Assembly Natural Resources Committee Chairwoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, will hold a special informational hearing on climate change Tuesday in Oakland before heading later in the week to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

California Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols and California EPA Climate Change Program Manager Andrew Altevogt will be on hand to discuss implementation of AB 32, California’s greenhouse-gas emissions law, while other state officials address climate change adaptation and emission reduction through energy-efficient building retrofits.

And there’ll be a panel discussion on climate change and the business climate including Cal professor Daniel Kammen, founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL) and the co-Director of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment; San Francisco Chamber of Commerce Vice President of Public Policy Rob Black; PG&E Corp. Senior Vice President Nancy McFadden; Electric Vehicles International President and CEO Ricky Hanna; Chevron Corp. climate change analyst Julie Bussey; Recurve President Matt Golden; and Parducci Wine Cellars/Paul Dolan Vineyards partner Thomas Thornhill III.

The event runs from 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 8 in the auditorium of the Elihu Harris State Office Building at 1515 Clay St. in Oakland; it’s free and open to the public.

Meanwhile, scientists today continued trying to debunk the “Climategate” scandal – stolen e-mails which climate-change sceptics claim show by climate scientists colluding to withhold or skew data – as a pre-Copenhagen distraction from mountains of evidence supporting a human role in global warming. Here are some other interesting items to that effect from Monday and Tuesday.