On December 30, I posted the following Twitter riff: Check this diagram of the year’s news. Find climate? Climategate? Copenhagen? http://j.mp/noCO2news.

The diagram, drawn by compiling weekly news summaries from Journalism.org, contains not even a postage-stamp-size space for coverage of climate — or the environment as a whole, for that matter. While Joe Romm recently published a list of journalists who had moved furthest from what he considers excellence in climate coverage in 2009 (yours truly included), the absence of coverage didn’t make his cut.

The crew at Journalism.org, which is run by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, had already noted in a year-end wrapup that environmental coverage, including climate, was down somewhat from 2007 and 2008, representing 1.5 percent of overall coverage. (An important note: That analysis used data through Dec. 6, capturing the burst of news about the stolen climate files but missing the tumultuous climate talks in Copenhagen. Also, the weekly analysis for Dec. 14-20 showed a climate spike.) The picture has been very different online, with the same analysts noting sustained heat around climate on blogs.

There are many out there who blame the news media — either for ignoring global warming or mishandling it — for the failure of the public to engage in an energy revolution to limit climate risks. But my sense is such critics have inflated expectations of what media coverage, without a direct punch from nature, can accomplish. Mind you, media coverage of incremental, yet important, issues remains vital, to my mind; it’s just not sufficient (which is one reason I’m branching out).

Don’t take my word for it. I queried Robert Brulle, a sociologist at Drexel University who has long studied human responses to environmental issues, about the state of news coverage of climate. He sent the following graph, in which he has charted network television coverage of global warming over time.

Here are Dr. Brulle’s thoughts about the media, the human mind and looming issues, like global warming, that hide in plain sight (I added the links for context and background): Read more…

One of the most marvelous and vexing features of human existence is awareness of the passage of time, of a past and future bracketing the moment, and of the brief span of hours in an individual life. At the close of the first decade of the millennium, weigh in below on developments since 2000 that you feel will most powerfully shape the years to come. As William Gibson has said, the future is out there now; it’s just not evenly distributed. Where have you seen it?

And have a healthy and satisfying 2010.

The unusual pattern of atmospheric high and low pressure over and around the Arctic that has contributed to the recent snow and cold from Alabama to Washington, to East Anglia, England (and rain and warmth along the west coast of Greenland) is also an important influence on the shifting sheath of sea ice on the Arctic Ocean.

Several specialists studying Arctic sea ice told me that there’s a good chance that, if current conditions persist, the ice this spring could be in better shape than it has been over the last few years. In all of this, though, it’s important to step back from the lure of the moment, which quickly attracts bursts of attention from climate commentators when conditions favor one view or another, and examine long-term trends.

The polar pressure pattern, called the Arctic Oscillation (often abbreviated as A.O.), is deep in its negative phase at the moment — a depth not seen since the 1980s, according to Ignatius Rigor of the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington. Look at the lower right-hand corner of the graph above to see a blue dot signifying current conditions. But also be sure to note the red line indicating the running trend, which is slowly toward the positive side.

The fate of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is determined by a complicated mix of factors, including the pressure changes, with the biggest loss of old thick ice resulting more from a great “flush” of floes than melting, Dr. Rigor and many other scientists tracking the region say. (Watch the animation below, provided by Dr. Rigor, to see the importance of motion in shaping ice conditions.) Read more…

Official White House Photo by Pete Souza President Obama spoke during a meeting with Premier Wen Jiabao of China and other world leaders during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen on Dec. 18.

Here is what amounts to China’s official tick-tock of the final three days of the Copenhagen climate talks, in which China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is cast as the hero and President Obama as something of an awkward presence. It’s fun to compare this description, particularly of events on Dec.18, with that of the White House, which described Mr. Obama as essentially crashing a meeting in which China appeared to be conducting an end run around the United States.

By Zhao Cheng & Tian Fan (Xinhua News Agency), and
Wei Dongze (People’s Daily)

BEIJING, 24 Dec. (Xinhua) - On 19 December, the Copenhagen climate change conference finally produced major and positive outcomes after complicated and tortuous negotiations. The Copenhagen Accord issued at the conference firmly upheld the basic framework and principles established by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol, further clarified the due obligations and actions of the developed and developing countries respectively according to the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities,” and reflected international consensus regarding the long-term goal for addressing climate change, financing, technology, transparency of actions and other issues.

From 16 to 18 December, in the nearly 60 hours Premier Wen Jiabao spent in Copenhagen, he held intensive talks and consultations with other leaders to drive the negotiation process forward. We, as members of the traveling press corps, witnessed the roller-coaster, nail-biting negotiations at Copenhagen. But more importantly, we experienced the sincerity, confidence, resolve and effective efforts Premier Wen brought to Copenhagen, which fully demonstrated China’s image as a responsible big country dedicated to development and cooperation. Read more….

Best wishes to all as the holiday season crests and the first decade of this millennium comes to an end. Here’s a post from one year ago that is worth republishing as a note of thanks to the hundreds of thousands of “unique visitors” (that is still such an odd phrase) who have stopped in here, and particularly to the thousands of comment contributors who have made Dot Earth the dynamic, exasperating space it has become.

The Christmas season extends to Deadhorse, Alaska, the hub of the oil industry on the North Slope. (Credit: Andrew C. Revkin/ The New York Times)

A man claiming to be Father Christmas, but speaking Russian, with Natalya Lieberman, the runner-up in a Moscow beauty pageant, on the shifting sea ice near the North Pole. (Credit: Andrew C. Revkin/ The New York Times)

[UPDATE, 12/25: Be sure to see the Earthrise video here, as well.] Best wishes for the Western holiday season and the end of the calendar year to all Dot Earthers. I’ve been in some pretty farflung places at this time of year, including the North Slope of Alaska (above), where I was reporting on how the warming climate was shrinking the “tundra travel” season — the span when oil-survey crews can safely cross the rock-hard landscape.

During Santa Claus’s off season a few years back, I was lucky enough to run into him (or someone who looked a lot like him but spoke Russian) at the North Pole. I went there in 2003 to study the drifting, thinning Arctic Ocean sea ice up close and personal with a hardy team of scientists.

But others have experienced Christmas much farther afield. I had to post the remarkable video/audio snippet below of the Apollo 8 astronauts reciting from Genesis on Christmas Eve 40 years ago. On Christmas Day, they left lunar orbit and began the long ride back to the home planet.

Thanks for coming along on this experimental journey called Dot Earth. I hope you’ll stick around for the coming year. Let me know what you want more of, and less of, in these “pages.”

Click for another fun shot of me, Mrs. Lieberman, Father Christmas, and Alex Witze, now from the journal Nature and back then with The Dallas Morning News. Read more…

In the White House photo above, showing President Obama and Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao heading to a bilateral meeting in Copenhagen, it’s noteworthy to see who’s smiling and who’s grim. The unsurprising outcome of two weeks of climate talks in Copenhagen was an accord full of conditionality. And the lack of specifics, according to the British environment writer Mark Lynas, was largely due to China. Mr. Lynas was in Copenhagen in several guises, as a TV show host, writer and adviser* to the government of the tiny island nation Maldives. The latter designation got him a front-row seat in the back-room negotiations among heads of state, and that resulted in his provocative and popular column in the Guardian on China and climate.

On “PBS NewsHour” Wednesday night, President Obama reflected on China’s maneuvers in Copenhagen, as well. I’ve snipped the take-home excerpt here, and further below I’ve appended Mr. Lynas’s response to a couple of questions I sent him about the outcome of the talks, and next steps.

[UPDATE 12/24: I've added a note that came in from Mohammad Al Sabban, the lead negotiator in climate talks for Saudi Arabia. He criticizes the fingerpointing aimed at China ] Read more…

Today is my last day as a staff reporter for The New York Times. After spending more than a quarter of a century writing about science and the environment, more than half of that time here, I am switching gears for the second half of my professional life. I’ll be continuing to blog, write and work with video. And I’ll certainly keep contributing to this remarkable newspaper as it works to sustain a reliable view of the fast-changing planet while straddling the uncertain interface between the front page and home page.

But my prime focus now will be education and a broader exploration of new ways to make information work – to give ideas the best chance of getting where they are needed to help advance our relationships to the environment and each other. I’m taking a position as senior fellow for environmental understanding at Pace University, situated in the school’s young Academy for Applied Environmental Studies. There’s more background on my plans in the Columbia Journalism Review, the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media and CEJournal. I’ll also be working on two books, one for middle school kids on resilience to disasters and another, for adults, on ways to navigate the next 50 years with the fewest regrets.

I’m convinced that there is vast untapped potential to use the Web and other means to build global awareness and meaningful relationships. Here’s some evidence. While giving a talk at Linfield College in Oregon in September, I learned of a professor of U.S.-Russian relations at another school who, on his own and with no extra budget or bureaucracy, recently linked his course through Web video with another course in U.S.-Russian relations in St. Petersburg, Russia. The same could be done for courses in climate policy, linking North and South, and even within schools. Imagine parallel deconstructions of climate legislation by, say, political science students and climate science students, using an online document dissector — essentially a more sophisticated, layered variant of the speech and document annotations done here on Dot Earth. (Please let me know if tools like this already exist out there.)

Another hint of what’s possible came in November, while I was in Istanbul to report a forthcoming story. I visited a poor neighborhood called Bagcilar. As I interviewed residents at a community center that had a dozen heavily used computers, several kids ran up to me, checking out my camcorder and pad. A common greeting of theirs was, “Facebook? Facebook?” Some are Facebook friends of mine now. Read more…

COPENHAGEN — I wandered the fast-emptying halls of the Bella Center shortly before the final plenary of the climate conference here concluded and diplomats, observers and journalists scattered for hotels and the airport. Workers were already busy dismantling portions of the space-station-style wings where the national delegations huddled in warrens of cubicles. They had to make way for a home furnishings and design exhibition starting after the holidays.

The complex where the United States delegation had worked was already empty but for rented laptops, empty desks and one stale whole-wheat roll. In the area devoted to environmental groups and other non-governmental organizations, I picked up a stray poster picturing the Copenhagen mermaid peeking above the waves, with the grammatically odd logo, “All we are Tuvalu!!”

The suddenly silent complex reminded me of a similar scene in The Hague in 2000, when workers were taking down panels with the logo “Work it Out” after the failure of talks aimed at completing the rule book for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the supplement to the original 1992 climate convention. Of course that pact ended up taking force, although without the participation of the United States.

But Kyoto is widely seen now as a dead-end document, with binding terms expiring in 2012 and efforts to extend them complicated by efforts to replace the protocol with a broader accord including China and the United States. Those efforts culminated here in a muted victory, at best, with a Copenhagen Accord that Yvo de Boer, the lead United Nations official managing the talks, said left things just a little advanced from where they were at this time in 2007.

So what is the significance of this conference, which for more than a year was depicted by many campaigners and officials as a “make or break” event? Will the atmosphere ever feel a beneficial impact from the resulting accord? Will communities facing risks from shifting climate patterns and rising seas benefit from pledged billions, even if the money flows? Read more…

COPENHAGEN — Around dawn, managers of climate talks here sought to get final approval of the Copenhagen Accord, a climate agreement shaped by the United States and four partners in the final days of climate talks.

They faced blistering opposition from representatives of half a dozen countries, some banging their desks and one, from Venezuela, bloodying her hand while trying to be recognized.

In the end, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon directly intervened, sending aides to round up the aggrieved delegations and meeting with them privately for an hour.

The public scene in the plenary, leading up to the private meeting and the consensus to “take note” of the accord, is recorded in the conference minutes below, which provide a window on the “wild roller coaster ride” described by Robert Orr, Assistant Secretary General for Policy and Planning.

• Pres
o introduces the paper
o outlines the content
• - massive clapping by Venezuela on the table, but are not given the right to speak
• Tuvalu
o I am grateful that you came back to the meeting
o within the UN, we are given respect as nations
o we have processes to consider items collectively
o today I saw leaders saying they had a deal
o this is disrespectful of the other countries
o we have democratic processes
o we appreciate that you have given us more time
o this documents have major problems
o we need science-based results
o anything above 1,5 can mean the end for
o response measures – inconsistant with Bali
o reference to mechanism on REDD- but is not defined clearly
o no reference to International Insurance Mechanism
o review mechanism in 2015 is too late
o in biblical terms:
o I regret to inform you: Tuvalu cannot accept that document

• Venezuela (bleeding hands from her clapping!)
o it is with indignation that we are speaking
o this document is not acceptable

Read more…

[UPDATE, 12/19, 1 a.m. Copenhagen time: Here is a link to the "Copenhagen Accord" as it stands in the middle of the night here. It remains unclear whether the document will end up a "decision of the conference" or have limited support (because poorer developing countries block approval). Stay tuned.]

Here are President Obama’s remarks at a small news conference.

From an Obama administration official, typos and all:

Today, following a multilateral meeting between President Obama, Premier Wen, Prime Minister Singh, and President Zuma a meaningful agreement was reached. Its not sufficient to combat the threat of climate change but its an important first step.

We entered this negotiation at a time when there were significant differences between countries. Developed and developing countries have now agreed to listing their national actions and commitments, a finance mechanism, to set a mitigation target of two degrees celsius and to provide information on the implementation of their actions through national communicatios, with provisions for international consultations and analysis under clearly defined guidelines.

No country is entirely satisfied with each element but this is a meaningful and historic step forward and a foundation from which to make further progress.

We thank the emerging economies for their voluntary actions and especially appreciate the work and leadership of the europeans in this effort.

COPENHAGEN — There are strong signals emerging that leaders have agreed on a climate deal. As reporters flooded back and forth within the cavernous Bella Center following rumors of Obama sightings, drafts of a possible climate agreement had continued to emerge. Tom Zeller on Green Inc. has posted twice on the document trail. Have a look and see if you can translate the diplomatese. (The photo above is by Doug Mills of The Times.)

COPENHAGEN — Marc Roberts, the climate cartoonist, has recycled one of my favorite strips, this time warning heads of state and negotiators — who have produced at least four drafts of a proposed climate agreement since this morning — not to “drop the ball.” Click on the strip to get the idea.

COPENHAGEN — As Mike Hulme of the University of East Anglia has written, global warming has entirely different definitions for many countries and factions tussling over the building blanket of human-generated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The thousands gathered here for two weeks have included people passionately fighting for and against restrictions on emissions and campaigners on related issues — from human rights to nuclear power to vegetarianism. Here’s a roundup of some of those voices and views, with more being added as time allows.

On Thursday, Senator James M. Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican (pictured above) who has been the leading critic in Congress of steps to rein in greenhouse gases, visited the conference center for three hours to predict failure in the talks and in domestic efforts to pass a cap-and-trade climate bill. Alluding to occasional meetings with Chinese climate officials, Mr. Inhofe said, “They always confide in me, and they say we’re hoping you will pass a cap and trade in the United States because then your industry, your manufacturing jobs, will come to our country.”

Andrew C. Revkin/ The New York Times President Evo Morales of Bolivia at the climate talks.

Through much of the meeting, President Evo Morales of Bolivia was the face of poor countries calling for the rich nations, which built nearly all of the existing human-generated blanket of greenhouse gases, to pay a “climate debt” to the world’s vulnerable communities. On Friday, he told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now (translated):

Looking forward means that we have to review everything that capitalism has done. These are things that cannot just be solved with money. We have to resolve problems of life and humanity. And that’s the problem that planet earth faces today. And this means ending capitalism…. The best thing would be that all war spending be directed towards climate change, instead of spending it on troops in Iraq, in Afghanistan or the military bases in Latin America. This money would be better directed to attending to the damages that were created by the United States.

Another figure at the center of the animosity between the rich and poor worlds was Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, a Sudanese diplomat at the United Nations in New York, who speaks on behalf of the Group of 77 developing countries and China. Read more…

COPENHAGEN — Tom Zeller over at Green Inc. has posted President Obama’s short address pressing the thousands of assembled negotiators and 118 other heads of state to produce a strong new accord constraining greenhouse gases:

Remarks of President Barack Obama
Copenhagen Summit, Copenhagen, Denmark, December 18, 2009

Good morning. It’s an honor to for me to join this distinguished group of leaders from nations around the world. We come together here in Copenhagen because climate change poses a grave and growing danger to our people. You would not be here unless you – like me – were convinced that this danger is real. This is not fiction, this is science. Unchecked, climate change will pose unacceptable risks to our security, our economies, and our planet. That much we know. Read more….

A document leaked during climate negotiations reveals lots of heat ahead.

COPENHAGEN — Late on Thursday, environmentalists monitoring the climate talks alerted reporters to the existence of a six-page document, dated December 15th, that is a compilation by the United Nations office managing the talks of all the major countries’ plans for curbing their emissions, along with a calculation of where that would take the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases and eventual temperature of the planet. United Nations officials confirmed the document’s authenticity but declined to discuss it.

The analysis concluded that without much stronger action to cut emissions both before and after 2020, “global emissions will remain on an unsustainable pathway that could lead to concentrations equal or above 550 p.p.m. [parts per million of carbon dioxide in the air] with the related temperature” rising 3 degrees Celsius, or 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit. That is far above the thresholds for dangerous warming being debated at the meeting and accepted in recent statements by the major economies of the world.

The conclusion that current plans for greenhouse gases would lead to substantial warming is not new and largely based on recent analysis by the United Nations Environment Program and Sir Nicholas Stern, a British economist, and in step with findings of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and elsewhere.

But environmental campaigners said they were outraged that the document so clearly showed that countries involved in the negotiations are aware of the gap.
Read more…