It may not be unheard of for the federal government to quietly encourage others to sue it – think of the Endangered Species Act and how it sometimes takes a lawsuit to prompt the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to add animals to the list. But a recent suit seeking to invalidate a report on global warming, coupled with the Bush administration’s uneven regard for the science on this subject is reason for concern.

The attorneys general of Maine and Connecticut this week asked U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate whether the White House encouraged the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an anti-regulation group, to sue it to undermine a 2000 report which said that global warming posed significant threats to ecosystems and water supplies. In its lawsuit, the CEI says the report, the National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change, by the scientists from government, industry, universities and non-governmental organizations, does not meet government standards for objectivity and quality.

The attorneys general contend that the lawsuit is not so much a challenge to the science behind global warming as an attempt by the Bush administration to have an outside group get it off the hook for combating climate change. To strengthen their case, the attorneys general cite a June 2002 e-mail from a Myron Ebell, director of Global Warming and International Environmental Policy at CEI, to Phil Cooney, the chief of staff at the Council on Environmental Quality at the White House. In it, Mr. Ebell thanks Mr. Conney for soliciting his group’s help and notes that this is a “welcome change from past the administration’s [standard operating procedure], which is to tell conservative to stop bothering them and to shut up.”

Mr. Ebell also says someone at the Environmental Protection Agency – “a fall gal” – needs to go in order to get everyone “rowing in the same direction.” Agency administrator Christine Todd Whitman lasted another year, stepping down last month. Mr. Ebell also calls for backtracking by the administration on the National Assessment and warns, “this administration has managed, through incompetence or intention, to create one disaster after another and then to expect its allies to clean up the mess. I don’t know whether we have the resources to clean up this one.”

While the e-mail indicates there is a close relationship between CEI and the Council on Environmental Quality, interest groups currying favor with the White House is nothing new. What is more troubling and should be investigated by Congress is the Bush administration’s pattern of downplaying whether climate change is occurring and, if so, what is causing it. Earlier this summer, it was revealed that the EPA had included a long section on the threats posed by climate change in a draft report on the state of the environment. Officials at the White House first amended and then whittled this part of the report to a few paragraphs.

Then last month, the secretaries of commerce and energy announced they were boosting spending on such climate change reviews by $103 million. The money would be used to further examine the “uncertainties” surrounding global climate change. This despite the fact that the National Academy of Sciences, which has studied the issue several times at the behest of the administration, said in a report two years ago: “There is general agreement that the observed warming is real and particularly strong within the past twenty years.” This is because greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, are accumulating in the atmosphere as a result of human activities, the science panel said.

Given this pattern of planting doubt, the Maine and Connecticut attorneys general are right to call for an investigation, but not of the relationship between a conservative group and the White House. The investigation, initiated by the Senate, should look at why important information about climate change is being redacted from EPA documents and why endless review, but not action plans, are warranted on such a thoroughly studied topic.