(Thumbnail image: Global Arab Network)

“15,000 delegates from 192 nations are trying to reach a deal on climate change.  Listen to this.  'Let’s mark this meeting in history.  Let’s open the door to the low carbon age.  Let’s get it done.  And let’s get it done now.  Thank you.'” (FOX News)

The world’s biggest names in politics and science are converging on Copenhagen to talk climate change, but there is debate about whether they’ll make real progress.

We’re taking a look at perspectives from Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, True-Slant and CNBC.

First, CNN’s Phil Black talks about what effect the email scandal—known as climategate—is having on the conference.

“The people here at this conference are very much climate change true believers.  They believe in the science.  They believe in the need to act upon it, but that scandal has shook the walls of this conference center to some degree, to the point where it was actually acknowledged by the world’s leading climate change scientist really, the man who’s the international face of climate science.”

MSNBC’s Anne Thompson says new proposals from powerhouses like the U.S., China and Russia have renewed hopes for big change.

“That has given a lot of momentum to this conference, which, quite frankly, three weeks ago, appeared to be dead.  It’s not going to be a legally binding agreement.  It most likely will be a political agreement, and the biggest sign that something will happen is the fact that President Obama changed his date to be here in Copenhagen.”

Blog True/Slant, points out that an editorial calling on President Obama to spearhead an international agreement ran in 56 newspapers around the globe.  Only two U.S. newspapers carried the editorial.

“Though falling far short of shrill, the story’s singling out US energy policy may have made it unpublishable for some editors, fighting to hold onto their last advertisers in markets that view climate change as more a partisan issue than a scientific one.”

With new information that the summit will generate more than 40,500 tons of CO2, CNBC hosts poked fun at the apparent hypocrisy.  

“According to a handful of British papers, the talks also include 140 private jets, 1,200 limos, five of them are electric.  Copenhagen’s biggest limo company says quote, ‘We don’t have enough limos in the entire country.’  So they’re driving in the gas guzzling cars made in Germany and Sweden”

“There are just so many jokes one could make about all the hot air coming out of Copenhagen.  I mean, just imagine all the other carbon emissions with all the talking and overindulgence of eating.”

FOX News contributor, Dana Perino, gave her own less-than-enthusiastic evaluation of Copenhagen on "FOX and Friends." 

“This conference I think is—I had one word that summed it up on Friday night, which was, ‘whatever.’   But there will be some incremental progress.  There’s not going to be some big treaty.  And they’ll all pick up their per diems for two weeks and we’ll all pay for it.”

So do you think the Copenhagen conference will bring about real change?  Or are leaders just blowing smoke?

Writer: Chance Seales

Producer: Zach Wade