When Kevin Rudd was elected prime minister of Australia in 2007, hopes were high that climate action might soon follow. And Rudd indeed ratified the Kyoto Protocol his first day in office, which his predecessor John Howard had not done. (See this earlier Nature story for context about the role of climate in that election.)

Things are looking a lot different these days. Australia’s nascent stab at creating cap-and-trade legislation to create regulate* greenhouse gases — introduced as a white paper last December and then as draft legislation last month — is running into political trouble, as Roberta Kwok reports in this week’s issue of Nature. Perhaps not surprisingly, the problem stems in part from struggles among parties; Rudd’s Labor party does not have a majority in the Senate and only a slim majority in the House of Representatives, so he needs either opposition Liberals or the Greens on board to make the legislation reality. And that’s a long way from happening; the Liberals cite the costs of such restrictions in the economic downturn, while the Greens think its target of 5 to 15% reductions doesn’t go far enough.

On the other side of the world, the United States is just starting to embark on its own version of the same political game. On Tuesday, Congressmen Henry Waxman (Democrat, California) and Ed Markey (Democrat, Massachusetts) introduced their first draft of extensive climate and energy legislation — including an outline of a cap-and-trade system. You can read the bill in all its gloriously gorey detail here.

Alex Witze

*Corrected 2 April 2009.

Cross-posted from The Great Beyond

Jim Hansen, the earth scientist known for his outspokenness about global warming, is marching today as part of a climate protest against burning coal. The focus of all the attention is the Capitol Power Plant, a coal-burning monstrosity just blocks from the US Capitol building that is one of the biggest sources of emissions in the District of Columbia. Hundreds of protestors have reportedly turned out, even in the snow that coats Washington several inches deep and snarled commutes this morning.

Over at Nature’s Twitter feed, reporter Jeff Tollefson notes that Hansen says he is willing to get arrested. Check out the action live as Jeff reports it.

Image (sans Darryl Hannah): Jeff Tollefson

Posted on behalf of Roberta Kwok

The US could soon offer one-stop shopping for climate information, in the form of a central National Climate Service (see Nature story here) that would consolidate data and forecasts from multiple sources.

The idea of a National Climate Service is old, dating back to the late 1970s, but Jane Lubchenco might finally make it a reality. At her 12 February nomination hearing, Lubchenco said she would work toward creating such a service under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the agency she is slated to lead.

What exactly would a National Climate Service do? For starters, it would synthesize climate data that is currently fragmented across multiple NOAA programmes, the US Geological Survey, the US Department of Agriculture, and university research groups. It would also take a “user-oriented” approach, tailoring new research and data analysis toward urgent problems such as drought, flood risk, agriculture, and vector-borne disease transmission. Finally, it would attempt to improve predictions of climate-change impact at the local or regional level, where demand for information is growing.

Translating global forecast data to the community level is key, says Larry Larson, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers in Madison, Wisconsin. Scientists are predicting climate change and sea level rise worldwide, he says, but the question he often gets from members is: “What does that mean to me?”

Providing answers will require a better climate observing system, says Chet Koblinsky, director of NOAA’s Climate Program Office. Existing systems are ad-hoc because many of them were originally set up for other purposes, he says, and some parameters such as soil moisture are not well-monitored. Ed Sarachik, a climate scientist and professor emeritus at the University of Washington in Seattle, warns that “without a climate observing system, you’re going to hit a wall.”

A National Climate Service might also invite a larger role from the private sector, says Richard Anthes, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Companies could do the work of analyzing data for specific uses, the same way the Weather Channel interprets NOAA’s National Weather Service data for the public.