Media Ignore EPA Suppressing Skeptical Global Warming Report

The day before the House was to vote on a controversial energy bill destined to be the largest tax hike in American history, it was revealed that the Environmental Protection Agency had suppressed an internal report challenging the entire global warming myth.

Despite the importance of this study, and how it related to a debate about to ensue on the House floor, its existence and suppression went almost completely ignored by America's media.

This, of course, comes in stark contrast to regular and frequent news reports in previous years accusing the Bush White House of intentionally censoring the science of climate change.

Making matters worse, the media have no excuse for this current oversight for several House members held a press conference about this issue early Thursday afternoon (h/t NBer Joseph Johnson):

REPRESENTATIVE JOE BARTON (R-TEX.): Well, good afternoon. I'm Congressman Joe Barton the ranking Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee, and we're here today on a very serious matter.

We have the Obama administration, which was put into office on the pledge and the promise of openness and transparency and full disclosure and a new change in government. And one of their biggest issues is the issue of climate change and whether we should move a massive reorganization of our entire economy because of CO2 emissions.

In order to move forward, the EPA administrator had to find an endangerment finding, which is a legal term meaning the EPA administrator had to declare that there was an endangerment to human health, and, therefore, we needed to regulate this substance -- in this case, CO2.

There is a group within the EPA that's tasked with doing some of the economic and environmental analysis. And a career scientist in that group prepared an extensive report, close to 100 pages in length, in which he found that there were very serious concerns about going forward with the finding of endangerment. And that's the substance of this press conference, is how that report was suppressed, censored, prevented from going through the review process.

Also in attendance at the press conference which took place at 12:32 PM EDT Thursday were Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.), Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), Rep Greg Walden (R-Ore.), Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and Rep. John Fleming (R-Louis.).

Yet, despite this press conference, and the significance of this revelation just before a key House vote, LexisNexis identified not one television news report on this subject.

Not one.

As for the print media, at 11:09 PM EDT, hours after Friday's vote, CBSNews.com published this piece at its Political Hotsheet blog:

The Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages.

Less than two weeks before the agency formally submitted its pro-regulation recommendation to the White House, an EPA center director quashed a 98-page report that warned against making hasty "decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data."

The EPA official, Al McGartland, said in an e-mail message to a staff researcher on March 17: "The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward... and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision."

The e-mail correspondence raises questions about political interference in what was supposed to be a independent review process inside a federal agency -- and echoes criticisms of the EPA under the Bush administration, which was accused of suppressing a pro-climate change document.

Alan Carlin, the primary author of the 98-page EPA report, told CBSNews.com in a telephone interview on Friday that his boss, McGartland, was being pressured himself. "It was his view that he either lost his job or he got me working on something else," Carlin said. "That was obviously coming from higher levels." 

Bravo, CBSNews.com. But why not begin revealing this on Thursday evening and Friday morning BEFORE the House voted on the American Clean Energy and Security Act? And why not do it on television, hmmm?

As for major print media, the only article I could find on the subject was published some time on Friday by the New York Times. As this was a piece originally published Thursday by Environment and Energy Daily, it seems this only appeared at the Times website and not in its print edition.

And that's it.

One has to wonder why the suppression of such information by the EPA is suddenly not considered newsworthy given the media's fascination with what it consistently depicted as scientific censorship when George W. Bush was in the White House.

A Google search using the words "Bush censors science" produced 752,000 results. 752,000!!!

Such included this one published by ABCNews.com December 10, 2007:

House Democrats and Republicans traded rhetoric Monday over a new report claiming White House officials sought to suppress scientific views of global warming that clashed with Bush administration policies.

The report -- originally undertaken as a bipartisan effort -- leads to what the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee calls an "inescapable" conclusion that "the Bush administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming."

Considering the 752,000 reports about Bush censoring science, it appears the news media don't mind aiding and abetting such suppression when it furthers their agenda.

Be afraid, America. Be very afraid.

*****Update: Power Line's John Hinderaker took the Obama administration to task for its behavior concerning this report --

If the Obama administration gets its way, Americans will not become aware of the scientific evidence: Obama's EPA suppressed the Carlin/Davidson report and tried to keep it secret for political reasons. The emails obtained by the CEI are revealing. [...]

Global warming zealots are a bit like Iran's mullahs. They are fanatically devoted to a series of false propositions. Unable to win an open scientific debate, they consistently resort to bullying and brute force to suppress their opposition. Once again, we see the Obama administration taking the lead in this regard, putting political ideology above scientific truth and demanding that all others do likewise.