June 7, 2000 -- Yesterday the orbiting Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) recorded a powerful series of solar eruptions including a full-halo coronal mass ejection (CME).
"The halo CME was magnificent," says Gary Heckman, a space weather forecaster at the NOAA Space Environment Center. "Based on [the characteristics of the eruption], this looks like a sure bet to produce a geomagnetic storm." ......
They may sound menacing, but CMEs pose little danger to people on Earth. Our planet's magnetic field serves as an effective shield against solar wind storms. The same familiar force that causes compass needles on Earth to point north also extends far into space. When a CME hits the magnetosphere -- the region around Earth controlled by its magnetic field -- most of the incoming material is deflected away from our planet.
If a gust of solar wind is very strong -- as this one might be -- it can compress the magnetosphere and unleash a geomagnetic storm. In extreme cases, such storms can induce electric currents in the Earth that interfere with electric power transmission equipment. Satellite failures are possible, too. Geomagnetic storms can also trigger beautiful aurorae. These "Northern Lights" are usually seen at high latitudes, but they have been spotted farther south than Florida during intense disturbances. The last time this happened was April 6, 2000.
That was 2000, they were more excited about the aurora you could see than any power failures. Fast forward to today.
Powerful Solar Storm Could Shut Down U.S. for Months
A new study from the National Academy of Sciences outlines grim possibilities on Earth for a worst-case scenario solar storm.
Damage to power grids and other communications systems could be catastrophic, the scientists conclude, with effects leading to a potential loss of governmental control of the situation.
The prediction is based in part on a major solar storm in 1859 that caused telegraph wires to short out in the United States and Europe, igniting widespread fires.
It was perhaps the worst in the past 200 years, according to the new study, and with the advent of modern power grids and satellites, much more is at risk.
Then we have this article:
Don't Blame Sun for Global Warming, Study Says
The sun's energy output varies slightly as sunspots wax and wane on the star's surface.
But sunspot-driven changes to the sun's power are simply too small to account for the climatic changes observed in historical data from the 17th century to the present, research suggests.
The difference in brightness between the high point of a sunspot cycle and its low point is less than 0.1 percent of the sun's total output.
"If you run that back in time to the 17th century using sunspot records, you'll find that this amplitude variance is negligible for climate," Foukal said.
So, the sun is a major player, or it isn't. Then again it might be, maybe if the moons all align at the right time and the sea ice melts, but only if Jupiter is perfectly visible to the naked eye, and nothing will happen if there is cloud cover.
Are all none scientific people, like me, as tired of the scare tactics being used by the eco-nuts as I am?. Oh, and let's not forget about this little threat to our climate....
Alaska volcano is rumbling, but no big bursts
"It looks like a volcano that wants to erupt, and our general impression is that it's more likely to erupt than not," said Tina Neal with the Alaska Volcano Observatory.
As a precaution, Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage, about 160 kilometres northeast of Redoubt, was moving five C-17 cargo planes to McChord Air Force Base in Washington.
"We're just trying to be proactive and protect our assets," said a spokesman.
"Our aircraft support other missions, such as delivering supplies to Iraq and Afghanistan, and this relocation will allow them to still do all those missions even if the volcano does erupt."
On Saturday, geologists observed a quickly growing area of vigorous steaming on the north side of the mountain. Volcanic gas also was detected.
A hole in a glacier clinging to the north side of the volcano had doubled in size since Friday, spanning the length of two football fields.
The area is just below a dome that formed the last time Redoubt blew in 1990.
The signs of heat add to concerns that an eruption is near, which could send an ash cloud about 160 kilometres northeast toward Anchorage, the state's largest city.
An eruption in December 1989 sent an ash cloud 300 kilometres that flamed out the jet engines of a KLM flight carrying 231 passengers on its way to Anchorage.
Pilots were able to restart the engines and land safely.
The observatory last week detected a steep increase in earthquake activity below the volcano, upgrading its alert level to orange, the stage before full eruption.
Hey, but CO2 is the problem, ever though water vapour makes up 95% of greenhouse gases. I'm no scientist, but I can detect BS when I encounter it. Too bad the eco-nuts have no such radar detector.
15 comments:
CO2 is about .035 of 1% of the atmosphere. If it doubles, that would still be less of a difference than the change in brightness (.1%) they claim cannot be a factor. How can they be so positive about the catastrophic claims they make about CO2? I agree. For those of us without a science background, it is hard to take them seriously when we look out our window.
Watch for the next scare from the envirwackos and Greens. Via Drudge, Green guru says 2 chldren limit should be law. Population should be controlled by birth control and abortion. Doesn't China has a one child policy
Wonder what Lizzie thinks.
Wonder if that is why Pelosi has 350 million in the stimulus bill for prevention of STDs.
You know, one of the advantages of being over 50 is that I can discern BS from reality since I have seen a fair chunk of life. Back in the 60s, we had phosphates as the environmental killer. In the 70s, we had the energy crisis and some other environmental killer (I can't remember what it was). In the 80s, we had the ozone layer. In the 90s, we had something else. Now, we have carbon dioxide. I've lived through enough of these climate crises to know that no matter what, the crises are 99% balderdash. Every time we have an environmental crisis, some industry benefits.
During the ozone layer hysteria, a whole sun screen industry was born and, today, we hear that sun screens are not effective and that they are contributing to a lack of vitamin D in our children - combined with parents not allowing their kids to get enough sunlight for fear of the ozone layer.
During the 60s, a whole new industry of phosphate-free detergents was born. Cyclamates were banned and a new industry of artificial sweeteners was born.
Yet, despite all of these crises, we still drive cars, we still burn fossil fuels...etc. Add to that the popularity of bottled water and disposable diapers along with disposable everything plus polluting farming practices and carbon dioxide becomes nothing but a smokescreen to distract us from the real issues and to give Dion-types an excuse to raise taxes in order to line their own pockets.
We have too many people on the planet and we are too greedy for consumer products which gives rise to industrialization of countries like China and India which pollute with total abandon.
No amount of taxation or legislation will, on its own, save the planet. We have to stop forcing population growth and we have to stop consuming products which cause a threat to our planet.
At the risk of sounding cruel - forests have life cycles - if deer increase, so do their predators, for example. If, for some reason, the deer population diminishes, so does the population of their predators. Human, on the other hand, "save" people by bringing food and medicine to areas where the human population is dying off. Cruel as it may sound, we are interfering with a natural cycle. Nature balances itself out and we humans interfere - thus causing a ripple effect which is felt over the entire planet.
Unfortunately, the Dions, Mays, and Suzukis of the world capitalize on and promote this sort of environmental hysteria for their own purposes and those purposes have nothing to do with the environment. We humans, unfortunately, fall for it. Well, this is one earthly man who fails to fall for their BS.
"Are all none scientific people, like me, as tired of the scare tactics being used by the eco-nuts as I am?."
"Hey, but CO2 is the problem, ever though water vapour makes up 95% of greenhouse gases."
You need a grammar and spelling detector. Your BS detector notwithstanding.
Happy Groundhog's Day
Looks like another 6 weeks of global warming.
My favorite is Balzac Billy
"ever though water" - Stereo, you also need a spelling detector. I believe you meant "even" and not "ever".
Wayne - agreed. There are far worse pollutants than CO2. The destruction of rain forests - a trendy issue a few years back - is a real threat to the planet. We need trees to clean the air and water but we persist in changing the natural landscape. Borneo, for example, is cutting down its forests to make way for palm oil trees. Apparently, palm oil is in great demand and an entire ecosystem is being destroyed for the sake of the country's economy.
CO2 is not the problem - Asia's pollution, overfishing, forest elimination, over-farming...is the problem. As for Canada's contribution to the world's pollution - negligible but still an issue for people like Dion and May to use as an excuse to overtax us and put in place more communist-style "programs".
MaryT - if Lizzie Mae starts to promote abortion as a method of birth control, how about if she is the first to take part - retroactively. It would be nice to be rid of that voice and face. I love these commie types who purport to tell us what is best for us when they can't even manage their own lives.
Remember the year 2000, the year our computers were all going to crash, and they didn't?
I'm not sure how this helps your analogy. This problem was fixed by the long and tedious work done by thousands of rewrites to software and fixes to time systems across many industries and institutions. It was fixed precisely because we saw it before it happened and worked to correct it. We don't really know what MIGHT have happened if we hadn't recognized the problem and fixed it, because we DID fix it. The only fear was that someone forgot to fix one or two things, and that the failure mode for one of those things would be catastrophic; i.e., there was no fear, except for those that didn't understand it. The probability that a catastrophic failure mode (say, like forgetting to check the impact on flight control systems and correct it if necessary) might have been overlooked was next to nothing.
So your analogy here is ridiculous, particularly given that the people advocating for climate change reduction measures are trying to make us aware of the problem so that we CAN fix it...you know, just like we did with the Y2K bug. Hopefully, if they everyone ignores your ilk, we will have the same outcome that we did with Y2K. That is, nothing will happen, because we will address the problem when we still have time to fix it, and we will manage to implement measures to mitigate the risk.
As it is, what you're doing is akin to proclaiming that the Y2K bug doesn't exist, so there is no reason to even bother to investigate or correct any potential risk factors in the thousands or tens of thousands of systems impacted. As you admit to no science background, perhaps you should just step aside and let the experts do their work.
East of Eden has the same problem. He/she seems to think that there were no measures taken to address these problems that he/she claims are 'balderdash'. EoE, are you honestly saying that the production of CFCs, which was heavily curbed by legislation, was not at all responsible for depletion of the ozone layer?
EoE,
Re: ""ever though water" - Stereo, you also need a spelling detector. I believe you meant "even" and not "ever".
That is Hunter's error in her text which she has not corrected. Maybe she will fix it later.
Your retroactive abortion quip, FTR is extremely distasteful verging on reprehensible. Surely no one deserves to have a remark like that levelled against her, no matter how little you think of her politics.
Remember the year 2000, the year our computers were all going to crash, and they didn't?
Of course they didn't, because the problem was known. Numerous programmers reviewed program code and fixed the problems.
The likelihood of problems was higher the older the systems were. Anyone coding in the 1980s or later would be more likely to make sure the 2000 rollover works. That's why most PCs worked, though a number had problems with the bios, though DOS or Windows had been updated by then.
Older programs were written at a time when using an extra byte to record the century would require a management level decision, considering it would be a dollar a byte, multiplied by the number of records stored. Few people in the 1960s thought their systems would still be in use 40 years later.
I recall that the systems that did have problems were mostly in the defense area. That is because they were written years ago and are still in use.
The systems that received the most attention and fixing were the financial ones. Your home PC failing to accept dates after 2000 is not a big deal. But a banking system that decides to calculate your mortgage incorrectly is a big deal for the bank. I know I took a couple hundred dollars out before the rollover, since I figured any problems would likely be fixed in a couple of days. I certainly wasn't "scared" as you would have us believe now.
CO2 is about .035 of 1% of the atmosphere. If it doubles, that would still be less of a difference than the change in brightness (.1%) they claim cannot be a factor.
That is not a logical argument. It is not much different than arguing that a concentration of .035 of 1% of botulinum is no big deal. When in fact .00000001 of 1% concentration will kill you.
The water vapour in the atmosphere does a lot more to maintain the current temperatures of the earth than CO2 does. Altogether the greenhouse effect adds about 35 degrees C to the temperature.
The reason water vapour is less of a concern is that if you dump more water vapour into the air, it will not stay there for long. It will precipitate out (rain or snow) within a month. CO2 does not turn to a liquid at pressures below 5 atmospheres. It will turn into dry ice at -68C, which you won't find in the upper atmosphere.
So the CO2 will stay for years, possibly centuries. Similar to the problems with lead, it was once believed lead in water pipes and car exhaust was no big deal due to low concentrations. But they accumulate over time, especially in smaller people (i.e. children) and lead is no longer used in plumbing and no longer used in gasoline.
For those of us without a science background, it is hard to take them seriously when we look out our window.
Meanwhile the Suzuki machine continues to work. It gets cold when you heat it. It warms up when you stop heating it.
When you understand that the Suzuki machine is real, you will understand that the earth could be warming despite the cold weather.
And as always, the scientists could be wrong. Something I never hear the "skeptics" say about their own assertions.
Funny how my spelling mistakes are more interesting than the point I was making.
If in 2000, a solar flare was nothing to worry about, how come in 2009 it might be a catastrophic event? How about that volcano that is about to erupt? Have the computer models been adjusted for that little event? How can they it hasn't even happened yet, but they can predict what will happen in 100 years? BS!
BS detection!
If in 2000, a solar flare was nothing to worry about, how come in 2009 it might be a catastrophic event?
I don't know. An interesting question to be sure, though not related to the articles you cited in your post. The first one says CME's pose little danger to people on earth. That's different from "nothing to worry about". First you have to get a CME pointing at us and not some other direction.
Consider the activity of crossing a street. There is little danger of getting run over if you look both ways. But it is not "nothing to worry about". You do have to pay attention in crossing the road. And the worst case scenario is catastrophic for you.
A better example is asteroids. Getting hit by an asteroid is catastrophic. But there is little danger because there aren't a lot of asteroids per 100 million cubic miles and the chances of being hit are low.
The two articles are not inconsistent, but they are focused on different things.
How about that volcano that is about to erupt? Have the computer models been adjusted for that little event?
Yes, the models take volcanoes into account. They tend to cause cooling with all the ash they put in the air, but they are not frequent enough to counteract the effects of GHGs.
How can they it hasn't even happened yet, but they can predict what will happen in 100 years?
You never know, this could be the biggest volcano ever. It could be so big its ash blots out the sun and all our crops will fail, most areas will freeze and we'll all die.
But if it falls within the observed averages, it will have a local cooling effect but will not counteract the overall warming trend.
Predictions are always extrapolations based on current information, whether you predict 100 seconds or 100 years into the future. The unexpected can always make your prediction fail to materialize. When I go home, my car might just levitate and fly to the moon. You never know. But I predict it will operate the way it has since I got it. If I never comment here or anywhere else ever again, you'll know my prediction was wrong.
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