Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more.
Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more
65 Hunting Ridge, now yours for $6.950 million. Built in 1997 by Aberdeen who have an excellent reputation, its owners have been trying to unload it since 2011, when they priced it at $10.750 million. It's a lot of house: 6 acres, 8 bedrooms, 10 baths, but it's on Hunting Ridge, and that's a problem.
No, global warming is not responsible for polar bears and grizzlies cross-breeding: they've been doing the dirty for a long, long time.
One of the many damaging effects of climate change put forward by scientists is that shrinking habitats are causing polar and grizzly bears to mate more.
This hybridisation could dilute polar bears' DNA which will further drive down the animals' already dwindling numbers, experts suggest.
But a new study reveals that this inter-breeding is natural and is in fact not a consequence of global warming.
Such hybrids among bears are not as rare as we have hitherto assumed,' said study lead author Professor Dr Axel Janke of the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center in Frankfurt.
It had previously been assumed climate change causes grizzlies or 'brown bears' to invade northern regions while polar bears are pushed onto the sea ice later than usual.
The new results show however that an abundant flow of genes among different bear species occurred plenty of times in the past.
Just yesterday we learned that the water flowing over the Antarctic ice shelf was a phenomenon that's been occurring for thousands of years, not a few decades, as the warmest "scientists" have told us; tomorrow will we see the "severe weather" fraud debunked?
As I keep saying, if global warming is actually real and capable of scientific proof, why do its advocates keep lying about it?
Settled science from google, which has vowed to fight "fake news"
Gee, maybe the market for $16 million homes is different from, and better than that for $18 million ones
The builders of 11 Round Hill Club Road, on the market since 2015 and originally priced at $17.950 and later dropped to $16.950, have parted ways with the architect's brother as their agent and hired someone else, and lowered its price to $15.950. Both agents are highly competent, so my suggestion to the builders is that they look at their price, not the agents' efforts on their behalf. As it is, they remind me of Hillary's search for someone to blame for her losing the election.
Of course, that's not to completely rule out a Russian conspiracy here, I just think it unlikely.
21 Hurlingham Drive - kockey rink or not, it still wouldn't sell at $12.4
But still, you didn't call, you didn't write .... Oshrat Carmiel has an article out in Bloomberg reporting that, astonishingly, as prices have dropped, Greenwich homes are selling again. Which is true, as far as it goes, but I do wish New York reporters, even good ones like Oshrat, would occasionally call me (and you have my number, Oshrat) to discuss the spin that's put on some of the sales data. For instance, the article cites this report of the sale of former Blackstone Group's James Mossman home at 21 Hurlingham Drive, in Conyers Farm:
On Hurlingham Drive, a seven-bedroom home on 13 acres (5.3 hectares) [Oshrat, you know I love you, but most of us aren't Israelis, and don't know a hectare from a vector, and couldn't care less - see? You should have called me; I'd have saved you the calculation] with a 3,000-bottle wine cellar, a tennis court that converts to a hockey rink and a globe-shaped observatory with retractable roof, sold for $8 million. It was previously listed at $8.95 million and $8.495 million.
And that's accurate enough, but it's one of the sales cited by Carmiel's sources to support their claim that homes are selling for 92% of their initial price, and spending an average of "just" 292 days on the market. In fact, 21 Hurlingham started at $12.4 million in 2014, and lingered for 949 days before finding a taker; and that's entirely typical of what's going on in the high end of the market. The firms spinning this stuff take the last asking price, and the last spell on the market, and calculate their numbers from there - that's a fine thing for their selling customers, but does it really serve their buyers? Assuming they also represent buyers, of course, and perhaps they don't, really.
All that said, Oshrat's grasped the basic principle of what's going on out here: lower prices, more sales.
UPDATE: Oshrat reads this column and just called to advise me that the article's been updated to include the original starting price of 21 Hurlingham. In fact, that just makes her point stronger: Greenwich high-end homes are selling at large discounts. Or they aren't selling at all.
RELATED THOUGHT: One phenomenon that's gone unremarked upon, here and elsewhere, is the huge number of properties being sold in the $1.1 - $2.5 range in Old greenwich and, especially Riverside, to end users who are building new custom homes worth, today, maybe $4 - $.5 million. Touring Riverside over Easter weekend, I suddenly realized (it's been a gradual process) that even the older, modest areas have been converted to luxury housing. That's what's driving the low-end market in the eastern part of Greenwich; even more than builders doing spec houses, I thin. It will be interesting to see what happens to these construction projects when they're put up for sale in 5-10 years, as used houses Will they hold their value? Stay tuned..
Al Gore, call your office
WSJ: Water on Antarctic ice shelves a more widespread, older phenomenon than thought
Scientists find meltwater movement has been happening for decades, not always a ‘death to ice shelves’
Networks of lakes and streams formed from melted ice are more common in Antarctica than previously believed, implying that current models to understand how quickly the continent’s ice might melt and raise sea levels are too simple, scientists have found.
Looking at several decades’ worth of satellite imagery and aerial photography of the whole continent, researchers saw widespread lakes and streams on the continent’s ice shelves for the first time, as well as a meltwater river system and waterfall. They described the findings in two papers published this week in the journal Nature.
Every year during the summer, some of the ice on Antarctica melts and can pool in the old snow on top of the ice shelves and form ponds, before refreezing in the winter.
Meltwater collecting in ponds on the surface of ice shelves acts “as a jackhammer” to fracture the ice, says Robin Bell, a geophysicist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, lead author on one of the papers. When ice shelves, the edges of Antarctica’s ice sheets that float on top of the ocean, break up and collapse as a few on the northern Antarctic Peninsula have done, they allow the ice on land to flow into the water as well, contributing to sea-level rise.
The new research shows that the meltwater doesn’t only stand still on Antarctica’s ice, as current models of ice-sheet melting assume, says Dr. Bell. She describes a river of meltwater on Antarctica’s Nansen Ice Shelf that ends in a waterfall into the ocean. Satellite data show the river formed in six of the eight summer melt seasons between 2006 and 2015, and polar expedition records from 1909 and 1912 that Dr. Bell examined describe meltwater streams on the ice shelf.
But the science is settled and the computer models are unimpeachable, according to these scare headlines from Google:
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