The Competitive Enterprise Institute has uncovered a series of e-mails suggesting that in mid-March EPA managers buried a report raising doubts about the scientific basis for EPA’s decision to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. CEI submitted the material as part of a public comment to the EPA on Tuesday, just ahead of the deadline for submitting comments. CEI wants EPA to release the report to the public.

In one e-mail, dated March 12, 2009, Al Gartland, director of EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics, instructed researcher Alan Carlin to refrain from discussing his research with anyone outside of the NCEE. Carlin then urged Gartland to reconsider his decision not to send his report to the Office of Air and Radiation, which directs EPA’s climate programs, and Gartland answered on March 17:

Alan, I decided not to forward your comments. The time for discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. … I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.

Gartland sent a follow-up e-mail seven minutes later:

With the endangerment finding nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don’t want you to spend additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research etc, at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate.

Why were EPA researchers not allowed to share their findings with the people making decisions about significant environmental regulations? What was in Carlin’s report?