Ralph J. Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences, the most prestigious scientific body in the United States, said that there was a danger that the distrust of climate science could mushroom into doubts about scientific inquiry more broadly. He said that scientists must do a better job of policing themselves and trying to be heard over the loudest voices on cable news, talk radio and the Internet.

"This is a pursuit that scientists have not had much experience in," said Dr. Cicerone, a specialist in atmospheric chemistry.

The battle is asymmetric, in the sense that scientists feel compelled to support their findings with careful observation and replicable analysis, while their critics are free to make sweeping statements condemning their work as fraudulent.

"We have to do a better job of explaining that there is always more to learn, always uncertainties to be addressed," said John P. Holdren, an environmental scientist and the White House science adviser. "But we also need to remind people that the occasions where a large consensus is overturned by a scientific heretic are very, very rare."

"I have obviously written some very awful e-mails," Phil Jones, the British climate scientist at the center of the controversy, confessed to a special committee of Parliament on Monday. But he sharply disputed charges that he had hidden data or faked results.

No scientific body is under more hostile scrutiny than the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which compiles the climate research of hundreds of scientists around the globe into periodic reports intended to be the definitive statement of the science and a guide for policy makers. Critics, citing several relatively minor errors in its most recent report and charges of conflict of interest against its leader, Rajendra K. Pachauri, are calling for the I.P.C.C. to be disbanded or radically reformed.

On Saturday, after weeks of refusing to engage critics, the I.P.C.C. announced that it was asking for the creation of an independent panel to review its research procedures to try to eliminate bias and errors from future reports. But even while allowing for some external oversight, Dr. Pachauri insisted that the panel stood behind its previous work.

"Scientists must continually earn the public’s trust or we risk descending into a new Dark Age where ideology trumps reason," Dr. Pachauri said in an e-mail message.

...some scientists said that responding to climate change skeptics was a fool’s errand.

He said that the recent flurry of hostility to climate science had been driven as much by the cold winter as by any real or perceived scientific sins.

"There have always been people accusing us of being fraudulent criminals, of the I.P.C.C. being corrupt," Dr. Schmidt said. "What is new is this paranoia combined with a spell of cold weather in the United States and the ‘climategate’ release. It’s a perfect storm that has allowed the nutters to control the agenda."

The answer is simple, he said.

"Good science," he said, "is the best revenge."

A number of institutions are beginning efforts to improve the quality of their science and to make their work more transparent. The official British climate agency is undertaking a complete review of its temperature data and will make its records and analysis fully public for the first time, allowing outside scrutiny of methods and conclusions. The United Nations panel on climate change will accept external oversight of its research practices, also for the first time.

"Republicans and conservatives don't deserve the bulk of the credit for stopping--or at least significantly slowing down -- Obama before he was able to do as much damage as he intended. Who does?

"(1) President Obama himself. As one wag commented, Obama turned out to be quite an effective community organizer. But the community he organized was a majority of the American people in opposition to his agenda of big-government liberalism.

"(2) Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Republicans, facing overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress, should thank their lucky stars to have squared off against an ideologically blinkered speaker of the House and a short-tempered, incompetent majority leader of the Senate.

"(3) Conservative and independent grassroots activists. It's this simple: No Tea Parties, no defeat of Obamacare. It wasn't just the practical and political effect of the demonstrations across the nation. It was the example of people not being intimidated by elite opinion, the example of their willingness to fight what was supposed to be an inevitable new era of liberal big government, and the enterprise that self-generating and self-organizing activists showed in resisting the Obama agenda. . . .

"4) The American people. . . . Despite their wish for the new president to succeed, they didn't succumb to the temptation--or to the urging of liberal elites--to give him a blank check."

The group on Tuesday released a survey of its findings that revealed that tea party activists are neither "political junkies or crusty right-wing extremists." Almost half the respondents had never been involved with politics prior to 2009.

Yes, they are angry, the survey found.

But the majority also has a strong desire to "stand up for my beliefs," with 90 percent citing that motivation as "very important." Another 70 percent hoped that they had "a positive impact on the country," along with clout in the polling booth: 84 percent said "to influence elections" was also very important to them.

Few want to break out as a solo entity: Eight-out-of-10 are not interested in forming a third political party; 62 percent, in fact, said they were Republicans and 28 percent were independents. Just one-in-10 declared they belonged to the "Tea Party."