I've got a small essay I'm working on and wanted to use the Climate Change issue in the context of the Butterfly Effect as the backdrop to understanding why many scientists support Global Warming Theories, etc...
The idea here is that since weather is a dynamic system, that small changes on the inputs to the system may give us large (unexpected) results on the outputs.
One hole in this theory is that weather may no be a very chotic system and perhaps much more stable than generally assumed (at least in the context of the butterfly effect). And... Opponents of global warming often use volcano ash, etc. as "reason" that man does not imprint our environment nearly as much as the earth events (such as volcanoes, etc...)
So... Can it be confidently said that one key reason for concern about climate change is that we may damage the system and realize too late that there's been irrepairable, irreversible, possibly catastrophic damage?
Please discuss.
For reference, here's the info from Wikipedia regarding the Butterfly Effect:
In 1961, Lorenz was using a numerical computer model to rerun a weather prediction. He took a shortcut when inputting a sequence of numbers, and entered the decimal .506 instead of the full .506127 out to the normal 6 decimal places, the computer held.
The result was a completely different weather scenario.
Lorenz published the findings in a 1963 paper for the New York Academy of Sciences noting the words of another meteorologist who remarked" if the theory were correct, one flap of a seagull's wings could change the course of weather forever." Later in 1972, when Lorenz failed to provide a title for a talk he was giving for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a colleague suggested: Does the flap of a butterflys wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?.
The phrase refers to the idea that a butterfly's wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately alter the path of a tornado or delay, accelerate or even prevent the occurrence of a tornado in a certain location. The flapping wing represents a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events leading to large-scale alterations of events. Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different. While the butterfly does not cause the tornado, the flap of its wings is an essential part of the initial conditions resulting in a tornado.
The idea here is that since weather is a dynamic system, that small changes on the inputs to the system may give us large (unexpected) results on the outputs.
One hole in this theory is that weather may no be a very chotic system and perhaps much more stable than generally assumed (at least in the context of the butterfly effect). And... Opponents of global warming often use volcano ash, etc. as "reason" that man does not imprint our environment nearly as much as the earth events (such as volcanoes, etc...)
So... Can it be confidently said that one key reason for concern about climate change is that we may damage the system and realize too late that there's been irrepairable, irreversible, possibly catastrophic damage?
Please discuss.
For reference, here's the info from Wikipedia regarding the Butterfly Effect:
In 1961, Lorenz was using a numerical computer model to rerun a weather prediction. He took a shortcut when inputting a sequence of numbers, and entered the decimal .506 instead of the full .506127 out to the normal 6 decimal places, the computer held.
The result was a completely different weather scenario.
Lorenz published the findings in a 1963 paper for the New York Academy of Sciences noting the words of another meteorologist who remarked" if the theory were correct, one flap of a seagull's wings could change the course of weather forever." Later in 1972, when Lorenz failed to provide a title for a talk he was giving for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a colleague suggested: Does the flap of a butterflys wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?.
The phrase refers to the idea that a butterfly's wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately alter the path of a tornado or delay, accelerate or even prevent the occurrence of a tornado in a certain location. The flapping wing represents a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events leading to large-scale alterations of events. Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different. While the butterfly does not cause the tornado, the flap of its wings is an essential part of the initial conditions resulting in a tornado.
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