President Obama, GOP contender Mitt Romney, and the U.S. news media moderators pointedly refused to mention climate change once during the series of four presidential debates.

"Google's Street View maps are headed into the backcountry. Earlier this week, two teams from Google strapped on sophisticated backpacks jammed with cameras, gyroscopes and other gadgets and descended to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. But this is just the first step in the search giant's plan to digitally map and photograph the world's wild places."

"Penn State University scientist Michael Mann, whose work showed that Earth’s temperatures have risen along with increased fossil fuel use, announced Tuesday he had filed a lawsuit against the conservative National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute for defamation, complaining that they falsely accused him of academic fraud and compared him to convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky."

"NEW YORK -- Dozens of wells drilled this year across rural Ohio are quietly pumping out the answer to the U.S. energy industry's most loaded question: Is the Utica shale formation, touted as a potentially $500 billion frontier, a boom or a bust? Yet the answer is likely to remain concealed for some time."

"An un-redacted version of a recently released Nuclear Regulatory Commission report highlights the threat that flooding poses to nuclear power plants located near large dams -- and suggests that the NRC has misled the public for years about the severity of the threat, according to engineers and nuclear safety advocates."

"A new 'addendum' to be released as soon as this week purports to update with the latest science a 2009 federal assessment on the impacts to the United States of climate change. The addendum matches the layout and design of the original, published by the U.S. Global Change Research Program: Cover art, 'key message' sections, table of contents are all virtually identical, down to the chapter heads, fonts and footnotes. But the new report comes from the conservative Washington, D.C.-based Cato Institute."

"CALGARY — [Alberta] Premier Alison Redford shot down calls from opposition parties and the union representing workers at the XL Foods plant for a public inquiry to get to the bottom of the huge beef recall stemming from E. coli tainted product at the Brooks facility."

"Two New York Times journalists were detained briefly by law enforcement officers while reporting on demonstrations against the Keystone XL pipeline in northeast Texas, the newspaper said Thursday."

A lawyer for a climate-change-denial group seeking records from scientist Michael Mann apparently failed to get advance permission from his then-employer EPA to work on the case pro bono.

"A high-profile Kentucky environmental enforcement action involving hundreds of alleged clean-water violations at dozens of mining operations in Eastern Kentucky apparently is coming to a close."

"With his Dudley Do-Right chin and broadcaster hair, Bill Line was the voice of Washington's cherry blossoms, parades, protests and national monuments."

"As the longtime spokesman for the National Park Service in the District, he was our National Ranger, stiff and proper, adjusting his ranger hat just so before reminding us to use Metro rather than drive to the Mall.

"America is unique when it comes to giving a platform to climate deniers and skeptics. According to a new analysis of data released last year, American newspapers are far more likely to publish uncontested claims from climate deniers, many of whom challenge whether the planet is warming at all and are 'almost exclusively found' in the U.S. media. The study was published in the journal Environmental Research Letters."

"The premiere of a Hollywood film featuring hydraulic fracturing is months away, but the energy industry already is preparing for battle."

"The U.S. federal budget fight might prevent a timely study of the country's new energy bonanza, a senior official said, and stands in the way of data that could help ease volatility that is costly to energy companies and traders alike."

"[Wednesday] night's inaugural presidential debate may seem a logical place for the candidates to discuss the role of federal lands in providing energy, recreation and job opportunities at a time of stubbornly high unemployment."