It’s beginning to look a lot like scandal. With snow falling in Dallas and Houston and with winter storm warnings out for parts of the country, it’s already tough to convince people that the earth is warming. Now we learn that top climate scientists at a British University have almost certainly been cooking the data in an attempt to overcome the accepted fact that there has been no warming for the past eleven years.

What happens now? So much angst has been invested in Al Gore’s green movement that it has become Too Big To Fail. Scientists who profess to believe are getting major grants for more research – so long as the research bears out the coming catastrophe. Companies are investing in green technology. Several administrations have bought in, and the major media has provided one-sided coverage on the issue.

Already, "Big Climate Change" is reacting; after all, as Mr. Gore has repeatedly told us, the science is settled. That’s why fallout from the leaked emails at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) is so – well – unsettling.

To counter, Mr. Gore is saying that any agreement emerging from the Copenhagen talks will not be enough. "Even a final treaty will have to set the state for other tougher reduction [of CO2] at a later date. But clearly, Gore is shaken. Since the scandal broke, he has cancelled a $1,200-per-handhsake speaking engagement that was to have taken place during the Copenhagen affair. And two members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences – Roger L. Simon and Lionel Chetwynd – have called for rescinding of the Oscar awarded to the makers of "An Inconvenient Truth."

While Gore contemplates his next move, the chairman of the UN’s top global warming agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is telling all us skeptics to ignore the hacked emails from East Anglia. Rajendra Pachauri says there is "virtually no possibility of a ‘few scientists’ biasing IPCC’s advice."

And that seems to be the plan. Global warming enthusiasts – including the media and the Obama Administration – are giving the scandal short shrift. "I think there’s no real scientific basis for the dispute of this," said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, making it plain that Obama will still push for climate change taxes.

For her part, Sen. Barbara Boxer of California has no concern about the revelations from the exposed emails. Rather, she is pushing for criminal charges against those who obtained the emails.

All of this pales in comparison to media coverage – what there is. As of this writing, the Big Three networks, ABC, CBS and NBC have gone twelve days with no mention of the story. What the Associated Press is doing is even more egregious. The AP has loosed its "science writer," an environmental zealot named Seth Borenstein to write story after story about the end of the world from climate change.

Borenstein has been writing pseudo-science for a long time, but even since the CRU scandal broke, he’s been pumping out the alarmism. One story from late November has Borenstein lecturing that, since 1997, climate change "has worsened and accelerated beyond some of the grimmest of warnings." His latest contribution leads off: "With the world losing the battle against global warming so far, experts are warning that humans need to follow nature’s example: adapt or die." But Borenstein is a hack writer known in many circles as the "Baghdad Bob of climate change reporting." As with Gore and Obama, nothing will change his mind.

On the other side, strong voices are emerging. From Lord Christopher Monckton to Australia’s Professor Ian Plimer to Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe who’s pushing for hearings, the word is slowing getting out: the earth is not warming, the science is not settled, and the elements of a conspiracy are emerging.