Conclusion: Predicting the Butterfly
We have been similarly unsuccessful in using global models to predict yet another complex and turbulent system—namely, the weather. We are not much better at making predictions that we were twenty or thirty years ago.[xv] Specific, localized aberrations or rogue events (what chaos theorists call the butterfly effect) that can neither be predicted nor adequately described apparently have a major influence on the weather that occurs in other, remote parts of the world. In North America we have seen the influence of El Nino (a small body of water off the western Central America coast), much as we have witnessed the impact which conflicts in very small countries have had on the entire world community. And a single instance of police brutality can create an international avalanche of protest. Are there many El Niño’s that directly impact on our daily lives? Are there other influential events that are far removed and unknown (and perhaps unknowable) to us? We may be forced to live with (and acknowledge) the contradiction between globalism and localism in many aspects of our daily lives.
