In our final catalogue of weather modifications as answer to prayer I would expect to find a cross section of supernatural miracles, i.e. not explainable by scientific knowledge, Modoki miracles, i.e. within the realms of natural laws, and several unresolved bizarre/interesting borderline cases. The probabilities presented in the Modoki miracle example in the last post were overly optimistic. Although it is hopeful such cases will be found ‘On the balance of probabilities’ I would expect that post analyses will most likely rule out chance events but may find too many ‘variables’ involved to assign specific values. Variables in this context are considered as factors that may change the outcome of a physical system in question, e.g. varying sea surface temperature. Although complex systems may be modelled based on physical laws such as physics, contributing factors need to be considered from a diverse range of disciplinary areas1.
There is a saying that goes garbage in garbage out, which means the quality of variables such as the accuracy of the measured signal, whether an initial condition or not, has a large impact on a model’s success. But there’s more, particularly in relation to complex dynamical systems such as the weather. In nature there are many cause and effect relationships that could influence our weather systems on both large and small scales. Most would have heard of the term ‘Butterfly effect’, where Edward Lorenz posed a question:
“Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?”.
The American Scientist article explains that the purpose of his question was to illustrate the idea that some complex dynamical systems exhibit unpredictable behaviours such that small variances in the initial conditions could have profound and widely divergent effects on the system’s outcomes.
This effect would suggest the need to look for subtle changes in the behaviour of large-scale wind systems and how these might affect the global movement of say atmospheric water vapour2. This illustrates the difficulty faced in trying to isolate possible signals/signs of weather modification amongst many such variables, let alone attempting to attribute the signs to an answer to prayer. Technically we call such a study an attribution analysis. Such analyses are performed by scientists around the world particularly in relation to climate change (see here) but do not, as far as I am aware, address possible answers to prayer. In a future post I will elaborate on maximising what is called the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The signal is what we are trying to measure, e.g. in the broadest sense a Modoki miracle, and the noise is what we are trying to eliminate, e.g. natural or human causes for the onset of rain. The higher the ratio the more confident we are of achieving our aim.
So, what would a specific Modoki signal look like, and if God is indeed working within natural laws how would we know an answer to prayer is happening and that outcomes are not just a result of chance? In the golfing analogy referred to in the last post God’s advantage is in knowing with precision how to direct force to the golf club considering all environmental factors that may influence the balls trajectory. God is aware of all the variables and their initial conditions and can choose to work within natural laws. We can also look for the interaction of known variables and shifts in the probability of outcomes in weather modification, but at what precision? The chosen variables, resulting signals, their initial conditions, can all be considered as information whether from environmental monitoring technologies, simulations by computer models or from the providential knowledge possessed by a supernatural agent acting within natural/physical laws. Indeed, information is everything in this regard, including the writing and reading of this blog, even our prayers.
These will be detailed in future posts including meteorology, climatology, environmental science, and space weather. It should be noted that currently there is no consensus that all cause-and-effect relationships will contribute to the short-term production of rain but rather some on longer timescales.