EPA Accused Of Cover Up - The Flap That Flopped
Posted: Sun 05 Jul 2009, 18:50:47
I’ve waited a few days to see how this revelation of a purportedly "suppressed" EPA document that is skeptical of climate change played out. The supposedly damaging report was dug up by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a libertarian think tank, and exposed just prior to the house vote on the Waxman-Makey bill (aka American Clean Energy and Security Act), which passed despite this last minute attempt to torpedo it amidships. After all timing is everything.
The draft of the document in question is here:
http://cei.org/cei_files/fm/active/0/DOC062509-004.pdf
You will see that the report is really nothing more than a rehash of many of the denialist talking points with only one peer-reviewed study, which was unrelated to the topic’s conclusion, as support. All the rest of the underlying documentation came from criticised
blog postings, non-peer-reviewed articles even one astrologer.
Conclusion, the report itself was rather an embarrassment to science and would have been as well to the EPA had they used it.
Let’s get back to the supposed victim here. This controversy surrounds one Alan Carlin who is a 71 year old economist working for the EPA and the author of the report. Carlin it seems took it upon himself, climate change is his hobby, to hand over an unsolicited report to the EPA as an official submission from his unit the National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE) which was in no way approved by his boss. Now Carlin could have placed this report for review during the public Endangerment findings but opted not to do so. Obviously the report was not used, but hardly represents suppression by EPA officials.
Carlin in fact has been free to talk about this controversy to almost every right wing blog, news rag and lets not forget interviews at FoxNews to explain his case. All this has prompted Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) to proceed with a criminal investigation of the cover up. Now this may sound a little hypocritical to some because where was Senator Inhofe’s righteous indignation when NASA was being silenced from talking to the media a couple of year ago?
The most damaging evidence of what a farce this story is though comes from Carlin himself in an interview with TPM.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.c ... ould_p.php
The draft of the document in question is here:
http://cei.org/cei_files/fm/active/0/DOC062509-004.pdf
You will see that the report is really nothing more than a rehash of many of the denialist talking points with only one peer-reviewed study, which was unrelated to the topic’s conclusion, as support. All the rest of the underlying documentation came from criticised
blog postings, non-peer-reviewed articles even one astrologer.
Conclusion, the report itself was rather an embarrassment to science and would have been as well to the EPA had they used it.
Let’s get back to the supposed victim here. This controversy surrounds one Alan Carlin who is a 71 year old economist working for the EPA and the author of the report. Carlin it seems took it upon himself, climate change is his hobby, to hand over an unsolicited report to the EPA as an official submission from his unit the National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE) which was in no way approved by his boss. Now Carlin could have placed this report for review during the public Endangerment findings but opted not to do so. Obviously the report was not used, but hardly represents suppression by EPA officials.
Carlin in fact has been free to talk about this controversy to almost every right wing blog, news rag and lets not forget interviews at FoxNews to explain his case. All this has prompted Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) to proceed with a criminal investigation of the cover up. Now this may sound a little hypocritical to some because where was Senator Inhofe’s righteous indignation when NASA was being silenced from talking to the media a couple of year ago?
The most damaging evidence of what a farce this story is though comes from Carlin himself in an interview with TPM.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.c ... ould_p.php