I got the June issue of National Geographic and read in it about Solar Storms and an upcoming maximum in 2012-2014 might occur with heavy solar storms. When there will be a soloar storm like the 1859 'Carrington' event, the society and economy will probably be in jeopardy.
Here the online edition.
Power outages for weeks, satellites (including GPS) which do not function properly. This will affect air travel, supermarkets cannot be supplied, cars can only drive until their gasoline tank is finished as gas stations require power, money transactions and ATMs cannot be done, etc.etc. There are no backups for this. Worse when it is winter in Europe and North America which is way colder than in Australia, heating does not work (except people who have a wood stove like me).
Internet will be very slow and many sites are offline and you can forget about cloud computing.
Dependancy on technology is a big issue and nearly nobody realizes this.
One positive point: in downtown SYD and MEL you can see NELM 6.x or Bortle scal 1 or 2 skies ....
Don't misunderstand me I am a tech geek, I like technology but I don't like the way the societymakes itself so dependant on it.
Some small scale examples:
- Modern cars have electric windows and cannot be controlled anymore without power . Why ? We have muscles.
- Central heating systems in EU and US are gas fired but the electronics require electricity. Why not a small emergency generator run on gas to power the (low power) electronics in it ?
- Air conditioning requires a lot of (fossil) energy and is used in countries with lots of sunshine and heat. Why not an absorbsion cooler which runs on heat ? That means: the hotter / more sun, the harder the A/C runs.
Yes i know MONEY .
But a large scale solar storm and large power outages costs even more $$$$.
What are your ideas ?
