In June of 2009, a story surfaced about the alleged suppression by the US EPA of information related to climate change.

The source of the information was reported to be one Dr. Alan Carlin, who, although a real EPA analyst, was in fact, an economist, not a scientist. Distortions of the story, from the usual sources, began almost immediately.

Update June 2014

Climatecrocks notes: Alan Carlin, (no relation to George, I’m quite sure) was a Fox News flash in the denialist pan a few years ago. An economist with no climate credentials, but apparently with right wing conspiracist leanings, claimed to have authored a “report” on climate change, that was censored by the EPA. Remember?
Anyway, he’s being recycled.  Which is normal in the science denial business. And, well, it got me thinking, why not recycle my takedown of Mr. Carlin from several years ago, above.

Media Matters:

CNBC sought someone to write about “global warming being a hoax” in order to counter a major new report that shows the economic cost of failing to take climate action.

As Republic Report first reported, the cable business channel CNBC reached out to DeSmogBlog, a website that rebuts climate change denial, to ask Alan Carlin, an economist who denies that the majority of recent warming is man-made, to write about “global warming being a hoax.” (CNBC apparently mistakenly assumed that Carlin worked with DeSmogBlog because they had profiled him.) Media Matters has confirmed that Cindy Perman, the commentary editor of CNBC.com, sent the following message to DeSmogBlog:

Hi there. Given this new report on the cost of climate change, wanted to extend an invitation to Alan Carlin to write an op-ed for CNBC.com. Can be on the new report or just his general thoughts on global warming being a hoax.

As Media Matters has documented, the majority of CNBC’s climate change coverage in 2013 falsely suggested that climate change is not occurring or that it is not mostly man-made, even though 97 percent of climate scientists say it is.