Sun God angry, sends flares to destroy Earth!

Okay, maybe it's not that drastic, but it looks like we might be in for an occasional flare-up of solar storms that'll cause some electronic issues.  Maybe it's time to set up those Faraday Cages around your instrumentation packages, not to mention your computers and stereo and digital TV systems...

From The Financial Times:

Scientists warn of $2,000bn solar ‘Katrina’

The sun is waking up from a long quiet spell. Last week it sent out the strongest flare for four years – and scientists are warning that earth should prepare for an intense electromagnetic storm that, in the worst case, could be a “global Katrina” costing the world economy $2,000bn.

(...)

“Predict and prepare should be the watchwords,” agreed Jane Lubchenco, head of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “So much more of our technology is vulnerable than it was 10 years ago.”

Remember that the Sun cycles in eleven year periods, and that solar flares and sunspots increase and decrease over each term.  We're coming out of a period of flare and sunspot latency that has affected (gasp!) our weather and going into a new eleven year cycle.  This has been going on for about a gazillion years.  The Sun makes big dents in weather cycles and its electronic emissions cause grief in our RF use.

I guarantee that, somewhere around 2014-2017, the weather will become, on a ten year average, warmer as the flares grow and further roll over the Earth, heating the troposphere, which further heats the lower atmosphere and the water, which covers 75% of the planet.  There will be major storms in all seasons. Glaciers and polar ice masses will diminish. Lotsa those La Nina and El Nino thingies.

SatTV will experience occasional outages (as they did last decade and the one before that) and, as a result, CATV will have occasional morning and afternoon reception issues (as they did last decade and the one before that).

Then the ice masses will refreeze and regrow (as they did last decade and the one before that), the intensity and occurrence of the storms will reduce to almost zero (as they did last decade and the one before that) and we'll have less and less electrical interference (as they did last decade and the one before that).

And, hopefully, fewer Al Gore movies and predictions of doom and disaster.  Sadly we're still living with Gore's tediousness.

It's how things work, kids. Science, and all that.  And, yes, these issues are ALL settled.  Have been for the aforementioned gazillion years.  You can check Mother Nature's appointment book.

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