The Butterfly Effect and Monsoons
With the monsoons continuing to deluge Pakistan, producing flooding, causing a lack of shelter, food, and clean drinking water, and resulting in death, I wonder, "Can't something be done to prevent this?"
It is silly, of course, to think that the weather can be controlled — or is it? Could a monsoon, hurricane, typhoon, or tornado be redirected to a less populated area or safely dissipated before damage is done? Though it may seem laughable or even arrogant to propose, consider "the butterfly effect" which suggests otherwise.
The Butterfly Effect, based on chaos theory, postulates that a small event, such as a butterfly flapping its wings, could have a much larger effect someplace else, such as altering, causing, or averting a tornado. (Check out the Wikipedia entry for the Butterfly Effect for more information than you likely care to know).
Although the location of the altered weather is random and cannot be predetermined, it seems that something could somehow be done to mitigate the damage of a developing storm. Yes, it would take more than a butterfly or two, but caught early enough, it would seem that a reasonably small event could be introduced to calm a storm's fury.
It would be akin to the idea of altering the path of an approaching asteroid. If done when it was far enough away, the trajectory need only be changed a fraction of a degree to cause it to completely miss the earth. Again, it would be a minor event, producing a huge change. Why not?
(While we're on the subject, I recommend that you not watch the 2004 movie, The Butterfly Effect.)
It is silly, of course, to think that the weather can be controlled — or is it? Could a monsoon, hurricane, typhoon, or tornado be redirected to a less populated area or safely dissipated before damage is done? Though it may seem laughable or even arrogant to propose, consider "the butterfly effect" which suggests otherwise.
The Butterfly Effect, based on chaos theory, postulates that a small event, such as a butterfly flapping its wings, could have a much larger effect someplace else, such as altering, causing, or averting a tornado. (Check out the Wikipedia entry for the Butterfly Effect for more information than you likely care to know).
Although the location of the altered weather is random and cannot be predetermined, it seems that something could somehow be done to mitigate the damage of a developing storm. Yes, it would take more than a butterfly or two, but caught early enough, it would seem that a reasonably small event could be introduced to calm a storm's fury.
It would be akin to the idea of altering the path of an approaching asteroid. If done when it was far enough away, the trajectory need only be changed a fraction of a degree to cause it to completely miss the earth. Again, it would be a minor event, producing a huge change. Why not?
(While we're on the subject, I recommend that you not watch the 2004 movie, The Butterfly Effect.)
Posted by Peter DeHaan at 8/16/2010 2:51 PM 
Categories: Weather and Climate, Movies
Tags: monsoon flood Pakistan Peter DeHaan blog author Peter DeHaan Peter DeHaan Musings Musings of Peter DeHaan
Categories: Weather and Climate, Movies
Tags: monsoon flood Pakistan Peter DeHaan blog author Peter DeHaan Peter DeHaan Musings Musings of Peter DeHaan
This is definitely an interesting postulate; however, there is one fact which is hard to overcome: we can barely guess the weather locally.
I'm semi-familiar with the idea that larger events are easier to predict than small events. However, we are still oftentimes caught off guard by local weather changes. We can only sometimes predict the weather in our area for greater than an hour or two.
Not that it isn't an interesting thought, but it seems that it is likely that it would also cause consequences that we cannot even attempt consideration of. If we change one hurricane to avoid hitting a populated area, what would be the effect of this seemingly minor change. If the butterfly effect can apply a small event to change something significant; what then occurs if something significant should be changes, could it be an exponential relationship in that something unfathomable could be precipitated by changing something of decent size?
We often act without looking into the ramifications of our actions. We guess that we'll have a sprinkle later today and it ends up either the Sahara or the Rainforest. I fear what we would do when we couldn't guess the outcome of our actions.
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