The other day, Edward Lorenz died. Lorenz was an academic meteorologist from MIT who tried to explain why weather forecasting was so notoriously difficult to get right -- creating a science we now know as chaos theory.

Contrary to the thinking of the day, Lorenz suggested that in complicated systems such as Earth's atmosphere small initial differences might lead to massive effects, and he illustrated it with the now famous 'butterfly effect'. The tiny movement caused by a butterfly's wings could eventually cascade into a tornado. Apparently he came up with the idea when he was using a mathematical shortcut in a weather system model. Using 0.506 instead of 0.506127 meant that a completely different weather system resulted from the simulation. Today very serious mathematicians and physicists use it in very complicated ways.

In terms of climate change, the climate scientists appear to be suggesting that the chaotic behavior of the atmosphere is ironed out in the long run, but the skeptics know better. I don't normally waste time reading this crap, but this time it really takes the biscuit. According to one of their number:

When you consider that man's contribution of CO2 in to the atmosphere accounts for only 1/4 of 1% of greenhouse gases (99.75% is natural) you begin to understand the Butterfly Effect analogy. Many scientists have already concluded that this minuscule CO2 input is causing climate warming so they spend a lot of time, effort and money adjusting their models to prove it. If you fed the effect of a butterfly flapping its wings in to a computer model and then adjusted all the other climate conditions around it to produce the perfect conditions you can also prove that a butterfly flapping its wings can, over time, cause climate change. You can also add a frog belch at just the right moment in time at the right place to the model and completely wipe out the effect of the butterfly. -- Global Warming Hoax

Yeah, that's right. You are just so right. There is never a time in nature when small differences make a big difference, so the scientists are clearly delusional.

Meanwhile much of the UK is in the throng of a big stink. According to scientists, weather conditions are causing a nasty mix of odors to hang about Britain like a great smelly fart. The theory is that it originated in continental Europe as a heady brew of industrial and agricultural smells. But then, given that we've not experienced it before, this is a little hard to believe.

But it's a fitting memorial to Edward Lorenz. A cow farts in Brussels and we smell it all across Britain -- chaos theory in action.