Butterfly Effect

[mowque]

Does the Butterfly Effect touch upon natural disaster. Ie, does the random actions of man really impact the global climate, geology and whatnot indirectly?

If I wear a red shirt, and walk to work instead of jogging in a blue shirt, it'll cause a different rain pattern?

What is your opinion and how long doe sit take to branch out and take effect?

Please, fill in how long you might guess it would take to change these events, if ever.

Drought-

Forest Fire-

Hurricane-

Wet Year-

Earthquake-

Volcano-

Meteorite Impact-


Any guesses or explanations?

 

[Midas]

It depends to what extent you subscribe to the theory.

I'd say natural events are more resilient to change than human events. Some of the things you've listed can be caused or helped to be caused by humans. Droughts, forest fires, landslides etc. can all come from human causes and so those are more variable. But naturally occuring droughts (i.e. no rain for a year) pre-industrial age and the other things you've listed are dependent on what the event is. Like, you could probably reasonably butterfly away the Lisbon Earthquake from the year it happened, but I'd say just given the way earthquakes work at some point there'll be an earthquake there. Same goes for events like Krakatoa, etc.

Any near miss-astroids obviously have the potential to hit our planet, and if it's plausible they could (but didn't) then yeah sure, maybe even just a different day and chance favors the impact event.

So I didn't answer your question really at all but those are some garbled thoughts .

 

[SeptimusMagistos]

Droughts (and dust storms in particular) could be changed within decades or even years, depending on farming practices.

Air and water currents would need a major difference in industrial development. It's hard to really change a wind.

Forest fires are easy. They could be changed within as little as a year, though if the thing that lead to the forest fire in the first place keeps happening, it will probably come about eventually.

I'm not sure how much you can do about earthquakes through human activity unless someone starts heavy machinery in the area. Messing around with volcanoes could probably do the trick.

 

[Emperor-of-New-Zealand]

Seeing as most natural disasters are independent of human activity - as stated, earthquakes and by extension tsunamis are the biggy here - I don't think that a human changing a specific event can impact them. Volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, etc. happen because something in nature has made them happen. Even storms; they can be influenced by man-made climate change, but they are still going to happen.

 

[Raygun_McGuffin]

Depends on the butterfly.

A guy wearing glasses trips and loses them in some bushland, can't find them, and later the hot sun starts huge fire that makes ten thousand people homeless and kills dozens.

A mistake with paperwork can mislabel containers of hydrochloric acid.

Either way could lead to the creation of a desert if there's already a long drought, of the deadly poisoning of a river. That can lead to change in local climates, resulting in storms that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

 

[mowque]

I mean in totally unrealted PODs, ie battle went differently or something. I DO NOT mean something like "Well, then America has more deforestation more (due to the POD) and that causes more floods or fires." I mean, how long does the change you inject radiate out to the rest of the universe? Ever?

 

[Grey Wolf]

I would like to point you towards my recent essay on the subject

http://www.alternate-history-fiction.com/weather-and-earthquakes.html

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

 

[Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy]

Geological and astronomical events are beyond human influence. Everything else... well, do remember what the butterfly effect originally referred to.

 

[Raygun_McGuffin]

I mean in totally unrealted PODs, ie battle went differently or something. I DO NOT mean something like "Well, then America has more deforestation more (due to the POD) and that causes more floods or fires." I mean, how long does the change you inject radiate out to the rest of the universe? Ever?

A new vast area of desert in South America could affect climate in the USA. Climate can affect battles too...and whole wars.

During the Soviet era, they decided to move three rivers and the effect has been killing an inland sea ever since, and affecting weather patterns across the whole of Eurasia . But the decision to start such a vast project could've been affected by loads of minor things. It's taken years.

Everything is related, just to different degrees. I seriously doubt that whole universe is affected by mere humanity.

 

[Mark E.]

I'm not sure how much you can do about earthquakes through human activity unless someone starts heavy machinery in the area. Messing around with volcanoes could probably do the trick.

If I recall other posts on this subject, the amount of energy involved in an earthquake or volcanic eruption is so many magnitudes greater than anything created by human activity, that not even the largest nuke could trigger or change one.

 

[Whanztastic]

Anything that changes the industry of a nation of respectable size will change weather patterns locally and globally given the right amount of time.


Indonesia industrializing heavily in the 60s butterflies away hurricane Katrina.

 

[Eigenwelt]

People confuse "butterfly effect" with some sort of quasi-magical "butterfly force".

The butterfly effect is the the culmination of all the real world changes in mass, momentum, engery, etc. that stem from your POD. A tenth century infantry battle will have little effect on an asteroid collision. If the handful of photons of light reflected back into space and happen to hit that oncoming asteroid slow it's arrival by a fraction of a fraction of a quadrillionth of a second...

has it really made a difference? Technically yes. Observably and relatively, no.

 

[Claudius]

There is a theory that the end of the Midieval Warm Period (certainly a good example of an astronomical/geological event) caused increased crop failures leading to a malnourished European population and when the Plague hit, increased the mortality to an already stressed population.

So if the POD is a delay in climate cooling for a couple of decades, perhaps the onset of plague will have a less lethal total effect and endless butterflies in European history result from the millions of people who did not die. Of course this could be used in a TL in any way one wanted: several Galileo or Newton-type geniuses for example, or a more successful resistance to the Ottoman invasion of the Balkans or an earlier discovery of the New World.

 

[Nosimplehiway]

While I agree that from a scientific standpoint weather is a highly chaotic system, and in 100 different alternate realities you would be unlikely to get the same hurricane on the same day in the same place, I generally leave weather (and certainly tectonic activity) unchanged unless there is a truly compelling reason the original POD would alter it. The reason for this is more practical and literary than scientific. In such a chaotic system how can I, as an amateur, predict how many days earlier or later, or how much more or less intense a Hurricane Katrina or a Canadian Ice Storm of '98 would be due to, say the Germans winning WWII or JFK not being assassinated? No one on Earth has that sort of predictive ability.

So, I simply assume that while the exact same hurricane may not have happened in an alternate line, a major hurricane was almost certain to hit the general vicinity of the AL-LA-MS Gulf coast at some point between 1990 and 2010. Similarly, it doesn't take ASBs to make a major ice storm in Canada, even if the British had decisiviely won the War of 1812.

Once I grant the likelihood of an event, I figure I might as well use the actual event for literary reasons. For example, if in an ATL based on the South winning the ACW I want to examine how the CSA would deal with disaster relief given their loose states' rights structure, I don't want to have to take the time to describe the exact conditions of a major hurricane striking Jacksonville in mid-August of 2005, when there was a perfectly good analog to the event in OTL. I simply don't want to have to make weather charts and describe the event in detail. By assuming that Katrina hit the same in the ATL as in OTL the reader is able to follow along more easily and the story flows more gracefully.

 

[SeptimusMagistos]

If I recall other posts on this subject, the amount of energy involved in an earthquake or volcanic eruption is so many magnitudes greater than anything created by human activity, that not even the largest nuke could trigger or change one.

Are you sure? Causing an earthquake out of the blue would be difficult. But I'm pretty sure if you set off a nuke on top of a fault line or on top of a volcano, it would do something. Can anyone with a working knowledge of geology confirm or deny this, please?

 

[The Kiat]

I don't care if the butterfly is the size of Mothra, there ain't gonna be no effect on the weather. It seems to me that whomever cooked up this nonsense was trying to make it feel like individuals have a far bigger impact on the world as a whole than they typically do. That's not to say some individuals aren't outstanding enough to shape world events, such as Washington, but for every man of that caliber, you're going to end up with a million nobodies (like me).

 

[RMcD94]

I don't care if the butterfly is the size of Mothra, there ain't gonna be no effect on the weather. It seems to me that whomever cooked up this nonsense was trying to make it feel like individuals have a far bigger impact on the world as a whole than they typically do. That's not to say some individuals aren't outstanding enough to shape world events, such as Washington, but for every man of that caliber, you're going to end up with a million nobodies (like me).

Lovely thought line. One atom moving left, causes two atoms to move out it's way, causes four atoms to move out their way, etc, etc, etc. Imagine it like a pond. A tiny pebble can cause lots of ripples.

I believe in casual determinism myself. Since the beginning of time the entire history of the universe has been written. If even one quark was in a different position at the start of the universe (since you can't change it at any other point unless from outside universe help), then the universe would have been different.

 

[The Kiat]

One quark is just as good as another. As for atoms moving other atoms-- do you have any idea just how large an atmosphere is? You are not going to change the weather no matter how hard you beat your wings.

 

[hopper2cool]

I don't care if the butterfly is the size of Mothra, there ain't gonna be no effect on the weather. It seems to me that whomever cooked up this nonsense was trying to make it feel like individuals have a far bigger impact on the world as a whole than they typically do. That's not to say some individuals aren't outstanding enough to shape world events, such as Washington, but for every man of that caliber, you're going to end up with a million nobodies (like me).

I 99% agree with you. A lot of the stricter Butterfliests seem to think that any change will be huge quickly. I don't believe that. However given enough TIME (the thing people ignore way too much) then I can believe that changes might be huge.

 

[RMcD94]

One quark is just as good as another. As for atoms moving other atoms-- do you have any idea just how large an atmosphere is? You are not going to change the weather no matter how hard you beat your wings.

Why not? So, you think in a universe where the wings didn't flap, it'd be exactly the same? Yo crazy.