[mike777]

Daniel1960, on 2013-July-15, 09:01, said:

I live in Michigan, and can comment on the Detroit issue. Any property that has defaulted on their property taxes is taken over by the city. These abandoned lots can be purchased for a minimal price. The city does allow anyone to start a garden on these lot with the understanding that they must vacate if a buyer purchases the lot. These are springing up all over town, and the city just ignores them. Some have even fenced in the lots (usually adjacent to their own), but that involves the risk of dismantling the fence. Just because a lot appears to be abandoned, does not mean that it has no private owner, although, in all likelihood, the owner has defaulted, and the property reverted back to the city.

In practice if the owner walks away there is very often a mortgage on the property. The bank will pay the taxes and try and sell the property. The problem is upkeep when a bank or city takes over the property and how messy the foreclosure procedure is becoming where reselling the property takes years.

This has become an excellent example of where in the name of stability, a purging of the economic system is curtailed and in the long term introduces fragility into the process.

[Zelandakh]

blackshoe, on 2013-July-15, 08:08, said:

I have no problem with people who live near an eyesore suing the property owner (or going to mediation, or just talking to him) to get the eyesore cleaned up. I don't even care if they suggest the way to clean it up is to allow them to plant stuff. What I do care about is that the property owner's rights are respected.

One person's eyesore is another's urban nature paradise. Why should the owner's rights to have their property in a more natural state not be respected?

[mike777]

Zelandakh, on 2013-July-16, 02:02, said:

One person's eyesore is another's urban nature paradise. Why should the owner's rights to have their property in a more natural state not be respected?

zoning laws

a long long time issue over many decades..do you want your neighbor to have long natural grass. weeds, bugs. coyetes, snakes, other natural animals...etc....in natural state......a common issue/debate/discusion over the years/decades.....

But I always start at point...do you actually own a home a real home, and do you care at all about what is next door? Or is this all just a theory for you?

[Al_U_Card]

mike777, on 2013-July-16, 02:08, said:

zoning laws

a long long time issue over many decades..do you want your neighbor to have long natural grass. weeds, bugs. coyetes, snakes, other natural animals...etc....in natural state......a common issue/debate/discusion over the years/decades.....

But I always start at point...do you actually own a home a real home, and do you care at all about what is next door? Or is this all just a theory for you?

Some "grass-roots" democracy, perhaps?

All that is required is that all "adjacent" landholders agree to the state of the land. No danger of propagation and the protection (of individual rights) from abuse by the majority is maintained at the smallest social level possible.

[blackshoe]

Zelandakh, on 2013-July-16, 02:02, said:

One person's eyesore is another's urban nature paradise. Why should the owner's rights to have their property in a more natural state not be respected?

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "natural state". In a city, the "natural state" of an empty lot is probably going to include a lot of trash.

mike777, on 2013-July-16, 02:08, said:

zoning laws

a long long time issue over many decades..do you want your neighbor to have long natural grass. weeds, bugs. coyetes, snakes, other natural animals...etc....in natural state......a common issue/debate/discusion over the years/decades.....

But I always start at point...do you actually own a home a real home, and do you care at all about what is next door? Or is this all just a theory for you?

Zoning laws are misguided.

[billw55]

blackshoe, on 2013-July-16, 08:39, said:

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "natural state". In a city, the "natural state" of an empty lot is probably going to include a lot of trash.


Zoning laws are misguided.

If someone bought the house next door to yours, then tore it down and built a gas station there, would you be ok with that?

[onoway]

Lots of the guerilla gardeners are about making space more attractive rather than growing food but today ran across this:
http://www.ted.com/t...central_la.html

(I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't a TED talk about pretty much anything! I wasn't looking for this one, it just turned up)

It seems to be typical in that he starts out with municipal spaces such as road verges and then grows from there with lots of volunteers getting involved.

[blackshoe]

billw55, on 2013-July-16, 09:18, said:

If someone bought the house next door to yours, then tore it down and built a gas station there, would you be ok with that?

Probably not. But that doesn't give me — or the government — the right to tell him he can't.

As I recall, Houston has no zoning laws. I wonder how many times this problem has cropped up there?

[dwar0123]

blackshoe, on 2013-July-16, 17:20, said:

Probably not. But that doesn't give me — or the government — the right to tell him he can't.

Do you agree with Democracy only when people agree with you?

[mike777]

Although Houston is the only major American city with no formal zoning code, the city's land use regulations have historically been nearly as meddlesome, ...

[onoway]

It was certainly Texas and I think it was Houston that someone who had built a deck onto his house was told he had to take it down because he hadn't asked permission first, and it was something like 9 inches too big in one direction..I don't remember the details exactly now as it was a few years back, but it was (to my mind) totally bizarre.

I'd always thought that Texans were a fiercely independent "man's home is his castle" sorts but it seems there are as many people there as anywhere else who don't have anything better to do than supervise the neighborhood.

Apologies to Houston, just checked back on emails and it was Austin.

[mike777]

Houston aint Austin.....which is closer to SF. pardner

[blackshoe]

As I remember it, Austin is full of liberals. Of course, it's been 40+ years since I was there. Maybe they all moved.

[billw55]

blackshoe, on 2013-July-16, 21:44, said:

As I remember it, Austin is full of liberals. Of course, it's been 40+ years since I was there. Maybe they all moved.

Austin is home to one of the largest universities (perhaps the single largest) in America. This by itself is adequate to explain a significantly higher level of dems than the state as a whole. It is also the state capital which obviously draws a concentration of the minority party. No surprises here.

[blackshoe]

billw55, on 2013-July-17, 13:40, said:

Austin is home to one of the largest universities (perhaps the single largest) in America. This by itself is adequate to explain a significantly higher level of dems than the state as a whole. It is also the state capital which obviously draws a concentration of the minority party. No surprises here.

I didn't say it was surprising.

[Al_U_Card]

You don't tug on Superman's cape....

And you don't piss-off Steve McIntyre, where his work is involved.

[Al_U_Card]

Acid test?

From Dr. Judith Curry's blog

Just how agendized is the alarmist position? (From Craig Idso's critique on ocean-acidification alarmism and alternate analyses from the literature.)

In conclusion, based on the many real-world observations and laboratory experiments described above, it is clear that recent theoretical claims of impending marine species extinctions, due to increases in the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration, have no basis in empirical reality. In fact, these unsupportable contentions are typically refuted by demonstrable facts. As such, the NRDC’s portrayal of CO2-induced ocean acidification as a megadisaster-in-the-making is seen, at best, to be a one-sided distortion of the truth or, at worst, a blatant attempt to deceive the public.

Surely, the NRDC and the scientists portrayed in their film should have been aware of at least one of the numerous peer-reviewed scientific journal articles that do not support a catastrophic – or even a problematic – view of the effect of ocean acidification on calcifying marine organisms; and they should have shared that information with the public. If by some slim chance they were not aware, shame on them for not investing the time, energy, and resources needed to fully investigate an issue that has profound significance for the biosphere. And if they did know the results of the studies we have discussed, no one should ever believe a single word they may utter or write in the future.

Finally, if there is a lesson to be learned from the materials presented in this document, it is that far too many predictions of CO2-induced catastrophes are looked upon as sure-to-occur, when real-world observations show such doomsday scenarios to be highly unlikely or even virtual impossibilities. The phenomenon of CO2-induced ocean acidification is no different. Rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations are not the bane of the biosphere; they are an invaluable boon to the planet’s many life forms.

JC comment: So whose view of the ocean acidification is correct: Doney’s or Idso’s? In this instance, it is instructive for me to describe my own reasoning process, since I come to this topic with very little first hand knowledge, beyond understanding the basic chemistry of the problem.

When I saw Scott Doney listed as a witness for this hearing, I was very pleased, since he is a scientific heavy hitter on this subject. However, upon reading the first page of his testimony, the following statement raised my skeptical hackles, especially since their was no evidence or reference to support this:

Today the surface ocean is almost 30% more acidic than it was in pre-industrial times.

I found Doney’s testimony to be highly normative, something that I am not a fan of in testimony by scientists. I did a word search, looking for ‘uncertain’, ‘disagreement’, ‘debate’, ‘unknown’. The only statements I found were:

Decisions should incorporate precautionary considerations to account for the fact that potential carbon dioxide thresholds are presently unknown for many aspects of ocean acidification.

The potential biological consequences due to acidification are slowly becoming clearer at the level of individual species, but substantial uncertainties remain particularly at the ecosystem level.

For these reasons, Doney’s testimony didn’t score too high on my credibility meter, in spite of my acknowledgement of his expertise and stature in the field.

I figured that there has to be another side to this story, so I did a quick google search and spotted Idso’s document. Idso’s document clearly states that there is another side to this story. Idso’s approach is more credible IMO, since he acknowledges that there are two sides to the story, that at this point may be equally plausible. I searched for the same 4 words; only spotted one use of ‘unknown’, so I am not sure how useful my little litmus test was.

The issue is this: failure of the ‘mainstream’ experts to adequately discuss uncertainty and alternative viewpoints leaves a void to be filled by the likes of Idso, with the inadvertent effect of elevating Idso’s essay more than it probably deserves.

[PassedOut]

Taking Antarctica's temperature

Quote

Yet, over the last six years researchers have found clever ways to take Antarctica’s temperature and piece together its complicated climate history. Those efforts reveal that the continent is home to some of the most rapidly warming places on Earth. Whether natural or human-caused, Antarctica’s changing climate makes it clear that the continent isn’t as isolated as was once thought.

If these warming trends continue, what happens in Antarctica will have important consequences for the rest of the world. The Antarctic ice sheet stores roughly 70 percent of the planet’s freshwater. If it melted entirely and drained into the ocean, global sea level would rise more than 60 meters — enough to submerge New York City, London, Copenhagen, Bangkok, all of Florida, much of the Netherlands, Bangladesh and many other low-lying coastal and island locales.

Fortunately, researchers don’t expect the massive ice sheet to disappear anytime soon. But to plan for the future, officials need to know how much ice will melt and how quickly sea level will rise.

Of course sea level won't rise the entire 60 meters, but even a much more modest rise will cause severe problems.

[Daniel1960]

PassedOut, on 2013-July-22, 12:30, said:

Taking Antarctica's temperature


Of course sea level won't rise the entire 60 meters, but even a much more modest rise will cause severe problems.

Funny how most readings show a decreasing temperature in Antarctica over the past 30 or 50 years, m yet this article somehow shows warming. By most estimates, Antarctica is still contributing to a sea level decrease.

http://www.real-scie...c.-29-20.37.jpg

[hrothgar]

Daniel1960, on 2013-July-22, 14:04, said:

Funny how most readings show a decreasing temperature in Antarctica over the past 30 or 50 years, m yet this article somehow shows warming. By most estimates, Antarctica is still contributing to a sea level decrease.

http://www.real-scie...c.-29-20.37.jpg

Maybe the authors assumed that the audience had a basic familiarity with the topic and didn't need to provide the standard boilerplate?

http://en.wikipedia....ing_controversy

Some public commentators have argued that this possible cooling trend observed in the interior of the Antarctica shows the lack of reliability of the models used for global warming predictions and even of climate theory in general. These arguments are made despite the fact that the small and variable observed trends are broadly consistent with the small magnitude of model-predicted temperature trends for Antarctica. The argument was popularized in Michael Crichton's 2004 fiction novel State of Fear. This novel has a docudrama plot based upon the idea that there is a deliberately alarmist conspiracy behind global warming activism. The author advocated skepticism in this matter.[5][28]
As presented in page 193 of "State of Fear": "The data show that one relatively small area called the Antarctic Peninsula is melting and calving huge icebergs. That's what gets reported year after year. But the continent as a whole is getting colder, and the ice is getting thicker".[29] Crichton's footnote source is Doran et al., 2002.[14]
A rebuttal to Crichton's claims was presented by the group Real Climate:[6]
Long term temperature data from the Southern Hemisphere are hard to find, and by the time you get to the Antarctic continent, the data are extremely sparse. Nonetheless, some patterns do emerge from the limited data available. The Antarctic Peninsula, site of the now-defunct Larsen-B ice shelf, has warmed substantially. On the other hand, the few stations on the continent and in the interior appear to have cooled slightly (Doran et al., 2002; GISTEMP).
At first glance this seems to contradict the idea of "global" warming, but one needs to be careful before jumping to this conclusion. "A rise in the global mean temperature does not imply universal warming. Dynamical effects (changes in the winds and ocean circulation) can have just as large an impact, locally as the radiative forcing from greenhouse gases. The temperature change in any particular region will in fact be a combination of radiation-related changes (through greenhouse gases, aerosols, ozone and the like) and dynamical effects. Since the winds tend to only move heat from one place to another, their impact will tend to cancel out in the global mean.[6]
The leading author of the research paper, Peter Doran, published a statement in the New York Times[7] stating that "... our results have been misused as "evidence" against global warming by Michael Crichton in his novel "State of Fear"... Our study did find that 58 percent of Antarctica cooled from 1966 to 2000. But during that period, the rest of the continent was warming. And climate models created since our paper was published have suggested a link between the lack of significant warming in Antarctica and the ozone hole over that continent. These models, conspicuously missing from the warming-skeptic literature, suggest that as the ozone hole heals — thanks to worldwide bans on ozone-destroying chemicals — all of Antarctica is likely to warm with the rest of the planet. An inconvenient truth?" He also emphasized the need for more stations in the Antarctic continent in order to obtain more robust results.
It is common to find statements that "climate models generally predict amplified warming in polar regions", e.g. Doran et al.[14] In fact, climate models predict amplified warming only for the Arctic and not for Antarctica