Climate alarmists blame mankind for atmospheric temperature fluctuations. But solar variations? Durr, what’s that?
“The cloud will probably miss Earth,” SpaceWeather.com wrote. “At this time, however, we cannot rule out a glancing blow from the flank of the CME on or about August 11th.”
CME as in “coronal mass ejection“. It’s Mr. Sun, clearing his throat and hawking up a loogie. So what happens when the world’s massive, insanely complex power and information grid finally takes a massive flare head-on?
Nobody knows.
But I’m anticipating at least a few fatalities to go with billions in financial damage. Some vulnerable electronic or digital chokepoint will conk out, something that didn’t even exist the last time we took a huge direct hit.
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by Al Gore and Co. And a lot more dangerous than the atmosphere’s temperature going up another degree or two.
World's Only Rational Man 
It’s much worse than that. One day our sun will die. And even that can be topped. One day… all of us… will die.
Oh the noes!
Enviro-nitwits, what else do you expect from them? We have a ton of near Earth objects that could be potentially harmful. We can’t even check the entire sky for those. Apophis was an accidental catch and now we can only hope he won’t hit. We have no technology whatsoever to defend us against something like that, even though it has happened in the pas a bazillion times and happens on a daily basis anyway. Just most rocks that hit us are too tiny to be noticed. Until the big one comes, of course. And the question is not if, it’s when. And what are we going to do then? Sorry, Bruce Willis ain’t available for drilling and NASA doesn’t even have a spaceship for that!
Also, the thing I love with the climate is how they all seem to exactly know how a… non-linear, chaotic system… will develop over the next 100 years. The entire hubris in this “climate change” stuff is amazing. First, us little humans change the climate (with our barely 4% more CO2), then we can foresee how it all will develop, and then we can actually protect the climate! OMG! We so powerful!
But if we’re so powerful, then why don’t we have a faster-than-light spaceship yet? Or actual AI? Or… anything else that would be important to have?
Yep. Weather forecasters can’t see 24 hours into the future reliable, but “climatists” can see that many years.
Heck, back in April I was raving about it (once again):
“Let’s talk a bit about CO2.
I was just reading a press release from Eurekalert where this was stated:
Professor Kennedy said that the doubling of the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere over the past 50 years is “like hitting our ecosystem with a sledge-hammer”
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-05/nu-gos051711.php
Now that sounds all like “OMG!!!!”
There’s just one problem. Nothing has doubled.
Let’s use the Mauna Loa to show the utter madness and massive lies used by the AGW fanboys.
A few words on it before I start with the math:
Mauna Loa is used because that is where such measurement began. Initially as a hobby by Charles Keeling. But the record is the longest. It is a good situs, even if within 15 miles of an active volcano, Kilauea Iki. However being upwind, the effect is minimal, and when the wind shifts, the volcanic CO2 is easily detected. Mauna Loa, as was determined early, is ideal. It is far from urban influence, is high enough to get lower atmospheric readings of pure atmosphere, such as it is.
There are of course now other sites. Ironically, some also close to volcanoes. But the readings are uncontradicted: the measures from Mauna Loa are pure accurate data and CO2 is indeed increasing.
It lends itself for the measure of other atmospheric components, both natural and introduced and began the trend of high astronomical observatories serving as climate science sites.
So far so good, now for the math. The source used for this little calculation is this: ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
CO2 has doubled in the past 50 years, correctamundo? Correctamundo!
Let’s doooo some math!
Today’s seasonally corrected Mauna Loa CO2 April 2011 = 390.49 ppm
The seasonally corrected Mauna Loa CO2 value 50 years ago , April 1961 = 317.27 ppm
317.27 x 2 (a doubling over 50 years) = 634.54 ppm
Hmmm, I seem to lack some 244.05 ppm somewhere.
Doubled? Really?
These people fail at basic math, yet I’m supposed to believe them the rest? Seriously??
Also: So let me get this right, a 0.1% variation in the solar TSI is totaly insignificant, but a 0.01% variation in the atmospheric content (100 ppm) is hitting the ecosystem over the head with a sledgehammer? Oooookay….”
The only invariant here is their argument.
If/when a CME hits us, the Tea Party will be blamed ,;)
Ha ha! Damn you, solar terrorists!
Considering that this solar cycle is predicted to peak at only half of what the last cycle was, I think this is an exercise in manufacturing news by the news “industry”.
But solar activity has been so low, for so long, while this possibly sensitive information grid has developed. I don’t mean to be alarmist, but we still don’t know what will happen when we’re hit with a direct flare.
The telegraph offices did burn in 1859, could be bad.
@Crosspatch The worst solar flare to hit earth hit in a really down solar cycle.
The smart thing to do would be to just kill the entire grid right before the blast hits, the damage would be very limited this way. We can survive (in an economic sense) a few hours without power a lot better than we can survive massive damage to the grid. An early warning satellite at L1 (Lagrange point) would be quite well placed to warn us in time to knock off the power; good thing we just so happen to have one there 😉
If I was the head of a power company, or pretty much any large company, I’d draw up some basic plans to shut down and disconnect everything as quickly as possible. Thankfully we can see these things coming with plenty of time to spare, so if we already have a script to follow for a complete shutdown we should be able to escape a significant part of the damage.
With that the only things I’m worried about are the miles of wiring strung from telephone poles and our satellites.
As for people, I’d suggest taking flashlights, laptops, and any other portable/useful gadgets and getting into a car or any other metal skinned object. Faraday cages are your friends.
Your power company plan is rational, intelligent, far-sighted…and hopeless. There’ll be no shutting of any barn doors until the horses have gotten out at least once. We’ve not taken a truly massive hit to the grid; thus, no management type will be the first one to screw with the balance sheet. Let’s say they shut their grid down safely (causing lots of anger) and so nothing bad happens. To the people wanting to sue them, they have proof of incompetence because nothing bad happened!
As for the individual preparation, it would be nice to make the concept of “Faraday cage” into a public meme.