Video: EPA analyst Carlin was told that “the administrator  and the administration has decided to move forward on  endangerment, and your comments do not help.”

On April 24, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a proposed “endangerment finding” that carbon dioxide poses a threat to human health and welfare. That action prompted Congress to begin considering global warming legislation.

(Click here for our report on House passage of a climate bill at the end of June.)

But more than a month before, EPA analyst Alan Carlin submitted an internal report that challenged the EPA’s intent to regulate carbon dioxide to reduce global warming. The 98-page report (PDF)  called the science underlying the EPA’s intents outdated and cited multiple refereed scientific and economic studies in recent years that show that human influence on climate change is minimal and efforts to fight it will cost far more than their effects will be worth.

Fox News reports that Carlin’s “boss told him in March that his material would not be incorporated into a broader EPA finding and ordered Carlin to stop working on the climate change issue.” That effectively covered up existence of the report until the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) obtained and released it.

Now Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and a leading Congressional critic of manmade global warming fears, has demanded an investigation. “He came out with the truth. They don’t want the truth at the EPA,” Inhofe told FOX News. “We’re going to expose it.”

The decision not to include Carlin’s report in EPA findings related to greenhouse gas regulation apparently was made by the EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics Director Al McGartland, who e-mailed Carlin saying,

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. [Emphasis added]

That the comments didn’t help the legal or policy case for EPA Administrator Jackson’s decision to regulate carbon dioxide, however, is just the point. The decision appears to have been made despite contrary evidence known to the EPA but not revealed publicly.

As Kimberly Strassel points out in the Wall Street Journal, the EPA’s muzzling Carlin is particularly ironic in light of

• claims by NASA scientist James Hansen, who has spoken publicly promoting alarm about manmade global warming over 1,400 times, that the Bush administration tried to censor him;
• EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s promise, “As administrator, I will ensure EPA’s efforts to address the environmental crises of today are rooted in three fundamental values: science-based policies and program, adherence to the rule of law, and overwhelming transparency”; and
• the fact that one of President Barack Obama’s first acts was a memo to agencies demanding new transparency in government, and science.