Last March Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) analyst Alan Carlin submitted a report that challenged the EPA’s intent to regulate carbon dioxide to reduce global warming. The 98-page report called the science underlying the EPA’s intents outdated and cited multiple refereed scientific and economic studies in recent years that show that human influence on climate change is minimal and efforts to fight it will cost far more than their effects will be worth.

But Fox News reports that Carlin’s “boss told him in March that his material would not be incorporated into a broader EPA finding and ordered Carlin to stop working on the climate change issue.” That effectively covered up existence of the report until the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) obtained it and released it last week.

Now Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and a leading Congressional critic of manmade global warming fears, has demanded an investigation. “He came out with the truth. They don’t want the truth at the EPA,” Inhofe told FOX News. “We’re going to expose it.”

The decision not to include Carlin’s report in EPA findings related to greenhouse gas regulation apparently was made by the EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics Director Al McGartland, who according to the CEI e-mailed Carlin saying,

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.

That the comments didn’t help the legal or policy case for EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s decision to regulate carbon dioxide, however, is just the point. The decision appears to have been made despite contrary evidence known to the EPA but not revealed publicly.