This post was just going to poke a bit of fun at BBC newsreaders & presenters on Radio 4 this morning who could not quite make up their minds if climatic, as in the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, should be pronounce the Climactic Research Unit – which it must be right now, in the midst of so much attention.
Even the OED recognises that there can be confusion. But then it comes up with this delicious quote (not, I hasten to add, meant to serve as an example of such confusion but as an example of one meaning of the word climax in ecology: The point in the ecological succession at which a plant-community reaches a state of equilibrium with its environment, able to reproduce itself indefinitely under existing conditions). It comes from PW Richards: Tropical Rain Forest , “known to generations of botanists and tropical biologists as THE book in the field”
“Since the Tropical Rain forest is a climatic climax, it must, by definition, be in a state of equilibrium.”
[No, I do not know what that means]
I also found the following to illustrate the use of another climate-related adjective – climatarchic, meaning presiding over or influencing climatic conditions. It comes from an 1874 book by BF Taylor called World on Wheels
That a railroad should influence the weather is the very last thing that would be suspected, but it must plead guilty to the charge, for in certain regions it is almost climatarchic a presider over climate.
They knew about the problem even then!
