Category Archives: The Sink or Swim Project

Join Me For Miami Climate Week 2025

Miami is no stranger to rising tides, extreme heat, and the urgent need for climate solutions—but this year, Miami-Dade County is making history by hosting the inaugural Miami Climate Week. This groundbreaking initiative will bring together changemakers, scientists, policymakers, and community leaders to accelerate climate action in South Florida and beyond.

From March 25th to 31st, Miami will host a dynamic lineup of events, panels, workshops, and activations aimed at tackling the biggest environmental challenges of our time. Whether you’re an activist, entrepreneur, student, or concerned resident, this is your chance to be part of the movement shaping Miami’s future in a warming world.

I do hope you can and will join me next week and, as such, I’d like to share a few ways that I’ll be participating.

I am so very proud to share that the University of Miami’s Climate Resilience Institute is anchoring Miami Climate Week by hosting the inaugural Resilience 365 Conference on Monday March 24th and Tuesday the 25th at the University’s Lakeside Expo Center on our Coral Gables campus. This conference brings thought leaders and communities together to discuss solutions to our climate change crisis including climate tech innovations, financing resilience infrastructure, legal topics and ways to foster healthy communities in a warming world.

The speaker lineup at our Resilience 365 Conference next week is simply fantastic. Don’t wait, register today and get involved! To attend or learn more, please click here.

And, speaking of the Conference’s speakers, I’m incredibly honored to share that I will be participating in a few ways. On Monday March 24th, please join me for the Understanding Climate Litigation panel discussion at 3:15 pm in the Lakeside Auditorium. The amazing panelists joining me include Geoffrey Supran, Cinnamon Carlarne, and Katrina Kuh, and the discussion will be moderated by my friend and esteemed mentor Jessica Owley. I’m confident that it will be a stimulating panel about state, federal, and international climate cases and what they might mean to the future of our battle.

The Resilience 365 Conference will also be hosting a Youth Roundtable entitled Empowering the Next Generation where “students, professors, and professionals will engage and share experiences of creating meaningful action around their key interest areas. We will explore the gap between awareness and action, options for getting involved, challenges young leaders are facing, ways to keep calm while carrying on, and more.” I am proud to be serving on the University of Miami’s Climate Resilience Institute’s inaugural Student Advisory Council and would love to see as many young climate activists and concerned citizens join us for what I anticipate will be a lively discussion. If you’re attending the Conference and interested in joining the discussion, please reach out to me!

And if you can’t attend in person please consider following at MiamiClimate365.com.

And if our inaugural Resilience 365 Conference and Miami Climate Week were not enough, I am pleased to share that I have been chosen to present a TED-like Talk at the University of Miami Graduate & Postdoctoral Research Symposium on March 25th.

My talk, entitled Energizing the Sunshine State, will focus on part of my Ph.D. dissertation research that explores Florida’s lack of a renewable energy landscape, why 95% of Florida’s power is generated from non-renewable sources, and how we’ve allowed our fragile state get into such a mess. The talk touches on part of my recent research that will be published later this Spring by the Louisiana State University Journal of Energy Law and Resources. To learn more about the Symposium, please click here.

I am also excited to share that on Wednesday evening I will be moderating a panel discussion at the University of Miami following a public screening of the documentary film Razing Liberty Square. Our panel will include my dear friend, climate powerhouse extraordinaire, Caroline Lewis and my fellow Miami Hurricane and longtime friend Valencia Gunder.

Climate gentrification is a serious, growing issue here in South Florida. The documentary focuses on the lives of residents of the Liberty Square public-housing community after learning that their homes had become part of $300 million revitalization project that was proposed in 2015. It’s a fascinating look at what happens when a neighborhood located on some of the highest-and-driest ground in the region is targeted for new development and the fight over a new form of racial injustice: Climate Gentrification.

Join us on March 26th at 6:30 PM in the University of Miami Frost Seminar Room. Seats are limited to this free event so please register ASAP for what will be a thought-provoking and important discussion following the screening. To learn more and register, click here.

Miami Climate Week is more than just a series of events; it’s a CALL TO ACTION for everyone who cares about the future of our city, state, country, and our planet. Whether you’re attending expert panels, engaging in hands-on workshops, or connecting with local organizations and the people working hard to make a difference in our warming world, your participation matters.

This is our moment, your moment, to shape a more resilient, sustainable world from right here in Miami, ground zero in America’s climate change battle. So please plan to join me, mark your calendars, bring your ideas, and be part of the change.

#AlwaysBelieve, #BeInconvenient, #MyOceanPledge, #RatherBeInCourt, #SaveMiami, Climate Change, Climate Resilience Institute, Delaney Reynolds, Eco Warrior, Energizing the Sunshine State, Global Warming, Graduate & Postdoctoral Graduate Research Symposium, Miami, Miami Climate Week, Miamisearise.com, Politics, Razing Liberty Square, Resilience 365 Conference, Sea Level Rise, Sea Rise, The Sink or Swim Project

2024 UCS Science Defenders

The Union of Concerned Scientists, which is a nonprofit advocacy organization founded by scientists and students at MIT using independent scientific research to inform climate change-related public policy and evidence-based solutions, annually announces its Science Defenders. These are “individuals and groups who use science to improve the world and help people, including those who have taken a stand to protect science and scientists from political or other interference” (UCS).

I’m incredibly proud to share that my good friend and fellow Board Member for The CLEO Institute, John Morales, has been honored as one of the 2024 Science Defenders. As an Emmy Award-winning meteorologist with NBC6, John has become a trusted voice for so many, especially here in South Florida. For decades, he has guided our community through the most difficult moments – hurricanes, extreme weather, and now, the growing impacts of climate change – with clarity, compassion, and integrity.

But what sets John apart is not just his science communication, it’s his courage. Long before it was common in the broadcast world, John used his platform to speak openly about the realities of climate change, educating viewers not just about the forecast for tomorrow, but about the future of our planet. John embodies what it means to be a Science Defender: someone who stands up for truth, for people, and for the role of science in protecting us all.

Congratulations, my friend. Your leadership, voice, and heart continue to inspire so many of us.

You can read more about John and his work from the Union of Concerned Scientists’ announcement below, or by clicking here.

John Morales: Facing Climate Change with Humanity

For people worldwide concerned about the ever more destructive and frequent storms fueled by our changing climate, meteorologist John Toohey-Morales’ honest and emotional reaction to Hurricane Milton’s unprecedented rapid intensification as it approached the Florida coast in October 2024 struck a chord. Millions viewed a clip of him describing the storm’s stunning drop in pressure with a tremor in his voice.

“I used to be a cool cucumber,” Morales says. “But I’ve been in this profession for 40 years, and I don’t feel I can be non-alarmist anymore. Things have changed during those 40 years, and they’re accelerating in the wrong direction. Any little disturbance out there has a chance to go through a rapid intensification cycle and end up being a monster hurricane in a snap. It’s what I saw in Milton.”

As he observed and forecasted the storm last fall, Morales says he feared for the people in Milton’s path whose safety was at risk. And as a meteorologist who consistently and clearly links extreme weather to climate change in his reporting, he also deeply felt in that moment “the frustration of communicating about this for 20-plus years, and not enough being done [about it].”

Morales has been a steady presence on the television screens of millions of south Floridians for decades. He provides his expert analysis on weather events in English and Spanish on WTVJ in Miami—including, by his estimate, hundreds of tropical storms. Although he retired from his position as Chief Meteorologist in 2022, the station retained him as a hurricane specialist; it was in this role that his Milton forecast went viral. Morales’ current responsibilities include serving as a trustee at Cornell University and as an atmospheric and environmental scientist at ClimaData Corporation, a company he founded that specializes in forensic meteorology and weather consulting. He also trains other meteorologists—consistently ranked by audiences as among the most trustworthy sources of scientific information—in science communication.

One year after Morales began his on-television career as a meteorologist, the category 5 storm Hurricane Andrew devastated southern Florida.

“I was the first degreed broadcast meteorologist in any Spanish-language newscast anywhere in the US at the time,” he says. “After Andrew, people began to recognize the need to have a knowledgeable voice providing potentially life-saving weather warnings and forecasts. We’ve come such a long way since then: dozens of degreed meteorologists are on Spanish-language newscasts all over the US.”

Never losing sight of the people put at risk by extreme weather, Morales, who grew up in Puerto Rico, has branched out to also provide information about storms and climate trends in Caribbean countries with ClimaData.

“These are countries with limited resources, facing the increasing negative impacts of climate change head on without a lot of support. Making sure that people are properly served with the correct information so they can save lives and property is important to me.”

#AlwaysBelieve, #BeInconvenient, #MyOceanPledge, #RatherBeInCourt, #SaveMiami, Climate Change, Delaney Reynolds, Eco Warrior, Global Warming, Miami, Miamisearise.com, NBC6, Politics, Sea Level Rise, Sea Rise, The Sink or Swim Project, UCS Science Defenders

Spring Break 2025

I’ve spent this week, my school’s spring break, at home here on No Name Key and once again can’t imagine a more restful, naturally beautiful, and special place on earth than this island.

No Name has always been my magical place to me and the more I travel to faraway places for one reason or another it’s always the serenity and nature of No Name that is on my mind. A two and a half hour drive from madness and the millions of people, cars, and noise that is Miami or 45 minutes to the perpetual party that is Key West, No Name always offers a unique tranquility that touches my senses in ways that fill my heart and mind, and this week was no exception.

In addition to some writing and preparing for a number of events in the coming weeks including the University of Miami’s inaugural Resilience 365 Conference (more on that in a future post), my “busy” schedule this week included walks in the woods, time on the water, and, despite a chill in the air, diving in the water too.

As I hiked deep into our pineland forests, pregnant Key Deer does worked with feverish purpose to build their nests out of harm’s way in time for the birth of their fawns that typically arrive in April. It’s a special and important time of year for No Name’s principal residents, our beloved Key Deer, and they seemed particularly prevalent. That’s good news following how many were lost to Hurricane Irma, and before that to the screwworm disease, but I am deeply concerned that their home here, the only place they have lived since the end of the ice age, will disappear in the decades ahead due to sea level rise.

As peaceful as it is here, I was never truly alone. Adolescent tarpon kept me company on my kayaking excursions offshore, making a swooshing sound as they rolled on the surface for air in a way that made me think I was at a musical concert. And on a day that I took our boat out with no destination in mind other than to enjoy the salt laced wind in my face and lungs I was greeted by a pod of porpoise that included a newborn calf. Time, as so often happens here, froze while I was enraptured in a world where the blue waters and sky seamlessly stitched together as one and their division was only apparent where those majestic animals breached for air in between.

And the bird life this time of year on No Name is simply stunning. Great White and Blue Herons everywhere. Ibises busy foraging for food up and down the water’s edge. A bald eagle from its nest on neighboring Big Pine Key cruising by with wings that seem to fill the sky. Brown pelicans, down for the winter, patrolling the shoreline ever in search of their next meal.

The nature here is so abundant, it’s literally everywhere. While admiring a Great White Heron that lives on the point of our peninsula I noticed a three foot alligator that when I’d seen her last year was just a baby. And here she was, fully three feet long, hunting her next meal by silently cruising the mangrove roots that disappear into the water where the snapper and snook live. And, no sooner than I was thinking about how she’d grown up so fast, the “clouds” in the water off in the distance signaled that a manatee was churning up the bottom’s seaweed and about to motor past me. He was at least six, perhaps seven, feet long, a foot or two under the surface, and while gigantic he was at the same time oddly graceful as he glided along his way.

And if daytime here this week was not sufficient nourishment, the night sky produced a commanding performance. With a background painted in pure black, the darkest black I’ve ever seen, the stars were so brightly illuminated that it was as if diamonds were covering the sky while performing some sort of celestial orchestra. Just magnificent.

And speaking of my No Name neighbors, I also had the chance this week to read Kristie Killam’s new book, Stories of Nature From the Florida Keys: A Park Rangers Adventures in Paradise, Behind the Lens and Through the Seasons. Kristie has long lived on No Name and spent her professional career as a marine biologist, environmental science teacher, and park ranger for the Florida Keys National Wildlife Refuges including most recently at the National Key Deer Refuge that’s around the corner from No Name. The book is filled with wonderful stories about dozens of animals that live or visit No Name and the surrounding region, but the book’s highlight are the exceptional photographs she’s taken and fill its pages. If you ever need a dose of No Name’s beauty, then a copy of Kristie’s book will surely fill your soul until you can visit in person.

#AlwaysBelieve, #BeInconvenient, #MyOceanPledge, #RatherBeInCourt, #SaveMiami, Blue Heron, Climate Change, Delaney Reynolds, Eco Warrior, Global Warming, Great White Heron, Miami, Miamisearise.com, Politics, Sea Level Rise, Sea Rise, The Sink or Swim Project
1 2 3 … 61