Detroit — Being on the organizer’s side of a panel is an experience — and an interesting insight into the prejudices of the global-warming debate.

When leaked East Anglia climate e-mails had snowballed by mid-December into a major science scandal worthy of the “-gate” suffix, Frank Beckmann (a Detroit talk radio host who has done superb journalism on global warming) and I agreed that the January international auto show in Detroit (the world’s largest) provided a critical opportunity to reassess the climate movement — just as the auto industry was unveiling a sweeping product response to EPA regulations based on the science in question.

While most auto-show-related panels are assembled and marketed months in advance for the 5,000 international journalists that descend on our Michigan burg, we had one month to organize a fair and balanced panel, titled “Climategate: Are new green auto rules based on faulty science?” We took a Noah’s Ark approach: two representatives from each of the fields of politics, policy (one representing autos), and climatology.

Happily, given the red-hot nature of the story, we were able to line up leading representative from each area . . . with one exception: a Democratic politician.

Just as Al Gore has notoriously declined debate, elected Democratic officials seem determined to reinforce the fiction of “climate consensus” by refusing to acknowledge dissident voices.

Republican Fred Upton — a Michigan congressman on the House energy committee — eagerly accepted our invitation (Michigan Republican Mike Rogers would have also come; Sen. James Inhofe was interested, had his schedule permitted his attendance. ). But his Democratic committee opposite, Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak, passed. As did Rep. Sandy Levin. And Sen. Debbie Stabenow. And Rep. Gary Peters. And Gov. Jennifer Granholm. And so on.

We tried to fill the seat with environmental activists and they also declined. One prominent green responded to our phone call with ad hominem attacks on climatologist Patrick Michaels as a ”liar” and CEI’s Myron Ebell as a fraud. Shut up, he argued. Eventually, Skip Pruss — Granholm’s chief energy officer — jumped at the chance to debate. My hat is off to Skip.

Because our time was short, our marketing effort had to be formidable. We blanketed radio and print alike with promos in the Detroit News, on WJR Radio (the leading AM station in Michigan), and via the Detroit Auto Show’s own media contact lists. We also contacted all major networks and news services.

The public showed up. The media did not. With the exception of one of my Detroit News colleague, not a single MSM journalist attended. Like its response to Climategate, the mainstream media’s attitude to our panel was to ignore it. And like Climategate, the full story about warming science will come via the new, growing, truth-telling alternative media.