Climate change protesters take to London streets

Thousands of people calling for a deal on climate change at next week's conference in Copenhagen gathered to march through central London on Saturday.

Organizers Stop Climate Chaos Coalition estimated that more than 10,000 people would participate in the event, which is to begin at Grosvenor Square and wind its way down to the Houses of Parliament on the River Thames.

The coalition - which includes groups such as Oxfam, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the WWF - called the protest "The Wave," and organizers asked marchers to dress in blue. They said the march would climax with a mass "wave" around Parliament. Other "Wave" events were being held in Glasgow, Belfast, and Dublin, Ireland.

"The UK government must fight for a comprehensive, fair and binding deal at Copenhagen - that is our demand today and we expect it to be fulfilled," Oxfam GB chief executive Barbara Stocking said in a statement. "They must return home with a strong, effective climate deal both for our own sakes in the UK and for the millions of poor people already suffering from the effects of climate change around the world."

Also on Saturday, Britain's Met Office said it would publish some of the data it uses to analyze climate change, after thousands of pieces of correspondence between some of the world's leading climate scientists were stolen from the University of East Anglia and leaked to the Internet. Skeptics of man-made global warming have said the mails prove that scientists have been conspiring to hide evidence about climate change.