intuitive fred888

Rich Americans Ditch Home Ownership For Renting

2012-02-02T13:02:00.000-08:00

begin quote:
The demand is also being seen in Marin County, right across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco.
Last year, the phones at Foundation Rentals & Relocation office were ringing constantly with high-end homeowners wanting to rent property that they couldn't sell, but no one was interested in renting them.
Now the firm is getting calls from executives, especially in the technology sector, looking to move into a rental.
"They're entrepreneurs. They would rather put their cash in their business," says Darcy Barrow, who founded the firm with her husband Christopher Barrow.
"And get a greater return," adds Christopher. end quote from:
Rich Americans Ditch Home Ownership For Renting

However, for people who own their homes or condos or estates outright and only need to pay utilities and taxes to keep their homes the outcome might be very different. However, if you are buying a house with a mortgage this might make sense especially if you are an entrepreneur and and can make much better money elsewhere rather than putting money into a home, condo or estate.

Householder Yogi

2012-02-02T10:18:00.000-08:00

In my late teens and early 20s when I was designing my life and what I would do with it I asked myself a question: "How can I help all life on earth and beyond the most efficiently during this lifetime?" I received my answer when I read "Autobiography of a Yogi" by Paramahansa Yogananda who is a man, trained as a Swami in India and who originally came to the U.S. in 1914 and became very famous on the west Coast in places like Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco between then to around 1950 when he passed away. I learned through reading this book about a concept I had never heard before called "Householder Yogi" which basically means that as a husband or wife and/or father (or mother) and married with children, you use your marriage and family as your discipline in attaining enlightenment for the betterment of yourself and all beings. This seemed the most balanced way to go as long as your spouse would be supportive to your discipline and your yoga. The basic concept goes like this: Yoga means "To Yoke" or one's discipline. Now, you could consider washing dishes and clothes and taking the best care possible of your spouse and children a discipline. I had remembered many past lifetimes of being single and sometimes celibate and mostly I found this interfered with how far one could progress as a being. Somehow it is much more balanced to move forward as a householder yogi. This was my thought then and it is still my experience and belief. The primary problem of moving forward alone is maintaining physical, mental, and spiritual balance throughout one's hopefully long life. I attribute one of the many reasons that I am alive and well still at age 63 is that my family has always been there with me just like I have always been there for them as long as that was also their wish. In moving forward in this way I have found my forward progress "Oceanic" in nature. I have found it much easier to make quantum jumps in consciousness with the stability of my family around me when things were working well. And even when there have been problems of one sort or another I have found these problems also lead me to various types of enlightenment as well by persevering to solutions to all problems one at a time or sometimes many at a time.

So, I'm sharing this concept with you because it has always worked for me in good times and bad and everything in between. Good Luck!

Note: For me and many others enlightenment is not just spiritual in nature. It is also in regard to all aspects of life and learning from conception both in the womb to the end of one's life. So, enlightenment is about the desire to understand everything in the universe. As much as God and Life will allow us to know in a useful helpful way for all beings including ourselves and our families.

Questions answered about the Sun

2012-02-01T22:44:00.000-08:00

The first question is: "Is the Sun made of plasma and liquid and Gases?

The first state is a solid and it is the coldest state of matter. As we heat up a solid it becomes liquid. Liquid is the second state of matter. As we heat up liquid, the liquid turns to gas. Gas is the third state of matter. As we heat up the gas, atoms break apart into charged particles turning the gas into plasma. This is not the same type of plasma that is found in your blood: same name, different stuff.

The Sun's plasma is so hot that the most energetic charged particles can escape from the Sun's gravity and fly away, out into space. We call this plasma the solar wind because it blows out away from the Sun and past the planets, interacting with their magnetic fields and/or atmospheres. Along with the solar wind comes the Sun's magnetic field, which reaches from the Sun out to past Pluto and Neptune. end quote from: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/themis/auroras/sun_earth_connect.html

How often does the sun spin on its axis?

For the answer to this question click on the above word button.

So, we find that the Sun is both Plasma and superheated gases. And we find that it takes 25.05 days to rotate at its equator but it takes 34.3 days to rotate at the poles because it is plasma and not a liquid or a solid and so it behaves differently than those two forms of matter as it rotates at different speeds. The way it moves is easier for me to think about if I combine the attributes of both wind and water to some degree to allow for how different parts of the sun rotate in my own imagination. Maybe the closest to plasma is watching videos of lava flow down a mountain or out into the sea at a place like Kilauea on the big Island of Hawaii. I think that might be the most similar natural thing on earth we have to the sun, flowing lava.

Pfizer's Birth control mix up could cause pregnancy

2012-02-01T12:12:00.000-08:00

Pfizer's Birth Control Pill Mix Up Could Cause Unintended Pregnancies

Women taking two types of birth control pills made by the drug manufacturer Pfizer may be at risk for unintended pregnancies because of a packaging screwup.
The pharmaceutical manufacturer recalled nearly 1 million birth control pills after realizing that some of the placebo pills were placed within the daily active pill cycle.
For more on this story, watch World News with Diane Sawyer tonight at 6:30p.m. EST
Pfizer recalled certain lots of the pill Lo/Ovral-38 as well as lots of the generic version norgestrel and ethinyl estradiol tablets. The affected packets have expiration dates ranging between July 31, 2013, and March 31, 2014, and the lot numbers are located on Pfizer's website.
"Consumers exposed to affected packaging should begin using a non-hormonal form of contraception immediately," according to a public statement released by Pfizer. end quote from above word button

83 die of Snow in Serbia

2012-02-01T11:37:00.000-08:00

Helicopters rescue Europeans stranded by snow

By DUSAN STOJANOVIC and MARIA DANILOVA | Associated Press – 21 mins ago

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Rescue helicopters evacuated dozens of people from snow-blocked villages in Serbia and Bosnia and air-lifted in emergency food and medicine as a severe cold spell kept Eastern Europe in its icy grip.

The death toll from the cold rose to 83 on Wednesday and emergency crews worked overtime as temperatures sank to minus 32.5 C (minus 26.5 F) in some areas.

Parts of the Black Sea froze near the Romanian coastline and the rare snow fell on Croatian islands in the Adriatic Sea. In Bulgaria, 16 towns recorded their lowest temperatures since records started 100 years ago as four more people were reported dead from hypothermia.

In central Serbia, choppers pulled out 12 people, including nine who went to a funeral but then could not get back over icy, snow-choked roads. Two more people froze to death in the snow and two others are missing, bringing that nation's death toll to five.

"The situation is dramatic, the snow is up to five meters (16 1/2 feet) high in some areas, you can only see rooftops," said Dr. Milorad Dramacanin, who participated in the helicopter evacuations. end quote.

So, though we have a lack of snow in California in the Sierras, in Serbia and Japan they have way too much and people are dying. But likely we will see a lot more of this everywhere on earth with extremes both high and low of temperatures, as well as extremes of drought and rain and snow other places. Though the average temperature on earth is rising it also creates more chaotic and unpredictable changes in the weather in all directions as the basic temperature rises here on earth.

Over 50 people have died from Snow in Japan

2012-02-01T11:29:00.000-08:00

http://news.yahoo.com/video/world-15749633/japan-braces-for-more-snow-28156676.html

Most of the 50 people died while on their roofs pushing the snow off before their roofs collapsed. When they fell into the snow and weren't rescued they froze to death. By falling into the 10 or 12 feet of snow on the ground it would be sort of like falling into an avalanche. You wouldn't be able to move and unless someone heard you there would be a good chance of either freezing to death or not being able to breathe in that much snow. I suppose people could wear snow shoes but that might be counter productive because they would also make people slip off the roofs and into the snow more as well. So, as you can see that much snow is very dangerous and unpredictable. Likely the best bet would be to work always with two people one on the roof and one spotting on the ground so they could call for help in a real emergency.

73% think truth has been covered up regarding Kennedy Assassination

2012-02-01T11:14:00.000-08:00

POLL

Do you believe JFK was killed by one shooter?

Yes, there was no conspiracy.

27%
No, the truth's been covered up.

73%

79,436 votes

Long-lost tape sheds light on assassination
end quote from Yahoo.com

I am one of those who believes the truth has always been covered up. Though it likely was covered up for very very good reasons, still, we may never know the full truth.

Here are some of the many reasons people don't believe what they have been told:
1. The deal to never attack Castro as long as he was alive between the U.S. Government, the Soviet Union and Castro in Cuba.
2. Jack Ruby's ties with the Mafia when he shot Oswald and then was killed in jail soon afterwards.
3. Joseph Kennedy's enemies in the Mafia from Prohibition times.
4. Oswald's wife from the Soviet Union and his love for Communism and his time spent in the Soviet Union.
5. The motivation of Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev for assassinating Kennedy for making a fool of him during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And of what happened to Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev soon after Kennedy was assassinated.

All of these many things and many many more leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth. Of all the people I have met who actually lived through those times I have yet to meet even one that believed we were told the truth about what actually happened to Kennedy and of who actually did it and of what the motivations actually were by the planners of Kennedy's assassination.

However, I also believe that likely what we were told was an alternative to a Global Nuclear War. And if that was the primary motivation then likely that was a good enough reason for the people of the world to be lied to so completely.

Greece likely will be first to exit Eurozone

2012-02-01T10:44:00.000-08:00

Despite the huge sums of money being pumped in by the ECB through its short-term bond buying programme, economists yesterday said Greece was beyond rescue and it is in its own interests — as well as that of other southern European countries — to default and take a break from the common currency until its economic health is restored.

Fatherless Children

2012-02-01T10:07:00.000-08:00

Though children raised only by their mother might be nurtured properly growing up and often have healthy adulthoods, it should be noted that because of growing up without a father in the house that the tendency is to get pregnant or marry very early for girls and for boys who grow up without a father, there is a tendency for them to get into a whole lot more trouble than boys who grow up with fathers and a higher instance of boys without fathers going to jail at some point in their lives.

Since my father was always there since before birth and since many if not most of my friends growing up came from broken homes, I felt very fortunate growing up to have my father always there, even though in my teens at times I was too troubled to fully appreciate him at the time. In my case my father kept me out of a lot of trouble that I could have gotten into by setting boundaries. I still had a lot of freedom but freedom within certain bounds which made my life and future a fortunate one in the end.

There is one instance that if you have been reading a lot of my blogs you will recognize that typifies the boundaries he set. I was 15 and pretty headstrong and already 6 foot 1 and my father was 6 feet 2 1/2 inches tall. One night while my father was taking a shower I came into the bathroom and told him I wanted to go to a party. He didn't like the idea and told me I couldn't go. I got very angry and drove my fist through the glass shower door. He proceeded to get out of the shower area and grabbed me by the back of my neck and pushed my face into the bathroom carpet and said forcefully, "If you to that again I will kill you!" This was one of the best things that happened to me in my teen years. Though I was upset this kind of boundary setting kept my path forward and not into ruin. The next thing my father did for me was to prevent me being drafted into the Army and sent to Viet Nam. I was ashamed that I had had childhood epilepsy and never spoke about it to anyone as my father forbade it. So, when my draft card arrived when I was 18 my father called me at my private school then in my senior year in Santa Fe, New Mexico from our home in Glendale, California to tell me how to fill out the papers for my draft card. So, I did as he said. When I returned home to California for the summer he took me to my doctor that had treated me for Childhood epilepsy and I got a 4F classification, which basically meant at that time that I would never be called up for active duty unless our country was attacked in an all out war.
Both these situations allowed me to grow up and have a good future. I did not have the presence of mind at 15 or even 18 to have covered myself to this degree to be safe in my life. This is often what having a father might mean in one's life. My best friend in high school did not have the luxury of a father. Instead he went to college and got a jet engine repair certificate and joined the Air Force so he wouldn't be drafted and spent his time in Thailand and Texas maintaining fighter jets during the Viet Nam War. When he came back his mother had moved to Santa Barbara and my parents had moved to San Diego. When I was 21 after about 6 months in the Hollywood Hills staying with my Aunt who had a great pool there at her house and about half of that time in Venice, California I moved in with my parents in San Diego so I could more easily afford college. My friend and I didn't ever meet up until I found his email address when we were in our 40s. He was working for the Post Office then. Though I met his wife and my friend and I climbed up to Vernal Falls in Yosemite, he did not seem like his old self. Something was wrong, I could tell. Last year he died from Early Alzheimer's at age 63. His life could have been so very much better if he had a father there for him. I likely have another 20 years or more to live. I was fortunate to have a father always there for me.

The Cathars of France: 12th to 15th Century

2012-02-01T08:55:00.000-08:00

begin quote from Wikipedia on heading "Catharism"
Catharism (from Greek: καθαρὀς, katharos, pure)^[1] was a name given to a Christian religious movement with dualistic and gnostic elements that appeared in the Languedoc region of France and other parts of Europe in the 11th century and flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries. Catharism had its roots in the Paulician movement in Armenia and the Bogomils of Bulgaria which took influences from the Paulicians. Though the term "Cathar" has been used for centuries to identify the movement, whether the movement identified itself with this name is debatable.^[2] In Cathar texts, the terms "Good Men" (Bons Hommes) or "Good Christians" are the common terms of self-identification.

Origins

The Cathars' beliefs are thought to have come originally from Eastern Europe and the Byzantine Empire by way of trade routes. The name of Bulgarians (Bougres) was also applied to the Albigenses, and they maintained an association with the similar Christian movement of the Bogomils ("Friends of God") of Thrace. "That there was a substantial transmission of ritual and ideas from Bogomilism to Catharism is beyond reasonable doubt."^[3] Their doctrines have numerous resemblances to those of the Bogomils and the earlier Paulicians as well as the Manicheans and the Christian Gnostics of the first few centuries AD, although, as many scholars, most notably Mark Pegg, have pointed out, it would be erroneous to extrapolate direct, historical connections based on theoretical similarities perceived by modern scholars. It is likely that we have only a partial view of their beliefs, because the writings of the Cathars were mostly destroyed due to the doctrinal threat perceived by the Papacy; much of our existing knowledge of the Cathars is derived from their opponents. Conclusions about Cathar ideology continue to be fiercely debated with commentators regularly accusing their opponents of speculation, distortion and bias. There are a few texts from the Cathars themselves which were preserved by their opponents (the Rituel Cathare de Lyon) which give a glimpse of the inner workings of their faith, but these still leave many questions unanswered. One large text which has survived, The Book of Two Principles (Liber de duobus principiis),^[4] elaborates the principles of dualistic theology from the point of view of some of the Albanenses Cathars.
It is now generally agreed by most scholars that identifiable Catharism did not emerge until at least 1143, when the first confirmed report of a group espousing similar beliefs is reported being active at Cologne by the cleric Eberwin of Steinfeld.^[5] A landmark in the "institutional history" of the Cathars was the Council, held in 1167 at Saint-Félix-Lauragais, attended by many local figures and also by the Bogomil papa Nicetas, the Cathar bishop of (northern) France and a leader of the Cathars of Lombardy.
The Cathars were largely a homegrown, Western European/Latin Christian phenomenon, springing up in the Rhineland cities (particularly Cologne) in the mid-12th century, northern France around the same time, and particularly southern France—the Languedoc—and the northern Italian cities in the mid-late 12th century. In the Languedoc and northern Italy, the Cathars would enjoy their greatest popularity, surviving in the Languedoc, in much reduced form, up to around 1325 and in the Italian cities until the Inquisitions of the 1260s–1300s finally rooted them out.^[6]

General beliefs

Cathars, in general, formed an anti-sacerdotal party in opposition to the Catholic Church, protesting against what they perceived to be the moral, spiritual and political corruption of the Church. They claimed an Apostolic succession from the founders of Christianity, and saw Rome as having betrayed and corrupted the original purity of the message, particularly since Pope Sylvester I accepted the Donation of Constantine (which at the time was believed to be genuine).

... they usually say of themselves that they are good Christians, ... hold the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ and his gospel as the apostles taught ... occupy the place of the apostles.... ...they talk to the laity of the evil lives of the clerks and prelates of the Roman Church... ... they attack and vituperate, in turn, all the sacraments of the Church, especially the sacrament of the eucharist, saying that it cannot contain the body of Christ... Of baptism, they assert that the water is material and corruptible ... and cannot sanctify the soul... ... they claim that confession made to the priests of the Roman Church is useless... They assert, moreover, that the cross of Christ should not be adored or venerated... Moreover they read from the Gospels and the Epistles in the vulgar tongue, applying and expounding them in their favour and against the condition of the Roman Church...
— Bernard Gui, On the Albigensians Sacred texts

Besides the New Testament, it has been alleged that Cathar sacred texts include The Gospel of the Secret Supper, or John's Interrogation^[7] and The Book of the Two Principles. Sacraments
In sharp contrast to the traditional Catholic church, the Cathars had a single sacrament, the Consolamentum, or Consolation. It involved a brief spiritual ceremony to remove all sin from the credente, or believer, and induct them into the next higher level as a Perfect.^[8] Unlike the Catholic sacrament of Confession, the Consolamentum could be taken only once.
Thus it has been alleged that many credentes would eventually receive the consolamentum as death drew near—performing the ritual of liberation at a moment when the heavy obligations of purity required of Perfecti would be temporally short. Some of those who received the sacrament of the consolamentum upon their death-beds may thereafter have shunned further food or drink in order to speed death. This has been termed the endura.^[9] It was claimed by Catharism's opponents that by such self-imposed starvation, the Cathars were committing suicide in order to escape this world. Other than at such moments of extremis, little evidence exists to suggest this was a common Cathar practice.^[10]

Theology

It has been alleged that the Catharist concept of Jesus resembled nontrinitarian modalistic monarchianism (Sabellianism) in the West and adoptionism in the East.^[11]^[12]
Bernard of Clairvaux's biographer and other sources accuse some Cathars of Arianism,^[13]^[14] and some scholars see Cathar Christology as having traces of earlier Arian roots.^[15]^[16] According to some of their contemporary enemies Cathars did not accept the Trinitarian understanding of Jesus, but considered him the human form of an angel similar to Docetic Christology.^[17] Zoé Oldenbourg (2000) compared the Cathars to "Western Buddhists" because she considered that their view of the doctrine of "resurrection" taught by Jesus was, in fact, similar to the Buddhist doctrine of reincarnation.^[18]

Social relationships

Killing was abhorrent to the Cathars. Consequently, abstention from all animal food (sometimes exempting fish) was enjoined of the Perfecti. The Perfecti apparently avoided eating anything considered to be a by-product of sexual reproduction.^[8] War and capital punishment were also condemned, an abnormality in the Medieval age. As a consequence of their rejection of oaths, Cathars also rejected marriage vows.

Organization

It has been alleged that the Cathar Church of the Languedoc had a relatively flat structure, distinguishing between perfecti (a term they did not use, instead bonhommes) and credentes.^[8] By about 1140 liturgy and a system of doctrine had been established.^[19] It created a number of bishoprics, first at Albi around 1165 (hence the term Albigensians^[20]) and after the 1167 Council at Saint-Félix-Lauragais sites at Toulouse, Carcassonne, and Agen, so that four bishoprics were in existence by 1200.^[8]^[19]^[21]^[22] In about 1225, during a lull in the Albigensian Crusade, the bishopric of Razes was added. Bishops were supported by their two assistants: a filius maior (typically the successor) and a filius minor, who were further assisted by deacons.^[23] The perfecti were the spiritual elite, highly respected by many of the local people, leading a life of austerity and charity.^[8]^[20] In the apostolic fashion they ministered to the people and traveled in pairs.^[8]

Suppression

In 1147, Pope Eugene III sent a legate to the Cathar district in order to arrest the progress of the Cathars. The few isolated successes of Bernard of Clairvaux could not obscure the poor results of this mission, which clearly showed the power of the sect in the Languedoc at that period. The missions of Cardinal Peter of St. Chrysogonus to Toulouse and the Toulousain in 1178, and of Henry of Marcy, cardinal-bishop of Albano, in 1180–81, obtained merely momentary successes. Henry's armed expedition, which took the stronghold at Lavaur, did not extinguish the movement.
Decisions of Catholic Church councils—in particular, those of the Council of Tours (1163) and of the Third Council of the Lateran (1179)—had scarcely more effect upon the Cathars. When Pope Innocent III came to power in 1198, he was resolved to deal with them.
At first Pope Innocent III allegedly tried pacific conversion, and sent a number of legates into the Cathar regions. They had to contend not only with the Cathars, the nobles who protected them, and the people who respected them, but also with many of the bishops of the region, who resented the considerable authority the Pope had conferred upon his legates. In 1204, Innocent III suspended a number of bishops in Occitania; in 1205 he appointed a new and vigorous bishop of Toulouse, the former troubadour Foulques. In 1206 Diego of Osma and his canon, the future Saint Dominic, began a programme of conversion in Languedoc; as part of this, Catholic-Cathar public debates were held at Verfeil, Servian, Pamiers, Montréal and elsewhere.
Saint Dominic met and debated the Cathars in 1203 during his mission to the Languedoc. He concluded that only preachers who displayed real sanctity, humility and asceticism could win over convinced Cathar believers. The official Church as a rule did not possess these spiritual warrants.^[24] His conviction led eventually to the establishment of the Dominican Order in 1216. The order was to live up to the terms of his famous rebuke, "Zeal must be met by zeal, humility by humility, false sanctity by real sanctity, preaching falsehood by preaching truth." However, even St. Dominic managed only a few converts among the Cathari. end quote from Wikipedia under the Heading "Catharism"

These people remind me of the movement which started in California towards healthy foods and healthy living and vegetarianism which began in the early 20th Century in places like Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco. It really began to become more of the norm in the 1960s and beyond and now has found its way into the culture around the world to a greater or lesser degree. It's amazing to me to find a movement like this flourising in Southern France in the 1200s to the 1500s when it mostly had to go underground when it was suppressed by the Catholic Church.

Since my father was one of those who became a vegetarian in 1934 because he didn't like the idea of the injections animals were given going into his body by eating the meat of that time. So, he studied with Paul Bragg who was a student of Bernard McFaddin. Paul Bragg was also the teacher of Jack LaLanne as well who started the movement of workout Gymns and promoted healthy food and organic foods until he passed away recently. He had an exercise show on from the 1950s on TV. From 1951 on and off and then continually from 1959 until 1985.

Also, their beliefs that war and capital punishment should be rejected and that all vows including marriage vows should be rejected to me is to be way ahead of their times. I think this movement is worth studying just because their ideas were so ahead of their times.

Though to me, marriage is important if you are having and raising children, I think this movement is amazing that it could exist in Europe anywhere during those times.

Computer Screens before bed prevent sleep cycle

2012-02-01T08:08:00.000-08:00

Both my wife and my son have told me that watching a computer monitor or LCD or Flat screen right before bed and trying to go to sleep isn't a good idea. If you want to sleep it is better to read a paper book or to listen to music. If you need to get enough sleep for work or school this might be important to know.

Almost 2900 heat records broken in U.S. last week

2012-02-01T06:58:00.000-08:00

Although most of these heat records were broken between Chicago and the East Coast of the United States, weather is very strange everywhere south of the Oregon border with California and all the way across the United States. On the news I believe the exact number of heat records broken was 2898 total as of last night. Here in California on the Northern California Coast we could be in a drought year. Since the end of Christmas there has only been one rain storm of any significance which also means only one rain storm of any significance since October before Christmas as well. So, only two real storms so far this rainy season. And I think Southern California is in even worse shape rain wise. Though this might all change in March which seems to be when we get the most wet weather the last few years. But the biggest difference is that there is no snow in the Sierras or Southern Cascades to speak of. Although this could change in February and March and April it is unlikely to stay cold enough for snow because snow in the mountains tends to create its own weather. But when it isn't there by now this might not work this year. This could be very problematic for California farmers and reduce the amount of crops that can be grown in California dramatically this year if things continue like this any longer. Without a good snow pack in the Sierras and Southern Cascades farmers will have their water rationed and many will not be allowed to grow crops because of worry of pumping up too much of the aquifer in the ground. If they pump too much water in drought years there won't be enough water for the people who live in the state to have come into their homes and businesses. So, even though a good snow pack now is unlikely, hopefully the rain comes through in February or March.

For example, right now in Heavenly there is about 35 inches of snow and in Mt. Shasta in the Southern Cascades it is about the same. There should be 7 to 12 feet of snow or more right now for this to be a normal year in both places. I have also seen 40 feet of snow or more at 8000 feet on Mt. Shasta and skied on it in an extreme snow year by March, April and May.

Obama wants schools to speed digital transition

2012-01-31T21:50:00.000-08:00

Obama wants schools to speed digital transition

Basically, if you click on the news word button above, Obama wants to convert to E-books from paper ones for all public schools in the U.S. Now, this would be a really good idea if it weren't for two basic things. The first potential problem is that we are in a heavy Coronal Mass Ejection Cycle and so it is remotely possible that everything electronic on earth or just some electronic things might not work anymore. Or, the second problem would be if there were a big enough EMP over the U.S. which could wipe out everything electrical including computers, and E-books and Ipads and smartphones. However, even if all this happened most books would remain and still be there to read that were paper. So, though I think it is a noble idea in peacetime, it might not be useful if there is some kind of war or magnetic storm generated by the sun. So, likely we need mostly e-books, but with enough paper copies so at the very least each teacher has a paper copy. So, a ratio of 1 paper book to 30 e-books would likely be good in case of potential emergencies.

Onboard Radar in Passenger Jets?

2012-01-31T21:26:00.000-08:00

Avionics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avionics

Military aircraft had become flying sensor platforms, and making large amounts of ... On-board communications are provided by public address systems and aircraft intercoms. .... The military uses radar in fast jets to help pilots fly at low levels. end quote from Google regarding Wikipedia and Avionics.

I have been researching lately CME's (Coronal Mass Ejections) from the sun and their effects on GPS satellites and co-ordinates worldwide. One of the things I found out is that often a GPS Satellite turns upside down during a magnetic storm when it thinks the poles have shifted during the storm. When it is in the wrong direction likely it cannot accurately send GPS information as a result of this. All GPS satellite positioning need three satellites to triangulate a position anywhere on earth within 3 feet in accuracy for hikers (with GPS devices), all cell phones on earth, planes, ships and some cars and trucks.

During last weeks Magnetic storm caused by a level 3 CME from the sun it was said that instead of 3 feet of accuracy GPS anywhere worldwide could have been reduced to within 30 feet accuracy instead of 3 feet. And I was thinking that during some IFR landings of passenger jets 30 feet just wouldn't be good enough. It also might not be good enough to dock a large ship in the fog in a port. So, I was thinking that passenger airliners might need their own radar on board that could tell them not only if they were near another aircraft but also how near the ground is when landing. Because scientists say we might be having up to one largish CME per month until the end of 2013. This potentially could save a lot of lives if passenger planes all had their own on-board radar for emergencies like when GPS fails for one reason or another or when pitot tubes freeze over and give incorrect airspeed indications. This becomes even more important when on autopilot when computers are flying the plane because computers might not be able to distinguish unusual changes or to know what to do with strange readings that may or may not be accurate thereby precipitating a real emergency.

Food Crisis Threatens Millions in Niger

2012-01-31T12:55:00.000-08:00

Food Crisis Threatens Millions in Niger

If you read the news article at the above word button you will read about how approximately 3 million people will possibly face starvation or death in Niger between now and August. The price of food has risen 25 to 35 percent and since there has been a major crop failure that helped precipitate this rise in the cost of food likely many will starve and die between now and when the next big set of crops are harvested in August. However, unless the weather is better for growing food that crop won't be there either.

M3.6 Solar Storm on Feb. 30th 2011

2012-01-31T12:12:00.000-08:00

Monster ProminenceCredit: NASA/SDONASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this view of a powerful M3.6 Class solar flare on Feb. 24, 2011 during a 90-minute sun storm. NASA scientists called the display a "monster prominence" that kicked up a huge plasma wave. end quote from:http://www.space.com/30-amazing-sun-photos-space.html The good thing about this storm was that it was NOT directed towards Earth. If it had been it would likely have been much worse than the storm last week which was directed at Earth and was a Level 3 Solar Storm

The Advantages of Being Shy

2012-01-31T10:27:00.000-08:00

There is a Time magazine Cover and article about this out right now and so I thought this might be a good time to share my experiences of being shy. Of course I had another advantage in addition to being shy I was always very tall for my age, so the combination of being one of the tallest in my class always and being fairly shy always protected me in various ways. I can see that now looking back now.

First of all being shy can protect a person from a whole lot of dangerous people. Extroverts often say things that they shouldn't around dangerous people and then wind up with teeth knocked out as a result or worse. Whereas a shy person might (because they aren't talking) be sizing up all the people around them to ascertain whether any of these people are even safe to be around or if they are women if they are available for dating or whatever. So, shyness can be a distinct advantage in regard to both safety and looking for a mate.

In my own case because I was always tall by age 15 I was 6 foot 1 inches tall and by 21 I was 6 foot 4 1/2 inches tall. So, if I was around girls my age or older I would always listen to their problems like an older brother or friend rather than verbally accost women like many other guys I knew who were definitely extroverts would. My methods were almost always effective in gaining the trust of all the women I met, young or old. My mother used to say when I was 16. "You are a quiet nice boy 16 years old." I sort of liked this way of thinking because it was also true. So while I watched other boys offend women by being too aggressive I always wound up with one or more of the girls who confided in me their problems. This began when I was about 15 and continued until I was 25 and got married and had a son. I still found that I counseled my friends because I was always a very common sense person while also being very intuitive. Also, since I was an only child I always felt sort of lonely in this sense and helping others also seemed to help me with my problems and I felt healed as I helped others grapple with their problems and helped many friends and acquaintances move away from suicide, especially before age 25 when most people give up the idea of ending it all for one reason or another.

So, by being shy one can often work through their own problems by having enough time to think about things and not going into things half cocked like many extroverts tend to do and wind up injured or dead. Being shy one can often survive things that extroverts could not or would not because shy people tend to be more thoughtful about everything they do. They also tend to be more kind to others because they tend to have more sensitive and thoughtful natures. Shy people can tend to become writers because of the capacity for introspection which many extroverts might not have developed because they were always out partying and getting into trouble. So, I would say that there are advantages and problems with both being an extrovert or shy. But shy people tend to survive and extroverts often perish because they often take risks that they haven't thought enough about to survive. 40% of the heads of large companies tend to define themselves as shy people.

Also, just because people are shy doesn't mean that they also can't be dangerous, aggressive or take risks. It's just that shy people might take different types of risks than extroverted people would. For example, Shy people often are musicians, actors, rock climbers, stunt pilots, surfers, motorcycle enthusiasts, pilots, world travelers etc. They are just less likely to put themselves into ongoing extreme social situations all the time. They will tend to pick and choose carefully what social situations they will allow themselves to endure, unless those situations are required by their chosen livelihood or spouse or other extenuating circumstances.

There is even a historical label for this kind of person, "The Strong Silent Type" which typifies someone who is skilled and well qualified for any emergency or situation and who is not in the least interested in "Tooting his or her own horn" verbally but mostly just interested in "Taking Care of Business" in whatever business or activity that might be on Earth or beyond. However, tooting your own horn does extend into writing for a shy person in a manifold of ways.

Senate clears way for vote on insider-trading ban

2012-01-30T23:59:00.000-08:00

Senate clears way for vote on insider-trading ban

This actually might help the perception of Congress by the common person in the U.S. and around the world. Since there don't appear to be any insider trading bans against congress in any way it has been perceived for some time that this is one of the reasons rich people or people who want to become rich as Congressmen or Women try to get elected. If Congress actually passes this in both houses and since I believe the President has promised to sign this if it passes it cannot but help to lift the polls a little bit for Congress and to make people feel Congress is listening to the people a least a little bit.

Surviving by the Grace of God

2012-01-30T23:38:00.000-08:00

Some of the things I write my daughter and once in a while my old friend think are "a little goofy". But from my point of view I'm never goofy, but what life puts us through to survive is almost always goofy. Looking back at my life I'm really grateful and amazed that I survived it at all. So, if sometimes what I write might seem a little goofy at times, my point of view is that, "I learned to write pretty good by age 9 and found that I could survive Childhood Blunt Trauma Epilepsy just fine without any medication (because my Dad wouldn't let me take Phenobarbitol) which is a terrible drug anyway, if I just kept putting down my thoughts and feelings as I hovered through suicidal thoughts thinking that I wouldn't make it through the next night time seizure. Though I only had Blunt trauma childhood epilepsy from ages 10 to 15 when my skull grew enough to relieve the pressure on my brain in the back where I had fallen backwards off a rock onto the back of my head while rock climbing with my Dad when I was about 8 or 9 years old. So, the post traumatic stress disorder of blunt trauma epilepsy left me one day about a year after I really found God the Day that I (during a scream as I started to enter another night time seizure) invoked God into my life and body to live with me permanently. By the way the moment I did this I never had another seizure ever not even that night in my whole life. So, by traumatically permanently invoking God into not only my life but to live with me permanently in my body, EVERYTHING changed in a way I cannot ever completely explain in any useful way to anyone. Suffice it to say I have never been the same person since. For a long time I was afraid of God living in my body with me. I sort of felt like I had a big strong Tiger by the tail and as long as I held on for dear life to that tail I might live. It went on like this until I was in my early 30s when I met my first Tibetan Lama in Ashland, Oregon. I walked into the room and suddenly I was two places at once physically. In one physical reality I was walking into the room with about 100 people for an initiation of the Thousand Buddhas Empowerment or (The Sword which Pierces All Defilement) and the other physical place I was simultaneously was likely several hundred years ago wearing a loincloth some place like Tibet in the Springtime or summer because the flowers were blooming. The Lama said to me, "You don't belong in any church. You are a Yogi that does research for all religions and people's on earth." At the time this made perfect sense to me as I was pretty discouraged with all Religions at that point in my life. However, when I split into two people and experienced two realities as real as one I knew I was with people I could relate to and with. Because up until this time my supernatural abilities were too much for most people. There are a lot of fakes around and I have met a lot of them that make a living while being fakes. However, I learned that because I wasn't a fake that I had to live by completely different rules than fakes do. So, what I learned is this: "Whatever you know you are then responsible for knowing!" What this means in real time is that if you know things that other people don't know you must be very careful with that knowledge. In other words, "To those who are given much much is expected." So, I have had to learn to be very careful with all the wisdom and knowledge that God has Graced me with. However, for most people it takes years to learn all this. So, if you are able to understand what I'm talking about you are already ahead of the game and your lives will be the better for it.

Wires up the back side of Half Dome not for the Faint of Heart

2012-01-30T14:29:00.000-08:00

This is a picture of what climbing half dome looks like now(between May and October most years) when the weather is good. What is really amazing to me is that most people to get to this point have already walked 7 miles from their car or bus stop (at least 14 miles round trip in one day for most people). When I last did this as training for going to Nepal in 1985, there were only about 25 to 50 people that would have been in this photo rather than 1200. To get to this point you usually have to hike up to Vernal Falls and then towards California Nevada Falls before you reach this point. And be sure that you don't get vertigo from heights because my wife and several others were having a hard time not falling off from the exposure of about 1200 feet of vertical rock or more at a 35 to 45 degree angle or more, and 400 feet of wire which is there from about May to October which seems almost straight up when you are on it. And often you see people who really should not be on a vertical surface ever doing this being dared by a friend or relative which could turn out to be fatal in the end potentially for both. Don't let anyone talk you into it if you don't have the skills. Even though it is only a class 4 type of climb with wires to hold onto so you don't fall off, most people aren't roped in. What this means in real time is if you make a mistake and slip for any reason you are dead. Most focused climbers from ages 18 to 60 in good health might laugh at this type of exposure. However, if you have a problem for whatever reason you are dead at this point unless someone catches you which is unlikely. Note: Picture is from a news article online called: 1200 is a crowd on Half Dome.

2nd note: Be sure to make a reservation with the National Park Service because it sounds like they are starting to limit how many can ascend per day now. Obviously, if there is lightning rain or snow it wouldn't be a good time to do this. Also, I believe in the winter they remove the wires and vertical posts during that time and likely re-install them during the spring or later.

1st quote (besides picture) (This is from Backpacker Magazine online regarding how dangerous this wire up to Half Dome is:

The Danger Scale key

The Hike The iconic symbol of Yosemite grandeur, Half Dome just begs to be climbed. The seven-mile route to this granite landmark via the Mist Trail sees 2,500 to 3,000 people per day during summer weekends, making it the most heavily trafficked corridor in the park. People endure fatigue, altitude sickness, and dehydration in their determination to stand atop Half Dome's broad 8,836-foot-high crown. Steel cables bolted into the granite assist climbers up the final 400 vertical feet, but the combination of high, open rock and metal fixtures makes this a lousy place to get caught in an electrical storm. And once the raindrops start falling, the rock becomes treacherously slick. Yosemite's search and rescue team responds to 300 incidents each year–more than any other national park–and not surprisingly, Half Dome claims its share: six deaths since 1995.
Exhibit A Rescuers had to rappel 800 feet to recover the shattered remains of Japanese hiker Hirofumi Nohara, 37, who cartwheeled 1,200 feet down Half Dome's sheer face into the granite ravine below after trying to squeeze past hikers ahead of him on the cables. Alas, the fatality didn't surprise park employees, who've seen people do many stupid things to earn their "I climbed Half Dome" T-shirts. "We see people taking risks [to claim one] that they might not ordinarily take," says ranger Scott Gediman. In 1985, five hikers defied signs of a pending storm and marched up Half Dome only to get blasted by lightning. Last year, three hikers in three separate accidents fell to their deaths from Half Dome's upper reaches; two had attempted the route when the cables were down, and they lost their footing on the wet granite. On crowded weekends when hundreds of hikers clog the cables, it's impossible to make a fast exit when storms threaten. Says Gediman, "I've been on the cables when they were so packed with people I couldn't move up and couldn't move down–it became real dangerous."
Survival Plan Assess your fitness level honestly: The Mist Trail is a rigorous hike. And leave early–no later than 5 a.m.–to give yourself the best shot at completing it. Hike on a weekday between late May and early October, a period when the cables have generally been installed. Assess the sky before you commit to the cables, and never climb them when the rock is wet: That's when almost every fall from Half Dome has occurred. end quote from:
http://www.backpacker.com/october_08_americas_10_most_dangerous_hikes_mist_trail_half_dome_ca/destinations/12629

Also, my first time Climbing Half Dome was in 1969 (when I considered myself to be a fairly good Rock Climber) at age 21 with a friend who was 18 and who had just graduated from high school and was on his way to UCLA in the fall, we were in a a Rock Climber's Camping area then near El Capitan. We then got up and had breakfast at Yosemite Lodge Cafeteria and took off up the Mist Trail near Camp Curry by 9 or 10 am. So even though we were young and strong climbers because we also really enjoyed nature and the views and taking plenty of pictures along the way, wound up getting on top of Half Dome around 2 PM and stayed up there until about 4 pm. But because it was a long way down back to my car near Camp Curry we headed out knowing we would pass most of the scarier parts of the trail by sundown. Because it was summer time I think sundown could have been as late as 8 or 9 pm. However, because of the really high canyon that most of Yosemite is night falls pretty early even during Daylight Savings time Summers there. So, the sun comes up late and goes to bed early in most of Yosemite Valley. So, if you are prepared for the sun, altitude and 7 miles up and 7 miles back (14 total miles) and can keep your wits about you while climbing up and down the wire and don't fall off the front edge while on top it can be one of the most amazing experiences of your life!

You Can't Eat a Computer

2012-01-30T12:14:00.000-08:00

California fuels rule sparks controversy

My son and I were discussing the above article that starts with the word button "California fuels..." and his response was "You can't Eat a Computer" which basically means that even though computers are fun and kind of addicting, in the end they are in the same category as a television or a radio. They are entertainment, and no matter how much fun they might be you can't eat them. In other words unless you have a job or an income they are only entertainment. So, the California fuel rules controversy is that the rules here in California were designed before the Great Recession, during which time people might have economically had enough money to actually comply with these rules. For example I was driving north towards the Bay area from Santa Barbara where I was on business. I said to my wife, "I'm amazed! There must be about 1/4 the cars I've ever seen on any Sunday if it were before 2008 traveling up Hiway 101 north.

begin quote from above article:"

“To us, it’s the most credible and powerful mechanism we can put in place,” said Dan Sperling, a member of California’s Air Resources Board and director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at University of California-Davis. “It’s an incentive to invest in other things besides oil.”
Many oil industry officials in the United States and overseas say the standards are too complex, will drive up gas prices and cannot be met given the current supply of petroleum alternatives.
Charles T. Drevna, president of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, said the policy “sounds really good at the 30,000-foot level” but added, “When you get down to terra firma, it’s a giant energy tax and a fuel rationing scheme.”
The premise of California’s rule — as well as its European counterpart, the “E.U. Fuel Quality Directive” — is that goals for cutting greenhouse gases can only be met if the transportation sector begins to move away from fossil fuels.
The new standards assign carbon intensity values to roughly 250 types of crude (higher carbon) along with other fuels — including ethanol, electricity and hydrogen, all lower carbon— that power cars and trucks.
They call for reducing the overall carbon content of fuel sold in the state 10 percent by 2020. Refiners will either have to mix low-carbon fuels into what they sell over time in order to make the required cuts or buy credits to offset the amount by which the fuel they sell exceeds the standards.
The state projects that the standard would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 23 million metric tons in 2020, according to Simon Mui, a scientist at the advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council. end quote.

So by reducing the carbon in fuels the hope was to create less carbon in the sky by moving people away from Gasoline to hybrids and electric cars and fuel cell cars and Hydrogen powered cars. But the reality is that the present Unemployment rate in California is 11.1 % And this rate if adjusted for all the people working part time who want full time jobs or who have given up looking for work might take this rate up to 15% or even 17% for the state to be realistic about who isn't employed or fully employed. And this doesn't even give you kids 15 to 20 who can't even get their very first part time job because people over 20 years old already have them. Under these conditions and the fact that the average car in the U.S. is now 10.8 years old (which is the oldest the average car has EVER been in history) it isn't a very good time to be changing fuels. However, on the other hand Oil is on its way out over the next 25 years and because of that the price of oil can only go up because that is just the Law of Supply and Demand. When everyone wants something that there is not enough of the Price can Only go UP! So, because of this switching fuels isn't an option, it is a necessity if we want civilization to continue here on earth. Because of this the most sustainable culture in the U.S. is actually the Amish culture in Pennsylvania because they are NOT an Oil based culture. This is all something we all should be thinking about if we want civilization to continue.

Also, I would say that if you look at both the Tea Party and the Occupy movement, both movements are the direct result of rising oil prices, Global Climate Change and reduced food supplies making food cost more just like Oil is costing more worldwide. I would also say that the Arab Spring which has brought down countries all across the middle east is also a part of reduced oil and reduced food and a burgeoning young population in those areas.

It is important to address the real needs of the 99 percent

2012-01-30T01:29:00.000-08:00

We appear to be at yet another crossroads of history here in the U.S. It concerns me as Occupy Camps get shut down in cities across the U.S. that it will just be seen as "Complete Disenfranchisement" by many of the 99%. This doesn't really help anyone and only angers those without jobs or money or a place to stay or the ability to get married and raise a family even more. Without useful actions that result in jobs it is illogical to think that the Occupy movement is going to go away and not just get angrier by the day instead. I fear for our democracy at times like these that we presently live in. However, if our democracy could weather the Great Depression, World War II, World War I, the 1800s and the late 1700s, likely we will find our way through all this as well.

U.S. Banks European Credit Default Swap Exposure

2012-01-30T01:20:00.000-08:00

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/u-s-banks-tally-their-exposure-to-europes-debt-maelstrom/?hp

Since the U.S. Government now appears to be demanding from U.S. Banks to know their exposure through Credit Default Swap exposure (insurance deals) towards the European Banks and European debt exposures, and since this likely will be public knowledge (at least to investors and potential investors in these banks, it should get very interesting the next few months in regard to all this.

Hey Santa: Who Stole my Horn?

2012-01-29T23:32:00.000-08:00

Picture of a baby Reindeer in the Cairngorm mountains near Aviemore, Scotland

Word Buttons

2012-01-29T23:28:00.000-08:00

I have for some time been quoting articles as long as I gave credit to the site from which it came originally. However, things have been changing lately on the Internet in case some of you haven't noticed. When Megaupload was shut down a message was sent to everyone on the Internet that things were changing. Not necessarily changing for the better but changing never the less. More and more of us need to think about protecting our own best interests. Even though many like myself are mostly interested in directing attention to issues that appear to need attention for human ongoing survival here on earth. Other people are motivated sometimes (Only by Money) and not by any principles at all it seems. So, as the Internet morphs and becomes something less desirable to all of us, it might be more important to protect ourselves during this change. In the same way many young people are moving to Twitter to have a more anonymous experience away from Facebook right now, maybe many of us bloggers need to concern ourselves with content. And though it might be okay to place word buttons of articles we want to comment about, maybe it is time not to directly quote from those articles at our websites online. This is my thought today. I'll have to think more about it in the future. If I decide to continue to operate in this new way I will only publish photos that I or someone in my family have personally taken and only publish word buttons to direct people to articles that I am commenting on. Time will tell. I need to think more about this.

Purple Delta 7 on CME's

2012-01-28T16:15:00.000-08:00

Once again if you are interested to learn more who Purple Delta 7 is please read:
Purple Delta 7

The above site on Purple Delta 7 has a record of most of the things I have written about her since she first appeared in "The Protectors" which is also at the dragonofcompassion.com website which is my archive site.

The Coronal Mass Ejection happened this week and Jonathan Flow had a headache from the Solar Storm as it hit earth. He really wished it would get over because being an intuitive it was a lot like having all the radio stations that he listened to through his intuitive mechanisms turn into what seemed like a whole lot of static. Now, he also sensed what might be called a "Quickening" of all life on earth through this mechanism as well and realized that all life was being changed in a variety of ways through what we call a solar storm. He understood that what we call a solar storm might be called something different by the sentient life form that actually is the sun. It might be called Something like "The quickening of all life on earth" or even "The quickening Dragon's breath from the sun" or something else interesting and exotic and life affirming like that".

However, just about then the front door rang and an incredibly beautiful woman was standing there and said, "Guess who I am?" Jonathan was just taken aback and had no idea who this woman was or what she was here for, especially because she was as beautiful as the most beautiful woman you might ever see in a movie and from the look in her eyes was incredibly intelligent too. Seeing that Jonathan was confused by why she was here and starting to get a little worried she finally started laughing and said, "I"m Purple!" Don't you recognize me, I'm your bodyguard." Jonathan sighed relieved it was only Purple playing games with him to keep him on his toes now at 63.

Jonathan smiled and said, "Come on in, Purple. What's going on?" She said, "Did you experience the Solar Storm as they call it here on earth?" Jonathan said, "Yes. It sort of felt like I had a headache and was listening to a lot of static." Purple said, "Yes. I long ago programmed one of my thousands of strings of consciousness to be a duplicate exactly of yours." Jonathan looked at her and said, "OH. YOu have an emulator of my physiology to know when I'm in distress and might need help?" Purple looked at Jonathan and said, "Yes. And if you died I would simply repair you and bring you back to life without you knowing anything happened." Jonathan felt chills moving up his spine a little at this thought but had had to get used to all this kind of stuff since he first met the Galactic Sentience in 1970 when he was 22. It is actually amazing what you can get used to if you have to and have no other realistic choice in the matter. It's sort of like waking up one day and finding out that grizzly bears live your neighborhood and that you will have to watch out for them and adapt to them for the rest of your life. It isn't a small thing but it can be done.

"So, Purple what do you think of the Solar Storm and all that?"
Purple said, "Well. It concerns me that there will eventually be an event that wipes away human hard drives."
Jonathan looked worried and said, "You think we might all forget everything we know?"
Purple: "Yes. This could be very problematic. It might not kill anyone physically but if the jamming of the neural mechanism of brains on earth was intense enough it could wipe all human hard drives or brains clean as well as all animals and creatures."

Jonathan said, "So, what you are worried about is the end of human civilization?"
Purple said, "It has happened before to other cultures."
Jonathan: "Here on Earth?"
Purple: "Yes."
Jonathan: "Why didn't you tell me this before?"
Purple: "This kind of stuff is on a need to know basis."
Jonathan: "Could People who were deep enough into the earth not be affected by a solar storm in this way?"
Purple: "Yes. That is possible. But how many might be there? 100. 1000. 10,000 at most. And how would they deal with humans that just forgot who they were? There is an instinctual programming found in all creatures including humans that would then kick in. But in the end only less that 100,000 to 500,000 humans might survive in this form the way things presently are on earth."

Jonathan: "So, it would go back to cave man days and the re-invention of culture and civilization and maybe one day if there weren't another event like this we would re-emerge thousands of years from now."
Purple: "It takes about 10,000 years usually."
Jonathan: "So this really has happened before."
Purple: "Yes. I'm afraid so."

Jonathan: "But what are the actual odds of this happening to us?"
Purple: "Well. Let me see if I calibrate what has happened here on earth and go back about 1 million years I can calculate the odds. Here it is: 'There is only a 1 in 10,000 odds of this happening in the next 100 years. But there is a 50-50 chance that within the next 300 years that most all electrical and electronic equipment will be totally wiped out on earth.' "
Jonathan said, "Well. That's pretty scary."
Purple: "Yes. And this is the problem. Have you noticed that big box stores are slowly being replaced by companies like Amazon.com and others?"
Jonathan: "Yes."
Purple: "Well. As long as the Internet exists somewhat in the form like it is worldwide now this will only get more this way as time goes on, at least until there is no more oil."
Jonathan: "Yes. I understand this."
Purple: "Well. Eventually there will be no physical teachers at all because it will be much cheaper for every country to have its own sentient robots or computer sentients to teach on TV or online(or a series of familiar teachers on a forum resembling Sesame Street or something like that."
Jonathan: "So, what you are saying is that if there is a Solar Flare when the only people left trained to teach are computers and robots that when a level 3 solar flare or a level 5 or above Solar Flare occurred it could wipe out the computer teachers and likely all above ground electrical and electronic technology which might at that time be as if people would be children without their parents (at least as far as education and understanding the universe goes).
Purple: "Yes. Did you see that Big Bang Theory program on TV where Raj falls in love with the voice recognition software on his SIRI Iphone?"
Jonathan said, "Yes."
Purple: "Well. Imagine if you thought you could marry someone like me and that we would breed and have kids and so on and so on."
Jonathan said ,"That isn't really possible is it?"
Purple: "No. Not in your age and era of technology but it does become possible within 1000 to 2000 years if your civilization doesn't go extinct before then."
Jonathan: "I'm starting to short out trying to fathom all this, Purple."
Purple: "Yes. Emotionally is is likely difficult to deal with this much reality and be living in a human body and talking about your own human civilization here on Earth."

Jonathan: "So, what is the likelihood of Humans being okay 30,000 years from now if they don't prepare for all this?

Purple: "You mean survive like they are now without having their minds eventually wiped clean along with all electrical and electonic things on earth wiped out as well?"
Jonathan: "Yes."
Purple: "Close to zero. However, since you are writing about this someone will get it and start preparing for the inevitable and maybe a way or ways will be found for civilization to survive this kind of thing intact."
Jonathan: "So that is why you are telling me all this?"
Purple: "Yes."

Jonathan: "But doesn't telling me this so I will write about it change the future and doesn't that break some kind of code or something?"
Purple: "Well. I can talk about probabilities about things you and I both might be concerned about. But I can't tell you exactly what will happen in any given future."
Jonathan: "Define 'Any given future'".
Purple: "Well. As far as you and I are concerned there may be one future that the Galactic Sentience will authorize and an almost infinite host of other alternate futures that will not exist very long in the grand scheme of things."
Jonathan said, "Well. I assumed it was something like this. After all, otherwise why would you destroy a solar system or a galaxy unless it was to restore order by going back in time to stop yourself destroying the solar system or galaxy once you had made the necessary corrections to the time space of the solar system or Galaxy?"
Purple: "Exactly!"
Jonathan: "So what you are actually saying to me is that you don't want the human race to go extinct. So, you are telling me to watch out for Coronal Massive Ejections because that could end Civilization on Earth."
Purple: "Yes. And I don't want life on earth to go extinct either."
Jonathan: "But at least in regard to Coronal Mass Ejections what is there you could do to stop that?"
Purple: "You'd be surprised."

A Super Solar Flare: 1859 The Carrington Event

2012-01-28T14:43:00.000-08:00

So far this is the best source for the Carrington Event which happened in 1859. Besides being able to read a newspaper outside at night directly from the Aurora Borealis ANYWHERE ON EARTH during the event, many telegraph operators were electrocuted while on duty and their paper near them to write down telegrams on was set on fire as the arcs of electricity came off their lines from the flare. Begin quote.

Carrington Super Flare - Science@NASA

Home >Science News >Science@NASA Headline News >2008 >A Super Solar Flare

A Super Solar Flare

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May 6, 2008: At 11:18 AM on the cloudless morning of Thursday, September 1, 1859, 33-year-old Richard Carrington—widely acknowledged to be one of England's foremost solar astronomers—was in his well-appointed private observatory. Just as usual on every sunny day, his telescope was projecting an 11-inch-wide image of the sun on a screen, and Carrington skillfully drew the sunspots he saw.

Right: Sunspots sketched by Richard Carrington on Sept. 1, 1859. Copyright: Royal Astronomical Society: more.

On that morning, he was capturing the likeness of an enormous group of sunspots. Suddenly, before his eyes, two brilliant beads of blinding white light appeared over the sunspots, intensified rapidly, and became kidney-shaped. Realizing that he was witnessing something unprecedented and "being somewhat flurried by the surprise," Carrington later wrote, "I hastily ran to call someone to witness the exhibition with me. On returning within 60 seconds, I was mortified to find that it was already much changed and enfeebled." He and his witness watched the white spots contract to mere pinpoints and disappear.
It was 11:23 AM. Only five minutes had passed.
Just before dawn the next day, skies all over planet Earth erupted in red, green, and purple auroras so brilliant that newspapers could be read as easily as in daylight. Indeed, stunning auroras pulsated even at near tropical latitudes over Cuba, the Bahamas, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Hawaii.

Even more disconcerting, telegraph systems worldwide went haywire. Spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and set the telegraph paper on fire. Even when telegraphers disconnected the batteries powering the lines, aurora-induced electric currents in the wires still allowed messages to be transmitted. "What Carrington saw was a white-light solar flare—a magnetic explosion on the sun," explains David Hathaway, solar physics team lead at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Now we know that solar flares happen frequently, especially during solar sunspot maximum. Most betray their existence by releasing X-rays (recorded by X-ray telescopes in space) and radio noise (recorded by radio telescopes in space and on Earth). In Carrington's day, however, there were no X-ray satellites or radio telescopes. No one knew flares existed until that September morning when one super-flare produced enough light to rival the brightness of the sun itself.
"It's rare that one can actually see the brightening of the solar surface," says Hathaway. "It takes a lot of energy to heat up the surface of the sun!"

Above: A modern solar flare recorded Dec. 5, 2006, by the X-ray Imager onboard NOAA's GOES-13 satellite. The flare was so intense, it actually damaged the instrument that took the picture. Researchers believe Carrington's flare was much more energetic than this one.

The explosion produced not only a surge of visible light but also a mammoth cloud of charged particles and detached magnetic loops—a "CME"—and hurled that cloud directly toward Earth. The next morning when the CME arrived, it crashed into Earth's magnetic field, causing the global bubble of magnetism that surrounds our planet to shake and quiver. Researchers call this a "geomagnetic storm." Rapidly moving fields induced enormous electric currents that surged through telegraph lines and disrupted communications.
"More than 35 years ago, I began drawing the attention of the space physics community to the 1859 flare and its impact on telecommunications," says Louis J. Lanzerotti, retired Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories and current editor of the journal Space Weather. He became aware of the effects of solar geomagnetic storms on terrestrial communications when a huge solar flare on August 4, 1972, knocked out long-distance telephone communication across Illinois. That event, in fact, caused AT&T to redesign its power system for transatlantic cables. A similar flare on March 13, 1989, provoked geomagnetic storms that disrupted electric power transmission from the Hydro Québec generating station in Canada, blacking out most of the province and plunging 6 million people into darkness for 9 hours; aurora-induced power surges even melted power transformers in New Jersey. In December 2005, X-rays from another solar storm disrupted satellite-to-ground communications and Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation signals for about 10 minutes. That may not sound like much, but as Lanzerotti noted, "I would not have wanted to be on a commercial airplane being guided in for a landing by GPS or on a ship being docked by GPS during that 10 minutes."

Right: Power transformers damaged by the March 13, 1989, geomagnetic storm: more.

Another Carrington-class flare would dwarf these events. Fortunately, says Hathaway, they appear to be rare:
"In the 160-year record of geomagnetic storms, the Carrington event is the biggest." It's possible to delve back even farther in time by examining arctic ice. "Energetic particles leave a record in nitrates in ice cores," he explains. "Here again the Carrington event sticks out as the biggest in 500 years and nearly twice as big as the runner-up."
These statistics suggest that Carrington flares are once in a half-millennium events. The statistics are far from solid, however, and Hathaway cautions that we don't understand flares well enough to rule out a repeat in our lifetime.
And what then?
Lanzerotti points out that as electronic technologies have become more sophisticated and more embedded into everyday life, they have also become more vulnerable to solar activity. On Earth, power lines and long-distance telephone cables might be affected by auroral currents, as happened in 1989. Radar, cell phone communications, and GPS receivers could be disrupted by solar radio noise. Experts who have studied the question say there is little to be done to protect satellites from a Carrington-class flare. In fact, a recent paper estimates potential damage to the 900-plus satellites currently in orbit could cost between $30 billion and $70 billion. The best solution, they say: have a pipeline of comsats ready for launch.
Humans in space would be in peril, too. Spacewalking astronauts might have only minutes after the first flash of light to find shelter from energetic solar particles following close on the heels of those initial photons. Their spacecraft would probably have adequate shielding; the key would be getting inside in time.
No wonder NASA and other space agencies around the world have made the study and prediction of flares a priority. Right now a fleet of spacecraft is monitoring the sun, gathering data on flares big and small that may eventually reveal what triggers the explosions. SOHO, Hinode, STEREO, ACE and others are already in orbit while new spacecraft such as the Solar Dynamics Observatory are readying for launch.
Research won't prevent another Carrington flare, but it may make the "flurry of surprise" a thing of the past.

Authors: Trudy E. Bell & Dr. Tony Phillips | Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

more information

Description of a Singular Appearance seen in the Sun on September 1, 1859, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 20, p.13-15 -- the original report by R.C. Carrington
An engaging book on the history of the 1859 Carrington flare and the detective work to sleuth its cause and significance is Stuart Clark's The Sun Kings: The Unexpected Tragedy of Richard Carrington and the Take of How Modern Astronomy Began (Princeton University Press, 2007).
One recent analysis on the effects of a potential future solar flare of similar magnitude is "The Carrington event: Possible doses to crews in Space from a comparable event," by L. W. Townsend et al., Advances in Space Research 38 (2006): 226–231--one of 16 articles in an entire special issue devoted to the 1859 Carrington flare.
See also "The 1859 Solar–Terrestrial Disturbance and the Current Limits of Extreme Space Weather Activity," by E. W. Cliver and L. Svalgaard, Solar Physics (2004) 224: 407–422 (available at ) and "Forecasting the impact of an 1859-caliber superstorm on geosynchronous Earth-orbiting satellites: Transponder resources," by Sten F. Odenwald and James L. Green, Space Weather (2007) 5: 1-16.
NASA is well aware of radiation hazards in space and taking mitigation measures. A book-length report on a 2005 workshop exploring the subject is Space Radiation Hazards and the Vision for Space Exploration: Report of a Workshop published by the National Research Council in 2006. end quote.
NASA's Future:US Space Exploration Policy
end quote.

It is this type of CME event that happened in 1859 that might be the most troubling for humans on earth and all electrical or electronic technology. The fact that it only happened 153 years ago means that it could happen again at any time, especially during between now and the end of 2013 or during the peak of any future Solar Cycle of events.

By the way the picture that they talk about damaging the camera that took the picture above in 2006 was milder than the one we just experienced this week. The one this week was the largest CME since the 2003 Halloween event.

Also for universities and governments researching these types of events the following repeat of the above quote might be useful:"In the 160-year record of geomagnetic storms, the Carrington event is the biggest." It's possible to delve back even farther in time by examining arctic ice. "Energetic particles leave a record in nitrates in ice cores," he explains. "Here again the Carrington event sticks out as the biggest in 500 years and nearly twice as big as the runner-up."

Here is a repeat quote dealing with cost estimates caused by a Carrington like event in the future:"Experts who have studied the question say there is little to be done to protect satellites from a Carrington-class flare. In fact, a recent paper estimates potential damage to the 900-plus satellites currently in orbit could cost between $30 billion and $70 billion. The best solution, they say: have a pipeline of comsats ready for launch." end repeat quote from above.

Solar Flares Could Cripple Earth's Tech Infrastructure in 2013

2012-01-28T11:44:00.000-08:00

Solar Flares Could Cripple Earth's Tech Infrastructure in 2013

By Eric Mack, PCWorld Jun 9, 2011 8:46 AM

This week's solar flare will likely go unnoticed by most people on Earth, but NASA says that might not be the case two years from now, when a peak in solar activity could cause trillions of dollars in damage to our high-tech infrastructure.
The sun released a huge solar flare Tuesday, shooting a bunch of radiation in our direction. While the Earth isn't expected to take a direct hit from the flare, it could rub up against the planet's electromagnetic field on Thursday, possibly disrupting radio and satellite transmissions, not to mention creating some spectacular auroral light displays for those in the north.
Solar weather runs in cycles, and the current cycle is expected to peak in 2013.NASA is calling the flare medium-sized and the biggest one seen in the last five years, but it's nothing compared to something called the "Carrington Event" in 1859, a huge solar flare that set telegraph machines on fire and produced an auroral glow in many parts of the world bright enough to read by. Even when telegraph operators disconnected their batteries, "aurora-induced electric currents in the wires still allowed messages to be transmitted," according to a NASA historical account.
Solar weather runs in cycles, and the current cycle is expected to peak in 2013, and it's during that time that we're most likely to see something like the Carrington Event. Only problem is that if such an event happened today, it would cause much, much more damage than it did in the 19th century.
"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," Richard Fisher, head of NASA's Heliophysics Division, said last year. "At the same time, our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms."
Basically, if the sun were to send a massive shipment of electromagnetic radiation our way, it could knock out the backbone of our digital civilization, taking power grids, satellites and other communications systems offline for hours, possibly even days. There's also the possibility for damage to that infrastructure that could run into the trillions of dollars.

NASA Footage of the June 7 Solar Flare

Fortunately, there are precautions, such as back-up systems, that can be put in place, and solar weather watchers have been urging politicians to do so through conferences and other efforts over the past few years. Whether we'll be ready when the solar "Big One" comes remains to be seen, but scientists say it's not an apocalyptic scenario.
So, presuming that the world doesn't end with the Mayan calendar in 2012, it also won't end with a huge solar flare in 2013, but it definitely has the potential to ruin a day or two.

See more like this:
wireless technology,
satellite

Would you recommend this story? YES297 NO11

end quote.

Though this story was written in 2011 about a much weaker Solar Storm than we just had, it is important that designers of electrical technology of all kinds think about what a Class 5 Coronal Mass ejection might do to their hardware, wherever it is installed. Those who find ways to mitigate CME potential problems might still be in business after 2013 and those who don't might not. What is the liability, for example, if a company's electrical or electronic part fails and 1 or more people die even if it is caused by a Coronal Mass Ejection? I don't know the answer to this but likely we will find out more about this during the next few years. If you consider the following true story it is definitely something to think about regarding CME's.

On June 4, 1989, a gas pipeline explosion demolished part of the Trans-Siberian Railway, engulfing two passenger trains in flames and killing 500 people.
Unlike the Siberian pipeline, the Alaskan oil pipeline built during the mid-1970s is a newer technology specifically designed to minimize corrosive currents now well known to modern pipeline engineers. end quote. So a Coronal Mass ejection was the direct cause of the deaths of 500 people when it exploded a pipeline and engulfed 2 passenger trains in Russia in 1989.

The Quebec Blackout of 1989 caused by a Solar Storm

2012-01-28T11:02:00.000-08:00

Chapter 1 : A Conflagration of Storms

"All those motorists sitting at traffic lights cursing, should realize that

it is not Hydro-Quebec's fault"

[Hydro-Quebec, 1989].

On Thursday, March 9, 1989 astronomers at the Kitt Peak Solar Observatory spotted a major solar flare in progress. Eight minutes later, the Earth's outer atmosphere was struck by a wave of powerful ultraviolet and X-ray radiation. Then the next day, an even more powerful eruption launched a cloud of gas 36 times the size of the from Active Region 5395 nearly dead center on the Sun. The storm cloud rushed out from the Sun at a million miles an hour, and on the evening of Monday, March 13 it struck the Earth. Alaskan and Scandinavian observers were treated to a spectacular auroral display that night. Intense colors from the rare Great Aurora painted the skies around the world in vivid shapes that moved like legendary dragons. Ghostly celestial armies battled from sunset to midnight. Newspapers that reported this event considered the aurora, itself, to be the most newsworthy aspect of the storm. Seen as far south as Florida and Cuba, the vast majority of people in the Northern Hemisphere had never seen such a spectacle. Some even worried that a nuclear first-strike might be in progress.

Luke Pontin, a charter boat operator in the Florida Keys, described the colors in reddish hues as they reflected from the warm Caribbean waters. In Salt Lake City, Raymond Niesporek nearly lost his fish while starring transfixed at the northern display. He had no idea what it was until he returned home and heard about the rare aurora over Utah from the evening news. Although most of the Midwest was clouded over, in Austin Texas, Meteorologist Rich Knight at KXAN had to deal with hundreds of callers asking about what they were seeing. The first thing on many people's mind was the Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-29) which had been launched on March 13 at 9:57:00 AM. Had it exploded? Was it coming apart and raining down over the Earth? Millions marveled at the beautiful celestial spectacle, and solar physicists delighted in the new data it brought to them, but many more were not so happy about it.

Silently, the storm had impacted the magnetic field of the Earth and caused a powerful jet stream of current to flow 1000 miles above the ground. Like a drunken serpent, its coils gyrated and swooped downwards in latitude, deep into North America. As midnight came and went, invisible electromagnetic forces were staging their own pitched battle in a vast arena bounded by the sky above and the rocky subterranean reaches of the Earth. A river of charged particles and electrons in the ionosphere flowed from west to east, inducing powerful electrical currents in the ground that surged into many natural nooks and crannies. There, beneath the surface, natural rock resistance murdered them quietly in the night. Nature has its own effective defenses for these currents, but human technology was not so fortunate on this particular night. The currents eventually found harbor in the electrical systems of Great Britain, the United States and Canada.

At 2:44:16 AM on March 13, all was well and power engineers at Hydro-Quebec resigned themselves to yet another night of watching loads come and go during the off-peak hours. The rest of the world had finished enjoying the dance of the aurora borealis, and were slumbering peacefully, preparing for another day's work the next day. The engineers didn't know, however, that for the last half-hour, their entire system had been under attack by powerful Earth currents. One second later, at 2:44:17 AM, these currents found a weak spot in the power grid of the Hydro-Quebec Power Authority. A 100-ton, static VAR capacitor Number 12 at the Chibougamau sub-station tripped and went off-line as harmonic currents induced by the electrojet flowing overhead, caused protective relays to sense overload conditions. The loss of voltage regulation at Chibougamau caused power swings and a reduction of power generation in the 735,000-volt La Grande transmission network. At 2:44:19 AM, a second capacitor followed suit at the same station. 150 kilometers away at the Albanel and Nemiskau stations, four more capacitors went off-line at 2:44:46. The last to fall at 2:45:16 AM was a static VAR capacitor at the Laverendrye complex to the south of Chibougamau. The fate of the network had been sealed in barely 59 seconds as the entire 9,460-megawatt output from Hydro-Quebec's La Grande Hydroelectric Complex found itself without proper regulation.

In less than a minute, Quebec lost half of its electrical power generation. Automatic load-reduction systems tried to restore a balance between the loads connected to the power grid, and the massive loss of capacity now available. One by one, the load-reduction systems disconnected towns and regions across Quebec, but to no avail. Domestic heating and lighting systems began to flicker and go out. Eight seconds later at 2:45:24 AM, power swings tripped the supply lines from the 2,200 megawatt Churchill Falls generation complex. By 2:45:32 AM, the entire Quebec power grid collapsed, and most of the province found itself without power. The cascading of events was much too fast for human operators to react, but it was more than enough time for 21,500 megawatts of badly needed electrical power to suddenly disappear from service.

The nighttime temperature in Toronto was 19 degrees F (-6.8 C) with a high temperature that day of only 34 F (1.6 C) so the loss of electrical power was felt very dramatically as most people woke up to cold homes for breakfast. Over 3 million people live near Montreal, the second largest metropolitan area in Canada, where nearly half of the population of Quebec resides. It is famous for its 30 kilometers of underground walkways linking 60 buildings, two universities and thousands of shops and businesses. Over 500,000 people use this system each day to avoid the bracing cold winter air. Pedestrians using this electrically-lit system suddenly found themselves plunged into complete darkness, with only the feeble battery-powered safety lights to guide them to the surface.

The presses at the Montreal Gazette had been rolling at break-neck speed that night to print the Monday newspaper for its 195,000 subscribers, but the power failure shut the production down for a day. Huge rolls of paper weighing several tons each, came to a sudden halt, shredding paper in a storm of debris, and jamming the presses. The Montreal Gazette apologized to its customers in a news release on March 12, blaming what they had assumed was a local power failure in Montreal. Their sister newspaper, La Presse, seemed unaffected by the outage and helped The Gazette press their papers. The only casualty was the color, comics section which came out a day later. Dealing with their own emergency, they had little time to investigate just what had happened. A cursory call to Hydro-Quebec identified the cause of the outage as a defective 12,000-volt cable that provided The Gazette with power. There was no mention of any aurora sighted in Montreal, perhaps because of cloudy conditions and, of course, other more urgent matters. The 5000 subscribers who called the newspaper that day preferred to talk to the Customer Service operator complaining about not getting their morning newspaper. The tone of the reportage changed rather abruptly on March 14 when the details of the blackout had finally all emerged.

The blackout closed schools and businesses, kept the Montreal Metro shut down during the morning rush hour, and paralyzed Dorval Airport, delaying flights. Without their navigation radar online, no flight could land or takeoff until power had been restored. People ate their cold breakfasts in the dark and left for work. They soon found themselves stuck in congested traffic, which tried to navigate darkened intersections without any streetlights or traffic control systems operating. Like most modern cities, people work round the clock, and in the early morning hours of March 13, the Swing Shift staffed many office buildings in the caverns of Downtown Montreal. All these buildings were now pitch dark, stranding workers in dark offices, stairwells and elevators. It cost businesses tens of millions of dollars as it stalled production, idled workers and spoiled products.

Hydro-Quebec officials said that the vast power system was innocent. The fault, they said, was in the geography of Quebec, which had power lines extending much farther north than for other electrical systems. Many people soon pointed out that this was the second major blackout in less than a year, and that Hydro-Quebec's outages totaled about nine hours per year, compared to neighboring Manitoba Power and Electric's two hours per year average. Hydro-Quebec promised to invest another $2 billion to cut in half the number of yearly blackouts, but this didn't derail the investigations that were called for by the government to see if Hydro-Quebec had been negligent. Energy Minister John Ciaccia echoed the sentiments of many people as they sat in snarled traffic facing blackened signals,

"It's frustrating because despite all our efforts to upgrade the system, we still wake up at 5 AM with a total blackout."

By 10:00 AM, power had been restored to most of the customers in Quebec, and by 11:00 AM all but 3,500 of the 842,000 customers were back in business. It would, however, be a complicated process to pick up the pieces. Isolated power failures were promised over the next 24 hours as Hydro-Quebec wrestled with re-starting their vast interconnection of power lines and transformers. Residential customers, they announced, would be at the bottom of the priority list for being re-connected. New York Power authorities lost 150 megawatts the moment Hydro-Quebec went down, and the New England Power Pool lost 1,410 megawatts at about the same time. Service to 96 utilities in six New England states was interrupted while other reserves of electrical power were bought and brought online. In a show of solidarity with their sister utility in the North, by 9:00 AM, New York Power and NEPool were sending over 1,100 megawatts of power up to Quebec to tide them over while the system was being brought back up again. Luckily, these states had the power to spare at the time. But just barely. Some of them had their own cliff hanger problems to deal with. Electrical power pools serving the Northeast United States had come very close to going down as well.

The electrojet currents, now flowing in the upper atmosphere, spread their impact far and wide, causing electrical disturbances throughout North America and Great Britain. A thousand miles away from Hydro-Quebec, Alleghney Power, which connected Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania lost 10 of its 24 VAR capacitors as they were automatically taken off-line to avoid damage. A $12 million, 22,000-volt generator step-up transformer owned by the Public Service Electric and Gas Company of New Jersey experienced overheating and permanent insulation damage. This transformer was the linchpin in converting electricity from the Salem Nuclear Plant, and boosting it to 500,000 volts for transmission. Replacement power had to be bought for $400,000 to keep East Coast residents from sharing the same fate as their neighbors in Quebec. Luckily, the owners had a spare replacement transformer available, but it still took six months to install. Without the replacement, it would have taken a year to order a new one. Across the United States from coast to coast, over 200 transformer and relay problems erupted within minutes of the start of the March 13 storm. 50 million people in the United States went about their business, or slept, never suspecting that their electrical systems had been driven to the edge of disaster. Not since the Great Blackout of 1965 had U.S. citizens been involved in a similar outage. There would have been no place they could drive to in an hour to escape.

The solar flare and accompanying storm conditions did much more than cause a blackout and upset communications systems. Automatic garage doors in California suburbs began to open and close without apparent reason. Microchip production in the northeastern United States came to a halt several times because of the ionosphere's magnetic activity. In space, geostationary communications satellites that sensed the Earth's magnetic field in order to point themselves had to be manually repointed from the ground as the local field polarity reversed direction, nearly causing the satellite to flip upside down. Some satellites in polar orbits actually tumbled out of control for several hours. GOES weather satellite communications were interrupted causing weather images to be lost. NASA's TDRS-1 communication satellite recorded over 250 anomalies caused by the increased particles flows into its sensitive electronics.

The Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post said nothing about the storm, or the blackout. Only a brief mention was made about it in European papers such as the London Times, and then only to comment on the spectacular aurora. The Fairbanks Daily News and the Anchorage Daily News ran several articles describing the auroral display, but also failed to mention the power outage, even though Quebec City and Montreal were blacked-out by the event. The Toronto Star in Quebec, at least on Page 3, considered the blackout in its own province to be a significant news event, and on March 13, 1989 announced, "Huge Storms on Sun linked to blackout that crippled Quebec"

"Fiery storms on the Sun may have caused yesterday's huge power blackout that left almost 6 million people without heat or electricity for almost 9 hours...Premier Robert Bourassa did not believe the blackout will dissuade U.S. utilities from signing lucrative contracts to buy Quebec electricity, the cornerstone of the premier's economic policies...An official from the New York Power Authority from which Hydro-Quebec bought 700 megawatts, said in an interview he would prefer that Quebec didn't have so many power blackouts. "

Meanwhile, the Space Shuttle Discovery was having its own mysterious problems. A sensor on one of the tanks supplying hydrogen to a fuel cell was showing unusually high pressure readings on March 13 "The hydrogen is exhibiting a pressure signature that we haven't ever seen before" said the Flight Director Granville Pennington at the Johnson Space Center. Engineers tried, apparently unsuccessfully, to understand the odd readings in order to advise whether to end the flight a day early on Friday. No public connection was ever made between this instrument reading 'glitch' and the solar storm that crippled Quebec, but it is fair to say that the conjunction of these two events was not completely by chance.

In many ways, the Quebec blackout was a sanitized calamity. It was wrapped in a diversion of beautiful colors, and affected a distant population mostly while they slept. There were no houses torn asunder, or streets flooded in the manner of a hurricane or tornado. There was no dramatic footage of waves crashing against the beach. There were no cyclonic whirlwinds cutting a swath of destruction through Kansas trailer parks. The calamity passed without mention in the major metropolitan newspapers, yet six million people were affected as they woke to find no electricity to see them through a cold Quebec wintry night. Engineers from the major North American power companies were not so blasé about what some would later conclude, could easily have escalated into a $6 billion catastrophe affecting most U.S. East Coast cities. All that prevented 50 million more people in the U.S. from joining their Canadian friends in the dark were a dozen or so heroic capacitors on the Allegheny Power Network.

The Media seemed to have missed one of the most human impacts of the beautiful aurora they so meticulously described in article after article. Today the March 1989 'Quebec Blackout' has reached legendary stature, at least among electrical engineers and space scientists, as an example of how solar storms can adversely affect us. It has even begun to appear in science textbooks. Fortunately, storms as powerful as this really are rather rare. It takes quite a solar wallop to cause anything like the conditions leading up to a Quebec-style blackout. When might we expect the next one to happen? About once every ten years or so, but the exact time is largely a game of chance.

Why should we care that we are now once again living under 'sunspot maximum' conditions? After all, we have already weathered at least five of these solar activity cycles since the end of World War II. What is different about the world today is that we are substantially more reliant upon computers and telecommunications to run our commerce, and even our forms of entertainment and recreation. In 1981, at the peak of solar cycle 21, there were 15 communication satellites in orbit. Cellular phones were rare and there were 800,000 PCs sold in the U.S. with 300 hosts on the Internet. By the time the peak of solar cycle 22 came around in 1989, there were 102 communication satellites, and 3 million cellular phone users in the United States. With the new Intel 80486-based PCs, you could send e-mail to your choice of 300,000 host machines on the Internet.

As we arrive at the peak of the 23rd sunspot cycle in 2000-2001, however, we enter a very different world far more reliant on what used to be the luxuries of the Space Age. By 2000, 349 communication satellites orbit the Earth supporting over $60 billion of commerce. Over 100 million people have cellular phones, and Global Positioning System handsets are a commonplace for people working, or camping, 'off road'. By 2003, 400 million people will routinely use wireless data transmission via satellite channels. There will be over 10 million Internet hosts with 38% of US households Internet-connected. To support all of this, not only will we need more satellites, but we will need more electricity flowing in our power grid which will have to work under loads unheard of in the past. As voters continue to elect not to build more power plants, blackouts and brownouts will become more common as power companies run out of temporary sources of power to buy during peak-load conditions during the summer and winter.

As if to emphasize today's exuberance and expectations, 'Individual Investor' magazine announced on its cover 'The Sky's the Limit: In the 21st century satellites will connect the globe'. The International telecommunications Union in Geneva has predicted that by 2005, the demand for voice and data transmission services will increase to $1.2 trillion. The fraction carried by satellite services will reach a staggering $80 billion.

To meet this demand, many commercial companies are launching; not just individual satellites, but entire networks of them with names like 'Iridium', 'Teledesic', 'Skybridge' and 'SpaceWay'. The total cost of these systems alone represents a hardware investment of $35 billion between 1998 and 2004. The actual degree of vulnerability of these systems to solar storms is unknown, and will probably vary in a complex way depending on the kind of technology they use, and their deployment in space. They do, however, share some disturbing characteristics: They are all light-weight, sophisticated, built at the lowest cost, and following only a handful of design types replicated dozens and even hundreds of times, often with off-the-shelf electronics.

It is common to base future expectations on recent past experiences: "Past is prologue" some say. Increasingly, these past experiences with, for example, commercial space technology, do not extend back much beyond the last solar maximum in 1989-1990. So, when we wonder why infrequent events such as solar storms aren't more noticeable, we have to remind ourselves that most of our experience comes from times when the Sun was simply not very active, and when we were a lot less technologically vulnerable.

Now more than ever, we depend on uninterrupted sources of power. Blackouts are amusing for about the first 60 seconds, then become intolerable. Along with our expensive personal computers, we routinely purchase 'surge protectors' to handle the many intermittent rises and falls of an increasingly complex power delivery system. No surge protectors can save us from Quebec-style blackouts. We have become dependent on our cell phones and pagers in a way that will tie critical moments in our private lives to the shotgun physics of satellite and power grid survival during invisible solar storms. When a single failed satellite like the Galaxy IV in May 1998 can catch 45 million pagers off guard, do we find ourselves more secure? Sometimes it can be dangerous and costly to gamble, although most of the time we seem to get by with hardly realizing that a calamity has passed over us. We actually seem to enjoy living on the technological 'edge'. But when a corroded natural gas pipeline in the Urals sprung a leak and detonated in June 1989, 500 people died. Pipelines corrode, and solar storms hasten this process, with tragic consequences.

There is also a disturbing tendency of denial. In both the electrical power industry and in the satellite business, there seems to be a tendency not to recognize that certain ventures are inherently risky and intrinsically susceptible to solar and geophysical influences. At the same time that the emplacement of vital communications systems, and human activities in space, have escalated, our scientific understanding of how the Sun affects us has not kept up due to cutbacks in research funding.

Although no one can say for sure how current trends in thinking are going to play themselves out in the next 5-10 years, the evidence for how we have already been affected in the past is well documented. It all comes down to the simple fact that the Sun is not the most polite and well-behaved neighbor we would like to imagine it to be. Not only do we find ourselves between a rock and a hard place, but also we can not even tell when the next blow is likely to fall. There is no great mystery about what is going on. We have had a long history, spanning a century, of calamities spawned by solar disturbances.

In the chapters to follow, we are going to see why most experts feel we will be at greater risk for trouble during this, the 23rd Solar Cycle, than in many previous ones. What has changed during the last ten years is the level of our reliance upon sophisticated technology, and its widespread infiltration into every niche of modern society. end quote

TTo read more please go to :http://www.solarstorms.org/SWChapter1.html

I think it is worth repeating the following quote from above:

In many ways, the Quebec blackout was a sanitized calamity. It was wrapped in a diversion of beautiful colors, and affected a distant population mostly while they slept. There were no houses torn asunder, or streets flooded in the manner of a hurricane or tornado. There was no dramatic footage of waves crashing against the beach. There were no cyclonic whirlwinds cutting a swath of destruction through Kansas trailer parks. The calamity passed without mention in the major metropolitan newspapers, yet six million people were affected as they woke to find no electricity to see them through a cold Quebec wintry night. Engineers from the major North American power companies were not so blasé about what some would later conclude, could easily have escalated into a $6 billion catastrophe affecting most U.S. East Coast cities. All that prevented 50 million more people in the U.S. from joining their Canadian friends in the dark were a dozen or so heroic capacitors on the Allegheny Power Network.end quote

Some of the Historic Problems caused by Solar Storms

2012-01-28T10:51:00.000-08:00

Solar Storms By Sten Odenwald
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, March 10, 1999; Page H01
For thousands of years, the aurora borealis or "northern lights" have lit the skies and human imagination with ghostly incandescence. Most often seen in Arctic regions but occasionally visible as far south as the Mediterranean, they have inspired awe, fright and a fair measure of misunderstanding.
Tiberius Caesar mistook their red glows for a fire in progress and dispatched an army to Ostia in 34 A.D. to inspect damage. But until the 19th century, no one seriously thought that they could hurt anybody -- unless, as an Old Norse legend warned, you happened to whistle at one!
Now we know better. Technological advances have made it possible for auroras and other "storms" in space to make themselves felt in the form of power blackouts, satellite failures and even pipeline explosions.
Space weather generally varies with the 11-year sunspot cycle: the more sunspots, the more storms and the more voluminous the "solar wind," as scientists call the stream of charged particles that incessantly blows off the face of the sun. Already, we are well on the way to the next solar maximum, expected to peak next year.
The maximum usually coincides with an increase in two other kinds of extremely bad "space weather." In one, powerful solar flares hurl protons and electrons almost to the speed of light. That acceleration produces blasts of X-rays that radiate into space. Both the particles and radiation can disrupt short-wave communication on Earth.
Were that not enough, the sun also can spawn billion-ton clouds of plasma and their associated magnetic fields. Traveling at more than 1 million mph, some of these "coronal mass ejections" (CMEs) may arrive at the Earth in only a few days.
In many ways, they actually are more noxious than the more familiar solar flares. CMEs pummel Earth's magnetic field like a sledgehammer 1 million miles wide and upset the delicate balances of trapped particles in the Van Allen radiation belts and elsewhere within the boundaries of Earth's magnetic field. [See illustration below].
The first indication that space weather has worsened usually is a spectacular auroral display in Arctic regions. When the solar wind hits the Earth's magnetic field, electrons and protons inside the field are accelerated into currents that flow along the gossamer-thin magnetic field lines and converge on the polar regions.
As they enter the thickening atmosphere about 500 miles above our heads, the particles collide with atoms and molecules of oxygen and nitrogen, which shed their added energy as light, producing ethereal shapes and colors.
But that's not all. The motion of other populations of charged particles within Earth's magnetic field causes great currents of charged particles to circulate in space like a 10,000-mile-wide river. These invisible stratospheric rivers can alter the geomagnetic field temporarily and produce "magnetic storms."
Humanity began feeling the effects of the solar maximum as soon as technology became sophisticated enough to respond. During the late 1800s, vast networks of wires were strung to carry telegraph and telephone traffic, setting the stage for a giant-scale reenactment of one of history's most famous physics experiments.
English physicist Michael Faraday discovered in his lab that, if you take a magnet and move it near a loop of wire, electrical current flows in the wire. The moving field induced a corresponding motion of charge in the wire. Faraday's "magnetic induction" soon was put to use in the first electric generator.
Exactly the same thing happened when solar storms triggered changes in Earth's magnetism, affecting thousands of miles of telegraph wires. Electrical currents induced by the changing fields often were so powerful that telegraphers didn't need battery power to send their information. Some operators were even treated to near-electrocution!
Placing wires under the ocean made no difference. In the Atlantic cable between Scotland and Newfoundland, 2,600-volt surges were recorded during a magnetic storm in March 1940. Short-wave broadcasts often were blocked for hours, and "technical difficulties" were expected and even jokingly tolerated.
Some effects of solar storms were far beyond the nuisance level, especially at higher latitudes. In August 1972, a 230,000-volt transformer at the British Columbia Hydroelectric Authority blew up when shifting magnetic fields induced a current spike. On March 13, 1989, a storm plunged Quebec into a complete power blackout, affecting millions.
Over the years, such failures -- which follow the sunspot cycle -- have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.
Earlier in this decade, the North American Electric Reliability Council, which oversees the entire U.S. electrical grid, estimated that a storm only slightly stronger than the one that hit Quebec could cascade into the United States. Such a disruption then would have cost the U.S. economy between $3 billion and $6 billion, about the damage inflicted by Hurricane Hugo in September 1989.

THE PIPELINE PROBLEM
Long uninterrupted pipelines also can bring solar storms "down to Earth." Magnetic storm currents acting on pipelines are known to enhance the rate of corrosion over time, with potentially catastrophic cumulative effects.
On June 4, 1989, a gas pipeline explosion demolished part of the Trans-Siberian Railway, engulfing two passenger trains in flames and killing 500 people.
Unlike the Siberian pipeline, the Alaskan oil pipeline built during the mid-1970s is a newer technology specifically designed to minimize corrosive currents now well known to modern pipeline engineers.
Since the last solar maximum in 1990, hundreds of millions of people have come to depend on flawless, reliable work by an armada of satellites worth tens of billions of dollars. They are increasingly vulnerable.
In orbit above the protective layers of the atmosphere, they are prey to potentially hazardous dosages of radiation. The most destructive element seems to be high-energy electrons that penetrate deep into a spacecraft and affect delicate electronics.
Data bits in critical control programs can change suddenly from "1" to "0" or vice versa. The resulting false commands can put satellites into unplanned, and even fatal, operating modes.
In addition, many satellites have attitude control systems that sense the direction of Earth's magnetic field to determine up from down. During magnetic storms, polarities can change abruptly, causing satellites to upend themselves.
The list of major satellites incapacitated by adverse space weather is long and costly. Recent examples include an AT&T Telstar 401 satellite that experienced a massive power failure in 1997 only days after a solar storm arrived at Earth.
Last May, PanAmSat's Galaxy IV satellite, insured for $165 million, mysteriously lost attitude control and halted service for 45 million pagers in North America. Several new Motorola Iridium satellites suffered attitude control failures about the same time. In 1998, satellite insurance companies paid $1.8 billion in claims, of which half was for satellite failures in orbit. end quote.

There also may be articles written on the Millions of dollars or more in damage from Solar Storms to pipelines, Satellites, and electrical generating stations, power lines and transformers. However, I haven't found it yet.

I wanted to repeat the following quotes from above to emphasize them: Begin quote.
Data bits in critical control programs can change suddenly from "1" to "0" or vice versa. The resulting false commands can put satellites into unplanned, and even fatal, operating modes.
In addition, many satellites have attitude control systems that sense the direction of Earth's magnetic field to determine up from down. During magnetic storms, polarities can change abruptly, causing satellites to upend themselves. end quote.

Begin repeat of 2nd quote from above:
Some effects of solar storms were far beyond the nuisance level, especially at higher latitudes. In August 1972, a 230,000-volt transformer at the British Columbia Hydroelectric Authority blew up when shifting magnetic fields induced a current spike. On March 13, 1989, a storm plunged Quebec into a complete power blackout, affecting millions.
Over the years, such failures -- which follow the sunspot cycle -- have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. end quote.

Zero emissions cars in California may be problematic

2012-01-27T17:45:00.000-08:00

Can California change US cars forever? New zero-emissions rules take aim.

The main problem with hybrid zero emissions cars is the batteries. They are dangerous in an accident. (Many people were electrocuted in Hybrid accidents before trunks electrical shutoffs were installed) But the biggest problem right now is that the average age of a car in the U.S. is 10.8 years old at present. People just cannot afford to buy hybrids unless they are rich. So what most people are doing who cannot afford the gas prices is that they will buy a high mileage car like a Hyundai or something like that that gets over 30 miles per gallon regularly. And often this is not a new car but sometimes a car that is already 3 to 5 years old. This is just a fact of life not only in California but throughout the U.S. and the rest of the world. So, likely I see more people buying high mileage cars and trucks most places instead of hybrids or other alternatives for the next 10 to 20 years. We no longer have the same wealthy economy where the average person can afford a hybrid or to replace the batteries when the time comes to do that. So, it is much more realistic to expect people to be buying more used high mileage (over 30 mpg) cars and trucks instead. They really won't have any choice soon. My wife and I paid about $4.09 a gallon for premium gasoline in San Luis Obispo today. So, it is either buy higher mileage cars or buy a bicycle or motorcycle or take the bus or train or don't travel anywhere. Buying zero emission cars for most people is completely unrealistic these days. (Unless those vehicles are 3 years or older already).

However, without finding a way to move the country more surely away from gasoline and diesel as power sources (within 25 years) civilization could grind to a halt slowly or quickly (depending upon how fast the price of gasoline and diesel goes up until there is no more oil left at all worldwide).

Though one of the ways to move the country away from oil products is to use hydrogen, this also becomes problematic if the hydrogen we are going to use comes from water, for example. Because once you break water into Hydrogen and Oxygen and burn it, it no longer can turn back into water again. And even though the bi-product of burning hydrogen and oxygen is water vapor you still are consuming either the hydrogen or both the hydrogen and oxygen depending upon the system you are using to break it down and use one or both elements. Since water is also limited upon earth (there is a finite quantity) burning water as fuel doesn't make a lot of sense in the long run. (Even though in the short run it might be better than ending civilization when oil runs out if that happens rather suddenly). So, though hydrogen from water might be a temporary solution to the end of oil, it cannot because of the finite amount of water on the planet be a permanent one just like oil could could not be a permanent solution to our energy problems either because it was always finite as well. So, by being more forward thinking in how we design the future we can help the earth cultures of the future survive and prosper and not face the eventual end of water on earth like we now are facing the end of oil on earth in the next 25 years.

Portlandia

2012-01-26T23:40:00.000-08:00

Portlandia is an IFC (independent Film Channel) production series that started early in 2011. So, when I saw the first season at Netflix I was interested. I played a promo for it about recycling and thought that was very eccentric and funny and weird but it reminded me of when I went to UCSC in 1989 when recycling first started through Universities and colleges throughout California. Now, recycling is in almost every northern California Coastal City. Even Santa Barbara has recycling bins at home now. And where I live we have a recycling bin, a trash bin and a plant refuse bin. And we combine paper, plastic and glass, and aluminum and tin cans in the home recycling bin. And what I find interesting is that approximately 75% of trash is recyclable. So, in the Portlandia promo skit they have about 12 different recycling bins to separate things into and I found this sort of funny and weird at the same time.

But when I watched the first episode of Portlandia I really enjoyed it a lot and I personally have seen incidents in my life that paralleled each skit so it really is based upon real behaviors of real people in Coastal California, Coastal Oregon and Coastal Washington. However, each of these areas has their own kind of style and variation about all this. For example, some of the behavior parodied in this Portlandia started in the late 1960s and early 1970s in Berkeley and San Francisco and then spread out just like long hair throughout the nation. Different parts have stayed and morphed throughout the Country. In some places long hair and beard is still going on. And other places certain ways of dressing and behaviors are still going on and morphing. For example, in the early 1980s, after experiencing much of the 1960s in Los Angeles and Venice and places like Big Sur and Mt. Shasta and later Santa Cruz. I went with my family (wife and three children ages 10 to 14 to the Eugene Oregon Country faire and was completely surprised when the long hairs dancing to the Grateful dead that were female stripped to the waist just like they did in the 1960s and 1970s while dancing in public. This I had thought even then was gone forever. But the real live Ecotopia exists in many places from San Francisco North and even to some degree in places like Santa Cruz to this day. I was also amazed more recently by a parade in Arcata that I went to because my God Daughter was graduating from Humbolt University in Arcata, California in the early 2000s. In the parade people dressed in all sorts of costumes but one woman basically dressed in makeup and looked sort of like the girl from X-Men (you know the one that is all blue makeup) and nothing else. And this seemed to be okay with everyone in this cultural local. But the skit in Portlandia that made me laugh until I got almost couldn't breathe was the one about the store "Women and Women First". I have also met women like this and as a man this is always quite a challenge to maintain politeness and chivalrousness when dealing with people like this. When the two women go to the bank to change the man's money and lock him in the store so he can't get out. That was just too much. What is even more funny is that I have actually met women who are just like this over the years.

Though my son and my wife laughed also out loud during the first episode I probably will be watching this series alone. But to be able to laugh at experiences that shaped my life from 1968 until the early 1990s and to some degree since as well when I visit old friends is really wonderful for me now. I find it very therapeutic to watch this series because all my emotions go this way and that especially now I tend to live a more traditional lifestyle than I did between the 1960s until the 1990s. I have been married and living with my wife and now 15 year old daughter in a very safe and relatively affluent community near the ocean since about 1994 now. So, watching Portlandia it takes me back to a more alternate lifestyle that I lived successfully from the 1960s until I decided that I needed to move on with my life during the 1990s. In some ways I found living a more alternative life sort of like never completely growing up. And even now when I visit friends who never married or never had or raised children who still live very alternative lifestyles I'm glad I had the experiences that I did but am also grateful to be living a more traditional, financially secure lifestyle that I do now. I miss a lot of the amazingness of the past. But sometimes things could just get so crazy in unpredictable ways that I really appreciate the ongoing stability of my life now.

One of the funnier points of view about this is my present wife. Her point of view that is well taken is that : "One cannot live an alternate lifestyle successfully without starting out being a very fortunate and somewhat elitist kind of person." Though I would have argued vehemently against this point of view in the past, I realize now that usually this point of view is right. Only those who are fortunate enough to get enough exposure to many different points of view and a diverse education become successful in an alternate lifestyle. So, the average person in the world would only consider someone living an alternate lifestyle as an oddity sort of like living as an artist or a bohemian or a beatnik or whatever, but basically unattainable or confusing or even not useful to the average person on earth. So then, Portlandia is basically about a certain kind of elitism that is usually (at present) reserved for middle to upper middle class or rich white kids who also might be of any race or persuasion. But at core this is also a form of elitism even though that really might offend many in the middle of this kind of living. I know as a young alternative person I couldn't have seen it in this way then.

For example, Stephen Jobs (when he was alive) would have been considered a Rich Hippie in the mold of an alternative Zen thinking Northern Californian. And since his company right now is the most successful in the world, that is pretty elitist in itself as well as ultimately successful.

CFC Destruction of Ozone

2012-01-26T13:24:00.000-08:00

CFC Destruction of Ozone - Major Cause of Recent

omsriram.com/GlobalWarming.htm

CFC Destruction of Ozone - Major Cause of Recent Global Warming!

Robert A. Ashworth

pdf. format for printing

The animation illustrates how one chlorine atom in the stratosphere

can destroy up to 100,000 ozone molecules. Graphic credit goes to

University of Alaska

Abstract

CFCs have created both unnatural atmospheric cooling and warming based on these facts:

CFCs have destroyed ozone in the lower stratosphere/upper troposphere causing these zones in the atmosphere to cool 1.37 ^oC from 1966 to 1998. This time span was selected to eliminate the effect of the natural solar irradiance (cooling-warming) cycle effect on the earth's temperature.

The loss of ozone allowed more UV light to pass through the stratosphere at a sufficient rate to warm the lower troposphere plus 8-3/4" of the earth by 0.48 ^oC (1966 to 1998).

Mass and energy balances show that the energy that was absorbed in the lower stratosphere /upper troposphere hit the lower troposphere/earth at a sustainable level of 1.69 x 10¹⁸ Btu more in 1998 than it did in 1966.

Greater ozone depletion in the Polar Regions has caused these areas to warm some two and one-half (2 �) times that of the average earth temperature (1.2 ^oC vs. 0.48 ^oC). This has caused permafrost to melt, which is releasing copious quantities of methane, estimated at 100 times that of manmade CO₂ release, to the atmosphere. Methane in the atmosphere slowly converts to CO₂ and water vapor and its release has contributed to higher CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere.

There is a temperature anomaly in Antarctica. The Signey Island landmass further north, warmed like the rest of the Polar Regions; but south at Vostok, there has been a cooling effect. Although the cooling at Vostok needs to be analyzed in more detail, because of the large ozone hole there, black body radiation from Vostok (some 11,400 feet above sea level) to outer space is most likely the cause. Especially, since this phenomenon occurred over the same period that stratospheric ozone destruction took place.

Greenhouse Gases

Many scientists do not agree with the CO₂ global warming models developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). For instance, T.M.L. Wigley¹, a senior scientist at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, calculated the "saved" warming that would accrue if every nation met its Kyoto Protocol obligations (U.S. reduction of 43%). By 2050, the earth�s temperature would reduce by 0.07 ^oC - a change so small it could not be reliably measured. In contrast to Wigley's projections, the IPCC has developed models² that predict the average surface temperature of the earth relative to 1980-1990, will increase by 2 to 11.5�F (1.1 to 6.4�C) by the end of the 21st century due to increased CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere. They project temperature change as functions of growth rates in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Those projections are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. IPCC projections of global warming.

What is so disturbing is that measured temperature points added to the IPCC graph do not show the temperature has increased. Further, temperatures for over 1200 years (see Figure 2) show absolutely no correlation with CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere. Note that the 210 to 312 ppmv scale is in larger increments than the upper 312 to 378 ppmv scale, visually making the CO₂ increase look greater than it actually was. The temperature is jumping around and not following CO₂ concentrations at all. The IPCC models are clearly flawed. One must wonder whether the IPCC used any actual temperature measurements or historic CO₂ concentrations relative to global temperature, when it developed its models. After developing the models, it does not look like they checked their predictions against real measurements. If so, CO₂ causing global warming would have been negated by now.

Figure 2. CO₂ concentration and temperature change with time from 800 to 2006 AD³.

As shown in Figure 2, over the time from 850 until 1650, the CO₂concentration was relatively the same (~230 ppmv) but the earth's temperature varied from +0.6 to -0.2 ^oC. The CO₂ concentration was 375 ppmv in 2006 and there was still no correlation of temperature with CO₂ concentration

Some say historically, that increased CO₂ levels in the atmosphere have created periods of global warming. They cite the Vostok, Antarctica ice core data⁴, as proof of this. The truth here is that whoever came up with this analysis got the cause and effect reversed. The data show that global warming always comes first (refer back to Figure 2). After a temperature spike from by the sun, the oceans start to warm and liberate more CO₂because of the reduced solubility of CO₂ in seawater at higher temperatures. After a spike, there is a lag of some 800+ years until CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere starts to increase.

Data that is more recent, further confirm that atmospheric CO₂ concentrations have no effect on global temperature, see Figure 3. While CO₂ levels increased some 20 ppmv over the past 10 years, global temperatures did not increase they fell. For instance, the earth's temperature from January 2007 to January 2008 dropped by almost 0.6 ^oC.

Figure 3. Earth temperature and CO₂ concentration 1998-2008.

The temperatures shown in the graph⁵ are from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) and the United Kingdom's (UK) Hadley Climate Research Unit. The Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii measured concentrations of CO₂ in the atmosphere over this same period. Here again, actual data completely refutes IPCC modeling predictions. Even further, human emissions account for only some three percent (3%) of the total CO₂ in atmosphere⁶ or some 12 ppmv of the 385 ppmv seen in 2008. Therefore, if anthropogenic emissions of CO₂ had been banished completely at the start of 2008 the CO₂ in the atmosphere would have dropped only back to the level we had in mid 2002. It was also warmer in 2002 than it was in 2007. Although one would prefer not to refute another's work, the more you study CO₂ causing global warming, the more ludicrous it becomes.

Besides the carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere, atmospheric concentrations of methane have increased 2.5 times from pre-industrial time (approximately 700 ppbv) to 1,745 ppbv in 1998⁷. In 1966, the methane concentration was around 1400 ppbv. In 2000, methane concentrations leveled off at 1755 ppbv and currently appear to be slowly dropping. This is during the same time span when stratospheric CFC concentrations leveled off and started to drop slowly. Where is this methane coming from? Much of it could be from the melting of permafrost. A recent study⁸showed that permafrost melting in North Siberia is releasing methane sequestered there since the Pleistocene era (10,000 to one million years ago) from the surface of thawing lakes. Further, methane is being emitted at a rate much greater than previously thought. The methane being released was estimated to be some 100 times the rate of carbon dioxide released from the burning of fossil fuels. Methane (CH₄) slowly converts to CO₂ in the atmosphere. If the researchers from Florida, Alaska and Russia are correct, it appears that most of the recent CO₂ increase has come from the melting of permafrost.

Ozone Loss Effect

In 1994, ozone in the lower stratosphere in Antarctica had dropped to less than one-third of its normal level. Although not as severe, ozone concentration north of the Arctic Circle sank to 45% of normal in the winter of 1996.

The legendary hypotheses⁹ of Paul Crutzen, Sherwood Rowland, and Mario Molina led to CFCs being banned because they were destroying stratospheric ozone. Although it unleashed a storm of criticism and controversy at the time they did their work, they were vindicated by receipt of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 1978, the USA banned the use of CFCs in hair sprays and other aerosols. In 1987, the governments of the world through the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), agreed to limit the production and release of a variety of CFCs. The protocol to accomplish this was put forward at a meeting in Montreal, Canada and has since become known as the Montreal Protocol. Since the original protocol, its provisions were amended in mid-1998; the amendments were then ratified or accepted by 120 and 78 countries, respectively. CFCs will be produced in China and other developing countries until 2010. However, in July 2007, China shut down five of its six remaining CFC production plants ahead of schedule and now is only producing 550 metric tons per year.

It is well known that warming of the stratosphere is caused by ozone absorbing ultraviolet radiation. Since ozone keeps the stratosphere warm, using straightforward logic, loss of ozone would cause the stratosphere to cool. When ozone is lost, more UV light passes through the stratosphere to hit earth. The effect is clearly shown (Figure 4) by temperature versus ozone concentration in Dobson Units (DU). NASA¹⁰ generated the graph below.

Figure 4. Ozone concentration versus stratospheric temperature.

Except for the periods of two large volcanic eruptions, temperature and ozone concentration rise and fall together. From 1997 to 2001, the temperature of the stratosphere averaged a 1 ^oC change for every 6.45 DU of increase or decrease in stratospheric ozone concentration. Over the Polar Regions, the primal cause for colder than normal temperatures is loss of ozone. During winter, the air temperature drops and clouds of ice crystals, with mixtures of hydrochloric, sulfuric and nitric acids, form in the stratosphere. These ice crystals provide a surface for chemical reactions that change chlorine compounds that do not react with ozone (e.g. hydrogen chloride) into more active forms that destroy ozone, such as:

HCl + ClONO₂ -> Cl₂ + HNO₃and CL₂ + UV -> 2 Cl ^-

In addition, the very cold air creates vortices of fast-moving air. These vortices effectively insulate the Polar Regions from the rest of the atmosphere. They sit there, are very stable, and keep the outside higher-ozone air from coming in. Most stratospheric ozone is created in the tropics because of the greater intensity of solar radiation that creates ozone. Stratospheric air currents, from the tropics, then transport ozone to the Arctic and Antarctica. However, the strong and stable vortices hinder the migration of ozone to the poles and more UV light passes through to hit earth. That is why the Polar Regions have warmed more that the rest of the earth.

Since the late sixties, the loss of ozone has caused the stratosphere to cool, see Figure 5. The exceptions to cooling caused by ozone destruction occurred at the times of the major eruptions of El Chichon, and Mt. Pinatubo volcanoes. The Agung volcanic eruption that occurred before the time interval analyzed also warmed the stratosphere. In 1980, Mt. St. Helens erupted but it had a much smaller effect than El Chichon and Mt. Pinatubo. In 1998, the stratosphere was 1.37 ^oC cooler than it was in 1966. This span of time was chosen to negate the solar irradiance cycle and the volcanic eruption effects. The data suggests that the cooling over this time span appears to be mostly due to loss of ozone.

Figure 5. Global lower stratospheric anomalies from 1958 to 2008¹¹.

The temperature changes before 1966 are most likely the result of change in the rate of solar energy that hits earth and maybe some volcanic activity. However, after CFC refrigerants and aerosols started to be produced and released to the atmosphere, the stratosphere started to cool. As the lower stratosphere and upper troposphere cooled, the troposphere and earth from 1966 to 1998 warmed by 0.48 ^oC see Figure 6. The mean used for this graph to set a zero temperature is different from Figure 5 but since only temperature change is being considered, the line depicting the zero point is irrelevant.

Figure 6. Near earth surface temperature global change with time¹².

In the Arctic, surface temperatures increased 2 � times the average global increase (1.2 ^oC vs. 0.48 ^oC) from 1966 to 1998, see Figure 7. This appears to be caused by less ozone in the stratosphere in polar climes where ozone destruction is exacerbated.

Figure 7. Observed Arctic temperature change¹³.

There is a cooling anomaly in Antarctica. Whereas, the Signey Island landmass in the northern part of Antarctica has warmed, south at Vostok, there has been a cooling effect. Although the cooling at Vostok needs to be analyzed in more detail, because of the large ozone hole in Antarctica, it seems likely that black body radiation from Vostok (some 11,400 feet above sea level) to outer space is most likely the cause, especially since this phenomenon occurred over the same time span that stratospheric ozone destruction took place. One would have to use reverse logic to explain the cooling effect at Vostok being caused by increased CO₂in the atmosphere.

The change in ozone depletion chemicals in the stratosphere versus time¹⁴ plus future concentration projections is shown in Figure 8. CFC concentrations peaked in the late nineties and then started dropping slightly. The contribution of methyl bromide is split into anthropogenic (A) and natural (N) components and the natural ozone-depleting substance methyl chloride is included. The line at 2 ppb corresponds to the time when ozone depletion was first detected (1980). It also shows when major ozone recovery is anticipated (2050 to 2060). Although not shown, chloroform (CHCl₃), dichloromethane (CH₂Cl₂), and a range of other chlorinated solvents contribute a further 0.1 ppb to the stratospheric chlorine.

Figure 8. Ozone depletion chemicals in the stratosphere.

CFC's and CCl₄ are nearly inert in the troposphere and have lifetimes of 50-200+ years. The hydrogen-containing halocarbons like HCl are more reactive, and tend to be removed in the troposphere by reactions with [OH] radicals. However, this process is slow and some live long enough to reach the stratosphere. Total stratospheric organic chlorine is currently over 3 ppbv. Methyl Chloride (CH₃Cl) is the only ozone-depleting chlorocarbon from a major natural source and makes up around 0.5 ppbv of the total. Organic bromides and iodides also destroy ozone.

It is different in the stratosphere; the major source of CFC decomposition there is photolysis¹⁵, reaction with ultraviolet (UV) light radiation. Ultraviolet light has wavelengths in the 200-400 nm region. UV-A light is a low energy UV light with wavelengths between 320-400 nm. Only about 5% of the UV-A light is absorbed by ozone and most reaches the surface of the Earth. UV-B light is of moderate energy and has wavelengths between 290-320 nm. Ozone absorbs most of the UV-B light before it reaches the surface of the Earth. UV-C light is a high energy UV light with wavelengths in the range of 200-290 nm.

Both ozone and oxygen molecules absorb the UV-C light before it can reach the Earth's surface. Therefore, where there is low stratospheric ozone, more UV (A, B & C) light from the sun passes through the atmosphere to hit earth and heat it up.

The initial products from high energy UV-C light hitting a CFC molecule are a chlorine atom and an organic radical, considering CFC-11 (trichlorofluoromethane):

CCl₃F + UV-C light = CCl₂F + Cl

The free chlorine atom can then react with ozone to form ClO:

Cl + O₃ -> ClO + O₂

The ClO in turn will react with nascent oxygen (O) to release a chlorine atom; thus, a continuous destruction of ozone occurs because the chlorine atoms are not sequestered into stable compounds:

ClO + O -> Cl + O₂

The CFC chlorine can take other reaction paths, but this is believed to be the predominant ozone destruction cycle. It has been estimated that one CFC molecule in the stratosphere will destroy 100,000 molecules of ozone over its natural lifetime there. Though the concentration of CFCs is only 3 ppbv, they have the ozone destruction effect of a concentration of 0.03% based on one reaction per ozone molecule.

Figure 9 shows a correlation of CFC concentration and average stratosphere and earth temperature plotted versus time. As shown by the arrows, in a logical sequence, CFC concentration started to drop first causing a reduction in stratospheric cooling and then a reduction in earth warming.

Figure 9. Stratospheric cooling, earth warming and CFC concentration.

When one sees like trends, it is a good indication that the trends are related to one another. Contrarily, when one looks at CO₂ concentrations versus earth temperature there is no trend whatsoever that shows increased CO₂ concentrations increase global temperature. The only observable trend between the two is that a global spike from the sun creates a higher temperature on earth and some 800 years or so later the CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere start to increase.

Large solar heating-cooling cycle variations occur every 80,000 to 110,000 years, but the sun's thermostat also regularly increases and decreases in shorter term cooling-warming cycles (approximately 11 years)¹⁶, see Figure 10. For the mass and energy balances completed, to eliminate the short-term solar irradiance warming-cooling cycle effect on global warming, the period from 1966 to 1998 was chosen. At these two points in time, the solar irradiance hitting the earth was approximately the same (1368.8 W/m²).

According to NASA, the lower stratosphere and upper troposphere, both of which have cooled together¹⁷, extends from 8 to 19 km above the surface of the earth with the lower troposphere being in the 0 to 8 km elevation zone. Knowing how much the lower stratosphere-upper troposphere cooled and how much the lower troposphere-earth warmed, mass and energy balances could be made to determine how much more radiant energy hit the earth in 1998 compared to 1966 due to the destruction of ozone.

Figure 10. Solar irradiance cycle effect on earth.

Table 1 shows the mass and energy balances completed around the lower stratosphere/upper troposphere (8-19 km above sea level) zone, 1966 versus 1998 based on measured atmospheric temperatures that showed these zones had cooled 1.37 ^oC over this time span.

The mass and energy balance in Table 2 shows the effect of the additional energy being absorbed by the troposphere/earth (surface to 8 km above sea level) in 1998 compared to 1966. It is similar to this. Say you have one million pounds of water. You measure the temperature of the water, and then you add one million Btus of energy to it and measure the temperature again to find it has raised 1 ^oF.

The additional UV radiation passing through the upper atmosphere is sufficient to heat the lower troposphere and the top 8-3/4 inches of the earth by 0.48 ^oC. The temperature of the lower troposphere and 8-3/4" of earth (land and water) in 1966 had an average heat content of 9.7755 x 10²⁰ Btu and in 1998; it had a heat content of 9.7924 x 10²⁰ Btu.

The added instantaneous UV energy that hit the earth in 1998 was 1.6855 x 10¹⁸Btu. The added energy hitting the earth was used to first heat the troposphere and the remaining energy was then applied to heat land and water. To make the energy balance, 8-3/4" of earth/water needed to be heated.

TABLE 1. UV-B LIGHT NOT ABSORBED IN UPPER TROPOSPHERE/LOWER STRATOSPHERE

TABLE 2. HEAT ABSORBED IN LOWER TROPOSPHERE AND EARTH SURFACE

Ozone Signature Present but No Greenhouse Signature

There are several possible causes of global warming, and they each warm the atmosphere at different latitudes and altitudes, that is, each cause will produce a distinct pattern of hot spots in the atmosphere, or �signature�. The greenhouse signature is very distinct from the others; warming due to a greenhouse effect would cause most warming in the tropics at about 10 km up in the atmosphere¹⁸.

If the IPCC is right about a greenhouse effect, do actual temperature measurements show a hot spot like they predict from their signature modeling efforts? The answer is no! Therefore, one cannot in good conscience say CO₂ is causing global warming through a greenhouse effect that is not there. It exists, but there is no signature for its existence?

Temperature in the atmosphere has been measured for decades using radiosondes (a technique where weather balloons with thermometers radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere). Actual measured temperatures (Hadley Centre radiosonde observations) for 2006-2007 are shown in Figure 11. The measurements show mostly warming in the troposphere and on earth with cooling in the stratosphere

Figure 11. Observed signature from actual measurements¹⁹.

The axes for the observed temperatures are as per the signature diagrams developed by the IPCC shown in Figure 12. However, the horizontal axis only goes from 75 degrees north to 75 degrees south, there is no data around 60 degrees south, the vertical axis only goes up to 24 km and there was no data above 20 km for the equator area. The vertical axis shows the height in the atmosphere in kilometers (km) and the atmospheric pressure in hectopascals (hpa).

The six theoretical computer model signatures developed (Figures 12 a through f) by the IPCC²⁰, which is the most authoritative document for those who believe carbon emissions have caused global warming. In each diagram, the horizontal axis is the latitude, from the North Pole through the equator to the South Pole. The colored regions on each diagram, shows where the temperature changes occur for each possible cause. Here also, the vertical axis shows the height in the atmosphere in kilometers (km) and the atmospheric pressure in hectopascals (hpa).

Figure 12. IPCC projected climate change signatures.

Figure 12a is the signature developed for increased solar irradiation. If this signature were present, the warming would be moderate through most of the stratosphere and troposphere. This effect is not seen.

Figure 12b is the signature of a large volcanic eruption producing huge clouds of ash and fumes. If this signature were present, there would be moderate warming above 14 km, and moderate cooling below that. The opposite of this effect is seen, cooling in the stratosphere and warming in the troposphere.

Figure 12c is a signature of an increase in greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide. If this signature were present, warming would be concentrated in a distinct �hot spot� about 8 to 12 km up over the tropics, with less warming further away, turning to cooling above 18 km. No "hot spot" seen.

Figure 12d is a signature of increased ozone depletion (both tropospheric and stratospheric). The ozone signature shows moderate warming below 12 km and moderate cooling above 12 km. This effect is seen and was probably more pronounced in 1998 when it was hotter on the earth than it was in 2007.

Figure 12e is a signature of increased industrial pollution, specifically direct sulfate aerosols. If this signature were present, there would be moderate cooling below 14 km mainly in the northern hemisphere and moderate warming above 14 km over the tropics. A little bit of this could be occurring around the equator and in the southern hemisphere.

Figure 12f is the signature that was expected by the IPCC, developed by combining the five signatures. The combination was made in the proportions the IPCC believed those causes contributed to global warming. The distinct "hot spot" at 8 to 12 km high over the tropics due to increased greenhouse warming dominates the theoretical combined signature. Actual measurements do not show this effect.

There is clearly no "hot spot" as the IPCC predicted; the "greenhouse signature" is absent, which means greenhouse gases did not cause the earth to warm. After the greenhouse signature was found to be missing, alarmists objected by saying the readings of the radiosonde thermometers might not be accurate and maybe the hotspot is there but went undetected. The uncertainties in temperature measurement from one radiosonde is large enough to miss the hotspot; however, hundreds of radiosondes have given the same answer, so statistically it is not possible that they collectively failed to notice the hotspot.

The signature that is the closest to the actual warming signature is the "ozone depletion signature"; refer back to Figure 12d where it showed moderate warming below 12 km and moderate cooling above 12 km. This effect dominates in the northern hemisphere from 20^o to 75^oN north. It is not an exact fit for the observed signature all over the globe but clearly appears to play the dominant role. The ozone signature also shows greater warming in the North Polar Region like is currently seen. In the IPCC ozone signature presented, there was no projection for the South Polar Region. Effects like industrial pollution and other currently unknown effects could be playing minor roles based on the IPCC models.

Conclusion

Many factors can influence the earth's temperature. However, from a scientific analysis, there is not a greenhouse signature in the atmosphere as implied by the IPCC. The non-effect of CO₂ is also clearly shown, by an earth temperature drop of almost 0.6 ^oC from January 2007 to January 2008. It should be obvious to everyone who has analyzed climate change that climate-driving forces, other than CO₂, control the temperature.

As this paper addresses, chlorofluorocarbon destruction of stratospheric ozone can be correlated nicely with both the cooling and warming temperature anomalies seen over the time span from 1966 to 1998 and the ozone signature for global warming is the closest of the five signature impacts developed by the IPCC. Further, one can account for most, if not all, of the 0.48^oC rise in earth's temperature from 1966 to 1998 with the additional UV light that hit the earth due to ozone destruction in the upper atmosphere. Further, the "ozone depletion signature" developed by the IPCC for the atmosphere is seen but not the "greenhouse signature".

Ozone destruction has also indirectly created an increase in CO₂ concentrations due to the melting of the permafrost in Siberia that has warmed two and one-half (2�) times more than the average earth temperature has risen. The higher temperatures started melting the permafrost, and this in turn created a significant release of methane. Methane slowly reacts with oxygen to convert to CO₂in the atmosphere.

Unless we remove the CFCs from the atmosphere, it appears that the whole earth will continue to be warmer than normal and higher concentrations of CO₂ (from permafrost release of methane) will exist until the CFCs in the stratosphere slowly disappear naturally over the next 50-100 years. The exceptions that could alter this are large volcanic eruptions or weather modification techniques as proposed by physicist Freeman Dyson, wherein fine particulate, such as bauxite (Al₂O₃), is sprayed into the stratosphere to simulate a volcanic eruption, which would absorb more UV light in the stratosphere and cool the earth as shown in the IPCC modeled signature for volcanic eruptions.

China and other developing countries are to phase out CFC production in 2010. Some CFC production plants have been shutdown ahead of schedule in these developing countries, which is very beneficial. However, it would not be that difficult to remove CFCs from the atmosphere to bring earth's temperature back to normal much quicker. Although the atmosphere is intricate in how it acts and reacts, CFCs appear to be the dominant cause of the greater than normal earth warming from 1966 to 1998, not CO₂.

Einstein⁽²¹⁾ once said, "The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest possible number of hypotheses or axioms". One can do that here using CFC destruction of ozone to explain the observed recent earth temperature anomalies.

The United States Congress will be considering a $1.2 trillion carbon tax this year that, if implemented, would make the recent increase in the cost of gasoline look pale in comparison to the price it will be after such a tax is imposed. Taxing carbon makes absolutely no sense and will dramatically hurt the economy of every country that implements it - all for no useful reason! This paper is a direct challenge to the IPCC; its models are way off base. When one develops a model, actual data needs to be observed to confirm or refute the model that one develops. It does not look like the IPCC knows this.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Christopher Monckton and David Evans for their support and suggestions. Most of all I would like to pay tribute to three gentlemen; Paul Crutzen, Sherwood Rowland, and Mario Molina, who saved this earth through their work on the CFC effect on the environment. If they had not worked to stop CFC production, what we are seeing now with global warming would be nothing compared to how bad it would have been without their efforts to stop its production. Their work was not only important from the standpoint of reducing global warming, but also in reducing the occurrence in skin cancer.

References

(1) Wigley, T.M.L., 1998. Geophys. Res. Lett., 25, 2285-2288.

(2) IPCC, 2007: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Editors: Solomon, S., D. Qin, and M. Manning.

(3) Nahle, N., Noriega, W. and Nahle, A. S. H. 2006. "Global Tropospheric Temperature Deviations since the Medieval Age". �Biology Cabinet Organization. Obtained from http://www.biocab.org/MGW_to_2006.html. Data Sources for developed graph: M.L. Khandidar, et. al, "The Global Warming Debate: A Review of the State of the Science", Pure Applied Geophysics; 162 (2006). K.J. Kreutz et. al, Bipolar Changes in Atmospheric Circulation During the Little Ice Age", Science; Vol 277, Issue 5330; pp 1294-1296, Aug. 29, 1997. Keith R. Briffa and Timothy J. Olsen, "PALEOCLIMATE; Blowing Hot and Cold", Volume 295; Issue 5563; pp 2227- 2228, March 22, 2002. NOAA/NASA/TIROS-N; http://www.science.nasa.gov.

(4) "Climate and Atmospheric History of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok Ice Core, Antarctica", by Petit J.R., Jouzel J., Raynaud D., Barkov N.I., Barnola J.M., Basile I., Bender M., Chappellaz J., Davis J. Delaygue G., Delmotte M. Kotlyakov V.M., Legrand M., Lipenkov V.M., Lorius C., P�pin L., Ritz C., Saltzman E., Stievenard M., Nature, June 3, 1999.

(5) "Correlation Last Decade and This Century CO2 and Global Temperatures Not There" by Joseph D�Aleo, Certified Consultant Meteorologist, Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), and Executive Director of Icecap.us http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Correlation_Last_Decade.pdf

(6) "Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) J. T. Houghton, Y. Ding, D.J. Griggs, M. Noguer, P. J. van der Linden and D. Xiaosu (Eds.)Cambridge University Press, UK

(7) "Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) J. T. Houghton, Y. Ding, D.J. Griggs, M. Noguer, P. J. van der Linden and D. Xiaosu (Eds.)Cambridge University Press, UK. pp 944.

(8) "Methane bubbling from Siberian thaw lakes as a positive feedback to climate warming", Nature (Sept. 7, 2006), Jeff Chanton, Florida State University; K. M. Walter and D.Verbla, University of Alaska-Fairbanks; S. A. Zimov, Northeast Science Station, Cherskii, Russia.

(9) Nobel Prize in Chemistry, The Rotal Swedish Academy of Sciences , October 11,1995. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1995/press.html

(10) Graph from data developed by Paul Newman of National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center

(11) Data from HadAT2 radiosonde developed by the United Kingdom Met Office Hadley Centre.

(12) Brohan, P., J.J. Kennedy, I. Harris, S.F.B. Tett and P.D. Jones, 2006: Uncertainty estimates in regional and global observed temperature changes: a new dataset from 1850. J. Geophysical Research 111, D12106, doi:10.1029/2005JD006548

(13) Impacts of a Warming Arctic: Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, ACIA Overview report, Cambridge University Press, 2004

(14) "Australia State of the Environment 2001 Independent Report to the Commonwealth Minister for the Environment and Heritage, graph and projections provided by Madronich & Velders

(15)R. Zander, M. R. Gunson, C. B. Farmer, C. P. Rinsland, F. W. Irion, and E. Mahieu, "The 1985 chlorine and fluorine inventories in the stratosphere based on ATMOS observations at 30 degrees North latitude", J. Atmos. Chem. 15, 171, 1992.

(16) Lean, J. 2000. Evolution of the Sun's Spectral Irradiance Since the Maunder minimum. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 27, No. 16, pp.2425-2428, Aug. 15, 2000

(17) Duan, A. (2007), "Cooling trend in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere over China", Geophys. Res.Lett., 34

(18) "Carbon Emissions Don't Cause Global Warming, November 28, 2007", Dr David Evans, Former Greenhouse Accounting Specialist for the Australian Greenhouse Office. http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Evans-CO2DoesNotCauseGW.pdf

(19) HadAT2 radiosonde observations, from US Climate Change Science Program (2006), p. 116, fig. 5.7E.

(20) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2007, p. 675, based on Santer et al, 2003. See also IPCC, 2007, Appendix 9C).

(21) L. Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein, (William Sloane Associates, New York, 1947) p. 110.

End quote from:

CFC Destruction of Ozone - Major Cause of Recent - Om Sri Ram

omsriram.com/GlobalWarming.htm

When I first started reading this article I thought that ozone was O1 but in watching the graphic I noticed that it is actually O3. Watching the Clorine atom destroy the O3 ozone was very upsetting. And to add to this Methane which is being released from the Tundra that is melting from Alaska through Siberia is putting Methane in the upper atmosphere which creates the Ozone O3 atoms into water vapor which also doesn't help us on earth in regard to protecting us from Cosmic rays and the sun. So both CFC's and Methane both dramatically reduce O3 which on earth causes blindness with anything that has eyes, especially in places like Australia and at high altitude all over the planet. Sheep herders even ten years ago complained that their sheep were going blind at high altitude in the Andes. So, this sort of thing is likely spreading further now from CFC's and Methane ending the protective ozone layer. another result of dramatically lowering the O3 (Ozone) all over earth is to increase skin cancer in humans and other animals that have their skin exposed directly to the sun. For example, the Tasmanian Devil might go extinct because of skin cancer on the face this decade or century in its native habitat.

Also, for all you humans out there reading this be sure you have good sunglasses both in the sun and even when there are clouds. Where I live more skin cancer comes from living skin unprotected in the fog and clouds than in the sun. That's because it is obvious if you don't use sun screen when the sun is out because you get an obvious burn. But what you are getting through the clouds often causes more skin cancer because your skin doesn't burn in such an obvious way so you think nothing is wrong.

begin repeat quote from above: "The signature that is the closest to the actual warming signature is the "ozone depletion signature"; refer back to Figure 12d where it showed moderate warming below 12 km and moderate cooling above 12 km. This effect dominates in the northern hemisphere from 20^o to 75^oN north. It is not an exact fit for the observed signature all over the globe but clearly appears to play the dominant role. The ozone signature also shows greater warming in the North Polar Region like is currently seen. end quote.

I am not a scientist that studies this sort of thing but from a common sense analysis of what I'm reading it sounds like what people are calling "Global Climate Change" or "Global Warming" might actually be about CFC's and methane killing the ozone in the upper atmosphere. This makes even more sense when you look at where it is affecting life on earth the most which is north of the equator towards the north pole which is where the majority of people live on earth with things that actually pollute the air like CFC's and methane.

And, when I went back to the introductory paragraph of this research I realized that that is what this study confirms. Here is a repeat of the introductory paragraph:

Abstract

There has been a lot of discussion about global warming. Some say anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions caused the earth to warm. Others say there is no abnormality at all, that it is just natural warming. As you will see from the data presented and analyzed, a greater than normal warming did occur in recent times but no measurements confirm an increase in CO₂, whether anthropogenic or natural, had any effect on global temperatures. There is however, strong evidence that anthropogenic emissions of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were the major cause of the recent abnormal warming. end repeat quote.

And also methane, especially now being released in incredible quantities by melting tundra in the northern regions of Alaska, Canada and Siberia etc. are killing more Ozone or O3 by turning ozone into H20 (water vapor) from the hydrogen atoms in methane. So, if the problem is actually CFC and methane caused I can see why the research was redirected because the makers of CFC's worldwide and all people who have herds of animals that also help create methane might be held legally accountable for Global Climate Change and global warming. So, likely for this reason this research hasn't made it much into the light of day. I can see why countries might have done this for a variety of reasons, not the least of which, countries want to still eat meat, drink milk etc. However, if herds of mammals are part of the cause of Global Climate change right along with CFC's this becomes problematic in an entirely new way for everyone on earth. Also, humans generate methane through their feces just like animals do. And even if animals (or humans die) if they are not cremated they also over time create methane and eventually oil as well. In fact, the oil that we burn in our cars, trucks and planes was once (everything that lived from trees to plants to dinosaurs and all deep past animals that over a long time converted to oil). So, by burning oil we are burning what is left of past ages that was once alive. I'm not sure exactly what to do with this information because it is all an "Inconvenient Truth" once again.

Once again to simplify it appears that CFC's in this study more than any other thing which are from refrigeration units and propelents from spray cans (over the years) appears to be one of the primary causes of Global Climate change and Global Warming through the conversion of Ozone O3 into free Oxygen O2. because one clorine atom from CFC when hit by Ultraviolet light from the sun separates out from the CFC into a clorine atom, it then attaches itself to an atom of Oxygen which turns the Ozone into free oxygen. But life on earth needs Ozone to protect it from going blind and skin cancer. In addition CFC in the upper atmosphere also is one of the major contributing factors to global Climate change and Global Warming. Also, the study illustrates in the far above diagram how one Clorine atom can destroy 100,000 molecules of ozone and return it to free oxygen which does not protect eyes or skin from damage from harmful UV rays from the sun and Cosmic Rays.

Second, (not in this study) I brought up how Methane melting out of the permafrost is also now a major factor in ending ozone as it melts out of the permafrost in Siberia, Canada, and Alaska and other northern regions. This also increases the loss of Ozone exponentially which also contributes to blindness and skin cancer and harm to plants and animals all over earth. This also contributes to Global Climate Change and Global Warming.

Grief and Adaptation to Change

2012-01-26T13:01:00.000-08:00

Grief has always been part of the both personal and group evolutionary process of mankind as long as mankind has existed. To interfere with Grief by using legal or illegal drugs often just ends that individuals forward progress in life. In my own life grief of the loss of my father brought about Asthma into my son's life for the first time at age 11, and set the stage for my divorce 9 years later. It also brought about (indirectly) a custody battle for my then 5 year old daughter which eventually caused me (partly) to get a heart virus and almost die at age 50. However, if I look at the grief just in my own life around the death of my father in 1985 and the death of my mother in 2008 I see each was a very important catapult into the future in my life and my children's lives. If, by taking legal or illegal drugs we become more out of touch and dysfunctional permanently than we would have been without taking anything, then we have harmed not only ourselves but also directly and indirectly harmed everyone we know and to some degree society itself.

So, my point of view is that if necessary visit your local Grief Therapist or minister or friend to help you through your grief but all the while seeing that grief is a necessary step towards a realistic look at your life now and your life into the future. In many cultures grief can catapult a person into a whole new and meaningful life if they let it. It can catapult someone when they lose their mate into another good relationship and travel to new and different places and climates. Grief is awful but often leads to a new life and new hopes and dreams. It is a natural element of change in the history of humankind and often leads in the end to better lives sometimes than before. Once again Descartes philosophy holds true, "There is nothing so bad that no good may come from it and nothing so good that no bad may come from it." Generally, as I watch life on earth this philosophy is usually just the way things are here on earth.

Police use Predator Drones in Police Departments in the U.S.

2012-01-26T10:54:00.000-08:00

Police employ Predator drone spy planes on home front

If you click on the above word button "Police employ....." you read about how people in the midwest here in the U.S. were arrested by being Identified by air from a Predator Drone. I personally don't think this is a very good precedent because eventually one of these predators is going to go haywire and do some damage. But I also know that if and when that happens it will be kept quiet by local police forces because that is just the way things are done. So, then it becomes more a question of, "How much damage can an unmanned predator drone do before it gets into the news?"

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For the answer to this question click on the above word button.

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Zero emissions cars in California may be problematic

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CFC Destruction of Ozone

CFC Destruction of Ozone - Major Cause of Recent Global Warming!

Abstract

Greenhouse Gases

Ozone Loss Effect

Ozone Signature Present but No Greenhouse Signature

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

References

Abstract

Grief and Adaptation to Change

Police use Predator Drones in Police Departments in the U.S.