Well, can't recall off the top of my head the html to link this; I'm lazy, like most point & clickers, but here is the link for those that don't mind to type... not in the mood to refresh my brain at the moment....

www.abcnews.go.com/wire/World/Reuters19990531_948.html

The reason this causes the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up is that several months ago, an article in the "raw" news feed at abcnews.com had an article about solar peak activity complicating y2k problems.. I read it right after coming in to work, then went back a few minutes later to print it out to show to a co-worker, and it was gone... I never found reference to it again. Searching on solar flare activicty, I found Gary's comments about the additive problem, and linked into here, where I have been lurking for a while.

My gut feel is that begining about now, with this article, the government is going to begin slowly raise the threshold... by the time the DGI's feel the heat, they'll already be cooked....

Hope this one doesn't get censored too... printed it out right away this time :)

-- Carl (slowlygi@stubborn.com), May 31, 1999

Answers

Guts more often than not, tend to steer us in the right direction!

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), May 31, 1999.

It will be a contributing factor - if for no other reason than the troubles solar activities cause in electric distribution will compound the recovery problems from Year 2000 problems. Manual recovery, in this case, will be made more difficult by the possibility of solar-induced shutdowns and spikes.

Also, solar-induced problems will make tracking down th esymptoms from year 2000 problems more difficult. For example, if you don't know what casued the spike, how do you know when you've actually eliminated the cause?

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), May 31, 1999.

Interesting that they call it the other Y2K problem.

Diane

For the research archives...

[Fair Use: For Educational/Research Purposes Only]

Reuters Raw News

WIRE:May 31, 4:04 p.m. ET

Solar storm peak seen in 2000

http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ Reuters19990531_948.html

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The year 2000 could see electrical power outages, satellites veering off-course and cellular phone and pager disruptions as the number of sunspots and flares, solar storms and other ``space weather'' hits its cyclical maximum, scientists said Monday.

``We call this the other Y2K problem,'' said JoAnn Joselyn, leader of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Space Environment Center, during the 194th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. ``We don't quite know how bad the effects are going to be. We do know the ionosphere is going to be disturbed.''

Geomagnetic storms on earth and other results of the increased solar activity are expected to reach their 11-year peak between January and April 2000, said Richard Altrock of the Air Force Research Laboratory in Sunspot, New Mexico.

Altrock devised a new method of watching and timing sun surface activity and applied it to the last three solar cycles to pinpoint the roughly four-month window during which he expects solar activity to reach its maximum next year.

He also predicted the number of sunspots in the coming maxima, dubbed Cycle 23, will reach approximately 160, roughly the same number as seen during the most-recent two peaks in 1989 and 1979.

The cyclical increase in solar activity occurs as the sun's magnetic field reverses every 10 or 11 years.

The accompanying release of highly charged particles and radiation toward earth on solar winds at speeds of up to 1 million mph or 440 kms per second can disrupt radio communications, form sky displays known as northern lights and create enough drag to cause satellites to lose altitude, explained Joselyn.

The magnetic fields in the sky also create currents on the ground, usually small and subtle but which can be magnified via long high- voltage power lines.

This can burn out power companies' electrical transformers and cause power outages such as occurred in 1989 in parts of the East Coast and across Canada's Quebec province, she said.

Related events such as solar flares occur more frequently before the solar maximum, but major flares can continue for two or three years afterward.

Each solar flare releases energy equivalent to 1 million, hundred- megaton nuclear explosions and accelerate particles through space that are hazardous to satellites and astronauts and can disturb radio transmissions.

Richard Canfield, a physicist at Montana State University in Bozeman, said his researchers by early 2001 will operate two powerful new instruments - a spectroscopic imager and a suite of solar telescopes - designed to study solar flares.

In the meantime, Joselyn said her group in Boulder, Colo., will continue operating round-the-clock, using a satellite to monitor the solar winds, and can give companies and the public 30- to 60-minute advance warnings of increased solar activity incidents to help them prepare.

``So we can tell what's coming,'' she said.

Copyright 1999 Reuters News Service.

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), May 31, 1999.

Electromagnetic Space Storms

There were several other threads about this but we can't find them in those BIG archives ...

xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), May 31, 1999.

...without a search engine, Leska.

*Sad Sigh*

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), May 31, 1999.

Or Kevin.

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), May 31, 1999.

On my way home this afternoon, I passed under some high lead towers crossing the highway. Since I was listening to AM radio, the loud buzz from emissions from the lines disrupted the broadcast. No biggie, was glad to hear it. It raised a question in my mind though. If some kook or worse decided to make problems for the surrounding area by destroying some towers in a remote location, (happened here a while back, they got caught) would the BPA or local authority know the difference between an act of vandalism, and a major malfunction caused by Y2K?

I would hope they will set up some kind of alert to the public to dispel fears of a total breakdown. All this crap is so convoluted and provoking.

-- unspun@lright (mikeymac@uswest.net), May 31, 1999.

The "other things" were the censorship of a report on the abc feeds about three months ago, about a UK bank official talking about the contributing effects of the now dubbed "other y2k" on remediation efforts, lame as they may be...

Since researching, I've of course seen numerous other articles here and there, but none in conservative media like abc... the same people that yanked their "War in Kosovo" chat room when things got a little too charged for their tastes...

Information for those of us that care to search, and know what to search for, is at this point still available... my point was that information such as this is just beginning to rise to the DGI level of awareness... ie., consumer news...

Interesting to see how lomg the link lasts this time....

Carl

-- Carl (slowlygi@stubborn.com), May 31, 1999.

Carl, we've discovered that links disappear fast, so we often copy the text so there will be an archival record for historians and Y2K researchers on this Forum. Educational, instructive, helpful to those of us trying to prepare for the Great Unknown. Know the frustration of vanishing articles all too well. The most frightening of all Y2K articles we read, which bumped us up instantly to an 8, lasted only a couple hours. We still kick ourselves that we did not copy it IMMEDIATELY !!

xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxx

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), May 31, 1999.

Carl,

I didn't notice this thread before I already posted to your earlier one. I'll repeat some of my other posting here:

Whatever happened to that article you read several months ago was not government censorship; this latest article has nothing to do with government "raising the threshold" and is not going to get suppressed or censored either.

The Sun is not part of a conspiracy. Its activity is openly visible to anyone in the world with suitable equipment, which many thousands of astronomers have.

(Note: Do NOT directly view the Sun without suitable equipment. Do NOT try to overcome your eyes' natural tendency to avoid looking directly at the Sun. Direct viewing can rapidly, but painlessly, scar your retinas, producing permanent damage wherever your eyes' lenses focus the Sun's image on your retinas. [You wouldn't go totally blind; you'd just lose a certain percentage of visual acuity, impairing your reading ability for the rest of your life, e.g.] If you want to find out more, consult recent issues of _Sky & Telescope_ or _Astronomy_ magazine. Every month they have ads for the equipment for solar viewing.)

Reports of solar activity have been continuously available on the Internet for years, (and in the pre-Internet scientific media for decades). See Sunspots and the Solar Cycle at www.sunspotcycle.com, and The NASA Space Weather Bureau at www.spaceweather.com.

-- No Spam Please (nos_pam_please@hotmail.com), June 01, 1999.

"DOD braces for space storms - Atmospheric disruptions in 2000 could interfere with satellite, comm systems"

http://www.ntgov.com/gcn/gcn/1998/october19/33.htm

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), June 01, 1999.

Yes, No Spam Please, after looking around, I found many articles re solar flare activity, cycles, etc., but had not seen it mentioned in conjunction with y2k.. of course it is uncontrollable... The original news feed that caught my eye was a UK banking consultant warning that the solar peak occuring at the same time as the rollover needed to be factored into plans...

Notice in the last few days every major on-line news, cnn, fox, etc., all have current articles on the "other y2k", not to mention feeds on corporate & government "crisis centers"....

I know many of us have been aware of these things for some time... the proliferation of articles in the "consumer" news is what caught my interest and seemed to affirm some opinions, as well as the Naval War College strategic game playing, as to a structured unfolding of the alarm as to the potential seriousness of rollover... when my aging mother in her late 60's starts asking questions about these things, which she has, the "threshold" has been raised....

Carl

-- Carl (slowlygi@stubborn.com), June 01, 1999.