Meet Alan Carlin: The EPA’s Inconvenient Voice

With the recent narrow passage of the controversial Waxman-Markey “cap and trade” bill in the House and the ongoing debate over global warming, one should expect balanced coverage of both sides of the issue. However, much of the media has neglected to report on the alleged “hush up” of an EPA research analyst whose report on global warming prompted his supervisor to warn it could have had a “very negative impact on this office.”

At 8:45 a.m. EDT on the June 30 edition of "Fox and Friends," EPA Senior Operations Research Analyst Alan Carlin, told interviewer Steve Doocy that his 98-page study that questioned the science behind global warming and called for the EPA to stop depending on reports from the United Nations, was ignored by his supervisor who refused to forward the report on because Carlin’s “comments do not help the legal policy or case” for the EPA’s position on global warming.

Ironically, as detailed in this NewsBusters posting by the MRC's Brent Baker, in late January of 2007 the broadcast network evening newscasts quickly hyped “a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing meant to publicize a report from two far-left groups about how the Bush administration supposedly suppressed science about the dire threat of global warming.”

This caused Matt Lauer on NBC’s Today, to suggest that President Bush was “hiding the end of the world,” and that, “A controversy in Washington over what could literally be the end of the world as we know it.” Now that the tables are turned, the media’s bias coverage of environmental issues is even more apparent.
                                            
The following exchange was aired on the June 30th edition of Fox and Friends:

STEVE DOOCY, co-host, "Fox and Friends": Good morning. Most of us are not scientists. You are. You've worked for the EPA for 38 years. Tell us in a nutshell what your report said this spring.

ALAN CARLIN, EPA analyst: The most important finding was that EPA in my view needed to look at the science behind global warming and not depend on reports issued by the United Nations which is what they were thinking of doing and have done.

DOOCY: And, in fact, it's problematic because for the last 11 years, temperatures had been dropping. So your report pretty much turned the whole global warming debate on its head, and what happened to your report? I understand it was hushed up.

CARLIN: My supervisors decided not to forward it to the group within EPA who had the responsibility for preparing an overall report which would guide EPA on whether to find that the emission of global warming gases would be something that EPA should regulate.

GRETCHEN CARLSON, co-host: And why should Americans care about that? Because they just passed cap and trade Friday night, at least the House did, and maybe this report could have changed some of those congressmen and women's minds. Here's the email from your supervisor after you submitted the report. It's unbelievable.

It says this. “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.”