Does the Climate exist?
Part One: Of the Impossibility of an Ontological Proof of the Existence of Climate
[The following will be published in two parts. Bear with me on the philosophical considerations of Part One. You will be rewarded in Part Two, which I’ll publish tomorrow.]
Does “the Climate” exist? If yes, we should be able to provide a definition that is neither tautological nor entirely based on a quantification of something else (i.e.., if Climate = A, then “A is X of B”.) Let’s see what the obvious go-to source for the definition of “climate” has to say – the IPCC:
“Climate in a narrow sense is usually defined as the average weather—or more rigorously, as the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities—over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years. The classical period for averaging these variables is 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The relevant quantities are most often surface variables such as temperature, precipitation, and wind. Climate in a wider sense is the state, including a statistical description, of the climate system.”[1]
This definition does not fulfil the criteria of a valid definition. A definition must be able to “express the essential nature of the thing” (Marriam-Weber). Instead, it refers to a quantity of something else: “A is X (units) of B”. We sure can define weather. Weather is “[t]he state of the atmosphere at a given time and place, with respect to variables such as temperature, moisture, wind velocity, and barometric pressure.” There is no substantial definition of climate that is not already exhausted in the definition of weather. From a logical standpoint, we should then be able to replace the notion of “climate” with that of “weather over time”.
So what if we replace current political and medial talk about climate with the notion of “weather-over-time”? Let’s try it out:
“Weather-over time-change widespread, rapid, and intensifying.” IPCC, Aug 2021.
“UN weather-over-time report stresses urgency to act to secure a livable future.” UN, 2023[2]
“We have never been better equipped to solve the weather-over-time challenge. But we must move into warp speed weather-over-time action now!” Antonio Guterres, March 20th, 2023.
“Experience weather-over-time change in the Pacific” UN, 2023.
“A top weather-over-time scientist is warning that weather-over-time change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuel over the next five years.” Greta Thunberg on Twitter, 2018.
Doesn’t really work, does it? “Climate” definitely has a more authoritarian aura to it. Imagine people were told by the EU or a Green minister that combustion engine cars forbidden from next year because of “weather-over-time”. Or imagine a US Democrat “stand up for weather-over-time!”. So, what is going on with the authoritarian usage of the word Climate? I will return to this. First, we must sharpen up the logical considerations. If Climate exists, it must be 1). definable as a phenomenon in its own right, which is of the essence for 2.) having correspondence in reality. The latter is likewise the basis for whatever “models” or “simulations” express.
1.) What is the specific quality of "climate"?”
If the official go-to source for the topic of “climate”, the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change, or the UNFCCC (the UN Climate Change organization), fails to provide a definition of “climate” on their webpage, Twitter’s swarm intelligence is usually a good place to hear how people define climate. One mutual on Twitter made this valid point: it’s “basically what happens in the atmosphere… mostly an interaction of air, temperature and water, on a rotating ball orbiting around the sun.”
Which, as we have seen before, is the definition of weather, not of climate.
He added: “Climate plays a huge role in our lives, on countless different levels. As a farmer, I depend on it completely, and so do all the creatures that eat or breathe.”
There is no human being who has ever depended on or experienced “climate”. We depend on and experience “weather”. The change in the atmosphere from one day or hour or minute to the next is what humans experience. They may also experience warm summers and cold winters, as they may experience rather cold summers and warm winters. When humans experience coldness, dampness, or snow, they experience the weather. Climate as weather-over-time presents an abstraction that can never be experienced itself. When you’re in Athens over the summer, you will experience hot weather, not a hot climate. You will not walk out on your balcony in the morning and say: “What beautiful climate it is again today!”
Another Twitter friend emphasized the criterion of “predictability”: “The climate is long-term weather and is predictable, unlike short-term weather.” Only to promptly invalidate this definition: “Despite the fact that the definition of a chaotic system is that unpredictability grows with time and the weather is a classic example.” He is right. This is not a good definition and does not solve the problem of the missing quality of “climate”.
Yet another friend pointed me to the intelligibility of climate: “…one does speak of a "temperate climate", or a "tropical climate" etc, and these are, I think, intelligible and useful categories. Everything involved can perhaps be counted, but one doesn't need to do that to understand what's meant.” So when we say “the nice climate of Southern France”, everyone will understand what is meant. But this, I’d wager, is because “climate” is subconsciously exchanged by “weather”. Someone probably thinks of sitting on their beachside balcony in Marseille in January at a mild 20 degrees Celsius with a glass of rosé, and think, yes, nice climate. But what they really mean is weather. Of course, you can say the “climate” is nicer in Marseille than in Hamburg. But the factor which gives meaning to this statement is how many days of sunshine or rain/coldness/dampness/dryness the respective areas have. And that is entirely a weather thing.
One other person had the following to say: “Climate is basically defined by the thermodynamic properties of the earth and its atmosphere moving through space. The climate of a planet determines what kind of weather a planet experiences.” This, the attentive observer stated, is why “it rains melted lead on Venus, and water on earth.”
But we still don’t know what “climate” is, for the thermodynamic properties of a planet are expressed by its meteorological patterns. It rains water instead of lead because the weather we experience (the sum of its meteorological patterns) takes care of it. Weather may depend on “climate” as much as it wants, but at the end of the day, there will be a storm or a flood or a drought. As far as the definition goes, therefore, we are back with weather. Or “weather over a period of 30 years”, if you will. Lots of weather.
The missing definition of “climate” puts us into a conundrum. For it would be a bit of a stretch to contend that where there is no definition, the thing does not exist. Or would it?[3]
After all, to “define” means to limit, and limitation is the sine-qua-non of determination: a cat is not a dog, H20 is not 02, my husband is not a dish of Indian curry. Because “A is not X” would lead to an infinite series, definitions are positive. They tell us not what a thing is not, but what it in fact is, and thereby automatically exclude the infinite series of what particular things are not, which does come in handy when you think of it. But if you cannot delineate a being, it vanishes – not only to the mind, but also in reality. This is why “Everything Everywhere All At Once” would be a definition of nothingness or meaninglessness.
2.) What are the climate models models of?
But can we not say that a lot of people have at least a vague understanding of “climate”? If we cannot define the essence of a thing (climate), can we at least say that if we can think, imagine, model, simulate, imitate it, it also must have an independent existence, and therefore a correspondence in reality? For what else should motivate us to make assessments on climate that have a definite impact on our lives?
At this point, it may be worth revisiting Kant’s objection to the “ontological proof of the existence of God”.
Faced with the challenge proving the existence of God, medieval and modern philosophers such as Anselm of Canterbury and Descartes (whom Kant seems to take as the sole point of reference) said that - if you forgive me for using Kant’s paraphrasis - “because existence necessarily belongs to the object of that concept, provided always that I accept the thing as given (existing), its existence also must necessarily be accepted (according to the rule of identity), and that the Being therefore must itself be absolutely necessary because its existence is implied in a concept, which is accepted voluntarily only, and always under the condition that I accept the object of it as given.”
In simpler words, because I can think that God exists – “God exists” is a valid logical judgment – he must also exist in reality.
Kant calls this a “powerful illusion”: “Being is evidently not a real predicate, or a concept of something that can be added to the concept of a thing.” Nothing is added in reality to the thing by saying “it exists”. Saying “the 1 million dollars on my bank account exist” unfortunately do not yield the fact that the 1 million dollars really exist. “By whatever and by however many predicates I may think a thing … nothing is really added to it if I add that the thing exists.”[4]
Existence is a not an independent predicate, says Kant. And we are still left in the dark on the meaning of God, or “climate”, for that matter.
[1] https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/chapter/glossary/
[2] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/
[3] Needless to say, the reversal is not true: there are perfectly definable things that have no correspondence in reality, e.g. a centaur, millions of fiction characters, as well as extinct animals or plants.
[4] All Kant quotes: Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason, London: Macmillan, 1922. pp. 471 ff.
Wittgenstein might have enjoyed this:
"When I say "My broom is in the corner", is this really a statement about the broomstick and the brush? Well, it could at any rate be replaced by a statement giving the position of the stick and the position of the brush. And this statement is surely a further analysed form of the first one. But why do I call it "further analysed"? Well, if the broom is there, that surely means that the stick and brush must be there, and in a particular relation to one another; and previously this was, as it were, hidden in the sense of the first sentence, and is articulated in the analysed sentence. Then does someone who says that the broom is in the corner really mean: the broomstick is there, and so is the brush, and the broomstick is fixed in the brush? a If we were to ask anyone if he meant this, he would probably say that he had not specially thought of either the broomstick or the brush. And that would be the right answer, for he did not mean to speak either of the stick or of the brush in particular. Suppose that, instead of telling someone "Bring me the broom!", you said "Bring me the broomstick and the brush which is fitted on to it!" a Isn’t the answer: "Do you want the broom? Why do you put it so oddly?" (PI 60)
The usefulness (for whom? remains to be discussed) of "climate" as a concept is in the association with other situations that can not be sat out (weather can be sat out, think of a thunderstorm). We understand what is meant when somebody is speaking of a climate of change, a climate of anxiety, or a climate of fear.