I predict December 21.
(Runs away)
Well if Chuck Schumer can trigger a series of bank failures with one comment to the press, so I don’t see why not.
If it is another Carrington type event, we have a lot more electrical wire capture area today compared to 1859. Losing electrical power will be the long term bad news. The immediate impact may be buildings igniting as the wiring catches fire. The telegraph offices caught fire in 1859. Imagine fires and no water pressure to put them out in places where water pressure is derived from electric pumps.
What kind of science or “science”? At first blush if I had to ask scientists at all, I’d ask sociologists to address that question.
The current prediction model for Solar Cycle 24 gives a smoothed sunspot number maximum of about 90 at its peak in May of 2013. This current prediction makes this the smallest sunspot cycle in about 100 years.
The resulting low numbers of sunspots do not necessarily mean weaker solar flares, just less of them probably occurring. There is always a chance of an Earth directed X class flare disrupting the power grid and causing damage to communications satellites, but less of a chance of one during a weak solar maximum like this one is shaping up to be.
I heard on Coast to Coast that it would only cost us 5 billion dollars to harden our electrical grid in the right places and to have a store of essential transformers that used to be made in USA but are now made in China etc. A grid meltdown will blow many transformers that take a while to build especially when the electric is out and the whole world is clamoring for them. So having a reserve of these would help get the grid back up lot sooner.
This would also be very helpful if we are hit with an EMP attack. Seeing how the USG pisses away billions each day it it treasonous not to have a store of these transformers.
Very real, this book woke me up (and scared me) a couple of years ago.
One Second After
In other words, heavily Democratic precincts would be devastated. That’s just awful.
God only knows what the sun will do, and he is not talking.
That being said, I was monitoring the sun from age 14, back in the late 50s.
As a ham radio operator, interested in working DX (foreign countries), we lived and died by the 11 year sunspot cycle.
The late 50s was probably the greatest sunspot period in my
50+ years of activity.
I remember days/nights when the 15 meter band was open to contacts most anywhere in the world, and at the same time.
I also remember many periods of low sunspot activity when I would be hard pressed just to work anything outside of the states.
We should all keep in mind that we live or die by what the sun does.
Just one burp can be catastrophic for life on Earth.
later
How often do we hear this. Last “solar event” was suppose to knock out power, etc., riots, cats and dogs sleeping together, but it never seems to have the effect they claim. If it happens, it happens. Not much I can do about it.
This VERY respected solar watcher believes that Solar Max for this Solar Cycle 24 has already passed: http://www.solen.info/solar/ I agree with him.
Cycle 24 has been a very weak cycle, as predicted by about half of the solar science community but notably NOT by NASA, and well justified by theoretical work done by Russian and Finish solar scientists over the years. In addition, there is a very intriguing mechanism which may explain why: http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/50 though that is not the basis upon which the Russians and Finns have been working.