The Cornell 7 are the tip of the iceberg - We must do more to stop rape

Following renewed coverage of the “Cornell 7” case - where seven college fraternity members allegedly drugged and raped a female student in 2024, were not arrested, and faced only minimal disciplinary consequences - I have been thinking about how huge a societal failure it is that this type of thing continues to happen.

Crimes of the type that occurred at Cornell are not rare. In fact, they are disturbingly common. For example, one university in Florida with an undergraduate enrollment of 14,497 reports that 8 sexual assaults (7 rapes, 1 fondling) occurred in student housing in 2025. As far as I can tell, zero of these crimes were covered in the news, and it’s unclear if any of the perpetrators were arrested or expelled. I only know the numbers from reading the annual Campus Safety Report that the university publishes as required by the Clery Act. The stats are in a little table on page 51.

Dormitory at a state university in Florida

The numbers in any university's Clery Act report are almost certainly an undercounting of the actual number of assaults that have occurred. Sociological research indicates that 6.5% of male college students in the US and Canada commit rape, victimizing 24.6% of female and 6.8% of male undergraduate students.

Based on those numbers, which are credible, we can try to estimate the real number of assaults that occur annually at a given university. For our Florida school:

14,497 students x 0.58 proportion female x 0.246 proportion of females assaulted at some point in college ÷ 4.4 years average time each student is in college = 471 women assaulted per year. This is a horrendous number of horrendous crimes causing long-lasting, serious damage to victim's lives and to society as a whole. The numbers imply that 98.4% of these assaults may be going unreported. A US Justice Department report in 2016 conservatively estimated that 80% of sexual assaults go unreported, but it seems the underreporting of campus assaults may be even more drastic than that. Whether it's 20% of the true amount, or only 1.6% of the true amount, it’s clear that the reported assaults are just the tip of the iceberg.

Many have commented previously on why only small proportion of the assaults committed are reported. I’m not going to review all those reasons, but one of the big ones is fear that the police / authorities won't do anything about it, and that the perpetrator will remain at large, potentially retaliating against his victim(s). We MUST do better about following through with investigation, prosecution, and punishment for the perpetrators of these crimes. (Just having to write an apology essay like 5 of the Cornell 7 had to do is ridiculously inadequate as a punishment.) The act of rape must result in serious, life-altering punishment and shame for the rapist if would-be rapists are to be dissuaded. Ensuring that those serious punishments are delivered should also encourage victims to report.

There are a lot of great organizations like https://rainn.org/ that have been working for decades to fight back against this huge problem, addressing both the institutional failures and the sociological dynamics that allow it to be this bad. I would encourage people whom this bothers to speak up however they can, and work with those organizations to make things better. 

HOT election coming November 3 in Lee County, Florida - How I'm voting

I got my mail in ballot this week for the November 3rd election, and you better believe I'm voting HARD this year. There's A LOT of tricky stuff on the ballot this year, so I hope people will take the time to research the candidates and issues carefully. This is not a time to just "wing it" in the voting booth without having studied. Anyway, here are the things that were on my ballot, how I voted, and why I voted that way. Your decision is your own, of course, but maybe seeing how I thought about it will help you make your choices. 

US Senator-

Angie Nixon (DEM) – She has been outspoken against corruption and the usurpation of power by the super wealthy, and has been outspoken for the rights of working people and the environment. Also, she is not related to Richard Nixon. Her opponent, incumbent Ashley Moody (REP), is a ultra conservative partisan operative who pulls strings to keep the powerful in power and thwart popular initiatives like marijuana legalization, etc. 

Representative for Congress, District 19-

Victor Arias (DEM) – He came from poverty to become a lawyer and civil rights advocate and he seems genuinely committed to empowering everyday people in the community he represents. His republican opponent Jim Schwartzel is a Fox News station owner and Trump-branded propagandist using “hatriotism” enrich himself and offering little of real value to those he proposes to represent.

 

Governor and Lieutenant Governor of Florida-

David Jolly and Gwen Graham (DEM) – I was hoping for someone a little further left, but I think Jolly will manage important issues like affordability, infrastructure, public education, and environmental protection much better than MAGA republican contender Byron Donalds. I saw once saw Donalds give a talk in the atrium of the building where I work and he said, "GULF OF AMERICA" to the cheers and chuckles of all the rich guys in suits and fancy ladies with pearls. Eww.

 

Attorney General-

Jose Javier Rodriguez (DEM) – He seems set to fight for consumer and labor rights and fight AGAINST the corrupt and powerful. This is the opposite of previous Florida attorneys general like Pam Bondi who protected Jeffrey Epstein, and incumbent James Uthmeier, who protected DeSantis’ corruption and tried to rise to MAGA stardom with cruel, taxpayer-money-wasting stunts like Alligator Alcatraz.

 

Chief Financial Officer-

Annette Taddeo (DEM)- She has business experience but also seems to be a genuine advocate for non-rich-people’s rights. I think she’ll be much tougher on corrupt and exploitative businesses and wasteful government projects than her opponent, republican incumbent Blaise Ingoglia, has been. Ingoglia makes a lot of noise about cutting government waste, but really he’s just been squeezing the hell out of low level civil employees while letting government big shots spend unlimited amounts of taxpayer money on stupid stuff like Alligator Alcatraz.

 

Commissioner of Agriculture

Joey Mendoza Atkins (DEM) - Mendoza Atkins is a long shot against much better funded and politically connected opponent, incumbent Wilton Simpson (REP). But one of the reasons I am voting for Atkins is because he has promised to actually follow the pollution-control recommendations of the Blue Green Algae Task force, which includes some scientists I admire. His opponent Simpson has also received hundreds of thousands of dollarsfrom the notorious “Big Sugar” lobby and energy monopoly Florida Power andLight. 

 

State Senator District 28

David Silverberg (DEM) – He is a smart journalist and editor who has been an insightful critic of government corruption and foolishness. His opponent Lauren Uhlich Melo (REP) is a rich Naples real estate broker with a TERRIBLE environmental record in the senate, always voting against stronger environmental protections and pushing bills that would expand urban sprawl.

 

State Representative District 80

William Moskal (DEM) – This guy seems smart and legitimately concerned with working in the interests of the district, protecting the environment and people’s rights instead of just fawning over the next big development scheme. His opponent, Adam Botana (REP) was responsible for a scheme to slice a chunk off of the Estero Bay Aquatic Preserve for a huge luxury marina development. Angry citizens shot down that scheme but Botana needs to pay for it by losing his seat.

 

Supervisor of Elections

Chris Vignieri (DEM) – Vignieri has lots of legal knowledge and experience navigating tricky but important issues as a lawyer for the Department of Children and Families, Suncoast Region. His opponent Jenna Persons-Mulicka (REP) is part of a rich political power couple (husband is a good ol’ boy Lee County Commissioner and they have a huge development / construction business) with all kinds of legal and financial scandals. I can hardly think of a worse person than Persons-Mulicka to supervise elections, so Vignieri is an obviously better choice to ensure elections are fair and by-the-book.

 

Board of County Commissioners District 2

Elliot Taylor (DEM) – Youngish family guy (and FGCU alumnus) who has rightfully called out the dumb aspects of Lee County’s “business as usual” of polluting, poor infrastructure planning, and helping the rich before the poor. Taylor’s webpage makes a big point about protecting wetlands and ensuring that Lee’s “Conservation 20/20” program is maintained as voters intended. His opponent, curmudgeon incumbent Cecil Pendergrass (REP), always votes pro-development, anti-environment and is basically just a rubber stamp for special interests. Out with the old, in with the new.

 

Board of County Commissioners District 4

DeMaria “Princess” Artis (DEM) – Overall she seems more responsible and practical about environmental and infrastructure planning than her opponent Brian Hamman (REP). Hamman is an ideological conservative who always seems to have his head in the sand about how things are really going and ALWAYS chooses sprawling development and special interests over environmental protection. Artis should be better.

 

Retain Justice of the Supreme Court Carlos G. Muniz?

NO – Muniz’ has been appointed to various judgeships by conservative idealogues like Jeb Bush, Ron DeSantis, and Donald Trump, and has earned an ugly reputation for always siding with the rich, powerful, and corrupt, from football player rapists to the scammers behind “Trump University.” Muniz is a tool for protecting rich sleazeballs. Let’s throw him out.  

 

No. 1 Constitutional Amendment Article III, Section 19 – Budget Stabilization Fund

NO – We should keep the maximum allowable amount in this fund at 10%. The nonpartisan League of Women Voters (LWV), and the Florida Education Association (FEA) are both opposed to this amendment, and they are usually good, sober thinkers about this kind of thing. I think voting no will help prevent the legislature from doing weird reckless stuff with our taxpayer money.

 

No. 2 Constitutional Amendment Article VII, Section 3, Article XII – Exemption of tangible personal property on agricultural land from taxation.

NO – This one is written to sound like a favor to farmers, but in practice I think it would be more like a tax shelter for wealthy land barons. LWV and FEA are opposed, too.

 

No. 3 Constitutional Amendment Article VII, Section 4, 6, and 9, Article XII – Increased homestead exemption; Lower cap on increases in non-homestead property assessments

NO – This one is another wolf in sheep's clothing. It is likely to really handicap local government services and is opposed by a wide diversity of groups, including police and fire organizations, civil engineer associations, school associations, etc.

 

County Charter Amendment Referendums

Referendum Providing for the Structure of the County Legislative Branch

YES – This would make it so instead of voting for all Lee County Board of County Commissioners, residents would just vote for the representative for their own district of the county. This will help ensure that individual districts’ local interests are represented. The LWV supports this. https://my.lwv.org/florida/lee-county/voting/single-member-districts

 

County Charter Revision Relating to Setting the Number of Consecutive Terms of Elected Constitutional Officers

NO – This proposal would limit the county sheriff, clerk of courts, property appraiser, tax collector and supervisor of elections to 3 consecutive 4 year terms. That SOUNDS good, but really the problem isn’t that these officers are staying too long, it’s that they’re often lousy in the first place. Shills for special interests are a dime a dozen and easy to replace, while genuinely dedicated public servants are harder to find and potentially worth keeping around for longer. In theory we should be able to vote lousy ones out after a single term anyway, and if we’re not doing that there’s a deeper problem than term limits. Righteous firebrand Marsha Ellis, who is married to one of my buddies at work, has pointed out that this charter revision is a trick so the county can look like it’s cleaning house without really cleaning house. So, no.

 

Mosquito Control District Referendum – MCD to include all of Lee County

NO - This would merge the Fort Myers Beach Mosquito Control District with the overall county district. People on Fort Myers Beach like their local MCD as it is, and it seems to be run economically and effectively. https://www.fortmyersbeachtalk.com/news/community-news/2026/08/fort-myers-beach-mosquito-control-district-under-threat-from-states-merger-bill/ Also, this is being pushed by unscrupulous State Representative Adam Botana (the guy who tried to slice a chunk off of the Estero Bay Aquatic Preserve), and there is plausible speculation that he’s after the FMB MCD property for another of his get-rich schemes.

New sail - 6.5 Ezzy Legacy + Hot Water

Now that I'm a responsible, married, middle-aged adult I'm pretty frugal about my watersports equipment purchases. So I used my ~2015 6.8 Aerotech Phantom sail hard for about a decade, including through at least one professional repair, before finally getting something new yesterday. The new sail is a 6.5 meter squared Ezzy Legacy. I also considered a 6.7 Ezzy Cross, a newer Ezzy freeride sail which Roy at Ace Performer had in stock. But I decided against the Cross for two reasons. 1) It was more expensive than the Legacy. 2) I was nervous about the extremely long "foot" length of the Cross, in which the bottom batten extends beyond the clew of the boom. I thought it might be in the way in wave riding and jibing and stuff.

Anyway, I was gonna try the 6.5 Legacy yesterday right after I bought it, but while idling my rustbucket no-AC minivan at Bonita Beach access #10, waiting for a nice young couple to leave the only available beach parking spot in Robert E. Lee County where only the aristocracy and landed gentry are deemed worthy of beach access, steam started billowing out from my hood and I had to flee to a shady spot to add coolant. I still salvaged a nice SUP session in the tree shade of the Imperial River and only hit one barely-submerged cypress stump at full speed causing one board-deck breaking knee impact and swan dive deep into the black water.

Today, with a full coolant reservoir and the van only making a few worrisome new noises, I headed back to Bonita Beach and had the good fortune to find an open spot at access #1. It didn't look windy enough to foil, but the water was a pretty color and the sun was shining so I figured the seabreeze might strengthen enough to foil while I was out there. The new sail rigged up easy and it looks good. The draft is really deep and close to the mast so the sail's center of effort is way forward. That tends to make sails powerful and light feeling- you don't feel as much "back hand" pull on the boom.

On the water it was definitely non-foiling conditions, but the wind very gradually built. I got up briefly in an isolated gust, and that gave me the gambler's hope of getting some more. Eventually there were some bigger patches of wind and I was able to fly for longer stretches, and even do some foiling jibes. The sail feels nice and stable at speed. I think the built-in shape that it has is better for foiling than the wind-induced shape of the Aerotech Phantom was. We'll see how it is for shortboard sailing once there's some more wind.

One more thing I wanted to say: The water here in South Florida is HOT. It's disturbing and in fact not normal. Doing fieldwork in the Caloosahatchee Estuary last week the thermometer on the fishfinder was saying 92 F - that's 33.4 Celsius - in the water. It would be neat if that heat would kill the germs from the 450,000 gallon (1,703 metric ton) sewage spill in the Caloosahatchee a few weeks ago, but germs like it hot.

The Florida Keys are also experiencing coral bleaching again - the worst since the terrible 2023 bleaching event that killed almost all of the endangered Acropora corals remaining on the reef. There are a lot of graphs and stuff on the NOAA Coral Reef Watch page where you can see the temperature and risk levels for various parts of the planet. I think one of the most telling figures is this "time series graph" which shows the cumulative heat exposure that the corals have had. It's still July but we're at a level now that we didn't get to last year until late August.

Proposed Solutions:

1. We stop CO2 pollution by switching to 100% renewable energy ASAP, and meanwhile we conserve energy by not doing energy-wasting things like building massive dystopian AI datacenters.
2. We plant lots of TREES and stop cutting down the ones we have. It was SO much cooler under the tree canopy of the Imperial River. Typical Florida developers are building for rich snowbirds who aren't here in the summer and have no appreciation for the value of trees, it seems.
3. We implement high tax rates on the richest Lee County residents and property owners, who can afford it, and use the money to buy much more public access along our beaches. Nothing fancy, just dirt/grass parking with tree shade.
4. We improve bike lanes and public transportation and stuff so it's more feasible to get to the beaches without a car at all.
5. We change the name of the county to something better, once we've earned it.

Water Borne: a 1200 Mile Paddleboarding Pilgrimage

Are you known as, "that ______ guy" or "that ______ lady? If so, you have surely been gifted a book, or ten, about that ______ thing, for better or worse. As a standup paddleboarding (SUP) dabbler since 2007 and SUP race enthusiast since 2014 I'm actually surprised that I wasn't given a SUP book until recently. Library and bookstore shelves aren't exactly overflowing with SUP offerings- maybe that's why it took a while. You see, SUP is like tofu- it's very wholesome but (I assume) most people would rather die than read a book about it. I did a cursory search just now and there are literally more books about tofu than there are about SUP. (How to know your ______ is boring AF: there are more books about tofu than ______.)

I'm not a professional writer (my wife is) but I gather that there are a few tricks for turning a boring topic into something more palatable, much as a gifted chef can make tofu nearly edible. 1. Combine it with something totally unrelated and much more interesting. The small town bookstore owner also solves murders. 2. Raise the stakes. It not just a long paddle; it's a very dangerous solo ocean crossing. 3. Twine it into deeply personal or philosophical musings. 4. Use it as a vehicle to explore and opine on interesting aspects of culture, history, science, etc.

Dan Rubenstein's "Water Borne: a 1200 Mile Paddleboarding Pilgrimage," which my mom gave me for Christmas, uses a bit of techniques 2 and 3, but mostly technique 4. Rubenstein is a Canadian journalist who seems to be a thoughtful, responsible, good-hearted person very concerned with environmental conservation, social and economic justice, and other important things now subject to anti-woke backlash in the US. Dan's long, inland paddleboard journey; a circuit on rivers, lakes, and canals from the Great Lakes region to New York City and back, is an impressive logistical and endurance feat. He often paddled ~50 km (30 miles) per day day on a 14' inflatable BadFish sup loaded with camping gear, and he had to deal with strong headwinds, wrong-way river currents, ocean-type waves on the Great Lakes, and "Deliverance" type peril in some run-down urban and rural areas. But he never frames the story in a macho, proving-his-greatness kind of way. He's humble and self-deprecating with dorky dad energy that I resemble and appreciate as a sane antidote to the toxic energy of the egomaniac males like Hegseth and Musk who dominate the news these days.

Picture from a nice TotalSUP article about Dan's Journey

Part of Rubenstein's responsibility is that he's working his ass off doing journalist stuff the entire time he's paddling. Almost every day he has a meeting arranged with some local-to-that-part-of-the-waterway environmental activist, scientist, historian, barge operator, quaint inn proprietor, urban youth outreacher, or other person who is deeply involved in honoring and improving their part of the world. It's inspiring to get a view of all these people in all these places rallying around green and "blue spaces" for ecological restoration, economic revitalization, equitable access, etc. We need that kind of water stewardship everywhere to reverse the harmful effects of pollution, privatization, shoreline "hardening," etc. At the same time, it's exhausting to read through so many sequential accounts of those do-gooders and the similar challenges they're facing, so I found myself reading the book in kind of small doses at a time. Dan also has random encounters with kind, quirky, and occasionally creepy people along the way, which adds some fun and keeps things down to earth.

The most awkward, painful-reflection aspect of reading this book was Rubenstein's constant, critical interrogation of his own privilege as an educated, middle-class, straight white male in a nation that (like the US) gained its riches through exploitation of nature, indigenous people, poor workers, etc. But as awkward as attempts of privileged people to be politically correct / woke always seem to be, I think it's still important that we keep awkwardly working to be better, more humble, more real human beings. The alternative is deepening the harmful divisions in society that prevent human progress and could lead to our destruction, and that's no good.

Anyway, cheers to Dan. Water Borne isn't going to sell like Harry Potter or The Hunger Games, but it's an honest and intelligent book about the hope and challenge of healing our waterways and healing the social-environmental fabric of our world. Two thumbs up from this _______ guy.

Florida Democratic Primary Ballot for August 18, 2026 election - Thoughts

There's an election coming up soon in Florida, and since I signed up to vote by mail I have my ballot now. I'm registered as a democrat, so my version of the ballot lets me vote for candidates in the democratic primary elections, as well as in elections for non-partisan positions like judges and school board members. Interestingly, I also get to choose between two republicans in a "universal primary" for District 5 County Commissioner, because Florida law opens up the primaries to all registered voters if all the primary candidates are from one party.

I tried to do a reasonable amount of a research into all the candidates before I marked my ballot, looking not only at the candidates' own campaign websites, but also at what the local newspapers and trusted pundits were saying about them. The News-Press usually has some local candidate information, and I think it's viewable even to non-subscribers. (I actually subscribed to that newspaper recently, which is the first time I've ever purchased a newspaper subscription. It seems to be a good local news source that covers shit in more detail than you get on the TV news. Also, I know and admire some of the writers a lot, including Amy Bennett Williams and Chad Gillis who have often covered science and environment stories I've weighed in on.)

Anyway, this is what I marked (the X is who I voted for), with a little explanation of why:

United States Senator - 
Angie Nixon (X) 
Alex Vindaman

- Both senate candidates have admirable qualities such as being willing to speak truth to power at personal risk. However, I chose Angie Nixon because of her support for peace in Gaza where my friend Rachel was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003 in a pattern of violence against Palestinian civilians, aid workers, and human rights activists that the US has abetted for far too long. This needs to change. 

US Congressional Representative for District 19 (Byron Donalds' seat) -
Victor Arias
Robert M. Neeld
Howard Sapp (X) - 

- Sapp is a respected local leader who has been in tough political races before. He has also raised the most money.

Governor and Lieutenant Governor -
Evelyn Castillo-Bach
Thomas Eloy Fernandez
Dayna Marie Foster
David Jolly / Gwen Graham 
Dotie Joseph (X)  
Stephann Norman

- Dotie Joseph is an legitimate democrat with 8 years experience in the Florida House. David Jolly is the favorite in this race but he was a republican until recently, which I think is suspicious. 

Chief Financial Officer
Earle Ford
Annette Taddeo (X) 

- Taddeo has political experience and seems to unequivocally support stuff I care about.

Commissioner of Agriculture
Joey Mendoza Atkins (X) 
Donald A. "Don" Prichard

- Mendoza Atkins says he'll actually follow the recommendations of the Blue Green Algae Task force, which includes some scientists I admire. Also, Mendoza Atkins is the only candidate with a website.

Board of County Commissioners District 5
Amanda Cochran REP (X) 
Trish Petrosky REP 

- Cochran is a rural Lee County resident opposed to sprawl and endorsed by the non-partisan "Vote Water" environmental organization. Petrosky on the other hand was appointed by Governor DeSantis, is not really from around here, and is expected to be a rubber stamp for environment-destroying special interests

Circuit Court Judge 20th Group 19
Vera Bergermann (X) 
James Stewart 

- Stewart was appointed by Governor DeSantis. That suggests that Stewart has far right conservative views like DeSantis does. Bergermann was not appointed by DeSantis and is more likely to have independent views.

Circuit Court Judge 20th Group 27
Ryan Kuhl (X) 
Amanda Levy-Reis 

- Levy-Reis was appointed by Governor DeSantis. That suggests that Levy-Reis has far right conservative views like DeSantis does. Kuhl was not appointed by DeSantis and is more likely to have independent views.

County Judge Group 5
Mike Colombo (X) - Not appointed by DeSantis
Javier A. Pachecho - Appointed by DeSantis

- Pachecho was appointed by Governor DeSantis. That suggests that Pachecho has far right conservative views like DeSantis does. Colombo was not appointed by DeSantis and is more likely to have independent views.

School Board Member District 6

Jada Langford Fleming 
India Palencia (X) 

- Fleming is one of those ultra-conservative "anti-woke" crusaders who I think are dumbing down and education and censoring important topics. Palencia is known for standing up for minorities. 

Stop the "rollout" of PLASTIC GRASS at FGCU

College campuses are usually quiet in summer, but Florida Gulf Coast University buzzed this week with an impassioned effort to stop the rollout of PLASTIC GRASS in the central quad. Plastic grass already sneaked its way onto campus in two other places this year, including a 4000 square foot area around the student center that used to be real grass and trees and is now an uninhabitable plastic heat-collector.

While mowed lawn is far from the best type of land cover for nature (you may have seen my other posts advocating for unnecessarily mowed areas to be "rewilded"), it's still WAY better than plastic grass, despite whatever BS hype you might hear from plastic grass salesmen. Some reasons real is better than artificial include:

1. Plastic grass is not alive. Nothing can eat it. Real grass, on the other hand, supports a food chain of bugs and worms and bunny rabbits and things that in turn support birds and other predators.
2. Plastic grass is made from oil in an energy intensive process that contributes to CO2 pollution and other types of pollution.
3. Plastic grass breaks down (quickly in the searing UV of the Florida sun) and introduces microplastic particles and toxic chemical pollutants like PFAS into the soil and water, hurting wildlife and endangering human health.
4. While real grass that's overmanaged with fertilizer, pesticides, watering, etc. can be a burden on the environment, grass actually grows fine in south Florida with no intervention other than mowing. It gets weedy, but that's a good thing because the biodiversity of the weeds leads to more efficient resource use and resilience, and the flowering weeds look pretty and support all sorts of beautiful and important pollinators like honeybees and butterflies.
5. Real grass with no chemicals added can also help sponge-up chemical pollution running off from other areas.
6. Real plants naturally cool the landscape via "evapotranspiration" (wicking water from the soil up through their roots and leaves into the sky), and also by conversion of light energy into chemical energy via photosynthesis. Sunlight hitting plastic grass, on the other hand, just turns into HEAT, making artificial turf areas much hotter than natural grass; even hotter than pavement sometimes. Trees cool better than grass, but grass is still way cooler than plastic. We've known this stuff about the heat problem of plastic turf since the early 1970s, at least, but just to demonstrate it again I deployed a thermometer on the real and fake grass at FGCU last week-

The plastic grass on campus is particularly galling because FGCU, my employer, is conspicuously branded as Florida's "environmental university." Environmental sustainability has been a central part of FGCU's stated goals since its founding in 1997. This may be partly to offset the original scandal of our campus' construction over sensitive wetlands and panther habitat that was supposed to be preserved. (This was part of a trojan horse deal to let land baron Ben Hill Griffin develop a bunch of surrounding property that was also supposed to have been protected. Very Florida.) Anyway, despite the dirty beginnings, FGCU has USUALLY done a good job of being green. We've kept most of the campus as natural preserve areas, we've let native plants grow around our stormwater ponds to the point that they've become diverse wetlands, we've integrated hands-on environmental education into almost all our academic programs, and we've hired a lot of biology, environmental science, environmental engineering, and marine science faculty who've been active in research intended to help protect the environment.

So how did we go so wrong with the plastic grass? I think it's because the business and operations parts of the university, in their enterprising zeal, have developed a very bad habit of making environmentally-consequential decisions about campus management and development without involving any of the environmental experts we have among our faculty. FGCU does have a Sustainability and Resiliency Council co-chaired by a wonderful environmental scientist who I sincerely love, but it doesn't seem like that group can do anything besides make recommendations that get ignored. I understand why the business and operations folks don't like involving faculty. We faculty are a bunch of opinionated know-it-alls who are never quite satisfied with anything, and decision-making processes we're involved in often become slow and painful. Also, we might say "NO" to some big building or project that the expand-the-enterprise folks are giddy about getting underway. Nevertheless, faculty from relevant disciplines MUST be included in decision making processes to avoid these kind of glaring, should-have-known-better, publicly-humiliating mistakes. What's the point of all our big brains and expertise if the people making decisions never ask us what we think?

In an official statement addressing the plastic grass controversy, given for a News-Press story about the plastic grass that I was also quoted in, our university's spokesperson pointed out that the planning folks did send around a survey last year to ask what people would like to see for the campus quad area. I remember the survey. It was pretty open-ended and of course I filled it out and said I'd like the quad area to be kept as natural as possible, and oh by the way please remember to ask us or at least tell us when you're making some big environmental decision. "Would you like us to replace the real grass with plastic grass?" was absolutely NOT one of the questions on the survey, and I highly doubt that any of the other staff or students who filled out the survey said anything remotely like, "I want to see more plastic grass." So I think the decision to use plastic grass was a poor interpretation of whatever feedback the planners got from that survey and one that, again, could have easily been avoided if there was anyone on the decision making committee with even the slightest knowledge and appreciation of science and environmental stuff.

The fight is still on. I have hope that we can stop the plastic-rollout from happening in the main quad, and maybe we can even tear it out of the areas it's already gone in. Some students from our ornithology club made an online petition that you can sign if you want to help. (790 signatures so far!) It's wonderful to see bravery and leadership from the students on these campus environmental issues. I was heartened to see their commentary in this Gulf Coast News TV segment, for example. I'm also excited to see one of our top research students, Anthony Dues Jr. has started a substack blog tackling the topic with a scientifically informed rant. This ain't over.

Sea Breeze / Land Breeze - The Gulf of Mexico Breathing

Florida doesn't have any mountains to look at but we do have some primo clouds. Clouds have interested me ever since I was a kid, but since getting into windsurfing and studying marine science, both of which require learning about the roles of ocean and atmospheric circulation in weather and climate, I've developed a cloud obsession bordering on the unhealthy. Clouds are neat in themselves, but their patterns and changes over time tell an awe-inspiring story of the planet's life; its giant, slow breathing and pulsing movements of water, energy, and heat. One cloud pattern I love to watch in summer in Florida is related to the seabreeze / land breeze cycle that unfolds each day and night.

Sea Breeze is wind that blows from the ocean towards the land. It's driven by solar heating of the land during the day, which causes hot air to rise over the land, drawing cooler air in from the sea. If conditions are right the seabreeze forms tall, billowing clouds as it rises over the land. These are the source of Florida's summer thunderstorms, which are particularly intense over the middle of the state where the Atlantic Coast sea breeze coming from the east collides with the Gulf Coast sea breeze coming from the west.

Land Breeze is the opposite of sea breeze. It's wind that blows from lands towards the ocean, when the ocean is warmer than the land so air is rising over the ocean and sinking over the land. It happens at night, because land cools off faster than water does. So when the sun sets in Florida the thunderstorms over land usually peter out, but majestic thunder clouds may form over the ocean. On summer mornings in Florida, especially on the Gulf of Mexico side, you can often look out and see gorgeous, side-lit walls of thunderclouds that formed over the ocean at night.

I can't see the beach from my apartment complex, but I know which direction to look to see those over-the-Gulf clouds, and they're often spectacular in the morning. Likewise, in the afternoon I look east to see the eruptions of storms forming inland, and I try to time my bike ride home from work to not get caught in them. Below is a comparison of the morning and afternoon skies today, demonstrating the pattern pretty well. (I should note that it's never exactly the same, and there definitely exceptions to the land clouds in the day, sea clouds at night rule, but the exceptions are interesting, too.)

Here's what the morning conditions look like on the iwindsurf.com radar. Land breeze pattern, with the activity over the ocean and nothing happening over land.

Here's what the afternoon conditions look like on the iwindsurf.com radar. Sea breeze pattern, with land heating generating rising air and thunderstorms over the peninsula, but not much going on over the waters.

This is the modeled wind strength and direction for the morning from iwindsurf.com. Air is still flowing off the land out into the ocean.

This is the modeled wind strength and direction for the afternoon from iwindsurf.com. You can see landward flow caused the seabreeze, plus locally increased winds around the thunderstorms.