We have come to a point in the election season where the courage of the candidates and the intelligence of the voters are being severely tested. So far, the candidates are flunking. The public’s grade is pending.

The test is about oil and national security.

An old friend of mine used to say that at a certain stage in political campaigns, dead cats start flying through the air.  I’ve never understood what he meant by that, but I think the cat-flinging has begun.

Both candidates are doing their share, but one exchange deserves special analysis: John McCain’s attack against Barack Obama’s comment about tire gauges. In one of his recent energy speeches, Obama made the point that acts of conservation by individual Americans can have an impact on rising oil prices. He used tire pressure maintenance as an example.

You've heard about Al Gore's challenge to remodel the U.S. electrical industry in 10 years to eliminate all CO2 emissions. Some commentators say the job is too big, some say it isn't, but everyone, including Al, agrees it's a big, big job.

But exactly how big? What are we up against here? How much new wind, solar, geothermal power do we need to replace the CO2 producing plants? What else might be needed to make such a system work?

Hurricane Katrina will see its third anniversary on August 29th, a cataclysm whose meaning has yet to inform the national politics of present-day America. But a new report released last month and a documentary film going national this month just might help transform that.

The report and the film are highlighting issues of environmental justice, economic opportunity, and racial equality and they are bumping right into a counter-effort the denialist machine has launched -- a fear-mongering campaign aimed at scaring the poor and minorities about higher energy prices.

It's the naked truth about Katrina and climate and race in America versus a cynical and nauseating brand of ugly politics orchestrated by the fossil lobby whose message was something like this: "Climate action is nothing less than a war on the poor."

And so, as the race issue briefly erupted front and center in the presidential campaign last week, with McCain accusing Obama of playing the "race card", it also emerged in the climate debate at the same time. Curious.

The good news is that in this nation of rampant visual consumption, the argument may just start and end with the film, called Trouble the Water.

The following is excerpted from a longer report that James Hansen has just posted here. The excerpt appears under the heading "How Science Works" in the original:

How Science Works

by James Hansen

One of the books about Richard Feynman (can’t find it now) has a story something like this. When he started to work at Los Alamos on the Manhattan project he was essentially a post-doc. In an early meeting, led by one of the physics giants of the first half of the century, they were discussing possible interpretations of some data. One possibility was described and seemed to Feynman to be clearly correct, but they continued to go through many alternative suggestions and Feynman was getting more and more antsy: why didn’t the leader restate the evidence for the logical interpretation? Eventually the leader stood up and said something to the effect “o.k., it seems that so-and-so’s explanation is still best, let’s get to work.”