EPA Whistleblower’s Office May Get Shut Down

Following a whistleblower report that criticized a global warming rule, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is reportedly considering shutting down the agency office in which the critical report originated. Dr. Alan Carlin, the senior analyst whose report EPA unsuccessfully tried to bury, worked in EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE). According to a story in last Friday’s Inside EPA, the agency is now considering shutting that office down. The Washington Times ran an editorial yesterday, critical of the potential shut down of the internal review office by the EPA: In June, the Competitive Enterprise Institute made waves by releasing internal e-mails from the Environmental Protection Agency. In those messages, a top administrator told a key researcher that the researcher’s new report would not be released. Why? Because it does “not help the legal or policy case” for a controversial decision to treat global warming as a health hazard. In short, because researcher Alan Carlin’s conclusions differed from the administration’s political agenda, his research was ignored. CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman appeared on the G. Gordon Liddy radio show yesterday to talk about the scandal, and the EPA’s plans to shutter the office that produced the controversial report. Kazman reiterated what he said in a statement on Monday about the issue: “Economists are the most likely professionals within EPA to examine the real-world effects of its policies,” said Kazman. “For this reason, the NCEE is a restraining force on the agency’s out-of-this-world regulatory ambitions. EPA would love to get that office out of the way, especially since it has within it civil servants like Dr. Carlin, who are willing to expose the truth about EPA’s plan to restrict energy use in the name of global warming.”...OpenMarket

So much for sticking to science.