Get ready: looks like the Right is gearing up for its next fight – trying to debunk the "myth" of climate change. They already have their figurehead: Dr. Alan Carlin, an economist who has been working in a corner at the E.P.A. since the Nixon administration, and who is, by all accounts, an ardent climate change denier.

Dr. Carlin is at the center of a storm ginned up by conservatives because of a series of internal agency emails which appear to dismiss Dr. Carlin’s comments on an E.P.A. report on greenhouse gases.

So, is this additional proof of a "vast left wing conspiracy to silence the critics of the Obama administration"? Or more manufactured, Inhofian hokum? From the New York Times:

But the newly obtained documents show that Dr. Carlin’s highly skeptical views on global warming, which have been known for more than a decade within the small unit where he works, have been repeatedly challenged by scientists inside and outside the E.P.A.; that he holds a doctorate in economics, not in atmospheric science or climatology; that he has never been assigned to work on climate change; and that his comments on the endangerment finding were a product of rushed and at times shoddy scholarship, as he acknowledged Thursday in an interview.

In other words, taking this man’s report seriously would be akin to asking me to draft a report on the dangers of quantum mechanics. You can see why the Right has thrown its full weight behind Carlin – despite his thirty-plus year tenure at the E.P.A., he has almost zero credibility in this particular area.

Perhaps Dr. Carlin would like to his apply "market externalities will save the world" theory to explain this?

Climate researchers now predict the planet will warm by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century even if the world’s leaders fulfill their most ambitious climate pledges, a much faster and broader scale of change than forecast just two years ago, according to a report released Thursday by the United Nations Environment Program.

I certainly hope Carlin doesn’t own waterfront property. Then again, climate change deniers don’t even START thinking about tomorrow.