Weakening of Earth's magnetic field and solar cycles, Part 2

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The sun is a huge electromagnetic transmitter that is flooding the planet of the solar system by heat, light, UV radiation and electrically charged particles. The Sun itself has a magnetic field and magnetic field creates an "egg" around the solar system known as heliosphere. Heliosphere is shaped like a droplet, with an elongated, narrow end pointing in the opposite direction in which we move.

Any change that occurs in or on the Sun will eventually affect every living person. Solar activity during this last sunspot cycle was the solar is greater than anything previously seen, spinal studies, written by Dr. Mike
Lockvvood and colleagues at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Chilton, UK, 1999. investigate the solar activity over the last 100 years. They reported that since 1901. total solar magnetic field has become stronger by 230 percent. Scientists do not understand what it means for us.

Some of the sunspot activity in this last cycle was stronger than anything ever recorded. But researchers say do not understand what it means for us. Apparently, the sun ie earth's driving force, said Richard Fisher Director of helio physics at NASA. To mitigate possible threats to public safety, it is crucial to better understand the extreme space weather events caused by solar activity.

   Solar cycle 24

According to NASA, the Sun begins another 11-year cycle of activity. The sun reverses its magnetic poles every a year. Given that the Sun is responsible for some adverse climate changes on Earth the next decade could bring more trouble for our planet. The years ahead could be tumultuous. Jimmy Raeder explained:

"We enter the 24th solar cycle 1z reasons not fully understood, CME and the even-numbered solar cycles (such as 24) are usually hit Earth with a leading edge that is magnetized north. CMF This should open a crack and fill the magnetosphere with plasma just before the storm. This is a perfect sequence for a really great event. "




Every 10-11 years the number of sunspots is our closest star rise from zero (as it was in 2008.) To a maximum of over four hundred. While the sunspots affect the Earth, solar flares and other disturbances that are spreading around our sun during increased sunspot activity lead to an increase in the number of particles (electrons and protons) and harmful light radiation (ultraviolet and X-rays), known as solar wind. Yes No
Earth's protective magnetic field and atmosphere, this bombardment of particles would completely burn us. Sunspot Cycle 24, which is expected to peak somewhere in the 2012th, it could be one of the strongest in the last few centuries.

It will be 30-50 percent stronger than last and will start with a delay of a full year, the revolutionary foresight that uses a computer model of solar dynamics developed by scientists who are from the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Accurate prediction of solar cycles years in advance will help the company to prepare for active gust of solar storms, which can slow satellite orbits, disrupt communications and bring down power systems. Scientists have confidence in the forecasts because of a series of tests recently developed model simulated the strength of the last eight cycles with an accuracy of over 98 percent. Forecasts are generated in part by monitoring the movement of debris below the surface of sunspots from the previous two solar cycles.

 
    Solar cycle 25

"The great conveyor belt" is a huge circulating current of fire (hot plasma) within the Sun. There are two branches, north and south, and each takes about 10 years to pass a full circle. The researchers believe that turning the conveyor belt controls the sunspot cycle and therefore it is important to slow down.


Usually, the conveyor belt moving at a speed of about one meter per second speed walk, NASA said in Solana physicist David Hathaway. "That was the end of the 19th century, "In recent years, however, the belt has decelerated to 0.75 m / s in the north of 0.35 m / s in the south. "We have never seen so low, said Hathaway."

According to the theory and observation, the speed of the belt says it will be the intensity of sunspot activity about 20 years in the future. Slow belt means lower solar activity; fast belt means stronger activity.

"The slowdown that we see now means that Solar Cycle 25, which will be the culmination of about 2022nd year could be one of the weakest in the last century, said Hathaway.

   The solar activity on the Earth

The first instrument for measuring the activity of solar flares have occurred 440 years ago. They showed that the closest star to our Earth is not only the honor of eclipses. Sunspots, solar flares and other phenomena affect everything on earth, from weather events to human behavior. These phenomena are known collectively as the solar activity. This activity, which is expressed by a gust of solar radiation, magnetic storms and fiery flashes, the intensity can vary from very weak to very strong. The greatest threat to civilization are the storms.

On 28 August 1859th polar light shone and sparkled over the entire American continent, when darkness fell. Many people thought that their city is in flames. The hands on the instruments that were used for recording Uh magnetic fluctuations around the world came out of the scale. Telegraph system broke down, hit by strong surges. It was perhaps the worst solar storms in the past, 200 years ago. Its effects on humans were small because civilization had not yet been entered into high-technology development phase. But with the advent of modern electricity grids and satellites is much more in danger.




That something similar happened in our era of space nuclear destruction would be catastrophic. According to scientific data, a storm of this size occur about once in five centuries. But half of low-intensity events occur every 50 years. The last recorded 13th November 1960 .. Disrupted the Earth's magnetic field, disrupting the work stations.

Today is our dependence on radio-electronic devices so huge that increased solar activity could be disabled for life support systems around the world, and not just on the surface. Bad space weather can cause disturbances in any orbital system, light solar storm can ruin navigation systems controlled from space. NASA is now ringing the alarm because the North American continent near the northern magnetic pole, and is most sensitive to solar activity, spinal studies corporation "Metatech" revealed that the attack similar to the one from 1859. disable the entire power grid in North America. Even the relatively weak magnetic storm of 1989. encourage solar activity caused the accident in a Canadian hydroelectric power plant that is six million people in the United States and Canada for nine hours left without electricity.

Study of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, also spoke about the troubling features of the Earth in the worst case scenario of solar storms. Modern power grids are so interconnected that the large space storms -  type such as expected to occur once in a century could trigger a cascade of crashes that could be expanded throughout the United States, left without electricity for 130 million people or more only in that country, the conclusion a new report. Such widespread power cuts although, as expected, a rare ability to hit other vital systems.

"The impact would be felt on the interdependent infrastructures, for example, drinking water supply would be affected for several hours, quickly perishable foods and medicines for about 12-24 hours. and the current or subsequent loss of heating / air conditioning, garbage disposal, telephone service, transportation, fuel supply and clock on, "the report reads.

To fix the system could be taken months, the bank could be close, and trade with other countries could be interrupted.

"Emergency services would be overloaded, and command and control could be lost," say researchers led by Daniel Baker, director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado at Boulder.

   Sun's cycles and human behavior

Could cycles of war and peace could be associated with the solar cycle?

Some researchers claim that geomagnetic storms affect brain waves and hormone levels, causing many different reactions, mainly in men. Although some women may also feel the changes during these storms, it seems that they are generally less affected by the behavior of the Sun. Reacting to changing hormone levels, some men may become increasingly irritable and aggressive, while others may instead become more creative.

It was found that an increase in solar activity increase psychotic episodes in people who already suffer from unstable psychological states. Although we may associate such behavior with a full moon, Dr. Robert Becker and his colleague Dr. Howard Friedman 1963rd demonstrated that changes in the sun and water to a noticeable increase in psychotic activity. Yet, these reactions do not occur only in a few particularly sensitive or unlucky individuals.

 


Evidence suggesting that the wars and international conflicts often break out when sunspots are rapidly forming or rapidly decaying, because in these conditions occur more intense geomagnetic storms. In addition. to an increase in solar activity are correlated with periods when the increased number of accidents and diseases, as well as crimes and murders. The entire biosphere is affected by this electromagnetic pollution, and it seems that human behavior responds accordingly. Not cause any geomagnetic storm disturbances. But over time, extremes of solar activity can also affect the period of earthly conflict. Data on cycles of war and peace extend to at least 2,500 years old.

Another 1915th some scientists have begun to recognize the connection between solar activity and human behavior. This work began with Russian scientist Alevander Chizhevsky who observed a correlation between mass changes in human behavior and the cycle of sunspots.

The thirties of last century, Professor Raymond Wheeler, a historian at the University n Kansas, took this observation one step further. His research numerically ranked severity of individual battles correlating to solar cycles. The information obtained by statistically analyzing Edward Dewey, who confirmed the existence of these cycles of wars. However, he was unable to establish a clear link with the cycle of sunspots, because at that time was insufficient data.
 The 1980s, with a detailed analysis Wheeler's data, is the connection became clear.

After a more detailed study of the data seems to begin to discover the pattern by which IE most likely to start a war in the key points of the sunspot cycle. These are periods when geomagnetic activity is changing the fastest in the rapid increase in solar activity, or in a downward cycle, when sunspots are rapidly diminishing. In addition, we can see how it negatively affects the psychological mechanisms such as brain rhythms and hormone levels. In other words, wars could be a kind of mass psychosis. When you see the connection with physical mechanisms (such as IE electromagnetic pollution), it gives us some predictions about when it is likely that they could begin intensified aggression. Calculations show that we are facing another increase of intense solar activity in less than two years, roughly around 22 September 2010. NASA predicts that the activity reached a peak in 2012. year.

   Changes in the Solar System

Five planets atmosphere and Earth's moon change. In the upper layers of Earth's atmosphere creates HO gas that did not exist in amounts that exists today. Scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences say that it is not associated with global warming, CFCs or fluorocarbon emissions. They argue that the atmosphere of Jupiter, Uranus and Neptun also changing.

The Martian atmosphere becomes much thicker. In 1997. probe "Mars Observer" has lost one of its mirrors, which caused her fall. This happened because the atmosphere was about twice as much too dense, but NASA was calculated. Brightness and magnetic fields of planets are also changing. Venus shows a significant increase in its overall brightness, Jupiter's energetic charge has risen so high that there is now a visible tube of ionizing radiation, which is formed between the surface of Jupiter and its moon "Io." At the recently captured images can be seen a great power tube. Uranus and Neptune also are becoming brighter. The magnetic field of Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune are changing.

Jupiter's magnetic field has more than doubled, and Neptune's magnetic field is stronger. The Russians say that all three of these planets become radiant, and their atmospheric qualities are changing, but do not explain what that means. The Russians also report that looks at how Uranus and Neptune has recently been a reversal of the poles. When the space probe "Voyager II" flew by Uranus and Neptune, it seemed that the north and south magnetic poles substantially deviated from the spot where the earlier recordings was a half rotation. In one case, it is 50 degrees, and in another case, the difference was 10-odd degrees.

This new information on changes in the solar system comes at an interesting time for our planet. It is possible that for some time the celestial events play a role in shaping our lives on this planet, and that these changes that we see now in our sun, solar system and Earth's magnetic field could be just what transforms our world as we know it into something new . Only time will tell, but it seems that the future is already knocking at the door.

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End of Fossil Fuel Era an 'Exciting Time'

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Author and scientist Amory B. Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute see a bright future beyond dirty fuels... and sooner than you think


In an essay in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs and a recent interview with Yale Environment 360, Amory Lovins discusses his latest book, Reinventing Fire, written with his colleagues at the Rocking Mountain Institute, which looks at what a transition away from an economy and energy system based on fossil fuels towards one based on renewable energy would look like.

                              Amory B. Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute

"Weaning the United States from fossils fuels would require two big shifts," writes Lovins at Foreign Affairs, naming "oil and electricity" which he says are "distinct." He points out, "In the US, three-fourths of electricity powers building, three-fourths of oil fuels transportation, and the remaining oil and electricity run factories. So saving oil and electricity is chiefly about making buildings, vehicles, and factories far more efficient." This, admits Lovins, is "no small task."

Dwelling on the scale of the challenge, however, is not where Lovins devotes his energy. Instead, he looks at other "epochal energy shifts" that have occurred in history, like the end of the whale oil industry in the mid 19th century, where in just thirty years the whale oil industry went from bringing lighting to nearly every American household in 1850, to being essentially snuffed out by 1879, when Edison's electric lighting hit the scene. "Whales," writes Lovins, "had been accidently saved by technological innovators and profit-maximizing capitalists."

The point, of course, is not that we should look to 'profit-maximizing capitalists' to lead us to a clean energy future (though they will certainly play a role). The point is that we should definitely not expect whaling captains to lead us. And in this era, the whale ship captains are the captains of the big oil, coal, and gas companies and the politicians who do their bidding.


"The chief obstacle is not technology or economics," concludes Lovins, "but slow adoption." He writes:
Helping innovations catch on will take education, leadership, and rapid learning. But it does require reaching concensus on motives. If Americans agree what should be done, then they need not agree why. Whether one cares most about national security, health, the environment, or simply making money, saving and supplanting fossil fuels makes sense."

"Wise energy policy can grow from impeccably conservative roots-- [...]

Moving the United States off oil and coal will require Americans to trust in their own resourcefulness, ingenuity, and courage. These durable virtues can give the country fuel without fear; help set the world on a path beyond war, want, or waste; and turn energy from worrisome to worry-free, from risk to reward, from cost to profit."

   A Clean Energy Plan


In the interview with Yale Environment 360 senior editor Fen Montaigne, Lovins discusses how business and society can pull off this transformation even if the U.S. Congress keeps failing to act, why climate change need not even enter the discussion, and why the oil industry will ultimately forego fossil fuels and jump aboard the green bandwagon. “One system is dying and others are struggling to be born,” says Lovins. “It’s a very exciting time.”



Yale Environment 360: Given that we’re in the midst of what could only be described as a fossil fuel boom, with the discovery of new unconventional sources and new oil sources being found all over the world, how do you speed this transition and get from here to there?

Amory Lovins: Well, I’m not sure what boom you’re talking about. When I read the Wall Street Journal, I see a headline a few weeks ago about coal running out of steam.

e360: China is consuming tremendous amounts of coal.

Lovins: Hang on — I look at the data and I find that in the United States, coal’s share of the electrical services market, which is 95 percent of its market for fuel, has fallen by a quarter from 2005 through 2010, displaced by cheaper gas, efficiency, and renewables. And then when you look in the forward prices and the options market, that spread is going to keep widening. And when I hear how cheap natural gas is, I remember that it’s also very volatile. This has nothing to do with the many uncertainties around fracking, which will take a decade to resolve — if they work out well, we’ll be satisfied with a new option; if they don’t, that’s okay because we won’t need that much gas, so we won’t be very disappointed.

e360: Certainly in China, India, and the developing world there is a fossil fuel boom going on.

Lovins: But in a global context, there is a remarkable boom in efficiency and renewables in China, the world leader in five renewables. Part of the story in China is that the extraordinary vitality of renewables is coming very largely from the vibrant private sector, while all of the nuclear and half the coal business are the old state enterprises. So the story of incumbents and insurgents is partly the story of the reshaping of the Chinese economy from the old and rather bureaucratic command organizations. That is, I think, an encouraging trend.

  We  must use our most effective institutions to end-run our least effective institutions.

Last I looked a couple of years ago, the private sector in China was something like 50 to 70 percent of the profits, the growth, and the new jobs. Of course there is still a lot of momentum in the coal bureaucracy in China and India, which together burned half the world’s coal and account for about three-quarters of the projected increase, but I think those projections are looking quite dubious. In China, for example, they have lately retired over 70 gigawatts of inefficient coal plants, so that their coal plant fleet is now more efficient than ours. In 2010, 59 percent of their net new [electricity] capacity was coal. It used to be much higher.

e360: You feel we’re in a period where fossil fuels over the next decade or two are going to be increasingly like whale oil?

Lovins: Yes.

e360: You’ve got the president of Shell writing a foreward to your book. There are prominent quotes from the president of Texaco in one section of the book. How do you persuade these oil companies that are making billions of dollars now and into the foreseeable future to get on board with this renewable energy revolution? What is going to persuade them to be on what you see as the right side of history?

Lovins: Mainly risk management, and as a member of the National Petroleum Council, having worked in this industry for 38 years, I’ve seen a lot of concern about risk. Oil is like airlines. It’s a great industry and a bad business. Look at its fundamentals. It is extremely capital-intensive, long lead time, based on a wasting asset of which you only own about 6 percent and the rest can be taxed away or confiscated at any time. It is a business overflowing with all kinds of risk — technical, political, financial. It is unpopular politically. Its subsidies are at some political risk in this country. Put all that together and you have a magnificent recipe for headaches. Why would you want to be in a business like that?

e360: You’re making huge profits at this point.

Lovins: Well, sometimes yes, and sometimes it gushes red ink. So the smarter leaders in that industry have been trying to get out of the business since at least 1973, and have constructed some pretty intelligent portfolios of both activities and options that are getting rather rapidly diversified. Some companies that were not very foresighted, even though they were operationally excellent, are starting to smell the coffee.

 I think there is a bright future for what we now think of as the oil industry in the new energy era, using its formidable capabilities and assets, but in different ways. A lot of refineries will turn into biorefineries; a lot of drilling will go to geothermal, possibly carbon sequestration and other pursuits. The fuel logistics will diversify into hydrogen — which of course is mainly a business of the oil industry right now and it’s a very big business — and into electricity and biofuels. Shell is already the world’s biggest distributor of biofuels. The average cost of getting our U.S. transport system off oil is about $18 a barrel for the efficiency and electrification part, or if you include the biofuels to run the trucks and airplanes to the extent they’re not on hydrogen, it might be at most about $25 a barrel. So I don’t much care what the world oil price is, this is a better bet and it very much better manages the risks.

e360: In the spheres that you write about — transportation, electricity generation, industry — what pieces of the puzzle need to be put in place in the coming decade or so to do this massive scaling up that’s going to be required to attain your vision of an economy that by 2050 is primarily powered by renewable sources?

Lovins: Broadly we need to pay attention to allow or require full and fair competition, preferably at honest prices. And to use our most effective institutions to end-run our least effective institutions.

e360: For example?

Lovins: Well, we use private enterprise, co-evolving with civil society and sped up by military innovation, to end run Congress. The transition we describe requires no act of Congress. It’s led by business for profit.

e360: So you want the private sector to end-run the dysfunctional political system?

Lovins: At the federal level, yes. There are policies required to unlock or speed the transition we described, but they could all be done administratively or at the state level, where most of the action is.

e360: From a technological point of view, how do you scale up wind and solar to the point where it can be generating the volume of electricity that you envision by 2050?

Lovins: The way we’re scaling it up now. U.S. photovoltaics have doubled each of the last two years. World [photovoltaic] growth last year — a difficult year for many industries — was 70 percent. And 68 percent of Europe’s new capacity last year was solar and wind. Wind, for example, is generally competitive without subsidy, even though the global wind industry will of course shift its projects in a given year to wherever they get the most subsidy, as you would expect. But even without subsidy they have a very strong business case.

e360: So you foresee in the U.S., Europe, and China a steady accretion of this scale and volume for these new sources?

Lovins: Yes, and China is leading the plummeting cost and rocketing volume of most of the renewables. They’re the world leader in five. They aim to be in all. The ones they lead are photovoltaic, wind, small hydro, biogas, and solar thermal for hot water.

So this is actually quite a big business. Clean energy was a $260 billion investment flow in 2011. Europe has now more than one million new renewable jobs. The big winner is Germany. They have more solar workers than America has steel workers. [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel bet that it would be smarter to send their energy money to their own engineers, manufacturers, and installers than to keep paying it to [Russia’s] Gazprom. She’s right, and it was a winning bet.

e360: In your book you are not counting on any sort of miraculous silver bullet technologies.

Lovins: No, no new inventions.

e360:  But do you think there will be within a matter of decades technologies we can’t envision that could even further accelerate this transition?

Lovins: Oh, yes. I think there will be many, and actually although we’re not counting on any new inventions, we do give examples of emerging technologies in the lab about to get to market that are going to be quite powerful. For example, windows whose ability to transmit or block heat is a function of the temperature of the glass, and that’s a passive property.
It doesn’t  require any control system. That sort of thing is so revolutionary we haven’t even figured out how to use it yet. Or as another example, Tsutomu Shimomura, the computer security expert, has invented a way of controlling LED lighting in big buildings that gets rid of almost all of the wire and power supplies and controls, but gives superior control flexibility. And that should ultimately cut by manyfold the installed cost of those LED lighting systems and thus help them take over even faster in both new and old buildings. Fuel cells have already beaten the cost targets that we had expected. The list goes on.

Despite our woeful underinvestment in efficiency R&D, the technical progress here and abroad continues to accelerate with no end in sight and it’s not just in widgets. It’s also progress in new business models, new designs, ways of combining technologies more effectively to get expanding returns, not diminishing returns, new delivery channels that are rapidly maturing, new regulatory models. These things all together I think have put us irreversibly on the path to a new energy era, and a lot of it is an incumbents-versus-insurgents play where the incumbents have many intelligent ways they can respond and some dumb ways, one of which is called ostrich.

e360: Your book, in each of the main chapters, lays out detailed prescriptions — down to diagrams of factory piping — of how to improve efficiency and make advances. What has the reaction been to the book from corporations, from politicians?

Lovins: The reaction I have seen has been uniformly favorable, partly because it’s a trans-ideological approach that focuses on outcomes, not motives. Whether you most care about profits, jobs, and competitive advantage, or about national security or environmental stewardship and climate and public health — regardless of the reason, you’ll still want the outcomes. They’ll still make sense and make money, so let’s just do what we all agree ought to be done for whatever reason, not argue about what reason is most important, and then a lot of the stuff we may not agree about becomes superfluous. The military is very strongly on this track already — with both efficiency and resilient electric supply — for their own good reasons. We are not seeing so far political resistance to these ideas and we’re getting a very warm welcome in the business community.

e360: How big an impediment to your vision of how to go forward is the fact that many of the leaders of the Republican Party not only deny the existence of climate change, but belittle renewable energy. Is the political gridlock on this issue a big impediment to maybe moving forward?

Lovins: I don’t see it as a big impediment because we’re not relying on Congress to do anything. Again, you don’t have to believe climate science to think that the outcomes of Reinventing Fire are desirable. If you care
about  either making money or national security, either of those suffices; you may even care about both together. Then you’re twice as motivated. We are counting in the analysis all externalities — carbon [reduction] and otherwise — as worth zero, a conservatively low estimate. And we still get a $5 trillion surplus from getting the U.S. completely off oil, coal, and nuclear energy and a third off natural gas by 2050, with a 2.6-fold bigger economy. That, I think, is an attractive outcome regardless of your political beliefs.

e360: Let’s say there’s a President Santorum or a President Romney, do you think that they could be persuaded once they’re in office to embrace a vision like this?

Lovins: I don’t know, but I don’t much care. Rocky Mountain Institute is non-partisan, and we observe that most states, including many strongly Republican states, have renewable portfolio standards. The renewable leader in the nation is Texas, which is not noted for being environmentally minded, but does care a lot about making money and is very good at it. That’s fine.

e360: On the issue of climate change, do you believe the climate movement has made a strategic error by focusing so much on the issue of warming and its impacts rather than on the positive economic message you propagate in the book?

Lovins: I think you could make that case. In fact, to go back to the beginning of the modern climate debate, I think that when the bogus studies were issued claiming that climate protection would be very costly, the environmental movement fell into a trap of saying it won’t cost that much and it’s worth it. What they should have said is, “No, you’ve got it wrong. Climate protection is not costly but profitable because it’s cheaper to save fuel than to buy fuel.”

So the whole climate conversation has been distorted by this error of mistaking cost for profits and that has blocked international negotiations, because it’s so much harder to talk about cost burden and sacrifice, what is it worth to save the climate and who should pay for it, than to talk about profits, jobs, and competitive advantage, which should have been the subject all along.
I think you could make that case. In fact, to go back to the beginning of the modern climate debate, I think that when the bogus studies were issued claiming that climate protection would be very costly, the environmental movement fell into a trap of saying it won’t cost that much and it’s worth it. What they should have said is, “No, you’ve got it wrong. Climate protection is not costly but profitable because it’s cheaper to save fuel than to buy fuel.”

So the whole climate conversation has been distorted by this error of mistaking cost for profits and that has blocked international negotiations, because it’s so much harder to talk about cost burden and sacrifice, what is it worth to save the climate and who should pay for it, than to talk about profits, jobs, and competitive advantage, which should have been the subject all along.

e360: When you look at your 2050 vision, yet you also look at all the carbon that’s still being burned, how do you reconcile the two?


Lovins: Well, one system is dying and others are struggling to be born. It’s a very exciting time, but I think the transitions that we need in how we design vehicles, buildings, and factories, and how we allow efficiency to compete with supply, are well under way. Most of the key sectors are already at or past their tipping point. And it’s clearest for oil, but will become clearer for coal that the stuff is becoming uncompetitive even at relatively low prices before it becomes unavailable even at high prices. It’s the whale oil story all over again. They ran out of customers before they ran out of whales.

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Amory Lovins at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies





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Lost in migration: Earth's magnetic field is weakening

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The discovery by NASA rover Curiosity of evidence that water once flowed on Mars - the most Earth-like planet in the solar system - should intensify interest in what the future could hold for mankind.

The only thing stopping Earth having a lifeless environment like Mars is the magnetic field that shields us from deadly solar radiation and helps some animals migrate, and it may be a lot more fragile and febrile than one might think.


Scientists say Earth's magnetic field is weakening and could all but disappear in as little as 500 years as a precursor to flipping upside down.

It has happened before - the geological record suggests the magnetic field has reversed every 250,000 years, meaning that, with the last event 800,000 years ago, another would seem to be overdue.

"Magnetic north has migrated more than 1,500 kilometres over the past century," said Conall Mac Niocaill, an earth scientist at Oxford University. "In the past 150 years, the strength of the magnetic field has lessened by 10 per cent, which could indicate a reversal is in the cards."

While the effects are hard to predict, the consequences may be enormous. The loss of the magnetic field on Mars billions of years ago put an end to life on the planet if there ever was any, scientists say.

Mac Niocaill said Mars probably lost its magnetic field 3.5-4.0 billion years ago, based on observations that rocks in the planet's southern hemisphere have magnetization.


The northern half of Mars looks younger because it has fewer impact craters, and has no magnetic structure to speak of, so the field must have shut down before the rocks there were formed - which would have been about 3.8 billion years ago.

"With the field dying away, the solar wind was then able to strip the atmosphere away, and you would also have an increase in the cosmic radiation making it to the surface," he said.

"Both of these things would be bad news for any life that might have formed on the surface - either wiping it out, or forcing it to migrate into the interior of the planet."


Earth's magnetic field has always restored itself but, as it continues to shift and weaken, it will present challenges - satellites could be more exposed to solar wind and the oil industry uses readings from the field to guide drills.

In nature, animals which use the field could be mightily confused - birds, bees, and some fish all use the field for navigation. So do sea turtles whose long lives, which can easily exceed a hundred years, means a single generation could feel the effects.

Birds may be able to cope because studies have shown they have backup systems that rely on stars and landmarks, including roads and power lines, to find their way around.

The European Space Agency is taking the issue seriously. In November, it plans to launch three satellites to improve our fairly blurry understanding of the magnetosphere.

The project - dubbed Swarm - will send two satellites into a 450 kilometre high polar orbit to measure changes in the magnetic field, while a third satellite 530 kilometres high will look at the influence of the sun.


Scientists, who have known for some time the magnetic field has a tendency to flip, have made advances in recent years in understanding why and how it happens.

The field is generated by convection currents that churn in the molten iron of the planet's outer core. Other factors, such as ocean currents and magnetic rocks in the Earth's crust also contribute.

The Swarm mission will pull all these elements together to improve computer models used to predict how the magnetic field will move and how fast it could weaken.

Ciaran Beggan, a geomagnetic specialist at the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, said studies have also refined our understanding of how the field reverses.

They have focused on lava flows: When these cool and form crystals the atoms in iron-rich molten rock align under the influence of the magnetic field, providing a geological memory of the Earth's field.

But that memory looks different in various locations around the world, suggesting the reversal could be a chaotic and fairly random process.

"Rather than having strong north and south poles, you get lots of poles around the planet. So, a compass would not do you much good," said Beggan.

While the whole process takes 3,000-5,000 years, latest research suggests the descent into a chaotic state could take as little as 500 years, although there are significant holes in scientific understanding.

"Although electricity grids and GPS systems would be more vulnerable, we are not really sure how all the complex things that are linked together would react," Beggan said.




© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Original source article: Lost in migration: flip of earth's magnetic field overdue





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Now Everyone Hates Apple?

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A little over a month ago we reduced our position in Apple (AAPL) by virtue of swapping half of our core technology ETFs into a tech ETF that does not own Apple. This had the effect of reducing our exposure from about 4% to about 2%.

There was no fundamental bear case to make at the time but there was a pretty good list of sentiment indicators that we've all seen before in terms of analysts competing for higher price targets as the stock kept going up, the stock getting constant attention on stock market television, a lot of excitement about the coming product launch and the stock having become the largest company in the world (click through on the above link for more details on these things).

Since we made the swap the stock went down a hair, then up a few percent and now most recently down a few more percent (the stock was $675 when I started placing trades in late August).

Now things seem to have changed some. It is still talked about a lot on stock market television but now it seems like a lot of pundits hate the name all of a sudden which speaks to the psychology of the market.

The point of this post is not about Apple specifically as it is too early to be right or wrong with the trade. The point here is the list of sentiment based indicators isolated in more detail in the previous post. I didn't write that post and place that trade because I hadn't seen those things come together many times before. Often I talk about the details of various market events being different but that the behaviors tend to repeat over and over.

Reducing a position when the sentiment becomes cultish or euphoric will not be the worst trade you ever make.

The Big Picture for the Week of October 14, 2012

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One of the bits I enjoy doing on Twitter is making fun of Jim Paulsen, Thomas Lee and Tobias Levkovich when they are due to come on CNBC. Of Paulsen and Lee I usually say something like their name? wait, don't tell me...BULLISH! And of Levkovich I usually say something like Tobias Levkovich to come on with some obscure stat that means the market is going higher.

So it was yesterday that I tweeted the above out about Levkovich and somehow this tweet made Carl Quintanilla's radar and right before the segment and he tweeted back "let's find out." So ole Tobias did not disappoint with Marshallien K which even he said was out there. If you Google it you will find it but it is obscure enough that there is no Wikipedia page on it (nothing at Investopedia either). I tweeted Marshallian K back to Carl but he did not respond to that.

It might be that I am the only one who thinks this is funny but it does make a bigger and more useful point about how unnecessarily complicated people can make investing. Whenever possible I try to make investing as simple as possible. Like many people I probably first clued into this from Peter Lynch in the 1980s (maybe he started talking about this in the 1970s?). Then I started noticing that most of the investors being portrayed as legends looked at things very simply, seeking the simplest explanation along the lines of Occam's razor (yes RW, the precise meaning is a little different).

I think a useful example here is the inversion of the yield curve before the financial crisis really ramped up. In the years before the crisis I wrote often that I would heed a yield curve inversion as being a very ominous sign for the market and the economy; banks don't do well on lending spreads which causes a lot of problems. Of course when the curve did invert in 2007 there were plenty of very smart pundits telling us why this inversion did not mean trouble--back then the Chinese were buying our debt in such a manner as to distort our yield curve.

While it might have been true that the curve was distorted by Chinese buying, the curve was still inverted which was still problematic for banks nonetheless.

The idea gains some relevance because the market has more than doubled from its low 43 months ago. Cycles tend to last four to five years so it is possible that after slightly more than three and half years that the next bear could be coming soon. Regardless of the time, as we get closer to whenever the next bear phase starts there will again be plenty of people like Paulsen, Lee and Levkovich with plenty of reasons why the market will ignore any bearish markers at the time and go higher (all three missed the financial crisis and two of the three missed the tech wreck, one was not a strategist during the tech wreck).

You will probably be much better off seeking out the simplest explanation whenever possible.

We recently got back from our annual pilgrimage to the Grand Canyon. In the above picture a mule train went by near the South Rim.

Weakening of Earth's magnetic field and solar cycles

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New solar cycle 24, in combination with the weakening MAGNETIC FIELD ENVIRONMENT, can have severe consequences for the country in terms CLIMATE, power networks and human behavior.


 If you thought that only which is why we should be concerned about include wars, famine and economic breakdowns think again. Emerging science suggests that the next cycle of solar flares could be strong enough to disrupt the entire electrical grid of the planet. This article documents! I number of changes that occur in connection with the Earth magnetic field term. Sun and solar system and clarify some of the concerns expressed by today's leading scientists. I analyze how it could hit the human race on an energetic level.

   Planet's magnetic field

Magnetosphere is a bubble of magnetism that surrounds Earth and protects us from solar wind. Fortunately, the planet's magnetic field rejects most of the particles in a circular orbit around the Earth. Like the weather patterns on Earth, the solar or wind patterns can change rapidly. It is fortunate that our planet's magnetosphere reacts to the threat and absorbs shock. without wavering, and leaping. Geophysicists call this reaction geomagnetic storm, but because of the way that distorts Earth's magnetic field also has to be called electromagnetic pollution. In these circumstances we see the polar light in our night sky.





But strange things are happening in the atmosphere and in space. Earth's magnetic field has been weakening. This decrease actually began 2,000 years ago, but the rate of decrease rapidly grew 300 years ago. However, in the last twenty years, the magnetic field has become erratic.

Aeronautical maps of the world, which is used to enable the aircraft has landed using automatic control systems had to be revised in the whole world to autopilot systems to work.

Now, NASA's five spacecraft from the mission THEMIS discovered a crack in the Earth's magnetic field that is 10 times larger than anything previously thought to exist When this happens, the solar wind can penetrate through the opening to "recharge" the magnetosphere, causing a strong geomagnetic storm. Exploring the mystery is a key goal of the THEMIS mission, launched in February 2007. The big discovery occurred on 3 June 2007. When the five probes serendipitously flew through the cracks just at the moment it opened. Onboard sensors recorded a torrent of solar wind particles streaming into the magnetosphere, signaling the event of unexpected size and importance.

But the breach itself is not the biggest surprise. Researchers are even more amazed and baffled at the unexpected way in which it occurs, overturning the accepted notions of space physics.

"At first I did believe it," said David Sibeck, THEMIS project scientist at the Center Goddard Space Flight Center. This finding fundamentally changes our understanding of the interaction of the solar wind and magnetosphere. The opening was a huge four times wider than Earth itself, said Li Wenhui, a space physicist from the University of New Hampshire, who analyzed the data. A hunting Li's colleague Jimmy Raeder, also of the University of New Hampshire. He said the 27-l particles per second were flowing into the magnetosphere - that's 1 followed by 27 zeros. This influx is an order of magnitude greater than what we thought was possible. Space physicists have long believed that the holes in the Earth's magnetosphere open only in response to solar magnetic fields that are oriented toward the south. However, a large hole in June 2oo7. opened in response to the solar magnetic field, which was directed towards the north. To the layperson it may seem like a quibble, but to a space physicist, it is almost like an earthquake.

   Unexpected pad shield





 In conjunction with changes in our magnetic field today in the scientific community believes that the solar wind pushes the Earth's magnetosphere almost directly above the equator, where the planet's magnetic field points north. Scientists had previously believed that if a large amount of solar magnetism is also directed towards the north, the two fields should reinforce one another, strengthening the defense of the Earth's magnetic closing door and the solar wind. Language of space physics, solar magnetic field points north is called the "northern IMF" (interplanetary magnetic field) and is synonymous with "shields".

The big surprise is that when a northern IMF shields off. It has completely overturned the understanding of many scientists. While researchers have investigated the gap in the magnetic field, they discovered that 20 times the solar wind enter the Earth's protective shield when the magnetic field was aligned.

Events with Northern IMF does not trigger geomagnetic storms, said Raeder, but creates conditions for the storm filling the magnetosphere with plasma.

Loaded magnetosphere is ready for the auroras, power outages and other disruptions that may occur when a CME (coronal mass ejection). This means that the impact of solar flares is 20 times stronger when the magnetic fields are aligned. The magnetic field of the earth and the sun will be aligned at the peak of Solar Cycle 24 which is expected in 2012. This will cause the flow of solar particles. What the researchers did not discuss the impact ua human bioelectric system.

   Eart's magnetic field change

At the Earth's climate significantly affects the planet's magnetic field, according to the Danish study, published in January 2009. that could challenge the notion that human emissions responsible for global warming. Our results show a strong correlation between the strength of Earth's magnetic field and the amount of precipitation in the tropics, said one of the two Danish geophysicists involved in the study,




Faurschou Mads Knudsen from the Department of Geology University of Denmark Varhus newspaper Videnskab.

Results of the study (which was also published in the American scientific journal Geology) speak in favor of a controversial theory that a decade ago published Danish astrophysicist Henrik Svensmark. He claimed that the climate has a strong influence particles of galactic cosmic radiation (GCR), which penetrate into Earth's atmosphere.

   TORQUE geomagnetic field




Bottom published  other recent studies is the view that rapid changes in the turbulent movement of the Earth's liquid outer cortex attenuate the magnetic field in some regions of the planet's surface.

What is surprising is the fact that the Earth's magnetic field occur fast, almost instantaneous changes, "said study co-author Nils Olsen, a geophysicist at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen.
The results suggest that similar changes occur simultaneously velocity in liquid metal, 3,000 miles beneath the surface, ie said Olsen. Fluctuations in the magnetic field have occurred in some scattered regions on Earth.
These changes, "my point to the prospect of a trade geomagnetic field", ie co-author published a study, scientists from the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam. Earth's magnetic field reversed hundreds of times over the past billion years, and for the completion of this process might be needed thousands of years. The weakening of the magnetic field also opens up more layers of Earth's atmosphere to intense charged particle radiation. scientists have said.

   Cosmic rays hitting Earth

An international team of researchers discovered a puzzling excess of high-energy electrons that bombard the Earth from space. The source of these cosmic rays is unknown, but it must be close to the solar system and could be made up of dark matter. The results reported by Nature magazine in its issue dated 20 November 2008. It is a great discovery, said co-author ie Jolm Wefel with Louisiana State University. "This is the first time we see a separate source of accelerated cosmic rays that stands out on the wider galactic background."

To study the strongest and most interesting cosmic rays, Wefel et al spent the last eight years managing a number of balloons in the stratosphere over Antarctica. Their cosmic ray detector, which is financed by NASA revealed a significant excess of high energy electrons.

"The source of these exotic electron must be relatively close to the solar system - located not more than one kiloparsec, - said co-author Jim Adams of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Marshall. Galactic cosmic rays are subatomic particles accelerated to near light speed distant supernova explosions and other violent events.

One in crowds rushing through the Milky Way, creating a mist of high-energy particles that enter the solar system from all directions. Cosmic rays consist mostly of protons and heavier atomic nuclei with some electrons and photons as a spice in the mix. Why the source must be close? According to Adams: "High-energy electrons rapidly lose energy as they fly through the galaxy. They impart energy to the two main ways:

(1) clash with the lower-energy photons, in a process called inverse Compton scattering, and
(2) when the radiation is losing some of its energy in a spiral motion through the galactic magnetic fields. "
High-energy electrons because they are local, but researchers can not accurately locate the source in the sky.




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Weakening of Earth's magnetic field and solar cycles, Part 2

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The sun is a huge electromagnetic transmitter that is flooding the planet of the solar system by heat, light, UV radiation and electrically charged particles. The Sun itself has a magnetic field and magnetic field creates an "egg" around the solar system known as heliosphere. Heliosphere is shaped like a droplet, with an elongated, narrow end pointing in the opposite direction in which we move.

Any change that occurs in or on the Sun will eventually affect every living person. Solar activity during this last sunspot cycle was the solar is greater than anything previously seen, spinal studies, written by Dr. Mike
Lockvvood and colleagues at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Chilton, UK, 1999. investigate the solar activity over the last 100 years. They reported that since 1901. total solar magnetic field has become stronger by 230 percent. Scientists do not understand what it means for us.

Some of the sunspot activity in this last cycle was stronger than anything ever recorded. But researchers say do not understand what it means for us. Apparently, the sun ie earth's driving force, said Richard Fisher Director of helio physics at NASA. To mitigate possible threats to public safety, it is crucial to better understand the extreme space weather events caused by solar activity.

   Solar cycle 24

According to NASA, the Sun begins another 11-year cycle of activity. The sun reverses its magnetic poles every a year. Given that the Sun is responsible for some adverse climate changes on Earth the next decade could bring more trouble for our planet. The years ahead could be tumultuous. Jimmy Raeder explained:

"We enter the 24th solar cycle 1z reasons not fully understood, CME and the even-numbered solar cycles (such as 24) are usually hit Earth with a leading edge that is magnetized north. CMF This should open a crack and fill the magnetosphere with plasma just before the storm. This is a perfect sequence for a really great event. "




Every 10-11 years the number of sunspots is our closest star rise from zero (as it was in 2008.) To a maximum of over four hundred. While the sunspots affect the Earth, solar flares and other disturbances that are spreading around our sun during increased sunspot activity lead to an increase in the number of particles (electrons and protons) and harmful light radiation (ultraviolet and X-rays), known as solar wind. Yes No
Earth's protective magnetic field and atmosphere, this bombardment of particles would completely burn us. Sunspot Cycle 24, which is expected to peak somewhere in the 2012th, it could be one of the strongest in the last few centuries.

It will be 30-50 percent stronger than last and will start with a delay of a full year, the revolutionary foresight that uses a computer model of solar dynamics developed by scientists who are from the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Accurate prediction of solar cycles years in advance will help the company to prepare for active gust of solar storms, which can slow satellite orbits, disrupt communications and bring down power systems. Scientists have confidence in the forecasts because of a series of tests recently developed model simulated the strength of the last eight cycles with an accuracy of over 98 percent. Forecasts are generated in part by monitoring the movement of debris below the surface of sunspots from the previous two solar cycles.

 
    Solar cycle 25

"The great conveyor belt" is a huge circulating current of fire (hot plasma) within the Sun. There are two branches, north and south, and each takes about 10 years to pass a full circle. The researchers believe that turning the conveyor belt controls the sunspot cycle and therefore it is important to slow down.


Usually, the conveyor belt moving at a speed of about one meter per second speed walk, NASA said in Solana physicist David Hathaway. "That was the end of the 19th century, "In recent years, however, the belt has decelerated to 0.75 m / s in the north of 0.35 m / s in the south. "We have never seen so low, said Hathaway."

According to the theory and observation, the speed of the belt says it will be the intensity of sunspot activity about 20 years in the future. Slow belt means lower solar activity; fast belt means stronger activity.

"The slowdown that we see now means that Solar Cycle 25, which will be the culmination of about 2022nd year could be one of the weakest in the last century, said Hathaway.

   The solar activity on the Earth

The first instrument for measuring the activity of solar flares have occurred 440 years ago. They showed that the closest star to our Earth is not only the honor of eclipses. Sunspots, solar flares and other phenomena affect everything on earth, from weather events to human behavior. These phenomena are known collectively as the solar activity. This activity, which is expressed by a gust of solar radiation, magnetic storms and fiery flashes, the intensity can vary from very weak to very strong. The greatest threat to civilization are the storms.

On 28 August 1859th polar light shone and sparkled over the entire American continent, when darkness fell. Many people thought that their city is in flames. The hands on the instruments that were used for recording Uh magnetic fluctuations around the world came out of the scale. Telegraph system broke down, hit by strong surges. It was perhaps the worst solar storms in the past, 200 years ago. Its effects on humans were small because civilization had not yet been entered into high-technology development phase. But with the advent of modern electricity grids and satellites is much more in danger.




That something similar happened in our era of space nuclear destruction would be catastrophic. According to scientific data, a storm of this size occur about once in five centuries. But half of low-intensity events occur every 50 years. The last recorded 13th November 1960 .. Disrupted the Earth's magnetic field, disrupting the work stations.

Today is our dependence on radio-electronic devices so huge that increased solar activity could be disabled for life support systems around the world, and not just on the surface. Bad space weather can cause disturbances in any orbital system, light solar storm can ruin navigation systems controlled from space. NASA is now ringing the alarm because the North American continent near the northern magnetic pole, and is most sensitive to solar activity, spinal studies corporation "Metatech" revealed that the attack similar to the one from 1859. disable the entire power grid in North America. Even the relatively weak magnetic storm of 1989. encourage solar activity caused the accident in a Canadian hydroelectric power plant that is six million people in the United States and Canada for nine hours left without electricity.

Study of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, also spoke about the troubling features of the Earth in the worst case scenario of solar storms. Modern power grids are so interconnected that the large space storms -  type such as expected to occur once in a century could trigger a cascade of crashes that could be expanded throughout the United States, left without electricity for 130 million people or more only in that country, the conclusion a new report. Such widespread power cuts although, as expected, a rare ability to hit other vital systems.

"The impact would be felt on the interdependent infrastructures, for example, drinking water supply would be affected for several hours, quickly perishable foods and medicines for about 12-24 hours. and the current or subsequent loss of heating / air conditioning, garbage disposal, telephone service, transportation, fuel supply and clock on, "the report reads.

To fix the system could be taken months, the bank could be close, and trade with other countries could be interrupted.

"Emergency services would be overloaded, and command and control could be lost," say researchers led by Daniel Baker, director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado at Boulder.

   Sun's cycles and human behavior

Could cycles of war and peace could be associated with the solar cycle?

Some researchers claim that geomagnetic storms affect brain waves and hormone levels, causing many different reactions, mainly in men. Although some women may also feel the changes during these storms, it seems that they are generally less affected by the behavior of the Sun. Reacting to changing hormone levels, some men may become increasingly irritable and aggressive, while others may instead become more creative.

It was found that an increase in solar activity increase psychotic episodes in people who already suffer from unstable psychological states. Although we may associate such behavior with a full moon, Dr. Robert Becker and his colleague Dr. Howard Friedman 1963rd demonstrated that changes in the sun and water to a noticeable increase in psychotic activity. Yet, these reactions do not occur only in a few particularly sensitive or unlucky individuals.

 


Evidence suggesting that the wars and international conflicts often break out when sunspots are rapidly forming or rapidly decaying, because in these conditions occur more intense geomagnetic storms. In addition. to an increase in solar activity are correlated with periods when the increased number of accidents and diseases, as well as crimes and murders. The entire biosphere is affected by this electromagnetic pollution, and it seems that human behavior responds accordingly. Not cause any geomagnetic storm disturbances. But over time, extremes of solar activity can also affect the period of earthly conflict. Data on cycles of war and peace extend to at least 2,500 years old.

Another 1915th some scientists have begun to recognize the connection between solar activity and human behavior. This work began with Russian scientist Alevander Chizhevsky who observed a correlation between mass changes in human behavior and the cycle of sunspots.

The thirties of last century, Professor Raymond Wheeler, a historian at the University n Kansas, took this observation one step further. His research numerically ranked severity of individual battles correlating to solar cycles. The information obtained by statistically analyzing Edward Dewey, who confirmed the existence of these cycles of wars. However, he was unable to establish a clear link with the cycle of sunspots, because at that time was insufficient data.
 The 1980s, with a detailed analysis Wheeler's data, is the connection became clear.

After a more detailed study of the data seems to begin to discover the pattern by which IE most likely to start a war in the key points of the sunspot cycle. These are periods when geomagnetic activity is changing the fastest in the rapid increase in solar activity, or in a downward cycle, when sunspots are rapidly diminishing. In addition, we can see how it negatively affects the psychological mechanisms such as brain rhythms and hormone levels. In other words, wars could be a kind of mass psychosis. When you see the connection with physical mechanisms (such as IE electromagnetic pollution), it gives us some predictions about when it is likely that they could begin intensified aggression. Calculations show that we are facing another increase of intense solar activity in less than two years, roughly around 22 September 2010. NASA predicts that the activity reached a peak in 2012. year.

   Changes in the Solar System

Five planets atmosphere and Earth's moon change. In the upper layers of Earth's atmosphere creates HO gas that did not exist in amounts that exists today. Scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences say that it is not associated with global warming, CFCs or fluorocarbon emissions. They argue that the atmosphere of Jupiter, Uranus and Neptun also changing.

The Martian atmosphere becomes much thicker. In 1997. probe "Mars Observer" has lost one of its mirrors, which caused her fall. This happened because the atmosphere was about twice as much too dense, but NASA was calculated. Brightness and magnetic fields of planets are also changing. Venus shows a significant increase in its overall brightness, Jupiter's energetic charge has risen so high that there is now a visible tube of ionizing radiation, which is formed between the surface of Jupiter and its moon "Io." At the recently captured images can be seen a great power tube. Uranus and Neptune also are becoming brighter. The magnetic field of Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune are changing.

Jupiter's magnetic field has more than doubled, and Neptune's magnetic field is stronger. The Russians say that all three of these planets become radiant, and their atmospheric qualities are changing, but do not explain what that means. The Russians also report that looks at how Uranus and Neptune has recently been a reversal of the poles. When the space probe "Voyager II" flew by Uranus and Neptune, it seemed that the north and south magnetic poles substantially deviated from the spot where the earlier recordings was a half rotation. In one case, it is 50 degrees, and in another case, the difference was 10-odd degrees.

This new information on changes in the solar system comes at an interesting time for our planet. It is possible that for some time the celestial events play a role in shaping our lives on this planet, and that these changes that we see now in our sun, solar system and Earth's magnetic field could be just what transforms our world as we know it into something new . Only time will tell, but it seems that the future is already knocking at the door.

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End of Fossil Fuel Era an 'Exciting Time'

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Author and scientist Amory B. Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute see a bright future beyond dirty fuels... and sooner than you think


In an essay in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs and a recent interview with Yale Environment 360, Amory Lovins discusses his latest book, Reinventing Fire, written with his colleagues at the Rocking Mountain Institute, which looks at what a transition away from an economy and energy system based on fossil fuels towards one based on renewable energy would look like.

                              Amory B. Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute

"Weaning the United States from fossils fuels would require two big shifts," writes Lovins at Foreign Affairs, naming "oil and electricity" which he says are "distinct." He points out, "In the US, three-fourths of electricity powers building, three-fourths of oil fuels transportation, and the remaining oil and electricity run factories. So saving oil and electricity is chiefly about making buildings, vehicles, and factories far more efficient." This, admits Lovins, is "no small task."

Dwelling on the scale of the challenge, however, is not where Lovins devotes his energy. Instead, he looks at other "epochal energy shifts" that have occurred in history, like the end of the whale oil industry in the mid 19th century, where in just thirty years the whale oil industry went from bringing lighting to nearly every American household in 1850, to being essentially snuffed out by 1879, when Edison's electric lighting hit the scene. "Whales," writes Lovins, "had been accidently saved by technological innovators and profit-maximizing capitalists."

The point, of course, is not that we should look to 'profit-maximizing capitalists' to lead us to a clean energy future (though they will certainly play a role). The point is that we should definitely not expect whaling captains to lead us. And in this era, the whale ship captains are the captains of the big oil, coal, and gas companies and the politicians who do their bidding.


"The chief obstacle is not technology or economics," concludes Lovins, "but slow adoption." He writes:
Helping innovations catch on will take education, leadership, and rapid learning. But it does require reaching concensus on motives. If Americans agree what should be done, then they need not agree why. Whether one cares most about national security, health, the environment, or simply making money, saving and supplanting fossil fuels makes sense."

"Wise energy policy can grow from impeccably conservative roots-- [...]

Moving the United States off oil and coal will require Americans to trust in their own resourcefulness, ingenuity, and courage. These durable virtues can give the country fuel without fear; help set the world on a path beyond war, want, or waste; and turn energy from worrisome to worry-free, from risk to reward, from cost to profit."

   A Clean Energy Plan


In the interview with Yale Environment 360 senior editor Fen Montaigne, Lovins discusses how business and society can pull off this transformation even if the U.S. Congress keeps failing to act, why climate change need not even enter the discussion, and why the oil industry will ultimately forego fossil fuels and jump aboard the green bandwagon. “One system is dying and others are struggling to be born,” says Lovins. “It’s a very exciting time.”



Yale Environment 360: Given that we’re in the midst of what could only be described as a fossil fuel boom, with the discovery of new unconventional sources and new oil sources being found all over the world, how do you speed this transition and get from here to there?

Amory Lovins: Well, I’m not sure what boom you’re talking about. When I read the Wall Street Journal, I see a headline a few weeks ago about coal running out of steam.

e360: China is consuming tremendous amounts of coal.

Lovins: Hang on — I look at the data and I find that in the United States, coal’s share of the electrical services market, which is 95 percent of its market for fuel, has fallen by a quarter from 2005 through 2010, displaced by cheaper gas, efficiency, and renewables. And then when you look in the forward prices and the options market, that spread is going to keep widening. And when I hear how cheap natural gas is, I remember that it’s also very volatile. This has nothing to do with the many uncertainties around fracking, which will take a decade to resolve — if they work out well, we’ll be satisfied with a new option; if they don’t, that’s okay because we won’t need that much gas, so we won’t be very disappointed.

e360: Certainly in China, India, and the developing world there is a fossil fuel boom going on.

Lovins: But in a global context, there is a remarkable boom in efficiency and renewables in China, the world leader in five renewables. Part of the story in China is that the extraordinary vitality of renewables is coming very largely from the vibrant private sector, while all of the nuclear and half the coal business are the old state enterprises. So the story of incumbents and insurgents is partly the story of the reshaping of the Chinese economy from the old and rather bureaucratic command organizations. That is, I think, an encouraging trend.

  We  must use our most effective institutions to end-run our least effective institutions.

Last I looked a couple of years ago, the private sector in China was something like 50 to 70 percent of the profits, the growth, and the new jobs. Of course there is still a lot of momentum in the coal bureaucracy in China and India, which together burned half the world’s coal and account for about three-quarters of the projected increase, but I think those projections are looking quite dubious. In China, for example, they have lately retired over 70 gigawatts of inefficient coal plants, so that their coal plant fleet is now more efficient than ours. In 2010, 59 percent of their net new [electricity] capacity was coal. It used to be much higher.

e360: You feel we’re in a period where fossil fuels over the next decade or two are going to be increasingly like whale oil?

Lovins: Yes.

e360: You’ve got the president of Shell writing a foreward to your book. There are prominent quotes from the president of Texaco in one section of the book. How do you persuade these oil companies that are making billions of dollars now and into the foreseeable future to get on board with this renewable energy revolution? What is going to persuade them to be on what you see as the right side of history?

Lovins: Mainly risk management, and as a member of the National Petroleum Council, having worked in this industry for 38 years, I’ve seen a lot of concern about risk. Oil is like airlines. It’s a great industry and a bad business. Look at its fundamentals. It is extremely capital-intensive, long lead time, based on a wasting asset of which you only own about 6 percent and the rest can be taxed away or confiscated at any time. It is a business overflowing with all kinds of risk — technical, political, financial. It is unpopular politically. Its subsidies are at some political risk in this country. Put all that together and you have a magnificent recipe for headaches. Why would you want to be in a business like that?

e360: You’re making huge profits at this point.

Lovins: Well, sometimes yes, and sometimes it gushes red ink. So the smarter leaders in that industry have been trying to get out of the business since at least 1973, and have constructed some pretty intelligent portfolios of both activities and options that are getting rather rapidly diversified. Some companies that were not very foresighted, even though they were operationally excellent, are starting to smell the coffee.

 I think there is a bright future for what we now think of as the oil industry in the new energy era, using its formidable capabilities and assets, but in different ways. A lot of refineries will turn into biorefineries; a lot of drilling will go to geothermal, possibly carbon sequestration and other pursuits. The fuel logistics will diversify into hydrogen — which of course is mainly a business of the oil industry right now and it’s a very big business — and into electricity and biofuels. Shell is already the world’s biggest distributor of biofuels. The average cost of getting our U.S. transport system off oil is about $18 a barrel for the efficiency and electrification part, or if you include the biofuels to run the trucks and airplanes to the extent they’re not on hydrogen, it might be at most about $25 a barrel. So I don’t much care what the world oil price is, this is a better bet and it very much better manages the risks.

e360: In the spheres that you write about — transportation, electricity generation, industry — what pieces of the puzzle need to be put in place in the coming decade or so to do this massive scaling up that’s going to be required to attain your vision of an economy that by 2050 is primarily powered by renewable sources?

Lovins: Broadly we need to pay attention to allow or require full and fair competition, preferably at honest prices. And to use our most effective institutions to end-run our least effective institutions.

e360: For example?

Lovins: Well, we use private enterprise, co-evolving with civil society and sped up by military innovation, to end run Congress. The transition we describe requires no act of Congress. It’s led by business for profit.

e360: So you want the private sector to end-run the dysfunctional political system?

Lovins: At the federal level, yes. There are policies required to unlock or speed the transition we described, but they could all be done administratively or at the state level, where most of the action is.

e360: From a technological point of view, how do you scale up wind and solar to the point where it can be generating the volume of electricity that you envision by 2050?

Lovins: The way we’re scaling it up now. U.S. photovoltaics have doubled each of the last two years. World [photovoltaic] growth last year — a difficult year for many industries — was 70 percent. And 68 percent of Europe’s new capacity last year was solar and wind. Wind, for example, is generally competitive without subsidy, even though the global wind industry will of course shift its projects in a given year to wherever they get the most subsidy, as you would expect. But even without subsidy they have a very strong business case.

e360: So you foresee in the U.S., Europe, and China a steady accretion of this scale and volume for these new sources?

Lovins: Yes, and China is leading the plummeting cost and rocketing volume of most of the renewables. They’re the world leader in five. They aim to be in all. The ones they lead are photovoltaic, wind, small hydro, biogas, and solar thermal for hot water.

So this is actually quite a big business. Clean energy was a $260 billion investment flow in 2011. Europe has now more than one million new renewable jobs. The big winner is Germany. They have more solar workers than America has steel workers. [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel bet that it would be smarter to send their energy money to their own engineers, manufacturers, and installers than to keep paying it to [Russia’s] Gazprom. She’s right, and it was a winning bet.

e360: In your book you are not counting on any sort of miraculous silver bullet technologies.

Lovins: No, no new inventions.

e360:  But do you think there will be within a matter of decades technologies we can’t envision that could even further accelerate this transition?

Lovins: Oh, yes. I think there will be many, and actually although we’re not counting on any new inventions, we do give examples of emerging technologies in the lab about to get to market that are going to be quite powerful. For example, windows whose ability to transmit or block heat is a function of the temperature of the glass, and that’s a passive property.
It doesn’t  require any control system. That sort of thing is so revolutionary we haven’t even figured out how to use it yet. Or as another example, Tsutomu Shimomura, the computer security expert, has invented a way of controlling LED lighting in big buildings that gets rid of almost all of the wire and power supplies and controls, but gives superior control flexibility. And that should ultimately cut by manyfold the installed cost of those LED lighting systems and thus help them take over even faster in both new and old buildings. Fuel cells have already beaten the cost targets that we had expected. The list goes on.

Despite our woeful underinvestment in efficiency R&D, the technical progress here and abroad continues to accelerate with no end in sight and it’s not just in widgets. It’s also progress in new business models, new designs, ways of combining technologies more effectively to get expanding returns, not diminishing returns, new delivery channels that are rapidly maturing, new regulatory models. These things all together I think have put us irreversibly on the path to a new energy era, and a lot of it is an incumbents-versus-insurgents play where the incumbents have many intelligent ways they can respond and some dumb ways, one of which is called ostrich.

e360: Your book, in each of the main chapters, lays out detailed prescriptions — down to diagrams of factory piping — of how to improve efficiency and make advances. What has the reaction been to the book from corporations, from politicians?

Lovins: The reaction I have seen has been uniformly favorable, partly because it’s a trans-ideological approach that focuses on outcomes, not motives. Whether you most care about profits, jobs, and competitive advantage, or about national security or environmental stewardship and climate and public health — regardless of the reason, you’ll still want the outcomes. They’ll still make sense and make money, so let’s just do what we all agree ought to be done for whatever reason, not argue about what reason is most important, and then a lot of the stuff we may not agree about becomes superfluous. The military is very strongly on this track already — with both efficiency and resilient electric supply — for their own good reasons. We are not seeing so far political resistance to these ideas and we’re getting a very warm welcome in the business community.

e360: How big an impediment to your vision of how to go forward is the fact that many of the leaders of the Republican Party not only deny the existence of climate change, but belittle renewable energy. Is the political gridlock on this issue a big impediment to maybe moving forward?

Lovins: I don’t see it as a big impediment because we’re not relying on Congress to do anything. Again, you don’t have to believe climate science to think that the outcomes of Reinventing Fire are desirable. If you care
about  either making money or national security, either of those suffices; you may even care about both together. Then you’re twice as motivated. We are counting in the analysis all externalities — carbon [reduction] and otherwise — as worth zero, a conservatively low estimate. And we still get a $5 trillion surplus from getting the U.S. completely off oil, coal, and nuclear energy and a third off natural gas by 2050, with a 2.6-fold bigger economy. That, I think, is an attractive outcome regardless of your political beliefs.

e360: Let’s say there’s a President Santorum or a President Romney, do you think that they could be persuaded once they’re in office to embrace a vision like this?

Lovins: I don’t know, but I don’t much care. Rocky Mountain Institute is non-partisan, and we observe that most states, including many strongly Republican states, have renewable portfolio standards. The renewable leader in the nation is Texas, which is not noted for being environmentally minded, but does care a lot about making money and is very good at it. That’s fine.

e360: On the issue of climate change, do you believe the climate movement has made a strategic error by focusing so much on the issue of warming and its impacts rather than on the positive economic message you propagate in the book?

Lovins: I think you could make that case. In fact, to go back to the beginning of the modern climate debate, I think that when the bogus studies were issued claiming that climate protection would be very costly, the environmental movement fell into a trap of saying it won’t cost that much and it’s worth it. What they should have said is, “No, you’ve got it wrong. Climate protection is not costly but profitable because it’s cheaper to save fuel than to buy fuel.”

So the whole climate conversation has been distorted by this error of mistaking cost for profits and that has blocked international negotiations, because it’s so much harder to talk about cost burden and sacrifice, what is it worth to save the climate and who should pay for it, than to talk about profits, jobs, and competitive advantage, which should have been the subject all along.
I think you could make that case. In fact, to go back to the beginning of the modern climate debate, I think that when the bogus studies were issued claiming that climate protection would be very costly, the environmental movement fell into a trap of saying it won’t cost that much and it’s worth it. What they should have said is, “No, you’ve got it wrong. Climate protection is not costly but profitable because it’s cheaper to save fuel than to buy fuel.”

So the whole climate conversation has been distorted by this error of mistaking cost for profits and that has blocked international negotiations, because it’s so much harder to talk about cost burden and sacrifice, what is it worth to save the climate and who should pay for it, than to talk about profits, jobs, and competitive advantage, which should have been the subject all along.

e360: When you look at your 2050 vision, yet you also look at all the carbon that’s still being burned, how do you reconcile the two?


Lovins: Well, one system is dying and others are struggling to be born. It’s a very exciting time, but I think the transitions that we need in how we design vehicles, buildings, and factories, and how we allow efficiency to compete with supply, are well under way. Most of the key sectors are already at or past their tipping point. And it’s clearest for oil, but will become clearer for coal that the stuff is becoming uncompetitive even at relatively low prices before it becomes unavailable even at high prices. It’s the whale oil story all over again. They ran out of customers before they ran out of whales.

Video



Amory Lovins at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies





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Comet Coming Next Year May Be Brighter Than the Moon

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Astronomers working at the International Scientific Optical Network in Russia have discovered a comet that is headed our way; one that many believe will be the brightest ever seen in modern times. Dubbed ISON (an acronym for the site in Russia), the comet was first found on September 25th, Discovery says  leading researchers to scour other images taken over the past couple of years to see if they could find it to help map it's trajectory.

                                                 Comet ISON

That led, Mail Online reports to several sightings and clearer picture of where it's coming from and where it's heading. At present, the researchers say, comet ISON appears headed on a course that will bring it to within 60 million kilometers of Earth but more importantly just 1.8 million kilometers from the sun, which is what causes the tail to shine so brightly. 


What makes the finding so exciting though, says Discovery is that most who have seen the data believe that the comet will be really bright; brighter in fact than any other seen in modern times. So bright it will appear brighter than the moon at night and bright enough to be seen even during the day. If that does happen, it will most certainly be a momentous occasion, one that will likely result in an enormous amount of media coverage, social network chatter and maybe even parties celebrating the once in a million year event.

Making all that even more likely is a prediction by the original research team that the comet will be lighting up the sky for up to two weeks, and if all that isn't enough, it's expected to arrive in late November to early December, bringing it very close to the holiday season, possibly inspiring comparisons between it and the Star of Bethlehem that the New Testament says, led the three wise men to the birth of Jesus.



The researchers believe the comet originated from a part of space known as the oort cloud, which is basically a mass of icy debris left over from impacts between planets and asteroids millions of years ago. If correct, it would mean the trajectory of the comet, if it survives its close call with the sun, wouldn't bring it around again for more than a hundred million years, which in human teams, pretty much means forever, so those of us that get to see it, will likely be the only ones ever to do so, even more reason to celebrate.






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