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.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
PJB says:
June 21, 2010 at 6:37 am
Regarding the “continuity” in sunspot activity measurement between old manual observations and current technologically adept ones, is this considered a “problem” by the scientific community?
If so, is there a current dialog on just how to go about normalizing the method?
Yes, this is a problem and, yes, there is debate about it.
http://www.leif.org/research/Rudolf%20Wolf%20Was%20Right.pdf
Wolf was right about the calibration of the sunspot number. There was a ‘mini-debate’ in the 1890s about how to count spots [whether to count the tiniest ones, pores and ‘specks’]. The better way is to count everything you can see no matter how small, and that has prevailed to the present day.
FijiDave says: “I just went to check on the effect of the Dalton Minimum and saw this graph on Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
and now I’m totally confused, as I thought the literature says that the MWP was 2 degs warmer than now. This graph shows quite the opposite.”
Wankapedia has drunk the KoolAid and then some. It’s so heavily politicized, I no longer use it.
899 says:
June 21, 2010 at 8:04 am
Those with the knowledge of proper handling of those components will know the term as ESD sensitive devices. ESD = Electrostatic Sensitive Device. It doesn’t take much of an electrical field to play havoc with them.
If there is power in the device, then the small induced currents might push it to overload, and the devise has enough power to destroy itself. In the air ( in contrast to ground currents induced by the magnetic disturbance high up, coming through the grounding wires) the power of the incoming electromagnetic pulse is very small. If the device operates with microwatt power for the chips, then the incoming energy would have to be higher than that to destroy an inert ( not powered) device. milliwatts per cm^2(10watts/m^2) would mean large electric or magnetic energy induced directly.
This is not the case. Have a look at fig 7 of the second reference given by Leif http://www.leif.org/research/Geomagnetic-Response-to-Solar-Wind.pdf.
We are talking of millivolts per meter electric fields .
As I expected, after the cold winter in the NH, we now have one of the coldest winters here in South Africa (for the last 15 years). However, just as improbable as global warming is (because earth is a giant water cooling plant), so I also doubt that we will ever fall back into an ice age – mainly because I think that people are clever enough to understand that if they see ice and snow around them, it will not help them to stand around and not do something about it. Remember, it is mainly the reflection of light from the snow that caused earth to fall in ice ages in the past.
However, according to a recent poll here, 80% of the people here believe (or have been made to believe) that global warming is real and it is a big problem. gosh. Can you believe this? I am doing the best I can here but it seems I am all alone. I also think that global cooling is for real now, and I think we should start give out warnings. You know, become a bit more alarmist….???
jorgekafkazar says; Wankapedia has drunk the KoolAid and then some. It’s so heavily politicized, I no longer use it.
It is true. Don’t trust everything you read on Wikipedia. I could not believe my own eyes when I found that a definition (from Wikipedia), about the interpretation of the greenhouse effect, was changed after I had used it in an argument.
Can’t think why anyone would believe that this absurdity will not occur. Isn’t it already possible for windmill owners to draw electricity from the grid to generate power to sell to the grid at higher prices? LMAO. Let’s have some more Government! Politicians and bureaucrats are so smart. Big Oil never got paid to not fill my tank. Okay, so they slowed production to raise prices.
Roger Carr says:
June 21, 2010 at 4:32 am
Peter Taylor says: (June 21, 2010 at 3:40 am) All those shamans and yogis I know, as well as – deep breath – astrologers, are expecting something big this summer!
Dunno if such expectations really count for much, Peter. Whenever life gets a bit slow we humans tend to look for some earth-shattering event which will justify our keeping on going. Either that or a feeling that this week we will definitely win the lottery. Something hard-wired into our brains, I suspect, to stop the tedium killing us. (Think of the old journo saying: If it bleeds it leads.)
Kinda reminds me of this quote:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Menchen
Solar cycle vs temp chart.
Grant Hillemeyer says:
June 20, 2010 at 5:28 pm
It would be very prudent to design expensive and vital electrical equipment to resist damage from such an event. Our existing power delivery infrastruction should be shielded as soon as practical. If a large number of these transformers were destroyed simultaneously it would be months, and could be years until they could be replaced. I don’t think we should scream and runs for the hills, but it is an issue that should be addressed. Of course, our illustrious congress will do nothing because you can’t buy votes spending money that way.
____________________________________________________
I rather see that than a 1.5 million dollar grant for Mann to study mosquitoes.
anna v says:
June 21, 2010 at 6:16 am
899 says:
June 21, 2010 at 5:31 am
On the contrary
The currents come from the grounding connections, because the currents are in the ground, so underground might be worse than surface lines. The telegraph and phone lines were under tension during the Carrington event, there is always current going on that is modulated by the signals.
http://www.leif.org/EOS/SSTA.pdf
Induce electric fields in the Earth create potential differences in voltage
between grounding points—which causes Geomagnetic Induced Currents (GICs) to flow through transformers,
power system lines, and grounding points.
Propagated EM fields have but two components: And ‘E’ field, and an ‘H’ field.
The E field is voltage related, and the H field is entirely magnetic in nature.
The E field component is incapable of penetrating moist soil, and so would dissipate with a few short inches. The H field can penetrate wet soil, but with a highly attenuated E field component, the chances of significant damage is very questionable.
Finally, regardless of a ‘ground’ connection, the damage was NOT a result of any ground mechanism. The telegraphs of the day were TWO WIRE devices, which required a supply and return line for proper operation. The ground lead is merely to dissipate collected static from the atmosphere and from wind generated static.
The whole purpose of a ‘ground’ lead is to neutralize LOCALLY accumulated static electrical buildup, such as to place the wires at a neutral potential relative to the Earth itself.
anna v says:
June 21, 2010 at 6:04 am
Dave Springer says:
June 21, 2010 at 4:49 am
When a CME hits those satellites it will hit the earth 30-90 minutes later and we can judge its intensity. That’s not much time to react. Decision makers all over the world have to order their bits of the power grid shut down and then workers have to trip circuit breakers to protect big power transformers. That’s a pretty big decision and not a small amount of work.
This 30 minute information would be the second level alarm. The first alarm would give ample time to have personnel ready in case it will be necessary to shut down everything . I am sure emergency planners can handle such scenaria with ease.
Such hubris. There was plenty of people sounding the alarm well ahead of New Orleans Anna. 10 years in fact. How well did the emergency planners handle it?
Smokey says:
June 21, 2010 at 11:03 am
Solar cycle vs temp chart.
Invalid analysis.
Here is a better chart:
http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle%20Lengths%20and%20Temperatures.png
and here: http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle%20Length%20Temperature%20Correlation.pdf
anna v says:
June 21, 2010 at 9:03 am
If there is power in the device, then the small induced currents might push it to overload, and the devise has enough power to destroy itself. In the air ( in contrast to ground currents induced by the magnetic disturbance high up, coming through the grounding wires) the power of the incoming electromagnetic pulse is very small. If the device operates with microwatt power for the chips, then the incoming energy would have to be higher than that to destroy an inert ( not powered) device. milliwatts per cm^2(10watts/m^2) would mean large electric or magnetic energy induced directly.
This is not the case. Have a look at fig 7 of the second reference given by Leif http://www.leif.org/research/Geomagnetic-Response-to-Solar-Wind.pdf.
We are talking of millivolts per meter electric fields .
You’re fixated on that matter of ‘grounding.’
IF and EM field is able to generate a potential difference in a conducting surface, such as cause sufficient current to flow in that surface, then damage is possible, and it doesn’t matter a whit whether it’s grounded.
Leif,
Thanks, I’m throwing that chart out in favor of yours. I didn’t like that it ended twenty years ago anyway.
Smokey says:
June 21, 2010 at 12:20 pm
Thanks, I’m throwing that chart out in favor of yours. I didn’t like that it ended twenty years ago anyway.
If you do so, don’t forget to include my conclusion:
3. the scatter plot below the first Figure shows how the pink points correlate with the blue points [pink open circles]. The square of the correlation coefficient is R^2 = 0.0324, thus NO correlation.
tallbloke says:
June 21, 2010 at 11:45 am
New Orleans is a different story.
An alarm system is not expensive to implement. The cost will come if there has to be a three day power shut down. I do not see any hubris in this.
To avoid the New Orleans flooding a lot of money should have been spent and usually such decisions are always put off until too late.
899 says:
June 21, 2010 at 12:18 pm
I was quoting from the report, that the damage seen happened because the ground, instead of being neutral had a surge of current that destabilized the transformers that were destroyed: there is a whole list of them. page 8 http://www.leif.org/EOS/SSTA.pdf
They were all under power.
Yes, I noticed that. But I like to collect charts.☺
899 says:
June 21, 2010 at 8:04 am
alcuin says: […]
What you’re missing is the fact that the energy in a flare is of such a broad electromagnetic spectrum that it could easily overwhelm the relatively weakly protected components in a cellphone. Certainly the design of modern communications devices is ‘robust’ enough to handle the more common electrical fields experienced daily.
But a solar flare is animal of a different color. That energy could be sufficient to easily overwhelm the device with the right level of exposure. The spacing of the elements in integrated circuits is so close that arcing would take place and essentially destroy them. Your wee timorous beastie would become past tense with a high enough blast of energy.
899, this is not against you, just what you are saying:
Sorry to say you don’t know what you are talking about, but, seems you don’t know what you are talking about. You must be conjuring up something in your mind that is not actually real. We are speaking of at most 1 µT/s flux and I would love for you to explain how this is to “destroy” your cell phone or i-pad.
However, rub your feet on the carpet and touch your cell phone while it is grounded, then yes, you run the risk of some real damage depending on whether the internal circuit boards are well grounded themselves. But that is an electrostatic high voltage/low current situation. A solar flare creates the opposite, low voltage/high current and not local (not enough meters).
I sit with a 1 Tesla super magnet in my hand and pass it quickly (< 1/4 second) 1 cm over my cell phone, any orientation, that's a big magnetic field flux. Know what happens, nothing, no damage. Having to do with solar flares we are speaking of micro-Tesla fields at best, usually nano-Tesla. So once again, why do you think a flare is going to destroy you cell phone’s electronics?
But please stop mixing and hyping in relation to someone’s personal electronics compared to this very real concern in relation to the electricity grid. Even NASA said “disrupt” (loss of power), not “destroy”. It’s not the wires at fault in this case per se, it’s the connections to the physical ground between two points separated by many kilometers that is where voltage and currents are formed.
Drive a stake into the ground in New York and drive a stake into the ground in north Canada and connect these stakes with a wire, then you have d/c flowing during a solar event when even feeble magnetic fluxes are present. It’s that simple. The voltages are not that high but the currents can be huge (because the Earth is so large) in the wire you used to connect the stakes is very thick (low resistance). If that thick wire between the two stakes then actually goes through a huge transformer, you can have problems. This is actually what happens on the grid. See?
I’m sure the electric companies also have huge capacitors between to prevent this d/c flow but if the capacitor should short, the d/c then goes directly through the transformer and it can burn that out due to the d/c current, not the normal high a/c voltage and a/c current, self inductance protects them but not if d/c.
You seem to be more describing a nuclear device designed to generate an e/m pulse. That is also a rather weak magnetic field but it fluxes in a picosecond or so, the dWb/dt flux is then large because dt is very tiny. Once again, if the net area is small, lets say a tiny transformer in your cell phone, there still is not enough area exposed to burn out the circuits. Those pulse devices were created to bring grids down over many kilometers (large x distance, large current and the contention is that even they don’t have enough power to work).
Or possibly you think a solar flare is like a giant radio broadcasting device spewing E/M waves that are to be picked up by any wire and the energy used to burn electronic device out.
If you have the numbers to counter my complains above, please provide them, but please stop worrying people over something they actually have nothing to worry about. Listen more to “anna v” and I'm sure Leif, they are correctly saying basically the same thing and have the data.
And just read something else you claim, where did you get the idea that telegraph transmission lines were two wires over long distance hauls? Give a reference please. Yes a telegraph device uses two wires locally of course but if the telegraph company used two wires when they could just as easily use one wire I would like the actual reference. Maybe I am wrong.
anna v – Tall Bloke is right to question the ability of the utility managers to heed warnings and shut down the system in time (even if they can). I have a family connection to someone high up in one of the Scottish electricity utilities, and have made him aware of the risk presented to the grid infrastructure from a Carrington type event, but to no avail; these utilities are no longer run by engineers (who knew how to manage the grid very well), but by managers from retail and business backgrounds. Their main consideration is profit, not security of supply, or anything that might or might not happen in the next 5 or 10 years.
Andrew P. says:
June 21, 2010 at 1:21 pm
anna v – Tall Bloke is right to question the ability of the utility managers to heed warnings and shut down the system in time (even if they can). I have a family connection to someone high up in one of the Scottish electricity utilities, and have made him aware of the risk presented to the grid infrastructure from a Carrington type event, but to no avail; these utilities are no longer run by engineers (who knew how to manage the grid very well), but by managers from retail and business backgrounds. Their main consideration is profit, not security of supply, or anything that might or might not happen in the next 5 or 10 years.
That is just so intellectually wrong on so many levels as to be criminal.
So then, the bottom line is that of the essence of the drug pusher and the addict?
The Scottish utilities ‘hook’ the consumer with the promise of a constant ‘fix’ of power, but then don’t care about the security of the supply?
Andrew P. says:
June 21, 2010 at 1:21 pm
anna v – Tall Bloke is right to question the ability of the utility managers to heed warnings and shut down the system in time (even if they can). I have a family connection to someone high up in one of the Scottish electricity utilities, and have made him aware of the risk presented to the grid infrastructure from a Carrington type event, but to no avail; these utilities are no longer run by engineers (who knew how to manage the grid very well), but by managers from retail and business backgrounds. Their main consideration is profit, not security of supply, or anything that might or might not happen in the next 5 or 10 years.
Sadly, I get that feeling. Reading many articles lately I get the same idea that they just wait until failure, hopefully the systems “trips” and automatically disconnects in time but if the sequence is too slow, well, some toasted capacitors and transformers. Reminds me a bit of BP and the oil industry I have learned of late, no ultimate backup procedures or equipment if the ultimate disaster hits… heaven forbid… that would cut into their immediate profits and the holy stock price!
anna v says:
June 21, 2010 at 12:25 pm
To avoid the New Orleans flooding a lot of money should have been spent and usually such decisions are always put off until too late.
I suspect quite a lot need to be spent on remote controlled power circuit breakers here too. Will it be put off until it’s too late?
wayne says:
So once again, why do you think a flare is going to destroy you cell phone’s electronics?
Because there is not only a magnetic effect, but also a SEP [solar Energetic Particle] effect. We have all seen how a big flare upsets the detectors at SOHO, e.g. http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/gallery/images/c2c3protons.html
At rare times [we know about 70+ events the last 70 years] such energetic protons [or muons caused by them] can reach the ground [a Ground Level Event] and cause ‘upsets’ in computer memory causing software to fail [e.g. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.117.5936&rep=rep1&type=pdf ]. Not to speak about effects on orbiting satellites.
Sure Scientific American, Nat Geo, New Scientist and others aren’t worth subscribing to, but they still have ones and twozees articles barely worth reading. So have a Coffee @ur momisugly a Barnes & Noble StarBucks & peruse what they do have free (as there is some justice in this).