Hackers broke into the electronic files of one of the world's foremost climate research centers this week and posted an array of e-mails in which prominent scientists engaged in a blunt discussion of global warming research and disparaged climate-change skeptics.

The folks at Fox News were fuming this week that the EPA apparently suppressed an internal “scientific report” that questioned the rational for listing CO2 as a pollutant under the Clear Air Act.

The report, however, is neither secret nor scientific.

It's not secret because it has been posted on the websites of the Heartland Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and several other think tanks with a record of using any excuse to deny climate change science. The full file is available here.

The person listed as the author of the report, Alan Carlin, is not a scientist, but an economist who works for National Center for Environmental Economics. But Carlin also had some help.

Several years ago, Ken Gregory of the Astroturf group Friends of Science compiled an eye-glazing compendium of pseudo science questioning climate change. Real Climate points out that Carlin has imported sections of this verbatim, crediting Gregory 20 times in the report.

Carlin also referenced Christopher Monckton and S. Fred Singer, a politician and a lapsed scientist, both of them darlings of the denial industry.

But what about un-referenced sources? Plugging Carlin’s report into Plagiarism Checker.com revealed a whole series of unreferenced sections lifted verbatim from one of the deans of the denial industry, Patrick Michaels, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute.

Among the many conservative think tanks faithfully pushing the skeptic message in Washington, D.C., few are as prominent—or, should I say, infamous—as the Heartland Institute. The “independent” research and non-profit group has the dubious distinction of having organized the first major denier-palooza, the “International Conference on Climate Change,” last year. Despite a less than stellar showing, and an even more lukewarm follow-up in March, it’s hoping that the third time will be the charm.

The likes of Senator James Inhofe, Lord Christopher Monckton and Anthony Watts will be descending on the Washington Court Hotel this week to discuss the “widespread dissent to the asserted “consensus” on the causes, consequences, and proper responses to climate change.” Its ostensible purpose will be to “expose Congressional staff and journalists to leading scientists and economists in the nation’s capital” and demonstrate that “global warming is not a crisis and that immediate action to reduce emissions is not necessary”—which it calls the emerging consensus view of (the handful of) scientists outside the IPCC.

It’s not often the public gets to follow the money trail, so it was a treat this week when PR Watch revealed the Cato Institute has been bankrolling a consulting company owned by notorious climate denier Patrick Michaels to the tune of $242,900 since April 2006.

Michaels is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and according to tax documents uncovered by PR Watch for 2006 and 2007, Cato ponyed up almost a quarter million to Michaels’ firm New Hope Environmental Services for "environmental policy" services.

Small world eh?

For at least a year before the 2008 U.S. election, legions of political geeks were glued to a number of websites, from pollster.com to politico.com. The latter provided more or less excellent coverage, including the all-important electoral map.

But when it comes to the credibility of policy discussions, it looks like they've shot themselves in the foot. Via their "reporter" Erika Lovley, they are actively pushing the climate change skeptics' agenda.

I'll just give a big hat tip to Brad Johnson at Think Progress, because he sums it all up in one paragraph:

Erika Lovley, the Politico’s energy and environment reporter, today wrote a full-page article on the dying breed of global warming deniers that promotes their brand of toxic stupidity

Climate change skeptics on Capitol Hill are quietly watching a growing accumulation of global cooling science and other findings that could signal that the science behind global warming may still be too shaky to warrant cap-and-trade legislation.