Those expecting or hoping for major substantive breakthroughs and commitments from international policy makers meeting in December in Copenhagen have pretty much had their expectations dashed.

With the confab about to get under way in early December  – and with hundreds and hundreds of watching media among those making the trek – there’s always the element of surprise and of a last-minute face-saving gesture, one that few will likely conclude means much in terms of halting warming.

That said, The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media itself will go into something of a Copenhagen-obsessed focus during the coming and final month of this calendar year.

We expect to post lots more frequent and lots briefer updates than normal during December. With up to seven different correspondents, bloggers, photographers, and independent observers feeding copy from Copenhagen during the December 4-18 meeting, we’ll set aside our traditional features and instead focus largely on the climate change communications-related aspects of the meeting. Who is saying, and who is hearing, what kind of messages? In what formats? What communications tools and strategies appear to be working? And which ones falling flat? And with which particular audiences? Is the youth contingency mobilized? Or too busy texting for the fun of it all?

By the end of the month, our hope is we’ll have a lot better understanding of the new directions in climate change communications that we’ll likely see a lot more of in 2010 and beyond. Look for a different look and feel to this site for the next month … one that we hope will inform you and us for continued coverage in the months and years ahead.