Source:
Rethinking Climate, Climate Change,
and Their Relationship with Water
Demetris Koutsoyiannis
Water 2021, 13, 849.
https://doi.org/10.3390/w13060849
Academic Editors:
Vasileios Tzanakakis, Stavros Alexandris
Published: 19 March 2021
Copyright: © 2021 by the author.
Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 15780 Athens, Greece; dk@itia.ntua.gr
Abstract:
... the modern definitions of climate are seriously affected by the wrong perception of the previous two centuries that climate should regularly be constant, unless an external agent acts upon it.
... We illustrate the definition by real-world data, which also exemplify the large climatic variability.
Given this variability, the term “climate change” turns out to be scientifically unjustified.
Specifically, it is a pleonasm as climate, like weather, has been ever-changing.
Indeed, a historical investigation reveals that the aim in using that term is not scientific but political.
Within the political aims, water issues have been greatly promoted by projecting future catastrophes while reversing true roles and causality directions.
For this reason, we provide arguments that water is the main element that drives climate, and not the opposite.
1. Introduction
... the notion (and the scientific term) of climate was established in ancient Greece in a geographical context, while it acquired a statistical content (average weather) in modern times after meteorological measurements had become common.
Yet the mod-ern definitions of climate ... are deficient as they are af-fected by a wrong perception of the 19th and 20th centuries that the climate at a certain place should regularly be constant, unless an external agent acts upon it.
... We illustrate the definition by real-world data, which also exemplify the large variability of climate.
Given this variability, the term “climate change” turns out to be scientifically unjustified.
Specifically, it is a pleonasm, as the climate, like the weather, has been ever-changing.
... the analysis of Sec- tion 5 shows that water is the main element that drives climate, rather than just being affected by climate as commonly thought.
This demands a more active role of hydrologists in climate research, replacing their current passive role in studying climate impacts. ...
... 8. Conclusions
... one of the aims of the paper is to show that polarization stems from political, rather than scientific, roots.
Many scientists have paralleled their scientific profession with political aims (cf. “Marches for Science”).
At the same time, mixing up science with politics has been promoted by many as a positive development.
In contrast, this paper tries to promote the ancient ideal of science being separated from other interests, such as economic or political.
... In modern politics, fuzzy language and subjectivity may be desirable as they serve several purposes such as inclusiveness and diffusion of responsibility.
In contrast, in science, the desiderata are rigour, clarity and objectivity.
... the current definitions of climate do not highlight its nonstatic nature.
Rather, they imply a static climate, as already analysed (Section 3).
... By dispelling the fallacy, the term “climate change” would hopefully disappear from the scientific vocabulary and remain where it exactly belongs, i.e., the political vocabulary (Section 6).
Dispelling another set of fallacies about the relationship of water and climate, also investigated here (Section 5) could be equally useful.
The potential usefulness relies on at least two facts.
Highlighting the stochastic character of climate and its huge variability helps us understand the failure of current deterministic modeling approaches in describing past climate,
and points to a potentially more promising direction in climate modelling within a stochastic framework.
Highlighting the strong role of water in the climate can help shake the prevailing views on roles and causality chains in climatic processes, which may currently be opposite the real ones.
Funding: This research received no external funding but was motivated by the scientific curiosity of the author."