President Obama is calling the climate bill that the House passed last week an "extraordinary" achievement, and so it is. The 1,200-page wonder manages the supreme feat of being both hugely expensive while doing almost nothing to reduce carbon emissions. The Washington press corps is playing the bill's 219-212 passage as a political triumph, even though one of five Democrats voted against it. The real story is what Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House baron Henry Waxman and the President himself had to concede to secure even that eyelash margin among the House's liberal majority. Not even Tom DeLay would have imagined the extravaganza of log-rolling, vote-buying, outright corporate bribes, side deals, subsidies and policy loopholes. Every green goal, even taken on its own terms, was watered down or given up for the sake of political rents. Begin with the supposed point of the exercise -- i.e., creating an artificial scarcity of carbon in the name of climate change. The House trimmed Mr. Obama's favored 25% reduction by 2020 to 17% in order to win over Democrats leery of imposing a huge upfront tax on their constituents; then they raised the reduction to 83% in the out-years to placate the greens. Even that 17% is not binding, since it would be largely reached with so-called offsets, through which some businesses subsidize others to make emissions reductions that probably would have happened anyway.

In a memo released on April 23, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, to great fanfare, established new guidelines to govern Agency decision-making. As she wrote, “In all its programs, EPA will provide for the fullest possible public participation in decision-making.” What’s more, she stated, “This requires not only that EPA remain open and accessible to those representing all points of view, but also that EPA offices responsible for decisions take affirmative steps to solicit the views of those who will be affected by these decisions [emphasis added].” This is a policy deserving of high praise, no doubt. Yet according to news reports, EPA has failed to meet Administrator Jacksons’s standard. Consider the case of Dr. Alan Carlin, a PhD economist in EPA’s Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation. In a compelling analysis, Carlin questioned, in fine detail, the science underlying the agency’s proposed endangerment finding. According to Carlin, a 38-year veteran of EPA, and a fellow agency employee, “We have become increasingly concerned that EPA and many other agencies and countries have paid too little attention to the science of global warming…We believe our concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by EPA before any attempt is made to reach conclusions on the subject.”

A top Republican senator has ordered an investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency's alleged suppression of a report that questioned the science behind global warming.

The 98-page report, co-authored by EPA analyst Alan Carlin, pushed back on the prospect of regulating gases like carbon dioxide as a way to reduce global warming. Carlin's report argued that the information the EPA was using was out of date, and that even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased, global temperatures have declined.

"He came out with the truth. They don't want the truth at the EPA," Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla, a global warming skeptic, told FOX News, saying he's ordered an investigation. "We're going to expose it."

The controversy comes after the House of Representatives passed a landmark bill to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, one that Inhofe said will be "dead on arrival" in the Senate despite President Obama's energy adviser voicing confidence in the measure.

As House Democratic leaders scramble to find 218 ‘ayes’ for Waxman-Markey, EPW Policy Beat hit the books to find the appropriate historical analogy for today’s (or tomorrow’s) vote. As with the vote on the BTU tax in 1993, Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Waxman likely will achieve victory on their massive energy tax, but by the barest of margins. And in fulfilling their green vision for national energy policy, they could very well imperil the political fortunes of moderate Democrats in conservative and rural districts, and hence, their majority. In other words, the victory will be costly. It will be, in short, a Pyrrhic victory—so named after King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose army, during the Pyrrhic War, suffered irreplaceable casualties in defeating the Romans in two key battles.