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As the Copenhagen Conference begins, and the negotiators get down to the really hard part, the rest of the world is still full of chatter about the (UEA), and in some cases, whether climate change is happening at all.

Climate scientists may be beginning to feel that they have stepped back five years, to before the 2005 scientific conference in Exeter at which they agreed that to avoid dangerous climate change the world should keep global temperature rise to less that 2C above pre-industrial levels.

That cleared the way for political leaders to sign up to the same goal, and to start talking about how to make it happen through a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol.

That Exeter conference took place at the Met Office Hadley Centre that is now so fearful of the damage the e-mail row has caused that it is offering to re-analyse the global temperature record from scratch.

This week it plans to release a subset of the data that it and the UEA team together used to produce the temperature record.

Deadline looming

The UK government insists a re-working is not needed (yet). The Met Office clearly feels this is the only way to draw a line under the UEA row.

It makes for a messy start to Copenhagen. And how will it all look two weeks from now?

The Danish host, Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, I'm told, prefers a work-life balance that keeps weekends free. Sensible man.

He apparently wants the deal done and dusted by the final Friday - 18 December.

This would be a refreshing departure from the tradition of climate talks, which tend to drag into the small hours of the Saturday.

But the prime minister seems unlikely to get his way, unless the arrival of US President Barack Obama on the 18th really does focus minds for a dramatic last push.

Legal status

The British delegation clearly feels that all is still to play for. Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband told journalists last week that his real fear a year ago was that this conference would go unnoticed.

That hasn't happened, he said: "The world is watching... and this is the best chance we have of getting an agreement."

And that agreement, though not the legally-binding treaty originally hoped for, should enshrine all the elements of a legally binding treaty, officials say.

Physically what they're aiming for is a five or six page document that enshrines everything that a legally-binding treaty would, especially on finance.

The developing world has to believe that any pledges of money or help with technology will actually happen, or they could still walk way.

Then, later, the lawyers will get a chance to go through line-by-line to make sure each country can translate the agreement into law... a treaty.

There isn't the time for that to happen now. Crucially, the aim is that the agreement will include a deadline by which it should become a treaty - six months, or a year from now.

Talk of revolution

One British official indicated that the UK team, at least, is still optimistic, but does not underestimate the scale of the task for the next two weeks, describing this as a profound moment in history.

Their view is that the world is now in the endgame of extraordinarily sensitive negotiations, and that the reason this is all so hard is that these are trying to effect a revolution in the world's economies; economies that are built (and being built) on fossil fuels, especially in Asia.

Those countries have been working out if their economies can live with a shift away from fossil-fuelled growth to low carbon growth.

Yet there is still the belief that the presence of the 100 or so heads of state now signed up makes an ambitious deal more likely.

"Leaders don't like to meet and fail," as one official put it.

Even Yvo de Boer, the UN's climate chief, is sounding a little more upbeat as we enter the conference proper.

And just last night, South Africa came forward with an offer of cuts in emissions.

US opposition

There is a chance that US opposition to a climate bill could weaken the deal. Last week, nine senators whose votes are key in getting US climate legislation through the Senate, set out the 10 principles they require to secure their support.

But in their letter to Mr Obama they talked only of "national actions", not economy-wide caps.

The question is how far Mr Obama will feel he can go at Copenhagen and, if a deal is agreed, whether it will ever become a legally-binding treaty that makes its way into national legislation.

But then the optimistic voices remind us that they see the shift in the US position since President George W Bush left office as extraordinary, that the EU may yet raise its offer of 20% cuts in emissions to 30% by 2020 and that China too may yet go further in its offer to cut carbon intensity.

Negotiators admit that the Russians remain an unknown quantity. They continue to hold their cards close to their chests on their requirement from a global deal.

Indeed, they stand to make some gains from climate change - according to CIA assessments. Frozen territory in the north could become available for agriculture, and then there are the potential riches of the Arctic, exposed for exploitation.

Here's an interesting thought on those e-mails - who did it?

The files appeared on a Russian server, after a brief appearance on the RealClimate website.

Without wanting to sound too much like Crimewatch - what more do you know, out there?