Captain Future's Log

Solar Storm Clouds Ahead

It's a big story, even if Keay Davidson at the San Francisco Chronicle is one of the few who noticed it. A group of scientists from NASA, the National Science Foundation, the National Center for Atmospheric Research and other agencies announced that the earth is about to be bombarded by radiation from the sun, in what may be the most intense sunspot cycle since the 1950s.

Computer models show it could begin as early as this year, but almost certainly will peak in 2012. This intense period typically lasts 11 years. This radiation can disrupt electrical power, radio and microwaves, knock satellites and spacecraft out of orbit, and bathe certain areas of the upper atmosphere with radiation at potentially dangerous levels.

If all this proves out, there are a couple of aspects that will be different this time than in the 1950s or the 1700s, the last time it was nearly this intense. The first is the rise of microwave and satellite communication, and our growing dependence on them. Much of the onrush into this dependence has been without planned redundancy (systems that will work when they don't), although there is some redundancy still existing just from inertia (i.e. people like me who still use land line telephones. However, satellites are often still involved. )

But severe sun spot activity could disrupt--could maybe even fry--cell phones, satellite links and global GPS. No one knows how bad it could get, because the current level of radio and microwave dependence is new. There was nothing like it in the 1950s.

As for satellites, the weaker solar storms of the 1970s are suspected to have forced the U.S. Skylab space station to fall out of orbit prematurely.

The second factor that to my knowledge no one is yet considering is the chemical makeup of the atmosphere, especially in terms of greenhouse gases and ozone depletion. Whether anyone has actually considered this chemistry or its possible effects, it is another difference from the last intense solar storm period.

In a sane society, people would be thinking about this, planning ahead. But then, our leaders apparently don't believe in a global phenomenon that is already well underway. What chance do we have of getting ahead of one that's yet to come?

The difference could be that people now making money might lose money if they don't plan ahead for the solar storms. Whereas in the case of global heating, the people who might make money from building the technology and infrastructure necessary to begin dealing with it, may not be the people making the big money now. Why they don't seem to want to be the businesses of the future is yet another mystery.