Lots of people talking about this article in the UK daily Mail:
A near miss for Earth: Solar flare that could have knocked out power, cars and phones came so close two weeks ago
- Earth has narrowly missed electromagnetic pulses caused by solar flares
- If they had hit, the pulses could have knocked out electrical equipment over continent-scale regions
An electromagnetic pulse that could have knocked electrical equipment over continent-scale regions barely missed Earth two weeks ago, it has been revealed.
Source: (h/t Jack Simmons)
But, not so fast…NASA’s Dr. Tony Phillips of Spaceweather.com writes:
Many readers are asking about a report in the Washington Examiner, which states that a Carrington-class solar storm narrowly missed Earth two weeks ago. There was no Carrington-class solar storm two weeks ago. On the contrary, solar activity was low throughout the month of July.
The report is erroneous.
The possibility of such a storm is, however, worth thinking about: A modern Carrington event would cause significant damage to our high-tech society.
There is even a recent SciFi movie revolving around the idea which seems to have gone straight to video:
@ur momisugly _Jim says: August 3, 2013 at 12:15 pm
Don’t be absurd. Who ever made a claim that power systems operated statically? I certainly didn’t. Now explain how power plant and distribution grid personnel are going to prevent the large transformers from blowing if a high altitude nuke is set off? Or if we have a really large Carrington type event – unless they put them in faraday cages before the strike, which to my knowledge isn’t available or planned at this point – but then I could be a little behind the times, so just fill us all in, would you? Because so far every expert I’ve run across who’s studied it, including federal reports to Congress, state unequivocally that it would be a massive problem. Personnel load balancing or even isolating ain’t gonna cut it, not for a flare that size. And certainly not for a high altitude nuke which they can’t predict, can’t disconnect & shut down in advance of, etc. So just fill us all in on how those personnel are possibly supposed to be able to prevent the problem from occurring, would you?
Whilst there is little doubt that we should expect another event like the Carrington event in the future, there is also little we can do in the way of mitigation or prediction. Sure it will probably happen when all the required parameters line up as required but we also know that there will be a reversal of the poles at some future point but what are you going to do?
All we will be able to do with these events is be as prepared as possible and deal with them as they happen.
The problem with this piece is that it’s typical Daily Mail. ” Woulda, coulda, shoulda” “What if?” “possible doom”. They do this regularly. They are known for sowing fear and dissent amongst their particularly narrow readership. As the saying goes, it’s not worth the paper it’s printed on. It’s a National Enquirer hiding behind a thin veneer of middle-class, middle-England respectability.
Anthony Watts says
Is it at all likely that one single event will cause damage over the entire earth?
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 3, 2013 at 11:01 pm
There are several reasons for this. We shall perhaps take them one at a time. The 1st one: You say that the graph shows a 5-yr running mean. If so, here would be 2.5 years of ‘missing’ data at each end of the Ap curve. But there are 10-yr blanks.
Hi doc
Nonsense.
Even you sometime get things badly wrong
Ap index data used (as available to me) 1844-2011
Last date when Ap>15 was in 2005, then 5 year ma (for Ap>15) takes it to 2003, and data is moved back along time line by 3 years, so graph stops in 2000.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Ap_LT.htm
similar at beginning, but here shift is 6 years forward.
You failed at the first attempt. Couldn’t you find something more substantial to complain?
Come back with your other reasons, or get your hat down on the desk, on the ready.
@Russ Hatch….how would the ‘greenies’ respond? Well, who are they these days?
Don’t dump them all in one basket, please. Sure, there are hundreds of them who don’t bother to think much – they are ideologues, like any other colour. But there are many, many thinking people, scientifically literate, who care about the environment and how modern industrial society undermines the very ecosystems upon which if not human survival, then certainly its quality of life depend. I would like to see a bit more acknowledgement of the role environmenalists have played in the kind of protection we all enjoy.
And as one of those ‘greenies’ who responded some time ago when most of you guys were focussed on the AGW stuff….like 2008, when the US National Academy of Sciences wrote a special report on the issue of EMP/Solar storms…..followed by Congressional hearings with the military…..who stated that following a Carrington type event, the US would not be able to feed 90% of the population. Of course, cities would be horror zones – after three days with no water, fuel or light, supermarket shelves empty….does not bear thinking about! Which is why so few people do think about it.
Following that report – which went unnoticed here in the UK – I started to lobby….and eventually it got to the PM and he ordered our scientists to link up with the US and there has since been a UK parliamentary inquiry…..published February of last year. I gave some evidence to it – more like a series of awkward questions to try and stimulate meaningful emergency planning for the ‘end of the world as we know it’. IBM later gave me a call and I visited their HQ – a very impressive operations room was looking at the consequences for their organisation and they were discussing the best locations for their data back-up centres (not Iceland anymore!).
Then, as I took a walk on the beach after the chat, there was a prominent sculpture of some English admiral….who died in 1859! Spookey, or what! But if that was a ‘sign’, nothing happened in 2012, so I guess that means we are absolved.
But a parting thought to all you technofreakish green-bashing limeys – this wonderous civiisation was built by science and engineering and it can’t withstand one big spaceweather event that Leif is quite right to point out, is a lot commoner than supposed! How is that for the wise-use of technology movement????? And it won’t be back to pre-industrial times, my friends, because there were only about 500 million people on the planet then, and 7 billion now!!! Many of them well-armed.
So – it makes sense to work on peaceful cooperation, stable ecosystems and resource use, as well as EMP protection…..but of course, the modern civil order does not have that kind of sense, as we well know from the AGW debacle! What to do?
Gary Pearse says:
“What is it about this thread that attracts the ‘MALenTHUSiasts who want to kill off several billion people to end up with 1B max.”
You ‘crowders’ are certainly a violent-minded bunch. You think, or pretend to think, that anyone advocating a lower population has to have in mind the murder of billions of people.
GeoLurking says:
For the record, NONE.
There are no nuclear plants running in North America or Europe that could possibly suffer from a similar combination of bad siting (required in Japan due to limited availability of options), ancient design that has not been effectively upgraded, and susceptibility to inevitable natural catastrophe. After knowing what eventually happened at Fukushima the layout was clearly insane. They should have stayed with the original plan of building it higher, as far as I know that was the reason they close that area in the first place.
Unless, of course, you include former Soviet countries in that list. Now we’ve got problems. Remember, even in 1986 when they were building Chernobyl (the explosion was during trials) the concept of using a graphite moderated reactor for commercial scale power would never have got past the laughing stage anywhere other than the USSR. Who knows the full catalog of potential tragedies in the former Soviet Union? If I was a border country I’d have quick-acting fuses and shut-downs at the ready for everything crossing the border: power, oil and gas lines, etc. and I’d have radiation suits and breathing apparatus stockpiled. Just in case.
vukcevic says:
August 4, 2013 at 3:37 am
Leif Svalgaard says:
Ap index data used (as available to me) 1844-2011
Very clever. Ap is available up to yesterday. In March 2012 Ap was 16.1, so redo your graph. Here are the monthly values starting Jan 2012: 7.2 8.8 16.1 10.1 7.1 10.1 13.9 8.0 8.1 10.0 7.1 3.4 4.7 6.1 10.6 5.4 10.3 13.1 9.5.
You subtract 4 in the beginning and add 4 at the end. There is no justification for that. Similarly there is no justification for shifting the data back and forth. This is what makes the whole thing phony. In addition you should not cut off the top of the temperature curve, nor cut it off in 2000, when there is data up to now. Redo your graph/
“Joel Renfrew says:
August 4, 2013 at 4:26 am
You think, or pretend to think, that anyone advocating a lower population has to have in mind the murder of billions of people.”
Interesting. How else are populations of other animals, sometimes called “pests”, “controlled”? Generally involves termination in one form or other.
“CodeTech says:
August 4, 2013 at 4:28 am”
While the design of the reactor was not the best, it was, at the fundamental level, functionally “OK”, if properly managed. It was “operator error”, more so the “pride” of the person in charge not paying too much attention to his subordinates, which lead to the disaster.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 4, 2013 at 4:34 am
Very clever. Ap is available up to yesterday. In March 2012 Ap was 16.1, so redo your graph. Here are the monthly values starting Jan 2012: 7.2 8.8 16.1 10.1 7.1 10.1 13.9 8.0 8.1 10.0 7.1 3.4 4.7 6.1 10.6 5.4 10.3 13.1 9.5.
You subtract 4 in the beginning and add 4 at the end. There is no justification for that. Similarly there is no justification for shifting the data back and forth. This is what makes the whole thing phony. In addition you should not cut off the top of the temperature curve, nor cut it off in 2000, when there is data up to now. Redo your graph/
And you think one or two monthly values are going to make any difference to 5 year (60 months average), come on doc pull another one.
I am happy with my graph, I may extend it when I get 5 years more data, around 2016.
Now, it may come as a news to you, most of warming is in the N. Hemisphere’s at the high latitudes, the energy is shifted from the equatorial regions pole-ward by ocean currents. These are not constant either in volume and velocity, even M. Mann knows this. There are delays, sometimes more energy is moved by the Gulf sometimes by the Kuroshio current:
http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/o4s/gl/c/img/current_transport.png
Delay between solar in GT in the 1860s was 6 years, dropping to zero in 1880s and then delay reappears around 1960 at 3 years. Greater velocity and transport less delay and vice versa.
I am not interested in the temperatures beyond 2000, since Ap index data is insufficient and GT temperature is at stand-still since 2000 anyway.
You disappoint doc.
1880-1960 period has no delay in GT vs Ap index, it is used as a zero reference, hence -4 and +4, representing input that can’t be attributed to the solar, suggestion of CO2 is as one, but not the exclusive possible. I could have used initial bit as a reference, then uplift would be 0, +4 +8, it is as simple as that.
I am still waiting for you to expose ‘the phoney’ . Not doing very well at the moment, are you?
Can’t you come up with anything of substance?
vukcevic says:
August 4, 2013 at 5:19 am
And you think one or two monthly values are going to make any difference to 5 year (60 months average),
Redo your graph. Don’t subtract 4 and add 4. If that is due to CO2 you should adjust the temperature curve, not APp
I am happy with my graph, I may extend it when I get 5 years more data, around 2016.
You have five years more data after 2005, so redo your phoney graph.
Patrick says:
““Joel Renfrew says:
August 4, 2013 at 4:26 am
You think, or pretend to think, that anyone advocating a lower population has to have in mind the murder of billions of people.”
Interesting. How else are populations of other animals, sometimes called “pests”, “controlled”? Generally involves termination in one form or other.”
Amazing. You think people are equivalent to animals – pests, and can not imagine how their numbers can be lowered except by ‘termination’.
Talking here to crowders has been eye-opening.
[Roughly] Around 08:30 U:T (i.e. 6:30 p.m. Australian Eastern Standard Time) on the evening Saturday the 27th of July 2013, my brother and I witnessed a super-bright Venus about 15-20 degrees above the NW Horizon. The site we were observing from has low light pollution and so we are very experienced at observing Venus in the first couple of hours after the start of twilight.
What we both noticed was that Venus appeared extremely bright, roughly as bright as a set of high-beam head-lights coming towards you on a very dark night. I have observed Venus for many decades and have even managed to cast a shadow of my hand onto a wall using the light of Venus, and I have never seen Venus anywhere near as bright as I saw it on that night.
It remained unusually bright until it set behind some nearby trees.
If Venus had only been bright for the hour or so that we observed it, it is possible that it may have not been been widely seen outside Japan, Alaska, N.Z. and the western Pacific region.
I wonder whether unusual brightness of Venus could have simply reflected a temporary brightening on the far side of the Sun?
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 4, 2013 at 5:25 am
Redo your graph. Don’t subtract 4 and add 4. If that is due to CO2 you should adjust the temperature curve, not APp
You have five years more data after 2005, so redo your phoney graph.
Is that it then?
Patrick, assuming you’re referring to Chernobyl, absolutely. Still, nobody outside of the USSR would consider building the type of reactor they were building there simply because the price of failure was so high.
Most of the fatalities were people standing watching the pretty colors of the burning graphite. People who, sadly, should have known better.
vukcevic says:
August 4, 2013 at 6:17 am
” redo your phoney graph”
Is that it then?
No, that is the 1st installment. Redo your graph.
Joel Renfrew. I can’t tell if you’re using the term “crowders” to be funny or if it’s actually a term.
However, nothing needs to be done to lower the population. Population increase is decelerating. In a fairly short time there will be no increase. It is reasonable to assume that either we will learn to function at a new stable population or population will continue to fall, as it would in most first world countries if not for immigration.
There is very good evidence that a falling population will be devastating to economies and human productivity. I’m glad I won’t be around to see the wars that will follow.
Peter Taylor says:
August 4, 2013 at 4:04 am
“@Russ Hatch….how would the ‘greenies’ respond? Well, who are they these days?
Don’t dump them all in one basket, please. Sure, there are hundreds of them who don’t bother to think much – they are ideologues, like any other colour. But there are many, many thinking people, scientifically literate, who care about the environment and how modern industrial society undermines the very ….
……as one of those ‘greenies’ who responded some time ago when most of you guys were focussed on the AGW stuff….like 2008, when the US National Academy of Sciences wrote a special report on the issue of EMP/Solar storms…”
Peter, admirable of you, truly. But you are making the same mistake you admonish AGW bashers for. Would it surprise you to know that thinking, caring folks who are battling (with science and energy/policy alternatives) AGW also are pro environment? If you followed this blog much you would see many of the bashers remarking that the government-AGW research complex spending could resolve real environmental issues like clean water and other health issues in third world countries and, indeed, it requires the kind of cheap energy that is being destroyed by policies and taxation. The harm is being done by “Greenies”. Not all greenies it is fair to point out. But, it’s like the “thinking” CAGW scientists who don’t speak against embarrassingly ridiculous bad science in many papers just because they support the cause. I would like to see a few more good greenies speak up against the huge waste of resources that robs funds from real enviromental issues. If they don’t, it’s fair game to lump them into the monolithic term derogatory Greenies.
Joel Renfrew says:
August 4, 2013 at 4:26 am
….You ‘crowders’ are certainly a violent-minded bunch. You think, or pretend to think, that anyone advocating a lower population has to have in mind the murder of billions of people.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
No we are just taking what one of the Co-founders of the Fabian Society and the London School of Economics said and looking to see if the real world data that supports it.
We then look at the 20th Century data:
So ‘Death by Government’ does happen and caused the death of millions. Many of these deaths were carried out by ‘Socialist’ governments. (The German National Socialist (German: Nationalsozialismus) were not capitalists though other socialists have done a quick back pedal since the end of WWII and relabeled them as such.)
And then there are the more subtle methods now used in the 21st century.
STARVATION:
How Goldman Sachs Created the Food Crisis
By the end of the twentieth century, twenty to thirty million people around the world were estimated to have lost their land under the impact of trade liberalization and export agriculture.
25,000 people (adults and children) die a day from hunger and related causes. One child every six seconds dying from hunger and related diseases (or 14,000 children a day)
The Actions of the UK Fabian Government
FUEL POVERTY
EUTHANASIA
And the ‘National Health Care’ death path.
Children placed on controversial ‘death pathway’: Sick children are being placed on a controversial end-of-life “pathway” previously only thought to have been used for elderly and terminally-ill adult patients.
Hospitals bribed to put patients on pathway to death: Cash incentive for NHS trusts that meet targets on Liverpool Care Pathway
Some hospitals set target of two thirds of all deaths should be on LCP
At least £30m in extra money handed to hospitals to achieve these goals
Get your head out of the sand and stop listening to the propaganda of the banker controlled media and start looking at the actual data.
Gary Pearse says:
August 4, 2013 at 6:24 am
Peter Taylor says:
August 4, 2013 at 4:04 am
“@Russ Hatch….how would the ‘greenies’ respond? Well, who are they these days?
Don’t dump them all in one basket, please…
….. Not all greenies it is fair to point out. But, it’s like the “thinking” CAGW scientists who don’t speak against embarrassingly ridiculous bad science in many papers just because they support the cause. I would like to see a few more good greenies speak up against the huge waste of resources that robs funds from real enviromental issues. If they don’t, it’s fair game to lump them into the monolithic term derogatory Greenies.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I use ‘Greenies’ for the brain dead followers who join the cause because it is ‘fashionable’ or politically expedient or where the money is.
I use Conservationist for those of us who truly care about the environment and are horrified by the political hijacking and waste of money.
The Regulating Class or Ruling Class are very good at hijacking words with a ‘good reputation’ and wrapping it around themselves to give them moral superiority.
That is what they did with the word ‘Liberal’ (Now called a classic liberal) and ‘Sustainability’ (Which now means Agenda 21) Farmers are ticked about the hijacking of the word Sustainability BTW.
vukcevic says:
August 4, 2013 at 5:19 am
“I am not interested in the temperatures beyond 2000, since Ap index data is insufficient and GT temperature is at stand-still since 2000 anyway.”
I do not have the knowledge to agree or disagree with you but a statement such as that is a real BS flag raiser.
I saw an interesting quote earlier. It’s on the Stossel tape with gavin, Dr. Spencer, and Matt Ridley. The quote is by Matt Ridley. ..”you either have cheap labor or you have cheap energy”
Sorry, it’s located at 13:04 in the youtube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLgUv_znMMw .
“Joel Renfrew says:
Amazing. You think people are equivalent to animals – pests, and can not imagine how their numbers can be lowered except by ‘termination’.”
Humans ARE mammals, animals if you like. I didn’t explicitly state that other than implying UN Agenda 21 path. I guess you cant get your “monkey” brain around the fact that this rock we live on is a virus, bacteria and insect world.