First of all, this story should never have been called ClimateGate. Given the similarities between this smear job and the Swift Boat attacks on Senator John Kerry, SwiftHack is a far more appropriate name.

I’ve attempted to cover the major points of interest in this story. Consider this post a perpetual work in progress. It will be continually updated. Please leave appropriate links and angles I’m missing in the comments.

For your convenience, the following 6 points each links to the corresponding section of this post:

The scientific consensus on climate change remains strong.

The impacts of catastrophic climate change continue to rear their ugly head.

Hacking into private computer files is illegal.

All of the emails were taken out of context.

The story is being pushed by far-right conspiracy theorists.

Scientists are human beings and they talk frankly amongst themselves.

Here we go again. James Inhofe, the most prominent climate change denier in the United States Senate, has concocted a new and innovative strategy to thwart the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. To wit, he and his Republican colleagues on the Environment and Public Works Committee have worked up a plan to simply not show up for next week’s markup:

But Boxer cannot hold the markup unless at least two Republicans show up, and EPW ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla.) signaled that he has unanimous support among the panel’s minority members to boycott the session until they get more data on the legislation from U.S. EPA and the Congressional Budget Office.

Inhofe said he will wait for Boxer to file an official notice of the markup — expected today — before responding with his own declaration of the GOP’s markup strategy.

“As soon as we find out what her announcement is and what she wants to do, we’ll have our response,” Inhofe told E&E last night. “We’ll have our unanimous expression ready.”

Sadly, this is a continuation of the GOP’s longstanding strategy of delaying clean energy legislation…

Today, Representative Ed Markey pushed this story back to the forefront with a Huffington Post piece. After setting the record straight on Romney’s falsehood and explaining the urgency of clean energy legislation, Markey finishes strong:

So the next time you hear Mitt Romney or other opponents of clean energy and climate legislation railing about the costs of action, you should multiply your suspicion by whatever number they are attempting to sell. Odds are, it is far from even-handed.

While this is a solid piece, and Representative Markey makes his case well, he barely mentions the other Republican politicians who have repeated this lie. I understand the value of pegging this on a potential 2012 Presidential candidate, but there are over a dozen current elected officials in the Republican party who have repeated this lie as well.

Since I last updated the count a few weeks ago, eight additional Republican politicians and party organizations have repeated the lie, bringing the total to 20.

Several members of the United States Senate have a serious credibility problem when it comes to climate change. Chief among them is Senator James Inhofe, whose career highlight was saying on the Senate floor that global warming is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

Mr. Inhofe’s most recent assault on the debate over domestic climate legislation was his insistence on repeating a misleading analysis of the costs of climate legislation, despite all evidence to the contrary. Incredibly, when I asked Senator Inhofe’s staff to respond to the fact that his statements on climate legislation were clearly factually inaccurate, they responded with the single-most convoluted statement I’ve ever seen. Ian Malcomb of Jurassic Park had some choice words for this 1700+ word rant as well. This is what we’re up against folks, and it is neither logical, credible nor reality-based. I would engage in a point-counterpoint back and forth with Mr. Inhofe’s staff — as I recently did with Senator Murkowski’s staff on the same issue — but it would clearly be fruitless. Rather than respond to Mr. Dempsey’s largely irrelevant arguments, I’ll simply refer you to this FactCheck.org refutation of the crux of his argument. Flail away, Mr. Dempsey, but reality is on our side.

I mentioned last week that both CBS and Politico were forced to issue corrections on pieces they published citing inflated cost-estimates of a version of climate legislation that was never considered by Congress.

Despite immediate and forceful pushback from the Treasury Department, the Congressional Budget Office and environmental groups, solid reporting by the Wonk Room and the Washington Post, and thorough debunkings by Media Matters and Politifact, several leading GOP elected officials have begun citing the highly misleading figure.