Lawrence Joseph on "Severe Space Weather Events

[silverguru]

a group of NASA-assembled researchers described "Severe Space Weather
Events a chilling report issued earlier this year on the destructive
potential of solar storms.

Entitled "Severe Space Weather Events — Understanding Societal and
Economic Impacts," it describes the consequences of solar flares
unleashing waves of energy that could disrupt Earth’s magnetic field,
overwhelming high-voltage transformers with vast electrical currents
and short-circuiting energy grids. Such a catastrophe would cost the
United States "$1 trillion to $2 trillion in the first year,"
concluded the panel, and "full recovery could take 4 to 10 years."
That would, of course, be just a fraction of global damages.

Good-bye, civilization.

Worse yet, the next period of intense solar activity is expected in
2012, and coincides with the presence of an unusually large hole in
Earth’s geomagnetic shield. But the report received relatively little
attention, perhaps because of 2012’s supernatural connotations. Mayan
astronomers supposedly predicted that 2012 would mark the calamitous
"birth of a new era."

Whether the Mayans were on to something, or this is all just a
chilling coincidence, won’t be known for several years. But according
to Lawrence Joseph, author of "Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific
Investigation into Civilization’s End," "I’ve been following this
topic for almost five years, and it wasn’t until the report came out
that this really began to freak me out."

Wired.com talked to Joseph about the possibility of geomagnetic
apocalypse — and how to stop it.

Read the whole article here.

Wired.com: Do you think it’s coincidence that the Mayans predicted
apocalypse on the exact date when astronomers say the sun will next
reach a period of maximum turbulence?

Lawrence Joseph: I have enormous respect for Mayan astronomers. It
disinclines me to dismiss this as a coincidence. But I recommend
people verify that the Mayans prophesied what people say they did. I
went to Guatemala and spent a week with two Mayan shamans who spent 20
years talking to other shamans about the prophecies. They confirmed
that the Maya do see 2012 as a great turning point. Not the end of the
world, not the great off-switch in the sky, but the birth of the fifth
age.

Wired.com: Isn’t a great off-switch in the sky exactly what’s
described in the report?

Joseph: The chair of the NASA workshop was Dan Baker at the Laboratory
for Atmospheric and Space Physics. Some of his comments, and the
comments he approved in the report, are very strong about the
potential connection between coronal mass ejections and power grids
here on Earth. There’s a direct relationship between how
technologically sophisticated a society is and how badly it could be
hurt. That’s the meta-message of the report.

I had the good fortune last week to meet with John Kappenman at
MetaTech. He took me through a meticulous two-hour presentation about
just how vulnerable the power grid is, and how it becomes more
vulnerable as higher voltages are sent across it. He sees it as a big
antenna for space weather outbursts.

Wired.com: Why is it so vulnerable?

Joseph: Ultra-high voltage transformers become more finicky as energy
demands are greater. Around 50 percent already can’t handle the
current they’re designed for. A little extra current coming in at odd
times can slip them over the edge.

The ultra-high voltage transformers, the 500,000- and 700,000-kilovolt
transformers, are particularly vulnerable. The United States uses more
of these than anyone else. China is trying to implement some million-
kilovolt transformers, but I’m not sure they’re online yet.

Kappenman also points out that when the transformers blow, they can’t
be fixed in the field. They often can’t be fixed at all. Right now
there’s a one- to three-year lag time between placing an order and
getting a new one.

According to Kappenman, there’s an as-yet-untested plan for inserting
ground resistors into the power grid. It makes the handling a little
more complicated, but apparently isn’t anything the operators can’t
handle. I’m not sure he’d say these could be in place by 2012, as it’s
difficult to establish standards, and utilities are generally
regulated on a state-by-state basis. You’d have quite a legal thicket.
But it still might be possible to get some measure of protection in by
the next solar climax.

Wired.com: Why can’t we just shut down the grid when we see a storm
coming, and start it up again afterwards?

Joseph: Power grid operators now rely on one satellite calledACE,
which sits about a million miles out from Earth in what’s called the
gravity well, the balancing point between sun and earth. It was
designed to run for five years. It’s 11 years old, is losing steam,
and there are no plans to replace it.

ACE provides about 15 to 45 minutes of heads-up to power plant
operators if something’s coming in. They can shunt loads, or shut
different parts of the grid. But to just shut the grid off and restart
it is a $10 billion proposition, and there is lots of resistance to
doing so. Many times these storms hit at the north pole, and don’t
move south far enough to hit us. It’s a difficult call to make, and
false alarms really piss people off. Lots of money is lost and damage
incurred. But in Kappenman’s view, and in lots of others, this time
burnt could really mean burnt.

Wired.com: Do you live your life differently now?

Joseph: I’ve been following this topic for almost five years. It
wasn’t until the report came out that it began to freak me out.

Up until this point, I firmly believed that the possibility of 2012
being catastrophic in some way was worth investigating. The report
made it a little too real. That document can’t be ignored. And it was
even written before the THEMIS satellite discovered a gigantic hole
in Earth’s magnetic shield. Ten or twenty times more particles are
coming through this crack than expected. And astronomers predict that
the way the sun’s polarity will flip in 2012 will make it point
exactly the way we don’t want it to in terms of evading Earth’s
magnetic field. It’s an astonoshingly bad set of coincidences.

http://www.apocalypse2012.org/blog/