Art:
Now I come to your tornado. It is an interesting example, because, even if I am no expert of meteorology, it is probably one of those cases where some form of order comes out of a system including events that can be easily explained in form of necessity laws, random events and chaotic components. I think there are many examples like that. None of them is designed, of course.
But do they exhibit high FI. The answer is no.
I will try to explain how the system should be considered in terms of FI, even if I am not a meteorologist. Of course, you are free to stick you your analysis in terms of water molecules, but I cannot agree.
Well, here the system is our planet, and its meteorologic phenomena. I think we can agree on that.
What type of system is it? IOWs how can we describe and analyze meteorologic phenomena?
I think we can agree that many of those events follow, more or less precisely, some well known laws, derived of course from the laws of physics applied to this particular system. That’s why many events can be more or less anticipated. Weather previsions are everywhere, and I would say that at present they are often rather good.
So, that part is a necessity system, more or less precise. No FI in that.
But of course, not all can be anticipated. Least of all, I think, tornadoes. Probably, necessity laws act on random components and chaotic components to generetae a tornado. I don’t know, I am not a meteorologist.
So, being not a meteorologist, I paste here some explanation taken somewhere on the web, hoping it is not so bad:
What causes tornadoes?
Tornadoes form in unusually violent thunderstorms when there is sufficient (1) instability and (2) wind shear present in the lower atmosphere.
Instability refers to unusually warm and humid conditions in the lower atmosphere, and possibly cooler than usual conditions in the upper atmosphere. Wind shear in this case refers to the wind direction changing, and the wind speed increasing, with height. An example would be a southerly wind of 15 mph at the surface, changing to a southwesterly or westerly wind of 50 mph at 5,000 feet altitude.
This kind of wind shear and instability usually exists only ahead of a cold front and low pressure system. The intense spinning of a tornado is partly the result of the updrafts and downdrafts in the thunderstorm (caused by the unstable air) interacting with the wind shear, resulting in a tilting of the wind shear to form an upright tornado vortex. Helping the process along, cyclonically flowing air around the cyclone, already slowly spinning in a counter-clockwise direction (in the Northern Hemisphere), converges inward toward the thunderstorm, causing it to spin faster. This is the same process that causes an ice skater to spin faster when she pulls her arms in toward her body.
Other processes can enhance the chances for tornado formation. For instance, dry air in the middle atmosphere can be rapidly cooled by rain in the thunderstorm, strengthening the downdrafts that asist in tornado formation. Notice that in virtually every picture you see of a tornado the tornado has formed on the boundary between dark clouds (the storm updraft region) and bright clouds (the storm downdraft region), evidence of the importance of updrafts and downdrafts to tornado formation.
Also, an isolated strong thunderstorm just ahead of a squall line that then merges with the squall line often becomes tornadic; isolated storms are more likely to form tornadoes than squall lines, since an isolated storm can form a more symmetric flow pattern around it, and the isolated storm also has less competition for the unstable air which fuels the storm than if it were part of a solid line (squall line) of storms.
Because both instability and wind shear are necessary for tornado formation, sometimes weak tornadoes can occur when the wind shear conditions are strong, but the atmosphere is not very unstable. For instance, this sometimes happens in California in the winter when a strong low pressure system comes ashore. Similarly, weak tornadoes can occur when the airmass is very unstable, but has little wind shear. For instance, Florida – which reports more tornadoes than any other state in the U.S. – has many weaker tornadoes of this variety. Of course, the most violent tornadoes occur when both strong instability and strong wind shear are present, which in the U.S. occurs in the middle part of the country during the spring, and to a lesser extent during fall.
Contrary to popular opinion, tornadoes have not increased in recent years.
OK, so I would say that there is some good understanding of the conditions that generate a tornado. In general, we can say that some specific configurations of the basic components of the weather (distribution of winds, temperatures, pressures, and so on) allow tornadoes to be generated. So, there is nothin mysterious in the process. It is well understood, even if its mathematical and empirical treatment is certainly difficult. Some configurations of weather conditions lead to tornadoes.
It’s those configurations that we must consider, not the configurations of individual molecules of water. The basic components of weather follow, more or less, precise necessity laws, and of course molecules of water follow those laws too. The random-stochastic component, the only one that generates specific configurations that can act as “configurable switches”, is caused by the complex interaction of those necessity laws.
So, the correct question in terms of FI is: how many weather configuration (target space) lead to a tornado, in the search space of all possible weather configurations?
I am certainly the last persom that can solve such a problkem quantitatively, but I believe that it can be solved in principle. There is nothing mtsterious here.
Now, tornadoes are not too common (luckily), but they are certainly not exceedingly rare. I suppose therefore that, analyzing the space of configurations above mentioned, it will not be difficult to show that the configurations that lead to a tornado are not exceedingly rare. I cannot make that kind of analysis, unfortunately. Can you?
So, I am rather confident that tornadoes, like many manifestations of necessity acting on random and chaotic components, are certainly fascinating, but can be perfectly explained in terms of the physics of these system. And the configurations that lead to them are a non trivial part of the space of configurations.
IOWs, FI is low, and there is absolutely no reason to infer design.