Inhofe Watch: Senator Demands Investigation of EPA Non-Scandal

Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) has called for a criminal investigation into charges that the Environmental Protection Agency squelched employees who disagreed with its endangerment finding: that human-caused carbon dioxide as the primary cause of climate change.

Sen. Inhofe, a long-time denier of human-propelled climate change, told Fox News last week that under the Obama administration,

[EPA officials] have been suppressing science and coming out with what they want people to say. You might remember — I talked to you about it on this station. When I first realized that this thing was a hoax and I made the statement that the notion that man-made gases, anthropogenic gases, CO2 cause global warming, it is probably the greatest hoax ever perpetrated.

As I noted in a post earlier today, about Senator John Barrasso (R-Wy.)'s similar performance at this morning's hearing of the Environment and Public Works Committee, this strikes me as a weird case of transference; since, under the Bush administration, global warming science demonstrably was suppressed, and scientists squelched, and these senators stood by and watched.

The work they are championing, by economists Alan Carlin and John Davidson of EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics, has not withstood scientific scrutiny. NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt describes it as "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." Carlin was allowed to submit it for inclusion in the endangerment finding, and EPA rejected it on its scientific merits.

Unfortunately, a couple traditional news outlets that ought to know better, CBS News and The New York Times, fell back on old habits of "he said, she said" style global warming reporting. Each has devoted some space to this story, while failing to question the motivations of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in trying to whip up some controversy around the Carlin/Davidson document. CEI is a free-market advocacy think tank that's long opposed curbing greenhouse gas pollution and disputed the reality of global warming.

If Sens. Inhofe and Barrasso had their way, we would soon see thousands millions of taxpayer dollars devoted to an investigation into why bad science was not included in an EPA decision.

Think of all that money going into clean tech research and development, instead!