Thousands of conservative political activists, officeholders, public relations operatives, celebrities, think tankers, and academics are assembled here this week for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. Among the issues that most intensely unite the various factions within the conservative galaxy is the use by liberals of global warming programs and policies as cover for the expansion of government power. All too often the science behind those efforts is inaccessible to the public and thus not subject to genuinely independent review and verification. So a key ingredient in stopping the global warming juggernaut in agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency is making scientific data publicly available.

Consider a 1999 EPA report purporting to show that the Clean Air Act would generate $170 billion in economic benefits in 2010. That at least sounded plausible. But EPA’s numbers changed dramatically when the agency released its 2011 report on the purported economic benefits of the Clean Air Act. The EPA’s new number was $2 trillion, an increase exceeding 1,000 percent. How did the Obama EPA come up with this number? Government officials used an economic model that, according to the scientists who wrote the study, was filled with “significant” and “major uncertainties.” The researchers even admitted that because of their model’s design flaws, “there is no way to validate” their findings. The agency refused to make their data available for outside review.