EPA

Is the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) deliberately trying to sabotage the EPA’s efforts to regulate carbon dioxide emissions? Is Peter Orszag, the agency’s brainy and genial director, secretly in cahoots with Republican opponents of President Obama’s climate policies?

Not quite – though that may have been your first impression upon reading the raft of articles published yesterday that breathlessly reported that an OMB memo had strongly criticized the EPA’s proposal to regulate greenhouse gases.

It’s no surprise that Sen. James Inhofe’s (R-OK) take on the recent EPA decision (that carbon dioxide is a danger to public health and must be regulated) is negative.

Inhofe, ranking minority member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, doesn’t believe in anthropogenic global warming, and has called the EPA’s stance the beginning of a regulatory climate which will destroy American jobs, raise consumer energy prices, and make it impossible for the U.S. to complete in a global economy.

Inhofe’s position, that Congress should pass legislation to stop the EPA ruling in its tracks, is typical of global warming deniers, who prefer bombast, manufactured evidence and creating hysteria to actual fact. All have, at one time or other, parroted their misinformed “proof” that Obama’s green economy plan will cost every American family $3,128 per year in rising energy costs.

I've often wondered if EPA actually stands for Environmental Pillaging Act, so contrary to environmental protection are the policies and recommendations that often come from this government organization.

However, in a victory for environmentalists, the US Appeals Court ruled against not allowing states to tighten up air quality standards.

Science around environmental matters has long been dismissed in the rough and tumble of U.S. politics, but many scientists contend things got markedly worse through two terms under President Bush, as incidents have shown how political appointees were involved in shaping government reports on everything from climate change to condoms.

Now, more than half the 1,600 Environmental Protection Agency scientists who responded to an online questionnaire complained of political pressure in interpreting and performing their work.

And four in 10 scientists who have worked at the agency for more than a decade said interference has been more prevalent in the last five years than previously.

Here's the full report, Interference at the EPA, by the Union of Concerned Scientists.