Credit: Maplecroft

The temperature baseline used in the Paris climate agreement may have discounted an entire century’s worth of human-caused global warming, a new study has found.

Countries in the Paris climate agreement set a target of keeping warming below 2 degrees Celsius by curbing carbon emissions compared to their preindustrial levels. But a new study shows that the preindustrial level used in the agreement, based on temperature records from the late 19th century, doesn’t account for a potential century of rising temperatures caused by carbon dioxide emissions. Accounting for those gases, released from about 1750 to 1875, would add another one-fifth of a degree to the baseline temperature, the study found.

Published yesterday in Nature Climate Change, the research suggests there’s less time than previously believed to address global warming, said Michael Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University.

The study estimates that there may have already been 0.2 degree Celsius of warming, or 0.36 degree Fahrenheit, built into Earth, he said. That means the Paris Agreement would have to be more aggressive, according to the study, which was also written by researchers from the universities of Edinburgh and […]

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U.S. Marines leaving a compound at night in Afghanistan’s Helmand province.
Credit: Defense Department

In May, the founder of the mercenary-for-hire group Blackwater (now since remained Academi), Erik Prince took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to propose that the Pentagon employ “private military units” and appoint a “viceroy” to oversee the war in Afghanistan.

On July 10, The New York Times reported that Prince and the owner of the military contractor Dyn Corporation, Stephen Feinberg, have, at the request of Stephen K. Bannon and Jared Kushner, been pushing a plan to, in effect, privatize the war effort in Afghanistan. (In recent weeks both The Nation and The American Conservativehave published deep-dive investigative pieces into the behind the scenes machinations of would-be Viceroys Prince and Feinberg).According to Prince, who has been actively lobbying for what he calls an “East India Company approach” as the solution to America’s longest war (16 years, $117 billion and counting), “In Afghanistan, the viceroy approach would reduce rampant fraud by focusing spending on initiatives that further the central strategy, rather than handing cash to every outstretched […]

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Credit: Yes! Magazine

The promise of free college education helped propel Bernie Sanders’ 2016 bid for the Democratic nomination to national prominence. It reverberated during the confirmation hearings for Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, and Sanders continues to push the issue.

In conversations among politicians, college administrators, educators, parents and students, college affordability seems to be seen as a purely financial issue—it’s all about money.

My research into the historical cost of college shows that the roots of the currentstudent debt crisis are neither economic nor financial in origin, but predominantly social. Tuition fees and student loans became an essential part of the equation only as Americans came to believe in an entirely different purpose for higher education.

Cost of a college degree today

For many students, graduation means debt. In 2012, more than 44 million Americans (14 percent of the population) were still paying off student loans. And the average graduate in 2016 left college with more than $37,000 in student loan debt.

Student loan debt has become the second-largest type of personal debtamong Americans. Besides leading to depression and anxiety, student loan […]

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Christofascist Pastor Ronnie Hyde

Ronnie Hyde pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and child pornography charges in March related to the 1994 slaying of 16-year-old Fred Laster, whose dismembered body was found in a Dumpster.

Laster’s decapitated torso was found behind a trash bin near Lake City, but the remains went unidentified until a DNA test in 2015 matched the slain teen to his twin sister.

Police said the 61-year-old Hyde befriended the runaway teen more than two decades ago as youth pastor at Strength for Living Church in Yulee, prosecutors said.

Investigators strongly suggested they suspect Hyde — who had been a counselor at Crosswater Community Church in Nocatee up to his arrest — is a suspect in other unsolved cases by plastering his face on eight billboards seeking information in the Jacksonville area.

New court documents show that prosecutors are also gathering evidence in two additional sex abuse cases dating back to the early 1990s.

A man came forward after Hyde’s arrest in March and said the former youth pastor had mentored him as […]

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump, who has averaged 40% job approval since his inauguration, received approval ratings of 50% or higher in 17 states in the first half of 2017. Residents in an equal number of states gave him approval ratings below 40%. In 16 states, his ratings ranged between 40% and 49%.

Consistent with the broader geographic patterns of Republican strength across the country, some of Trump’s highest approval ratings tend to be in Southern, Plains and Mountain West states. His lowest ratings are primarily in Northeast and West Coast states.

The results are based on Gallup Daily tracking from Jan. 20 through June 30, including interviews with more than 81,000 U.S. adults. Gallup interviewed at least 220 residents in each state during this period, including 500 or more in 39 states. Gallup weighted each state sample to ensure it is demographically representative of the adult population. The full results for each state are included at the end of the article.

During the Jan. 20-June 30 time period, residents in West Virginia (60%), North Dakota (59%) and South Dakota (57%) gave Trump his […]

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