WHAT APPALLING B.S.!

I suppose there is a certain bitter irony in a Greenie school costing the earth!

The new T.C. Williams High School, scheduled for construction next month, is expected to cost $92 million, the most expensive in the history of the Alexandria public school system. "People are starting to worry," said Frank Putzu, president of the Seminary Hill Association, a local civic organization. "When you start talking about $90 million, that's a lot of money. Nobody really understands why this is so expensive or what they're doing that is costing so much." The high school is for students in the 10th, 11th and 12th grades. Most area ninth-graders attend the Minnie Howard School.

Mr. Putzu said renovations at Minnie Howard have been delayed to help pay for the increasing cost of the new high school, which some people call "T.C. Green."
"I don't think we have a clear idea yet just how much this is really going to cost," Mr. Putzu said. "That's what's causing the uneasiness. [The cost] started at $81 million, it creeped up to $87 million, and now it's at $92 million. These projects never come in at cost."

Moseley Architects designed the new school at a cost estimated to be about 1.5 percent more than a conventional school building. The average cost of construction per square foot is $199.57, more than $50 higher than the average construction costs for Virginia high schools built in the past seven years, according to the Virginia Department of Education. "We know of [no other schools] in that league," said Charles Pyle, the department's director of communications. Supporters of the project acknowledge an environmentally friendly school is expensive, but say the energy-efficient equipment and other features will reduce the cost of everyday operations. David Peabody, a member of Alexandrians for a Green T.C. group, said the higher price will be repaid in three years because the cost of operating the new school will be less.

The existing school is of a 1950s design, "and its life expectancy has expired," he said. The school will be built on the existing school's football field, and construction is scheduled to begin Dec. 4. Student athletes will play at other schools while the new school is built.

Recycled building materials, energy-efficient lighting and a system that converts rainwater into water for toilets and irrigation are among the environmentally friendly features.... The building is expected to look like most other new schools, but will have ceramic tile instead of paint in the hallway. Some of the building materials also will be nontoxic and nonallergenic, and the building will have an advanced air-filtration system.

More here




NATURAL CLIMATE CYCLES

New data from Patagonia:

In our many reviews of recently-published studies that reveal the existence of a widespread millennial-scale oscillation of climate, we routinely draw attention to evidence for the worldwide occurrence of the Little Ice Age, Medieval Warm Period, Dark Ages Cold Period, Roman Warm Period, etc. We here continue in this vein in reviewing a study that identifies all of the above climatic intervals -- plus others -- in the Patagonian ice fields of South America.

Glasser et al. (2004) describe a large body of evidence related to glacier fluctuations in the two major ice fields of Patagonia: the Hielo Patagonico Norte (47o00'S, 73o39'W) and the Hielo Patagonico Sur (between 48o50'S and 51o30'S). This evidence indicates that the most recent glacial advances in Patagonia occurred during the Little Ice Age, out of which serious cold spell the earth has been gradually emerging for the past two centuries, causing many glaciers to retreat. Prior to the Little Ice Age, however, there was an interval of higher temperatures known as the Medieval Warm Period, when glaciers also decreased in size and extent; and this warm interlude was in turn preceded by a still earlier era of pronounced glacial activity that is designated the Dark Ages Cold Period, which was also preceded by a period of higher temperatures and retreating glaciers that is denoted the Roman Warm Period.

Prior to the Roman Warm Period, Glasser et al.'s presentation of the pertinent evidence suggests there was another period of significant glacial advance that also lasted several hundred years, which was preceded by a several-century interval when glaciers once again lost ground, which was preceded by yet another multi-century period of glacial advance, which was preceded by yet another long interval of glacier retrenchment, which was preceded by still another full cycle of such temperature-related glacial activity, which at this point brings us all the way back to sometime between 6000 and 5000 14C years before the present (BP).

Glasser et al. additionally cite the works of a number of other scientists that reveal a similar pattern of cyclical glacial activity over the preceding millennia in several other locations. Immediately to the east of the Hielo Patagonico Sur in the Rio Guanaco region of the Precordillera, for example, they report that Wenzens (1999) detected five distinct periods of glacial advancement: "4500-4200, 3600-3300, 2300-2000, 1300-1000 14C years BP and AD 1600-1850." With respect to the glacial advancements that occurred during the cold interval that preceded the Roman Warm Period, they say they are "part of a body of evidence for global climatic change around this time (e.g., Grosjean et al., 1998; Wasson and Claussen, 2002), which coincides with an abrupt decrease in solar activity," adding that this observation "led van Geel et al. (2000) to suggest that variations in solar irradiance are more important as a driving force in variations in climate than previously believed." Finally, with respect to the most recent recession of Hielo Patogonico Norte outlet glaciers from their late historic moraine limits at the end of the 19th century, Glasser et al. say that "a similar pattern can be observed in other parts of southern Chile (e.g., Kuylenstierna et al., 1996; Koch and Kilian, 2001)." Likewise, they note that "in areas peripheral to the North Atlantic and in central Asia the available evidence shows that glaciers underwent significant recession at this time (cf. Grove, 1988; Savoskul, 1997)," which again suggests the operation of a globally-distributed forcing factor such as cyclically-variable solar activity.

In concluding their study, Glasser et al. consider a number of "possible explanations for the patterns of observed glacier fluctuations." Since so many factors come into play in this regard, however, and since a good percentage of glaciers refuse to respond as their neighbors do, it is difficult to provide a "one size fits all" explanation for their behavior. Nevertheless, in as close as one can come to framing a general conclusion on this point, Glasser et al. state that "proxy climate data indicate that many of these broad regional trends can be explained by changes in precipitation and atmospheric temperature rather than systematic changes related to the internal characteristics of the ice fields."

In light of this body of evidence, and Glasser et al.'s analysis of it, it would appear that the history of glacial activity they describe does indeed suggest the existence of a millennial-scale oscillation of climate that operates on a broad scale . perhaps, in fact, over all the earth. Viewed in this light, the current recession of many of earth's glaciers is seen to be but the most recent phase of a naturally-recurring phenomenon that has been "doing its thing," over and over, without any help from variable greenhouse gas concentrations, throughout the entire last half of the Holocene.

So what's new?

Nothing.

Source






Remote Australia becoming wetter

How awful! According to the global warmers it should be getting drier, I think. It should definitely not be getting better, anyway!

"Australia's dry heart is getting wetter. The changes do not mean we will all soon be rushing to live in a lush jungle that was once desert, but a CSIRO scientist said today the changes were significant enough to be noticeable. Climate scientist Ian Smith said research on Bureau of Meteorology records for the past 50 years showed average rainfall nationwide had risen. Dr Smith said the wetter conditions had occurred mostly in sparsely populated regions, which was unfortunate for the drought-affected parts of Australia. The wetter areas included almost all of Western Australia and parts of central Australia. "It almost goes all the way from the northern parts of the north-west tropics all the way down to the Great Australian Bight," Dr Smith said. "They have been getting wetter, and significantly wetter according to the statistics. It's in the order of about 10 per cent a decade.... Where it's normally dry, that 10 per cent a decade doesn't necessarily mean a great deal of rainfall in terms of millimetres, but in the far north that translates into a lot more rain."

Dr Smith said computer climate modelling had shown that the wetter conditions were possibly the result of complex changes to monsoon circulation which carried moist air from the ocean over the land during summer. He said the changes involved monsoon areas becoming wetter and cooler in summer while dry regions became wetter and warmer. This caused the monsoon circulation to carry moisture further inland before it fell as rain, he said. Dr Smith said he couldn't comment on the long term outcome and whether dry regions would become more productive as they got more rain. "I'd be very interested to know what the impacts are throughout that part of the country and that's the next phase of our research," Dr Smith said.

Source

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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