The publication of damning emails about climate change could literally change the world.

The drab, drum-shaped home of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit is an anonymous little outpost, blending seamlessly with its chunky concrete neighbours on a windswept campus just outside Norwich. To the uninitiated, it has the look of a Seventies bus station waiting for the council to pull it down.

Unlikely as it may seem, however, this little corner of East Anglia is now ground zero in a controversy which just might influence the entire future of our planet.

A little over a week ago, hundreds of internal emails written by scientists working at the CRU were obtained by a hacker and posted on the internet, some of which appeared to show that researchers had deliberately faked evidence of global warming by manipulating statistics.

At first, the fallout was restricted to a row between climate change experts, played out in scientific journals and specialist internet blogs, but in the past few days, as the ripples have spread around the globe, "Climategate" has become a white hot political issue which has been seized upon by global warming sceptics and now threatens to overshadow next month's crucial climate change conference in Copenhagen.