evacuation zone now to affect apt values?

"Bpc properly designed. While our TriBeCa/financial district neighbors unfortunately lost power and experienced notable flooding, Bpc was essentially unscathed. This was truly remarkable, and in my mind, a salient selling point for future buyers."

It was a freakish stroke of luck that BPC was "essentially unscathed".

Hardly a "salient selling point" for future buyers.

"In my mind
I'm goin' to Carolina
I'm goin' to Carolina
in my mind..."

Storm cycles are nothing new to NY. I know back in the 90s when Dune rd was washed out, Andrew Heiberger bought like 10 houses, fixed them up and sold them over the course of quite a few years. People have short memories.
The "newest" tragedy is always the worst one.
Climate changes, whether anthropogenic or not.

Truly rising seas will take out florida before manhattan, so look for that first step before you run for the hills.

A bunch of Financial District buildings must've taken on water in 1960, judging by that photo that's all over the web. That was only 10.02 feet, while Sandy's was 13.88.

My own company has several thousand employees scrambling for space in our midtown and NJ buildings.

Sorry, but I think the rate of climate change is accelerating, far beyond what the climate scientists expected.

All their computer models are turning out to be "too slow," as Arctic ice melts much faster than expected.

The big melt this summer is what led to a high pressure system over Greenland, and that system "blocked" the original path of Hurricane Sandy and forced it back onto the East Coast of the US.

I'm not saying we know what climate change will bring. I'm saying we can say with reasonable certainty that the climate is going to change, and change far more quickly, than it has before.

"I'm not saying we know what climate change will bring. I'm saying we can say with reasonable certainty that the climate is going to change, and change far more quickly, than it has before."

Before what?

1970? 1870? 70 B.C.? 20,000,070 B.C.?

GG
Computer models are all rubbish because they dont have all the data nor the sophistication to accurately model everything that affects climate.

The facts are,recently the northern hemisphere has been warming and the southern hemisphere has been cooling.
The north pole has about 10% of the world's frozen water and the south pole 90%.

And while we have...what.. some 200 years of rough air temperature data? Comparing a temp reading in Minsk,Belarus in 1912 to one in 2012,I suspect the margin of error to be drastic.
Unfortunately the true accurate satellite readings of air temps are only a few decades of info.

It's sad this topic is so politicized, it's important enough that total truth is crucial to our species forward planning.

Re: planning for water, check out this new condo: http://streeteasy.com/nyc/building/the-arman-building

The plans are at http://a836-acris.nyc.gov/Scripts/DocSearch.dll/Detail?Doc_ID=2012110700922001

Note: no basement, mechanicals are on first and second floor, and the room called "Flood Shield Storage". The section shows sidewalk elevation of 7.something feet, I guess above some measurement of sea level or whatever the datum is.

Uh-huh. People will forget this shit in five minutes? Bullshit. This will stay with people for YEARS. Commercial and multi-res values in lower Manahattan will definitely be impacted, especially below Canal. And along Dumbo, waterfront JC, Hoboken etc. PLEASE!!!

"Big real estate investors say Sandy hurts lower Manhattan values"

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/big-real-estate-investors-sandy-020716538.html

"Sandy Homeless Trapped by Forces of Nature, NYC Market"

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-11-09/sandy-homeless-trapped-by-forces-of-nature-nyc-market

"Lower Manhattan Quiet as Sandy Shuts One-Third of Offices"

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-09/lower-manhattan-quiet-as-sandy-shuts-one-third-of-offices.html

Who said in five minutes? Why are you always so melodramatic?

I remember immediately post 9/11 when real estate was averaging around $700 per sq ft, tribeca/fidi was around 30% lower for around 2 years.
NOBODY wanted to live there anymore.
The same sensational headlines, people talking about moving to the Hamptons,Pennsylvania, every office building would leave the city.

So PUUULEASE right back at ya.

More-extreme weather events. Not more hurricanes, but more hurricanes that are extreme.

That's what's already happened as the climate has warmed from historical avereages by one degree centigrade over the past 20 years.

To make it local, the Long Island Power Authority said in all its reports that Hurricane Irene last year was a "one in a lifetime" event, and therefore the utility took no actions to upgrade its storm-response efforts to cope with storms of that size.

And guess what? An even bigger storm occurred one year later. Not a lifetime later -- a year later. And hundreds of thousands of Long Islanders are now in the dark, 10 days after the storm.

This is not hypothetical, futuristic stuff. Climate change happened last year, it happened this year. It is happening NOW. It is going to keep happening. It is not going to stop.

Pretending that it is going to stop is not a responsible approach to this, folks. You have kids and grandkids to think about.

How about the '89 earthquake in San Fran?
How about the countless idiots who live along the Mississippi and don't roll away? They have homes on wheels!
Tornado alley?

There's no place like home, truthskr
there's no place like home...

I know nothing about all this fancy science stuff (I'm an atheist), but I can tell you that after having a magnificent, wide, all-sand beach for decades (at least), Cancun's windward (fun big waves) side lost it in a 2003 hurricane.

The Mexican government did a magnificent job pumping sand onto the beach to restore it, and a year or two later it had all washed away. What remains is a beach with gigantic and treacherous boulders exposed (or, worse, lurking under the surf but protruding above the sand) in some areas, and the sea lapping up against retaining walls in others.

Sounds like a rising sea to me. Probably caused by rising consumption of fossil fuels by third-world countries, which should be stopped from doing so, but really I don't care what the cause is. I just want my beaches back so it's funner again.

GG

Who's denying "Climate Change?" Climate change is ALWAYS happening.
In 10 year, in 100 year and 10,000 year cycles. We are guaranteed an ice age coming.

Your arguments reak of buzz slogans for the politicized Gore camp.
Is your argument that it is 100% anthropogenic?
Who is pretending that it is going to stop?
DO you think switching to 100% solar and wind power tomorrow is going to stop a change in climate?

"THERE'S A FROST In FLORIDA! YOU'RE NOT GONNA GET ANY F**KIN ORANGES!"

(The Grateful DeadHead trippin on LSD at a show in 1976)

I recommend all to read a great work of fiction by Michael Chrichton called "State of Fear."
Yes it's a fiction novel, however, he went to great pains to back all his "character's" arguments with pages of footnotes to REAL life references.
I looked up many to confirm and they were all there.

I strongly believe the amount of carbon we pump into the atmosphere is NOT good.
But I am also interested in facts, not self loathing mantras of doom and gloom.

All Im saying to all is argue the topic intelligently, READ THE FINE PRINT.

I second the recommendation for "State of Fear." I am with truthskr10 on all of this; climate change is real, but we are kidding ourselves if we think half the nonsense that we are doing is going to stop it. Nobody will touch the one thing that could really make a difference - population control.

HELLO! I'm an active participant in population control. By Choice.

>Nobody will touch the one thing that could really make a difference - population control.

Well, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who want higher taxes on Americans but have paid very little themselves relative to their wealth (after all, Warren pays less than his secretary), are donating their money tax-free to foreigners in order to impact the global population.

But not by Pro-Choice.
I chose not to have children and not to get pregnant.
All women should have the right to choose and the right to condoms.

The plan starts at home.
USA use Condoms!

I cornered Jeffrey Sachs at a benefit a few years ago and asked him why he put "Population Control" as one of the latter chapters in his book "Common Wealth," and why he did not shine a light more brightly on the relative impact a child born in a rich nation has on the planet vs. a child born in an underdeveloped nation. He took his glasses off, chewed on one end, looked me straight in the eye, and said nobody wants to hear it. I have two friends who profess dedication to saving the planet and spend personal resources on family planning in developing countries, yet each have three children of their own. I am all for everyone having as many children as they want to have, but I do have a hard time with anyone who says they have dedicated their lives to saving the planet and then has multiple children in an industrialized nation. My sensitivity to this issue is heightened because I am from Detroit, and all the emission control legislation that would have zero impact on the environment, yet will have a real impact on those employed by the autoindustry, makes my head want to explode.

NYCNovice: You would like Tom Wright's book: "RoadWork".
He spent years in Detroit during the late 60's managing (and living in) The Grande Ballroom.

>and why he did not shine a light more brightly on the relative impact a child born in a rich nation has on the planet vs. a child born in an underdeveloped nation.
> have two friends who profess dedication to saving the planet and spend personal resources on family planning in developing countries, yet each have three children of their own. I am all for everyone having as many children as they want to have, but I do have a hard time with anyone who says they have dedicated their lives to saving the planet and then has multiple children in an industrialized nation.

Huh?

NYCNovice - you said it all, "overpopulation." And Jeffrey Sachs said it all even more so, "no one wants to hear it." About property values and Zone A, I don't think there will be any immediate rush out of property ownership in Zone A. Maybe for a year or so people will hesitate before buying in condos in Zone A, and maybe the rental market for luxury highrises will get a short-term boost from people forced to break leases in converted office buildings Downtown, but longer term the handwriting is on the wall. The Governor has stated New York needs to think its infrastructure from the bottom up. Seems like a tall order, and don't look to see mass transit lifted from the river beds and changed into monorails above the rivers, or for the els to come back. But the big push to revitalize NYC's waterfront as a modern frontier for luxury housing is going to end. Think insurance companies and think government policymakers in urban planning. We'll all have smashed windows if hurricane winds come, but not every building in the metro area will be flooded in the next storm surge.

Huntersburg - Aside from my not wanting to steer this thread off-topic (at least not more so than I started to), I generally put discussion of global warming and potential solutions thereto into the "too hard pile." However, because I know you have a curious mind, I did want to leave your 'huh?" unanswered. If you really did not understand my comments, read about carbon footprint of U.S. baby vs. baby from developing nation. See, e.g., http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2008/04/whats-your-babys-carbon-footprint. You may have just been making fun of me, but in the event you really did not understand, there you have it.

>NYCNovice - you said it all, "overpopulation

+1

Indeed, remove tax deductions for children. Add tax for more than 2 kids. 2 kids for a 2 adult household slows it all down.
And keep NASA well funded for future options off this rock, that's a proper long term survival plan.

The future crisis, maybe in a our lifetime is potable drinking water.
Forget, melting caps,how bad you think it's going to be when you have pirates chopping off glaciers for blackmarket water.

Don't get me started on the approaching water wars . . .. We'll never get back on topic.

That's a very negative point of view about humanity and our country.

Does Mother Jones also talk about the value to the world created by a U.S. baby when they offer up their nonsense about the cost ("carbon footprint") of a U.S. baby?

Too much carbon footprint, what a joke.

truthskr: "WaterWorld" was a good movie.

What gets me is when I meet parents of 7 girls and they explain:
"We were trying for a boy."

truth
Actually liked "The Postman" (land version of Waterworld) much better.

Of course an overdue supervolcano eruption like yellowstone is game over anyway.
Positive side: A supervolcano would cool the planet at least 5 degrees within a year, so there's always that.

Ok - my last comment on this stuff, mostly because it is off-topic. I really don't care how many children anybody has; I just go nuts when somebody who owns a gas guzzling SUV for their four children, each with huge carbon footrprints of their own, tells me that the way to save the planet is by targeting a specific industry. Personally, I do not see humanity solving this problem, and I recognize this is pessimistic. I know many minds far better than my own who disagree with me and feel confident that humanity will innovate its way out of whatever is coming. I hope they are right. I have not dedicated any portion of my life to saving the planet because after extensive research, I have not found confidence in any single step that I might personally be able to take to help the planet. I don't litter, but that's about it.

Yes,"The Postman" is a very good flick.

Looks like every disaster movie is coming to real life. To a city near you. (maybe not all, so soon.)

Are the Aliens still watching us, ready to attack?

Humans can not save the planet.
Less humans would be good for just maintaining what's left of it.

It's O.K. to go off on a tangent, NYCNovice.

http://www.videobash.com/video_show/mars-bitches-240177

but before we invade and colonize space, it's worth having a look at this list of the 5 least polluted cities in the world. the answer is staring us right in the face, people.

http://top5ofanything.com/index.php?h=6d2c1745

Funny!
At the end I automatically was treated by you-tube to "Dryer Scare".
Some college guys pranked their roommate. One of them hid out in the clothes dryer waiting for the roommate
to open the dryer door and put his laundry in.

That's one BIG BEAST of a clothes dryer!

California made the list with ClearLake!
Where's jason, does he know about this?

best part of the mother jones article:

"In 2007, Julia Roberts told Vanity Fair that the "highest high" would be "growing our food that I then make, and then composting and growing more."

In 2004, she paid Hollywood's Cedars-Sinai Hospital $1,700 a night for a deluxe maternity suite with valets, a chef, security staff, and salon service."

lucille: That's Hollywood!

NYCNovice, I agree with your viewpoint, basically. I look at trends. In my elementary and junior high school years, all the worry was overpopulation, how to feed the Third World's masses of starving people, water pollution, air pollution, coming gas shortages. All these decades later people consume more, waste more and overpopulate more. ZPG stopped being a topic of conversation long ago. Babies, sometimes born through the miracle of fertility doctors, have opulent strollers that come equipped complete with built-in bottles that sprout plastic straws that attach to their mouths so they don't have to do anything at all to get something to drink because they're practically set up with IVs of instant gratification. Cars are bigger than ever.

Not so off-topic, though. I think this started out as maybe people will shun apartments in Zone A. Answer is probably not, and the water will keep rising. And did anyone else notice that a large proportion of the buildings pictured on an article with a link posted here of buildings deemed unsafe by DOB consists of converted office buildings? Is that a coincidence of location, or are apartment buildings being built smarter than the old office buildings downtown were?

>I look at trends. In my elementary and junior high school years, all the worry was overpopulation, how to feed the Third World's masses of starving people, water pollution, air pollution, coming gas shortages.

What years were this?

" Is that a coincidence of location, or are apartment buildings being built smarter than the old office buildings downtown were?"

You are partially incorrect. 2 Gold, the W, and other new ones were closed as well. The coincidence is the pre-war buildings were ALREADY along the impacted and flooded areas. There were pre-wars that re-opened in a few days, if they located their equipment on higher floors. The common denominator was having vital equipment in the basement versus having it on higher floors.

...See also brand-new high-rises in Dumbo.

See also the Tate in Chelsea (hudson yards). Brand new. But shit was in the basement.

My buidling has no basement, and the equipment all on the 9th floor. We are in flood zone B, but other than damage to the lobby, would be fine in a flood. Or so the LL says. The LL's own office, however, was in a fucked part of Hoboken, ironically, and is closed.

Haha, Jason is slave to a landowner in Hoboken.

well, who knows - maybe the wave of the future will be buildings with no basements and equipment on 9th floors - or buildings with individual tide walls

Another story on the same. This will impact FIDI values at least. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324073504578109284069357780.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories

In the What Will They Think Of Next Dept.:

I just saw this on yahoo
"The Baby Mop", www.BetterThanPants.com

I'm all for putting the baby to good use but a onesie that doubles as a floor wiping device it just too much!

What happens when the baby touches his/her little hand up to the little face?
Yuck.
Babies are so flexible they can suck their own toes. Those dirty footsie mops will make the baby sick.

Well, this quote is interesting:

"The businesses that have had to relocate operations reads like a who's-who list in the world of Wall Street, including law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, brokerage firmMorgan StanleyMS +0.54% and insurance giant American International Group Inc. AIG +2.42%"

Long-term...... keep renewing the Downtown lease for the sake of patriotism/tax incentives/ etc.?

I can't see Washington putting in a dime like they did after 9-11. With people still homeless in New Orleans?

"Rapid Repair" ... should be an exciting fiasco to watch from the sidelines:
http://tinyurl.com/a2swbqx

NYCNovice,you seem like a thoughtful person, so I'll share some background that has really changed my thinking.

"The Ecology of Commerce." It's a book by Paul Hawken, the guy who started his own company, Smith and Hawken, to sell garden equipment and outdoor furniture.

It's a bit of an egghead book, but I'd encourage anybody who can tolerate dense prose to take a go at it.

Hawken is very pro-business, and also very pro-environment. The important thing about Hawken is that he defines the problem. He doesn't lay out a solution, but he clearly states the problem.

The problem is that ever since the Industrial Revolution started, business has been dumping on nature. You can go back 300 years and see where coal mining in Britain created black lung and the horrors of Dickensian London. And in the US, you can see where copper smelting plants on the Newtown Creek in Brooklyn dumped all their waste in the creek, and today it's a superfund site that's still the worst polluted waterway in America.

But we like business. Business creates wealth, it creates a higher standard of living, it alleviates human suffering. Capitalism, as Hawken says, is the most successful idea that humans ever came up with.

But he points out that we've got to get a grip on the fact that environmental damage comes from business operations -- in a direct sense. You can argue that consumer lifestyles are ultimately responsible, but consumers are not the ones blowing up mountaintops in Appalachia, or destroying the ancient forests of Alberta to extract tar sands oil. And most well-off consumers will cringe when they hear about these highly destructive operations -- as individuals, we don't want this activity.

All of the great harms done to natural eco-systems are done by the business operations that we so admire for their efficiency in creating wealth and innovation. We've never asked business to clean up its own mess, and usually we've allowed business to foist the costs of clean-up -- if there is any clean-up -- on the public sector.

And maybe for the first 200 years or so of the industrial revolution, that was sensible. Maybe the collective damage down by business was not great enough to warrant throwing up obstacles in the way of all that wealth-creation.

But now, the accumulated damage that we've done to the environment has grown so great that we can no longer ignore it -- this aggregate damage is called climate change. It's nature's cumulative response to 300 years of deforestation, ocean acidification, and yes, CO2 emissions. (The emissions by themselves would matter less if we had more forests and cleaner oceans.)

I see this moment in history as a great opportunity for humans to learn and grow. It's a chance for us to acknowledge the consequences of our activities, and to learn how to so something about it. To evolve into a more advanced species.

The sustainability movement already exists, and it's growing quickly and its going to mushroom in growth over the next few years. I think that's very exciting. I'm NOT talking about corporate bullshit on how "green" IBM is, or whatever company, I'm talking about real research and experimentation into how to live in a more sustainable way that doesn't harm natural systems so much -- like passiv haus technology, and bio-mimickry, and making renewable energy more efficient.

It's not a time for pessimism, or for giving up. It's a time for hope, and for fighting for the right cause.

Go on Amazon and get the book, try on some new ideas, tell me what you think.

regards, GG

GG - Will do. I've read a ton about all this stuff and am desperately looking for something that will change my mind. I WANT to believe, so I will get the book, as long as it is available in kindle format. It would be terribly ironic if the book were only available on paper.

i'm sure the book is great and i don't disagree with most of GraffitiGrammarian's post, but how can your approach to this book be even remotely objective if you have already decided you want to believe its perspective? and why do you keep desperately looking for a case against your own well informed opinion?

how could anyone who is not a trained researcher in this field claim to have a well informed opinion?

once again, the fraudster columbiacounty playing the confidence game.

Those Smith and Hawken catalogs filled my mailbox with paper I had no use for.

wondering, I am.

"how could anyone who is not a trained researcher in this field claim to have a well informed opinion? "

WHAT?

Ha -- very true NYCNovice. I actually don't know if its available on Kindle because I - gulp -- still consume paper books!

Just as a footnote, I wonder if Kindles are greener than ink-on-paper. Don't you have to put CO2 into the air into order to charge up your Kindle?

Same with electric hand dryers in the public restrooms versus paper towels. The commercial buildings always say, we put in the air dryers to be greener, but is it really greener if you have to put carbon into the air just to dry your hands?

I have no idea, I suppose there's a way to calculate the damage done by each and measure which is worse -- is there? Just wondering.

Server farms!

I don't like Kindles or other reading devices.
I like to read books. Finish reading the page,turn the page.
Finish reading the book and close the book with that satisfied feeling.
Put it up on the bookshelf or in the bookcase.

Somebody comes over to visit and browses through my books. Finds something interesting and takes it off the shelf to skim.
BOOKS!

GG - You just articulated the problem I have with Hawkens' thesis. ("Ecology of Commerce" is not available on Kindle, but "Natural Capitalism" is - "Natural Capitalism" is essentially revised edition of "Ecology of Commerce" but done in conjunction with Amory and L.Hunter Lovins). Sadly, Hawkens' work is not likely to brighten my view.

Lucille - I was born with an unfortunate penchant for logic and objectivity. My parents lamented my Spock-like disposition when I declared myself an Atheist at a young age. They worked hard to change it and instill faith over reason. They gave up when I was about nine and simply began pleading with me to refrain from trying to influence my older siblings and to please, under no circumstances, discuss matters of substance in polite society. Surely you can understand why I might want to hold an optimistic rather than a pessimistic view on any subject.

"The commercial buildings always say, we put in the air dryers to be greener, but is it really greener if you have to put carbon into the air just to dry your hands?"

Like many other questions people don't ask themselves often enough. Watch "Windfall" for some insights into the drawbacks of "renewable, clean, green" windmill energy. Wasn't there a shocking TV episode a few years back that revealed that "recycled" computer equipment was going into huge garbage dumps in China where children scavenged for materials amongst the toxic heap? Recycling is great, right? Well, it consumes lots of energy and pollutes in the process. A lot smarter would be to use less and re-use a lot more. Why do people throw hangers in the garbage? Why recycle something that's already perfectly usable as it is when someone discards it? How about bottles and jars? My biggest pet peeve is the plastic bags that groceries are wrapped in. A good move would be to outlaw them completely and force people to acquire more or less permanent, reusable bags to carry their shopping home in, over and over and over again.

Matt and I have t.v.s that are over 16 years-old.
I recently bought a new flat screen but am keeping the old t.v. because as I told Matt:
I want to see how long it lasts until it dies.

WSJ ran interesting article last week on unintended effects of conservation efforts. Interesting stuff. One of my favorite works in this area is "The Dominant Animal" by Paul and Anne Ehrlich.

books!

In dc the supermarkets charge 5 cents per plastic bag, everyone here uses reusable bags. I like it.

Oh, then there's the whole fast food phenomenon, but much more obvious is the biggest waste of all, bottled water. Most bottled water comes from municipal water supplies and is no higher quality than tap water run through a filter. So the marketing genius is not providing a great product, it's in the packaging. Why stand over a water cooler to drink, when you can carry your water with you? No need to ever be thirsty, even for a minute. Water is always in your backpack. It comes in all sizes and shapes, right down to the sip-sized. What people are paying for is plastic containers. If they didn't, there would be a whole lot less garbage generated. Then apply that to fast food. Why bother drinking a cup of coffee? That takes too much time. Just put it in a styrofoam or paper cup and walk with it, gulping while you walk, or while you work, or while you do just about anything else. That way much more coffee can be sold, because it doesn't require being seated to consume hot. And no need to worry about washing dishes. Just throw the container away. Next time you want a cup of coffee, pay for another container that you will discard quickly. Food? Stand in line like a cow waiting to be butchered, then get your very own plastic or paper plate, and plastic utensils. You don't use the spoon? That's OK, just throw it in the trash along with the useless plastic knife and the tiny little plastic fork. Restaurants clean up bigtime, because they don't need to wash any dishes. Can't find anyplace to eat your garbage? Just take it into the subway trains, and when you're through gobbling reconstituted dog meat, just leave it in the train.

Blah blah. Back to the original topic - polls show the vast majority of Americans think climate change is a real problem. In a blue state like New York, its 80% + who think that. So whether or not head-in-the-sand idiots on this thread think its not real or not does not matter. Most potential buyers of riverfront and downtown property DO think its real and believe Cuomo, Christie, Obama, and Bloomberg when they say storms like we have had two years in a row will be MORE common, not less.

"In dc the supermarkets charge 5 cents per plastic bag, everyone here uses reusable bags. I like it."

... like the reusable bags incentive; love the bacteria and other microorganisms that breed in your reusable bags and get all over your food.

Goddamned hippie.

lucille - just curious - do you walk to your supermarket, or drive?

Walk but I go seriously every day.

Goddamned hippie.

Guilty. I spray mine with disinfectant!

lucille: Oh, look who's back.
You don't need to answer her questions.

"but much more obvious is the biggest waste of all, bottled water. "

we get the 5 gallon jugs of poland spring and fill up reusable bottles, the jugs get picked up and reused. it may be stupid and false and all in my head, but i swear it tastes better.

"The groove is in the heart,
the groove is in the heart..."

Anyone know where my one trick pony is tonight? I need a good laugh, but I'd rather not have to travel over to West 67th Street.

sometimes you need to work for your amusement. try colbert. or fox news.

"but i swear it tastes better"

... try cutting your tap water with sidecars.

It seems like climate change is being taken rather seriously by architecture and city planning programs at top schools. A friend of a friend was in an urban planning Masters program at Columbia and all of the projects the students were asked to participate in, worked a rising sea level into plans. I imagine this mindset must influence at least a bit... the attitudes of architects and planners just starting out at firms who are developing such residential buildings as the one on Canal Street.

I was on a plane recently and sat next to a professor at Cornell who studies this stuff. They are taking it very seriously. A good friend of mine in college (in the 80's) is the daughter of the Princeton professor who was an early, very early, observer of global warming. Years ago they were taking this very seriously on an academic level. Not on a policy level.

Lucille - only asked because NY is, in many places, a walking city. Not that easy to carry a lot of bags around with you to take to the market to do major (or even sort of minor )shopping, as one can do when driving in a car to the market, as is done in many cities in the US (SF, and Chicago immediately come to mind) as well as all the suburban areas.

Yuh, right.

Good to hear from you ph41! Hopefully you can join us for sidecars again before Thanksgiving ...?

Yeah, she's a real treat when juiced-up.

"again", that explains a lot.

lucille: Ask around your neighborhood for markets that deliver.
Ask the market for paper bag grocery packing.

unprecedented increases in carbon in atmosphere==> heat, extreme weather, melting ice, rising sea levels

all of which are happening before our eyes, with costly consequences--here and now

and still, some heads remain resolutely buried in sand

those should buy beachfront property asap--cash, that is, since banks

will not lend for these properties, nor will insurers insure them

"and all the emission control legislation that would have zero impact on the environment, yet will have a real impact on those employed by the autoindustry, makes my head want to explode."

where is the logic in this--oh brilliant 9 year old atheist who needs to be restrained from influencing less-gifted older siblings?

emissions controls have helped and would help more if they had more teeth. and how do more stringent emissions controls have any impact on jobs in detroit, or within the auto industry?

"In dc the supermarkets charge 5 cents per plastic bag, everyone here uses reusable bags. I like it."

You like it? I think it's an outrage. Supermarkets charge money for plastic bags yet let black-soot-dioxin-belching automobiles park for free!

If the environment is your concern, does that make any sense at all?

I say if you're going to charge a nickel for a bag, also charge a dollar for a parking space. That would do a lot more to keep the air clean.

First - nowhere did I state or even imply that I am brilliant. Elsewhere on this board I have openly admitted that I am an idiot, and will happily do so again here.
Second - I certainly never stated or implied that my older siblings were less-gifted, and I believe quite the contrary. My elder siblings are my heroes.
Third - Further discussion of emission controls definitely goes into the "too hard" pile. If you want to want to educate yourself, read all of the legislative history and expert testimony on the state emission control legsislation, as well as all the public comments filed in response to FR notices seeking input on NITSA regs, and then we can have a discussion.

P.S. to Yikes - You will need a FOIA request to get some of the stuff I reference; if you are really curious, I am pretty sure I still have multiples boxes of binders containing this information that I would gladly send anyone who really cares.

I think the plastic bags controversity is a good one, and I propose just getting rid of them completely, so that it's your own problem what you're going to put your groceries in. Then people will manufacture all different size and strength and material of shopping bags, and those wasteful thin plastic bags (which are always doubled-up, go figguh) will just not be used. They're filthy and have microbes and germs? Your problem. Wash 'em.

As a consumer, it would be great if the retailers would nickle and dime me for more, 5c for a plastic bag, 10c for a paper bag that comes from a tree, $1 for a parking spot, $2 for a parking spot for an SUV, 30c for cart usage to cover depreciation and cleaning, 50c for lighting so I can see what I'm buying, $1 for electricity for goods requiring refrigeration in the store, 10c for each good I buy off the shelf to cover disability insurance for the stockboys, 1c for a receipt, 25c for my costs for the security guard. This way I'll be completely disincented to go to the grocery store, and instead I'll start my family's own urban rooftop farm. Isn't that what you "green" people want?

It is pretty amazing how quickly everyone in DC adopted reusable bags after the "bag tax" went into effect. I actually think that the United States may be capable of reacting to climate change in a productive way if we can ever get a handle on the facts (big if). My pessimism comes more from international front. I had the joy of sitting in trade negotiations during the wave of agreements that the Bush administration was trying to push through with Latin America (I was a career attorney - not one of the negotiatiors by any means), and the environmental chapters as environmental activists would have liked them were non-starters. Caring about the environment is easier to do if you have already made your money.

wow you must be really knowledgeable re all this--not "brilliant", but really knwledgeable...gotcha.. Boxes and binders full of stuff youve read...but still "too hard"? coming from someone so well-informed.....

clearly our cars pollute less today than they did in 1971, prior to emissions controls implementation--of course the process of legislation was riddled with politics and dirty dealing, but the fact is, our cars now pollute less--to dismiss as hopeless, based on a corrupted process, or because it's "too hard" is cynical and not helpful.

and why is a plastic bag charge an outrage? because others continue to pollute in egregious ways? the plastic bag charge is sensible, as are incentives to drive less, consume less, populate less, etc. execution of these concepts will be challenging but the effort is beyond worthy.

and if one gives a damn, there are plenty of totally compactable nylon bags one can easily carry so as not to need plastic--hell, the plastic bags themselves na be compacted and carried in a pocket or bag for reuse--

be thoughtful, not selfish---dont worry about what's "fair"---if you reuse a plastic bag 5 or 6 times, you have helped, regardless of whether a gas-guzzling sport ute just drove by you or not--there will always be assholes, in every arena. that's no excuse to be one yourself.

Ph41, truth
All the supermarkets here deliver and I get delivery when I buy a lot, about every 2 weeks or so. But I also like to buy things fresh and not freezing meats or fish, and we eat a lot of fruits and veggies so I'm at the market at least every other day. It's not a big deal, it is very close. A lot of people here also have those rolling carts to transport their groceries.