The Obama administration doesnt want to hear inconvenient truths about global warming. And they dont want you to hear them either. As Democrats rush on Friday to pass a $4 trillion thousand-page cap and trade bill that no one has read environmental bureaucrats are stifling voices that threaten their political agenda.
The free market-based Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington (where I served as a journalism fellow in 1995) obtained a set of internal e-mails exposing Team Obamas willful and reckless disregard for data that undermine the illusion of consensus.
In March Alan Carlin a senior research analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency asked agency officials to distribute his analysis on the health effects of greenhouse gases. EPA has proposed a public health endangerment finding covering CO2 and five other gases that would trigger costly extensive new regulations of motor vehicles. The open comment period on the ruling ended this week. But Carlins study didnt fit the blame-human-activity narrative so it didnt make the cut.
On March 12 Carlins director Al McGartland forbade him from having any direct communication with anyone outside his office about his study. There should be no meetings e-mails written statements phone calls etc. On March 16 Carlin urged his superiors to forward his work to EPAs Office of Air and Radiation which runs the agencys climate change program. A day later McGartland dismissed Carlin and showed his true politicized colors:
The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. 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.
Contrary comments in other words would interfere with the process of ramming the EPAs endangerment finding through. Truth in science took a back seat to protecting eco-bureaucrats from a very negative impact.
In another follow-up e-mail McGartland warned Carlin to drop the subject altogether: With the endangerment finding nearly final you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I dont 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.
But of course the e-mails show that EPA had already predetermined what it was going to do -- move forward on endangerment. Which underscores the fact that the open public comment period was all for show. In her message to the public about the radical greenhouse gas rules EPA administrator Lisa Jackson requested comment on the data on which the proposed findings are based the methodology used in obtaining and analyzing the data and the major legal interpretations and policy considerations underlying the proposed findings. Jackson meet Carlin.
The EPA now justifies the suppression of the study because economist Carlin (a 35-year veteran of the agency who also holds a B.S. in physics) is an individual who is not a scientist. Neither is Al Gore. Nor is energy czar Carol Browner. Nor is cap-and-trade shepherd Nancy Pelosi. Carlins analysis incorporated peer-reviewed studies and as he informed his colleagues significant new research related to the proposed endangerment finding. According to those who have seen his study it spotlights EPAs reliance on out-of-date research uncritical recycling of United Nations data and omission of new developments including a continued decline in global temperatures and a new consensus that future hurricane behavior wont be different than in the past.
But the message from his superiors was clear: La-la-la we cant hear you.
In April President Obama declared that the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over. Another day another broken promise. Will Carlin meet the same fate as inspectors general who have been fired or retired by the Obama administration for blowing the whistle and defying political orthodoxy? Or will he too be yet another casualty of the Hope and Change steamroller? The bodies are piling up.
Michelle Malkin makes news and waves with a unique combination of investigative journalism and incisive commentary. She is the author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild .
The Obama administration doesnt want to hear inconvenient truths about global warming. And they dont want you to hear them either. As Democrats rush on Friday to pass a $4 trillion thousand-page cap and trade bill that no one has read environmental bureaucrats are stifling voices that threaten their political agenda.
The free market-based Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington (where I served as a journalism fellow in 1995) obtained a set of internal e-mails exposing Team Obamas willful and reckless disregard for data that undermine the illusion of consensus.
In March Alan Carlin a senior research analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency asked agency officials to distribute his analysis on the health effects of greenhouse gases. EPA has proposed a public health endangerment finding covering CO2 and five other gases that would trigger costly extensive new regulations of motor vehicles. The open comment period on the ruling ended this week. But Carlins study didnt fit the blame-human-activity narrative so it didnt make the cut.
On March 12 Carlins director Al McGartland forbade him from having any direct communication with anyone outside his office about his study. There should be no meetings e-mails written statements phone calls etc. On March 16 Carlin urged his superiors to forward his work to EPAs Office of Air and Radiation which runs the agencys climate change program. A day later McGartland dismissed Carlin and showed his true politicized colors:
The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. 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.
Contrary comments in other words would interfere with the process of ramming the EPAs endangerment finding through. Truth in science took a back seat to protecting eco-bureaucrats from a very negative impact.
In another follow-up e-mail McGartland warned Carlin to drop the subject altogether: With the endangerment finding nearly final you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I dont 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.
But of course the e-mails show that EPA had already predetermined what it was going to do -- move forward on endangerment. Which underscores the fact that the open public comment period was all for show. In her message to the public about the radical greenhouse gas rules EPA administrator Lisa Jackson requested comment on the data on which the proposed findings are based the methodology used in obtaining and analyzing the data and the major legal interpretations and policy considerations underlying the proposed findings. Jackson meet Carlin.
The EPA now justifies the suppression of the study because economist Carlin (a 35-year veteran of the agency who also holds a B.S. in physics) is an individual who is not a scientist. Neither is Al Gore. Nor is energy czar Carol Browner. Nor is cap-and-trade shepherd Nancy Pelosi. Carlins analysis incorporated peer-reviewed studies and as he informed his colleagues significant new research related to the proposed endangerment finding. According to those who have seen his study it spotlights EPAs reliance on out-of-date research uncritical recycling of United Nations data and omission of new developments including a continued decline in global temperatures and a new consensus that future hurricane behavior wont be different than in the past.
But the message from his superiors was clear: La-la-la we cant hear you.
In April President Obama declared that the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over. Another day another broken promise. Will Carlin meet the same fate as inspectors general who have been fired or retired by the Obama administration for blowing the whistle and defying political orthodoxy? Or will he too be yet another casualty of the Hope and Change steamroller? The bodies are piling up.
Michelle Malkin makes news and waves with a unique combination of investigative journalism and incisive commentary. She is the author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild .
