National power grids could overheat and air travel severely disrupted while electronic items, navigation devices and major satellites could stop working after the Sun reaches its maximum power in a few years.
Senior space agency scientists believe the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes “from a deep slumber” sometime around 2013, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
In a new warning, Nasa said the super storm would hit like “a bolt of lightning” and could cause catastrophic consequences for the world’s health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken.
Scientists believe it could damage everything from emergency services’ systems, hospital equipment, banking systems and air traffic control devices, through to “everyday” items such as home computers, iPods and Sat Navs.
Due to humans’ heavy reliance on electronic devices, which are sensitive to magnetic energy, the storm could leave a multi-billion pound damage bill and “potentially devastating” problems for governments.
“We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be,” Dr Richard Fisher, the director of Nasa’s Heliophysics division, said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.
“It will disrupt communication devices such as satellites and car navigations, air travel, the banking system, our computers, everything that is electronic. It will cause major problems for the world.
“Large areas will be without electricity power and to repair that damage will be hard as that takes time.”
I don’t get it. Catastrophic predictions used to be full of coulds and
mights yet this guy Dr Fisher says lots of wills and woulds. Could it be he’s worried that funding agencies require more certainity before granting research funds.
It must be fun working in NASA’s Global Crisis Warning department: Catastrophic climate change, Nuclear winters, annihilation by asteroid , global solar meltdowns.
The “Cry Wolf” story comes to mind.
Considering that the last time we had a “once in a generation” storm it was about a generation ago, it would seem that this generation, by definition, will get its shot.
It is sort of like saying it has been 10 years since the last “once in a decade” thunderstorm.
Let me guess: Their budget is at risk and they must justify how vital their research is.
My God, we are going to have another Millenium Bug catastrophe – head for the hills and buy up bottled water and baked beans, everybody!
From what I have heard about massive solar flares, the car navigation will be the least of your worries – your car itself will not run at all, because the various chips are completely fried.
This isn’t of course restricted to petrol powered vehicles – modern diesel engines have numerous electronic aids to increase power/torque and economy, as well as inhibit particulate emissions, and run smoothly on low-sulphur fuels.
Hmmm, does this mean that my local supermarket may not be restocked in a hurry?
A solar flare would have far-reaching and significant consequences for our modern society.
Oh man… where to begin? Nah, I’ll just point out that after all the warnings about this in the past, there was exactly ONE solar event that actually damaged anyone’s electronics, and that was, I think, 2004 or 2005 when a large percentage of GPS receivers were damaged. There’s a theory that the great NYC blackout was caused by something solar too.
I can’t say I’d bet too high on this being a particularly intense solar cycle if it ever does start, either.
How can anyone read something like this and not comprehend how intensely we are being manipulated by alarmism? Between peak oil, cAGW, solar flares, drought warnings, flood warnings, hurricane warnings, meteor warnings, it’s amazing the true believers can ever hold themselves together!
This feels to me like it’s part of the big 20121221 religious scare, why should this solar cycle be any different than the other ones? Maybe we humans are the ones who are affecting the suns activity and behavior… no this is simply part of the big scare that is now so popular. Sure the power grids and power production systems need to be modernized all over the place, but this c**p will only ridicule the issue.
Now this is a threat that I can sink my teeth in to, unlike computer modelling, cosmic science is the real deal.
Solar physicists have understood this very real possibility for years, and just like the threat of near earth objects, it’s just a matter of ‘when’ not ‘what if’.
I’d be interested to learn more as to exactly why these scientists are thinking this could happen sometime in/around 2013. Doesn’t the major CME also have to actually be coming in the direction of earth in order for it to have such a big effect ? Or are these scientists thinking something other than a major CME event ?
I also noted from the telegraph article that Dr. Fisher states : “… power grids, would be without power and access to electronic devices for hours, possibly even days.”
Sorry Dr. Fisher, but I think the realistic picture there would be more in the area of ‘months’ rather than hours/days… if thousands of transformers are blown out, it would be months to replace them all and get everything back up and running. I don’t know of any country that carries an extra inventory of thousands of transformers in some warehouse. Tens of thousands of dollars per transformer, and days to make one.
And one more statement I’d like to comment on : “If you know that a hazard is coming … and you have time enough to prepare and take precautions, then you can avoid trouble.”
Sorry Dr. Fisher, but there will be no preparations or precautions taking place between now and then because we’re too busy spending our monies studying whale poop…
I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help myself.
Fitzy’s solar cycle 2012 prediction:
Dateline, Earth December 11th 2012….
Record levels of Arctic and Antarctic ice cover the poles, the Earths average temperature continues to drop by 0.2 degrees per year, Al Gore has gone missing while inspecting the Gulf Oil Mega spill in a light aircraft. He’s presumed lost in the oil sea, after mega lightening from space, strikes the brown and rainbow slicked sea, setting it alight.
/foolishment off.
Yay! Another thing for alarmists to get.. alarmed about!
The risk will increase, but I guess it did so many times in the last century. This is like a lottery — also where the storm hits I guess, where Pacific Ocean would be better than US, Europe, or Japan.
Since we take precaution in case of power loss I guess we can handle an initial power loss, but that the problem is a longer time without power. Certain precautions may be needed from energy companies?
However, even in case of a few weeks without power for some countries I don’t think this is more serious than the debt crisis.
“Hey Baa, what’s on the telly?”
“Not much love, just some B grade movie about Y2K….yaaawwwnnnn”
Until then, the sun is snoozing.
Sun spots are NULL and flux is around 70.
Danger! Danger, Will Robinson !
The control systems for nuclear power plants will fail!
There will be blackouts and wipeouts of the systems handling
the world’s financial systems and our ATMs!
The server farms that run the backbone of the internet will fry !
Chaos !
A wailing and gnashing of teeth !
NASA needs more funds !!!
Seems like some areas of science are now just a contest for the biggest scare stories.
Scarience? hmm… doesn’t have the necessary ring to it.
Here we go again,
“He said large swathes of the world could face being without power for several months, although he admitted that was unlikely. ”
Now that’s Olympic standard hedging your bets. This sounds like more millenium bug nonsense.
*in before end of world*
What kind of precautions could we take?
Unless there’s a Global Broadcast of “QUICK, everyone turn your phones off!” what are we supposed to do? Everyone will probably be due for their next techno gadget hit by then anyway…
Anyone free between noon and one today (UK time) might want to ask Mr Pearce one or two questions online:
“Live Q&A: Fred Pearce on the hacked climate science emails
Fred Pearce will be online between 12-1pm on Thursday 17 June to answer questions on his new book about ‘climategate’ ”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/16/fred-pearce-climate-science-book
Wow! Something exciting to look forward to in the reasonable future! We oldies (or olders) are a bit miffed at having to wait for the mega-sea level rises, and oven temperatures, and tidal waves, and meteorites, and super volcanoes, whose projected dates either don’t come to fruition, or are “extended” further into the future.
I want something to happen NOW!! Especially as it’s such an unseasonable, grotty “summer” in France. Would it be presumptious of me to expect a bit of a freeze up this winter (and the following few), ‘cos thet nice Mr. Bastardi seems to think so. Give me something to look forward to, please, particularly with a “told you so” element. I’m bored with the flim-flam of false (or imaginary) alarms…
yah and we might get hit by a comet, a super volcano might go off, the magnetic field may flip and the microbe that will end us all is lurking somewhere in Africa … so many ways to die.. so little time .
Big and obvious attempt to scare the govt into more funding. He might as well claim that the sun’s polar regions will be ice free by 2013.
Don’t let a good crisis go to waste – now’s the time to take over the communications infrastructure.
Funny how the sun “has no effect on climate”, but yet can cause so much other havoc.
The last time this was discussed here, Leif Svalgaard said:
“The danger is real”
Leif is not a man given to unwarranted speculation or flights of fancy.
He also said it’s a matter of when not if we would be hit by a big one similar to the Carrington flare in the 1850’s
He also said that such a flare might be expected to hit Earth once every 150 years or so.
It’s also known that the sun tends to chuck out big ones when it wakes up from long minima….
Reply: I resent that particular euphemism for “throw”. ~ ctm
That’s how it works, doesn’t it?
Bank crisis? Take it over.
GM crisis? Take it over.
CO2 crisis: Take over energy.
BP crisis? Take it over.
Health care crisis? Take it over.
USA crisis? Take it over?