Leftists love
to be miserable.
To stay miserable,
they like to believe
bad news is coming.
Their most popular
bad news fantasy
is a coming climate
change crisis --
coming since the
late 1950's,
but the bad news
never shows up.
One of the biggest
changes from global
warming is that Alaska
is warmer, especially
their winter nights.
Not a lot warmer,
but enough to notice.
But that's not bad news.
So leftists invented
the Extinction Rebellion.
Some bored scientist
had nothing to do, so he
invented a computer game
that predicted millions
of new species on this
planet in the future,
and a significant
percentage of them dying,
I suppose from climate
change.
This computer game
sounds more like a bad
LSD trip, but enough
leftists believe it.
So they glue themselves
to streets and buildings
in protest.
For those mentally
challenged leftists,
I offer a real threat,
that is not just a
computer game fantasy
-- it's better than that !
There's another "climate"
we ought to pay attention to,
although there's nothing
we can do to change
the "climate" of the sun !
Coronal mass ejections,
aka solar storms, were
until recently believed
to be rare occurrences
-- maybe once a century.
In 1859 the Sun spewed
concentrated plasma.
The plasma broke through
its magnetic fields in the
direction of the Earth.
That "Carrington Event"
was a solar storm
that hit the Earth’s
magnetic field,
warped it, and
caused telegraphs
all around the world
to fail.
In 1859, telegraphs
were "high tech".
Today we have power grids,
airplanes, satellites, and
computers ... and all of them
are susceptible to the effects
of another solar storm.
The Carrington Event
was considered to be the
worst-case scenario
for space weather events.
According to
astrophysicist and
aerospace engineer
Robert Coker,
the fallout from a severe
solar storm could cost
up to one trillion dollars.
That's from his
“The trillion-dollar
solar storm”,
published in 2017.
Coker discussed
a 1921 solar storm
similar to the
Carrington Event.
If that solar storm
had occurred today,
he wrote, it would
cost $1 trillion.
How can anyone
be prepared for
such a storm?
Start by predicting
the solar storms,
wrote atmospheric
sciences professor
Marshall Shepherd
in a FORBES article.
Shepherd wrote:
“Such near-real time
information on
geomagnetic storms
like a CME is valuable
for assessing impacts
on the infrastructure
associated with the
electrical power grid,”
and
“Take a moment
and think about
how you would
function for weeks
without electrical
power, GPS, or
air travel.”
The National Oceanic
and Atmospheric
Administration, together
with the U.S. Geological
Survey, recently presented
a Geo-electric Field Model.
This model
“calculates regional
electric field levels
in the U.S. caused by
disturbances in Earth’s
magnetic field from
geomagnetic storms.”
Getting a warning
in advance of
a solar storm,
however,
can't prevent
most of the serious
most of the serious
consequences
of such a storm.