The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is once again being accused of politicizing science, only this time conservatives are the ones crying foul.

At issue is a 98-page “comment” on the EPA’s recent finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are endangering human health. The comment was authored by an EPA economist Alan Carlin, and claimed, among other things, that the EPA was relying on outdated data because it used the last assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to help shape its finding. Carlin also echoes the old arguments of climate sceptics, which say that solar cycles, not human activity, are responsible for the recent increase in global temperatures.

Those views were apparently squelched by Carlin’s boss. The comments “do not help the legal or policy case for our decision,” Al McGartland, the EPA’s chief economist wrote to Carlin in an e-mail. Somebody (apparently not Carlin) forwarded the e-mails to the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, which posted them, along with the original comment paper and a letter demanding that they be entered into the record.

During the Bush years it was the other way around: Democrats repeatedly accused the administration of suppressing and distorting scientific evidence to support their policy decisions. During his first state of the union address, Obama promised to “restore science to its rightful place”.

So is this a suppression of science? Yes, but apparently very, very flaky science. The guys over at Real Climate have done a great job of picking apart Carlin’s comments–showing that they are mostly a rehash of old, scientifically dubious arguments.

Still, you wish that the EPA could have just said that, rather than discussing the political ramifications of the report.