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Fear Space Weather, Not Climate Change

By Kennedy Maize

Washington, D.C., Aug. 23, 2010 — It’s time to stop fretting about climate change and start worrying about space weather.

In an opinion article in the Aug. 15, 2010 New York Times, journalist Lawrence E. Joseph raises the issue of the havoc a major solar storm could have on modern electric power and telecommunications technologies. A large explosion on the Sun, of the magnitude of solar storms that hit the Earth in 1859 and 1921, could black out hundreds of millions of people, fry high-voltage transformers, disrupt global positioning networks and air traffic control, shut off water supplies (most rely on electric pumps to move water from place to place), and cause other serious, long-lasting damage.

Joseph warns, “This isn’t science fiction.” He’s right. A fairly small solar storm in March 1989 clobbered the Hydro-Quebec transmission grid, one of the most robust in the world, blacking out some six million Canadians for nine hours, as well as causing cascading blackouts in the U.S., according to NASA. That may have been merely a harbinger.

Solar activity generally follows an 11-year cycle of calm followed by raging sunspots and solar flares. The current solar “minimum” has been in place for well beyond 11 years, which leads some space scientists to fear that coming out of the minimum will mean a whopper of a maximum. Some modeling done for the National Academy of Sciences two years ago of a big burst on the scale of the 1921 storm found some 350 U.S. transformers at “risk of permanent damage and 130 million people without power,” with concomitant problems of water disruption, food and perishable medications lost, sewage disposal halted, fuel supply stopped, and phones down.

Interconnectedness, a goal that most analysts of the electric grid view as a positive, particularly an interconnected smart grid, would probably make the situation worse. The 2008 NAS report – Severe Space Weather Events – Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts – notes that interconnectedness means “interdependency,” which is “evident in the unavailability of water due to long-term outage of electric power – and the inability to restart an electric generator without water on site.”

Admittedly, such a solar event is low probability. But the “consequences of such an event could be very high, as its effects would cascade through other, dependent systems,” according to the academy report. Low-frequency, high-consequence events, says the academy, “present – in terms of their potential broader, collateral impacts – a unique set of problems for public (and private) institutions and governance, different from the problems raised by conventional, expected, and frequently experienced events.”

Journalist Joseph, who specializes in tales of the apocalypse, says that such a solar storm as hit the Earth in 1921 need not be a catastrophe. Grid-level surge suppressors, he says, could protect transformers, giving a substantial level of protection to the grid. He says that some 5,000 transformers in North America are vulnerable. At $50,000 a pop for grid suppressors, a significant level of protection could be had for only $250 million.

Where would that money come from? The U.S. House, says Joseph, passed a provision in the energy bill that would require grid protection measures by utilities, which would then recoup the costs from customers. The House put up $100 million for the measure. It didn’t get out of the Senate, and it appears unlikely that Congress will come up with funding for grid protection this year.

No one is sure when the next big solar storm will hit. Joseph favors 2012. That fits the New Age beliefs of some folk about when the world comes to an end. As noted in Wikipedia, Dec. 21, 2012 “represents the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mayan Long Count calendar. Various astronomical alignments and numerological formulae related to this date have been proposed, but none have been accepted by mainstream scholarship.”

While there is no real science that points particularly to 2012 for the “big one,” it seems as good a target as any for a not-fully-understood physical phenomenon that seems overdue, based on past experience.

Quacks like a duck; Poops like a duck; Limps like a duck

By Kennedy Maize

Washington, D.C., Aug. 9, 2010 –  Washington is abuzz with talk of a lame-duck session of Congress after the November mid-term elections. Many pundits seem to assume that the Democratic leadership will call the solons into session after the elections (with the Democrats having done very poorly, possibly losing their control of the House in the new 112^th Congress, beginning in January).

The daffy idea, which sends shivers (although maybe just crocodile shivers) down the right side of Republican spines, is that an outgoing Democratic majority will assemble for one last legislative bender. The Dems will then enact all the bills they couldn’t get through the pre-election House and, particularly, the Senate. Card check. Immigration “amnesty.” Global warming. Shudder. The outgoing Democrats, the conventional GOP wisdom appears to hold, will feel no political consequences once freed from the constraints of facing voters. They will vote their consciences, which implies that they haven’t been doing that for the past two years.

Here’s Charles Krauthammer, expressing the classic conservative nightmare scenario (faux or otherwise): “A lame-duck session, freezing in place the lopsided Democratic majorities of November 2008, would be populated by dozens of Democratic members who had lost reelection (in addition to those retiring). They could then vote for anything – including measures they today shun as the midterms approach and their seats are threatened – because they would have nothing to lose. They would be unemployed. And playing along with Obama might even brighten the prospects for, say, an ambassadorship to a sunny Caribbean isle.”

The Democrats have provided political tinder for this campfire. After climate legislation flamed out in the Senate, John Kerry of Massachusetts said he hoped to bring the whole smelly climate subject up again in a post-election session. Then the White House pitched in, with energy czarina Carol Browner claiming on a Sunday TV chat show that climate legislation isn’t dead, it’s only sleeping until the ducks limp home to roost post Nov. 2.

That prospect has the GOP in a tizzy. But it’s mostly for show, designed to scare the bejeezus out of Republican voters to ensure high turnout for the coming election and beef up contributions. Today, the Huffington Post reported, the House GOP leadership said they will introduce a resolution “for the purposes of preventing Democrats from passing legislative items during the lame-duck session” and will attempt to use the measure to hold up votes on additional Medicare and teacher funding. HuffPo reporter Sam Stein wrote that House aides cited Browner’s remarks in justifying their parliamentary shenanigans.

Freedom Works, a Washington-based, self-proclaimed tea party umbrella group headed by former Republican House majority leader Dick Armey, and former GOP House speaker Newt Gingrich have been pushing the idea of attempting to forestall a post-election session. The thoroughly odious TV hack Glenn Beck has also been trumpeting madly about a lame-duck session. It’s all balderdash.

HuffPo’s Stein observed, quite correctly, that the House resolution “appears likely to produce nothing more than Kabuki theater — which that Democrats aren’t necessarily averse to enjoying.” Procedurally, the GOP won’t be able to get a vote on the resolution (this has to do with inside political baseball so arcane it causes headaches).

My suspicion is that the GOP is pushing the House resolution, and may launch other grandstand attempts in the Senate, not only to hype the coming election, but also to thump their chests and take credit if the Democratic leaders decided not to bring Congress back to Washington in November. I’m betting that the Democrats will duck a lame-duck session. And even if they do flock to Washington in November, nothing controversial will get done.

The Democrats would be foolish to call Congress back into session after the election, They were asleep at the controls in letting the Republicans make the lame duck a political entree. There is nothing that requires Congress to come back to Washington after the election; there is nothing to be gained politically from a post-election pity party; there is peril down the road for the Democrats if it occurs.

Here are four good reasons, courtesy of Politico, why a lame-duck session, particularly one aimed at revivifying cap-and-trade, is lameoid: Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jon Tester of Montana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Jim Webb of Virginia. All are moderate Democratic senators up for reelection in 2012 in difficult, Republican-trending states.

Add a fifth reason: West Virginia Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin, who’s likely to win a special election Nov. 2 to fill the unexpired term of the late Robert Byrd. If there is a lame-duck session, Manchin will be seated in the Senate, and will be running again in 2012.

Regardless of the foolish bravado of Kerry, Browner, and other clueless Democrats, there are nowhere near enough votes in a lame-duck session to pass controversial measures such as cap-and-trade or anything like it. Even Dan Weiss, the climate guy at the liberal Center for American Progress and a former long-time Sierra Club air lobbyist, recognizes the futility. “The odds that a global-warming bill will happen in a lame duck are the same odds that a Shetland pony will win the Kentucky Derby,” he told Politico.