It took longer than he had thought it might, but by the end of March, former New York Times science reporter Andrew C. Revkin had secured his new position with the “opinion side” of the online Times while maintaining his new “communicator” position with Pace University and embarking on a new opinion-writing role with the newspaper’s Dot Earth blog, which he had started.

“Don’t expect momentous changes,” Revkin said in his final post to the original Dot Earth blog format before setting out with what he called the site’s “new iteration.”

“I’m not going to suddenly be revealed as an ardent liberal or conservative,” he wrote, but rather as an advocate … “for reality.” By his count, he had overseen some 940 blogs at the original Dot Earth site.

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Linking global climate science experts and media electronically.

Several months ago, Stacy Jackson, a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group, had one of those good ideas that most of us set aside and never act on because they require a bit too much work.

But Jackson decided to follow through. What emerged was a unique, successful experiment in connecting reporters with scientists to help them accurately cover science issues underlying negotiations at last December’s Conference of the Parties meeting in Copenhagen.

Hundreds of scientists would ultimately get involved, helping nearly 27 media outlets get their facts straight.

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Climate science can be about as complex as it gets, so it’s not surprising that the public at large is often confused about the subject.

Even with broad international scientific agreement on much of the evidence surrounding anthropogenic climate change, public concern has dropped sharply in the past two years - leading some to lament that public concern has decreased while scientific evidence has increased.

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A sampling of media coverage of Pennsylvania State University’s announcement of findings of an inquiry there illustrates how deadline reporting and headline-writing about a single straightforward news event can lead to differing shadings and colorings.

Penn State had named an internal university panel to look into climate scientist Michael Mann in connection with e-mail messages he had sent, part of the hacked e-mail cache from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, CRU.

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BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA — Growing tensions between scientists and major news outlets in Australia center around scientists’ concerns over coverage of the potential effects of climate change on coral reefs.

Many of the environmental scientists point to what they see as biased and misleading reporting, leaving them frustrated and wondering how they can best engage in a public debate that seems to have left them behind.

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Along with the U.S. … China makes up the climate change ‘G2′

It’s a virtual truism that two countries matter above all others when it comes to avoiding the most severe impacts of anthropogenic climate change: the U.S. and China.

That’s why so much was on the line when President Obama visited China last fall, and why speculation up to, during, and since Copenhagen focused so much on what the “G2″ might or might not agree to.

But understanding in the U.S. of how climate change plays out in China and Chinese media is sparse.

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Shiprock, sans the brown haze that often envelopes it.

Shiprock rises like a massive cathedral 1,800 feet above Navaho country in New Mexico. The best photographs capture the rock formation in reddish hues, set against a pristine blue sky.

But the first time I saw Shiprock, which figures prominently in Navaho religion and mythology, it was mostly lost in a brown haze.

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In Camille Feanny’s neighborhood workers busily repair homes and patch or reinstall roofs and windows after drenching storms last fall nailed the Southeast.

As she stares out her window, she’s dismayed: No rush to install new insulation, or solar panels, or double-paned windows.

“There are tax credits for installing and rebuilding your home in an energy-efficient way. The government is pouring billions into this,” Feanny said. “None of my neighbors knows anything about it.”

It’s a bitter irony for Feanny. She lives in Atlanta, home of CNN, where for nearly a decade she had worked on the network’s science and environment unit. That news unit was trimmed back for years and then unceremoniously dumped a little over a year ago, in what is the most prominent example of a science and environmental reporting team getting tossed aside as the traditional news industry sails stormy seas.

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Less than a year after launching its newly reorganized reporting team designed to enhance the paper’s focus on environment and climate change, The New York Times finds itself without the two long-time science desk reporters - Andrew C. Revkin and Cornelia Dean - who for years provided the heart of just that coverage.

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The nation’s climate change science desk gets a lot smaller come December 21 with the resignation from The New York Times of science writer Andy Revkin.

With its paring of some 100 newsroom and editorial employees, it’s not at all clear how the Times itself can fill the substantial void. Even more problematic, given the dire financial conditions facing most metropolitan daily newspapers, are prospects for others to move in.

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