Global Warming Archives - WMNF 88.5 FM

Tampa Bay’s electric utilities are facing a struggle familiar to those of us who were academic delinquents: a bad report card.

The Sierra Club’s annual  Dirty Truths report evaluates every American electric utility’s progress towards eliminating pollution-heavy energy production methods.

Duke scored 7 out of 100. TECO scored 2 out of 100.

Utilities were scored by how close they are to hitting three goals the Sierra Club set: eliminating coal by 2030, not building new gas plants through 2035, and building clean energy to replace fossil fuels by 2035.

Florida’s electric companies are preparing for an explosion of demand as plans for energy-hungry data centers expand.

The report also says that renewable energy is cheaper, and sticking to fossil fuels is driving the affordability crisis. TECO doesn’t pay for fuel; they add the cost of it directly to electric bills. Fluctuations in price affect rate-payers more than they affect the company.

TECO representative Cherie Jacobs told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that the Sierra Club’s goals aren’t achievable.

“To serve almost 900,000 customers every minute of every day, having 100% renewable energy just isn’t realistic,” Jacobs said. “We have a balance of natural gas as a fuel and renewables to produce that electricity.”

But she also said only about 11% of TECO’s energy comes from renewable sources. That’s short of TECO’s own goal, set in 2022, to have 17% of their capacity be produced by solar by the end of 2025.

Walter Smith, who leads the Sierra Club’s fight against coal in Tampa Bay, told CL that natural gas isn’t sustainable.

“Gas seems to be the cop out, right? It seems to be the one thing that they would use in order to say, ‘oh, we’re using clean energy,’” he said. “No, it’s just cleaner than coal. It is still affecting our environment in some terrible ways.”

Smith said the score reflects a lack of real commitment to renewable energy, and that utilities need to act fast to address the pressures of climate change.

While coal makes up less than 1% of TECO’s fuel mix today, according to Jacobs, Smith said it’s still putting a burden on consumers because the equipment is hard to maintain.

“Having to retrofit that old system constantly is costing them money. They’ve admitted that consistently. It’s costing them money, and it costs us money because it’s passed on to us as customers.”

Ana Gibbs, a Duke Energy Florida spokesperson, told CL that the company’s approach balances economic factors against the climate dangers of continuing to burn fossil fuels.

“Our diverse, all-of-the above fuel-mix approach supports the continued growth and economic vitality of the communities we serve,” Gibbs said in an emailed statement.

She noted that power plant upgrades and additional solar capacity have reduced fuel costs for consumers.

But renewables only account for 11% of Duke’s electricity, with much of that coming from hydropower dams that may harm the environment in other ways.

St. Petersburg’s “Dump Duke” campaign has grown in popularity. A coalition of environmental and affordability-focused groups recently launched a petition to get public power on the ballot.

The group said electricity would be more affordable with a city-run utility, in part because they believe the city is more likely to switch to renewable energy.

Duke pushed back against that, using a utility-favored firm to generate a report saying it could cost the city up to $4.1 billion.

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Robert Dillon was accused of asking a girl under 12 to leave a Jacksonville Beach McDonald’s with him in 2024. Two Jacksonville officers used surveillance software managed by the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office to identify him as the subject. According to the lawsuit, Dillon has never been to Jacksonville Beach.

Some Pinellas activist organizations want to turn a struggling apartment complex into public housing.

According to authorities, Michael Robinson was killed Monday evening.

Summer is almost here, and so is intense heat. WMNF’s Luiza Campos reports on staying safe in the heat and warning signs of heat exhaustion.

A spokesperson says ICE and the state of Florida moved people from there to other facilities for their safety due to hurricane season.

The Scoop, produced by Maeleigh Fricke

WMNF anchors Chris Young, Juanita Hurtado Huérfano, Seán Kinane, Lisa Marzilli.
WMNF News Director Seán Kinane
WMNF reporters Chris Young, Juanita Hurtado Huérfano, Lisa Marzilli, Seán Kinane, Sofia Caballero, Daria Mironova, Megan Fair, Luiza Medeiros de Campos, Hanna Lau, Joeniyah Carter, Jaelin Diehl.
Special thanks to Taylor Lovejoy and Corey Beltran.

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Summer is almost here and so is intense heat.

Last Saturday, eight local organizations held an event to educate Tampa residents on how to stay safe amid rising temperatures.

The day began with a presentation looking at heat over the last six decades in Tampa.

It showed that during the 2020s, the number of days with temperatures feeling above a hundred degrees were four times more than during the 1960s. 

Karen Liller is the chair for the University of South Florida’s College of Public Health and she warned about the potential risks of underestimating the heat.

“The evidence is there. We are getting warmer, the earth is getting warmer, the states are getting warmer,” Liller said. “Florida is definitely getting warmer.”

Heat exhaustion comes with symptoms like excessive sweating, dizziness, cool pale skin, and risk of fainting.

In worse scenarios, a heat stroke can be deadly.

It starts as a rapid strong pulse, no sweating and soon after the person might lose their consciousness. 

“Whom I really worry about is not so much people who can get to air conditioning or can get to fluids, but for people where that’s hard, that’s hard to have air conditioning or that is hard because they work outside,” Liller said. 

Florida still doesn’t have a heat ordinance requiring shading or water breaks and workload adjustments for outdoor workers. 

Construction and agricultural workers, gardeners and roofers are at higher risks.

In the same presentation, a meteorologist showed that in Tampa during the 2020s the number of 90 degree days per year were a hundred and twenty.

Double the number of 90 degree days per year during the 1970s. 

In order to hold back the heat, panelists suggested things like switching to solar energy, using electric vehicles and getting involved with local governments.

However, all of those things take funding and resources.

Liller said those things are not realistic for everybody. 

“I’m a big believer in making it affordable for everyone, making it a mandate so everyone can get this, not just people who are in positions of power or have a higher income,” Liller said.

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The return of the president-elect to the White House gets underway today with the certification of the 2024 election at the U.S. Capital. While this day in 2021 will live in infamy the second term will be very different. World leaders know what to expect this time, global conflicts will be a continued challenge as will progress on the economy. There is a possibility of tariff wars and recession.

The question becomes: where will the resistance come from?

Community Speaks for December 6, 2025

Furthermore, as we enter a new year we start with a fresh look at Black history. Fred Hampton was a Black Panther Party leader in the late 1960’s who was murdered in 1971 by the Chicago Police Department. He was the president and chairman of the Prisoners of Conscience Committee and the Black Panther Party Cubs. We listen to many of the salient comments this revolutionary made while organizing all people in a class struggle. The popular BPP children’s breakfast program became a mainstream undertaking that continues to this day.

On January 15 The Ifi Heritage Center in Riverview, FL will present a 2025 cultural explosion series which will feature the cousin of Fred Hampton, Donald Hampton. Another interesting person to be featured is Ms. Kredelle Petway, a Freedom Rider during the summer of freedom in 1964.

In resistance to the roll-back in classroom instruction in Black History, many Africa-American students commit their Saturday in pursuit of their knowledge of self.

Going forward we will celebrate the many ways people are in resistance to the threats against civil and human rights.

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The voter has spoken and now The People analyze what they said. The world prepares for another leap backwards as we move forward from the 2024 elections with a felonious commander-in-chief.

Community Speaks for November 11, 2024

The culture wars played heavily against a recovery as voters wait to “feel” the economic change.

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Former state senator Jeff Brandes says a lack of legislative leadership is making it impossible to solve Florida’s ongoing property insurance crisis.

Brandes, speaking on WMNF WaveMakers with Janet & Tom, said term limits mean legislative leaders like Senate presidents and House speakers are in their positions for only two years, not enough time to develop and implement a long-term strategy to fix anything.

“Everything is tactical, there is no strategy,” said Brandes, who now heads a non-profit think tank called the Florida Policy Project. “Nobody can tell you the long-term strategy, Republican or Democrat, because it doesn’t exist.” Saying we want to lower the cost of property insurance is not a strategy, Brandes said, “that’s a hope.”

Brandes said his nonprofit Florida Policy Project, which issued a study on the insurance crisis six months ago, is trying to provide the kind of detailed fact-based research legislators need to develop new strategies for property insurance, transportation, criminal justice and housing. He considers himself a libertarian and favors market-based solutions but believes there’s a big role for federal, state and local governments to help.

Solutions to the property insurance crisis put forward by the Project include giving government assistance to property owners in flood-prone areas so they can improve their homes to meet current flood and wind mitigation standards, Brandes said. In addition, zoning should be changed to allow more units on a property so owners can generate revenue to help pay for the necessary improvements, he said, a solution that also addresses issues with affordable housing.   To lessen the reliance on the state-backed non-profit Citizens Insurance, the largest property insurance company in the state, Florida government should offer incentives to grow the pool of providers, such as matching funds for start-ups.

A top priority for the Project this legislative session is to establish Centers of Excellence at Florida’s research universities to work on public policy issues like insurance and affordable housing.

Hear the entire conversation by clicking the link below, going to the WaveMakers archives or by searching for WMNF WaveMakers wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Dangerous flood conditions still exist on several local rivers from the excessive rainfall during Hurricane Milton.

The bus system in Hillsborough County will be fare-free to help. Find Milton resources here.

WMNF’s Chris Young reports how a group of activists called on the governor to do more to address climate change.

The state data from the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation website shows that there have been 152,000 claims reported as of yesterday.

The Pentagon said more than 800 military personnel have seen their service records upgraded to honorable discharges after being kicked out of the military.

The Scoop producer Leah Burdick

WMNF anchors Chris Young, Lisa Marzilli, Josh Holton, Seán Kinane

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The post The Scoop: Wed. Oct. 16th, 2024, Tampa Bay and Florida headlines by WMNF appeared first on WMNF 88.5 FM.

Hurricane Helene, which killed at least 130 people across six states and flooded homes in the Tampa Bay area that had never flooded before, is an example of the kinds of monster storms the United States should expect in the coming decades because of climate change, WLFA-TV Ch. 8 Chief Meterologist Jeff Beradelli says.

Beradelli, who earned a master’s degree in climate change from Columbia University, discussed the long-term impact of climate change in the wake of Hurricane Helene Tuesday (Oct. 1) during an interview on WMNF WaveMakers with Janet & Tom.

Helene created the highest storm surge to hit Tampa Bay in more than 100 years, the third-highest in its history, after hurricanes in 1848 and 1921. And while forecasters accurately predicted the storm surge, it was still a shock to see it, Beradelli said.

“You just don’t know until you see it with your own eyes,” Berardelli  said.

Beradelli said he recently completed a study with the U.S. Department of Energy about the impact of climate change on storms over the next few decades. “It was pretty astonishing actually,” Berardelli said.  He found there could be a 215 percent increase in the number of major hurricanes targeting the United States by 2060. Instead of 100-uear events we will see 30-year events, he said. “The warmer water is sending more storms toward the U.S.,” he said

Hurricane Helene was so deadly because it was so large, he said. Other storms, like Michael, were more intense but not as big. And it was moving fast, so it didn’t dissipate once hitting land. Instead, it slammed into the mountains of North Carolina, unleashing 20 inches of rain on an area that already had received a foot of rain, he said.

But climate change is putting more moisture in the atmosphere, so even summer storms are dumping more water on Florida. This summer, the record for rain in a 24 hours was broken in Tampa.

In general, the earth has 10 percent more water vapor in the atmosphere than 30 years ago. That not only produces more rain; it means this summer was the most humid on record, beating the record set just last year.

What’s unclear, Beradelli said, is how this will affect the insurance market in Florida going forward. “We’re going to see profound effects of hurricanes in Florida,” he said.

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It is always mosquito season in Florida and always a good time to be vigilant against mosquito bites due to the possibility of exposure to disease. On Wed. August 28, MidPoint hosted Dr. Tom Unnasch, Prof. Emeritus, USF College of Public Health, and Dr. Michael Teng, a professor of immunology at the USF School of Medicine to tell us all about the mosquito-borne viruses that are plaguing us in Florida and around the world. This was especially timely as Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, announced this week that he was hospitalized for several days with a case of West Nile Virus that he had caught from a mosquito in his backyard. Dr. Fauci said the virus “hit him like a truck” and it was the “sickest he had ever been from a virus.” We learned that Dr. Fauci’s case was a rare example of a serious bout of the West Nile virus that is more likely to affect the elderly and can result in lasting neurological issues, but which is usually asymptomatic in others. Because so many incidents of West Nile show no symptoms, cases of it are vastly under-reported.

Likewise, another mosquito-borne virus in the news recently caused the death of a person in New Hampshire. Eastern Equine Encephalitis, or EEE,  is a virus that occurs naturally in many types of wild songbirds, including blue jays, tufted titmice, chickadees, catbirds, and cardinals. Birds infected with EEE are considered reservoirs for the disease, as they maintain high levels of the virus even though they don’t develop the disease. It spreads through the bite of an infected mosquito and can affect people of all ages. Unlike West Nile, 30%of people infected with EEE die from it. The symptoms of EEE are similar to many of the other mosquito-borne viruses and include fever, headache, vomiting diarrhea, and even seizures, and there are no known vaccines to prevent it. So, don’t get bit!

The latest plague of things that bite us in Florida is the Oropouche virus or Sloth Fever. This virus is mostly spread by midges or “no-see-ums” and some types of mosquitoes. The symptoms can be sudden fever, severe headaches, chills, joint pain, extreme light sensitivity and a rash that starts on the trunk and spreads to the extremities. Accordig to the FL Dept. of Health, there have been 30 cases of Oropouche virus reported in Florida this year, with 10 of them in the last week alone, including 5 in Hillsborough County. All of the reported cases were found in people who had recently traveled in Cuba. The symptoms of this disease typically last a week, but can recur days or even weeks later. It has been particularly devastating to pregnant women who experienced numerous adverse birth outcomes including miscarriage, fetal death, and microencephaly, or babies born with abnormally small heads. Dengue fever is another mosquito-borne virus that occurs in areas with reported Oropouche virus. There have been 25 cases of locally acquired dengue reported in Florida in 2024 so far, including in Pasco, Hillsborough, and Manatee counties in the WMNF listening area. Hillsborough is currently under a Mosquito-borne disease alert for dengue with 2 cases reported in June. But, the number of travel-related dengue cases is much higher with some 417 cases in Florida with most of them coming from Cuba, Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina.

Climate change is a big contributor to the rise in mosquito-borne diseases. Fortunately, Florida maintains a robust surveillance system for mosquito-borne viruses using Sentinel Chickens that are tested regularly to alert us of the presence of these viruses locally.

According to Dr. Unnasch, our biggest disease danger in the US and Florida right now is from Bird Flu. He worries that we are not adequately surveilling our meat, dairy, and poultry industries to prevent the spread of bird flu which could morph into a pandemic that could rival our experience with Covid-19. There have been 13 cases of human bird flu transmission reported in the US so far, but the dangers of further spread are lurking. The biggest source of concern now is an outbreak in dairy cows that has spread across 8 midwestern states. The virus ravaged the poultry industry since 2022 destroying more than 90 million poultry to contain the spread so chicken and egg prices have risen. Unfortunately, the disease has now jumped from poultry to cows and the US Dept. of Agriculture has been slow to track that jump and slow to share information about the genetic sequencing of the virus which is necessary to develop vaccines and targeted treatments. Some experts are concerned that the USDA has a conflict of interest since their primary mission is to promote American agriculture, not regulate it and they are not equipped to address this threat. There are calls to transfer the response to bird flu to the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control.

As of August 21, 2024, there have been no cases of H5N1 bird flu found in Florida residents or in dairy farms but the virus has infected wild birds, backyard chickens, and at least one dolphin, so vigilance is warranted. Dr. Teng tempered the dangers we discussed by reminding us that the government has improved access to personal protective equipment since Covid and has stockpiled medications like Tamiflu which can be used to treat bird flu, and, since Covid, we have better structures in place to ramp up vaccine development and production if necessary. However, he did warn us that it was very important to avoid raw milk and rare meat, poultry, and eggs to avoid exposure to bird flu. Bird flu is inactivated by heat so cooking to an internal temperature of 165 degrees F is recommended to kill bacteria and viruses.

Listen to the entire show here, or on the WMNF app, or as a WMNF Midpoint podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

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CS for August 19, 2024

On the eve of primary elections in Florida, human rights are on our minds on this World Humanitarian Day. Florida outdoors workers feel like they are suffocating as a state law prohibits providing water and shade to such workers.

Also, commemorating women’s suffrage with the passage of the 19th Amendment stating the right to vote cannot be denied based on sex. The Democratic National Convention will start tonight. History will be made as the process begins nominating Vice-president Kamala Harris for President of the United States.

The choice facing voters? forward or backwards.

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