What Environmental Reporting Leaves Out [View all]

[GliderGuider]

What Environmental Reporting Leaves Out

Chaos theory does not lend itself to explanation in plain English. It is notoriously difficult to get across to the public. Even the highly educated can have a tough time grasping its abstract meanings and implications. In general terms, the theory holds that as an increasing number of essential parts of a complex system break down—such as a stock market, climate or mechanical engine—the overall system is destabilized, and its exact behavior becomes impossible to predict. This event precedes what’s known as “runaway,” which occurs when a critical number of those parts stop working and irreversible “tipping points” have been passed.

At this stage, the only thing that can be predicted with certainty is that the system will deteriorate with increasing acceleration. Just as water always runs downhill, the processes triggered in runaway will continue irreversibly and on their own, and no one can tell what the final results will be.

In other words, the relationships between parts within the system become so complex and the changes occur so rapidly that scientists cannot keep up. By the time they identify a problem and propose a solution, their work becomes obsolete, their discoveries made irrelevant. This fact can make it difficult to trust their predictions.

None of this suggests that scientific research is meaningless. It simply shows that predictions made early in the process of growing chaos should be regarded as snapshots in time, relevant for only a short while. Scientists remain our best forecasters of what’s to come, but they can see only so far into the earth’s future. Aside from the unsettling fact that the systems that support human and other life are disintegrating at an increasing rate, no one can say for sure exactly what the world we’re rushing into will look like.