WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - State attorneys general Ken Cuccinelli and Troy King say the federal government did not take recent findings into account when it issued its first pronouncement on the dangers of greenhouse gases.

Virginia's Cuccinelli and Alabama's King asked the federal appeals court in the District of Columbia Thursday to force the Environmental Protection Agency to open hearings for the purpose of introducing the information, which they say may show the EPA relied on faulty data to enact carbon dioxide regulations.

The information is from emails and other materials from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England. The CRU is the research arm of the United Nations panel on climate change, King and Cuccinelli say.

"The emails and associated materials suggest that prominent CRU scientists suppressed academic dissent, manipulated the peer-review process, and withheld, lost or discarded source data from academic and public inspection," the motion says.

"These practices not only violate clear EPA standards of conduct for scientific research, they also wholly undermine EPA's bases for relying upon IPCC science instead of conducting its own research. The existence of these charges and the basis for them is subject to judicial notice."

Cuccinelli had filed a motion with the EPA in February asking it to reopen its hearings to consider the data.

He claims the EPA's regulation could cost businesses and Virginians hundreds of millions of dollars in potentially unnecessary fees and increased energy costs. It could also decrease the amount of jobs in the manufacturing, agriculture and energy industries.

"Whatever the final decision is by the EPA, we want it to be based on sound scientific data, not data that has been sifted through a political filter," Cuccinelli said.

From Legal Newsline: Reach John O'Brien by e-mail at jobrienwv@gmail.com.