City of Cape Coral working on project to address canal safetyCollier County mental health center receives $4 million donation
CAPE CORAL City of Cape Coral working on project to address canal safety An older Cape Coral couple drove into a canal last year. Neighbors are now saying something needs to be done about canal safety.
NAPLES Collier County mental health center receives $4 million donation A giant donation is dedicated to providing people with better mental health care in southwest Florida.
LABELLE City of LaBelle under precautionary boil water notice A water main break has the City of Labelle under a precautionary boil water notice.
ESTERO FGCU student wins ice dancing national championship FGCU sophomore Lucas Appel wins his second US Senior Solo Dance National Championship in three years.
Lee County Sheriff’s Office: Parent brings weapon to Lehigh Acres school According to a Lee County Sheriff’s Office report, there is probable cause to believe a woman unintentionally brought a firearm to school.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA Most Wanted Wednesday: Southwest Florida’s most wanted suspects for December 11, 2024 Here are some of Southwest Florida’s most wanted suspects for Wednesday, December 11, 2024.
Second leading cause of chest pain The leading cause of cardiac chest pain is coronary artery disease, which affects over 18 million adults in the United States.
Vicky Bakery opens 26th location, first in Fort Myers A Fort Myers location just opened at 4429 Cleveland Ave., at El Dorado Plaza, just east of the Ginza sushi restaurant.
WINK News’ Matt Devitt, officials address resident flooding concerns In a slide presentation, WINK News Chief Meteorologist Matt Devitt showed surrounding coastal counties have the sensors that are installed and monitored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
FORT MYERS RSW offering remote parking for the holidays Southwest Florida International Airport, RSW, is offering passengers RSWRemote, a reserved holiday parking option.
Lee County man found guilty of manslaughter A 47-year-old man from Lee County has been found guilty of manslaughter after stabbing his neighbor multiple times in 2022.
SNIP Collier volunteer traps her 1000th feral cat A Spay and Neuter Initiative Program has reached a milestone as a Collier County volunteer has captured 1,000 feral cats.
SAINT JAMES CITY Saint James City man sentenced to 5 years for possessing child sexual abuse material A St. James City man has been sentenced to five years for possessing images and videos depicting the sexual abuse of children.
CAPE CORAL Sword-wielding Cape Coral man accused of threatening person with Molotov Cocktail The Cape Coral Police Department arrested a man who allegedly threatened another person with a sword and Molotov Cocktail.
PORT CHARLOTTE Tampa Bay Rays announces spring training season in Port Charlotte The Tampa Bay Rays have announced spring training ticket information for the 2025 spring season in Port Charlotte.
CAPE CORAL City of Cape Coral working on project to address canal safety An older Cape Coral couple drove into a canal last year. Neighbors are now saying something needs to be done about canal safety.
NAPLES Collier County mental health center receives $4 million donation A giant donation is dedicated to providing people with better mental health care in southwest Florida.
LABELLE City of LaBelle under precautionary boil water notice A water main break has the City of Labelle under a precautionary boil water notice.
ESTERO FGCU student wins ice dancing national championship FGCU sophomore Lucas Appel wins his second US Senior Solo Dance National Championship in three years.
Lee County Sheriff’s Office: Parent brings weapon to Lehigh Acres school According to a Lee County Sheriff’s Office report, there is probable cause to believe a woman unintentionally brought a firearm to school.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA Most Wanted Wednesday: Southwest Florida’s most wanted suspects for December 11, 2024 Here are some of Southwest Florida’s most wanted suspects for Wednesday, December 11, 2024.
Second leading cause of chest pain The leading cause of cardiac chest pain is coronary artery disease, which affects over 18 million adults in the United States.
Vicky Bakery opens 26th location, first in Fort Myers A Fort Myers location just opened at 4429 Cleveland Ave., at El Dorado Plaza, just east of the Ginza sushi restaurant.
WINK News’ Matt Devitt, officials address resident flooding concerns In a slide presentation, WINK News Chief Meteorologist Matt Devitt showed surrounding coastal counties have the sensors that are installed and monitored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
FORT MYERS RSW offering remote parking for the holidays Southwest Florida International Airport, RSW, is offering passengers RSWRemote, a reserved holiday parking option.
Lee County man found guilty of manslaughter A 47-year-old man from Lee County has been found guilty of manslaughter after stabbing his neighbor multiple times in 2022.
SNIP Collier volunteer traps her 1000th feral cat A Spay and Neuter Initiative Program has reached a milestone as a Collier County volunteer has captured 1,000 feral cats.
SAINT JAMES CITY Saint James City man sentenced to 5 years for possessing child sexual abuse material A St. James City man has been sentenced to five years for possessing images and videos depicting the sexual abuse of children.
CAPE CORAL Sword-wielding Cape Coral man accused of threatening person with Molotov Cocktail The Cape Coral Police Department arrested a man who allegedly threatened another person with a sword and Molotov Cocktail.
PORT CHARLOTTE Tampa Bay Rays announces spring training season in Port Charlotte The Tampa Bay Rays have announced spring training ticket information for the 2025 spring season in Port Charlotte.
FILE – In this Friday, Aug. 6, 2021 file photo, smoke spreads over Parnitha mountain during a wildfire in the village of Ippokratios Politia, Greece, about 35 kilometres (21 miles), north of Athens. Thousands of people fled wildfires burning out of control in Greece and Turkey on Friday, as a protracted heat wave left forests tinder-dry and flames threatened populated areas and electricity installations. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis) Earth’s climate is getting so hot that temperatures in about a decade will probably blow past a level of warming that world leaders have sought to prevent, according to a report released Monday that the United Nations calls a “code red for humanity.” “It’s just guaranteed that it’s going to get worse,” said report co-author Linda Mearns, a senior climate scientist at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research. “I don’t see any area that is safe… Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.” But scientists also eased back a bit on the likelihood of the absolute worst climate catastrophes. The authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which calls climate change clearly human-caused and “unequivocal,” makes more precise and warmer forecasts for the 21st century than it did last time it was issued in 2013. Each of five scenarios for the future, based on how much carbon emissions are cut, passes the more stringent of two thresholds set in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. World leaders agreed then to try to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 19th century because problems mount quickly after that. The limit is only a few tenths of a degree hotter than now because the world has already warmed nearly 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) in the past century and a half. Under each scenario, the report said, the world will cross the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming mark in the 2030s, earlier than some past predictions. Warming has ramped up in recent years, data shows. In three scenarios, the world will also likely exceed 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times — the other, less stringent Paris goal — with far worse heat waves, droughts and flood-inducing downpours “unless deep reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades,” the report said. “This report tells us that recent changes in the climate are widespread, rapid and intensifying, unprecedented in thousands of years,” said IPCC Vice Chair Ko Barrett, senior climate adviser for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “The changes we experience will increase with further warming.” The 3,000-plus-page report from 234 scientists said warming is already accelerating sea level rise, shrinking ice and worsening extremes such as heat waves, droughts, floods and storms. Tropical cyclones are getting stronger and wetter, while Arctic sea ice is dwindling in the summer and permafrost is thawing. All of these trends will get worse, the report said. For example, the kind of heat wave that used to happen only once every 50 years now happens once a decade, and if the world warms another degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), it will happen twice every seven years, the report said. As the planet warms, places will get hit more not just by extreme weather but by multiple climate disasters that occur simultaneously, the report said. That’s like what’s now happening in the Western U.S., where heat waves, drought and wildfires compound the damage, Mearns said. Some harm from climate change — dwindling ice sheets, rising sea levels and changes in the oceans as they lose oxygen and become more acidic — are “irreversible for centuries to millennia,” the report said. The world is “locked in” to 15 to 30 centimeters (6 to 12 inches) of sea level rise by mid-century, said report co-author Bob Kopp of Rutgers University. Nearly all of the warming that has happened on Earth can be blamed on emissions of heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. At most, natural forces like the sun or simple randomness can explain one- or two-tenths of a degree of warming, the report said. The report described five different future scenarios based on how much the world reduces carbon emissions. They are: a future with incredibly large and quick pollution cuts; another with intense pollution cuts but not quite as massive; a scenario with moderate emissions; a fourth scenario where current plans to make small pollution reductions continue; and a fifth possible future involving continued increases in carbon pollution. In five previous reports, the world was on that final hottest path, often nicknamed “business as usual.” But this time, the world is somewhere between the moderate emissions path and the small pollution reductions scenario because of progress to curb climate change, said report co-author Claudia Tebaldi, a scientist at the U.S. Pacific Northwest National Lab. In a way, the world can stay at the 1.5-degree threshold with extreme and quick emission cuts, but even then, warming would hit 1.5 degrees in a decade, rise a tad and then come back down, said co-author Maisia Rojas Corrada, director of the Center for Climate and Resilience Research in Chile. While calling the report “a code red for humanity,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres kept a sliver of hope that world leaders could still somehow prevent 1.5 degrees of warming, which he said is “perilously close.” “Anything we can do to limit, to slow down, is going to pay off,” Tebaldi said. “And if we cannot get to 1.5, it’s probably going to be painful, but it’s better not to give up.” In the report’s worst-case scenario, the world could be around 3.3 degrees Celsius (5.9 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than now by the end of the century. But that scenario looks increasingly unlikely, said report co-author and climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, climate change director of the Breakthrough Institute. Both extremes are looking less likely, he said. “We are a lot less likely to get lucky and end up with less warming than we thought. We won’t be able to meet Paris Agreement goals without rapid near-term reductions in our emissions,” Hausfather said. “At the same time, the odds of ending up in a much worse place than we expected if we do reduce our emissions are notably lower.” The report said ultra-catastrophic disasters, commonly called “tipping points,” like ice sheet collapses and the abrupt slowdown of ocean currents are “low likelihood” but cannot be ruled out. The much talked-about shutdown of Atlantic ocean currents, which would trigger massive weather shifts, is something that’s unlikely to happen in this century, Kopp said. The report “provides a strong sense of urgency to do even more,” said Jane Lubchenco, the White House deputy science adviser. In a new move, scientists emphasized how cutting airborne levels of methane, a powerful but short-lived gas that has soared to record levels, could help curb short-term warming. More than 100 countries have made informal pledges to achieve “net zero” human-caused carbon dioxide emissions sometime around mid-century, which will be a key part of climate negotiations this fall in Scotland. The report said those commitments are essential. “It is still possible to forestall many of the most dire impacts,” Barrett said.