"Do scientists think that changes in solar irradiance due to the 11-year solar cycle could be strong enough to cause the current change being measured in Earth's climate?
“Sustained changes in solar radiance – that is changes that occur over decades or centuries – could potentially have an effect on Earth's climate system, which is why such information is included, along with a variety of other natural and human-driven influences, in climate models.“
Increasing solar radiation at a time when greenhouse gas concentrations are higher absolutely will cause warming. If it didn’t, the entire basis of anthropogenic global climate change wouldn’t really work. Would the effect be less severe if humans didn’t put tons of greenhouse gas in the air, yes. Would warning still occur without an increase in solar radiation, yes. Do the two together have a greater effect than either alone, yes.
It’s funny to focus on words that talk about “potentially” having an effect while ignoring the known magnitude of this potential. That quote taken out of context leaves you with the impression that these two factors are both significant contributors, or even roughly equivalent, but the reality is that one of those factors is much much larger than the other, and the other is negligible, and I’m sure you know which one is which.
“the Sun's energy output only changes by up to 0.15% over the course of the cycle, less than what would be needed to force the change in climate that we see. Also, scientists have not been able to find convincing evidence that the 11-yr cycle is mirrored in any aspects of the climate beyond the stratosphere – such as surface temperature, rainfall or wind patterns.“
This page states that CO2 is 20% of greenhouse effect
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/CarbonCycle/page5...
"Carbon dioxide causes about 20 percent of Earth’s greenhouse effect; water vapor accounts for about 50 percent; and clouds account for 25 percent."
So 1 to 1.2% of sun's energy is CO2 greenhouse effect. So a 10% change in CO2 greenhouse effect is roughly the same amount of energy as the observed change solar cycle output.
tldr; 0.15% of sun's energy output is actually a lot of energy!
> a 10% change in CO2 greenhouse effect is roughly the same amount of energy as the observed change in solar cycle output.
I think your calculation might be mistaken, that number doesn’t make a lot of sense and is not supported by measurements. See Figs 13 & 16 in the following paper for magnitudes of temperature variation attributed to solar cycle variation.
The link you provided summarized the solar cycle’s contribution to warming as “very small”. This paper also notes that the solar cycle’s affect in the last 50 years has been cooling on average, and that recent warming trends are “almost entirely” due to changes in CO2.
Notice how the quote has no certainty (not sure where you got yours from) and how it suggested that there would be an "effect" (not sure where you got the warming from either).
Yes, but a good way to verify climate science is to make surprising predictions and then see how accurate they are.
Climate scientists have made many such predictions starting in the 1970s. Exxon even had scientists in the 80's predicting climate change with surprising accuracy, and then they buried that research because it would hurt their business.
It is a long-running myth in "climate skeptic" circles that we're due for an upcoming maunder minimum in solar activity which will reverse global warming (or cause global cooling).
See, for example, this article from this global-warming-denialist source:
The modern maximum was in 1950 (referring to the highest number of sunspots) and sunspots have been going down. Ironically, global temperatures were at +-0°C during that time period. We have less sun activity and yet temperatures keep rising. If sun activity were to go up for whatever reason then we would be twice as screwed as we are now!
Yeah, but in this case, not only was the temperature setting increased, but so was the oven’s insulation. As a result, the oven became more efficient at heating and more efficient at holding heat.
I thought higher solar activity meant increased sun spots and CME. In general that increases some solar wind particles.
We could see significant effects if CME was directed towards us (Carrington event), and maybe that would represent more energy into the earth system.
But in general, solar cycle isn’t “hotter”; sunspots in fact are cooler spots.
The umbra part of the sunspot is cooler, but each sunspot also has a penumbra region which causes the sunspot to be brighter. This is due to the magnetic field generated that causes the sunspot to overcompensate. This is the reason some theorize the Little Ice Age may have been caused by the Maunder Minimum.
The correct way to frame the issue is that climate change was already worse than it appeared because we were in the low side of the cycle recently. Now we are in the high side and it seems a bit warmer.
> "In the study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, Millán and his colleagues estimate that the Tonga eruption [January 15th] sent around 146 teragrams (1 teragram equals a trillion grams) of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – equal to 10% of the water already present in that atmospheric layer. That’s nearly four times the amount of water vapor that scientists estimate the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines lofted into the stratosphere."
It's a coincidence, and the "interesting coincidence" framing is the dumbest of the rhetoric (aka propaganda) tools out there. It's the basest of the rhetorical tricks, put together this way. Relying on psychology to produce inference from implication, and biology to produce the dopamine hit subconsciously underlying a sense of achievement that helps slide the BS in YOUR head (or the heads of your "paymasters") past the psychological defenses of others.
It's too bad we don't fortify more heads as standard practice, maybe the internet wouldn't spread stupidity like the drinking water from a 19th-century pump spread cholera.*
"Our method predicts that SC25 could be among the strongest sunspot cycles ever observed, and that it will almost certainly be stronger than present
SC24 (sunspot number of 116) and most likely stronger than the previous SC23
(sunspot number of 180). This is in stark contrast to the consensus of the
SC25PP, sunspot number maximum between 95 and 130, i.e., similar to that of
SC24. Indeed, as can be seen in Fig. 4b, if our prediction for the 2020 terminator
time is correct, such a low value would be a severe outlier with respect to the
observed behavior of previous sunspot cycles. Such a low value could only be
reconciled with the previously observed sunspot cycles if the next terminator
event is delayed by more than two years from our predicted value, which would
extend the present low activity levels to an extraordinary length. We note also
that the relationship developed herein would have correctly predicted the low
amplitude of SC24 (from a terminators separation of 12.825 years) following
the 2011 terminator—three years after the 2006 NOAA/NASA Solar Cycle
Prediction Panel delivered their consensus prediction (Pesnell, 2008). Finally,
the arrival of the SC24 terminator will permit higher fidelity on the forecast
presented."
Do scientists think that changes in solar irradiance due to the 11-year solar cycle could be strong enough to cause the current change being measured in Earth's climate?
In a word, no.
Scientists agree that the solar cycle and its associated short-term changes in irradiance cannot be the main force driving the changes in Earth's climate we are currently seeing.
For one thing, the Sun's energy output only changes by up to 0.15% over the course of the cycle, less than what would be needed to force the change in climate that we see.
Also, scientists have not been able to find convincing evidence that the 11-yr cycle is mirrored in any aspects of the climate beyond the stratosphere – such as surface temperature, rainfall or wind patterns.
The cycle is a regular small flucuation in total energy with relatively little change in the part of the spectrum that comes all the way through the atmosphere to heat up the land and water .. ibcreasing insulation trapping that heat has been the driver of climate change here.
If you read the linked article or any related science article the focus is on the geomagnetic surges caused by the changes in the suns field.
Ah, you're a tricky client! The article has a graph of sunspot numbers, not irradiance! So nothing contradicts anything, but that's not really important!
We also have graphs of sun activity vs temperature!
It doesn't feature the global temperature, so it's not perfect, we're sorry! We're very sorry! But it's clearly constant and doesn't exhibit the hockey stick shape of global temperature.
Lol... they match up fine for solar activity from 2012 to 2020.
This sounds like: "the data doesn't support my thesis so I'll wait for 'better' data. What does 'better data' mean? Data that supports my thesis... thank you very much."
>If scientists said that there was a correlation between temperature and Sun activity, they would be cancelled because it doesn't fit the narrative that climate change is caused by humans.
While I don’t agree with your previous point, this is a very important point I agree with.
We see this cross-domain/in many areas, certain topics are taboo and therefore proper science is not attempted by anyone out of self-preservation.
One of the best examples of this is the UFO phenomenon, the stigma has been so strong for nearly a century now that a lot of otherwise-intelligent people are completely blinded to the objective reality.
Can't tell if this is an excellent troll. Reminds me of the moment in "Behind the Curve" Netflix's excellent flat earth documentary, when one of the characters, discussing her feud with another flat earther, says something like "He's just so wrong about stuff. Could I be that wrong...? Eh, nope, I guess I know I'm right"
But in case you're not trolling the parent by comparing their climate chance conspiracy theories with even more ridiculous UFO conspiracies, relevant xkcd:
https://xkcd.com/2572/
The biggest problem in the world today are anti-intellectuals actively fighting for a worse world purely on the basis of enjoying what they perceive as “making other people angry”.
Hilariously enough, nobody called anyone names till you started. So I suppose that makes the people you’re responding to the “brave and courageous people”.
IMO, it seems these people exist to muddy the waters. I spent half a decade munging temperature and precip data from multiple institutions around the world (MPI, fer instance). These datasets suggest an unpleasant future, particularly by mid-century. But I'm supposed to ignore all of it because a) experts are wrong b) sunspots!
The funny thing is that I am actually upset. I am upset at having to waste so much time on being forced to responding. If we don’t respond, then their propaganda gets to carry to online discussion.
It’s tiring, but ultimately, I have kids and am compelled to respond to the bullshit for their sake.
You’re not punchy. HN has seen a massive growth of anti-intellectualism in the past couple months.
I’ve read “scientists will be cancelled for doing science” no less than 30 times this week alone.
See. The climate change deniers read a fake graph, call THAT “doing science”, and then complain that their demonstrably incorrect assertions are “cancelled”.
When they say that “people are cancelled for correlating sun activity with climate change”, what they really mean is “people won’t listen to my shitty, demonstrably incorrect talking point”.
The demonstrably incorrect graphs haven’t been doing so hot, so now they’re just trying to discredit all of science altogether with vague claims that have literally never happened. They think this fear based posturing will work on everyone else because of how well it works on them.
Thank you. I’m old enough to remember the internet before social media. The diversity of opinions have always existed and I appreciate that. But today it seems like we have a newfound anti-intellectualism, anti-science, anti-progress that only existed for me in stories of the Salem witch hunts or some long time before “we knew” better.
You are not actually able to read your counterpoint's mind, or the minds of all scientists, and you have not read all the writing of skeptics or "deniers".
We know so little about the Sun’s weather. Take the Maunder Minimum, a period spanning at least three solar cycles where there were three orders of magnitude fewer sunspots observed[0]. Imagine the effect if the standard cycle we knew increased by as much...!
Correlation was recently discovered between solar cycles and earthquakes. Volcanism correlates to earthquakes, but I don't believe it goes in both directions. Ergo, the solar cycles should not affect global warming. But that's not what we are now observing. Very interesting news.
Even though I"m working on the climate, I'm still quite worried about a Carrington event making it all de facto irrelevant. The way modern society works, a single such event would likely kill the majority of the world's population.
I'm curious why you think it would kill most people? Are you thinking exploding batteries and wire induced fires? Societal unrest from the grid being down??
I think the explosions and fires would cause negligible deaths. The thing I’m worried about is starvation. If the grid goes down on large parts of the world for more than a few days, the cascading effect would probably mean most people just starve to death within a month. We have extremely fragile food creation and distribution systems.
Pretty much everyone would survive the immediate event (except those in a plane or on a ventilator).
The problem is the consequences of frying of the electrical grid, satellites and terrestrial telecom networks, vehicles, probably datacenters, even possibly some personal electronics like glucose pumps.
Subsistance farmers would probably be OK. But most of them also depend on external supply chains like fertilisers, clean water, etc. Nobody else is an island, and that's quote no longer just applies to social ties: we depend on a web of relationships for everything: food, fuel, everything. Most (90+%?) of the global population will starve within a few weeks, even before disease gets them.
That's why survivalists and "bunker" types always seem crazy to me: unless they're the unibomber they plan for a fixed horizon for the "bad times".
Vehicles, data centers, and electronics would be untouched. Solar storm induces currents in long conductors like electrical grid and internet cables. Internet cables being problem is a new thing; I'm sort of surprised since I would expect water and earth to protect them. The big danger is that it will destroy a lot of transformers and those are hard to replace.
My impression is that it is relatively easy to protect the electrical grid by grounding everything.
Also, Carrington event is predictable once the flare happens. The electrical grid can be shut down, and shouldn't be damaged much when shut down. Doing the cold start would be a challenge. As would be making the decision to shut down the grid.
I don't get why you think people would starve to death though. Wouldn't this be something that last like a couple of days? There might be some long tail food shortages, but I would think obviously food distribution is going to be prioritised. At the same time, if you think people starving to death is a viable issue why do you think bunker types are crazy? It seems like this is exactly the type of thing the bunk would be suited for in that you typically store a year or two worth of food in it.
If the grid goes down how long does it take to step it up again? If transformers have been destroyed? They take years to make. How can a replacement transformer be built with no power?
How will you charge your car or pump fuel into it? How will the refineries make fuel?
And as for the bunkers: if civilization is destroyed, once your supplies are exhausted you emerge to…? There aren’t any grocery stores.
Most estimates put repairing the grid if all the transformers in America blew at once at around 24 months. significantly longer than a few days. Could you survive without gas stations, cell phones, computers, grocery stores, and a freezer or fridge or oven or washer and dryer etc -- for two whole years?
WHy would we need the entire grid to be back up to not starve though. Obviously we would prioritize things and critical infrastructure would be first. What would actually be damaged though. WOuld an individual generator, batteries, actual appliances? Is it just transformers on the grid. Are the wires still good. Also would it hit the entire world, or just the side that was facing the sun at the peak or something?
a Carrington event would take roughly 2 to 3 years to get power back on assuming best case scenario.
What do you think happens when there's no electric freezers for food storage, shipment, etc. No credit or debit cards. all digital money will basically be erased or locked on a hard drive that can't be accessed until the grid goes back up.
All factories cease production, I don't think diabetics stand a chance, and many others with debilitating diseases.
Hospitals will be working without electricity, without patient records, without power saws to saw through bone more efficiently, without lights except candles, without most medicines, and without a supply chain.
Essentially what a doctor can fit in a bag and carry and has zero electric components will still be useable. So scalpels, and other surgical tools, tongue depressor, blood pressure cuff, stethoscope, etc. People who wear glasses better hope they don't need a new prescription or break their glasses as there will be no solution.
To me the scariest fact is that every frozen and refrigerated food item in the world will spoil within 3 days. The only food remaining will be things like cereal, wheat, rice, canned goods etc, of course competition to get the last of the food will make the fight over toilet paper seem like the great emu was vs WW2.
Military arsenals requiring electronic targeting may go down too, all stocks basically go to zero, instability in markets and govts will be global.
Charismatic leaders might become war lords and take over large territories that were big, strong nations before the event.
If you had no warning of the event, you wouldn't even know for a week or two what happened. you can't look it up on the Internet. there's no tv or radio for you to get updates on the situation or warnings/alarms.
I think I heard estimates that said about 2.4 billion out of 8b, will be all that remain after 3 years. In other words 2/3rds of mankind will be gone.
In the middle ages people relied on goods from nearby farmers markets or grew it themselves. There wasn't a global supply chain, so life would carry on as normal. We'd literally be sent back to the middle ages..
yeah, I've given a lot of thought to all the scenarios that could happen. It's amazing how dependent we all are on a system of jugglers basically a few balls fall and it triggers a runaway domino effect.
Btw, I really enjoyed Lucifer's Hammer (1977, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle) as it explored the issues we are discussing. The source of that story was a meteor and not a solar flare, but the effect is the same.
don't know about it killing a majority of the world's population, but this isn't a black swan event; it's probablistic.
> We find that on average there is a 4% (28%) chance of at least one great (severe) storm per year and a 0.7% chance of a Carrington class storm per year...
[0]
So, have we (humanity) done anything to mitigate the impact of this?
Fascinating solar cycle revelations! The Sun's heightened activity defies predictions, reminding us of the universe's enduring mysteries. Science at its finest
76 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 148 ms ] threadI’m far from knowledgeable in this area but I’ve never heard of a relationship before. (ed)
"Do scientists think that changes in solar irradiance due to the 11-year solar cycle could be strong enough to cause the current change being measured in Earth's climate?
In a word, no. "
“Sustained changes in solar radiance – that is changes that occur over decades or centuries – could potentially have an effect on Earth's climate system, which is why such information is included, along with a variety of other natural and human-driven influences, in climate models.“
Increasing solar radiation at a time when greenhouse gas concentrations are higher absolutely will cause warming. If it didn’t, the entire basis of anthropogenic global climate change wouldn’t really work. Would the effect be less severe if humans didn’t put tons of greenhouse gas in the air, yes. Would warning still occur without an increase in solar radiation, yes. Do the two together have a greater effect than either alone, yes.
“the Sun's energy output only changes by up to 0.15% over the course of the cycle, less than what would be needed to force the change in climate that we see. Also, scientists have not been able to find convincing evidence that the 11-yr cycle is mirrored in any aspects of the climate beyond the stratosphere – such as surface temperature, rainfall or wind patterns.“
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/EnergyBalance/pag... Indicates that 5-6% of solar energy is thermal radiation from the surface absorbed by the atmosphere (greenhouse effect).
This page states that CO2 is 20% of greenhouse effect https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/CarbonCycle/page5... "Carbon dioxide causes about 20 percent of Earth’s greenhouse effect; water vapor accounts for about 50 percent; and clouds account for 25 percent."
So 1 to 1.2% of sun's energy is CO2 greenhouse effect. So a 10% change in CO2 greenhouse effect is roughly the same amount of energy as the observed change solar cycle output. tldr; 0.15% of sun's energy output is actually a lot of energy!
I think your calculation might be mistaken, that number doesn’t make a lot of sense and is not supported by measurements. See Figs 13 & 16 in the following paper for magnitudes of temperature variation attributed to solar cycle variation.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/grantham-i...
The link you provided summarized the solar cycle’s contribution to warming as “very small”. This paper also notes that the solar cycle’s affect in the last 50 years has been cooling on average, and that recent warming trends are “almost entirely” due to changes in CO2.
> absolutely will cause warming
Notice how the quote has no certainty (not sure where you got yours from) and how it suggested that there would be an "effect" (not sure where you got the warming from either).
Climate change deniers have a whole lot of it.
You don’t need to prove causality to throw a wrench in the argument.
Make a statement then say “prove me wrong”
Climatologists can make the same argument. There aren't many earth-like planets with which to conduct controlled experiments.
Climate scientists have made many such predictions starting in the 1970s. Exxon even had scientists in the 80's predicting climate change with surprising accuracy, and then they buried that research because it would hurt their business.
Discrepancies to reality can be investigated and used to make the model better.
You can then use the model to see how things would be with more or less CO2-emissions.
Running a simulation might be useful for directing scientific research, but it is not science.
See, for example, this article from this global-warming-denialist source:
https://cei.org/opeds_articles/its-the-sun-stupid/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Maximum
https://www.climate.gov/media/15021
But in general, solar cycle isn’t “hotter”; sunspots in fact are cooler spots.
Thank you for sharing the approved language and allowing us to avoid cognitive dissonance
> "In the study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, Millán and his colleagues estimate that the Tonga eruption [January 15th] sent around 146 teragrams (1 teragram equals a trillion grams) of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – equal to 10% of the water already present in that atmospheric layer. That’s nearly four times the amount of water vapor that scientists estimate the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines lofted into the stratosphere."
Ref: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/tonga-eruption-blasted-unpr...
It's a coincidence, and the "interesting coincidence" framing is the dumbest of the rhetoric (aka propaganda) tools out there. It's the basest of the rhetorical tricks, put together this way. Relying on psychology to produce inference from implication, and biology to produce the dopamine hit subconsciously underlying a sense of achievement that helps slide the BS in YOUR head (or the heads of your "paymasters") past the psychological defenses of others.
It's too bad we don't fortify more heads as standard practice, maybe the internet wouldn't spread stupidity like the drinking water from a 19th-century pump spread cholera.*
See:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc
Etc.
* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ghost_Map
"Our method predicts that SC25 could be among the strongest sunspot cycles ever observed, and that it will almost certainly be stronger than present SC24 (sunspot number of 116) and most likely stronger than the previous SC23 (sunspot number of 180). This is in stark contrast to the consensus of the SC25PP, sunspot number maximum between 95 and 130, i.e., similar to that of SC24. Indeed, as can be seen in Fig. 4b, if our prediction for the 2020 terminator time is correct, such a low value would be a severe outlier with respect to the observed behavior of previous sunspot cycles. Such a low value could only be reconciled with the previously observed sunspot cycles if the next terminator event is delayed by more than two years from our predicted value, which would extend the present low activity levels to an extraordinary length. We note also that the relationship developed herein would have correctly predicted the low amplitude of SC24 (from a terminators separation of 12.825 years) following the 2011 terminator—three years after the 2006 NOAA/NASA Solar Cycle Prediction Panel delivered their consensus prediction (Pesnell, 2008). Finally, the arrival of the SC24 terminator will permit higher fidelity on the forecast presented."
Do scientists think that changes in solar irradiance due to the 11-year solar cycle could be strong enough to cause the current change being measured in Earth's climate?
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/solar-events-new...The cycle is a regular small flucuation in total energy with relatively little change in the part of the spectrum that comes all the way through the atmosphere to heat up the land and water .. ibcreasing insulation trapping that heat has been the driver of climate change here.
If you read the linked article or any related science article the focus is on the geomagnetic surges caused by the changes in the suns field.
https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/189/graphic-tempe...
We also have graphs of sun activity vs temperature!
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/solact.htm...
But wait! There's more!
Here is a graph of sunspot numbers since 1880:
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/couldnt-sun...
It doesn't feature the global temperature, so it's not perfect, we're sorry! We're very sorry! But it's clearly constant and doesn't exhibit the hockey stick shape of global temperature.
This sounds like: "the data doesn't support my thesis so I'll wait for 'better' data. What does 'better data' mean? Data that supports my thesis... thank you very much."
While I don’t agree with your previous point, this is a very important point I agree with.
We see this cross-domain/in many areas, certain topics are taboo and therefore proper science is not attempted by anyone out of self-preservation.
One of the best examples of this is the UFO phenomenon, the stigma has been so strong for nearly a century now that a lot of otherwise-intelligent people are completely blinded to the objective reality.
But in case you're not trolling the parent by comparing their climate chance conspiracy theories with even more ridiculous UFO conspiracies, relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2572/
Hilariously enough, nobody called anyone names till you started. So I suppose that makes the people you’re responding to the “brave and courageous people”.
It’s tiring, but ultimately, I have kids and am compelled to respond to the bullshit for their sake.
I’ve read “scientists will be cancelled for doing science” no less than 30 times this week alone.
See. The climate change deniers read a fake graph, call THAT “doing science”, and then complain that their demonstrably incorrect assertions are “cancelled”.
When they say that “people are cancelled for correlating sun activity with climate change”, what they really mean is “people won’t listen to my shitty, demonstrably incorrect talking point”.
The demonstrably incorrect graphs haven’t been doing so hot, so now they’re just trying to discredit all of science altogether with vague claims that have literally never happened. They think this fear based posturing will work on everyone else because of how well it works on them.
Thank you. I’m old enough to remember the internet before social media. The diversity of opinions have always existed and I appreciate that. But today it seems like we have a newfound anti-intellectualism, anti-science, anti-progress that only existed for me in stories of the Salem witch hunts or some long time before “we knew” better.
Seeing it today is upsetting.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Randi
Using that as a term to imply consensus is bad science communication and just fuels climate change denial.
Meh. They have also found the solar cycle less surprising for some time.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum
What would it mean for it to be less surprising than predicted?
The problem is the consequences of frying of the electrical grid, satellites and terrestrial telecom networks, vehicles, probably datacenters, even possibly some personal electronics like glucose pumps.
Subsistance farmers would probably be OK. But most of them also depend on external supply chains like fertilisers, clean water, etc. Nobody else is an island, and that's quote no longer just applies to social ties: we depend on a web of relationships for everything: food, fuel, everything. Most (90+%?) of the global population will starve within a few weeks, even before disease gets them.
That's why survivalists and "bunker" types always seem crazy to me: unless they're the unibomber they plan for a fixed horizon for the "bad times".
My impression is that it is relatively easy to protect the electrical grid by grounding everything.
Also, Carrington event is predictable once the flare happens. The electrical grid can be shut down, and shouldn't be damaged much when shut down. Doing the cold start would be a challenge. As would be making the decision to shut down the grid.
How will you charge your car or pump fuel into it? How will the refineries make fuel?
And as for the bunkers: if civilization is destroyed, once your supplies are exhausted you emerge to…? There aren’t any grocery stores.
What do you think happens when there's no electric freezers for food storage, shipment, etc. No credit or debit cards. all digital money will basically be erased or locked on a hard drive that can't be accessed until the grid goes back up.
All factories cease production, I don't think diabetics stand a chance, and many others with debilitating diseases.
Hospitals will be working without electricity, without patient records, without power saws to saw through bone more efficiently, without lights except candles, without most medicines, and without a supply chain.
Essentially what a doctor can fit in a bag and carry and has zero electric components will still be useable. So scalpels, and other surgical tools, tongue depressor, blood pressure cuff, stethoscope, etc. People who wear glasses better hope they don't need a new prescription or break their glasses as there will be no solution.
To me the scariest fact is that every frozen and refrigerated food item in the world will spoil within 3 days. The only food remaining will be things like cereal, wheat, rice, canned goods etc, of course competition to get the last of the food will make the fight over toilet paper seem like the great emu was vs WW2.
Military arsenals requiring electronic targeting may go down too, all stocks basically go to zero, instability in markets and govts will be global.
Charismatic leaders might become war lords and take over large territories that were big, strong nations before the event.
If you had no warning of the event, you wouldn't even know for a week or two what happened. you can't look it up on the Internet. there's no tv or radio for you to get updates on the situation or warnings/alarms.
I think I heard estimates that said about 2.4 billion out of 8b, will be all that remain after 3 years. In other words 2/3rds of mankind will be gone.
In the middle ages people relied on goods from nearby farmers markets or grew it themselves. There wasn't a global supply chain, so life would carry on as normal. We'd literally be sent back to the middle ages..
etc etc etc...
That we aren't trying to prevent this, in a substantial way, is shocking to me.
> We find that on average there is a 4% (28%) chance of at least one great (severe) storm per year and a 0.7% chance of a Carrington class storm per year... [0]
So, have we (humanity) done anything to mitigate the impact of this?
[0] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/201...