Boxer, Jackson Blast Sen. Barrasso's "Suppressed EPA Memo" Meme

by Emily Gertz

categories: Arctic & Antarctic, Clean Energy, Fossil Energy, Global Warming Denial, Greenhouse Gas, Policy & Legislation, Politics, Science

Published July 07, 2009 @ 10:57AM PT

Did you hear the one about how the Obama administration is fostering a "culture of secrecy and suppression" of science?

That was the claim made by Senator John Barrasso (R-Wy.). At this morning's hearing of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Sen. Barrasso spent most of his time projecting onto the Obama administration a phenomenon he didn't seem to mind when it was actually practiced by the Bush-Cheney administration: censorship of scientific data on climate change, and suppression of the words and works of federal employees.

While Democratic and some of his GOP colleagues spent the morning discussing how to take action on clean energy and global warming with four members of the Obama cabinet, Sen. Barrasso tried to hamstring the hearing. He charged that an EPA economist was squelched from above when he disagreed with the agency's endangerment finding on carbon dioxide.

"What I've seen so far is an administration that is saying, yes we can hide the truth, yes we can hide the facts, and yes we can intimidate career government employees," said Sen. Barrasso.

Calling the accusation of censoring science "a brutal charge to levy," Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), the committee chair, addressed it to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson.

"I will be brief, because I think this committee has more important and substantive issues to deal with," said Ms. Jackson.

Citing materials released by the free-market advocacy think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute, including an exchange of emails between the EPA staffer at the creamy center of this story and his managers, Jackson stated that the "facts do not justify the CEI release."

The EPA employee, economist Alan Carlin, was given permission and encouraged to speak his mind, and find peer-reviewed work to back up his disagreement to the EPA's finding, she said. "I personally instructed staff that Carlin should feel free to circulate [his] memo to anyone he wished," Jackson said, adding, "I don't believe process debates like this are serving the American people" by finding solutions to clean energy generation and ways to stop global warming.

As Grist reporter Jonathan Hiskes has written, there's nothing to speak of to this conspiracy allegation by Sen. Barrasso and others on the right. "EPA Press Secretary Adora Andy noted that Carlin’s education and work expertise are largely in economics, not climatology," says Hiskes. "That’s why his comments on climate science were not included" in the endangerment finding.

Carlin's own report does not back up CEI's allegations, says Hiskes, and recycles several well-debunked global warming hoaxes: that the science is so rapidly evolving that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's reports cannot be trusted; that the globe is really cooling; that the mass of Greenland's ice cap is stable; and others.

The science in the document doesn't hold up. NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt wrote on RealClimate (and Hiskes reposted to Grist, as I'm reposting here):

...what solid peer reviewed science do they cite for support? A heavily-criticised blog posting showing that there are bi-decadal periods in climate data and that this proves it was the sun wot done it. The work of an award-winning astrologer (one Theodor Landscheidt, who also thought that the rise of Hitler and Stalin were due to cosmic cycles), a classic Courtillot paper we've discussed before, the aforementioned FoS web page, another web page run by Doug Hoyt, a paper by Garth Paltridge reporting on artifacts in the NCEP reanalysis of water vapour that are in contradiction to every other reanalysis, direct observations and satellite data, a complete reprint of another un-peer reviewed paper by William Gray, a nonsense paper by Miskolczi etc. etc.

I'm not quite sure how this is supposed to compete with the four rounds of international scientific and governmental review of the IPCC or the rounds of review of the CCSP reports ...

...Finally, they end up with the oddest claim in the submission: That because human welfare has increased over the twentieth century at a time when CO2 was increasing, this somehow implies that no amount of CO2 increases can ever cause a danger to human society. This is just boneheadly stupid.

So in summary, what we have is a ragbag collection of un-peer reviewed web pages, an unhealthy dose of sunstroke, a dash of astrology and more cherries than you can poke a cocktail stick at. Seriously, if that's the best they can do, the EPA's ruling is on pretty safe ground.

There are many really substantive critiques to make of the House clean energy and climate legislation, and whatever version the Senate will eventually take up. These policies warrant serious discussion and consideration in Congress.

Instead, Sen. Barrasso is falling down on the job. He is using falsehoods to try and block much-needed debates of and advancements on energy and climate policy, instead of engaging on the real issues. It's a mystery why his constituents don't demand better.