Did the EPA suppress a study that was critical of the Obama administration's line on so-called global warming? It certainly looks that way when you look at a Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) pdf that published the email exchanges between a scientist who wanted to run more tests and an EPA that wanted to push the administration's line of taking over domestic production of energy. (CEI is a think tank out of DC that has at least two CMC alums, Marlo Lewis and Richard Morrison, working for it.)
Over at The Forum, I recently got into a heated (you'll pardon the pun) comment exchange with Kim Munoz CMC '10 about the inherent problem with trusting science that is conducted by government regulatory bodies. In short, there's no incentive for the scientists to have their data speak for itself. No scientist ever got more funding by saying, "hey, let's run more tests before we go on a banning crusade." But many scientists get more funding by hyping the threats posed to us all and distorting our country's priorities and potentially even our entire economy.
Well, let's take the climate change report suppression as exhibit A in a very long trial against those who would politicize science. Given that the EPA stands to gain tremendously with more power and a larger budget, it's not suprising that they wanted to suppress a report that would be critical of the threats mankind faces from anthropogenic global warming. Careful readers of the email will note that the EPA administrator in question laments the budget cuts of 66%. It doesn't take a rocket scientist -- or a climate change scientist, for that matter -- to see that the passage of a law that puts the EPA at the center of the economic regulation will probably come with more "grants" and more money for the EPA.
And no, I'm not above saying, "I told you so, Kim."
