Reporting from Washington-- Republicans today boycotted the start of a Senate hearing on climate-change legislation.

The Republican members of the Environment and Public Works Committee are demanding a full Environmental Protection Agency analysis of the climate bill.

But despite the boycott, committee Chairwoman Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) still held the meeting, arguing that the EPA's partial analysis, based on a similar bill passed by the House of Representatives in June, was sufficient.

Making all the projections and running all the models would take the EPA about five weeks.

Because the Senate bill is largely based on the House legislation, the EPA said that full analysis "would likely show the impacts ... would be similar." So the EPA conducted a simplified analysis, drawing heavily on the study it already had made of the House bill and highlighting the parts that differed.

But that approach was not enough for committee Republicans, who were demanding a full, original analysis before they would take a vote on moving the bill out of the committee.