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“These e-mails don’t change anything. Simply because the processes by which the IPCC functions and the various sources – the large variety of sources – from which it derives its data and carries out its analysis on them is so robust, so reliable that something like this really shouldn’t detract from what the IPCC does.” (BBC News)

That was the chairman of the top UN climate change panel from the international summit in Copenhagen. His comments come in response to fallout from the so-called ‘climategate’ scandal that has caused renewed skepticism about global warming.

But do the e-mails really change anything? Or is it just all hype?

We’re tracking perspectives from The Wall Street Journal, The National Post, MSNBC, and The Guardian.

We begin with The Wall Street Journal, who offer a view that the e-mails dangerously blur the line between science and politics.

“People are going to step back and say ‘Oh, the scientists are just another political faction like everyone else. They used to look at scientists and say they have automatic stature and respect, but I think their stature and their credibility has fallen.”

A writer for Canadian newspaper The National Post, however, says the scientists want no part of the political side of their work.

“None of them appears to believe that the other side is engaged in a global conspiracy. Few if any of them use a vocabulary of invective and suspicion. Most, I suspect, would just like to get back to work.”

Despite the outcry against the e-mails, a commentator on MSNBC says the existing research still speaks for itself.

“Over the last decade or so we have seen report after report after report come out saying that climate change is a problem and is becoming more severe. I don’t think the revelation of hacked e-mails…is going to do anything to really derail what is going to happen.”

Finally, an editorial writer for The Guardian says that if nothing else, the climategate controversy should remind scientists of the fragile nature of their profession’s integrity.

“The scientific process must remain transparent, and should not be affected by ideology, or even morality...When either side of a debate hides some facts, or exaggerates others, then genuine free inquiry, the engine of progress, suffers.”

Does climategate change the global warming debate? Or is it merely politicians ill-using science? We want to know what you think.