Controling Complex Systems

Team: 49

School: Freedom High

Area of Science: Earth Science

Interim: Problem Definition:

With global climate change threatening major economic dislocation there are constant discussions about how to moderate or reverse human impact on the complex weather system. Most ideas to moderate human impact look for ways to reduce human emissions of carbon and greenhouse gasses. There are, however, some individuals suggesting that we attempt to counteract the human inputs to the system with “balancing” forces. An example would be to seed the upper atmosphere with particals that increase the Earth’s albedo, reducing solar input. It is our intention to show that because of the complex nature of the global weather system, attempts to “fix” the system would result in major unintended consequences.

Problem Solution:

The solution, which we believe to be the most likely to work in “fixing” global weather change, is to remove the contributing factor which is us. Humans are responsible for the global weather change to begin with, simply by putting gasoline in our car or turning on a light switch. Everything we do to further convenience our life produces an input factor to the complex system that is global weather. A good example to what the contributing factors do is take a grain of salt and put it in a glass of water, no difference now take a handful of salt and put it in the glass of water, it now becomes undrinkable. With all the pollution we add to our atmosphere is like adding more salt to our glass of water, it just gets worse and worse. The only way to fix the salt water is to remove the salt. Our contention is the only way to fix the weather is to remove the pollution.

Progress to Date:

Our team has collected a lot of information about complex systems and has started to model a complex system using the NetLogo modeling software. we used a basic modeling program to model weather. Every time we tried to add something, the weather would become increasingly unstable. Only when we removed the main contributing factor to our “weather friendly”. The longer the pollution stays in our atmosphere the more integrated it is going to get, the more its integrated model, pollution, did we start to see stability. Our initial model shows that the only way to provide a stable planetary weather system is to reduce human imputs to that weather system. We need to stop and realize that we are causing the problem and the only way to fix it is to become more the harder it will be to remove. We need to stop now before the ticking time bomb, that we created, explodes. The only way to do that is to remove the cause to fix the effect.

Although, global weather modeling is beyond the scope of our project and the ability of our team we can still do a proof of concept. We are testing our hypothesis and working with a number of complexity models that displays emergence through feedback. After each model reached “balance” we provided an input that created a “change of state”. Then we attempted to return the model to its previous state through direct intervention using “new” inputs, that did not work.

Citations:

Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_Systems

Http://guava.physics.uiuc.edu/~nigel/articles/complexity.html

Http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch2-g.html

Http://www.nccs.gov/2009/05/19/modeling-volcanic-eruptions-mimics-a-

Http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system

Team Members:

  Johnathan Cordova
  Christopher Forehand
  Georgia Griego
  Miles Anderson

Sponsoring Teacher: Joseph Vertrees

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