How extensive is the butterfly effect? Speculation...

[NHBL]

I've been thinking about the butterfly effect and its effects on natural phenomena. Specificly, which timelines should keep particular evens such as the Kobe Earthquake or Hurricane Katrina.

Here's my best guess, other opinions (and reasons, if any) very wanted.

Earthquakes, my best guess is that they are very long term stable. The Kobe Earthquake will happen on schedule, barring author's fiat or major earth-shattering events. Underground nuclear tests are the only man-made events that I can see being enough to change a volcano or earthquake. (Although with a sufficiently early POD, a few centuries of water being drawn from a particular aquifer might just be enough to change the timing?)

Hurricanes and other storms--much more variable. Differing levels of Carbon Dioxide could cause changes over a local area. Dresden burning or the like.
For that matter, I heard that the absence of planes over the USA--and the absence of cloud-spawning contrails--may have made a difference in the cloud cover. I'd say a year or tow, at most, to have the option of butterflying a particular storm. But, I'd be inclined to keep overall patterns the same for longer--this year was a heavy hurricane year, etc. How much longer? I don't know.

[Zyzzyva]

I've been thinking about the butterfly effect and its effects on natural phenomena. Specificly, which timelines should keep particular evens such as the Kobe Earthquake or Hurricane Katrina.

Here's my best guess, other opinions (and reasons, if any) very wanted.

Earthquakes, my best guess is that they are very long term stable. The Kobe Earthquake will happen on schedule, barring author's fiat or major earth-shattering events. Underground nuclear tests are the only man-made events that I can see being enough to change a volcano or earthquake. (Although with a sufficiently early POD, a few centuries of water being drawn from a particular aquifer might just be enough to change the timing?)

Hurricanes and other storms--much more variable. Differing levels of Carbon Dioxide could cause changes over a local area. Dresden burning or the like.
For that matter, I heard that the absence of planes over the USA--and the absence of cloud-spawning contrails--may have made a difference in the cloud cover. I'd say a year or tow, at most, to have the option of butterflying a particular storm. But, I'd be inclined to keep overall patterns the same for longer--this year was a heavy hurricane year, etc. How much longer? I don't know.

I'd say, barring crazy things like this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon#Other_uses), that earthquakes and volcanic eruptions go at the same times. Weather, I'd give a year, maybe less, before it goes off the rails; climate, obviously, is a lot harder to deflect (although I'd say "heavy hurricane year" falls under weather, not climate).

[Wolf]

I'd say the effects are up to the author myself. I like seeing OTL folks in ATL's acting in different ways. It makes ATL seem more ironic

[Chengar Qordath]

As far as Earthquakes are concerned, I would say that minor degrees of butterfly effect might exist but the overall effect probably won't be changed. In other words, I could see butterflies making an earthquake happen an hour or two later than OTL, but there will still be an earthquake.

[Weaver]

Any sort of gross geophysical event involving plate tectonics on Earth or supernovae, solar flares etc cannot vary by as much as a second. Unless of course humanity starts engineering in a big way using asteroids or building Dyson spheres etc.

Weather/climate is easily butterflied. Larger or smaller cities affect climate directly by varying the albedo of large areas of the Earth's surface, same same with crop types and distributions. The type and distribution of animals will also have a major effect, eg beavers on river systems, megafauna on forests, bird migrations on spreading of seeds.

These are all factors directly and easily impacted upon by humanity, and any significant change in humanity's footprint will butterfly climate and hence weather.

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

As far as Earthquakes are concerned, I would say that minor degrees of butterfly effect might exist but the overall effect probably won't be changed. In other words, I could see butterflies making an earthquake happen an hour or two later than OTL, but there will still be an earthquake.
Yeah ...

Like there's Some Speculation, That Mount Vesuvius' 1944 Eruption Might have been Hastened by World War II ...

But Even then, The Pressure had Probably been Building up for Years, And an Eruption was going to Happen Eventually, Anyway!

:eek:

[Blue Max]

Privately, I tend to be conservative with the butterfly effect, with the supposition that much of the time choices do not fundamentally change outcomes, and that the world turns on a dime only on miraculous odds.

Weather can be seeded; technology might outright uncover the functions that cause it. But things like plate tectonics, to say nothing of stellar supernovae, are probably beyond humanity's ability to adjust. Climate is out of our hands.

While this does suggest that the future may have artificially heightened crop yields and mitigated disasters, it also means that weather events are going to be very, very hard to change. Nuclear Weapons would have an effect, and to a lesser degree, damming rivers and razing jungles would as well. That said, for the butterfly effect to fire, you'd need a big adjustment in these tendencies--the expanded Caspian Sea in another thread or Damming the Mediterranean Sea might do that.

[Trebuchet]

The above posters are incorrect; the 'butterfly effect' is extremely powerful. Less so for earthquakes and volcanoes, but not entirely... and I would guess volcanoes are less affected, as weather (which is very 'butterfliable') is going to be able to put more or less strain on tectonic plates (by raising and lowering water tables and thus mass in the vicinity of a fault).

Weather is going to be insanely variable. To take the example of hurricanes, hurricanes are very dependent on the heat content of the ocean that they happen to be passing over, the presence or absence of various atmospheric phenomena, and the humidity and shear of the atmosphere they travel through. Random clouds, slightly different arrangements of winds and fronts a thousand miles away, possibly even the mass movement of large numbers of fish - all those could alter any of those, or multiple factors of those. I'd venture to say that the hurricane hunter planes that enter the storms probably change the storms' intensity and track a week later in a totally unpredictable fashion. Even unnoticeable changes in the storm's state will be compounded with incredible rapidity.

[Zyzzyva]

The above posters are incorrect; the 'butterfly effect' is extremely powerful. Less so for earthquakes and volcanoes, but not entirely... and I would guess volcanoes are less affected, as weather (which is very 'butterfliable') is going to be able to put more or less strain on tectonic plates (by raising and lowering water tables and thus mass in the vicinity of a fault).

Weather is going to be insanely variable. To take the example of hurricanes, hurricanes are very dependent on the heat content of the ocean that they happen to be passing over, the presence or absence of various atmospheric phenomena, and the humidity and shear of the atmosphere they travel through. Random clouds, slightly different arrangements of winds and fronts a thousand miles away, possibly even the mass movement of large numbers of fish - all those could alter any of those, or multiple factors of those. I'd venture to say that the hurricane hunter planes that enter the storms probably change the storms' intensity and track a week later in a totally unpredictable fashion. Even unnoticeable changes in the storm's state will be compounded with incredible rapidity.

Thanks for bringing up the hard chaos theory view; I probably mostly agree, though.