Three prominent US climate scientists addressed the controversy over climate emails leaked from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit on Friday, suggesting that the episode might provide a peak at the messy reality behind the curtain of science but does not change the results that have been presented to the public.

The call was organized by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think-tank, and hosted by Joseph Romm, who edits the centre’s Climate Progress blog. For more on that, see Roger Pielke Jr.‘s blog. Featured speakers were Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, of hockey-stick-graph fame, Gavin Schmidt NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University.

The scientists said very little that hasn’t been said before regarding the CRU affair (which I refuse to label according to popular nomenclature dating back nearly four decades to a certain scandal involving Richard Nixon and an odd Washington apartment complex). Indeed, many of the journalists on the call appeared to be more interested in the unrelated political questions about the upcoming United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen and climate legislation moving through the United States Senate.

Maybe more stories will follow, but the wires hardly lit up with news of the press conference. The National Journal posted a summary here, while the Washington Times – the Washington Post’s smaller, more conservative cross-town rival – focused on Mann. But that’s about it so far.

That said, the story isn’t going to end anytime soon. On Friday, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chairman Rajendra Pachauri weighed in with an interview on BBC, saying the IPCC would investigate the matter. Regardless of the outcome, those opposing action on global warming will use the affair as ammunition in the weeks and months to come. Perhaps it’s notable that the Christian Science Monitor posted its latest report in the political section.