A large majority of those voting in the poll last week support the idea of removing a section of highway downtown and building a boulevard as a pleasant way to move vehicles through the area. The total number of votes was 162.
The highway is now marked as I-70 but once the new Mississippi River bridge is opened I-70 will cross over into Illinois rather than pass by the Arch. The tunnel proposal solves only a 3-4 block section of getting past the highway lanes. The boulevard would help mend over a mile long zone for half the cost.
It has been suggested just closing Memorial Drive. That still leaves the exposed highway North of Washington Ave as well as creating a huge dead zone — vast pedestrian mall at the foot of the Gateway Arch. Bad idea.
You couldn’t tell from our unusually pleasant St. Louis Summer, but the planet is slowly warming. It is this overall warming of the planet – mostly covered by water — that produced jacket weather in August. No heat, no humidity. I’ve seen numerous comments on Facebook and elsewhere saying Al Gore was wrong. ‘See, it is cool in August, Global Warming isn’t real.’ Cool temperatures with little to no humidity should send off alarms. The world climate is changing, no doubt in my mind.
Below is a chart showing our averages:
Source: National Weather Service
Note that July is typically warmer than August but as we know it is August that usually has the suffocating humidity.
The USA’s summer was cooler than average in 2009, for only the second time this decade, according to data released Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Several Midwest states — including Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and South Dakota— recorded one of their 10 coldest summers on record. Northwestern Pennsylvania recorded its coldest summer ever. Climate records date to 1895.
The chill continued into August, as temperatures were below normal across the Midwest, Plains and parts of the South. More than 300 low-temperature records were set across the Midwest during the last two days of August.
On the other end of the spectrum, it was one of the hottest, driest summers on record in parts of south Texas, according to the climate center.
“They’ve been fighting a really bad drought situation there,” Arndt said. McAllen, Texas, broke its all-time record for highest-average summer temperature.
Overall, the South, Southeast and Southwest regions were drier than average this summer. Arizona had its third-driest summer, while both South Carolina and Georgia had their sixth-driest. (Source: USA Today)
Some may still argue the climate change we are experiencing is natural and that man is not the cause. I’ll concede that man’s pollution may not be the sole cause but in my mind it is a major contributor. While we have been fortunate in St. Louis — I had my windows open much of August — other areas had above normal temperatures. Just because we had a fantastic summer doesn’t mean we can dismiss the reality of the changing climate.
The Farmers’ Almanac is predicting a cold winter for many of you.
The venerable almanac’s 2010 edition says numbing cold will predominate in the country’s midsection, from the Rocky Mountains in the West to the Appalachians in the East.
Managing Editor Sandi Duncan says it’s going to be an “ice cold sandwich.”
“We feel the middle part of the country’s really going to be cold — very, very cold, very, very frigid, with a lot of snow,” she said. “On the East and West coasts, it’s going to be a little milder. Not to say it’s going to be a mild short winter, but it’ll be milder compared to the middle of the country.”
The almanac’s forecast, however, is at odds with the National Weather Service, which is calling for warmer-than-normal temperatures across much of the country because of an El Nino system in the tropical Pacific Ocean, said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the NOAA Climate Prediction Center in Camp Springs, Md. (Source: AP)
To a scientist, global warming describes the average global surface temperature increase from human emissions of greenhouse gases. Its first use was in a 1975 Science article by geochemist Wallace Broecker of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory: “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?”1
Broecker’s term was a break with tradition. Earlier studies of human impact on climate had called it “inadvertent climate modification.”2 This was because while many scientists accepted that human activities could cause climate change, they did not know what the direction of change might be. Industrial emissions of tiny airborne particles called aerosols might cause cooling, while greenhouse gas emissions would cause warming. Which effect would dominate?
For most of the 1970s, nobody knew. So “inadvertent climate modification,” while clunky and dull, was an accurate reflection of the state of knowledge.
The first decisive National Academy of Science study of carbon dioxide’s impact on climate, published in 1979, abandoned “inadvertent climate modification.” Often called the Charney Report for its chairman, Jule Charney of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, declared: “if carbon dioxide continues to increase, [we find] no reason to doubt that climate changes will result and no reason to believe that these changes will be negligible.”3
In place of inadvertent climate modification, Charney adopted Broecker’s usage. When referring to surface temperature change, Charney used “global warming.” When discussing the many other changes that would be induced by increasing carbon dioxide, Charney used “climate change.”
Within scientific journals, this is still how the two terms are used. Global warming refers to surface temperature increases, while climate change includes global warming and everything else that increasing greenhouse gas amounts will affect.
During the late 1980s one more term entered the lexicon, “global change.†This term encompassed many other kinds of change in addition to climate change. When it was approved in 1989, the U.S. climate research program was embedded as a theme area within the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
But global warming became the dominant popular term in June 1988, when NASA scientist James E. Hansen had testified to Congress about climate, specifically referring to global warming. He said: “global warming has reached a level such that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and the observed warming.”4 Hansen’s testimony was very widely reported in popular and business media, and after that popular use of the term global warming exploded. Global change never gained traction in either the scientific literature or the popular media.
But temperature change itself isn’t the most severe effect of changing climate. Changes to precipitation patterns and sea level are likely to have much greater human impact than the higher temperatures alone. For this reason, scientific research on climate change encompasses far more than surface temperature change. So “global climate change” is the more scientifically accurate term. Like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we’ve chosen to emphasize global climate change on this website, and not global warming.
After demolition of the historic Century Building began in the Fall of 2004, the lawsuits by two downtown residents seeking to prevent the demolition became a moot point. On April 19, 2005 the State of Missouri and the City of St. Louis, through entities, joined with the developer of the Ninth Street Parking Garage and filed a Malicious Prosecution claim against Marcia Behrendt & Roger Plackemeier. The plaintiffs are seeking $1,000,000.
After numerous delays the trial was scheduled to finally get underway tomorrow ( 9/14/2009) at 9am. But last Friday, at the request of the Plaintiffs, the case was again delayed. The parties have a new date of 10/26/2009 — that date is just to determine the future trial date. Most likely we are looking at 2010 for the trial.  When your motivation is to discourage public participation it makes sense to drag these things out.
I should disclose that I personally know both Marcia Behrendt & Roger Plackemeier. Marcia was the person that found me after my stroke on 2/1/2008. So I’m not an impartial observer in this issue. To file such a claim and then delay for years is just wrong.
MISSOURI DEVELOPMENT FINANCE BOARD VS BEHRENDT, Case #22052-01373, can be viewed at http://www.courts.mo.gov/casenet. The poll this week asks your view on the city & state suing these two for the last four + years.  Right or wrong?
September 12, 2009Books, STL RegionComments Off on Faded Glory or a Glorious Future?
As most frequent visitors know, I’m not from around here (I’ve “only” lived in St. Louis for about 5 years). I don’t remember Sportsman Park or where the Blues used to play. I never went to Gaslight Square or the Highlands amusement park. I never rode on a streetcar here, nor do I have any irrational cravings for a concrete or for Provel cheese. I’m an outsider, and I’m still learning a lot about my new hometown.
Earlier this year, Forbes Magazine did a special series on the State of the City, and unlike many series, focused on the whys cities are the way they are, instead of just creating another list. I found many points that crystallized more than a few of my perceptions and observations about St. Louis, both the city and the region, and offered more than a few insights about what the future may hold for us and how we may or may not get there.
In an effort to be succinct, I’m purposely not going to quote from any of the articles – it would be best if you explored them on your own – but I think there are multiple topics worth further, local discussion, everything from the role suburbia plays to discussions on parks, public art and high-speed rail. Many of the issues raised aren’t new – crime, schools, sprawl, taxes, jobs – but the spin is not always what we’ve come to expect. I’d encourage you to take the time to look at one or more in depth, and then to come back and post your thoughts on the issues that seem most relevant.
Many fought hard to keep the 1960s San Luis Apartments at Lindell and N. Taylor (map link). The battle, however, was lost and the demolition crews have been busy razing the structure. Little remained on Thursday:
Above: we can see the spray of water as the building was being wrecked. The water spray didn’t appear to be effective in other directions. Driving through the area you could see dust everywhere.
Neighbors (presumably) expressed their view on the alley side of the old garage being razed.
The dust will end once the building is fully razed. And just think, they won’t need any help from construction noise since the St. Louis Archdiocese is paving the prominent corner to store cars.
AARP Livibility Index
The Livability Index scores neighborhoods and communities across the U.S. for the services and amenities that impact your life the most
Built St. Louis
historic architecture of St. Louis, Missouri – mourning the losses, celebrating the survivors.
Geo St. Louis
a guide to geospatial data about the City of St. Louis
