DURHAM, N.C. - When it comes to climate communication, many scientists have a “love-hate” relationship with the media.

That’s the assessment of Bill Chameides, dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. Before his appointment at the Nicholas School, Chameides worked for three years - from 2005 through 2007 - as the chief scientist of Environmental Defense Fund. Previously, he had  spent 25 years at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he served as chair of the atmospheric-sciences department from 1998 to 2005. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1998.

Chameides spoke recently from his campus office about how both journalists and scientists can do a better job of educating the public about climate science.

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Health care insurers are woefully behind the curve when it comes to preparing for the risks that climate change poses to human health. Wine grapes, highly sensitive to extremes in temperature, may well foretell how continued warming will stress global agriculture. Most corporations, focused on a five- to seven-year time horizon, aren’t planning for how they’ll adapt to climate change in coming decades.

Where can you find these stories, presented in one place and generated by a new collaboration by national publications such as Slate, Wired, Mother Jones, The Atlantic and Grist?

The answer: The Climate Desk, a new collaborative journalism project launched on April 19.

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A number of scientific efforts comparable to the climate index initiative mimicking the widely publicized Dow Jones Industrial Average are at various stages of development in the scientific community.

One such effort is that championed by climate change investments expert Dan Abbasi to help improve public understanding of climate change, described on this site in a recent posting.

Several other interests also have established indexes with similar aims.

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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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Tracy Davis vividly remembers her reaction when she got word nearly a year ago that The Ann Arbor News, where she worked for nine years, primarily covering the environment, was closing.

“I stood there with my mouth open for an hour.” With the closing of The News, the town of 114,667, home to The University of Michigan, became the largest market in the country to lose its only daily newspaper. It now has only an online newspaper. The online version goes to hard copy twice a week for delivery to subscribers.

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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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In the aftermath of the recent hacked e-mails affair, much opprobrium has been cast in the direction of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.

In part the result of confusion over the meaning of the now notorious “hide the decline” remark, some assume that the global temperature record produced jointly by CRU and the Hadley Centre is of dubious quality.

Fox News, for instance, recently ran an article with the alarming headline, “NASA Data Worse Than Climate-Gate Data, Space Agency Admits“, referring to an e-mail obtained by the Competitive Enterprise Institute under the Freedom of Information Act. In that e-mail, one of the lead scientists behind NASA’s GISSTemp temperature series suggested that the Hadley and CRU approach might be superior.

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Can thoughtful climate lexicon avoid the kind of rhetorical congestion that has so far framed the climate debate?

As the ‘Climategate’ controversy has sent the science and policy community back to the communications drawing board, it’s a good time to return to earlier works on global climate change, or if you like, global warming, or the greenhouse effect, or even the carbon dioxide problem.

The reasons for inaction at the national and international levels are many and complex, but certainly challenges with the language used have contributed to the political deadlock. The situation has implications for how we move forward in the necessary task that our inaction makes more urgent each day: climate change adaptation.

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A 3-D spinning globe on the new website TakePart tells a compelling story about the tremendous impacts of climate change.

The graphic is part of an online feature explaining climate science. The globe, the centerpiece of the feature, can be spun with a click of your mouse. Moving the slider below whirls you through the years 1950-2050, as glaciers vanish, ice caps dwindle and portions of the Amazon turn to dust.

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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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