Surely, no one meant this literally: Can a Butterfly in Brazil Really Cause a Tornado in Texas?
Almost everyone has heard the claim that a butterfly can flap its wings in one part of the world and cause a chain reaction of events that ultimately results in a major event on the other side of the world. For example, a butterfly wing flap in Brazil could cause a tornado in Texas. Indeed, this concept has permeated popular society. . .
In academia, the concept of the butterfly effect apparently first appeared in an article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society by J. Smagorinsky in 1969, but the specific question “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” was introduced by Ed Lorenz at the 1972 Meeting of AAAS Section on Environmental Sciences.
Good Lord, it seems some do.
. . . existing numerical models cannot accommodate a disturbance as small as the flap of a butterfly’s wing, meaning we cannot accurately predict the resulting weather phenomena using numerical models.
But despite the lack of scientific evidence supporting the idea that a butterfly wing flap could create a tornado in Brazil, the prevailing opinion, even among many in the atmospheric science community, continues to be that it is, indeed, possible.
Yeah, I ‘member being taught this crap back in 80s.
“But Mrs. Fraser…doesn’t that mean a butterfly could STOP a hurricane with its wings too”?
Yeah…I didn’t get good grades after that.
Beautiful response and completely logical.
The one we read was something like
Step on a butterfly while hunting dinosaurs in the past, return to a totalitarian future with a different president.
I always thought that was the butterfly effect.
and Katrina was caused by an elephant fart in Mozambique.
its already permeated morality. I mean who knew that some white dude wearing a MAGA hat in the suburbs would cause some black guy to burn a restaurant to the ground downtown, but here we are…
And these shits can’t even accurately predict the weather 5 days from now!
“existing numerical models cannot accommodate a disturbance as small as the flap of a butterfly’s wing, meaning we cannot accurately predict the resulting weather phenomena using numerical models.”
This also applies to most weather models… and climate models… and temperature models…
It’s long past time to mothball the ‘Butterfly Effect’.
The butterfly effect is a well established concept in both in pure mathematics and meteorology. Calculating what happens, forward in time often requires equations which are prone to catastrophic divergence if the input is even slightly changed. It’s because the situation bifurcates – two near-to-each-other states lead to far-away end states at a relatively fast pace. Even simple differential equations may have this property.
The butterfly doesn’t ’cause’ a tornado in the sense we use cause usually, but predicting a tornado (quality, time and location) ahead of the time requires accuracy that would require to take weeds and butterflies into account. That’s impossible, and that’s why weather prediction will stay statistic rather than accurate science.
The prohibitive computational requirements are a reason why climate models will never be usable in long term climate change prediction. Climate is chaotic in the same manner as weather, and getting accurate results with modelling is rather limited. We can’t get even averages from the system we can’t simulate accurately.
Imagine what a cow fart could do.
The whole butterfly-destroying-the-planet thing is all about numerical accuracy in computer models, and why computer models are not reliable interpretations of reality. Chaos theory is all about this fact. If you run a model a thousand times, you will get different outcomes, with very small changes in input parameters. Chaos theory is all about mapping these relationships between inputs and outputs. You will also get different results with the same input parameters with different computers.
Models are used for theoretical experimentations, which require mathematical integration, and this operation magnifies the smallest error or digital artifact.
Models are NOT reality, but tests of theories. They are, however, politically mallable.
Well put. Chaos theory is built on the idea that no matter the precision of measurement, differences at the limits of measurement lead to wildly divergent outcomes. It was first noted when an astronomer was tasked with determining whether the orbit of the earth is stable.
Let me repeat those last two paragraphs. They are important.
Models are used for theoretical experimentations, which require mathematical integration, and this operation magnifies the smallest error or digital artifact.
Models are NOT reality, but armchair tests of theories. They are, however, politically malleable.
Butterflies are powerful things:
https://www.astro.sunysb.edu/fwalter/AST389/ASoundofThunder.pdf
That’s the one I remember. Thanks for the link.
Ray Bradbury invented the Butterfly Effect in 1952 in his short story A Sound of Thunder. It’s science fiction, folks. Good science fiction. Well, it’s Ray Bradbury.
Most people are morons.
The Butterfly Effect is simply a way of simply explaining deterministic chaos, when a very, ver small change in initial conditions of a system can make for a huge change in how the system evolves, it was never meant to be taken literally.
This is especially true on non-linear dynamical systems, like tyhe Earth’s atmosphere, and also why anyone with the smallest knowledge of chaos theory knows that you cannot predict long-term changes of the Earth’s environment, heck we struggle with short-term (ie 2-3 days) much of the time.
It is especially ludicrous to try to tie one single variable(ie CO2 content) to long-term changes.
My recollection of chaos theory texts is that “in theory” a butterfly’s wings flapping could trigger a sequence of events resulting in a hurricane in Florida. That is, it’s a METAPHOR to illustrate sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Certain nonlinear transformations are epistemologically stochastic because we cannot ascertain all the relevant initial conditions and cannot make all the necessary calculations. Further, the stochastic gap is generally bounded, as the article shows.
So called climate science is largely mere trafficking in metaphors.
Look at all the damage done with the hot air coming out of Ottawa and Washington. I believe, I believe
One thousand monkeys randomly typing could reproduce all the works of Shakespeare too…
Did Sunny H flappin’ her lips on the View cause the eclipse?
Ummm . . . shouldn’t we be shutting down all those giant windmills then?