Earth struck by most powerful space storm in three years
The most powerful geomagnetic storm since December 2006 struck the Earth on Monday, a day earlier than expected.On 3 April, the SOHO spacecraft spotted a cloud of charged particles called a coronal mass ejection (CME) shooting from the sun at 500 kilometres per second. This velocity suggested the front would reach Earth in roughly three days.
“It hit earlier and harder than forecast,” says Doug Biesecker of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado.
Fortunately, the storm was not intense enough to interfere strongly with power grids or satellite navigation, but it did trigger dazzling auroras in places like Icelan.
This just goes to show the danger of using too much solar power. If we keep sucking in the Sun’s energy with solar power arrays, it’s just bound to create more of these solar originating space storms.
It’s time for Congress to act. We need laws restricting solar power generation to only those facilities required for national security, like the Denver Mint, and the Senate cloakroom. The rest of us should return to wood burning stoves as soon as possible, a natural source of heat, unlike these silicon driven solar power converters, which are clearly unnatural and dangerous to the environment.
In addition, I propose that an international consortium be formed to study the effects of mining too much silicon from the earth. Yes, we could run out of rocks, and if we continue to dig deeper and deeper into the earth’s crust to get more silicon, we could destabilize the tectonic plates whose slow motion is a requirement for our survival. The mad rush for silicon based solar energy converter panels, combined with lavish suburban homes with granite countertops (tons of silicon there in every gated subdivision), inhabited by vain divas with silicone breast implants, could create a perfect storm, destabilizing the very continents, and sucking yet more solar storm activity towards the earth as more and more silicon is exposed above ground (especially at certain Hollywood premieres).
The photon hogs are going to kill us all.
The real hockey stick is the triple combination of silicon toxicity from over-mining, continental destabilization, and solar storms, predicted to peak all at once in 2012.
I’m ordering a bumper sticker for my Prius (oh, the guilt):
Don’t blame me, I burn wood
Go out today and cut down a tree to preserve the environment.
Teach your children, while there’s still time.
