Starting this fall semester FCI will offer joint monthly presentations on climate science research in both the FSU and UF campuses. The first seminar will be held on Monday, September 27 from 11 am to 12 pm at FSU and will be transmitted by video to UF.  Go to the Events page for additional details.

November 16th, 2010 has been set as the date for the Florida Climate Institute's Kickoff Event. The event will be held in Tallahassee, FL and will mark the beginning of the joint venture on climate issues between University of Florida and Florida State University and other collaborators. For more information about this event and to register, please go to the registration site.

Dr. Jim Jones of UF and Eric Chassignet of FSU oficially announced the Florida Climate Institute (FCI) on July 29th, 2010. The establishment of the FCI will increase the visibility of the universities current collaborations and promote additional cooperation and recognition in new areas of climate research, teaching, and outreach that will help us better understand and respond to climate challenges. To read the full announcement, please follow this link.

The Ford Foundation announced a five-year, $85 million initiative that aims to reduce poverty while also reducing long-term climate change. The initiative will focus on promoting the rights of rural and indigenous people to use and steward millions of acres of fragile lands, including forests, grasslands and dry lands in six key regions. To read more about it go to the Ford Foundation site.

The Pew Center on Global Climate Change convened a workshop addressing the use of cost-benefit analyses (CBA) in determining climate change costs.  A major focus of the workshop was the inadequacy of traditional analytical tools, such as CBA, for guiding policy decisions about non-incremental changes in economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions.  Many participants recommended a risk-management approach that views climate stabilization as insurance against uncertain but intolerable outcomes.  The workshop report contains an extended summary of 17 presentations and the full text of nine background papers by experts in climate science and economics.  The report is available in the Pew Center site.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' (USACE) overall Responses to Climate Change (RCC) Program addresses the need to reduce potential vulnerabilities to the Nation's water resources and infrastructure from climate change and variability.  Its mission is to develop, implement and assess adjustments or changes in operations and decision environments to enhance resilience or reduce vulnerability of USACE projects, systems and programs to observed or expected changes in climate.  The new RCC Program website shares news and information about program activities as well as the potential impacts of climate change, interagency efforts, strategies for dealing with climate change, and more.  

The UN Climate Change Conference will be this August, 2010. For more information please go to the conference site.

EcoAdapt, Island Press and partners just launched an interesting new web portal/tool to help build/advance climate adaptation efforts. The tool is called CAKE (Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange) and includes information, inventory of US coastal case studies, tools, contacts, forum, etc. It also includes many case studies of adaptation efforts in US coastal areas. 

Publication by Florida State University Coastal Climate Adaptation Web service. Download it from this site