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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tallbloke says:
June 21, 2010 at 4:00 pm
“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?
If you notice I am proposing to use the humans on shift there anyway to do all the circuit breaking once there is an alarm. Costs mush less.
In general, if things are off power, damage is drastically diminished, even from a cosmic ray shower.
Cosmic rays will riddle electronics but if there is no power when they pass the damage is limited to the pathways, which is of the order of microns in width at most, and we are not into quantum computing yet.
Leif Svalgaard says:
June 21, 2010 at 5:29 pm
Enough to erase or corrupt a BIOS (EEPROM) chip?
rbateman says:
June 21, 2010 at 9:44 pm
Leif Svalgaard says:
June 21, 2010 at 5:29 pm
Enough to erase or corrupt a BIOS (EEPROM) chip?
This happens all the time. That is why there are the parity checks and the redundant programmings. The computer is not destroyed though, because this damage is isolated and incoherent. If the computer is powered and a coherent cosmic ray pulse arrived it could well set up instabilities that would damage it. That is why I would recommend the sensitive devices to be off power if a Carrington event is expected.
We used to have the rule of thumb that there is “1 muon per cm^2 per second” coming down at sea level, to be counted as background. So including the normal neutron background this level of cosmics is livable.
anna v says:
June 21, 2010 at 9:17 pm
If you notice I am proposing to use the humans on shift there anyway to do all the circuit breaking once there is an alarm. Costs mush less.
“Joe, I know it’s four in the morning and the snowplough didn’t pass your way yet, but could you please try to get to unmanned transformer substations in areas 4356 a, d, g and h within the next thirty minutes and throw the big contact levers because Fred is off sick right now. … What’s that? Fred has the keys??? Damn!”
Posted on June 20, 2010 by Anthony Watts
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.
Well, it was about 101 F yesterday in South Central Kansas with a heat index well, so high it scares me to admit it. I’m taking potassium tablets to keep from passing out. All this after a much colder than average winter and spring, which makes it difficult to acclimate. Thanks for reminding me this is just weather. I was thinking of blaming CO2….not!