I’m having a free day today in Brisbane, after an intensive week of travel and presentations. I feel zorched, but I still hope to catch up on correspondences and posts. If you have not booked into the tour yet, there are two weeks left in the tour. Details here.
The other candidate for QOTW via NSIDC’s Dr. Mark Serreze merited its own story here.
National Geographic used to be one of my favorite magazines and television programs. I don’t subscribe anymore and I can hardly bear to watch the TV programs because they have so much alarmism in them. I had an ad popup on my MSN messenger which spieled gloom and doom for us puny humans, so I decided to check it out. While it is certainly true that we could see another “Carrington Event” and given our dependence on i-everythings and satellites in orbit these days, such a disruption could be more globally problematic than in the past.
But the NatGeo quote describing the video made me chuckle, not for the visions of dead iPhones, but for doing the very thing we skeptics get accused of, confusing weather and climate.
Here’s the quote from National Geographic Videos:
Just as the sun allows our atmosphere to remain stable, so too can it destroy civilization.
Ummm, confusing weather with climate there guys? From day to night, the atmosphere is anything but stable. In fact it is quite dynamic. Just ask anyone in Kansas about right now.
Plus, cycle 24 so far doesn’t look like a barn burner. That’s not to say we can’t get a big flare/CME, but the likelihood is lower with a quieter sun.
Watch the video by clicking below:
One of the slides from David Archibald’s presentation during our joint tour suggests a weakening solar cycle 24 and 25. Globally, that could be far more troublesome than some dead iPhones and power outages.
We can do without iPhones, but hungry masses due to declining growing zones tend to get a bit more testy than texters gone wild.
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With AGW, we are supposed to cut our carbon dioxide output and pay much higher taxes. What should we do to prevent a massive CME? (apart from paying much higher taxes?) Tin foil hats? For my cell phone?
I rate the FSM a much greater threat.
Enneagram says:
June 20, 2010 at 4:14 pm
A new explanation is needed, and the most logical one is here:
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=74fgmwne
No new explanation is needed [and for what?], and the one you refer to is pure nonsense. Its central thesis is that the Sun is powered from the outside rather than from the inside [and that sunspots are dark because we look through the hot exterior to a cold interior – William Hershel thought that too: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1981JRASC..75…46K and even some people today go along with that http://www.luisprada.com/Protected/The_Sun_Is_Cold_II.htm ]. There are too many things wrong with that to even begin to enumerate, so I’ll only name one: the measured neutrino flux.
Matt says:
June 20, 2010 at 6:30 pm
I have a question for Leif Svalgaard if he checks this thread.
What is the probability of any single large CME/flare event being pointed close enough to the Earth to actually cause a disruption to our electrical systems/devices? A ball park figure would be sufficient.
Depends on the size of the event. For another Carrington event the probability is one.
Well, I have my old solid state ham radio gear that runs these funny things that glow in the dark. The gas generator doesn’t have a lot of solid state stuff in it, so I guess I can get some power for a while –… …– — —
Matt says:
June 20, 2010 at 6:30 pm
What is the probability of any single large CME/flare event being pointed close enough to the Earth to […]
I may have missed the point of your question. CMEs are rather wide-angle, up to 60 degrees = one steradian [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steradian ]. Since there are 4pi steradians on a sphere, the probability that a random event will hit the Earth is 1/4pi = 8%. But CMEs are not random [occur mostly at lower latitudes] so the chance is perhaps double that. If we discount the ones we can’t see on the backside, we can double [roughly] again to about 32% or one-third. If it hits, the probability that it will cause wide-spread disruption is one.
ShrNfr
I couldn’t read your “fist”.
73’s
–.. .-.. ….- -.. -.
Caleb says:
June 20, 2010 at 6:41 pm
Also I have an old tube radio, which ought work fine after the super-solar-storm
But you may not anybody to listen to as the stations [with up-to-date equipment] will be disrupted and you [and they] may not have electricity…
Leif,
Thanks, your second response answered my question.
Yeah, we’ve had stable temps 10+f below average here in the PNW. Just lovely weather for mowing 2.5 acres. grumble grumble.
I can understand how a large power grid could would be affected by a geomagnetic storm, but not how a micro-sized device like an i-Phone would be, other than that the towers that relay its signals might be damaged by being connected to the power grid. Am I missing something or is the emphasis in these articles being misdirected?
Anthony,
what great weather to be having a free day in Brisbane. Brisbane’s “winter” weather is the envy of southern Australians and now we have the UHI to take the edge off those previous frosty mornings. I don’t know if your hosts told you, but Brisbane is no stranger to Americans, in the 1940s it was a garrison town hosting thousands of U.S. servicemen fighting in the South Pacific. After fleeing the Phillipines, General McCarthur set up his HQ about a block from from where you gave your talk. Sorry I missed your talk, I was impressed by all the reports, even the AGW people had many respectful comments.
That’s an amazing graph, thanks for providing it.
Is there any truth to the Carrington event being not subject to any particular level of solar activity?
Before you flail Nat Geo too harshly about alarmism just keep in mind that they are not science. They are entertainment media. They have to get buns in seats, just like any other media. Conflict sells. Status quo does not. As the old adage goes, we don’t read a newspaper to see which banks were not robbed.
Going back into my Faraday cage now.
DirkH says:
June 20, 2010 at 6:18 pm
“The fun thing is, you know, the sun allows our atmosphere to be stable, the sun can also destroy civilization, but what it can’t do is: cause climate change. No. That’s something only humans can do.”
We’ve been around awhile then.
Bring it on!
In Portland, Oregon, we’ve had 4 sunny days since April 1. We’ve had record rainfall. We’ve had record high lows. I might as well live in Alaska or Scotland.
Bring on the next solar cycle! PLEASE!
Journal of Cosmology, 2010, Vol 8, 1983-1999.
JournalofCosmology.com, June, 2010
The Forthcoming Grand Minimum of Solar Activity
S. Duhau, Ph.D.1, and C. de Jager, Ph.D.2
http://journalofcosmology.com/ClimateChange111.html
Jeff Alberts says:
June 20, 2010 at 7:23 pm
Yeah, we’ve had stable temps 10+f below average here in the PNW. Just lovely weather for mowing 2.5 acres. grumble grumble.
Yes, and growing tomatoes? Why bother grumble grumble
rbateman says:
June 20, 2010 at 7:34 pm
Is there any truth to the Carrington event being not subject to any particular level of solar activity?
One might make the argument that low activity may be important for the undisturbed growth of a region that can give us a Carrington event [or Halloween event in 2003]. Some of the largest events have occurred at low solar activity.
Hey Anthony…
Since you are in Brisbane…don’t know if you have seen this but check out this footage of a severe thunderstorm and a blinding, wet downburst there in Nov 2008.
Winds of about 111 MPH. Truly spectacular footage. I have this one bookmarked and I watch it every now and then.
Misnamed a “cyclone” but other than that….this is one of my favorite videos of big Momma Nature in action.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
I see that the World Cup is described as the coldest ever with practice pitches frozen too hard for training. Of course this is ‘weather’ and no indication of long-term climate, but can you imagine the headlines had it been the warmest World Cup ever?
R. de Haan says:
June 20, 2010 at 7:51 pm
The Forthcoming Grand Minimum of Solar Activity
Very poor paper. Cyclomania.
JDN.
My life and my music are completely “stream of consciousness!” Can’t help myself!
DirkH says:
June 20, 2010 at 6:18 pm
“u.k.(us) says:
June 20, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Here’s the quote from National Geographic Videos:
“Just as the sun allows our atmosphere to remain stable, so too can it destroy civilization.”
=============
Is this a threat ?”
The fun thing is, you know, the sun allows our atmosphere to be stable, the sun can also destroy civilization, but what it can’t do is: cause climate change. No. That’s something only humans can do.
———————–
Yep, if you can’t afford to pay for your “sins”, the tax will be collected by other means.
sea ice news-
New Paper “in-press”, abstract available in:
“Quaternary Science Reviews”
Arctic sea-ice cover from the early Holocene: the role of atmospheric circulation patterns by Sarah Dycka, , , L. Bruno Tremblaya and Anne de Vernal
Someone tell Steve Goddard. There is barely a mention of CO2.
Leif:
Thank you for confirming what I thought was said before about CMEs.