It’s been revealed that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has suppressed an internal report skeptical of man-made global warming. The report, released one day before the House voted on the deceptive cap and trade scheme, also went largely unreported by the establishment media. According to newsbusters, not a single television news station carried the story, despite a major vote on the cap and trade bill (aka climate-change bill).

The censored report can be found here.

Politcal Hotsheet of CBSNews.com did publish a story on this issue, but only did so after the House vote, and only online, not televised:

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.”

Several e-mail correspondences raise serious concerns about the Obama administration corrupting what is supposed to be a independent review process inside a federal agency. The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) submitted comments which said: “The study was barred from being circulated within EPA, it was never disclosed to the public, and it was not placed in the docket of this proceeding. The emails further show that the study was treated in this manner not because of any problem with its quality, but for political reasons [emphasis added].”

If the science conflicts with their agenda, they discard the science, and try to cover it up. All this after repeated assurances of honesty and transparency from the Obama administration.

The story continues: “In the last few days, Republicans have begun to raise questions about the report and e-mail messages, but it was insufficient to derail the so-called cap and trade bill from being approved by the U.S. House of Representatives.” No thanks to television news stations working hard to advance this administration’s goals by not reporting stories like these. Or at least not till after it passes a vote.

Rep. Joe Barton, the senior Republican on the Energy and Commerce committee, used the barred report in a floor speech during the debate on Friday. He said: “The science is not there to back it up. An EPA report that has been suppressed… raises grave doubts about the endangerment finding. If you don’t have an endangerment finding, you don’t need this bill. We don’t need this bill. And for some reason, the EPA saw fit not to include that in its decision.” The ‘endangerment’ finding is the EPA’s decision that carbon dioxide ‘endangers’ the public health and welfare.

It strains credulity to believe that a natural and vital atmospheric gas is dangerous to public health.

Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but a naturally occurring, beneficial trace gas in the atmosphere. For the past few million years, the Earth has existed in a state of relative carbon dioxide starvation compared with earlier periods. There is no empirical evidence that levels double or even triple those of today will be harmful, climatically or otherwise. As a vital element in plant photosynthesis, carbon dioxide is the basis of the planetary food chain - literally the staff of life. Its increase in the atmosphere leads mainly to the greening of the planet. To label carbon dioxide a “pollutant” is an abuse of language, logic and science. - Robert M. Carter, Ph.D. Professor of Environmental and Earth Sciences, James Cook University

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, the senior Republican on the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, had this to say about the report: “I’m sure it was very inconvenient for the EPA to consider a study that contradicted the findings it wanted to reach. But the EPA is supposed to reach its findings based on evidence, not on political goals. The repression of this important study casts doubts on EPA’s finding, and frankly, on other analysis EPA has conducted on climate issues.”

John at Powerline had this conclusion: “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.”

Unfortunately, this kind of environmental and political extremism is embedded in the Obama administration. The American people now have to prepare for the consequences of bad science being used as a justification for massive new government taxation and control under cap and trade.