Found this at Treehugger.  A free app that “visualizes recent global climate data from Earth Science satellites, including surface air temperature, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, ozone, and water vapor as well as gravity and sea level variations. It was developed by the Earth Science Communications and Visualization Technology Applications and Development Teams at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with support from NASA Headquarters.”

Download the app over at EcoApps…..

What is GAIN?

The Global Adaptation Index™ (GAIN™), a project of the Global Adaption Institute, provides a data-driven approach to help countries and the private sector invest in adaptation to climate change and other global forces.

Climate change is a reality and the challenge is only increasing as population growth, urbanization and economic expansion continue. All countries must adapt in order to minimize the effects of climate change and other global forces. Despite expanding resource commitments from international institutions, public funding alone is not the solution. The private sector will play a key role in providing the necessary additional resources. GAIN offers information on a country’s vulnerability and its readiness to undertake adaptive actions to prioritize and evaluate these needed investments.

Farmers can soon cut on fuel expenses as the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) tests the efficiency of its developed biofuel on machines.

The plan is an offshoot of a recent lecture by Dr. Rico O. Cruz, an expert on biofuel from Oregon, USA, who promoted Cruzesterification, a process of producing biodiesel from used vegetable oils. “Producing biodiesel using Cruzesterification makes the production of biodiesel as “easy as making coffee, in which the catalyst is the coffee, alcohol as the sugar and oil as the hot water. Blend the three ingredients and you a have a coffee or a biodiesel in minutes,” Cruz said.

continue reading “PhilRice machines to test biodiesel”over at PhilRice….

In Climate Loan Sharks, the World Development Movement and the Jubilee Debt Campaign reveal that the UK is pushing $1.1 billion of climate loans, via the World Bank, on some of the poorest countries in the world.

For example Grenada’s debt is already 90 per cent of GDP, yet it is to be lent a further $22 million, over 3 per cent of the country’s GDP. Lending to such debt burdened country is at best irresponsible and at worst willfully dangerous.

The UK, and other rich industrialised countries in the global north, owe a debt to countries in the global south as compensation for the devastating effects of climate change they have the primary responsibility for creating. A key part of this compensation is providing finance to poorer countries to help reduce the negative impacts of climate change on their lives and livelihoods.

Continue reading and download the FREE ebook “Climate loan sharks: how the UK is making developing countries pay twice for climate change”…..

This week in Cape Town, the World Bank will decide whether to approve new climate adaptation loans for five countries. In Bangladesh and around the world, campaigners are resisting these loans and urging their governments not to accept new debt for climate change. More than 50 organisations from countries due to receive the loans recently signed a statement opposing the concept of climate loans, which was initially invented by the UK.

Continue reading Why Bangladesh doesn’t want climate adaptation loans…..

“Potentially catastrophic” impacts on food production from slow-onset climate changes are expected to increasingly hit the developing world in the future and action is needed now to prepare for those anticipated impacts, FAO warned today in a submission to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

“Currently the world is focused on dealing with shorter-term climate impacts caused mainly by extreme weather events,” said Alexander Müller, FAO Assistant-Director General for Natural Resources.

“This is absolutely necessary,” he continued. “But ‘slow-onset’ impacts are expected to bring deeper changes that challenge the ecosystem services needed for agriculture, with potentially disastrous impacts on food security during the period from 2050 to 2100. Coping with long-term changes after the fact doesn’t make much sense. We must already today support agriculture in the developing world to become more resilient,” he said.

continue reading about the Potentially catastrophic climate impacts on food production over the long-term…..

Ms. Dwi Astuti, Binadesa Executive Director and AsiaDHRRA Vice-Chairperson for Southeast Asia sub-region, participated in the CSO Forum on AFCC held in Manila on March 1, 2011.

She presented AsiaDHRRA’s proposal for the establishment of ASEAN Peoples’ Field School on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change, a small-scale producer focused regional knowledge management mechanism.

Ms. Dwi also visited the AsiaDHRRA office and had an inspiring exchange with the secretariat.

New findings reported by the Africa Rice Center counter the widely held view that African rice, preferred by local consumers for its taste, is inherently lower yielding than Asian rice. They also confirm its remarkable adaptability to harsh growing conditions in Africa and hence its value for developing improved varieties suited to a changing climate.

continue reading about the endangered african rice varieties here….

Today, the Buckminster Fuller Institute announced the winner of its 2010 Challenge: Allan Savory, who has spent the last 50 years refining and evangelizing for a method of reversing desertification that he calls “holistic management.” The African Center for Holistic Management International, an NGO he helped found, will take home a $100,000 grant.

The Buckminster Fuller Challenge is meant to award big, sweeping solutions to seemingly intractable problems. As the Institute’s executive director, Elizabeth Thompson, tells FastCompany.com, “The approach was pioneered by Fuller. We’re looking for strategies that solve multiple problems at once, not just surgical implementations that don’t address the root problem.”

Continue reading Method That Turns Wastelands Green Wins 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge….