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"Without properly trained science journalists to serve as honest brokers ... the public is increasingly ill-equipped to sift through the cacophony of anti-scientific propaganda that pervades the public discourse and to identify the emerging threats to our health and our environment," Mann said. 

With two editors and seven reporters dedicated exclusively to environmental coverage, the Times has long been home to the single largest environment staff of any daily U.S. newspaper. Its coverage has become even more important in recent years, because many struggling papers have slashed their reporting staffs, often relying on the Times as inspiration for the stories they do cover.

Once the Times' environmental desk is dismantled, the nation's top five newspapers by readership—the Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal—will have about a dozen reporters and a handful of editors among them whose primary responsibility is to cover the environment. The New York Times has yet to reassign its reporters so a precise tally is not possible.

“I don’t think there’s any question” that climate change is already affecting wheat production in North Dakota, says Roger Johnson, a former durum farmer who was the state’s agriculture commissioner from 1996 to 2009.

The televised horrors of Hurricane Sandy may help break the climate silence that still afflicts many Americans. “Mother Nature is better at bringing people to Jesus than any politician is,” notes Jay Fuhrer, the extension agent. But a fear of offending friends and neighbors still inhibits many. “The first thing we always talk about here is the weather, because it affects our lives so much,” says Donny Nelson. “But global warming, people just don’t get into it.”

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