According to this, the EPA miiiiiiiiight be suppressing a report which questions the validity of the “science” behind global warming.
Huh. Now, why on earth would they do that? What possible consequences could a silly little 98 page report written by an economist at the EPA have that would necessitate his boss instructing him to cease work on that line of research?
Oh wait. This wouldn’t have anything to do with that insignificant, trivial and meaningless piece of legislation that passed the House late last week, would it?
Well, let’s look at the chain of events:
1. Alan Carlin, an EPA analyst, co-authors a report which argues that the EPA is using outdated information to conclude that regulating gases will reduce global warming, and in fact points out that as atmospheric CO2 levels have increased, global temps have actually declined over the last 11 years.
2. Carlin’s boss tells Carlin via email (emails have now been made public), that his report information will not be included into the comprehensive EPA findings. Boss orders Carlin to stop working on the climate change issue altogether.
3. Carlin responds back to his boss via email and says that his report findings are ”valid, significant” and “would be critical to the EPA finding.”
4. Carlin’s boss responds the next day to let Carlin know that his report will not be forwarded for inclusion into the EPA official findings. His message says in part, “The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.”
5. Carlin’s boss sends him a follow up email which instructs Carlin to ”move on to other issues and subjects. I don’t want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research, etc., at least until we see what EPA is going to do with climate.”
Fast forward to now. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) is ordering an investigation into this whole report suppression thing. He says, “He came out with the truth. They don’t want the truth at the EPA. We’re going to expose it.” Apparently, the email exchanges between Carlin and his boss have piqued the interest of Congressional Republicans, because they do seem to suggest some sort of political interference. Reps Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and Darrell Issa (R-CA) wrote to the EPA requesting them to reopen the “comment period” on the official finding. They said that the EPA was demonstrating an “agency culture set in a predetermined course.”
Further, they wrote, “It documents at least one instance in which the public was denied access to significant scientific literature and raises substantial questions about what additional evidence may have been suppressed.” Issa then said the administration is “actively seeking to withhold new data in order to justify a political conclusion.”
Sensenbrenner added, “I’m sure it was very inconvenient for the EPA to consider a study that contradicted the findings it wanted to reach.”
The EPA has refused to reopen the comment period. SHOCK!
Carlin said it best when he said that he’s concerned that he’s seeing ”science being decided at the presidential level.” He went on, “Now Mr. Obama is in effect directly or indirectly saying that CO2 causes global temperatures to rise and that we have to do something about it. … That’s normally a scientific judgment and he’s in effect judging what the science says. We need to look at it harder.”
Wait. Someone is suggesting that we actually consider the science carefully before throwing together a massive bill that Congress doesn’t have time to read which will in effect destroy tons of jobs and raise everyone’s taxes, all for a cause that we’re not entirely sure really fixes anything in the first place?
What a wackjob.
