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A principal vehicle for vaulting climate change to policy maker attention in the U.S. and abroad, the Institute's quarterly newsletter, Climate Alert, is now in its fourteenth year. During this time Climate Alert has emerged as the best source for policy makers of likely impacts of climate change on developing countries. Several Climate Alert special reports have generated wide public attention. These include an analysis of climate and energy trends in China, a study of the vulnerability of the insurance industry in the face of climate change, and an assessment of the growth of electric cars and other zero emission vehicles. With some funding from the U.S. EPA and technical support from the National Weather Service and several broadcaster and meteorological professional associations, the Climate Institute has developed broadcast quality video materials on climate change science. These materials based on peer-reviewed findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were made adaptable for use by television meteorologists in weather segments of daily television news show. This video series was disseminated in July 1996. In September of 1996 on the occasion of its tenth anniversary, the Institute convened a symposium, What is at Stake Should Climate Change, that drew some of the world's leading climate experts to discuss implications of climate change for agriculture and food security, human health, coastal areas, parks and ecosystems, the insurance industry, and international stability and migration. A month later at Washington College on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the Institute convened a two-day conference on Climate Change Implications for the Chesapeake Bay Region. The Institute collaborated with the Laboratory for Coastal Research of the University of Maryland, the U.S. EPA and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources to convene this meeting. On November 13, 1997, the Climate Institute convened a conference on climate change in Tom's River, NJ on implications of climate change and sea level rise for the New Jersey shore. The one-day Conference, "Coastal Hazards, Changing Climate, and the New Jersey Shore," was sponsored by the US Environmental Protection Agency, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, and the New Jersey Sea Grant College Program. Over 110 participants attended including mayors of several New Jersey coastal communities and representatives of state and local government. Between April 1998 and December 1998 the Climate Institute convened four regional climate impact conferences. 1) a conference on Post-Kyoto Strategic
Business Opportunities, held at Yale University in New Haven,
Connecticut, April 2-3, 1998; 4) a conference on Climate Change and the Intra-Americas (defined as the US South Atlantic and Gulf States, the Caribbean Island nations, Central America, and Mexico), held at Florida International University in Miami, Florida, November 30 - December 4, 1998. Each of the meetings examined the potential impacts of climate change on human settlements and ecosystems in the respective regions, addressed possible adaptation responses, and discussed the capacity for energy efficiency measures and renewable energy innovation to limit greenhouse gas emissions and realize other goals, e.g., reduced air pollution and in some instances, net economic savings, as well. Three of the conferences also featured a significant examination of the Kyoto Conference outcomes and, in the case of the Miami conference, of the Buenos Aires COP4 deliberations, as well. In October of 1999 a three-day U.S.-Canada Symposium on North
American Climate Change and Extreme Weather was held in Atlanta,
Georgia, bringing together computer, climate modelers, impacts
scientists and emergency, insurance and health planners to design
ways of ensuring better answers concerning incidence and severity
of floods, droughts and storms under enhanced greenhouse conditions.
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