Updated with EPA response: Is the EPA suppressing or withholding information on global warming?

June 24, 12:53 PMSF Environmental Policy ExaminerThomas Fuller

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UPDATE 3: I will be publishing a new story soon that continues this saga--I may have to apologise to Competitive Enterprise Institute, based on conversations with a source inside the EPA that has confirmed the essential elements of Alan Carlin's story, released through the CEI yesterday. I hope to have it up today.

UPDATE: The Environmental Protection Agency was kind enough to return my call and send me an email response in regard to the story below. Essentially, the EPA notes that the analyst was allowed to present his opinion both inside and outside the agency, and they were published on at least four occasions. Their statement of response is below this article.If this is true, then the Competitive Enterprise Institute has a serious problem. The EPA also noted that they are trying to find out how to make the analyst's report available.

I must say this does not sound like the big deal the CEI made of it, and I must particularly note how responsive and open the people I dealt with at the EPA were. Draw your own conclusions.

UPDATE #2: The analyst in question is Alan Carlin, an economist who has been with the EPA since 1972. Although this has been presented as if his report was skeptical of the received wisdom regarding climate change, a report found on his website (Why a Different Approach Is Required if Global Climate Change Is to Be Controlled Efficiently or Even at All), suggests that he is not a skeptic at all, but rather advocates geoengineering as opposed to limits on greenhouse gases. Some of his opinions differ from the IPCC consensus and most probably differ from the EPA proposal to treat CO2 as a pollutant. But the idea that Carlin is a skeptic whose ideas are being suppressed is probably far from the truth.

Based on the above, I'm striking out the rest of this article. I'd delete it, but that doesn't seem fair to any of the players.

If stories circulating today are true, the Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed relevant evidence when considering whether or not to classify CO2 as a pollutant. The skeptic weblog Watt's Up With That reports that the Competitive Enterprise Institute has seen a series of emails that imply that one analyst's report was discarded and that he was told not to work on climate change issues in future because the data he had found did not agree with EPA policy decisions.

If we are withholding information or suppressing evidence regarding global warming, not only is the EPA's decision to classify CO2 as a pollutant now something that will need to be revisited, it calls into question the upcoming vote on cap and trade. It may have implications for President Obama's entire energy policy.

As someone who supports President Obama's energy policy, I can only say the stupidity of this move beggars belief, if it turns out to be true. On a smaller scale, global warming activists have engaged in the suppression of information by withholding source code from scientists who wish to check their work, but to have national policy be essentially misdirected because information is awkward to holders of a specific policy position verges on the criminal.

If the reports are true and the EPA is forced to re-evaluate their determination--and if the reports are true, I think today's events mean they should--and if it delays consideration of Waxman Markey, and it changes the composition of President Obama's energy program, the time and money wasted will be considerable. The sense of open communication and transparency that President Obama has been seeking to establish will be tarnished, if not destroyed. It will fuel suspicions of skeptics and of conservative Republicans. It will lower the credibility of the administration among its supporters.

If the EPA is smart, they will put the analyst's report up on their website today, along with an apology and an explanation. So, how smart are they?

UPDATE: Well, they're smart enough to come out with a very quick response, given here:

“This Administration and this EPA Administrator are fully committed to openness, transparency and science-based decision making.  These principles were reflected throughout the development of the proposed Endangerment finding, a process in which a broad array of voices were heard and an inter agency review was conducted.  In this instance, certain opinions were expressed by an individual who is not a scientist and was not part of the working group dealing with this issue.

Nevertheless, several of the opinions and ideas proposed by this individual were submitted to those responsible for developing the proposed endangerment finding.  Additionally, his manager allowed his general views on the subject of climate change to be heard and considered inside and outside the EPA and presented at conferences and at an agency seminar.  The individual was also granted a request to join a committee that organizes an ongoing climate seminar series, open to both agency and outside experts, where he has been able to invite speakers with a full range of views on climate science.  The claims that his opinions were not considered or studied are entirely false.”
– EPA Press Secretary Adora Andy

As a Lib Dem, I'm hopeful that the EPA actually is as open and transparent as they sound here (but we'll see if the story ends here...). If CEI did indeed play games with the skeptic community and we journalists covering that community, it will be their credibility in tatters.