Senate Democrats and their wealthy backers may enjoy talking non-stop about global warming, and how it might cause problems for humanity, some day. But there are much bigger things out there waiting to knock us into Stone Age misery than SUVs. Like the Sun: Earth dodged a huge magnetic bullet from the sun on July 23, 2012. According to University of California, Berkeley, and Chinese researchers, a rapid succession of coronal mass ejections - the most intense eruptions on the sun - sent a pulse of magnetized plasma barreling into space and through Earths orbit. Had the eruption come nine days earlier, when the ignition spot on the solar surface was aimed at Earth, it would have hit the planet, potentially wreaking havoc with the electrical grid, disabling satellites and GPS, and disrupting our increasingly electronic lives. A near miss that could have wrecked over $2.6 trillion worth of damage worldwide had it been a direct hit. Maybe the left will launch a campaign to ban coronal mass ejections. Or perhaps institute a tax on the Sun.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 19:59:29 +0000
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