None of us knew this at the time, of course, and as nation after vulnerable nation stated its case long into the night, hope still sprung eternal. Over 16 million people had waited for the nail-biting finish, naively clinging to every desolate straw, even in the moment of going under. "This is how the world ends," wrote T S Eliot presciently, "not with a bang but a whimper."

Ricken Patel of Avaaz commented on the whimper: "There are some opening champagne at this moment. They are the fossil fuel lobbyists and polluting industries who have worked for years to capture key leaders and deny democracy today. They have so far operated in the shadows, but in the coming months the climate movement will take the fight directly to these lobbies and the legislatures they have captured."

How right he was.

Coincidence or Conspiracy?

Greenpeace researchers have spent these past three months uncovering the money trail that led to the unmitigated disaster of Copenhagen.

But before I get to what we found out, a word about what we found odd...

To begin with, why was the attack against the IPCC at the height of climate negotiations in Copenhagen so virulent? Remember all those leaked emails? Remember the drama around "ClimateGate" -- all timed impeccably to discredit not just the Copenhagen summit, the IPCC and specific figureheads, but also the entire accumulated body of work put together by thousands of climatologists?

It gets curiouser. Why did the EU in those final days, while ostensibly working to strive for a fair, ambitious and binding deal at Copenhagen, take a position so limp-wristed it was beyond farcical?

Why did the US, despite being responsible for the largest per capita share of global CO2 emissions, and despite all its noises about the urgency to act, make little more than a papal visit to bless the broken wedding? A three-page joke (the Copenhagen Accord) was found to be the only evidence left of America's involvement, even as it fled the crime scene on Air Force One.

And more recently, even as we were figuring all this out, why did Czech environment minister Jan Dusik resign rather than approve revamping of the Czech Republic's dirtiest coal power plant?

The result of these “coincidences” has been a global undermining of climate science as a whole. Climate skeptics are suddenly enjoying street cred. Not surprisingly, public belief in the climate science has been shaken. How did this happen? Or, as a fellow traveler tweeted the other day... "How do you explain the weight of climate skeptic voices in social media if expertise is more valued than ever?"

If you're interested in answers to any of these questions, you've come to the right place.

Lies, Denial and Skepticism. Now available for a fee.

As our investigations started, it quickly became clear this was going to be harder than we'd imagined. The smoke and mirrors created by the fossil fuel lobby are impenetrable. Their own tracks well covered, they operate through front groups, shell companies and think tanks.

But as we as we started knocking down the doors of loose, faceless associations representing industry interests, we found a cache of chemical and oil companies, every last one of whom benefits greatly if a climate treaty never gets signed, and every last one of whom is responsible for the industrialized world’s compromised and compromising position in Copenhagen.

LSE's Bob Ward admits that "a lot of the climate skeptic arguments are being made by people with demonstrable right-wing ideology which is based on opposition to any environmental regulation of the market, and they are clearly being given money that allows them to disseminate their views more widely than would be the case if they didn't have oil company funding."

Across the pond in the US, the "biggest company you've never heard of" has been hard at work to achieve similar results. Their name is Koch. You can pronounce that name any way you want.

David and Charles are two brothers heading Koch Industries. And they are to US climate policy what Halliburton was to US foreign policy. With $100 billion in annual sales and operations in nearly 60 countries, they have enormous financial interest in keeping us addicted to fossil fuels. Matter of fact, they've actually surpassed Exxon’s funding of climate denial think-tanks and astroturf front groups.

Through millions in lobbying and political contributions to politicians, Charles and David Koch are polluting not only our environment, but also the US political process, where efforts to get climate legislation passed is being hampered by massive corporate lobbying and denial campaigns -- including those that now claim that polar bears are not threatened by global warming.

Despite being virtually invisible to the public, Koch Industries is a top lobbying spender, a massive funding source to climate-denial front-groups, and a major force fighting against clean energy policies. Charles and David Koch, who own and control the corporation, drive the anti-environmental political spending.

More tomorrow...

Photo: © Greenpeace / Pedro Armestre