The media may play a role in misleading the public, especially when journalists attempt a "false balance" in stories, giving equal treatment to climate science skeptics who question the validity of climate science studies.

The digital age of environmental journalism has brought with it an ugly underbelly characterized by increasingly bitter personal exchanges and accusations and a sucking-up of countless hours of productive reporting time and effort. How reporters handle these distractions may shape how well the American public understands, or doesn't understand, the climate challenge they and future generations will face.

For purely journalistic reasons, reporters could periodically write about those things they had decided not to cover: Their rationale and providing links, even, for those wanting to know more. They can thereby open the doors to their own internal news decision-making, let the public see in, all in the interest of their better understanding the news-making process.

Making fuel from cellulose? Will it be the fuel of the future and how is the U.S. system promoting or haring it? New political carrots and sticks are leading the biofuels industry into a second generation phase, and many critics of the biofuels industry think it's long overdue. The question for the industry, though, is whether the science is ready to scale up.

In the wake of newly declared newspaper bankruptcy declarations in Minneapolis and Philadelphia…and shut-downs of print editions in Seattle and Denver — we have a challenge — the nation's media must do a responsible job in covering the coming climate change debates in Washington.

Survey results published in July 2008 show that scientist-journalist interactions "are more frequent and smooth than previously thought," according to the survey authors. Yet results also indicate that "science journalism is too tame, that is, that it is easily exploited by scientific sources."

Research suggests that the news media block or transform "beyond recognition" the aims of environmental and other activist groups. But a recent study suggests otherwise. It concludes that investigative journalists often are activists, but they stay within professional boundaries.

Journalists by their very nature love change. Change is news. Change is good. And now change is everywhere. Bud Ward reports.