Until BP’s Deepwater Horizon explosion in April and continuing oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, many in the news media covered deepwater oil exploration with a sort of awe. The practice, after all, is relatively new — most projects date back to just the 1990s, and a Gulf boom is only a decade old — and only a few companies know how to drill a mile or more below the ocean surface.

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Americans since 1896 have tracked the economy’s health with the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Now, a climate policy expert working for an investment firm thinks it is time for a climate change average. It would be based on a wide range of data scientists are keeping on oceans, temperatures, permafrost, the atmosphere, storm trends, and more. The information would be synthesized into a daily number called the Global Climate Change Index, or GCCI.

How the number would emerge is still unclear, but the most optimistic view is that the number could rattle off the tongues of news announcers, roll out in websites, appear in its own spot in newspapers, and perhaps flash above Times Square like Deutsche Bank’s carbon counter.

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The effort to decarbonize the atmosphere in coming decades basically comes down to two grim challenges: drastically reduce carbon emissions, or drastically reduce energy consumption.

Given that the world’s population is expected to increase by a few billion more people by 2050, the energy consumption piece is a bit of a wild card. So experts and policymakers are getting serious about “clean coal,” a catch-all phrase dear to the hearts of industry public relations officials and a term meaning so many things, and different things, to different people. In addition, it’s a concept that exists only in a few places.

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The public has cooled in its concern over climate change, recent surveys and polls show. But a strong interest in alternative energy continues, and Americans are keen on improving energy efficiency and saving on gasoline.

As with other issues, the public’s understanding of details is thin. Half of those Americans surveyed could not identify a renewable resource such as wind or solar power, and 39 percent could not name a fossil fuel - oil or coal, for example.

The Public Agenda survey, conducted last year, (see this article for more details) makes studies such as those of Caltech researcher Nathaniel Lewis that much more important. The simple reason: he offers a stark reality check on the nation’s high rhetoric and crawling progress toward alternative energy.

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View Braasch’s Copenhagen Photos

COPENHAGEN, Sunday 20 December 2009 (7 am local time) — The 11th-hour “Copenhagen Accord” agreed to by the U.S., China, and three other major greenhouse gas emitting countries capped 14 days of frustrating negotiation, contention, oration, and demonstrations. The final agreement, while disappointing in so many ways, nonetheless came as an upbeat and unexpected outcome - an alternative to no agreement at all - and one that just might open the way for breakthroughs down the road.

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‘The little mermaid’ in Copenhagen Harbour.

Six freelance journalists - an eclectic mix of writers, climate bloggers, photojournalists, youth advocates, and educators - are submitting copy to The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media between December 7 and the scheduled end of the international climate negotiations in mid-December.

Get updates here - and check back often - for our correspondents’ unique takes on the goings-on.

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Gardiner sees a climate change ‘perfect moral storm.’

SEATTLE, WA. — First it was a scientific debate. Then it became also an economic and policy challenge. Now climate change is becoming a moral storm. Or maybe it always has been.

University of Washington associate professor and author Stephen M. Gardiner believes the latter is the case. A social scientist and professor of ethics, political philosophy and environmental ethics, Gardiner has studied the ethical and moral complexities of climate change for the past 10 years. But only now is that focus becoming a significant part of the broader discussion on what to do about the impacts of a changing climate.

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Chemists first theorized the process commonly referred to as “ocean acidification” in the 1970s, but only during the past few years have researchers begun to fully appreciate the threats it poses to ocean inhabitants such as corals and fish.

With few major studies yet completed, researchers over the past few years have been encouraging the U.S. to launch a coordinated ocean acidification research program. Authorized in March but not yet funded, the program’s overarching goal will be to decipher ocean acidification’s biological and economic impacts to enable informed and adequate response to the issue.

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Glance at the websites of major U.S.-based environmental NGOs and you’ll see a pattern. These bright and often busy websites frequently are stamped with a simple logo: a heron, an egret, a polar bear, or a leaf.

The contrast is instructive. These organizations founded in the ethics of 20th century conservation are trying to harness the power of 21st century media. The results are mixed.

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In the summer of 1988, as Yellowstone National Park burned and congressional hearings on global warming were being held in a sweltering Washington D.C., Tony Barnosky was digging into the floor of a Colorado cave.

Traveling back in time, as he wrote in his new book, Heatstroke: Nature in an Age of Global Warming, Barnosky was uncovering ecosystems long gone - each shaped by changes in Earth’s climate.

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