Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more.
Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more
Lindsay Vonn retires, “Body broken beyond repair”.
What an incredible skier. She’s just 33, and while that’s old for a competitive skier, she’s just the age of my older daughter Katie — a kid, to my mind. I do hope she’s wrong about being irreparably broken, and wish her a strong, fun life apre ski.
85 Round Hill Road, listed at $7.495 million, pulled in 2009, and returned to the market in 2012 at $6.695, has sold for $4.5 million.
Tow appraises it at $6.366.
i blame bush
Decries “attack” on Jussie Smollett. Okay, I’d never heard of the guy either, but he’s a gay black comedian who claims to have been viciously attacked by two white men who broke his ribs, broke his nose, hung a noose around his neck and doused him with bleach, all while screaming homophobic slurs and shouting, “this is MAGA country!”.
There was much to raise doubts about this story in the first place, including the fact that Smollett’s attackers were supposedly lying in wait for him, despite his arriving in Chicago five hours later than scheduled due to a flight cancellation — that takes patience — but new details keep arising that makes it look more and more like a fake hate crime, including: he waited 40 minutes before calling the police and when they did arrive, he was still wearing the noose, he refused to let the police see his cellphone, demanded that they turn off their body cams, refused transportation to the hospital and drove himself, there’s no evidence of broken ribs and the police, despite scouring hours of surveillance tapes, can find no evidence of any attack. Certain Chicago policemen are calling “bullshit”, and you can read that here.
Was Jussie up to something else, and decided to blame whatever befell him on white racists? My guess is yes, but events will tell. I suspect it will turn out that Trump had no reason to condemn a non-event, but again, politically, he had nothing to lose.
Publius sends along this link to a recent article from Watt’s Up with that?
Mathematical modeling illusions
The global climate scare – and policies resulting from it – are based on models that do not work
Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris
For the past three decades, human-caused global warming alarmists have tried to frighten the public with stories of doom and gloom. They tell us the end of the world as we know it is nigh because of carbon dioxide emitted into the air by burning fossil fuels.
They are exercising precisely what journalist H. L. Mencken described early in the last century: “The whole point of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be lead to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
The dangerous human-caused climate change scare may well be the best hobgoblin ever conceived. It has half the world clamoring to be led to safety from a threat for which there is not a shred of meaningful physical evidence that climate fluctuations and weather events we are experiencing today are different from, or worse than, what our near and distant ancestors had to deal with – or are human-caused.
Many of the statements issued to support these fear-mongering claims are presented in the U.S. Fourth National Climate Assessment, a 1,656-page report released in late November. But none of their claims have any basis in real world observations. All that supports them are mathematical equations presented as accurate, reliable models of Earth’s climate.
It is important to properly understand these models, since they are the only basis for the climate scare.
….[T] oday’s climate models account for only a handful of the hundreds of variables that are known to affect Earth’s climate, and many of the values inserted for the variables they do use are little more than guesses. Dr. Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysics Laboratory lists the six most important variables in any climate model:
1) Sun-Earth orbital dynamics and their relative positions and motions with respect to other planets in the solar system;
2) Charged particles output from the Sun (solar wind) and modulation of the incoming cosmic rays from the galaxy at large;
3) How clouds influence climate, both blocking some incoming rays/heat and trapping some of the warmth;
4) Distribution of sunlight intercepted in the atmosphere and near the Earth’s surface;
5) The way in which the oceans and land masses store, affect and distribute incoming solar energy;
6) How the biosphere reacts to all these various climate drivers.
Soon concludes that, even if the equations to describe these interactive systems were known and properly included in computer models (they are not), it would still not be possible to compute future climate states in any meaningful way. …..
Although governments have funded more than one hundred efforts to model the climate for the better part of three decades, with the exception of one Russian model which was fully “tuned” to and accidentally matched observational data, not one accurately “predicted” (hindcasted) the known past. Their average prediction is now a full 1 degree F above what satellites and weather balloons actually measured.
In his February 2, 2016 testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space & Technology, University of Alabama-Huntsville climatologist Dr. John Christy compared the results of atmospheric temperatures as depicted by the average of 102 climate models with observations from satellites and balloon measurements. He concluded: “These models failed at the simple test of telling us ‘what’ has already happened, and thus would not be in a position to give us a confident answer to ‘what’ may happen in the future and ‘why.’ As such, they would be of highly questionable value in determining policy that should depend on a very confident understanding of how the climate system works.”
Similarly, when Christopher Monckton tested the IPCC approach in a paper published by the Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2015, he convincingly demonstrated that official predictions of global warming had been overstated threefold. (Monckton holds several awards for his climate work.)
…. As Science and Environmental Policy Project president Ken Haapala notes, “the global climate models relied upon by the IPCC [the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] and the USGCRP [United States Global Change Research Program] have not been verified and validated.”
An important reason to discount climate models is their lack of testing against historical data. If one enters the correct data for a 1920 Model A, automotive modeling software used to develop a 2020 Ferrari should predict the performance of a 1920 Model A with reasonable accuracy. And it will.
But no climate models relied on by the IPCC (or any other model, for that matter) has applied the initial conditions of 1900 and forecast the Dust Bowl of the 1930s – never mind an accurate prediction of the climate in 2000 or 2015. Given the complete lack of testable results, we must conclude that these models have more in common with the “Magic 8 Ball” game than with any scientifically based process.
While one of the most active areas for mathematical modeling is the stock market, no one has ever predicted it accurately. For many years, the Wall Street Journal chose five eminent economic analysts to select a stock they were sure would rise in the following month. The Journal then had a chimpanzee throw five darts at a wall covered with that day’s stock market results. A month later, they determined who preformed better at choosing winners: the analysts or the chimpanzee. The chimp usually won.
For these and other reasons, until recently, most people were never foolish enough to make decisions based on predictions derived from equations that supposedly describe how nature or the economy works.
Yet today’s computer modelers claim they can model the climate – which involves far more variables than the economy or stock market – and do so decades or even a century into the future. They then tell governments to make trillion-dollar policy decisions that will impact every aspect of our lives, based on the outputs of their models. Incredibly, the United Nations and governments around the world are complying with this demand. We are crazy to continue letting them get away with it.
Dr. Jay Lehr is the Science Director of The Heartland Institute which is based in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition
Build the Wall!
Randy procreators ruining one of the world’s most popular nudist beaches, Es Cavillet in Iberia
Tourists hooking up on Ibiza’s most famous nudist beach are causing massive damage to the island’s protected sand dunes, furious environmentalists have claimed.
The white sands of Es Cavallet are so beautiful they have become a haunt for millions of tourists, including those who want to get intimate on holiday.
But now campaigners say the steamy sessions are to blame for the erosion of the famous, but delicate, dunes which are part of Ses Salines Natural Park.
Geologists and biologists say that the excessive sexual activity is causing damage which can’t be undone and claim unbridled passion has turned the zone into an “outdoor riding arena.”
The sexual activity is “degrading” the landscape and a unique geological system, they say.
Island newspaper Diario de Mallorca says the protected areas of the beach are closed off with fencing but cruisers are jumping over them on a daily basis.
Biologist Joan Carles Palerm has told Diario de Mallorca: “Free access like this is causing the break-up of the dunes and their structures.”
“The system that maintains them is very complex and any alteration, such as this continuous activity, fatally affects them.
The sex is said to be uprooting fragile plants on the sand which are vital for the environment.
This leaves gaps which are then invaded by the wind and the sand dunes start to erode.
Geologists say people have been warned not to jump the fences but there is still a “non-stop frenzy.”
They say an information campaign was tried several years ago but visitors ignored the advice and even became aggressive.
Patrols are being ruled out because unless they can be done on a daily basis, cruisers would go away one day but return the next.
Well, they’re cuter than babies, and come in fluorescent colors!
Don’t wanna hurt no caterpillars. fr sure.
Democratic Virginia Del. Kathy Tran introduced “House Bill No. 2495 – Fall cankerworm; spraying prohibited during certain months” on Jan. 9, the same day as “House Bill No. 2491 — Abortion; eliminate certain requirements.”
Tran came under fire Tuesday for her support of legislation that would allow an abortion to be performed just moments before the birth of a child. (RELATED: VA Considering Bill Legalizing Abortion Until 40 Weeks In Pregnancy)
It’s possible to be somewhat ambivalent towards legal early abortion yet still shriek in horror at the idea of ripping up and discarding 9-month-old fetuses from their mothers’ wombs. At least, that seems to be the position of the majority of Americans polled.
But just last week the Democrats in NY state rose to their feet in thunderous applause and even lighted up the WTC in pink lights to celebrate the passage of a law only slightly less restrictive than this Virginia bill. We’re becoming a savage nation.
(UPDATE: the proposed bill was tabled by the committee hearing it, by a vote of 5-3, with all three Democrats voting in favor of it.)
That was the now infamous conclusion of an article in The Independent back in 2000 and repeated as non-fake news around the world, even in the editorial section of the NYT.
Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past – Environment – The Independent
By Charles Onians – Monday 20 March 2000 –
Britain’s weather ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: Snow is starting to disappear form our lives. Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain’s culture, as warmer winters – which scientists are attributing to global climate change – produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.
The first two months of 2000 were virtually free of significant snowfall in much of lowland Britain, and December brought only moderate snowfall in the South-east. It is the continuation of a trend that has been increasingly visible in the past 15 years: in the south of England, for instance, from 1970 to 1995 snow and sleet fell for an average of 3.7 days, while from 1988 to 1995 the average was 0.7 days. London’s last substantial snowfall was in February 1991.
Global warming, the heating of the atmosphere by increased amounts of industrial gases, is now accepted as a reality by the international community. Average temperatures in Britain were nearly 0.6°C higher in the Nineties than in 1960-90, and it is estimated that they will increase by 0.2C every decade over the coming century. Eight of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the Nineties.
However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.
Almost immediately, of course, snow reappeared in Britain, The Independent deleted its own article (but the Internet is forever), and global warming hysterics have been trying to explain it away ever since.
The real answer is rather surprising. Extreme snowfall is actually an expected consequence of a warmer world.
So what to make of our new polar vortex? CBS News reports that “settled science” is struggling to figure out how to fit it into the computer models that say we’re doomed, but they’re working on it:
Dr. Michael Mann, the director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, said:
These questions test the limits of both our available data (the apparent increase in frequency of these events is quite recent and so at best only just starting to emerge from the background noise) and the model simulations.
As we showed in our recent Science article, current generation climate models don't resolve some of the key processes involved in the jet stream dynamics behind many types of weather extremes.
Honest scientists can legitimately differ based on reasonable interpretations of the evidence to date.
Anything’s possible, and it’s possible, suppose, that we’re really undergoing some sort of global warming and that humans are causing it. It’s even possible that that will have bad effects, but before we return the western world to pre-industrial living standards and consign the Third World to perpetual poverty and starvation, we at least know hat we’re talking about. The proponents of a central world government who want to control this new global economy are using “irrefutable” computer models that couldn’t predict the return of blizzards, polar vortexes, or the unexplained 18-year-hiatus in rising temperatures we’re experiencing. Instead, they’re revising historical temperature data to “prove” that we are indeed warming, and claiming that all s going exactly as predicted, if only they’d thought to predict it.
Hogwash.
33 Meeting House Road has cut its price again — eleven years on the market and counting — to $4.695 million, which is $900,000 below the town’s appraisal. It’s a gorgeous house, custom built for this owner in 2006, and though I thought its original 2008 price of $7.795 was a tad high, I never thought it would be stuck on the market for a decade plus.
Meeting House values have been hammered for years by the hulking wreck of Jimmy Licata’s abandoned building project a bit down the street from this property, but I’d thought the bankruptcy, foreclosure and suits-counter-suits were cleared up a couple of years ago, and that the gargantuan eyesore was on its way to erasure. I haven’t been down that road to check, and I suppose if it’s still there, then the failure of this house to sell is understandable.
But it is a large amount of beautifully constructed house for this price, seems to me. I’d say it was worth a gamble that the Licata stigma will eventually ease and that this one would increase in value, but I’m sure the builders of this residence never imagined that they’d own it eleven years after they decided to sell it, so Meeting House Road may continue to surprise and disappoint.
Why are these creatures laughing?
The sitting-on-the-floor part can be attributed to the 50 people who refused to yield a seat — hooray for the new English — but the five-hour wait is a harbinger of our “Medicare for all” plan being planned for our country.
It’s not just our economically-illiterate Boston University economics major who is demanding that the government preempt the present medical system: another new heartthrob, and one actually age-qualified to run for president, Kamalla Harris yesterday called for the elimination of private medical insurance entirely. My prediction: this will be considered the only position acceptable by Democrats by 2020.
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