This description of the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs is a bit sobering.

[Herbert Augustus Chapman]

As you rightly point out, h, I am a words man. I'm awfully good at analysing and decoding language to extract its deeper - often unintended - meanings. For this reason, when I espy words and phrases such as 'non-linearity', 'highly unpredictable', 'could', 'can', 'may' and 'are likely to', I'm forced to conclude that the writer is bullshÃ*tting wildly and has no more clue of the likely outcomes than do I.

Allow me to elucidate. In mathematics, a linear equation is one that describes a straight line. It is simple to see the precise relationship between the given values of the x and y plane (staying in the two dimensional domain) with each other. Non-linearity is just a way of asserting that the relationship is far more complex and difficult to quantify accurately.

The problem is that literary types have purloined the term non-linear for descriptive rather than definitive purposes. They will even describe a piece of music or art as non-linear, bóllocks as you rightly say. I use the term purely in its mathematical sense.

If someone can look even briefly and myopically at this world and not conclude that we are in the process of doing grave and perilous damage to our ecology then they would have to be an imbecile.