Braunstein Speaks

‘Get ’em skeered and keep the skeer on ’em’

So said Civil War Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forest about tactics to keep the enemy from regrouping.

From today’s Sunday (London) Times: “NASA Mission to Unravel Sun’s Threat to Earth.”

“A new probe could help scientists predict the solar storms that cause chaos for us,” continues the sub-head.

Nine days from now, NASA is going to launch its Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) to discover the causes of extreme solar activity, such as sun spots, solar winds, and solar flares. X-rays, charged particles, and magnetic fields often disrupt navigational systems, communications, and even damage electrical power grids.

On March 13, 1989, millions of people in Canada and the United States were left without electricity for more than nine hours after a magnetic storm sent shockwaves through the Hydro-Québec power grid.

It is not clear what space-weather forecasts will do for the public at large, except scare them silly about conditions that they have absolutely no control over.

It is interesting, however, that shortly after “climate change,” nee “man-made global warming” has lost its ability to “keep the skeer on ’em,” the Al Gores of the world will be able to switch their investments from “carbon credits” to “solar fallout shelters.”

I watched some program on the National Geographic Channel the other night called, “Six Degrees Could Change the World.” Instead of a tale about more moderate weather leading to longer growing seasons—as we have enjoyed since the end of the Little Ice Age 150 years ago—National Geographic portrayed a dry, dust bowl of a planet before it disappears under 20 feet of rising oceans due to glacier melts.

No explanation was offered how civilization survived the last global warm-up a thousand years ago, but if the global-warming fear-mongers acknowledged the regular “climate changes” recorded through the ages, people would have laughed them out of town years ago.

So, lacking the ability to skeer us into giving liberals control over all facets of energy production, the future might hold constant skeers about sun spots and other regular heavenly happenings.

“Solar flare! For the best in protection, take cover in your new and improved Gore-Out Shelter! Only $9,900 while they last!”

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