Dr. Leif Svalgaard writes advising me of this new paper published Jan. 17. After reading it, I’ll have to say that it isn’t a matter of “if” – it’s a matter of when we’ll get another CME like the Carrington Event in 1859 – which had it occurred today, would plunge our society into darkness and chaos as our sensitive electronics, networks, and power systems fail world-wide. The authors call such an event a “global Hurricane Katrina.” If activists and global warming worriers spent just a fraction of the time and money spent on on climate hysteria preparing for this inevitable event, we could ensure a continuance of our way of life. As it stands, they seem blind to this looming and certain threat and prefer squabbling over a few tenths of a degree change in temperature that may or may not be entirely man-made.
Excerpts of the paper follow.
Edward J. Oughton , Andrew Skelton, Richard B. Horne , Alan W. P. Thomson3, and Charles T. Gaunt
Abstract
Extreme space weather due to coronal mass ejections has the potential to cause considerable disruption to the global economy by damaging the transformers required to operate electricity transmission infrastructure. However, expert opinion is split between the potential outcome being one of a temporary regional blackout and of a more prolonged event. The temporary blackout scenario proposed by some is expected to last the length of the disturbance, with normal operations resuming after a couple of days. On the other hand, others have predicted widespread equipment damage with blackout scenarios lasting months. In this paper we explore the potential costs associated with failure in the electricity transmission infrastructure in the U.S. due to extreme space weather, focusing on daily economic loss. This provides insight into the direct and indirect economic consequences of how an extreme space weather event may affect domestic production, as well as other nations, via supply chain linkages. By exploring the sensitivity of the blackout zone, we show that on average the direct economic cost incurred from disruption to electricity represents only 49% of the total potential macroeconomic cost. Therefore, if indirect supply chain costs are not considered when undertaking cost-benefit analysis of space weather forecasting and mitigation investment, the total potential macroeconomic cost is not correctly represented. The paper contributes to our understanding of the economic impact of space weather, as well as making a number of key methodological contributions relevant for future work. Further economic impact assessment of this threat must consider multiday, multiregional events.
1. Introduction
Space weather disturbances of the upper atmosphere and near-Earth space can disrupt a wide range of tech- nological systems [Hapgood et al., 2012]. Over the past decade many reports have analyzed the potential effects of extreme space weather on electricity transmission infrastructure [Space Studies Board, 2008; OECD, 2011; JASON, 2011; North American Electric Reliability Corporation, 2012; Cannon et al., 2013]. The economic costs associated with these extreme events have been heralded as being as high as $1–2 trillion in the first year, equivalent to a so-called “global Hurricane Katrina.” To date, however, there has been a lack of transparent research around how these direct and indirect economic costs actually stack up, which is surprising given the level of debate and uncertainty surrounding the vulnerability of electricity transmission infrastructure to extreme space weather.
Research in this paper has been produced by a similar team that originally developed the Helios Solar Storm Scenario [Oughton et al., 2016]—the first space weather stress test for the global insurance industry. Ultimately, these are different pieces of work. Helios purposefully explored the sensitivity of economic loss due to different temporal restoration periods, in order to provide a tool for stressing the portfolio exposure of global insurance companies. Helios is not a prediction but a hypothetical range of scenarios to enable miti- gation of space weather risks in the insurance industry. On the other hand, this paper focuses purely on the daily direct and indirect economic consequences of how an extreme space weather event may affect U.S. domestic production, as well as other nations via supply chain linkages, based on different blackout zones.
Two opposing views have emerged. On the one hand, some believe that the potential damage would not be that large and that we are relatively well prepared to deal with an extreme geomagnetic disturbance (GMD). The worst case scenario is seen to be an electrical collapse of the transmission grid, probably initiated by loss of voltage stability that will consequently protect the power system assets from damage. The grid connec- tions could then be reestablished, leading to a disruption only lasting hours or a few days. On the other hand, there are those who believe that damage might be initiated before a system loses stability or might occur outside the region of the electrical collapse and that we could end up with extensive damage to equipment and a doomsday-type catastrophe scenario where blackouts last weeks, even months, until exposed assets (with many supply issues) are replaced. There is still disagreement among these perspectives, and therefore, it is not surprising that the recent U.S. National Space Weather Action Plan [National Science and Technology Council, 2015] identifies the need for improved assessment, modeling, and prediction of the impact of this threat on critical infrastructure systems. Although there has been substantial development in the credibility of these perspectives in recent years, there is a valid need to explore how disruption to electricity transmis- sion infrastructure might affect our economy and society.
Modern economies increasingly rely on a variety of critical interdependent infrastructure systems powered by electricity. Although space weather can be caused by a variety of phenomena including solar particle events and bursts of electromagnetic radiation from solar flares, it is coronal mass ejections (CMEs) which are mostly associated with the long-term catastrophe scenarios that have been characterized in the literature. CMEs pose the main risk to Earth and its modern, technological society because large (1012 kg), relatively dense (100/cm3), and fast (>500 km s-1) CMEs hitting Earth with a southward interplanetary magnetic field direction (Bz) can give rise to extreme GMDs [Möstl et al., 2015; Temmer and Nitta, 2015; Balan et al., 2014].
Significant events may see quantities considerably larger than the numbers stated here. These have the potential to damage and disrupt the aviation, satellite, GPS, and electricity networks that our economy and society depend on. This is particularly problematic because failure in the power sector can cascade to other critical interdependent infrastructure systems, disrupting business activities and inducing a range of other economic and social consequences that can affect the global economy [Ouyang, 2014; Anderson et al., 2007; Haimes and Jiang, 2001; Rinaldi et al., 2001].
In particular, it is acknowledged that an extreme GMD has the potential to generate geomagnetically induced currents (GIC) that could initiate permanent damage to extra high voltage (EHV) transformers. Failure in these critical assets could cause system-wide instability issues leading to cascading failure. Further, such high-value assets are not necessarily easy to procure and replace in the short term. Understanding the economic impact of space weather risks can improve mitigation procedures and practices, as it can guide where limited resources should be allocated to improve economic resilience. Moreover, in industry it is not just utility com- panies who are concerned with catastrophe scenarios; the potential loss to insurance companies due to casualty and business interruption payouts could be enough to threaten the viability of certain companies in this sector (despite the use of limits and deductibles on insurance policies). Even during a relatively calm period of solar activity (2000–2010), Schrijver et al. [2014] have shown that there can be significant equipment loss and related business interruption claims for the insurance industry. Estimates of the potential economic loss associated with catastrophic events are able to be used to stress test asset exposure in the insurance industry and beyond. Indeed, in the UK General Insurance Stress Test 2015 undertaken by the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), insurers are required to undertake exposure stress tests for an extreme space weather event.
The scope of this paper has been guided by a recent workshop that focused on understanding the potential impacts of extreme space weather on the global economy. Held at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, UK, this event gathered together representatives from space physics, economics, catastrophe modeling, actuarial science, and law, with those from the property, casualty, and space insurance industry. Now that the motivation for the paper has been introduced, section 1 will present background material and examine past events. Section 2 will outline the methodology, and section 3 will report the results and discussion. Finally, conclusions will be presented in section 4.
…
4. Conclusions
This paper explored the direct and indirect daily economic costs associated with different scenarios of extreme space weather on mainland U.S., focusing on the upstream and downstream supply chain impact. The total daily economic loss to the U.S. economy associated with a storm within 55° ± 2.75° geomagnetic latitude (S1) was $6.2 bn (15% of daily U.S. GDP). This is predicated on approximately 8% of the population being left without power. This is supplemented by an indirect loss to the global economy via supply chain linkages with other nations of $0.8 bn per day. The total daily economic loss to the U.S. economy associated with a storm within 50° ± 2.75° geomagnetic latitude (S2), leaving 44% of the U.S. population without power, was $37.7 bn (91% of daily U.S. GDP). The indirect loss to the global economy via supply chain linkages with other nations is a further $4.8 bn per day. The S3 scenario with a blackout zone of 45° ± 2.75° geomagnetic latitude (S3) left 23% of the population without power. The total daily economic loss to the U.S. economy was
$16.5 bn (41% of daily U.S. GDP), and the indirect loss to other nations totaled $2.2 bn. Finally, the S4 scenario (50° ± 7.75° geomagnetic latitude) affected 66% of the U.S. population leading to an estimated potential eco- nomic loss of $41.5 billion per day to the U.S. economy (100% of daily U.S. GDP), combined with a daily loss to the global economy of $7 billion.
A key finding was that the direct economic cost incurred from disruption to electricity within the blackout zone was only a fraction of the total cost for those scenarios explored. On average in this study, only 49% of the total economic loss took place in the area affected by the storm, with a further 39% being lost indirectly in the U.S. outside of the blackout zone. A total of 12% of the impact took place internationally. Therefore, there is a great need when undertaking cost-benefit analysis of space weather forecasting and mitigation investment to consider the domestic and global indirect costs that could accrue via supply chains disruption; otherwise, the potential total cost is not being correctly represented.
However, this analysis focused only on the U.S., when in reality we could be susceptible to a multiday, multi- regional extreme space weather event. As a consequence, there is a need to undertake further economic impact assessment including Europe and East Asia, with multiple blackout zones, in order to understand the potential global cost associated with this threat.
Full paper –open access: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016SW001491/full
Yup. Huge solar ejections are inevitable and beyond the control of mankind.
This was loosely dramatized in “Knowing” 2009.
So I am intrigued by such physical phenomena but I simply do not worry about it.
ELEs like gamma beams from black holes, CMEs, asteroid collisions, primordial bacteria poisoning the atmosphere, super volcanoes, etc are cool things to ponder. Don’t worry, be happy.
A bigger worry is the reported shortage of bacon in the U.S.
I was stunned. Stop free trade. Save US bacon!!!
Or, much ado about nothing. We raise batches of hogs (buy the piglets, sell market weight hogs at ~9 months. Feed with surplus corn. Pork prices got so low wasn’t worth it. Took the barn/ feeder space to grow out calf steers since veal is up and pork down. Farmers know about this stuff. Pork up, veal down, we go back to bacon. Says this HBS part time Wisconsin farmer.
On a different note, my grandfather was Slovak. Loved the outdoors– hunting, fishing, mushrooming. I carry on his traditions to this day. One of his favorite evening campfire ‘snacks’ was ouhorki. (Probably spelled wrong). 2inch by two inch unsalted pork belly slab. Deeply scored toward skin in 1/4 inch ‘columns’ . Take a peeled onion, stick it on a spit (slender long stick). stick the scored pork belly on the spit tip, skewered just under the skin so it holds fast. Now roast the two over the campfire slowly turning until the scored bacon column bits are as crispy as you like. The fat naturally drips down to help cook the onion if you hold the stick right. Hint trick. No Slovak is stupid enough to hold the stick at all except to turn occaisionally. Use a grounded Y branch plus a piece of firewood over the grounded stick end. When done, plate and eat both with big chunks of dark bread. And maybe some homemade wine or vodka. Best part is the crispy roast pork skin eaten last, like South Carolina BBQ. Old country country folks knew a thing or three about surviving without electricity. Grandpa said this was only a late fall/ winter hunt treat. Onions for vitamin C and such, pork fat for heat calories, bread for carbs, pork meat for protein. Vodka to make sure the stream water was ‘pure’. A pre grid Slovak winter granola bar with Dasani.
With the modern marketing of hams, that is what I miss the most! The skin! Cooked to a crisp, with just a touch of meat and fat to give it flavor left attached.
You cannot find hams with the skin any longer. A shame. That was always the best part of the ham. You made me hungry Ristvan!
That is a crises! Probably caused by Little Caesars bacon crust pizza!
Pizza Rule #1
If you have to flavor your crust, your dough recipe sucks.
Their dough, sauce and pizza in general sucks. I survived my kids “pizza” days at school which Little Caesars always catered (yes, it was before Michelle).
Easier to just go buy a big barrel of Utz’s fried pork rinds at Sam’s Club.
On the plus side…beef is cheaper than it has been in years!
Ruh Roh! We are heading towards #Pizzagate
I am prepped for this. The worse of it on the east coast will be the violence in the first two weeks, and most of that will be over, except for the successful Gov and LE warlords, with 95+ percent dead in 2 months (dysentery and starvation). I’m hoping the warlords will decide to move on to softer targets when they get to my house.
I don’t prep per se. I own a medium large Wisconsin dairy farm instead. 260 gorgeous acres (about 160 are 3 forest woodlots), two barns, three operational water wells ( plus one year round flowing spring). Managed together with another 200 plus 160 contiguous.
Only issue is getting there (multiple contingencies depending on from where, and timing). Once there, can heat with firewood and cook on wood stove if necessary. We have always ~ 800 gallons diesel and ~80 gallons gas in the equipment shed for tractor, snomobiles, chain saws, 4 wheelers…. That’s just how fam fuel gets delivered to farms in big infrequent truckloads.
Did in 1999 dig a hand pumped cased well, first aquifer only 60 feet, close to the farmhouse. Other wells are all cased second aquifer about 120 feet for better water quality. Would suffice nicely in a prolonged pinch. Pails to flush toilets, oversized septic with gravity drainage, No electricity problem. Veg garden is 300 feet by 50 feet. We never can ‘can’ all the produce even tho have tools, jars, and experience. Blanche and freeze, then give away. Or, we dry down like with morel mushrooms. Only $80/lb. We harvest shopping bags full when hit the seasonal timing right in just a weekend.. Heck, one year we were overrun by a small pumpkin patch and had to take 18 big pumpkins home to give away. No way to cook and freeze that much pumpkin. Amazing what manure as fertilizer will do in decent soil. Oh, and I reload many rifle/pistol/shotgun calibers since 40 years as a competition shooter, plus have 3 BP rifles of caliber from 0.45 to 0.56, (plus 3 bp revolvers caliber 0.35-0.45), lots of hand cast balls plus lots of old battery lead to cast more, and lots of Pyrodex and percussion caps to power same. Well, all that might still qualify me as a prepper of sorts. Or just an old fashioned throwback. Or an old geezer (my kids thoughts except when they come hunting, shrooming, or blanche/freezing veggies or taking home the farm’s dried fruits, wild honey and fresh pork, veal, beef.)
Of course in today’s world you can add a few solar panels with marine batteries to power your well pumps.
That sounds awesome, hopefully far enough away from Milwaukee or Madison where the bleeding heart liberals will think that your stuff is actually their stuff. Lead helps.
Solar coronal mass ejections! That sounds really scary. We’ll all get pregnant with alien mutant babies who will destroy us with solar laser beams from their eyes.
We’re doomed.
RoHa,
Actually, there were a large number of unplanned pregnancies when TVs and elevators failed in1965, and other similar events. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_1965
When I posted on FB a few years back that a large Earth directed CME was coming, and people with no science background asked what that meant.
I told them that, in plain language, a piece of the Sun had broken off and was going to hit the Earth…they all first did not believe it, then freaked all the way out when I showed them that this was indeed more or less what was happening.
To the average science illiterate, which is most people, “a piece of the Sun will hit the Earth” is much scarier sounding than “Earth directed CME”.
Plain language man, plain language.
Then again, describing the process of slaughtering, rendering, butchering, and cooking up some meat sounds pretty bad in everyday plain language.
We use euphemisms to make everything sound nice and tidy.
I never did get around to mentioning that the piece of the Sun was moving at a speed that would cause a BB to smash an army tank into rubble, if not vaporize it outright.
Protective devices on the grid can operate within a couple of cycles to open the grid minimising damage. East West lines are affected more than north south lines. Grid operators have been taking measures to protect the grid from this type of event. Solar events similar but smaller happen a few times a year. Because of outages caused by solar flares in the past protection has been upgraded. There will be outages but damage should be minimized enabling reenergizing of the affected grid.
The biggest problem with this would be refrigerators, food processing equipment, and, electrical lighting and electrical equipment on farms, being hit by electrical overstress. That is where the starvation would really kick in.
BTW – major data and telco infrastructure typically has good surge protection at the grid interface.
I don’t think it is quite the big deal it so far as people being able to prepare for such a event if given 24-36 hours notice. Any one who lives in areas were power can go out due to storms- hurricanes etc knows the drill;
drinking water, toilet water bathing/cleaning water. Fuel for cooking/ boiling water. All know the lists.
No, the problem lays with the fact that energy providers may not have spare transformers and other vital replacement parts to repair the grid.
Most of the fix’s are simple, just stock pile enough of what is needed to get production facilities going again.
Note people have had storms knock out power for weeks at a time. The big thing will be to quickly re-establish communications within the country, being able to talk with people and family will comfort people.
So yes we would need to have back up satellites ready for launch and be able to launch them.
Last there will be groups and countries who will try to take advantage of the situation, I leave that to your imagination.
michael
The first effects arrive in 9 minutes.
These may knock out the comms satellites.
The news media is dependent on Satellites.
You may not even know that the following effects are coming due to lack of news.
The secondary effects which allegedly damage the power systems come later.
NASA constantly monitor the Sun for storms. They hopefully have enough time to turn the critical systems and solar panels away from direct line of sight of the sun before the first potentially damaging waves arrive.
They haven’t figured how to monetize a CME event because there is nothing on Earth to visualize the events. And the polar bears just refuse to pose for any more photos!
There’s this interesting article on solar flares being the inspiration for petroglyphs. What would the size of solar flare be needed to inspire these drawings?! (X-???)
http://www.alqpottery.com/pdfs/Peratt,et,al,TPS2007-Z-pinchAuroraB.pdf
GOD VERSUS CO2 BY STEVE FINNELL
Can God’s control over climate and weather be modified, or amended by made-made CO2 emissions? Is it possible to void the miracles of God by the actions of man-made CO2 emissions?
Genesis 7:12 The rain fell on the earth for forty days and forty nights. (NASB)
Could controlling man-made CO2 emissions have prevented forty days of rain and the great flood? Of course not.
Jonah 4:8 When the sun came up God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he became faint and begged with all his soul to die, saying, “Death is better to me than life.” (NASB)
Would it have been possible for Jonah to be spared the scorching wind if men had controlled their man-made CO2 emissions? Certainly not.
Genesis 8:22 “While the earth remains, Seedtime and harvest, And cold and heat, And summer and winter, And day and night Shall not cease.”(NASB)
Can restricting man-made CO2 emissions determine cold, heat, the temperature in summer and winter. Can man-made CO2 emissions control the seasons. No it cannot.
If men who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ believe that man-made CO2 emissions can control weather, climate, and seasons, then, why would anyone look to them for spiritual guidance concerning salvation?
Psalms 148:8 Fire and hail, snow and clouds; Stormy wind, fulfilling His word; (NASB)
This fulfills God’s word, what does man-made CO2 fulfill?
Job 1:16 While he was still speaking, another also came and said, “The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them , and I alone have escaped to tell you.” (NASB)
If men would have restricted their CO2 emission, could they have prevented God from destroying Job’s sheep, and servants? No, of course not.
2 Peter 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. (NASB)
No amount of man-made CO2 modifications, can cause or prevent the earth from be burned up.
Revelations 20:14-15 Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. 15 And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
Men need to stop worrying about the false doctrine of man-made global warming and start being concerned about the warming in the lake of fire.
How to get your name written in the book of life.
1. Faith: John 3:16
2. Confession: Romans 10:9
3. Repentance: Acts 3:19
4. Immersion in Water: Mark 16:16, Acts 2:38
YOU ARE INVITED TO FOLLOW MY BLOG>> steve-finnell.blogspot.com
A single north Korean pancake style hydrogen enhanced atomic bomb, based on 1950s soviet technology, exploded at height over Canada would expose the continental US to an EMP of about 10 thousand volts per foot. The resulting damage could result in the US and north Korea having roughly similar economies.
Which is why that can never be allowed. My late father was a B-29 pilot for years. He used to volunteer at Udvar-Hazy museum. Enola Gay. Folks would ask two questions: how did crew get in. He showed them, through the front wheelwell ladder, which meant they were not coming out as easily. Second, would he have dropped the bomb. To which he always replied, my friend Judd Tibbits did, it ended a war saving many American lives, and as we have them perhaps we should use them more often in defense of America.
Needless to say, the Smithsonian did not employ him as an authentic vet for much longer. He loved that PC outcome. In many ways. Now rests at Arlington with the nations highest non-combat neck order for post combat military contributions. Awarded the day he retired at the Pentagon. I was there.
No, “feed berple”, probably not, as their calculations of the EMP are off.
EMP is another ‘phenom’ not unlike CAGW where the hypothesis in its totality remains untested, the exact ‘formulation’ and effects unverified.
See the Rabinowitz (of EPRI note) paper on this effect, or lack thereof.
No wonder so many anxiety pills are consumed by modern society. We’ve been bombarded by so much Malthusian, end of the world hysteresis (attempt at pun) that worry warts are now a pandemic. I’m sorry, but with CAGW, killer bees (although, thankfully now on the endangered species list from toxic CO2 rise), low sperm counts from GMO foods, droughts caused by flatulent cattle and vegetarians, immunity caused by immunization, premature deaths caused by safe injection sites, brain damage from cell phones, powerlines and aluminum cooking pots, prescription drugs, fluorine and fracking fluids in drinking water, bad colesteral, pesticides, super bugs, the threat of defending safe places at unidiversities ……. colonial mass ejections will just have to get in line.
Oops ‘defunding safe places’.
Oops ‘colonal’ mass ejections-dang spelling correctors.
I had one of those colonal mass ejections the other day.
I feel much better now.
I thought the sperm count thing was due to tighty-whities and pointy bicycle seats, and was cured by the switch to boxer briefs and wider seats?
And the Killer Bees? My recollection is that they were vanquished by the British Bulldogs, although I could be wrong and it was really Brutus Beefcake and Rowdy Roddy Piper, although the contributions of George “The Animal” Steel and Randy savage cannot be ruled out either.
As for the rest of that stuff…well, I never wanted to live forever anyways.
Oh…wait…yes I did!
Yikes!
Your age is showing!
Any railroad locomotive engineers, or EE’s with GE, out there? How easy (or hard) would it be to severely disable a modern GE ES44AC locomotive? Or a modern Siemens DC electric in commute service?
I think all forms of transportation (air, rail, tug/barge, pipelines) take a beating from a hard hit just because of the huge reliance on electronic internal systems. Throw in the support systems like ATC, the new Positive Train Control, and the locks on large rivers, anything that can be produced and loaded for transport in an unaffected area will have a hard time moving.
Feel free to dissuade me of that thought.
We’ve TRIED before; it is a Sisyphus task, and much like trying to teach physics to a dog …
I have the utmost belief the climate scientist will, once reading this paper, find a way to link increased CO2 to the destruction that would be caused by a CME.
“Further, such high-value assets are not necessarily easy to procure and replace in the short term.”
What this translates to is that some HV transformers are essentially custom-made. One doesn’t just go to a warehouse and take one off the shelf and shuttle it out to one that needs to be replaced. Repair crews will have to take enough fuel with them for the trucks to get there and back. Without electricity, there will be no sales of gasoline or diesel fuel along the way. The utility companies will be on their own, needing backup generators to fuel their repair trucks, IF they have enough fuel on hand to re-fuel the returning repair trucks — and provide fuel to the repairmen that might want to go home and check on their families. That is assuming that the electronics in their cars haven’t been fried because the hoods of the cars have been replaced with plastic to save weight and there is no longer a Faraday shield in place. How do you build new transformers when there is no electricity for the plants to use? Where do you get food when the store delivery trucks can’t buy gas? How do you get perishables delivered when there is no refrigeration? If the grid goes down, things will get very ugly for those who have very little food in the house/apartment and little or no gas in their gas tanks. Even the military will have problems feeding their soldiers and putting gas in the tanks of their trucks. Only the Amish and Mormons will do well, if they aren’t overrun by hoards fleeing the cities on foot. It isn’t about dollars, it is about surviving!
Calm down!
Backup generators can run fuel pumps.
Not when their electronics are fried
And earth, strapped like a suicide bomber with 440 nuclear plants, many of which will not successfully shutdown and go into meltdown mode, will not fare well. In fact it will be the end of the end game. Imagine 50 Fukushima’s going off all at once.
Game over
Some have estimated that the US grid could be substantially hardened for about $250M, my estimate is that it would be around $3B. And yet our 3 pound monkey brain does not spend this money.
For reference, US Broker Bankers get annual BONUSES around $100B. So for the price of 1.5 weeks of Banker BONUSES we could harder our grid and prevent a worldwide tragedy. But we fiddle.
Folks in the “green sector” could be diverted to the task, thereby retaining employment for the victims of paradigm shift.
is that sarc for
stock, your comment was so dumb it wasn’t worth an honest answer.
stock,
What evidence do you have for claiming that “many” of the nuclear plants will not shut down successfully. Can you cite any historical statistics? And why would they go into meltdown mode? Unlike Fukushima, which was physically damaged by the tsunami, there is no reason to believe the CME would physically damage the structure.
It is called station blackout. The worst nightmare for nuke plants. They don’t properly test backup system under load and powering the things they are supposed to power. But this is irrelevant. Because a large enough CME will fry all the electronics, meaning none of the systems will work.
Pilgrim nuke near Boston had deposit buildup on its primary substation short out and lost all outside power. A series of failures of their “defense in depth” system cascaded. They were one step away from a forced and large radiation release to the Boston area. This is while the operators were living normal lives.
The situation in a hemisphere wide blackout with fried electronics would be quite different, quite worse.
These things are designed to survive nearby nuke strikes.
They won’t even notice a CME.
I love the way you decide that we need to spend other people’s money to solve these problems.
LOL MarkW you are obviously not to informed on nuclear or CME EMP
Stock, you are correct. But MarkW is not informed about a lot of things, even though he thinks he is well informed.
My nightmare is if a very large CME hit earth during a geomagnetic pole reversal. Would not all life on surface get microwaved. A global extinction event surely. I’m surprised that this conjunction of events has not been considered, at least to my knowledge. Odds are slim but age of earth is great.
Sleep well, it won’t happen in your lifetime.
If might just half or a little more than half the planet.
Even during a reversal, the magnetic field never goes to zero.
Even if the field did go to zero, the atmosphere is still there to block most of it.
True it doesn’t go to zero but it does drop to 10% or less. The big unknown is “how long” it takes for the reversal to occur. Is it 1 hour or one year? An important detail when calculating the risk of a Harrington-size CME occurring during a mag pole reversal.
I wish some of the astrophysics-types that visit this board would provide a little insight. It could be responsible for some of the mega-extinctions that have occurred in the past but left no trace as to their cause. Even the relatively recent extinction of North American mega-fauna of 12K years ago is poorly understood.
Dr. S., if a large CME event requires a large sunspot, what are the solar surface preconditions that make larger sunspots?
What about 2 or 3 medium CME’s striking earth’s magnetic field in a 36 hour period? Wouldn’t they sufficiently weaken the field by the arrival time of a 3rd, to cause substantial damages too, as the earth’s magnetic field wouldn’t have had enough time to recuperate between hits?
thanks
good night
All a CME does is push the magnetic field around a bit.
Once the CME passes the magnetic field returns to normal immediately.
Rice university used to have a visual of a major event over on their site. Showed earths magnetic pause pushed halfway across the planet. That was one hell of a push.
“””The final stage of the storm is the recovery phase, during which time H returns to its pre-storm level.
This phase generally appears in two parts:
A rapid recovery in which H recovers about halfway to its former level in a time of 6-12 hours; and a slow
recovery immediately following this, during which H completes its return in a time of 1-5 days.
Geomagnetic storms have been reviewed in detail by many authors, including Ferraro and Parker (1966)
Bartels and Chapman (1940) and Akasofu (1966).”””
Rice university used to have a visual of a major event over on their site. Showed earths magnetic pause pushed halfway across the planet. That was one hell of a push.
Current Magnetopause Standoff
http://iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov/IswaSystemWebApp/iSWACygnetStreamer?timestamp=2038-01-23%2000:44:00&window=-1&cygnetId=40
We almost got a double strike just in the last year or so.
I double checked the image above to make sure it was an artists rendition, dats a big un…
Based on the picture, we’ve got nothing to worry about since every living thing on the earth died long before the oceans boiled away.
From what I’ve read, it would “only” cost about $2 billion to ameliorate most of the damage to the US electrical grid system from a solar or nuclear EMP event.
This seems like a very small expense (btw, I hate it when politicians call spending “investments”) to protect against an inevitable solar EMP event, especially given the potential economic damage could be in the $trillions if the grid remains unprotected.
BTW, here is an interesting list of wasteful federal spending:
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/10/50-examples-of-government-waste?lfa=Entitlements
$2 billion is a rounding error of real government waste, fraud and abuse.
Exactly Samurai, my calc is $3B, but I am a professional engineer, contractor, and estimator, I hate being low on a bid.
It is chump change. Also, my calculations indicate that there is about a 1% chance per year of a Carrington size event, and certainly larger event, aka 775AD have occurred. However, in the next few decades, the risk is higher because we are entering/in a quiet sun mode.
Counter-intuitively, times of quiet sun are also the highest risk for large CME.
Induced voltage into the grid can be minimised by simple open circuiting the grid lines. All of them. Circuit breakers throughout the grid need to be opened in times of crisis. The question is what politician would have the balls to turn the power off? With a couple of hours notice of a hit I doubt if you would have got through to the appropriate minister, and if you did it would need to go to a committee. Of course you could be sensible like me and have all your refrigeration and communication off grid. I have my collection of shells for trading.
What politician has the balls to evacuate a city during a nuclear meltdown….answer….none of them.
Since there is no need, why should a politician risk his career?
Fukushima area thyroid cancer up 1200%, but don’t worry folks, no need to evacuate, move along and let the nuclear industry do whatever it wants, even better, give them handouts and loosen up the protections like EPA did in the last days of Obama
Most large substations have one spare transformer on site so there might be a limited supply available. However long transmission lines would be subject to overvoltage. This could damage insulators and bring overhead lines to the ground.
Never seen that, please provide a reference.
How in your opinion, do these same lines survive lightning strikes?
1. Introduction
Research in this paper has been produced by a similar team that originally developed the Helios Solar Storm Scenario [Oughton et al., 2016]—the first space weather stress test for
the global insurance industry.
Ultimately, these are different pieces of work. Helios purposefully explored the sensitivity of economic loss due to different temporal restoration periods, in order to provide a tool for stressing the portfolio
exposure of global insurance companies.
Helios is not a prediction but a hypothetical range of scenarios to enable miti- gation of
space weather risks in the insurance industry.
On the other hand, this paper focuses purely on the daily direct and indirect economic consequences of how an extreme space weather event may affect U.S. domestic production, as well as other nations via supply chain linkages, based on different blackout zones.
4. Conclusions
This paper explored.
__________________________________________
???
Bad for solar and Windelecs,
Good for Diesels:
lsvalgaard on February 1, 2017 at 10:34 am
But scenarios where high voltge transformers are fried and it takes a year to replace them are IMO avoidable.
The issue here is to what degree we can predict what will happen. Just turning off the power grid has an large cost and if nothing happens who will pick up that cost?
The good news: we are getting better at predicting the effects and monitoring the sun
[implied request: send more money].
Bad for solar? how?
We’ve already lived through one of the CME scenarios circa 1951. Only difference, between then and now, is the wisdom of Klaatu and his trusted robot Gort.
Repeat after me when the CME is imminent: Gort! Klaatu barada nikto!
In the mean time, while we await the CME, fire up those CO2 belching engines to keep our planet well fed!!
Is this website becoming alarmist?
Yesterday the pole flip was going to cause chaos, now its CMEs…
alarmism, definitely alarmism…
I think it’s more a subtle hint to all those climate scientists (sic) currently drying their eyes at their potential redundancy to go away and do something useful.
Poor Griffie, we aren’t paying him any attention.
You just did
Griff, you should stop reading your own posts. Both subjects are being discussed, and the facts are being presented. That is called science. The only one doing the Chicken little is you.
CMEs happen. Poles flip. And man can do nothing to stop them. Seems that lesson can be used on other alarmist memes as well.
You want alarmism….. what if a pole flip and CME happened at the same time! We don’t really know how long a mag pole-flip lasts…. so it’s difficult to assess the risk. Mass extinction is likely.
No, Grift, it’s an effort to establish perspective. Not that there was any possibility you’d jump to the OBVIOUS conclusion.