Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff laurenvog Obam here. The butterfly effect isn't just
Speaker 1: a movie from two thousand four. It's the idea that small,
Speaker 1: seemingly trivial events may ultimately result in something with much
Speaker 1: larger consequences. In other words, that small things have non
Speaker 1: linear impacts on very complex systems. For instance, when a
Speaker 1: butterfly flaps its wings in New York, that tiny change
Speaker 1: in air pressure could eventually cause a cyclone in Beijing.
Speaker 1: In the aforementioned film, Ashton Kusher's character finds a way
Speaker 1: to travel back in time to his childhood. Every time
Speaker 1: he makes the journey, though, he does small things differently,
Speaker 1: and those tiny changes wind up having major and horrifying
Speaker 1: effects on his adult life. The term butterfly effect was
Speaker 1: coined the nineteen sixties by Edward Lawrenz, a meteorology professor
Speaker 1: at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was studying weather
Speaker 1: path turns. He devised a model demonstrating that if you
Speaker 1: compare two starting points indicating current weather that are near
Speaker 1: each other, they'll soon drift apart, and later one area
Speaker 1: could wind up with severe storms while the other is
Speaker 1: calm at the time, Whether satisticians thought you should be
Speaker 1: able to predict future weather based on looking at historical
Speaker 1: records to see what had happened when conditions were the
Speaker 1: same as they are now, Lorenz was skeptical. He was
Speaker 1: running a computer program to test various weather simulations, and
Speaker 1: he discovered that rounding off one variable from zero point
Speaker 1: five zero six one to seven to zero point five
Speaker 1: zero six dramatically changed the two months of weather predictions
Speaker 1: in his simulation. His point was that long range weather
Speaker 1: forecasting was virtually impossible, in large part because humans don't
Speaker 1: have the ability to measure nature's incredible complexity. There are
Speaker 1: simply too many minute variables that can act as pivot points,
Speaker 1: cascading into much bigger consequences. As The Boston Globe wrote,
Speaker 1: the innumerable interconnections of nature, Lorenz noted, mean a butterfly's
Speaker 1: flap could cause a tornado, or, for all we know,
Speaker 1: could prevent one. Similarly, should we make even a tiny
Speaker 1: alteration to nature quote, we shall never know what would
Speaker 1: have happened if we had not disturbed it, since subsequent
Speaker 1: changes are too complex and entangled to restore a previous state.
Speaker 1: So while people often think the butterfly effect means that
Speaker 1: tiny changes can have big consequences, and that we can
Speaker 1: track this progression to see what change caused. What Lorenz
Speaker 1: was trying to say that we can't track those changes,
Speaker 1: and we don't really know exactly what would cause a
Speaker 1: weather pattern to go one way or another. Lorenz called
Speaker 1: this sensitive dependence on initial conditions when he introduced his
Speaker 1: work to the public in a nineteen sixty three paper
Speaker 1: titled Deterministic non periodic Flow. The term butterfly effect he
Speaker 1: coined later in speeches about the topic. The paper was
Speaker 1: rarely cited by other researchers, at least at first. Later on,
Speaker 1: other scientists realized the importance of Lorenz's discovery. His insights
Speaker 1: laid the foundation for a branch of mathematics known as
Speaker 1: chaos theory, the idea of trying to predict the behavior
Speaker 1: of systems that are inherently unpredictable. You can see instances
Speaker 1: of the butterfly effect every day. The weather is just
Speaker 1: one example. Climate change relatedly is another. For example, as
Speaker 1: it turns out, warming climates are impacting appropriately enough species
Speaker 1: of alpine butterflies in North America. We spoke by email
Speaker 1: with Alessandro Philozola, a community ecologist and data scientist and
Speaker 1: postdoctorate fellow at the University of Alberta. He said climate
Speaker 1: change is expected to have some large impacts, such as
Speaker 1: too hot for some species or too dry for others,
Speaker 1: but there are nearly infinite amount of smaller indirect effects
Speaker 1: that will also occur. In our research, we looked at
Speaker 1: one of those indirect effects and saw how future climate
Speaker 1: will slowly cause mismatch in spatial location of a butterfly
Speaker 1: and its host plant. As a caterpillar, this butterfly only
Speaker 1: feeds on this type of plant species, so any mismatching
Speaker 1: range will cause a decline in the butterfly. He adds
Speaker 1: that if we were to pause for a moment and
Speaker 1: think of all of the other species in a food web,
Speaker 1: suddenly there's the potential of many species being affected, not
Speaker 1: just one butterfly, but everything that eats it or that
Speaker 1: relies on the decay of its body for nutrients, and
Speaker 1: everything that eats those animals and fungi and plants and
Speaker 1: everything that's in competition with it for resources. That's the
Speaker 1: butterfly effect in action on a large scale. When we
Speaker 1: start to consider how one small change can quickly result
Speaker 1: in a lot of unintended consequence. There's naturally cause for concern.
Speaker 1: For example, limiting the construction of hydroelectric dams might reduce
Speaker 1: certain types of environmental damage, but in eliminating this potential
Speaker 1: source of clean energy, we tend to fall back on
Speaker 1: fossil fuels that accelerate global warming, and biofuel subsidies meant
Speaker 1: to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels have increased rainforest
Speaker 1: destruction and freshwater waste, and have lead to increases in
Speaker 1: food prices that have affected the poorest segments of the
Speaker 1: human population. How can we possibly do much of anything
Speaker 1: in our lives then, without fear of causing harm? Philo
Speaker 1: Zola returns to the butterflies as an example. He said,
Speaker 1: better understanding of indirect effects is probably one of the
Speaker 1: most important steps in trying to mitigate those effects. More simply, though,
Speaker 1: just keeping nature as close to its original state is
Speaker 1: really the most important thing. Ecosystems are vastly complex, and
Speaker 1: the loss of a single species might not have a
Speaker 1: perceived effect, but it could have cascading effects on the
Speaker 1: entire system. For another example, reintroducing wolves to yellow Stone
Speaker 1: park where they had previously been hunted out of their
Speaker 1: historical range, has wound up increasing beaver populations and increasing
Speaker 1: the number of willow and aspen plants, and provided food
Speaker 1: for birds, coyotes, and bears, among other benefits. Then we
Speaker 1: have to consider how the butterfly effect can play into
Speaker 1: our individual lives. With nearly eight billion humans on the planet,
Speaker 1: can just one person make changes that echo around the earth?
Speaker 1: Phila Zola says that he does wonder about the indirect
Speaker 1: effects of his personal actions. He said, the items I buy,
Speaker 1: the people I interact with, the things I say I
Speaker 1: believe each can have their cascading effects that rippled through society.
Speaker 1: That's why it's important to try and be a good
Speaker 1: person to create a positive influence. One thing I also
Speaker 1: think about is how these indirect effects are often not
Speaker 1: as small and removed as I believe many would think.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by an Than Chandler and produced
Speaker 1: by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of
Speaker 1: other small topics with big impacts, visit how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio.
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