CEI Files EPA’s Own Suppressed Report, Demands EPA Global Warming Proceeding Be Reopened

CEI Files EPA’s Own Suppressed Report, Demands EPA Global Warming Proceeding Be Reopened

Public Should Have Right to Review, Comment on Gov’t Report

Washington, D.C., June 30, 2009—The Competitive Enterprise Institute today is demanding that the Environmental Protection Agency allow public comment on an internal global warming report that the agency itself suppressed. 

CEI is submitting the report to the EPA and formally requesting that EPA re-open the comment period on its so-called “endangerment proceeding,” so the public can comment on both the report and on EPA’s conduct.  EPA’s official comment period ended June 23.

Today’s actions follow CEI’s release of internal EPA emails a week ago that demonstrated the agency cover-up, followed by a draft version of the report released last Thursday.   A day later, the author of the report was given permission by the agency to release the final report but only on his own website.

“EPA sits on this report for over three months, and then only allows it to be made public on the author’s personal website,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman.  “The fact that we have to formally re-file it with the agency indicates how unreal this situation is.”

The report criticizes the agency’s proposal to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.  It concludes that EPA is relying on outdated research and is ignoring major new developments. Those developments include a continued decline in global temperatures, a new consensus that future hurricanes will not be more frequent or intense, and new findings that water vapor will moderate, rather than exacerbate, temperature.  It finds that ocean cycles are probably the most important single factor in explaining temperature fluctuations.