Kanook – February, 2010

Some of us have read that our primary heat-source is the pilot behind our climate,
whereas some educated persons wonder whether the suns variations affect our
climate. Various studies over the history of mankind have found that the Sun
seemed to have been stable, compared to the timescale of human lifetimes. At
best, ambiguous1 results have been found when attempting to find cyclic variations
in the weather and their connection to the Sun – in other words has the rise in the
Sun’s activity explain the global warming experience in the 20th Century, by the
1990s there appeared to be a “tentative” answer that minor solar variations could
indeed have been partly responsible for “some” past fluctuations, but that “future”
warnings were issued pointing to a warming of our atmosphere caused by
increasing greenhouse gases, and that this would outweigh any solar effects.
Fortunately, for you and I, there have been others in the scientific community who
continued to study the effect of the Sun on our climate and have not hung their hat
on the predictions that the increase of greenhouse gases will be the driving force
behind sporadic or permanent climate changes on our Blue Marble.
On any given day our Blue Marble circles the Sun in an orbit some 92,955,521
mile in circumference, the Sun with a mass that contains 99.86% of the entire solar
system, whereas a million Earth’s could fit inside its bulk. The Sun’s radiated
energy averages 383 billion trillion kilowatts, in quantities that you and I can
understand the equivalent of 100 billion tons of TNT exploding each and every
second.
To say that the Sun dominates our skies is a known, but scientists have been and
still are studying the way its heat/light falls on various places across our planet. As I
recall the word climate is a derivative of the Greek word klimat, (inclination or
latitude) which originally stood for a simple band of latitude. When our scientists
ponder the possibility of climate change, most naturally turn their thinking toward
the effect of the Sun. Some base their thinking on the premise that the Sun will not
last forever, and try to calculate the effect of its slow demise on our planets climate.
William Herschel in 1801 introduced the idea of a more transient climate
connections, his thoughts based on the belief that some stars varied in brightness,
and since our Sun is a star it was natural to ask whether its brightness might vary
causing cooler or warmer periods on Earth. Herschel cited periods in the 17th
Century, when hardly any sunspots had been observed which during those periods
the price of wheat had been high, presumably reflecting prolonged periods of
drought. In his study he found in the mid-19 th Century, following the discovery that
the number of spots seen on the Sun rose and fell in a regular 11-year cycle – that it

1
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ambiguous
appeared that the sunspots reflected some kind of storminess on the surface of the
Sun or a violent activity that strongly affected the Earth’s magnetic field.
By the end of the century a small group of scientists were pursuing the question of
how solar variability “might” related to short-term weather cycles, as well as long-
term climate changes, but their attempts to draw parallels between the events were
curtailed by inaccurate and un-standardized weather data, in addition they lacked
statistical techniques for analyzing the data.
Riding behind their efforts was the general acceptance of the meteorological field
that the climate was stable overall, in other words about the same in one century as
in another. Albeit some agreed that there were some slight variations due to the
Sun, the majority felt the Sun was one constant in our weather, some continue in
this vein of belief today. Whereas some searched through mountains of data to
support their theory, and came up with other various reasons for the cycles of dry
summers or cold winters or you-name-it, in one or another region and remaining far
afield from the activity of the Sun. On the other side of the argument others
pointed directly at the Sun, such as Balfour Stewart who said, “They feel, they throb
together.”
Through this confusion, one Ellsworth Huntington (9-16-1876 / 10-17-1947)
studying the work of others concluded that “high” sunspot numbers meant
storminess and rain in some parts of the world, the result being a “cooler planet” –
he also speculated that highly active solar disturbances in the past might be a
reason for our Ice Ages. Another astronomer, Andrew Ellicott Douglass (7-5-1867 /
3-20-1962) from Arizona arrived at a conclusion between sunspots and climate by
examining tree rings, in his finding he noticed that tree rings were thinner in dry
years, counting them he found a direct correlation with respect to Herschel’s
records concerning solar variations – to his disappointment and other mainstream
science threw his findings to the wind and said that tree rings could not reveal
anything beyond “random” regional variations – time prevailing, in the 1960s
worldwide climate study accepted the tree ring data in the climate database.
Charles Greely Abbot (5-31-1872 / 12-17-1973) was a persistent advocate of a
solar-climate connection, whereas his predecessor Samuel Pierpont Langley (8-22-
1834 / 2-27-1906) had established a program of measuring the intensity of the
Sun’s radiation received on Earth, called the “Solar Constant”, a program that Abbot
pursued for decades. During the early 1920s Abbot concluded that the “Solar
Constant” was misnamed, whereas his observations showed “large” variations over
periods of just days, which he connected with sunspots passing across the face of
the Sun.
As early as 1913 Abbot noticed that over a period of ten-years the most active Sun
seem brighter by nearly one-percent, or if compared to the output of 100 billions
tons of TNT exploding every second, add another 1 billion tons. He announced that
he determined a direct correlation between sunspot cycles and the cycles of
temperature on Earth that is while figuring in the temporary cooling spells caused
by the dust of volcanic eruptions. He defended his finds against all objections,
telling the public that future studies would bring much needed wonderful
improvements in weather prediction – a subject he and others at the Smithsonian
pursued single-mindedly into the 1960s – all convinced that sunspot variations were
the primary cause of climate change.
His solar observations were questioned by the mainstream community, whereas
they maintained that his variations were riding on the edge of “detectability” in not
only in his mind – in other words he seemed to have shown for certain was that the
solar constant did not vary by more than just 1%, and according to “them” a
question arose if it even varied that much. They pointed to whether his detected
variations were actual variations of the Sun or the transmission of radiation through
a changing atmosphere – agreeing in a small way that if the atmosphere was
changing it “might” be that the sunspot cycle was causing the change.
Albeit that numerous respected scientists in the 1920s and 1930s announced
correlations that they insisted were reliable to make predictions between the
sunspot activity and the weather, sooner or later every prediction failed – a highly
published prediction being the forecast of a dry spell in Africa during the sunspot
“minimum” of the early 1930s, when it proved wrong a meteorologist later recalled,
“the subject of sunspots and weather relationship fell into disrepute, especially
among British meteorologists who witnessed the discomfiture of some of their most
respected superiors.” In the 1960s he said, “For a young climate researcher to
entertain any statement of sun-weather relationships was to brand oneself a crank.”
Scientists in the solar physics field felt much the same, as one recalled, “purported
connections…with weather and climate were uniformly wacky and to be
distrusted…there is hypnotism about cycles that…draw all kinds of creatures out of
the woodwork.” While in the 1940s most meteorologists and astronomers had
abandoned the quest of linking solar cycles to the weather there were some
respected experts who continued to suspect that there did exist a correlation,
lurking somewhere in the data.
Although the same who rejected the short-term effect of the Sun on weather,
accepted the possibility of the Sun effecting long-term climate changes, albeit with
very low enthusiasm and behind shades of scientific scorn. During the 1920s there
were a few brave scientists who constructed models suggesting a “modest” change
in solar radiation “might” have caused an Ice Age, this by initiating a self-sustaining
change in the polar Ice Caps. One, who really hung his neck way out there, was
British meteorologist Sir George Simpson (9-02-1878 / 1-1-1965) believed the
sequence of Ice Ages demonstrated that the Sun is a variable star – changing its
brightness over a cycle of 100,000 years. He told the Royal Meteorological Society
in a Presidential address in 1939, “There has always been reluctance among
scientists to call upon changes in solar radiation…to account for climate change.
The Sun is so mighty and the radiation emitted so immense that relatively short
period changes…have been almost un-thinkable.” He went on to state that all
terrestrial caused reasons proposed for Ice Ages were not very convincing, and in
lacking any substantial reason we are “forced a reconsideration of extra-terrestrial
causes.”
 Decades later, eminent astrophysicist Ernest Julius Öpik wrote that none of the
many explanations proposed for the Ice Ages were convincing, so “we always come
back to the simplest and most plausible hypothesis: that our Solar Furnace varies in
its output of heat.” He established a theory for a cyclical change of the nuclear
reactions deep within the Sun, his hypothesis was tuned to a 100 million-year
timescale that seemed to match the major glacial epochs, while the “flickering”
within any given epoch of the Sun would drive the expansion or retreat of the Ice
Sheets. In the 1950s, while other scientists published papers and inserted their
theories in textbooks providing explanations of the Ice Ages and other long-term
climate changes to volcanic dust and the shifting ocean currents, they found minor
ways to insert that long-term solar variation as a likely cause. Lately, the last
decade or two the United States Weather Bureau scientist said, “the problem of
predicting the future climate of Planet Earth would seem to depend on predicting
the future energy output of the Sun…” Needless to say, he really wasn’t a part of Al
Gore’s team of experts.
In 1949 Dr. Hurd C. Willett investigated the relationship between the number of
sunspots and their long-term variations of wind patterns – he declared that Sunspot
variations were, “the only possible single factor of climate control which might be
made to account for all of these variations.” While other respected scientists
believed they detected sunspot cycle correlations in the advance and retreat of
mountain glaciers. Willett later admitted that “the physical basis of any such
relationship must be utterly complex, and is as yet not at all understood.” But he
did open the door on another possibility that climate change could be, “solar
variation in the ultraviolet of the sort which appears to accompany sunspot
activity.” A few years before his outburst, another scientist has made the point that
ultraviolet radiation from the explosive flares that accompany sunspots would heat
the ozone layer high in the Earth’s atmosphere, and that “might” influence the
circulation of the lower atmosphere. In the 1950s and 1960s instruments on
rockets that were shot above the atmosphere did confirm that the solar flare
ultraviolet radiation did increase in the upper atmosphere, however the ultraviolet
light does not penetrate below the stratosphere, therefore meteorologists found it
un-likely that changes in the thin stratosphere could affect the layers below – which
contain far more mass and energy.
Others speculated maybe weather patterns were affected by electrically charged
particles sprayed out during a “solar wind”, stating that sunspots thrown out more
particles, while others pointed to the fact that high sunspot activity bends and
pushes the Earth’s magnetic field that shields the Earth from the cosmic rays that
plummet the Earth from the Universe beyond the solar system – whereas these rays
penetrate the upper reaches of the atmosphere they expend their energy producing
fewer of these particles – so more sunspots would mean fewer of these particles –
either way they said this might have an influence on our weather. Expert
meteorologists gave these ideas “some” credence, but the solar wind and
ultraviolet rays carried only a “tiny” fraction of the Sun’s total energy output and if
the preceding did influence the weather, it had to be through a “subtle” triggering
mechanism that was too mysterious, and besides the variations connected with
sunspots seemed likely to bear only on “temporary” weather anomalies lasting a
week or so and not on long-term climate changes.
Now if you read so far, pre our generation the mainstream scientific community
only associated the Sun with long-term climatic changes, lately they admit it may
affect short-term and not long-term, and within Al Gore’s team not at all, that
greenhouse gas is the culprit.
Kirill Ya Kondratyev and his various teams over the years have studied the effects
of the 11-year solar cycle, in reality the 22-year cycle. In 1970 his group claimed
that the Sun’s output varied along with a number of sunspots as much as 2% - a
figure that drew cautious responses from other scientists, while some remarked that
this could only be supported by verified observations from spacecraft above the
atmosphere.
Danish glaciologist Willi Dansgaard in examining ice cores from Greenland
produced a credible study finding cyclical variations – which they supposed were
the responsibility of the Sun – whereas they used data found in other scientific
journals where the scientific society had analyzed small variations in the sunspot
activity. Their analysis covered 80-years in one study and another cycle of 180-
years and revealed “changing conditions on the Sun.” The oscillations were so
regular that in 1970 Dansgaard’s group extrapolated the curves into the future.
They began by matching their results with a global cooling trend that, as others
reported, had been underway since around 1940. The predicted the cooling would
continue through the next one or two decades, following by a warming period for
the following three decades, or so.
Later studies “failed” to support Dansgaard’s cycles globally, it they existed at all
the cause did not seem to be the Sun, but light cyclical shifts in the North Atlantic
Ocean’s surface warmth and winds. Another case of supposed global weather
cycles that lost credence as more data became available. The 1970s also gave
birth to controversial claims that the weather data and tree rings from various
sections of the American West revealed a 22-year cycle of droughts, presumably
driven by the solar magnetic cycle. During this time the west was going through a
severe drought, and these bold claims drew some public attention – however
scientists were slowly beginning to understand that the planet’s climate system
could go through self-sustaining oscillations, due to the feedbacks between ocean
temperatures and wind patterns. Whereas the patterns cycled quasi-regularly by
“themselves” on timescales ranging from a few years (such as the El Nino Southern
Oscillation in the Pacific) to several decades.
Human are a strange lot, especially when it comes to their Sun – deep down they
know it’s a star, has been and always will be, however there is a component in their
thinking that believes their star is much better than any other star, where as Jack
Eddy once said, “As people and as scientists we have always wanted the Sun to be
better that other stars and better than it really is.” Because of this scientist
continue to severely scrutinize any possibility that “solar activity” could influence
climate, but always with a “skeptical” eye whereas most astronomers dismiss
outright any thought of important solar variation onto a timescale of hundreds of
thousands of years. And, that surface features such as sunspots will only have a
short-term effect and at most will be superficial – and that the main energy flow is
stable out to billions of years. In other simple words, bah hum-bug, when it comes
to the Sun really affecting our weather…during the past few hundreds of thousands
of years.
However in 1961 Minze Stuiver2 being concerned about the particular variations in
the amount of radioactive carbon-14 found in ancient tree rings, determined that
Carbon-14 is generated when cosmic rays from the far reaches of the Universe
strike the atmosphere. He noted how changes in the magnetic field of the Sun
would change the flux of cosmic rays reaching the Earth – he followed this up in
collaboration with the Carbon-14 expert Hans Suess3, confirming that the
concentration of the isotope really had varied over past millennia. His work was not
suggesting that the changes in Carbon-14 (cosmic rays) altered the climate, rather
they were showing that the isotope could be used to measure solar activity in the
distant past. In 1965 he tried comparing the new data with weather records, hoping
that his method “may supply conclusive evidence regarding the causes for the
great Ice Ages.” He first focused on the cold spell experience across Europe
through the 15th and 18th Centuries (Little Ice Age), where he found a relatively high
concentration of Carbon-14, which pointed to low solar activity – his conclusion
fewer sunspots made for a colder winter. A few others found the connection
“plausible”, whereas a great number of scientists speculated that it was just
another of the countless correlations that people had announced over the past
century as “thin” evidence.
The 1970s also brought claims that slower variations in the Earth’s magnetic field
correlated with climate, where in the cores of clay from the seabed reaching back a
million years, showed that colder temperatures were linked with high
concentrations of magnetism. The magnetic variations were supposed to have
been caused by processes in the Earth’s interior rather than the Sun, where the
study suggested that cosmic rays really “did” influence climate…as usual the
evidence was sketchy and it failed to convince a majority of the scientists.
In 1975, Robert Dickinson the respected meteorologist from NCAR in Boulder
Colorado assumed the task of reviewing the American Meteorological Society’s
official statement about Solar Influences on weather…his conclusion was that such
influences were unlikely, stating that there were no reasonable mechanism in
sight…except, “maybe”, one. “Perhaps” the electrical charges that cosmic ray
brought into the atmosphere “somehow” affected how aerosol particles came
together. “Perhaps” they somehow affected cloudiness, since cloud droplets
condense on the nuclei formed by aerosol particles…here you go, piling speculation
on top of speculation, which he quickly pointed out! His peers knew very little of
the process and said they would need to do more research, “to be able to verify or
disprove these ideas”. Dickinson in his skepticism, being who he was, had left the
2
http://www.geosociety.org/awards/05speeches/penrose.htm
3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Suess
door open even it was just a crack – whereas one way or another it was now at least
scientifically conceivable that changes in sunspots could have something to do with
changes in climate – most mainstream experts considered the idea to be
preposterous.
In 1976, John Allen “Jack” Eddy4 tied all the threads together in a paper that soon
became famous, he was one of several solar experts in Boulder a vigorous
community of astrophysicists, meteorologists and other Earth scientists who had
grown up around the University of Colorado and NCAR – unfortunately as is true in
most cases poor communications between fields left Eddy in the dark when it came
to Carbon-14 research, a condition that seems to always impede scientific research
in any field. Jack Eddy in his spare time pored over old books – his decision to
review historical naked-eye sunspot records, with his aim to definitively confirm the
long-standing belief that the sunspot cycle was stable over the centuries.
He failed, what he did find was evidence that the Sun was by no means as
constant as astrophysicist’s had believed, especially when it came to the “Little Ice
Age”, of the 16th and 17th Centuries, which during that time “sky-watchers” had
observed almost NO sunspot activity. Whereas people back to Herschel had noticed
the “prolonged” lack of sunspots.
A 19th Century German astronomer, G.W. Spörer had been the first to solidly
document the lack of activity, and a little later, in 1890, the British astronomer E.
Walter Maunder noted the discovery and its significance on the climate. Other
scientists, naturally, thought this was just another case of “dubioius” numbers at
the edge of detectability. Maunder’s publications sank beneath the waves of
obscurity, and as it happens, another specialist told him about Maunder’s work. As
Eddy walked through his research, his belief in early modern solar observations
increased, whereas the observations stating that there was no sunspot activity, was
accurate. He found, digging deeper, the inconstancy confirmed by historical
sightings of auroras and of the solar corona at eclipse (both reflecting the
heightened activity on the Sun’s surface).
Once his attention was drawn to the Carbon-14 record, he realized it too matched
the pattern – whereas all the evidence led to long-sustained minimums and at least
one maximum of activity in the past 2000 years. He soon realized that his battle to
create a “perfect” Sun was a wasted effort, it was not constant, and even during its
inconsistency that was found to be “regular”. He remarked, “why we think the Sun
should be any of these when other stars are not, is more a question for social than
for physical science.”
His announcement of a “solar-climate” connection met with the usual mainstream
skepticism, but he never let up pushing his arguments forcefully forward, especially
when it came to his referencing the Little Ice Age which he dubbed the “Maunder
Minimum”, meaning lack of sunspots. His paper showed that he had gone beyond
his predecessors in their historical investigation. He connected the sunspot

4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_A._Eddy
observations with the Carbon-14 record and work toward removing the doubts
about Solar Stability.

Jack Eddy then drew attention to the period of high Carbon-14 and low solar
activity during the 11th and 12th Centuries, where remarks in medieval manuscripts
showed that those centuries has been unusually warm in Europe…It was far from
proven that those were times of higher temperatures all around the globe.
However, scientists were impressed by the evidence from the North Atlantic region
where most of them lived and where the historical record was known. His reference
to the occupation and development of Greenland by the Vikings during this period
of time, and then their starvation in the Little Ice Age secured the attention of the
scientific community and the public.
He warned very forcefully, “when we have observed the Sun most intensively, its
behavior must have been unusually regular and benign.” Albeit the data showed
that the “Medieval Warm Period” when Iceland and Greenland were settled showed
a special group of regional variations, was significant it did not show a Universal and
extreme steep temperature rise that was felt around the world since the 1980s –
although the “Little Ice Age” was more definite, it too had any local variations,
albeit not as important as in the North Atlantic region.
Two experts proclaimed, “If the development of ‘paleoclimatology’ had taken
place in the tropical Pacific, Africa…or Latin America, the paleoclimatic community
would almost certainly have adopted other terminology.” Despite this retort, Eddy’s
central point would stand: regional climates were more susceptible to perturbing
influences, including small changes on the Sun, than most scientists had imagined.
Jack Eddy busted his tush to “sell” his findings…at a 1976 workshop he presented
his first full argument, his colleagues “tentatively” accepted that Solar Variability
“might” be responsible for climate changes over periods of a few hundreds or
thousands of years. He pressed on, looking for evidence connecting temperature
variations with Carbon-14, which he used to measure solar activity. He claimed, “In
every case when long-term solar activity fails, mid-latitude glaciers and climate
cools.”
As Jack Eddy’s documents hit the press, other scientists began to explore how far
his idea “might” account for Climate Change – adding solar variability to the
“sporadic” cooling caused by dust from volcanic eruptions did seem to give a better
match to temperature trends over the entire last millennium. A group of computer
modelers examining accurate global temperatures noted over the late 19th Century
obtained a decent match using only the record of volcanic eruptions plus
greenhouse warming, they improved the match noticeably when they added in a
record of solar variations, which really proved nothing…but it did give pause and
more reason to devote more of an effort to the question.
In the meantime Stuiver and other s confirmed the connection between solar
activity and Carbon-14, which became a standard tool in later solar-climate studies
– whereas an example was a study that reported a match between Carbon-14
variations and an entire set of “Little Ice Age” evidence indicated by advances of
glaciers, that had come at random over the last 10,000 years. Other studies,
however, failed to find such correlations.
In 1985 a reviewer commented, “this is a controversial topic…the evidence
relating solar activity and Carbon-14 variations to surface temperatures is
equivocal, an intriguing “but” unproven possibility.”
The science in Solar Activity is not over, by a long shot – whereas scientists
continue to report new phenomena at the border of “detectability”, such as Ronald
Gilliland at NCAR who in following Eddy’s path in analyzing a variety of old records
has tentatively announced slight periodic variations in the Sun’s diameter. His
study not only matched the 11-year sunspot cycle but also the 80-year cycle that
has remained in the shadow…adding these solar cycles on top of volcanic eruptions,
he has found a convincing match to the temperature record of the past century. His
calculations show that the solar cycles were currently acting opposite to the rise of
carbon dioxide, whereas today (2010) we have found out that the man-made global
warming fraud is just that a fraud, but in respect to his increasing diameter of the
sun – the jury is still out.
We have come a great distance over the past two decades, to where in 2006 a
prediction was made by Mausumi Dikpati at NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric
Research, by the way), were she says, “The next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50%
stronger than the previous one.” If she is correct, the years ahead will produce a
burst of solar activity 2nd only to the historic Solar Max of 1958, where the Northern
Lights were seen three times in Mexico.
Her prediction is based on the recent confirmation of a conveyor belt on the Sun,
similar to the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt here on Earth, whereas a network of
currents carry water and heat from ocean to ocean…in the movie The Day After
Tomorrow the belt stopped.
The Sun’s conveyor belt is made of electically-conducting gas, that flows in a loop
from the Sun’s equator to its poles and back again as it controls the weather on the
Sun, or more specifically it controls the sunspot cycle. As we know, sunspots are
tangled knots of magnetism generated by the Sun’s inner dynamo – keep in mind a
typical sunspot exists for just a few weeks, then it decays leaving behind a corpse of
weak magnetic fields…typical is the key word here. Enter the conveyor belt.
The top of the conveyor belt skims the surface of the sun sweeping up magnetic
fields of old dead sunspots, dragging them down to the poles to a depth of 200,000
kms or 124,275 miles where the Sun’s magnetic dynamo recharges and amplifies
them. Once the corpses of the magnetic knots are reincarnated they become
buoyant and float back to the surface, and Bingo…New Sunspots!
This action takes place over 40 years, about how long it takes the belt to complete
one loop…the speed varies anywhere between 50-years at a slow pace or 30-years
considered a fast pace. When the belt is turning pretty fast as it was between
1986-1996 it gathered up a lot of magnetic fields, which in turn will create future
sunspot cycle that will be pretty intense – whereas large sunspots and a lot of them
will begin appearing in 2010 – 2011.
 Today, the pragmatic scientific world, announces that the sometimes violent Sun
when it spins off a X-size flare can and will disrupt our navigational signals (GPS
landing electronics, and how to get home in your car), satellites (communications or
in simple terms where the Simpsons are broadcast from), and power grids (the
increase in magnetically induced voltage will overload the power systems
transformers), but these same scientists say little if not anything what this not-so-
friendly star of ours will could do and will do to our weather. Some of these MIT
grads are still arguing if this star is still ours or belongs to another time or space…
1000s of their formulas created the worst financial mess this world has ever seen,
demonstrating that a $1 into a checking account can multiple itself into 1000 pieces
of nothing and then selling that package of nothing.
NASA on Thursday last (February 11th, 2010) launched a satellite that will keep a
close eye on the Sun, supposedly sending us 1.5 Terabytes of information daily,
including digital snaps having the resolution experience in an IMAX theatre. This
information is said to give the scientists on the ground the necessary wherewithal to
predict our weather by measuring with great accuracy the size of the magnetic
eruptions and the predicted speed at which the flares magnetic energy is racing
towards our Blue Marble.
Our boys in smocks (sorry our boys and girls) using Satellite information are
attempting to define what maybe a coming SuperStorm created by a huge X-10 size
flare, making the 1859 event (the Carrington Event) look like small potatoes. But
here again, the results we see from any of these later studies will be colored to fit
the desires of the politicians, not the real world of science. Then again it may not
matter, if an event such as the 1859 ruckus smacks into our magnetic ball life as
you and I know it, especially when it comes to our power grid will vanish for quite
some time, unlike 1859 our control systems are build around microelectronics and a
pulse(s) of magnetic energy running helter-skelter across our systems will blow
them to kingdom come…really…it will take decades if not more to replace regional
and local electrical transformers…we do not have the manufacturing capacity to
make new units in a couple of weeks, we’re talking years and years.
What are we talking here, if another Carrington Event slammed into our Blue
Marble…the 1st event, within 90-seconds would be the failure of over 300 key
transformers, we’re not talking about those round tubes hanging on the pole
outside your house. We’re talking about units that are bigger than a 2-car garage
spaced across the power grid – immediately 130 million people would lose their
power.
Now the countdown begins, the next thing you and I would notice is the
availability of fresh water, which means the people living in high-rise units would
lose their water within that 1st 90-seconds, whereas the rest of us it would go away
in areas that use a water-tower to pressurize their taps, no power to pump the
water up to the tower, so at max the rest of us within 12-hours will lose our water
supply, as we use pumps in our reservoirs also.
Supermarket shelves would empty very quickly, our just-in-time-culture for
delivery networks may represent the “pinnacle of efficiency”, but all electrical
power transportation would halt, as for the fuel for delivery vehicles there would be
no electricity to pump the fuel from the underground storage tanks, or the regulate
the inter-state pipelines. Whereas back-up generators would run at important sites
such as hospitals until they ran out of fuel – max generated capacity “maybe” 72-
hours, after that all iron-lungs, critical care mechanisms – bingo! Gone!
As for those “critical transformers”, a well stocked utility might have one or two
hanging around, and even if they did it will take a well-trained crew about 1-week to
install one and within a month the handful of “spare” transformers would be on-line,
the rest will have to be built to order, a process that could take up to 12-months to
complete – a recent news article tells of Siemens delivery a large transformer to
Russia that was 18-months in the making. Even when some systems are capable of
receiving power again, there is no guarantee there will be any power to deliver
whereas most of the natural gas and fuel pipelines require power to operate and
even coal fired plants only keep a 30-day reserve, and remember the transport
systems are in disarray, translation the power outage drags into its 2nd month.
Nuclear power stations will experience a shutdown, as they are programmed to
shut-down when the grid they feed goes down and in most cases are not allowed to
produce power until the grid (infrastructure) is repaired – ie: the transformers.
Society as we know it now has no power for heating, cooling or refrigeration
systems – and then there are our pharmaceutical plants where certain medications
such as “insulin” which is highly perishable will be in short supply, in the USA alone
there are over 1,000,000 diabetics. With production down and the distribution
network collapsed the domino effect will bring about their death.
Paul Kinter, a plasma physicist at Cornell University says, “If a Carrington Event
happened today, it would be like Hurricane Katrina only ten-times worse.” In the
real world, it would be even worse than he predicts where the societal and
economic impact of Katrina has dollar value of some $125 billion, the Carrington
Event would be at least $2 trillion in the United States alone, and that is just the 1 st
year after the storm – outside estimates put our recovery at 10 years – some
question if the USA would ever bounce back.
The preceding scenario is not restricted to North American, for example China is
slowly implementing a 1000-kilovolt electrical grid, twice the voltage of the US grid.
Simple electrical theory shows that the higher the voltage the more efficient the
grid will become in acting as an antenna collecting the magnetic pulse from the Sun
– China will suffer maybe twice as long as the lower voltage systems, in that the
efficient high-voltage antenna will collect more of the energy.
Europe, is like the USA where the grids between nations are interconnected and
extremely exposed to cascading failures, for instance in 2006 a routine turn-off of a
“small” part of Germany’s grid (to let a ship pass safely under high-voltage cables)
caused a cascade power failure across Western Europe. In France alone, 5,000,000
were left without power for two-hours, many wondered if they should ever turn it
back on, but that is neither here or there.
The news (some call it good) is that supposedly we have technology that will
supply a warning to our society in the event that another Carrington surprise is on
its way, now whether or not our power supplier can react in time is another
question…some maintain it takes on the order of 3 days for such an explosion of
magnetic energy to reach us, yet we have had some take a little more than 17-
hours – I have never seen an organization implement a emergency disaster plan in
less than 24-hours.
And it is noted that the Carrington Event took 30-minutes to reach our Blue Marble
– if this is an indication of a fast moving CME, we’re in trouble…forget the Sun
affecting our weather, who will care.
A closing note: Our scientific brains tell us the “perfect storm” will most likely be
on a spring or autumn night in a year of heightened solar activity – something like in
2012 – and around the equinoxes, when the orientation of the Earth’s field to the
sun makes up particularly vulnerable to a plasma strike.
It maybe we should pray for a little warming – if you live in the northern latitudes a
cold winter without any power would be a nightmare…solution. Find yourself a cave
with a cool year-round small stream, gather up some firewood, blankets and stock
up on Insulin put it in a bucket and weight it down in the stream along with a few
vegetables, hide a few gallons of fuel for your $450,000 car and wait it out.
And forget about whether or not the Sun is really affecting our day-to-day
weather, let the girls and boys in smocks fight it out over a cold TV dinner. That is
their job!
Amen.