The Unknowable

There’s a story today in the Sunday Times that the Met (Meteorological) Office may lose its contract with the BBC following complaints that its weather forecasts are inaccurate.

I can’t help thinking that the BBC bosses would do well to watch their own broadcast ‘The Secret Life of Chaos’. Had they done so they would have seen an excellent explanation of precisely why the Met Office can’t predict the weather.

The modern origins of that part of science we now call Chaos Theory can be traced precisely to Edward Lorenz who whilst working on weather prediction discovered in 1961 that even the smallest changes in input circumstances will lead to dramatically different outcomes.

This concept was beautifully popularised in the phrase 'The Butterfly Effect' which suggests that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in one part of the world can lead to a hurricane elsewhere.

It seems in our ever growing desire to have answers, there is little room for the unknowable.

The secret life of Chaos is well worth a look and is currently available on the BBC iPlayer.

Here http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search/?q=secret%20life%20of%20chaos