What Environmental Reporting Leaves Out

[Speck Tater]

2. Having studied the mathematics of chaos theory,

I find what is happening today to be profoundly frightening. Dynamical systems operating at or near critical values have a nasty habit of very suddenly flipping from one semi-stable orbit to another very different orbit. An example is the double scroll attractor. Imagine the weather (not the climate) alternating regularly between winter and summer in a cycle like the left lobe of the orbit shown below:



Now imagine some slight perturbation nudging the orbit slightly. BAM! With no warning, it flips instantly into the other lobe. Once again the weather is relatively stable, but this time it alternates between summer (where winter used to be) and hell (where summer used to be).

Once that flip takes place the system is stuck semi-permanently in the new orbit and it might be tens of thousands of years before we see the return of the winter/summer orbit.