The single most important benchmark underpinning this week’s talks in Paris on climate change—two degrees Celsius—has guided climate-treaty discussions for decades, but some scientists question the validity of the target.Okay, so far so good. But then you get this doozy:
Many researchers have argued that a rise in the planet’s average global air temperature of two degrees or more above preindustrial levels would usher in catastrophic climate change. But many others argue that is a somewhat arbitrary threshold based on tenuous research, and therefore an impractical spur to policy action.
“It emerged from a political agenda, not a scientific analysis,” says Mark Maslin, professor of climatology at University College London. “It’s not a sensible, rational target because the models give you a range of possibilities, not a single answer.”
Policy makers tend to assume the two-degree target expresses a solid scientific view, but it doesn’t. The exhaustive reports published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are considered to be the most comprehensive analysis of the science of global warming. Yet the two-degree limit isn’t mentioned in a single IPCC report.
Still, many scientists are willing to back the goal because they see it as giving policy makers a clear-cut target to shoot at in the fight against global warming...
Most climatologists agree that the earth is getting warmer and that the emission of greenhouse gases is the main driver of this change. But the question of when a catastrophic tipping point might be reached is up in the air...Um, greenhouse gases are not the main driver. Frankly, we don't know what the main driver is. It could be anything. We're talking about the whole damned earth and the freakin' solar system. The number of possible variables is staggering.
Every hit was a prayer. Every run was a plea. Every time a USC player punched a UCLA player in the mouth on a bruising, revealing afternoon at the Coliseum, there was a message.Keep reading.
Hire Clay Helton.
It was heard when Adoree' Jackson caught a punt, shrugged off a shot by Cameron Judge and raced 42 yards for a touchdown. It resounded when Claude Pelon racked Josh Rosen into a fumble that was carried 31 yards by Rasheem Green for a touchdown. It echoed when Darreus Rogers bullied through the grasp of Nate Meadors for a touchdown.
Hashtag Helton2016.
Pat Haden had to be listening. The Trojans alumni and boosters are surely understanding. There is absolutely no way anyone with any Trojans influence can argue against the reality of what is happening.
In the wake of USC's 40-21 blasting of UCLA on Saturday, it is clear that Clay Helton should be named the Trojans' permanent head coach, and it should happen now.
Don't wait for the outcome of the game against highly ranked Stanford in next week's Pac-12 Conference championship bout. How fair is it to judge an interim coach with a 6-2 record, a bowl victory, a win over UCLA and six decorated years on the USC staff on whether he can lead a team from the dregs of a distracted season to the Rose Bowl?
Save the announcement for after the game to avoid distraction, but get the news conference and paperwork ready now. The coronation occurred Saturday, when Helton's culture change was brutally evident in how the Trojans outmuscled, outhustled and simply outfought a Bruins team that had spent the previous three seasons beating them double-digit senseless...
"A divorced Waffle House waitress goes online looking for love and finds this weirdo loner." https://t.co/p58yALi978 pic.twitter.com/GfeLvJBIAY
— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) November 29, 2015Liberals tell us it is heartless and “mean-spirited” to suggest that public safety would be best served if mentally ill people with histories of dangerous behavior were locked up in psychiatric wards. Americans are told that it’s OK to let delusional and antisocial freaks roam around free in our society, because what could possibly go wrong?More at the Washington post, "Alleged Colorado gunman was adrift and alienated."
When one of these dangerous kooks who roam among us finally commits the kind of crazy violence, however, liberals quickly rush to tell us that his insane actions have some kind of political significance and that the proper response to this atrocity is — wait for it — more liberalism. Another crazy killer, therefore, vote Democrat!
Liberalism would be laughable, if it were not so deadly...
The American student loan crisis is often seen as a problem of profligacy and predation. Wasteful colleges raise tuition every year, we are told, even as middle-class wages stagnate and unscrupulous for-profit colleges bilk the unwary. The result is mounting unmanageable debt.You can see where this is going.
There is much truth in this diagnosis. But it does not explain the plight of Liz Kelley, a Missouri high school teacher and mother of four who made a series of unremarkable decisions about college and borrowing. She now owes the federal government $410,000, and counting.
This is a staggering and unusual sum. The average undergraduate who borrows leaves school with about $30,000 in debt. But Ms. Kelley’s circumstances are not unique. Of the 43.3 million borrowers with outstanding federal student loans, 1.8 percent, or 779,000 people, owe $150,000 or more. And 346,000 owe more than $200,000.
Ms. Kelley’s debt woes are also mostly a matter of interest, not principal, a growing problem for the nation’s student debtors. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the number of active borrowers enrolled in college has declined to roughly nine million today from about 12 million in 2010. Yet the total amount of outstanding debt continues to increase, because many borrowers are not paying back their older loans.
This is partly a function of continuing economic hardship. But it also reflects how the federal government has become the biggest, nicest and meanest student lender in the world.
Ms. Kelley, 48, first enrolled in college in 1990 at Maryville University, a private school near St. Louis. She was a nontraditional student, already married with children. She took out loans to help pay tuition, and by the time she graduated with a degree in English in 1994, the total was $26,278, which is the inflation-adjusted equivalent of about $42,000 in 2015. This is not an unusual sum. The typical private college graduate who borrows holds $32,600 in debt.
Then as now, the job market was not clamoring for English majors. Practicing law and teaching seemed like the best options, and Ms. Kelley chose the former. Entering law school also allowed her to delay repaying her undergraduate student loans. She again borrowed for tuition, $37,000 for the first three semesters, which is also a fairly typical amount. Law school graduates today often have six-figure loans...
Black Friday's importance as the key shopping day of the year is ending, observers say, as Thanksgiving Day sales zoom and easy mobile shopping makes other days just as important.Still more.
The strong trend of online sales growth far surpassing offline sales continues, though.
Cowen analyst Oliver Chen estimates that while online traffic during Black Friday weekend will rise 20% vs. a year earlier, in-store traffic will fall 2% to 4%.
Online sales have enjoyed double-digit growth rates since the dawn of the e-commerce era.
Adobe Systems' (NASDAQ: ADBE) Adobe Digital Index, which says it measures 80% of all online transactions from the top 100 U.S. retailers, said sales between midnight and 11 a.m. ET Friday rose 15% from the year-earlier period, to $822 million.
Thanksgiving Day online shopping, however, jumped 25% vs. Thanksgiving 2014, to $1.72 billion.
Third-party sales even on top site Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) grew far greater year-over-year on Thanksgiving than they will on Black Friday, Scot Wingo, executive chairman of Channel Advisor (NYSE: ECOM), a firm that helps third parties sell on e-com sites, told IBD.
"Thanksgiving came on the scene two years ago, and it's really blown the doors off," Wingo said. Black Friday growth, on the other hand, was "OK," he said.
"This is the year we'll look back and say Black Friday jumped the shark," Stephen Baker, an analyst at NPD Group, told IBD...
