking snowfalls in New York, Boston and Atlantic Canada, introducing the section with this banal question:

”Record-breaking local hot weather events are sometimes promoted as evidence of global warming. What can we infer if record-breaking cold weather events begin to accumulate in some local data?”

They neglect to mention that such weather anomalies are predicted in the most rudimentary climate models.

Even more sophomoric is the Fraser Institute’s argument in a “Supplementary Information” section entitled “Defining ‘Climate Change:’”

“If the climate is nonstationary, a change in the mean is consistent with an unchanged climate.”

You can almost imagine the assembled “scientists” sitting around a table, shouting: “Ah ha! We sure got them on that one.”

Then, they conclude the whole analysis by wondering aloud “whether or not such (climate) change is a good or bad thing.”

Even if the energy industry’s tracks were not evident on this report, it’s hard to believe that any but the most agenda-driven deniers could take it seriously.