God will not allow it....

Update April 2014 -

The post below was written in a half-joking tone but with the intent of presenting facts about the coming solar storms predicted for 2012.  At the time this was written all major news outlets ignored the potential of a massive disruption of our electric and electronic's grid as just more of the junk pandered about by the Mayan calendar folks. 

We never adhered to the Mayan stuff, but saw clearly there there were other events that were of possible significance.  The solar storms predicted long before 2012 were one such event.

As scientist have now had time to look at the data from those storms their conclusion are much in line with what some of the "nuts" were saying as far back as 2006.

According to the UC Berkeley NewsCenter:

According to researchers from UC Berkeley and China, a rapid succession of coronal mass ejections — the most intense eruptions on the sun — sent a pulse of magnetized plasma barreling into space and through Earth’s orbit. Had the eruption come nine days earlier, when the ignition spot on the solar surface was aimed at Earth, it would have hit the planet, potentially wreaking havoc with the electrical grid, disabling satellites and GPS, and disrupting our increasingly electronic lives.

RT summed it up best

Citizens of Earth had no idea how close the planet was to getting slammed with a devastating solar flare back in July 2012, but scientists claim we only missed the damaging event by nine days. 

As noted by Reuters, scientists found that a series of coronal mass ejections – powerful eruptions on the sun’s surface that send waves of magnetized plasma through the solar system – occurred last year sometime between July 22 and 23. The blasts traveled through Earth’ orbit, but narrowly missed colliding with the planet.

Nine days - none of the major news outlets covered this, no respected scientist at the time could say with certainty that the two events required to create the perfect storm would occur 12 months or 12 minutes apart - but the data and facts were there to show that the two events would occur ad would occur near each other AND if they coincided it would be devastating.

Does anyone really use the term "conspiracy theorist" anymore as if it is a negative term?

____________original post below

The title of this post are five words I wrote in a recent post and I have been wondering...
 (and as a caveat I am not a die-hard advocate of the 2012 scare. I think there is plenty on the world to be afraid of without relying on an old Mayan calendar...)


Joshua reminded me of something I think often about.  Specifically what is the real deal with all this sun talk I read about on "wacky" websites and where are these people getting their ideas...and what does it mean?

March 10, 2006 via NASA

It's official: Solar minimum has arrived. Sunspots have all but vanished. Solar flares are nonexistent. The sun is utterly quiet.

Like the quiet before a storm.

This week researchers announced that a storm is coming--the most intense solar maximum in fifty years. The prediction comes from a team led by Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). "The next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the previous one," she says. If correct, the years ahead could produce a burst of solar activity second only to the historic Solar Max of 1958.

09 Jan 2009 via WMD

The sun is currently near minimum on its 11-year activity cycle, the report explains, but is expected to produce solar storms that will increase in intensity and frequency as it approaches peak activity levels in 2012.

The NASA report warns that if the sun's activity over the next few years flares to the level of the May 1921 "superstorm" or the so-called Carrington event of 1859, a "perfect storm" that Space.com called "the most powerful onslaught of solar energy in recorded history," the U.S. may not be equipped to handle the damages.

"The impacts of severe space weather events," the report states, "can go beyond disruption of existing technical systems and lead to short-term, as well as to long-term collateral socioeconomic disruptions."

17 Apr 2009 via Wired

For scary speculation about the end of civilization in 2012, people usually turn to followers of cryptic Mayan prophecy, not scientists. But that’s exactly what a group of NASA-assembled researchers described in 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."

17 Jun 2010 via Findtut 

The Perfect Solar storm, a scary one

"A grim possibility awaits, in the near future.  A huge monster in the form of the perfect solar storm may be stirring and it is imperative people all over wake up and take notice."

There are more, many many more of course but this presents the idea. Of course Earth and the Sun have experienced all of this before, through the same cycles that are now being observed.  The difference is the amount of and our reliance upon technology.  Perhaps this will end up to be all about nothing. After all the large coronal hole that appeared on the sun with those fantastic pictures posted on Space Weather.com did not produce the solar wind effects that some scientist predicted. This occurred on or about 6 Jun 2010.  I expected, at the least, to see some mention of massive auroras, perhaps seen in some southern latitudes.  But I have found no such mention of even that effect.

There are some that see real effects happening.  I intentionally did not include the items I have recently read that attempt to show cause and effect because I question the reliability of the observer. 

However even as late as early Jun 2010 it seems NASA is still interested in discussing this openly:

via NASA news

June 4, 2010: Earth and space are about to come into contact in a way that's new to human history. To make preparations, authorities in Washington DC are holding a meeting: The Space Weather Enterprise Forum at the National Press Club on June 8th

Richard Fisher, head of NASA's Heliophysics Division, explains what it's all about:

"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. 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."

The National Academy of Sciences framed the problem two years ago in a landmark report entitled "Severe Space Weather Events—Societal and Economic Impacts." It noted how people of the 21st-century rely on high-tech systems for the basics of daily life. Smart power grids, GPS navigation, air travel, financial services and emergency radio communications can all be knocked out by intense solar activity. A century-class solar storm, the Academy warned, could cause twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina.

What is this all about?  Is this NASA's version of "never let a crisis go without taking advantage of it".  Could this just be hyper-scare tactics to secure funding.  I would not put such past any government official.  Perhaps this is just nothing more than hot air and those that want to believe in the 2012 predictions are too willing to swallow it.


Then again...maybe not.  I think it is worthwhile to keep an eye on, to see what stories make it in circulation and what facts add up.  


I am reminded of  The Road - a chilling novel by Cormac McCarthy (2006) and an equally chilling movie released in 2009.  My assumption, because you are never told what happened to the Earth, is that something akin to massive solar flares were to blame.


If there is any truth to what the Mayans believed, then I think were ought to see more signs of it before then - if that is in any way related to solar activity. If is is all bunk, well I think we will figure that out too in short order..