As climate sceptics began unwrapping the package of illegally hacked emails sent by scientists at the University of East Anglia, they could have been forgiven for thinking that Christmas had come early. Just when even the US government had come round to the view that climate change was a serious man-made problem that needed radical international action, here apparently was the ammunition the sceptics needed to sway public opinion and again begin poking holes in the science of global warming.
The climate scientist at the centre of the row, Prof Phil Jones, stepped down temporarily as head of the university's climatic research unit on Thursday while an independent inquiry into the emails is carried out. He denies any suggestion that he manipulated or withheld data, but people on all sides of the debate agree that the affair has dented the public's trust in climate scientists.
The early gifts for the sceptics have not stopped there, though. On Wednesday, Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd's cap and trade bill was defeated in the senate by conservatives who are sceptical about global warming and greens who thought it was not radical enough. Rudd's opposition counterpart, who had supported the bill, was forced out in a sceptic-led coup.
In the UK, leading figures in the Conservative party came out on Thursday against David Cameron's stance on climate change and his "vote blue, get green" strategy. David Davis denounced what he called the green movement's "ferocious determination to impose hairshirt policies on the public". In response, the energy and climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, branded Davis and the former chancellor Lord Lawson "saboteurs" and "profoundly irresponsible" for endangering the chances of a deal at the UN climate summit at Copenhagen, which starts next week.
It is tempting to see all this as a rise in sceptical thinking as the world contemplates the economic consequences of massive cuts in its carbon emissions. But that is too simplistic, says Bob Ward, communications and policy director at the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics, which is headed by Lord Stern. "I don't think there's been a rise in scepticism," he said. "All that's happening is that the sceptics are now down to a small enough group that they are able to band together and gloss over their differences."
The differences are huge. Some, like Christopher Monckton, a hereditary peer and former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher, believe that climate change and the Copenhagen summit are part of a global conspiracy whipped up by former communists. "They are about to impose a communist world government," he told an audience in St Paul, Minnesota, during a tour of the US in October. "You have a president who has very strong sympathy with these points of view and he'll sign." Monckton has also been advising Ukip on its stance on climate change. The BNP leader, Nick Griffin, who will be part of the EU delegation to Copenhagen, also equates environmentalists and communists. "Climate change is their new theology … but the heretics will have a voice in Copenhagen and the truth will out. Climate change is being used to impose an anti-human utopia as deadly as anything conceived by Stalin or Mao."
Dr Benny Peiser, director of Lawson's sceptic PR outfit, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), agrees that many on the sceptic and denial side of the global warming debate are politically motivated. They oppose many policy measures being proposed to tackle global warming on ideological grounds and that is why they attack the science. "I think that's a fair observation, at least for many," he said. "People are indeed concerned about the whole government intervention – what we eat, what we do, how we spend our holidays."
That does not apply to the GWPF though, he said. "We are certainly not taking a critical stance on the basic science of the greenhouse effect or the fact that CO2 emissions in the atmosphere are having an effect on the climate." He said the foundation exists to help restore a less "hysterical" and "emotional" debate on the subject and promote what he calls a more "flexible and long-term approach" to the problem.
But Ward says the GWPF has not stayed aloof from the science. On its website is a graph showing the global temperature record since the beginning of the century. It showed a decline in temperature since 2003 which Ward said was contrary to the true measurements, and he said that by leaving out the temperature trend during the 20th century the graph obscured the fact that eight of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred this century. The GWPF blamed a "small error by our graphic designer" for the mistake which would now be changed, but said that starting the graph earlier would be equally arbitrary.
This is a question of where do you start ‑ perhaps 3bn years ago or 5m years ago," Peiser said.Lawson's foundation has also faced criticism over its funding. It is set up as a charity that receives donations from individuals and charitable foundations. Peiser said it did not take money from people with links to energy companies or from the companies themselves. But he would not reveal how many donors there are, what the maximum donation is or the identity of the donors.
"They are all highly respected donors. But that's not our decision," he said, adding that he would need their permission to make them public. He said people could have confidence in the independence of the GWPF because donors are approved by the charity's board of trustees. "These are very eminent people. These are not some kind of weirdos," he said.
Those who have been the target of attacks from climate sceptics for years argue sceptics' arguments, funding and motivation should be subjected to the same level of transparency that the climate scientists at the heart of the email hacking row are now receiving.
One sceptic who has come in for a lot of criticism from mainstream scientists is the Australian geologist Professor Ian Plimer. His book, Heaven and Earth – about what he calls the "missing science" of global warming – has been reprinted six times in the UK since its publication in March and has sold more than 30,000 copies in Australia. In July, the Spectator ran a cover feature about the book under the headline Relax: global warming is all a myth. The influential backbench Tory MP Douglas Carswell has said that reading the book overturned his belief that climate change is a man-made phenomenon, while Plimer says that the new Australian opposition leader, Tony Abbott, was converted to the sceptic cause by reading it.
Plimer, who has been in the UK this week promoting his book, says that climate change is not caused by human activities. He denounces mainstream scientists as behaving like a "mafia organisation" who try to squash dissent. "[Climate change science] has all the hallmarks of a fundamentalist religion," he said, "You demonise your opponents and you engage in anything to get the message done."
His book has been criticised by mainstream scientists as riddled with errors and misrepresentations of climate data. The first graph in the book purports to use temperature data from the Met Office's Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, but many of the data points are in the wrong place.
Another graph in the opening pages shows the global temperature record during the 20th century. Plimer does not give a source in the book but it looks remarkably similar to a graph used by Martin Durkin in his documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle. The programme was castigated for its inaccuracies by Ofcom and the graph was subsequently withdrawn by Durkin.
Potentially more damaging – because geoscience is his specialist field – is his claim that volcanoes are responsible for more CO2 emissions than human activities. The US Geological Survey says that humans in fact create 130 times the CO2 volcanoes do. Plimer now claims that the USGS figure only includes volcanoes on land, not undersea eruptions at mid-ocean ridges. But Dr Terrence Gerlach of the USGS said the 130 figure includes the underwater volcanoes.
Dr Adam Corner, an expert in the psychology of climate change at Cardiff University, said that the climate sceptic arguments are very attractive to the person on the street. "[The sceptics] offer an escape route from the conclusion that things are going to have to change," he said. An idea that challenges government intervention into how we eat, how we travel and where we go on holiday is bound to find fertile ground. "There's a challenge for the environmental movement to not present [climate change arguments] in that way," he added.The real question, though, is whether any of this matters. China and the US have now announced their opening bids for curbs on carbon emissions. At least in their rhetoric, most of the world's governments agree on the need for action at Copenhagen, so will the row over the East Anglian emails and the blogosphere punch-ups have any effect?
There are already signs that the row is gaining traction in the US and Republicans are likely to try to use the emails as a reason to further delay President Obama's energy legislation, which is stalled in the Senate. Diplomatic squabbles over the extent of cuts and funding for adaptation in the developing world are likely to be big enough stumbling blocks on their own at Copenhagen without revisiting the science. Even a meaningful "political agreement" at the talks looks touch and go. If that fails to materialise it will be the sceptics' biggest Christmas present of all.