What’s The Connection Between Fractals And Rainforests?

By Rainforest Action Network

Mandelbrot Set (Fractal)When longtime RAN supporter Robert Wehle recommended to one of our staff that we watch the NOVA special FRACTALS: Hunting the Hidden Dimension that was the first question that popped into our heads. We were intrigued here at RAN, so we scheduled a lunch viewing of the special.

What we found out is that fractals are:

A. Very cool

B. Are becoming a valuable tool in measuring things that were once thought to be unmeasurable, such as the exact length of a coastline or the carbon stocks of a rainforest.

You can watch the entire episode on PBS’s website, but if you want to skip right to the part where it talks about rainforests it is near the end, starting around the 44 minute mark.

Sidenote: The episode was partially funded by ExxonMobil and and the David H. Koch Foundation, two organizations known for their funding of climate change denying organizations, yet this episode repeatedly refers to global warming as an accepted scientific fact. An interesting contradiction, don’t you think?