Solar storm
Credit: NASA
Our planet is due to be hit with a powerful solar storm, an event that happens about once every hundred years. New research shows that losses from the ensuing blackouts could total $41.5 billion per day in the US alone, including nearly $7 billion lost in trade.
A study published in Space Weather shows that a sufficiently powerful solar storms is capable of throwing the American economy into utter turmoil by knocking out the transformers required to transmit electricity throughout the nation’s power grids. Depending on the severity of the solar blast, the daily economic cost would be in the tens of billions of dollars, with more than half of those losses coming from indirect costs beyond immediately stricken regions.
Solar storms are space weather events in which the sun, via coronal mass ejections (CMEs), spews any number of nasties our way, including x-rays, charged particles, and magnetized plasma. Our high-tech civilization is becoming increasingly vulnerable to the effects of these storms, which have the potential to […]
This is a very real threat that is being irresponsibly ignored by government and utilities. The military has hardened their assets, but it is clear – by the fact that we know our grid can be protected by spending a few billion dollars on modifications- that the US government and its regulated manopoly utility companies do not care about the grid or the people who depend on it for physical survival. They are more worried about spending money on wars, war toys and profits than protecting our critical transformers. Kudos to Stephan for raising this issue.
Since I presume readers who have found the Schwartz Report are in general both caring and very thoughful intelligent individuals, I’d like to ask if anyone is familiar with Ed Dane’s RV predictions regarding solar storms hitting the earth? I typically stick to more analytical material regarding this subject, but it is such a serious topic and we know for a fact that powerful storms hit the earth multiple times in not distant past. Just wondering if Dane is simply selling fear or has serious material that parallels with other RV practitioners. I feel silly asking so I will ask forgiveness in advance. I am not asking for character assessment, just viewpoints concerning the reliability or repeatability of data concerning RV solar storms. Thanks.