Lawrence E. Joseph
The Sun Also Surprises
Op-Ed Contributor
The Sun Also Surprises
By LAWRENCE E. JOSEPH
Published: August 15, 2010
Los Angeles
DESPITE warnings that New Orleans was unprepared for a severe hit by a hurricane, America was blindsided by Hurricane Katrina, a once-in-a-lifetime storm that made landfall five years ago this month. We are similarly unready for another potential natural disaster: solar storms, bursts of gas on the sun’s surface that release tremendous energy pulses.
Occasionally, a large solar storm can rain energy down on the earth, overpowering electrical grids. About once a century, a giant pulse can knock out worldwide power systems for months or even years. It’s been 90 years since the last super storm, but scientists say we are on the verge of another period of high solar activity.
This isn’t science fiction. Though less frequent than large hurricanes, significant storms have hit earth several times over the last 150 years, most notably in 1859 and 1921. Those occurred before the development of the modern power grid; recovering from a storm that size today would cost up to $2 trillion a year for several years.
Storms don’t have to be big to do damage. In March 1989 two smaller solar blasts shut down most of the grid in Quebec, leaving millions of customers without power for nine hours. Another storm, in 2003, caused a blackout in Sweden and fried 14 high-voltage transformers in South Africa.
The South African experience was particularly telling — the storm was relatively weak, but by damaging transformers it put parts of the country off-line for months. That’s because high-voltage transformers, which handle enormous amounts of electricity, are the most sensitive part of a grid; a strong electromagnetic pulse can easily fuse their copper wiring, damaging them beyond repair.
Even worse, transformers are hard to replace. They weigh up to 100 tons, so they can’t be easily moved from the factories in Europe and Asia where most of them are made; right now, there’s already a three-year waiting list for new ones.
Without aggressive preparation, we run the risk of a disaster magnitudes greater than Hurricane Katrina. Little or no electricity means little or no telecommunications, refrigeration, clean water or fuel. Basic law enforcement and national security could be compromised.
Fortunately, there are several defenses against solar storms. The most important are grid-level surge suppressors, which are essentially giant versions of the devices we use at home to protect computers. There are some 5,000 vulnerable transformers in North America; at $50,000 for each suppressor, we could protect the grid for about $250 million.
Earlier this year the House of Representatives passed a bill that would allow the White House to require utilities to put grid-protection measures in place, then recoup the costs from customers. Unfortunately, the companion bill in the Senate contains no such provision.
It’s not a lost cause, though; lawmakers can still insert the grid-protection language during conference. If they don’t, there could be trouble soon: the next period of heavy solar activity will be in late 2012. Having gone unprepared for one recent natural disaster, we would make a grave mistake not to get ready for the next.
Lawrence E. Joseph is the author of “Aftermath: A Guide to Preparing for and Surviving Apocalypse 2012.”
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on August 16, 2010, on page A19 of the New York edition.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/opinion/16joseph.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
Short-Circuiting the Great American Blackout
Short-Circuiting the Great American Blackout
Lawrence E. Joseph
John Kappenman, 55 , an obscure electrical engineer from Duluth, Minnesota, is determined to save civilization from the mother of all blackouts. If he succeeds, the daily life of billions around the world will continue undisrupted. But if he fails, we may well suffer on a scale that makes even World Wars seem trivial in comparison.
Over the past thirty years, Kappenman has accumulated a vast and compelling body of evidence indicating that sooner or later a major blast of EMP (electromagnetic pulse) from the Sun, a space weather Katrina, will knock out the electrical power grid and bring society to its knees.
“Historically large storms have a potential to cause power grid blackouts and transformer damage of unprecedented proportions. An event that could incapacitate the network for a long time could be one of the largest natural disasters we could face,” he declares. A bluff, friendly man, half science nerd, half overgrown farm boy, Kappenman insists that solar EMP blasts the size of those that occurred in 1859 (before society was electrified) and 1921(before the power grid had developed to the point where it played any significant role) would today result in large-scale blackouts lasting for months or years.
Kappenman was a major contributor to the landmark report, Severe Space Weather Events: Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts, published by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in December, 2008. Founded by Abraham Lincoln during the height of the Civil War, the NAS is the closest thing there is to a Supreme Court of scientific opinion for the United States, and much of the rest of the world.
“Electric power is modern society’s cornerstone technology, the technology on which virtually all other infrastructures and services depend… Collateral effects of a longer-term outage [such as would almost certainly result from a massive space weather event] would likely include, for example, disruption of the transportation, communication, banking, and finance systems, and government services; the breakdown of the distribution of potable water owing to pump failure and the loss of perishable foods and medications because of lack of refrigeration. The resulting loss of services for a significant period of time in even one region of the country could affect the entire nation and have international impact as well,” says the NAS report.
As examined extensively in my book, AFTERMATH, (Broadway/Random House, July, 2010) more than 100 million Americans could be affected by this blackout for months or years. Recovering from a future severe magnetic storm would cost $1 to $2 trillion per year-- ten to twenty times the cost of Katrina. Of course, the damage would be immeasurably worse if such a massive, protracted catastrophe were to touch off social unrest sufficient to undermine the agencies and institutions in charge of the reconstruction effort.
Unlike most doom prophecies, this one has potential for a happy ending. As examined further on, there is a comparatively quick and economical way to defend against solar EMP. “ Sunblock for the grid” recommendations are at the core of the GRID bill, HR-5026, passed UNANIMOUSLY by the U.S. House of Representatives this June. No mean feat in today’s poisonously partisan climate. But the true day of reckoning will probably come later on this summer in the United States Senate, where things are not looking very good at all.
The World’s Largest Lightning Rod
The world’s power grids, of which the United States has the most extensive, have in essence become giant antennas for space weather blasts. Just as a lightning rod attracts any lightning bolts that might otherwise strike a roof, the power grid, which is designed specifically to be extremely efficient at conducting electricity, attracts space weather bolts. Problem is that, unlike lightning rods, the power grid is gravely vulnerable to such shocks.
So how would a solar blast keep your toilet from flushing? By disrupting the power grid system at its weakest point: the transformer. Transformers receive power from high voltage transmission lines which in turn receive their power from substations directly connected to the main power plant, be it coal, oil, gas, hydroelectric or nuclear, . High voltage transmission lines, the ones held up by those big Y-shaped metal trellis structures that can be seen stretching along the highway, carry the current as far as 300 miles. The farther the distance, the higher the voltage required, just as more water pressure would be required to produce a steady, reliable stream of water out of a long hose than out of a short one. (Volts are essentially units of pressure, while amps are units of volume. The simplest analogy is to water: volts would measure how hard the water rushes out of the hose, amps would measure how much water is flowing.) The power from the transmission lines is fed into the transformers, whose job is to then step it down from the level of hundreds of thousands of volts to tens of thousands of volts, then split the current into several directions via a device known as a “bus.” The bus sends the electricity through the network of power lines one sees everywhere held up by utility poles. Transformers in communities then drop the voltage down to levels used in homes and businesses, so the flow of electricity requires transformers at many points in the network and if transformers are damaged, then no electricity can flow.The power lines feed into businesses and homes, most of which rely on electric pumps to supply the water necessary to flush one’s toilet, unless, of course, the electricity has been shorted out.
Transformers in the United States operate at levels as high as 765kV or 765,000 volts in the United States and up to 1000kV in China. Transformers in Europe typically use lower voltages, in the 400KV range. At one point, the Swedish electrical utility was considering upgrading to 800KV but protests from groups concerned about the human health impacts of the new ultra-high voltage lines put the kibosh on that. Right for the wrong reason, one might observe. The higher the voltage processed by a transformer, the narrower the tolerance for error and the more vulnerable it is, therefore, to the extra electrical jolt that would come from the GIC’s (geomagnetically induced currents,) caused by solar EMP.
According to Kappenman’s research, a repeat of the geomagnetic storm that occurred in 1859 or 1921 would see the copper windings and leads of the 350 or so of the highest voltage transformers in the United States melt and burn out. These transformers connect nearly one third of the entire US power grid infrastructure, damage levels of unimaginable proportions from any other threat. Transformers weigh over 100 tons apiece and usually cannot be repaired in the field, and because of their size they cannot be flown in from overseas factories where they are now made. In fact, most transformers damaged by space weather incidents cannot be repaired at all, and need to replaced with new units. Currently, the worldwide waiting list for transformers is about three years, and about half of those made fail either in test or prematurely while in service.
“We’ve been stacking risk multipliers on top of risk multipliers. The scientific community has developed a false sense of security regarding the power industry. We’ve got to preserve our capability and prevent wide spread catastrophic damage to this vital infrastructure!” declares Kappenman.
So why haven’t we been zapped yet? There was no power grid to zap to speak of until 1950’s. Before then, each city had its own generators, but there was no significant swapping of power from one city to the next. Today, megawatt loads zip instantaneously around the North American grid. The growth of what is known as open access transmission, whereby larger and larger amounts of energy are whizzed around the grid to meet consumer demand, makes it all the likelier that a sudden and unexpected injection of GIC electrical energy could blow out the system. Stressing the power grid with heavier and heavier loads, while good for profits and energy savings, does seem like tempting fate, given the looming danger of solar EMP assaults.
Sleeping through the Wake-up Calls
“We have already slept through at least one wake-up call, the geomagnetic storm of 1989,” Kappenman contends.
On March 13,1989, two solar blasts each about a tenth the size of the ones that hit in 1859 and 1921 knocked out the Hydro-Quebec electrical utility, causing it to go from fully operational to complete shutdown in 92 seconds. On the computer simulation, the blast looks like giant red, toothy mouths taking bites out of the top of the Northern Hemisphere. Millions of customers in Quebec lost power but within nine hours power was restored. No big deal in the grand scheme of things. True, a number of nuclear, oil and coal-powered plants as far away as Los Angeles subsequently reported transmission anomalies, but nothing blew up, although one large transformer at a Nuclear plant in New Jersey melted.
Another wake-up call came on Halloween, October 31, 2003. Kappenman was testifying before the Environment subcommittee of the House of Representatives Science Committee on the impact of the blackout of August 14, 2003 and potential impacts for severe space weather. The August 2003 blackout, not space weather related, is believed to have cost between $4 billion and $10 billion in repairs and collateral economic damage. As luck would have it, the day of Kappenman’s testimony turned out also to be a day of a powerful solar storm, known in space weather circles as Halloween 2003.
“During breaks in the Committee meeting, I was frantically sending out email advisories about the storm,” Kappenman recalls.
The solar flares for the Halloween 2003event was much more powerful than the March, 1989 storm, but its impact was less severe because it struck mostly at the poles, and did not swoop down as far south into populated areas . Nonetheless, Halloween 2003 did cause a brief blackout in Malmo, Sweden, and also fried fourteen 400 KV transformers in southern South Africa. In part because of the difficulty in recovering from the Halloween 2003 transformer burnout, South Africa has since had enormous problems supplying electricity to its customers, to the point where basic commerce and security have been impaired.
Kappenman’s Halloween 2003 testimony regarding solar EMP did result in his receiving partial funding by the US Congressional Electromagnetic Pulse Commission, though the commission lost its funding in late 2008. Since then, Kappenman has struggled financially, depending on the odd consulting assignment, and grateful that his wife, Lisa, earns enough to support them and their seven year-old son.
“I would say the odds are against us,” he acknowledged when we first met in April, 2009. Then he choked up a bit. “It’s the social breakdown… During Hurricane Andrew, which only affected several counties in Florida, the worst hit areas, without any electricity or anything, the National Guard, all they could do was leave jugs of fresh water at intersections and hope people would come take them… In the case of space weather the impact areas would cover major portions of the US at the same time, Oil and water pumping would cease, natural gas, too. There would be no ability to refuel a vehicle… rail transport, no ability to supply meaningful support from neighboring unaffected regions, because those regions would be extremely remote. No one keeps fuel at their factories any more, just-in-time manufacturing took care of that. You can’t just restart a nuclear power plant. For one thing, you need the operators to show up.”
Sunblock for the Grid
It turns out that the grid can be protected from solar EMP devastation by outfitting it with surge suppressors, much like the ones that protect our computers and plasma televisions at home. In a nutshell, solar EMP blasts hit the Earth and discharge massive electrical currents into the planet’s surface, some of which current surges back up and into the grid. Surge suppressors placed between the surface and the transformer would protect the transformer from the space weather-induced electrical currents coming up from the ground.
Each surge suppressor would be about the size of a washing machine, and would cost $40,000-$50,000 apiece; with some 5,000 transformers in the North American grid, that works out to $250 million or so, according to Kappenman’s reckoning. Let’s say this estimate is overly optimistic and that the inevitable cost overruns occur. Even if the final price tag for protecting the power grid from space weather attacks ends up being more in the $500 million range, that’s less than 0.3% of what it cost to bail out AIG for gambling on toxic mortgages, or 1.0% of what Bernie Madoff is said to have bilked from his investors. Given that electrical industry revenues in the United States totaled approximately $368.5 billion in 2008, according to the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration, a one-time space weather security surcharge of less than 0.2% should amply fund the surge suppressor project. With around 115 million households in the United States, this surcharge would work out to less than $5 per.
Money is not the problem. Indeed, resistance to the surge suppressor program is less about budget than the culture of the power industry, an antiquated crazy quilt of public and private companies, commissions and authorities, regulated by state by state, though often serving multi-state consumer bases, with technical specifications vetted by a variety of different professional organizations. The reason for this mishmash is that the North American power grid was not constructed as such, but rather is composed of local and regional power systems that have coalesced into a grid over the past century.
The real impediment, one might observe, is the resistor built into the psyche of the electrical utility industry, which spends only between 0.3% and 2% of its revenues, depending on the estimate, on research and development. This meager proportion puts it almost dead last compared to other major American industries, less than the pet food industry according to Wired.com magazine. Computer and pharmaceutical manufacturers reinvest 10% or more of their revenues or more in R&D.
The utility industry’s objections to implementing a space weather defense program are thus more inertial than economic. Why go to all the trouble of preventing a space weather blackout when no (serious) one has ever happened, at least not in the United States? Then, there’s the commonsense reluctance to complicate a system that has thus far functioned so admirably. Inserting surge suppressors would also require installing high speed switching circuits to bypass the transformers when necessary, yet another “moving part” that could potentially break down. Aggravating matters further is the inescapable fact that the more complex the network, the less control grid operators have over it.
“We have had no recognition of this potential space weather problem in our power grid network design codes, though we do take into consideration many other environmental factors such as wind, ice, lightning and seismic disturbances,” says Kappenman, who draws an analogy between securing the power grid in this manner and adding seismic retrofits to buildings before the hazards of earthquakes were fully understood.
Once installed, the surge protector system should be capable of preventing at least 70%-75% of space weather-related power grid failures in the event we were hit by the equivalent of the great geomagnetic storms of 1859 and 1921. Such protection would mean the difference between major inconvenience and societal collapse. In 2008, the surge suppressor program was recommended to Congress by Electromagnetic Pulse Commission which, as noted, has since lost its funding.
The House-Senate Compromise
But Kappenman never gave up. After thousands of hours of lobbying, presenting and cajoling, mostly at his own expense, Kappenman’s plan caught fire in spring, 2010, when it was understood less as a matter of federal regulation than as essential to national security. The fantastic news is that the House of Representatives bill, HR-5026, known as The GRID Act, was approved unanimously by the full House when it came to the floor on June 9, 2010. The bill enables the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to mandate protection of the power grid from both man-made and solar EMP. Utilities are authorized to recoup such costs by adding a minor surcharge to their bills.
The not-so-fantastic news is that the corresponding Senate measure, S-1462, known as the ACELA, American Clean Energy Leadership Act, is a vast, highly controversial amalgam of energy-related initiatives, essentially the Obama administration’s energy bill. However, the Senate bill currently makes no mention of protecting the grid from EMP, only from cyber-attacks.
Kappenman, raised Roman Catholic and still bearing respect for his religion’s moral teachings, does not confide in me the content of his prayers. I’d have to suspect, though, that he’d be thankful if the House-Senate compromise included the Senate bill’s jurisdiction over the entire power grid, and the House bill’s language protecting the grid from solar and man-made EMP, he would drop to his knees and thank the good Lord above.
Whatever legislation passes must do so before the fall elections and a new Congress takes over in the January, 2011. Otherwise the process has to start all over again. But what’s the rush? It turns out that the next red zone, the next time solar EMP storms peak in frequency and ferocity will, by scientific consensus, commence in late 2012. Mayan prophets and New Age doomsayers harkening to that perhaps fateful year would not be surprised to further learn that the current solar cycle climaxing in 2012 bears an uncanny resemblance to the one that produced the 1859 mega-blast, a repeat of which would almost certainly destroy our way of life for years, perhaps decades, to come. On the marked similarity between the 1859 and 2012 solar cycles, even Kappenman, who generally puts no stock in 2012-related oojie-boojie, agrees.
Mayhem aside for a moment, wouldn’t we kick ourselves all the way to hell if the power grid did go down, and along with it, our society, for lack of surge suppressors, a simple, affordable, un-grandiose, quick-fix?
AFTERMATH: A Guide to Preparing for and Surviving Apocalypse 2012 will be published by Broadway/Random House on July 13, 2010.
Stop stoning, save Sakineh!
Yesterday an Iranian woman, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, was saved by global protests from being stoned to death.
But she may still be hanged -- and, meanwhile, execution by stoning continues. Right now fifteen more people are on death row awaiting stoning in which victims are buried up to their necks in the ground and then large rocks are thrown at their heads.
The partial reprieve of Sakineh, triggered by the call from her children for international pressure to save her life, has shown that if enough of us come together and voice our horror, we may be able to save her life, and stop stoning once and for all. Sign the urgent petition now and send it onto everyone you know -- let's end this cruel slaughter NOW!
http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_
Sakineh was convicted of adultery, like all the other 12 women and one of the men awaiting stoning. But her children and lawyer say she is innocent and that she did not get a fair trial -- they state her confession was forced from her and, speaking only Azerbaijani, she did not understand what was being asked of her in court.
Despite Iran's signing of a UN convention that requires the death penalty only be used for the "most serious crimes" and despite the Iranian Parliament passing a law banning stoning last year, stoning for adultery continues.
Sakineh's lawyer says the Iranian government "is afraid of Iranian public reaction and international attention" to the stoning cases. And after Turkey and Britain's Foreign Ministers spoke out against Sakineh's sentence, it was suspended.
Sakineh's brave children are leading the international campaign to save their mother and stop stoning. Massive international condemnation now could finally stop this sickening punishment. Let's join together today across the world to end this brutality. Sign the petition to save Sakineh and end stoning here:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_
In hope and determination,
Alice, David, Milena, Ben and the whole Avaaz team
SOURCES:
Iranians still facing death by stoning despite 'reprieve', The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Britain condemns planned Iran stoning as 'medieval', AFP:
http://www.google.com/
AFTERMATH AD on DISCOVERY CHANNEL!
Grid bill passes full House UNANIMOUSLY!; Warnings about solar climax 2012
Great news! H-5026, the Grid bill that would mandate protections for the electric power grid from solar EMP assault just passed the full House of Representatives today UNANIMOUSLY! A 100% bipartisan collaboration in an age where politicians normally won't cross the aisle to perform the Heimlich maneuver.
Next stop, the Senate, where it should be a no-brainer but instead will probably be a dogfight because instead of being its own separate bill, the question of protecting the grid from solar EMP is folded into a huge, hotly contested, omnibus energy bill known as ACELA, American Clean Energy Leadership Act, S-1462, which will probably hit the Senate floor in late July, right after my book, AFTERMATH comes out.
Here is a link to an important related article that came out today. "Nasty Solar Storms Ahead" warns of huge, unfathomable dangers, twenty times the size of Hurricane Katrina, from the next solar climax, due in late 2012 or early 2013. As you all are too well aware, I've been writing and speaking on this very subject for five years now, in my book, Apocalypse 2012, and even more extensively in AFTERMATH. http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/
The danger is bearing down and yet the solution is almost at hand. We were right from the beginning. We can't let up yet.
Yours,
Larry Joseph
More Active Sun Means Nasty Solar Storms Ahead
The sun is about to get a lot more active, which could have ill effects on Earth. So to prepare, top sun scientists met Tuesday to discuss the best ways to protect Earth's satellites and other vital systems from the coming solar storms.
Solar storms occur when sunspots on our star erupt and spew out flumes of charged particles that can damage power systems. The sun's activity typically follows an 11-year cycle, and it looks to be coming out of a slump and gearing up for an active period.
"The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity," said Richard Fisher, head of NASA's Heliophysics Division. "At the same time, our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms. The intersection of these two issues is what we're getting together to discuss."
Fisher and other experts met at the Space Weather Enterprise Forum, which took place in Washington, D.C., at the National Press Club.
Bad news for gizmos
People of the 21st century rely on high-tech systems for the basics of daily life. But smart power grids, GPS navigation, air travel, financial services and emergency radio communications can all be knocked out by intense solar activity.
A major solar storm could cause twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina, warned the National Academy of Sciences in a 2008 report, "Severe Space Weather Events—Societal and Economic Impacts." [Photos: Sun storms.]
Luckily, much of the damage can be mitigated if managers know a storm is coming. That's why better understanding of solar weather, and the ability to give advance warning, is especially important.
Putting satellites in 'safe mode' and disconnecting transformers can protect electronics from damaging electrical surges.
"Space weather forecasting is still in its infancy, but we're making rapid progress," said Thomas Bogdan, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo.
Eyes on the sun
NASA and NOAA work together to manage a fleet of satellites that monitor the sun and help to predict its changes.
A pair of spacecraft called STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) is stationed on opposite sides of the sun, offering a combined view of 90 percent of the solar surface. In addition, SDO (the Solar Dynamics Observatory), which just launched in February 2010, is able to photograph solar active regions with unprecedented spectral, temporal and spatial resolution. Also, an old satellite called the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE), which launched in 1997, is still chugging along monitoring winds coming off the sun. And there are dozens more dedicated to solar science.
"I believe we're on the threshold of a new era in which space weather can be as influential in our daily lives as ordinary terrestrial weather." Fisher said. "We take this very seriously indeed."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20100609/sc_space/moreactivesunmeansnastysolarstormsahead
Solar EMP and the Mystery of Air France 447
In March, 2010 I gave a talk to a group in Washington state about the dangers that electromagnetic pulses from the Sun pose to the electrical power grid. As I have previously reported in the Huffington Post, the National Academy of Sciences boldly warns that solar EMP (electromagnetic pulse) will short out the electrical power grid, forcing up to 130 million Americans to go without electricity for months or years. After my presentation, a pilot for a major commercial airline came up and peppered me with questions concerning solar EMP and commercial air travel. Basically she wanted to know if such blasts from the Sun can fry sensitive electronic components used in advanced passenger aircraft.
Our conversation quickly shifted to the crash of Air France 447, an Airbus 330-200 that went down en route from Rio to Paris on June 1, 2009, killing all 228 aboard. The mystery of AF447 has been intensively investigated, but the blackbox was never found and the case was never solved. Investigators surmise that the plane flew through a thunderstorm, causing a temperature gauge to be coated with ice and thus give false readings which in turn caused speed sensors, known as pitot tubes, to give even more false readings, ultimately tripping the cascade of failures throughout the plane’s computer systems that sent AF447 into the ocean. But there are a lot of thunderstorms in the South Atlantic, and pilots who do the Rio-Paris run routinely avoid them…
The commercial pilot who approached me had heard the same scuttlebutt that I had, that AF447 had had been done in by solar EMP. When the Airbus went down it was passing through what is known as the South Atlantic anomaly, a California-sized crack in the Earth's protective magnetic field that normally protects us from solar EMP. Beginning the day before, on May 31, 2009, and continuing through the crash date, a large sunspot and along with it an enormous plasma filament had erupted on the Sun's northwest quadrant, the quadrant from which sunstorm explosions are likeliest to hit the Earth. Had a blast of solar EMP rocketed through space, penetrated this giant crack in the magnetic field and fried some of the Airbus’s electronic components, perhaps including the temperature gauge and/or pitot tubes? Depends on how well those components were protected, or "hardened." Most hardening of electronic components is done under the working assumption that normal conditions will prevail in the Earth's protective magnetic field. The South Atlantic anomaly is not "normal conditions"; it is an absence of protection.
Beyond the specifics of AF447 forensics is the critical question of how to prevent future crashes. By scientific consensus, solar EMP blasts will next climax in ferocity and frequency late in 2012 or early 2013. Might be a good idea to harden sensitive electronic components before then. Might be a good idea to start being extra careful about flying through the South Atlantic anomaly. The bad news is that the Earth's magnetic field problems are spreading far beyond the South Atlantic.
The shields are down, Scotty. In Apocalypse 2012 (2007), I warned of the deterioration of the Earth’s protective magnetic field, our most important line of defense against solar blasts. In December, 2008, my prediction was resoundingly confirmed by THEMIS, the squadron of five NASA solar research satellites that discovered a giant, pole-to-equator breach in the Earth’s magnetic field, unprecedented in size and threat. As detailed in my forthcoming book, AFTERMATH, so shocking was the discovery of this gigantic hole in our planet’s defenses that the THEMIS project leader exclaimed, “It was as though the Sun rose in the west.”
New Webinar: The 2012 Phenomenon
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Question
Now, extend that question globally: If God, or some other credible power made that offer to the world, that in 2012, the planet and all its inhabitants would get exactly what was deserved, no more no less. How would you vote?
Thanks,
Larry
SOUTH AFRICAN: Eskom coal catastrophe
Dear friends in South Africa
In 72 hours, the World Bank will vote on a proposed R29 billion loan to Eskom to build the fourth-largest coal plant in the world -- a climate disaster. At the same time, Eskom plans to effectively double electricity rates over the next three years. Big polluters are getting cut-rate electricity while ratepayers would be left to pay back this disastrous loan.
But the loan is not a done deal. Some creditors are having second thoughts, with the US expected to abstain and several European delegates reportedly on the fence. And we can tip the balance -- we just need one "no" vote to table the proposal since the Bank rarely proceeds with divisive votes!
While Eskom trumpets the plan, we can tell World Bank directors how we feel about coal. Let the Word Bank know that we don't want its dirty loan - click below to sign the petition today:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/no_eskom_coal_loan/?vl
The Bank is right to recognize South Africa's energy needs, but this loan would be putting money in the wrong place. Instead of dirty coal, South Africa needs energy efficiency and clean, renewable sources of power that people who most need it can actually afford. If this loan is approved, South Africans will pay for it several-fold -- in meteoric electricity rates, missed clean energy investments, polluted air, destroyed land, and the warming earth on which we live.
Eskom has paid lip-service to the environmental costs of this plant, touting its compatibility with scientifically unfounded carbon capture technology. But the best way to reduce coal's massive carbon impact is to leave it in the ground!
Dozens of South African environmental, community, church, labour, academic and women's organizations, representing a diverse, unified voice have mobilized to stop the loan. But every voice counts in these last days before the World Bank vote. Act now -- sign the petition opposing the loan:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/no_eskom_coal_loan/?vl
With hope,
Ben, Paul, Graziela, David, Alice, Ricken, and the whole Avaaz team
More information --
NGO Response to the World Bank panel report and Fact Sheet
http://www.groundwork.org.za/Publications/EskomFinalDocs/ResponsetotheWorldBankpanelreportandFactSheet.pdf
Original World Bank Fact Sheet
http://www.groundwork.org.za/Publications/EskomFinalDocs/WBEskomloanfactsheet.pdf
Eskom Tariff Hikes Slammed
http://allafrica.com/stories/201002250561.html
World Bank to Consider $4 Billion Loan Application From Eskom
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601116&sid=aGkhG0hBKlrE
SAfrica grants Eskom 24.8 pct price rise for 2010/11
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSWEB199720100224?type=marketsNews