News Coverage of Climate Entering ‘Trance’? - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com

In an e-mail, Dr. Boykoff said: “Apart from that Oceania blip in mid-2008, it does seem like stagnation or decreasing coverage. I’m curious about links between that and possible interpretations by negotiators of decreased public pressure to put forward a strong agreement leading into Copenhagen.”

Of course, the burst of coverage in 2007, surrounding the release of the fourth report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, could be seen as the journalistic equivalent of the global heat wave in 1998, propelled by a Pacific Ocean El Nino warming — creating a peak that distorts a trend. So the long-term trend may still be up.