Hasta La Gadget!

Back in our parents’ and grandparents’ day, the world, and our descriptions of it were pretty much, this or that. People were male or female, single or married, working or looking. Things have gotten a lot more complicated, and our vocabularies, have had to keep up. I read an article last week about people in the process of transgendering wanting their own pronouns. Him and his, her and hers, were not descriptive of who they are, or is it, were. And naturally, they felt dissed — which isn’t good.

For every trend, however, there is a counter-trend. In this case the counter-trend is toward the loss of specific meaning. Vocabularies are being simplified and distinctions being lost. At the extreme, thousands of years of language development are being erased as language is reduced to glyphs displayed on smartphones rather than cave walls.

Change is inevitable, but in the process, important and valuable information can be lost. I perceive that this is what has happened with the definitions of “to Marry” and “Marriage”. These words have particular importance to me as a collaborative divorce lawyer, who contradictorily, is devoted to providing support for couples who want their partnerships to be more successful, durable and satisfying.

You see, without getting into the structure of language, about which I have no more than the remnants of a fifth grade education, we have, in the use of our language, conflated “Marry” and “Wed”. The DIY sign on the back of newly wed’s escape vehicle doesn’t say, “Just Wed” as correctly describes the situation, but rather, “Just Married”.

If we look at the word “marry” as a verb, “to marry” out of the context of nuptials, it means something a kin to blending, a merger of characteristics, a combining of two different things to produce a third that retains the individual characteristics of the separate sources. The best description I’ve found is buried in the dozen or so dictionary definitions of “to Marry”, where it is described as the process by which different strains of tobacco are stacked together in close proximity in a controlled environment. Over time the favored characteristics of each strain are shared with the other, and unfavored characteristics masked or lost. The result being a blend which has the best characteristics of each original strain. That isn’t something that happens quickly with tobacco, so you can imagine how long it takes with people. It certainly doesn’t happen in the time it takes to exchange vows.

This difference isn’t trivial. How we think and how we act are shaped by the meaning attached to the words we use. At some level, the couple leaving the ceremony believing they are now married, believes the work is done, or mostly done. “I wanted to be one with Sean and now we are.” Well, ask the couple with twenty-five years into the marriage process and they’ll tell you, “A wedding just marks the start of the marriage process. It takes many years, and a great deal of hard work to accomplish.” Marriage, the somewhat mystical relationship that develops between partners over time, is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon. There is no switch that gets flicked and now we’re married. It is incremental and zig-zag, developing over time in an environment of sustained commitment, persistent love (despite challenges), patience, understanding, and effort. However, all of this work is not without a reward. The journey itself has many associated rewards. There are the delights, frustrations, and elations that come from guiding and abetting the development of children into adults. There is the attachment of two individuals at a profound level of intimacy. There are the events and moments experienced and shared along the way. And ultimately, there is a zen tranquility and shared bliss that exists outside and above the pains and pressures of change and even tragedy.

Wonderfully, this long-term phenomenon is not just the province and reward of wedded couples, but has the potential to be the product of every partnership. If we accept from the beginning that marriage is a long-term process and journey available to committed partners, our expectations, our standards of achievement, and our prospects for success will all be changed in the direction of more successful, durable and satisfying partnerships. And that, from my divorce perspective, is a very good thing.

No, climate change is not experiencing a hiatus. No, there is not currently a “pause” in global warming.

Despite widespread such claims in contrarian circles, human-caused warming of the globe proceeds unabated. Indeed, as reported here at The Huffington Post just last month, the most recent year (2014) was likely the warmest year on record.

It is true that Earth’s surface warmed a bit less than models predicted it to over the past decade-and-a-half or so. This doesn’t mean that the models are flawed. Instead, it points to a discrepancy that likely arose from a combination of three main factors (see the discussion my piece last year in Scientific American). These factors include the likely underestimation of the actual warming that has occurred, due to gaps in the observational data. Secondly, scientists have failed to include in model simulations some natural factors (low-level but persistent volcanic eruptions and a small dip in solar output) that had a slight cooling influence on Earth’s climate. Finally, there is the possibility that internal, natural oscillations in temperature may have masked some surface warming in recent decades, much as an outbreak of Arctic air can mask the seasonal warming of spring during a late season cold snap. One could call it a global warming “speed bump.” In fact, I have.

Some have argued that these oscillations contributed substantially to the warming of the globe in recent decades. In an article my colleagues Byron Steinman, Sonya Miller and I have in the latest issue of Science magazine, we show that internal climate variability instead partially offset global warming.

We focused on the Northern Hemisphere and the role played by two climate oscillations known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation or “AMO” (a term I coined back in 2000, as recounted in my book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars) and the so-called Pacific Decadal Oscillation or “PDO” (we a use a slightly different term–Pacific Multidecadal Oscillation or “PMO” to refer to the longer-term features of this apparent oscillation). The oscillation in Northern Hemisphere average temperatures (which we term the Northern Hemisphere Multidecadal Oscillation or “NMO”) is found to result from a combination of the AMO and PMO.

In numerous previous studies, these oscillations have been linked to everything from global warming, to drought in the Sahel region of Africa, to increased Atlantic hurricane activity. In our article, we show that the methods used in most if not all of these previous studies have been flawed. They fail to give the correct answer when applied to a situation (a climate model simulation) where the true answer is known.

We propose and test an alternative method for identifying these oscillations, which makes use of the climate simulations used in the most recent IPCC report (the so-called “CMIP5” simulations). These simulations are used to estimate the component of temperature changes due to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations and other human impacts plus the effects of volcanic eruptions and observed changes in solar output. When all those influences are removed, the only thing remaining should be internal oscillations. We show that our method gives the correct answer when tested with climate model simulations.

Estimated history of the “AMO” (blue), the “PMO (green) and the “NMO” (black). Uncertainties are indicated by shading. Note how the AMO (blue) has reached a shallow peak recently, while the PMO is plummeting quite dramatically. The latter accounts for the precipitous recent drop in the NMO.

Applying our method to the actual climate observations (see figure above) we find that the NMO is currently trending downward. In other words, the internal oscillatory component is currently offsetting some of the Northern Hemisphere warming that we would otherwise be experiencing. This finding expands upon our previous work coming to a similar conclusion, but in the current study we better pinpoint the source of the downturn. The much-vaunted AMO appears to have made relatively little contribution to large-scale temperature changes over the past couple decades. Its amplitude has been small, and it is currently relatively flat, approaching the crest of a very shallow upward peak. That contrasts with the PMO, which is trending sharply downward. It is that decline in the PMO (which is tied to the predominance of cold La Niña-like conditions in the tropical Pacific over the past decade) that appears responsible for the declining NMO, i.e. the slowdown in warming or “faux pause” as some have termed it.

Our conclusion that natural cooling in the Pacific is a principal contributor to the recent slowdown in large-scale warming is consistent with some other recent studies, including a study I commented on previously showing that stronger-than-normal winds in the tropical Pacific during the past decade have lead to increased upwelling of cold deep water in the eastern equatorial Pacific. Other work by Kevin Trenberth and John Fasullo of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) shows that the there has been increased sub-surface heat burial in the Pacific ocean over this time frame, while yet another study by James Risbey and colleagues demonstrates that model simulations that most closely follow the observed sequence of El Niño and La Niña events over the past decade tend to reproduce the warming slowdown.

It is possible that the downturn in the PMO itself reflects a “dynamical response” of the climate to global warming. Indeed, I have suggested this possibility before. But the state-of-the-art climate model simulations analyzed in our current study suggest that this phenomenon is a manifestation of purely random, internal oscillations in the climate system.

This finding has potential ramifications for the climate changes we will see in the decades ahead. As we note in the last line of our article,

Given the pattern of past historical variation, this trend will likely reverse with internal variability, instead adding to anthropogenic warming in the coming decades.

That is perhaps the most worrying implication of our study, for it implies that the “false pause” may simply have been a cause for false complacency, when it comes to averting dangerous climate change.

This commentary is a cross-post with RealClimate.

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Michael Mann is Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Pennsylvania State University and author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines (now available in paperback with a guest foreword by Bill Nye “The Science Guy”)

A rep for E! told HuffPost Entertainment that reports the Kardashians signed a four-year, $100 million deal with the network are “grossly inaccurate.”

On Thursday, Page Six claimed sources had confirmed Kris Jenner inked a “record-breaking” deal for herself and daughters Kourtney, Kim and Khloe Kardashian, as well as Kendall and Kylie Jenner. Kris’s ex-husband, Bruce Jenner, was reportedly not included in the contract’s new terms. (Jenner is apparently leaving “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” after 10th season so the network can build a show around the former Olympian.)

Page Six’s source told the paper, “You’ll be seeing a lot more of the Kardashian family. This is a huge deal, which will see their involvement with the network and its digital properties expand well into the future.”

The last time the family resigned their contracts with E!, it was a three-season deal worth a reported $40 million in 2012. At the time, the deal made them the highest-paid reality TV stars in the world.

While the network is denying the details of their new contract, it would be in their best interest to hold onto the family. Combined they have more than 79 million Twitter followers and 103 million Instagram followers. Kim Kardashian is a constant media presence, whether she poses nude or cuts her hair. Meanwhile, Kardashian’s sisters are also frequent tabloid fixtures: Kendall Jenner’s modeling career has exploded (she recently became the face of Estée Lauder cosmetics), while Kendall and Kylie Jenner even made Time magazine’s list of the most influential teens of 2014.

“They need you! Y’all are the personalities, E! needs y’all!” Kanye West, Kim’s husband, said after the Grammys earlier this month. “The Kardashians have a percentage of E! That’s what I’m saying, they need y’all!” Who are we argue with Yeezus?

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