Hacked E-Mails Controversy Irrelevant in Copenhagen

One of Denmark's leading businessmen and philanthropists, speaking privately at a reception here earlier this week, voiced a sentiment about the hacked e-mail controversy shared widely among attendees from around the world at this global climate conference.

"How can a few e-mails — which were stolen after all — have such an influence upon what Americans believe about global warming? The science is so consistent and deep. It is astonishing this is possible in the richest nation in the world."

A U.S. NGO representative offered an explanation: It is the unfortunate effectiveness of a right-wing propaganda machine in the U.S. that is able to manipulate the beliefs and passions of a sizable segment of the population and render them embarrassingly gullible.

The plausibility of the explanation was underscored by the fact that the propaganda machine has virtually no traction in Copenhagen. The issue of the hacked e-mails came up at a press conference during the first days of the meeting, with media pressing Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for answers, but that was the beginning and the end of any serious discussion of the subject.

"One can only surmise that those who have carried this out have obviously done it with a very clear intention to influence the process in Copenhagen," Pachauri said, "but I'm happy to observe that, barring a few isolated voices, people over here are totally convinced of the solidity of the findings we have in the IPCC 4th Assessment Report."

Still, as the conference enters its final days, hacked e-mail operatives are mounting efforts to stir up the controversy.

Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the Republican Party's senior skeptic in Congress and a promoter of the stolen e-mails-as-controversy theme, flew into Copenhagen for a brief press conference this morning to claim that Congress would not approve climate legislation, contradicting his Senate colleagues. Then he turned around and flew the 4,000-plus miles back home.

Yesterday, in front of the entrance to the media center, a person in a polar bear costume brandishing an electronic megaphone disrupted conversations in the cavernous hall, thronged with conference-goers. "Phil Jones, has anyone seen Phil Jones?" the bear asked, referring to the head of a British climate research institute who stepped aside in the wake of the hacked e-mail controversy.

The question was met with a chorus of boos, and the bear did not stay very long, but it was a media stunt manufactured for U.S. consumption, lasting long enough for FoxNews.com to snap a picture and run a sympathetic story.

"I wasn't getting anywhere with conventional attempts for an interview," the man inside the bear costume admitted to FoxNews.com, "so I decided to use the environmentalist trick of dressing up as a polar bear to catch attention."

Also spotted inside the media center was Marc Morano, Inhofe's former chief of staff and now head of Climate Depot, a web site that has been fanning the flames of the e-mail controversy. He was providing an interview to another reporter from Fox (see photo), the news organization owned by Rupert Murdoch that has become the chief megaphone of skeptic propaganda.

In a story headlined Copenhagen Climate Conference to Create 'Huge' Carbon Footprint, Fox's teaser reads: "When an estimated 16,500 delegates, activists and reporters descend upon Copenhagen Monday for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, a lot of hot air will follow." The reporter's sources? Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute and Herb London of the Hudson Institute.