Six deegrees (C°) can change our world; that comes from the same source that stated, trough a metereologist in the ’60s, who declared that a flap of wings of a seagull would have changed climate forever. Now the perspective, thanks to new instruments is even more realistic and precise. National Geographic produced a documentary, based on the book “Six degrees: Our future on a hotter planet” by Mark Lynas, in which describes real consequences coming from imperceptible variation of temperature. The scale presented reveals that a difference of one Celsius degree, would mean the difference between life and death for entire population.
That sounds
I hope National Geographic would be considered a better source than me, to whom someone blamed a bit of exageration, while I was talking about the Butterfly Effect.
But let’s come back on track, and see in detail which changes we would notice step by step.
+ 1° : Artic will be lacking ice packs for one half of the year. The rise of the water level will submerge part of Bengala. But in Great Britain new cultivations would be possible.
+ 2° : Tuvalu islands will be submerged by waters. Tropical coral reef will be in serious jeopardy
+ 3° : Here’s the turning point. That’s what’s likely to happen: Amazon Rainforest in fire; no more snow on the Alps. North-African climate in central Europe
+ 4° : Countries like Egypt and Bangladesh will be devastated. Venezia will disappear. Canada would become one of the fertilest regions on Earth
+ 5° : The temperate areas in the two emispheres would become off-limits for human beings. Millions of people would be forced to move.
+ 6° : Cities like New York or Tokyo will be abandoned or submerged. Part of the planet would undergo the risk of returning to the Cretaceous period.
What is quite striking about this topic, is the fact that such small variation to the initial status of the system, can bring such incredible consequences on the entire planet. That’s where Butterfly Effect comes in.
For many years, scientists asked themselves if it was possible to interpretate nature’s mechanism; in other words, to translate into a mathematical language natural misteries. Many attempts have been done since Reinassance. Now, after many years, we succeded in our purpose, creating a specific brench of mathematics called “The Chaos Theory“.
Chaos theory tries to find out regularity and simplicity, in other words predictability from aspects that seem to be irregular and chaotic. This science entraps into a rule what in nature seems so unpredictable; let’s see an example
When we light up a cigarette, for how much effort we can make to create the same initial conditions, smoke will never rise and go about the same way. Otherwise you’ll never found a cloud perfectly equal to another. How can we explain that? At this point you should already know the answer: sensitive dependence on initial conditions; that’s the proper and scientific name for the more poetical expression involving the Butterfly.
However this post had not a precise aim; but Chaos Theory was the first thing which came out in my mind when i read an article on the newspaper; and maybe that i’ll come with new exilarating application for these theories in our everyday life in the next posts.
So climate is just the first…
Tag: Butterfly Effect, Chaos Theory, Climate, Emergency, Science
