The Obama administration can finally get down to brass tacks on the president’s science agenda now that Senate confirmation of two top officials is in the bag.

After much unrelated political posturing, the Senate Thursday gave a thumbs up to Jane Lubchenco to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as well as clearing John Holdren as director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Both nominees are well-respected scientists with a bent for speaking their science—one of many qualities that netted their nominations.

“It is time to take science out of the laboratory and into our communities in order to help people understand how science impacts their everyday lives…,” stated Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, in his confirmation announcement. “Both individuals will serve this country and the taxpayers honorably; there is much work to be done and no time to waste.”

The nominees are no strangers to wasted time, having languished for more than a month since their relatively routine confirmation hearings. Although both are vocal advocates of a stronger stand on climate change policy, it wasn’t politics—at least not the nominee’s politics—that held up the confirmation process. Instead, it was a long-standing practice of placing a “hold” on the process, according to multiple and varying sources (see the Washington Post, CQ Politics, and the New York Times for reports and opinions). Holds are often used as leverage to achieve unrelated goals.

Now, with all holds barred, Lubchenco, a lauded marine ecologist, and Holdren, a prize-winning physicist, and can begin wrestling with the nation’s science and technology issues. For Lubchenco, according to a New York Times profile, that will include addressing climate change by approving an existing proposal to establish a national climate service.

“It is no longer enough to know what the wind patterns were for the last hundred years,” Lubchenco told the Times. “You want to know what they will be for the next hundred years—and they undoubtedly won’t be the same. So there are huge opportunities to provide services to the country.”

A national climate service, an idea that has been floated in one form or another for at least 30 years, would consolidate climate information gathering and provide credible information on long-term climate change impacts such as floods, droughts, and sea-level rise, according to the journal Nature (subscription required). Social problems such as disease transmission and agriculture impacts might also fall under such an agency’s purview, according to the article.

While Lubchenco has chatted with journalists about everything from her first brush with mollusks to her plans to promote American's understanding of the importance of science in daily life, Holdren has shied away from media interviews for now. He has, however, issued a video statement that unsurprisingly indicates gaining the momentum necessary to advance U.S. science and technology will be paramount to the Office of Science and Technology while he’s at the helm.

“The pace of these advances cannot be taken for granted,” he said in the video. “How quickly or slowly we get them depends on making good choices in science and technology policy.”