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Alachua County Climate Summit to be held Nov. 16

Press release from Alachua County

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Alachua County is hosting a Climate Summit at the Santa Fe College Blount Center (530 W. University Ave., Gainesville) on Saturday, Nov. 16, 2024, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. This Climate Summit is open to the public. Due to space limitations, attendees are encouraged to register online.

The event allows the public to provide feedback on the County’s draft Climate Action Plan (CAP) strategies and initiatives. The CAP is our proactive response to the projected impact of climate change on our community. The County hopes to adopt a final plan in 2025. Built around our Climate Vulnerability Assessment, the CAP’s purpose is to guide, develop, and cultivate environmentally, socially, and economically resilient strategies and equitable solutions to climate change for the whole community. 

Guest speakers include award-winning environmental journalist and author Cynthia Barnett; retired TV20 Meteorologist Bill Quinlan; Gainesville Resiliency Office Dr. Dan Zhu; Alachua County Environmental Protection Department Director Stephen Hofstetter; Nathan Crabbe, editor of The Invading Sea; and more.

The goals of the summit are to share research findings and resources with county residents and decision-makers and gather community feedback, which will be used to finalize the plan.

  • Evidently the definition of “summit” has changed since the days of Reagan-Gorbachev or Bubba Clinton-Yeltsin, not to mention Kennedy-Khrushchev. Now a “summit” is just a public gathering of peudointellectual onanists.

  • Can you believe the crap this BOCC wastes money on?

    I’m not talking only the “Summit” specifically, but the fact that they unashamedly have spent taxpayer money on a 38 page “Climate Vulnerability Assessment.” They pay the Alachua County Environmental Protection Department Director (Stephen Hofstetter) a salary of $120,765/year (you may look it up on govsalaries.com, go to Alachua County FL) and although the actual Assessment refers to “the team’s research” the team is not identified, nor the cost of the Assessment, or who ordered it, but it does list a lot of authoritative web pages as resources! Woooo Hooo!

    Everyone needs a job with Alachua County!

    • Somehow I don’t think the majority of Chronicle readers check the right “boxes.”
      I guess we could fudge it a bit…worked for Wheeler and Alford.

    • Don’t be an idiot.

      Since 2007, when the American Association of Petroleum Geologists rescinded their doubting statements on climate change, no major scientific organization in the world (about 200 and including all National Academies of Science and the American Association of Science) has backed off on their endorsements of the reality of climate change caused by human activity and the threat to the world’s populations due to these changes.

      Whoever you are listening to, they are in dispute with all of those scientific organizations and probably politically motivated idiots or just crackpots.

      Yes, the earth has changed since it’s “birth”, but think about rapid change to the environment under which we humans have flourished and the possible impact on agricultural lands – with existing national borders defined by or straddling them – and on the built environment, most of which is on the waters edge for obvious historic reasons.

      We need not worry about the “earth” which you correctly note has changed significantly over time, and which will adapt to varying conditions with new species in the future. Life is adaptable. We should worry about our survival in it and that means your kids and grandkids and their kids. Shaking the apple cart we thrive on is not a good idea.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statements_by_major_scientific_organizations_about_climate_change

    • Dh, you are absolutely correct. Yes, we can do better in controlling solution. But unless every country is in agreement it will net work.

  • All of these modeled projections are wrong because scientists refuse to properly include solar related factors. They blame my SUV, t-bone steak, and green yard while ignoring corporate industrial pollution and the cycles of that big as$ star. But again, anyone who doesn’t have their head in the sand knows that most scientists, like pollsters, always provide the conclusion that they were paid to provide.

    • You hit the nail on the head. More climate crisis BS to go with their other contrived crises (Covid, Gun violence, unaffordable housing, food deserts, democracy under attack) all designed to control the lemmings who lack critical thinking.

      • Doofus, over 1 million Americans died from Covid and of those, most were people like you who wouldn’t get vaccinated. We have the highest rate of gun deaths in the developed world, and it’s not even close, and they are the greatest cause of deaths among our kids. Since the 2008 crash, home construction has not kept up with population in the US. Food deserts?

        Democracy? – We have millions of idiots ready to vote for the guy who lost the last election and tried to overturn the results, with most in his party now getting line. In fact our local congressional representative’s 1st vote in the House was to overturn the last election as part of a conspiracy involving most of her fellow House Republicans. That’s treason.

        • Look up “lil yummy.”

          The majority of those shootings aren’t being orchestrated by 2nd Amendment supporters, they’re by felons who’ve decided to – KEEP VIOLATING THE LAWS. It’s really sad when you can’t have a BBQ in your backyard, or enjoy some time downtown without being shot. Even sadder are the numbers of youth today who have no respect for authority and lack the discipline to know not to use firearms. Stop the blame game.

          • US among countries in the world: #1 in gun ownership (Yemen $2), #1 by gun deaths among developed countries, #1 by incarceration rates, #1 for kids’ deaths by guns and guns kill more kids here than any other cause.

            Do the math You voted and figure it out.

            It’s not hard.

    • Yeah, no doubt the scientists who study climate have not thought about “solar factors”, and are all just part of a conspiracy involving thousands of them falsifying results, even though scientists have to produce their methodology and their results have to be repeatable by other scientists to be accepted as valid.

      Add to that the fact that those we knew in college who were primarily interested in making a quick buck went in to the sciences, not business or law. We all know the type.

        • Jazzman- I never said they aren’t aware of it. I said it isn’t properly included in modeling… and it isn’t talked about by mainstream media and government apparatchiks. Read about their models below — solar cycles are not included. Solar cycles, especially sunspot cycles, have a huge impact on everything living including us and the earth. The weakening ionosphere is causing just as much chaos. Experts know this…do the research! The related information is absolutely suppressed to the masses…even you are unaware of this issue.

          Climate Modeling – Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory:
          https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/climate-modeling/

          Climate Models – MIT Climate Portal:
          https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/climate-models

          Climate Change Modeling – American Meteorological Society:
          https://www.ametsoc.org/index.cfm/ams/about-ams/ams-statements/statements-of-the-ams-in-force/climate-change1/

          • Jazzman you stated:
            “…all just part of a conspiracy involving thousands of them falsifying results, even though scientists have to produce their methodology and their results have to be repeatable by other scientists to be accepted as valid.”

            We are talking about climate modeling. By nature models are purely hypothetical and cannot be proved or disproved for a long time. Why are you conflating the scientific method with computer modeling? Also, let’s not forget about the tragic history of climate modeling over the past 50 or so years.

          • I’ll also add volcanic activity to the missing factors in our current climate modeling.

            We know that a single volcanic eruption can spew more CO2 in one day than the entire world puts out in one year.

            Case in point: the 2022 Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai eruption. Pre to post eruption CO2 level measurements “..increased 2ppm equaled a whole year’s CO2 emission on Earth”
            https://phys.org/news/2022-02-tonga-eruption-carbon-dioxide-air.html

            Why exclude volcanic activity from the computer models too? It’s a scam, Jazzman. Plan and simple.

          • “A new NASA climate simulation suggests that extremely large volcanic eruptions called “flood basalt eruptions” might significantly warm Earth’s climate and devastate the ozone layer that shields life from the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation.

            The result contradicts previous studies indicating these volcanoes cool the climate. It also suggests that while extensive flood-basalt eruptions on Mars and Venus may have helped warm their climates, they could have doomed the long-term habitability of these worlds by contributing to water loss….”

            https://www.nasa.gov/earth-and-climate/nasa-simulation-suggests-some-volcanoes-might-warm-climate-destroy-ozone-layer/

          • Slice, your arrogance in assuming:

            1. You know more about climate science than the literally thousands around the world credentialed and studying it and for whom being right is their primary value to the human race, their colleagues, the recorded history of scientific knowledge, and themselves is staggering.

            2. The thousands of scientists studying this phenomenon and the institutions that pay them – yeah, they could have done better financially with an easier to get MBA than that Phd in Atmospheric Physics it took a decade to get – are all corrupt and in on a scheme is both ridiculous, impossible to believe they could get away with it, and indicates both your cynicism and gullibility to believe such nonsense. If you think such a conspiracy could be held across the multitudes of people who practice the science on which well over 97% of researchers agree on the basics and without spin off of competing ideas and outright challenging of the consensus on the basics, your judgement about humans – put aside the science – is way off.

            Yes, scientists and the scientific consensus can be wrong, but that’s why open information and repeatable procedures are essential rules of scientific practice. And that’s putting aside the fact that most humans are not corrupt chiselers and need to believe in the value and integrity of their work.

          • “…..According to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the current scientific consensus is that long and short-term variations in solar activity play only a very small role in Earth’s climate. Warming from increased levels of human-produced greenhouse gases is actually many times stronger than any effects due to recent variations in solar activity.

            For more than 40 years, satellites have observed the Sun’s energy output, which has gone up or down by less than 0.1 percent during that period. Since 1750, the warming driven by greenhouse gases coming from the human burning of fossil fuels is over 270 times greater than the slight extra warming coming from the Sun itself over that same time interval.2….”

            https://science.nasa.gov/earth/climate-change/what-is-the-suns-role-in-climate-change/

          • Government sponsored consensus science knows best, right? Didn’t you learn anything during the Covid operation? Just because the government gives certain voices a megaphone does not make them right. It’s actually called propaganda. Just like with Covid, the coordinated climate change agenda is about control and reduction.

          • Seek help Slice. I covered your gullible cynicism above and have many times shown you the stats on Covid and the vaccine.

          • Jazz the guy does have a point. It is curious why volcanic activity and solar activity are absent from the official climate models. Even if they only play a small role (as you and your links say) why would that data be left out completely? My guess is that volcanoes and the sun actually play a huge role compared to you and I. Many scientists agree with that too btw.

  • How much does this private party with lunch cost us? They are just talking and talking and talking. If you care, do something. Don’t waste our time and money sending another letter to the President. And if you can squeeze it into your laid back schedules, pay the bills for the county and city. These over paid people can bring their own lunch, coffee, etc.

    • Less than the last 2 Gulf generated hurricanes that went from tropical storms to cat 4 in no time.

    • Thanks for the links Orwood.

      The 1st one with Dan Rather is spot on, as true today as it was then, and you’ll notice that while it appeared 42 years ago, no one said “end of the world” or predicted a time for that event.

      The 2nd is BS, but the problem for your point of view is that the scientific community did not say freezing was the problem, journalists misinterpreting scientific research did.

      ” The supposed “global cooling” consensus among scientists in the 1970s — frequently offered by global-warming skeptics as proof that climatologists can’t make up their minds — is a myth, according to a survey of the scientific literature of the era.

      The ’70s was an unusually cold decade. Newsweek, Time, The New York Times and National Geographic published articles at the time speculating on the causes of the unusual cold and about the possibility of a new ice age.

      But Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center surveyed dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles from 1965 to 1979 and found that only seven supported global cooling, while 44 predicted warming. Peterson says 20 others were neutral in their assessments of climate trends.

      The study reports, “There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age.

      “A review of the literature suggests that, to the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists’ thinking about the most important forces shaping Earth’s climate on human time scales.”….”

      https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=4335191&page=1#:~:text=%E2%80%94%20%2D%2D%20The%20supposed,was%20an%20unusually%20cold%20decade.

  • Come and yell, “I need climate reparations!” everybody. 🤡👿👹👺💩DNC

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