[ackydoodles]

I'm sorry, what part of complex dynamics did you not understand?

It doesn't matter how slowly things change. It doesn't matter how big the inputs are. Complex dynamics teaches us that scale does not matter; very small inputs can and do end up being more important than very large inputs.

I'll say it again: scale does not matter.

No, they cannot tell if a season is going bad well ahead of time. It is a fallacy to think that they can. They can tell that a season is going bad exactly at the moment the season starts to go bad.

Why is it that every time I raise the issue of the unknowable future of chaotic systems that people down-vote me? Is it so hard for you to accept? Check the math and the science: it is sound. I am sorry you do not like it, but the mathematics of chaos is not some fringe idea. It underlies everything. I'm astonished that so few people have noticed this.

[sp332]

Chaos theory does not mean that literally anything can happen. Weather changes are still bounded by energy inputs and outputs. It can't rain if the humidity in the air is too low. The jetstream isn't just going to reverse course anytime soon, although it is shifting slowly. It's physically impossible to have snow if the weather is too warm - complex dynamics can't change that. I'm not saying a forecast will never be wrong, but not every case is an edge case. With good data and a useful model, you can be right most of the time.

[upquark]

You are taking an extreme stance on the topic. There's room for modeling and forecasting even in highly complex dynamical systems, the models are getting better with advances in applied statistics research. They are not perfect, but they are not completely useless either.

For example, here's an article I just found on modeling stochastic nonlinear dynamics in ecological/oceanographic applications: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1211.1717.pdf

As for caterpillars predicting climate patterns, I agree with you that it's unlikely, unless there are some simple environmental indicators the caterpillars learnt/evolved to take into account but we humans haven't paid attention to yet. This doesn't mean the changes are unknowable.