President Obama doesn’t want to run the auto industry, but he had to, temporarily of course, to save the economy. And Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Lisa Jackson doesn’t want to regulate carbon dioxide, but the EPA seems intent on moving forward regardless. Fortunately, Congress could shorten the EPA’s long, regulatory leash by amending the Interior-Environment appropriations spending bill early next week.

The Environmental Protection Agency issued a proposed endangerment finding in April, saying that global warming and climate change pose a serious threat to public health and safety and thus almost anything that emits carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases could be regulated under the Clean Air Act. The agency is already targeting the ailing auto industry. New regulations are proposing that the fleet average must reach 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016, which will increase the price and decrease the safety of the vehicle.

Earlier in September, Jackson said prefers cap and trade to regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act:

Legislation is so important, because it will combine the most efficient, most economy-wide, least costly (and) least disruptive way to deal with carbon dioxide pollution. We get further faster without top-down regulation.”

The amendment planning to be offered would prevent those top down regulations that could include new standards for hotels, retail stores, apartment complexes, restaurants, airplanes, ocean-going freighters and tankers and even lawnmowers. And the regulations would be costly. Heritage economists modeled the effects of proposed EPA regulations and found:

• Cumulative gross domestic product (GDP) losses are nearly $7 trillion by 2029 (in infla­tion-adjusted 2008 dollars), according to The Heritage Foundation/Global Insight model (described in Appendix A).
• Single-year GDP losses exceed $600 billion (in inflation-adjusted 2008 dollars).
• Annual job losses exceed 800,000 for several years.
• Some industries will see job losses that exceed 50 percent.

The full report is available here. It’s safe to say these cost estimates are low since the model does not consider the substantial administrative costs of complying with the new regulations. And keep in mind, the job losses are after accounting for “green” job creation.

Congressman Collin Peterson (D-MN) weighed in, arguing the EPA would gain tremendous power and micromanage the economy:

With or without Congressional action, EPA will be free to regulate greenhouse gases, resulting in one of the largest and most bureaucratic nightmares that the U.S. economy and Americans have ever seen. And, with EPA in the lead, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, arguably the voice of agriculture and rural America, would be left out of the process. Let me be clear, this is not a responsibility we want to leave in the hands of EPA.”

Whether it’s cap-and-trade legislation or EPA’s proposed regulations, attempting to restrict energy use by cutting carbon dioxide would be toxic to an ill economy. Even in the best of economic times, this policy would likely end them.

Ever hear of Alan Carlin? Probably not, and that is the way the Obama Administration wants to keep it. Dr. Carlin is an Environmental Protection Agency veteran who recently wrote a damaging report, warning that the science behind climate change was questionable at best, and that we shouldn’t pass laws that will hurt American families and hobble the nation’s economy based on incomplete information.

Despite its promise to put science above politics, the Administration has suppressed Carlin’s report, banned him from writing or speaking about climate change, told him to forget about attending any meetings that addressed his main job function—climate change—and gave him a new assignment: updating a grants database. One supposes that, by dedicating its distinguished scientists to data-entry tasks, Obama’s EPA is able to free up true-believing interns to do its research.

Until recently, Dr. Carlin’s assignment was to research climate change issues for the agency. As part of this responsibility, he prepared a 98-page report earlier this year questioning the need for the agency to regulate CO2. His main argument—buttressed by citation after citation of peer-reviewed science—was that the agency’s earlier argument for regulating was based on incomplete science that ignored much more recent (and contrary) studies.

EPA responded by burying the report. As for Dr. Carlin himself, he was put under a strict gag order by superiors. They forbade him from writing, speaking or e-mailing about global warming to anyone outside his group at EPA. Now that his comment has been leaked (available here), the truth can come out.

We spoke to an embattled Dr. Carlin on the phone today, and, though he does fear losing his job because of his opinion, he has the strength of his beliefs. He told us that in 40 years of working for the government, he can’t remember any other time such pressure has been put on him. But you can hear in his voice that Dr. Carlin, who got his undergraduate degree in physics from CalTech and his PhD in economics from MIT, is not easily silenced.

“I’ve been involved in public policy since 1966 or 1967,” he said. “There’s never been anything exactly like this. I am now under a gag order.”

As for travel, “it’s been made abundantly clear that I was not to attend anything to do with climate change.” When he did attend a conference in Washington that was open to the public, he was reprimanded by a superior who told Dr. Carlin that he had “shown poor judgment” in daring to ask a question.

He does maintain a good sense of humor. He told us he had just been interviewed on radio and that the reporter had said “we hear you’ve been fired” to which he responded, “I haven’t heard that myself, but your information may be better than mine.”

That Dr. Carlin’s fate should befall any civil servant is frightening. It is doubly frightening when the person is a respected scientist who is simply trying to do his job when it is needed most. At the same time EPA is looking to regulate CO2 as a health hazard, Congress is considering an even more intrusive climate change bill based on many of the same erroneous and out-dated assumptions identified in Carlin’s report.

House leadership ramrodded the Waxman-Markey bill through on Friday, with virtually no meaningful debate allowed. The Heritage Foundation estimates the legislation will inflict massive damage to a U.S. economy already on the ropes. It passed with only a seven vote margin. One wonders if it would have survived, if countervailing voices like Dr. Carlin had been allowed to be heard.

The EPA gag order—made clear in the emails between Dr. Carlin and his superior (available here), also demonstrates that President Obama’s promise to put truth above politics has now been forgotten.

You can read the comment that your government did not want you to see, all 98 pages of it, here.  In the executive summary, on page V, he clearly refers to the supposed relationship between carbon dioxide and “greenhouse gases.”

As of the best information I currently have, the GHG/CO2 hypothesis as to the cause of global warming, which this Draft TSD supports, is currently an invalid hypothesis from a scientific viewpoint because it fails a number of critical comparisons with available observable data. Any one of these failings should be enough to invalidate the hypothesis; the breadth of these failings leaves no other possible conclusion based on current data.

If this comment was proven to be suppressed, it could force the EPA to dismiss the entire comment review period and start over.

Dr. Carlin’s problems are far from unique. He is one of many who pay the price of Al Gore’s insistence that “the science is settled” on climate change, that we should no longer debate the issue. The media has happily gone along with this suppression. News reports present the questionable relationship between carbon dioxide and climate change as absolute fact. Skeptics are derided as “deniers” and are treated in the same way Galileo was by the Inquisition for suggesting the Earth revolved around the Sun. Today in President Obama’s America, a modern-day Galileo has been told to shut up and go away.

We knew it was coming, but rather than being cliché and waiting until Earth Day next week, the Environmental Protection Agency has issued an endangerment finding, saying that global warming and climate change pose a serious threat to public health and safety and thus almost anything that emits carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases could be regulated under the Clean Air Act. This is the first official action taken by the federal government to regulate carbon dioxide. Arbitrary restrictions and regulations in the name of curbing global warming do nothing but promise extraordinary perils for the American economy – all for little, if any, environmental benefit. The Associated Press reports:

“The Environmental Protection Agency has concluded that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases are a danger to public health and welfare, taking the first step to regulating pollution linked to climate change, The Associated Press has learned.

Such regulation would have widespread economic and social impact, from requiring more fuel efficient automobiles to limiting carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and industrial sources, changing the way the nation produces energy.

The EPA has concluded that the science pointing to man-made pollution as a cause of global warming is “compelling and overwhelming.” The blame goes mainly to carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels.”

The endangerment finding is the first step in a long regulatory process that could lead to EPA requiring different regulations and units of emissions requirements for each gadget that emits carbon dioxide. The first target would be automobiles, but the EPA’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) suggested regulations of almost everything that moves, including new regulations for smaller items such lawnmowers and forklifts.

We’ve often cited studies and conclusions from credible scientists arguing the global warming debate is anything but compelling and overwhelming. See, for instance:

• Addressing Drastic Sea Level Rises
• Natural Forces Slow Warming
• Tropical Cyclone Activity
• Warming and Cooling in the North Pacific
• Climate Change Modeling and the Sun’s Effect on Global Temperature
• Climate Engineering and the Fallacies in the EPA’s ANPR
• Anthropogenic Effects on Global Warming
• Global Warming is Irreversible
• Scientists Make Anti-Global Warming Case

Perhaps the most chilling information associated with global warming regulations are the staggering costs associated with them. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis found the economic costs of EPA regulations to be:

• Cumulative gross domestic product (GDP) losses are nearly $7 trillion by 2029 (in inflation adjusted 2008 dollars)
• Single-year GDP losses exceed $600 billion (in inflation-adjusted 2008 dollars).
• Annual job losses exceed 800,000 for several years.
• Some industries will see job losses that exceed 50 percent.

The EPA’s official announcement kicks off a 60-day comment period before issuing a final ruling. When the agency announced its plan to micromanage the economy with global warming regulations, 14,461 of you went to www.stopepa.com to express your dissent to the EPA about the invasive new energy tax on businesses and individuals. We look forward to hearing your voice again.