The President is on vacation in Maine, mind you, though most say that could hardly diminish the amount or intensity of public attention and emphasis he’s been giving to the climate issue. The Congress is missing-in-action altogether, having all but deep-sixed the vexing issue when Senate Democrats couldn’t muster the 60 votes they would need to break a GOP filibuster. Washington’s K Street Corridor, AKA Gucci Gulch, is all but in hibernation with en masse exits to points east, south, west, north and all the above.

But back to those two events expected before the clock strikes September:

• An Albemarle County, Virginia, court is expected to hand down its decision on the state attorney general’s efforts to force the University of Virginia to out an untold, but large, number of e-mails and other communications involving climatologist Michael Mann’s research while he was at U.Va. earlier this decade. See earlier Forum coverage here and here. The case has attracted national attention and concern, particularly among academics citing academic freedom issues, for its potential to “chill” climate research. A decision is likely by the end of this month, but it remains unclear whether that initial court determination will be the final word on A.G. Ken Cuccinelli’s campaign on the matter.
• On a substantially larger playing field, at least physically and geographically but also in terms of overall impact on climate science and policy, the InterAcademy Council investigation into the conduct of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is to be released August 30.

  The report, “Climate Change Assessments: Review of the Processes and Procedures of the IPCC,” is to be publicly released at a press conference in the U.N.’s Dag Hammarskjold Library Auditorium beginning at 10 a.m. EDT. The event will be webcast live and archived for later viewing at http://www.un.org/webcast. The report then is to be available online at http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/.

  According to a press advisory statement, the following InterAcademy Council participants are to take part in the release of the report, considered by many to be the single most important of a series of independent investigations resulting from recent controversies involving the unauthorized release last fall of e-mails from the University of East Anglia and findings of several factual errors in IPCC reports:

  * Robbert Dijkgraaf, IAC co-chair and president, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences;

  * Harold Shapiro, chair of IAC Committee to Review IPCC and economist/former president, Princeton University;

  * Roseanne Diab, vice chair of IAC Committee to Review IPCC and executive officer, Academy of Science of South Africa; and

  * Peter Williams, member of IAC Committee to Review IPCC and treasurer/vice president of The Royal Society, London, U.K.

  A number of reviews and investigations conducted so far into the alleged wrongdoings have substantially exonerated the scientists involved and also, to the extent they also looked into it, the underlying science. Several of those reviews, however, did find fault in involved scientists’ appearance of having been less than fully open and cooperative with disclosures involving their research. And most agree the whole experience argues for more transparency and openness in how climate science is conducted.

  Nonetheless, the reviews by and large have been supportive of the scientists and their work overall. The InterAcademy Council report, regardless of which way its findings lean, is expected by many to be the most important and most definitive, and its findings will be closely watched and reviewed by all “sides” of the climate change issue.

  Few, however, expect the report’s findings will bring an end to the divisiveness and partisanship that increasingly have characterized the climate change issue in recent years.

Queenslander John Cook, the individual most behind the site, said online that after initially recoiling at the amount of work that would be involved in re-working his rebuttals of common climate science “myths” he soon found the notion “irresistible.” His overhaul applies to the full range of skeptics’ arguments his site debunks, with much of the actual rewriting being done by a worldwide group of volunteers who have signed up to help him with the effort.

He initially announced his plans as involving three different levels of understanding — easy, medium, and hard. His breakdowns of those categories:

Source: skepticalscience.com

1.   Easy: explaining the climate science in plain English, the way you’d explain it to someone in an elevator or at a pub. So the response needs to be short, simple, understandable to the average person.

2.   Medium: this goes a little deeper, discusses the evidence in more detail, provides links to peer-reviewed papers without necessarily going into the nitty-gritty of the methodologies or technical aspects of the science.

3.   Hard: this might contain detailed mathematics, equations, methodologies on how measurements are taken, the nitty gritty of data is processed, etc.

There are a number of examples of skepticalscience’s “basic English” interpretations of the site’s more technical rebuttals. For instance:

Go here to review the piece distinguishing climate and weather;

Go here to review the piece addressing climate skeptics’ points about mid-20th Century cooling;

Go here to see a piece rebutting claims of 31,000 scientists having refuted climate change science via their signatures on the so-called “Oregon Petition”; or

Go here to see a rejection of arguments that scientists in the 1970s were generally forecasting climate cooling.

As of August 24, 2010, the site had assessed and written rebuttals for 119 different “Skeptic Arguments.” Those interested can sign up to receive e-mail notifications of new rebuttals, follow the site through various social media, or download a free IPhone, ITouch, Android, or Nokia app.

This is one of those stories where seeing is believing, where an image is worth at least 1,000 words, and where writing about the contents just can’t compare with seeing them on your own. Click here to see them — Examples: “Warning: This article is basically just a press release, copied and pasted.” and “Warning: Journalist does not understand the subject they are writing about.” — (or here for the pdf).

And have your printer online and your Avery # 5160 labels, or equivalents, loaded.

A Canadian professor and social scientist says that given climate trends and “virtually no chance of a breakthrough” on climate policy, it’s time to start thinking “Plan Z.”

Writing from abroad the Canadian Coast Guard’s Louis S. St-Laurent on a recent research trip, Thomas Homer-Dixon of the Balsillie School of International Affairs, in Waterloo, Canada, wrote that the changing climate — as illustrated by “devastating mudslides in China and weeks of searing heat in Russia” — contrasts with “nearly stopped” political action in nations’ capitals worldwide.

Given the global lobbying clout of coal and oil interests and the difficulty many people have in addressing what has become “an ideologically polarizing issue,” he wrote in an August 23 Op-Ed ( “Disaster at the Top of the World” ) in The New York Times, “we’ll almost certainly need some kind of devastating climate shock to get effective climate policy.”

Homer-Dixon doesn’t see that as such a far-fetched possibility at all. He points to the prospects for altered storm tracks and rainfall patterns and impacts on grain and crop production as real concerns.

“Policymakers need to accept that societies won’t make drastic changes to address climate change until such a crisis hits,” he cautioned, while urging progress on substantive contingency plans — Plan Z — in the meantime.

Pointing to an “easy to imagine” climate shock in North America, he paints a portrait of a parched American Southeast or Southwest and “news clips of cars streaming out of Atlanta or Phoenix [that] might finally push our leaders to do something serious about climate change.” His prescribed Plan Z in that case might involve guidelines for regional and local leaders on how to respond, advance decisions on allocations of limited water supplies, lines-of-responsibility for local law enforcement interests and emergency responders and federal agencies and the military.

“We need to be ready,” Homer-Dixon cautions … even if politicians and policymakers worldwide aren’t yet ready to do their parts.

“The public seems to have done what the mainstream media could not: it has kept the scandals in perspective. The scathing verbal attacks on climate science and scientists are actually coming from a relative handful of critics, and they do not reflect a broader resurgence of skepticism.”

Trying to explain the continuing stalemate on meaningful climate change legislative and regulatory action, the respected magazine wrote that “People — politicians included — make decisions on the basis of self-interest and their own hopes, fears and values, which will not necessarily match what most researchers deem self-evident.”

“Facts do matter,” the magazine continued, but scientists need to engage the public “in a clear and compelling way” and must provide policymakers and the public and private sector interest credible and timely information.

“Scientists will be only as persuasive as they are trusted — which means that preserving and cultivating the public’s trust must be the scientific community’s top priority.” To earn and keep that trust, they “must increase transparency wherever possible,” playing up, rather than playing down, “the kinds of uncertainties and internal debates that scientists struggle with on a daily basis.” They need to “steer clear of hype and rein in exaggerations” about global warming risks and counter professional climate doubters “with facts as a matter of course” while welcoming legitimate fears and legitimate criticism.

Concluding that climate science is sufficiently robust that broad conclusions cannot be undermined by “questions about any given datum point,” the Nature editorial concludes that “the fact that climate scientists can’t predict exactly how bad the impacts might be could well be the best argument for action.”

It’s just too obvious. Atlanta Journal Constitution editorial cartoonist Mike Lukovich used another popular metaphor August 24 to make the same point. Picture this:

Two frogs sitting in a slowly simmering pan of water atop a range. The caption on the pan: “Global Warming.”

So one big-eyed frog says to the other: “I’m peeved about that Mosque …”

There you have it. A picture, again, worth a thousand words. Maybe more.

That’s akin to what’s happening in the world’s oceans, according to a new study published in the July 29 edition of Nature (see article and news story).

Researchers found that phytoplankton, the underlying fabric of the ocean’s food web, has declined 40 percent since the 1950s. The likely cause? Global warming, which has heated the upper water column around the globe — slowing the circulation of nutrients from colder depths toward the surface, where phytoplankton live.

“It’s concerning because phytoplankton is the basic currency for everything going on in the ocean,” Dalhousie University biology professor and study co-author Boris Worm told the Associated Press in a story published July 28. “It’s almost like a recession … that has been going on for decades.”

Not only are phytoplankton a key food source in the ocean, they also help keep the Earth cooler than it otherwise would be by taking in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere above, wrote AP science writer Seth Borenstein in the story.

Increased greenhouse gases heat the upper oceans, which depresses populations of phytoplankton, which reduces their natural ability to absorb greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Sounds like a textbook definition of a climate feedback.

Care About Phytoplankton?  You Should …

Think “So What?” about a few plankton? Think again. Better yet, take a look at the opening paragraphs of Chapter 4 — “Reading the Vital Signs: Metabolism” — from Canadian science journalist Alanna Mitchell’s award-winning 2009 book Sea Sick:

Plankton are the nonchalant wanderers of the ocean. They go with the flow. And one of the toughest, least understood questions about the changing global ocean is where plankton will go next. “Go” in the geographical sense as well as the evolutionary, biological, chemical and even metaphysical.

Does it matter where they go?

Resoundingly, yes. Impossible as it seems, this question — unimagined by most of us — may be the most important question humans will ever grapple with.

Plankton — a group of tiny organisms that range from microscopic marine viruses and bacteria to single-celled plants with fabulously ornate shells to miniscule plant-eating animals — are the lynchpin on which life itself depends. Not only do they produce half of the planet’s oxygen but they are also responsible for a host of different, invisible and interlocked parts of the metabolism of the planet.”

Why worry about the fate of plankton? Now you know. They matter, matter a lot.

Where it may end, no one knows. The plug was officially pulled when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat facing his own tough re-election, concluded there was no way to get to the 60 votes needed to bring closure to an inevitable Republican filibuster. By then, most observers had the legislative effort on life support, and that just barely.

The votes just weren’t there, not only with solid Republican opposition but also with some all-but-certain Democratic opponents, primarily from midwestern industrialized and coal states.

Democrats blamed Republicans. Conservatives blamed liberals. Blue states blamed red states …. Tall folks faulted shorter ones. You get the picture. It wasn’t pretty.

Joining in the fray, The New York Times on a single day carried three op-ed pieces, collectively worthy of review for those wanting some insights into how not to pass a climate bill. The three are online here, here, and here.

Assessing blame for collapse of cap-and-trade in U.S. Senate.

NASA/GISS scientist Jim Hansen, long convinced that cap-and-trade wasn’t the way to go in combating carbon dioxide emissions in the first place, had his own take on the collapse. Blogger Keith Kloor, at his Collide-a-Scape site, provided Hansen’s elaboration on why he saw the Senate developments as a “great opportunity.” But Kloor might do well not to hold his breath while he wonders “if any mainstream advocates — many who seem to think that the U.S. Congress has now put the planet on an unalterable path to climate catastrophe — will chuck their defeatist mentality and embrace Hansen’s view.”

None of those perspectives, however, squared perfectly with Michael Shellenberger of The Breakthrough Institute, also no fan of cap-and-trade. “I think that this is the end of cap-and-trade for a long time,” Shellenberger said. “It’s the fourth time it’s failed since 2003.”

In a mass e-mail and online posting, one of cap-and-trade’s strongest organizational backers, Fred Krupp, Environmental Defense Fund President, vowed “We’re not going anywhere.” But Krupp characterized the Senate impasse as “disappointing” and cautioned that the log jam in the Senate will have “very serious consequences.”

EDF will “continue to fight to prevent the catastrophic threat of run-away global warming.” But nothing in his e-mail blast could be seen as being optimistic about enactment of major legislation any time soon.

For Climate Progress blogger Joe Romm, there was little doubt that the Obama White House carried much of the responsibility for the Senate impasse.

“It was the WH’s job to deliver, say, 55-57 Democrats — and then apply whatever carrots and sticks were needed to move a few GOP Senators,” Romm wrote. “Sure, it still might not have worked … but not trying at all was the only certain route to failure.”

He continued: “I can attest to the fact that the entire environmental and clean energy and progressive political community worked round-the-clock over the past year. If the White House and Obama had worked as hard on this most important of issues, we very likely would have had a price on carbon, I believe.”

None of which, of course, is likely to salve the gaping wounds of those House members who last fall, not without substantial prodding, backed the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill as it squeaked through the House with scarcely a Republican hand shake. Now left licking their wounds in what’s expected to be a tough election year, they’re left wondering “Why even bother?”

Next time substantive climate change comes before the U.S. Congress? On that, all parties seem to agree: It won’t be soon, and it certainly won’t be any easier.

And those up and down much of the Atlantic Seaboard don’t need a thermometer to tell them how scorching hot much of July was. If misery loves company, they and others now can also turn to a new NOAA “State of the Climate” report telling them that the past decade has been the warmest on record worldwide. Reviewing a set of 10 key indicators, NOAA says they “all tell the same story: global warming is undeniable … the Earth is growing warmer and has been for more than three decades.”

The indicators pointing to a warmer world and increasing are the troposphere, air temperature near the surface; humidity ocean heat content; sea level; sea-surface temperature; temperature over oceans; and temperature over land.

Indicators showing a warmer world and decreasing are snow cover; glaciers; and sea-ice. NOAA says in its July report that the data reflect “an independently analyzed set of data” from numerous technologies such as weather stations, satellites, weather balloons, ships, and buoys.

Based on numerous lines of evidence, said NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco in a press release, the situation can be summed-up in just four words: “Our planet is warming.”

The annual State of the Climate reports are available online here, and monthly reports are available here.

Ben Santer, of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, was early out of the gate on July 20 with a moving testimony to Schneider and his work, taking quickly to pen and pencil (bits and bytes) upon learning of the 65-year-old National Academy of Sciences member’s July 19 death while traveling overseas. Santer’s eulogy has been widely quoted and posted online as capturing the thoughts of so many of his climate science colleagues.

Santer, who along with NOAA-Boulder scientist Susan Solomon is preparing a written memorial of Schneider for the American Geophysical Union’s EOS publication, listed the following among lessons he learned from Schneider over the past:

• Do the best science you possibly can.
• Don’t let “fear of consequences” dictate the choice of scientific problems you decide to study. Choose the important problems — not the safe ones.
• Never give up; never be deterred by powerful opposition. Be fearless.
• Never stop trying to communicate the basic science.
• Never take refuge in jargon. Always seek clarity of language. Use metaphors. Tell stories. Communicate your passion for what you do.
• If you cannot convey complex scientific ideas in plain English, and your audience fails to understand you, the fault is yours — it is not the fault of your audience.
• Take time to talk to anyone about the science you do. Even your critics.
• Take time to inspire the “next generation” of climate scientists. Make sure they know the science is not “done and dusted”; there is a role for them to play; they can still make their mark on the science.
• Never engage in “science by assertion”. It is the facts that are important. It is the scientific evidence that is important — not the eminence of your position.”

“With a little thought, I’m sure there are many more lessons I can add to this list,” Santer wrote in a recent e-mail. There’s little doubt that he’ll indeed do so.