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President Obama Orders Government To Plan For 'Space Weather' (nbcnews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Network World: President Barack Obama today issued an Executive Order that defines what the nation's response should be to a catastrophic space weather event that takes out large portions of the electrical power grid, resulting in cascading failures that would affect key services such as water supply, healthcare, and transportation. The Executive Order ideally will coordinate the responses across government agencies such as NASA, the Departments of Homeland Security, Energy and others to help minimize economic loss and save lives by enhancing national security, identifying successful mitigation technologies, and ordering the creation of nationwide response and recovery plans and procedures, the White House stated. Further, the Executive Order will enhance the scientific and technical capabilities of the United States, including improved prediction of space-weather events and their effects on infrastructure systems and services. By this action, the Federal Government will lead by example and help motivate State and local governments, and other nations, to create communities that are more resilient to the hazards of space weather. The Executive Order reinforces the formal National Space Weather Strategy and accompanying Action Plan which were announced last year. It also bolsters other work such as the replacement of aging satellites that monitor and help forecast space weather, proposing space-weather standards for both the national and international air space, development of regulations to ensure the continued operation of the electric grid during an extreme space weather event, proposing a new option for replacing crucial Extra High Voltage (EHV) transformers damaged by space weather, and developing domestic production sources for EHV transformers, the White House wrote.
Would "Space Weather" be studied by meteorologists?
Whether this is a good idea or not, it requires an act of Congress. This is another attempt by President Obama to circumvent the Constitution for the purpose of increasing government spending. It's a shame that it seems John Boehner was unsuccessful in his lawsuit over exactly this problem.
I guess he heard how many people were going to vote for Giant Meteor 2016....
Obama's whoopin and hollarin all day
Shuckin and jivin
smokin and tokin
buttfuckin' and slutfuckin'
Repeal the 19th Amendment. Blame the Jews.
Donald "Hot Cosby" Trump 2016
Executive orders are horse shit. Every single one needs to be defecated upon by the supreme court.
what the hell was that?
until Obama is no longer president. He will be a giant black spot on our nation's history and will not be remembered fondly.
... SPACE MADNESS!
cannibals club
Stay out of the way and let the people sort it out. Government interference always makes things worse - look at Katrina.
--
roman_mir
Yes.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/produ...
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
Maybe Mr. Obama is preparing for some kind of nuclear attack which could wipe out power grid etc? That is certainly more likely to happen than some obscure "space weather event".
Someone's been watching too much Family Guy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Summation 2
Trump will win and be in the Whitehouse soon enough. He's ahead in all the recent debate polls, he's answered all the fake rape and assault and fraud charges they've thrown at him totally and completely. He's feared by every foreign nation, especially China and Russia. He'll build that wall to keep out Mexicans and Mexico *will* pay for it, whatever they say now. He'll triple the number of people in Gitmo and torture them more, cut taxes for everyone, spend more on the military. And then he'll archive his emails properly in compliance with the 1972 records keeping act. Not like crooked Hillary.
Trump will make America Great Again!
Soon enough, be patient.
our ability to not become outer space is our wager? cease fire stand down, hand in hand we stand,,, in the moms we trust.. sing along.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-kA3UtBj4M .. thanks again..
Given the increasing "it was the russians" rhetoric for everything, and the escalation in sword rattling (eg. military drills), this seems to me more like a preparation for the result of a nuclear exchange than obama actually caring about space weather (or space anything).
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/Defence/article1618135.ece
http://uk.businessinsider.com/photos-russias-military-exercise-crimea-2016-9
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/08/22/east-asia-war-games-a-tour-of-the-hotspots-as-temperatures-rise-between-china-and-the-u-s/
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/clinton-us-should-use-military-response-fight-cyberattacks-russia-china-1579187
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37605992
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/08/russian-stages-major-military-drills/
http://metro.co.uk/2016/10/11/gorbachev-warns-of-nuclear-war-risk-as-russia-america-tension-rises-6185847/
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-russia-idUSKCN0WL0EV
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/nato-risks-nuclear-war-with-russia-within-a-year-senior-general-warns-a7035141.html
You may have noticed, there are a lot of stories like the above. And aside from the hypocrisy of the US/West accusing the Russians/Chinese for hacking their infrastructure/banks/elections/whatever, whether true or not, the war drums are increasing in intensity.
So, we're meant to think Obama's concerned about space weather? Oh please.
Humans are the cause of space weather phenomena, and the UN needs to establish a scientific commission to root out and expose the terrible danger man-made reductions in sun spot activity are causing. Our celestial EMF footprint must be reduced to pre-1970 levels immediately to avoid all sorts of catastrophic global........
and when they do, the world shall burn.
buried alive...
buried alive...
Should have been done years ago. Better late than never.
Greed is the root of all evil.
All praise to His Highness The King Obama for taking on the tough subject of space weather and galactic climate change! It is clear. The science is settled. The debate is over. We are destroying our space. We're littering it with junk. We're bathing the Sun with galactic climate change causing radio waves, and we must stop it now!
It's far more likely to be preparation against a false-flag "Russian" EMP attack on the USA. ... you know ... if the White House were actually concerned about bad weather and disruption, there might be a little more planning for hurricanes.
Just saying
Seriously, every time a solar flare is supposedly coming to earth, people go INSANE about how it's the end of the world. If you start doing this, it will diminish these people's "efforts" at going crazy.
A lot of sick, sick burns from the ACs today. Try reading up on the Carrington Event and consider what a geomagnetic storm that generated visible aurora in southern Florida would do to a modern electric grid and telecommunication system. Not quote so funny.
sPh
The comments on this story are a shitshow of idiocy. No good will come of you trying to read them.
So, I see you are new to Slashdot.
...there have been conversations about the consequences of such for 30+ years (certainly since the concept of EMP gained widespread understanding).
If the country's emergency planners haven't already taken that into account (insofar as they're able with whatever budget they're given) they should be fired.
-Styopa
Would you like to know more?
Like the government could fix anything.
I'm glad to see someone taking the risk of a Carrington event seriously. However, an executive order is simply not enough. Electric utilities, comm. carriers are not going to spend money to protect themselves from a very high impact, low probability event. It will take Congressional action to allocate money to harden to infrastructure to protect against such an event. Anything less is just political posturing.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Expect a shower in about a months time - I think its the Leonids
Probably named after the guy who played Spock
plans to deal with "Space weather" would also work when dealing with the result of an EMP.
When Obama starts a conflict with Russia, he will coordinate with Lindsey Graham and detonate a nuke in the upper atmosphere to generate an EMP. It will probably be over North Carolina.
Unfortunately it's a little too late in Obama's term to compensate for the space between his ears tho.
We can spend a few billion planning for events (the dollars add up over the years), or we could spend a few billion actually hardening the power grid.
If we just hardened the grid then we wouldn't need to spend so much on planning how to handle it when the power goes out.
Congress (the opposite of progress) is going to get appropriations requests, and the public utilities will bring wheelbarrows full of critical failure points they haven't worked on for 50 years to the body.
considering that many city water and sewer systems are in default of the law already and running on baling wire and duct tape, ouch.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
and that's legal.
to fund anything requires Congress' budgeting authority.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
This should have been one of their top priorities for the stimulus spending in 2009. Better late than never; but if an event happens before they implement it wont matter will it?
MacGyver 1.0 and the SG-1 team have eliminated the Go'auld, so no returning Egyptian Gods. . .
One thing to remember is that if a global event happened taking out much of the planet's electronics happened, even though our military is hardened against EMP, not EVERYTHING is the military is. I'm sure the Pentagon has wargamed this out, but if you are another power looking to take advantage of the chaos that would be the time to do it.
If the president (any president) did call for such a windfall to the military-industrial complex, based on almost all of its past behavior, congress would very likely fall all over itself to approve the funding, and increase our taxes, in that order, but probably separated by only a few minutes.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
And just like the past eight years, it's very difficult to do that with a do-nothing, obstructionist congress doing everything it can to collect its pay while accomplishing as little as possible that's worth a damn.
Obama's been one of the best presidents we've had in my 45 years or so of paying attention (I give him 7/10, which is decent, room for improvement. Bush II The Moron, as a low-rated for-instance, gets a 2/10 — if Trump were elected, there's every sign he'd be the first 1/10 in my lifetime); congress... congress has been the very epitome of what congress should not be. 1/1, period. Idiots and incompetents. I'm voting against the incumbent congress-critter on my ballot. That's the only sane thing to do. Because:
Last election, congress had a 14% approval ratio, and a 94% re-election ratio. So we all pretty much agree congress is useless, or worse. But clearly, people always think it's the other congress member's fault, or vote for some local interest over the nation's interest. Clearly, that's a very bad group behavior. We should stop that. Until congress as a whole starts behaving, I am voting against the incumbent, period. I wish others would too. But. Sigh.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
See article 5. Authority to effectively do that resides there.
See the voting ballot. Authority to do that resides there.
Consequently, if you actually want to accomplish anything, you should always couch your assertions along with (a) supporting reasoning and (b) quality exhortation to utilize the above. Without (a) and (b), you're just hand-waving and can (and should) be ignored.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Necessary planning? Sure, but it requires funding and accountability which should be passed by Congress and not EO. So much for the US Constitution, people no longer even question the activity of Probably illegal actions.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
There is a lot of overlap between preparing for solar caused events like the 1859 Carrington event and modern EMP weapon detonation (which would be similar to a man-made Carrington event).
Based on the 1859 event accounts, we could expect massive infrastructure failure in certain parts of the world if such an event would repeat itself. The storm was a nuisance with the main damages being to telegraph operators and equipment back then. Today, it could be catastrophic.
There have been large solar events that have been near misses of earth in the past as well. It just takes one unlucky direct strike (or the use of an EMP by some nefarious actor) to bring large parts of our electrical grid to a halt. Some estimates put the damage expected at somewhere around $2 trillion.
you seem to completely misunderstand the design of our government.
At the core of the design is "checks and balances" which means the three branches are designed to resist each other and to keep each other in check and mostly paralyzed from doing anything. The founders only intended the Federal government to do the very few things they could get sufficient support for in all 3 opposing branches. They did not create parties as part of the system and warned against forming political parties because party-loyalty would enable all sorts of stuff to get through that would not if all the lawmakers were independent and truly representing the people.
Like a bad software developer, you have confused "design feature" explicitly created by the designers of the system with "bug" because some people now want the system to do quickly and easily what it was never intended to do.
Obama has officially replace Jimmy Carter as the worst US President in history - he has demolished entire sectors of the workforce to achieve a labor participation rate so low only Jimmy Carter ever matched it, he has increased poverty so that he has more people on Food Stamps (twice what the idiot Bush had) than any President before him, and he has doubled the total accumulated national debt in less than 8 years. Breathtaking incompetence.
[A] The US Census bureau says there are approx 186,000,000 working age Americans.
[B] The US Department of Labor says there are approx 95,000,000 working age Americans out of the labor force.
[C] President Obama claims only a 5% unemployment rate.
This is Slashdot - most people here are supposed to be able to do basic math, like compute a percent and compare two percentages to see if they agree.
Specifically they like the space weather data from STEREO, which comes down highly compressed on 30m dishes, rather than the larger Deep Space Network dishes. (70m?).
They keep insisting that image artifacts are evidence of space ships larger than earth that travel million of miles an hour. This of course assumes that what's being seen in the images are 1 AU away, and not simply particles that are inches away from the telescope (or even hitting the detector directly)
(I was designated 'Emergency On-Call' in the last government shutdown, because I manage services for distributing data that's used for space weather forecasting ... including STEREO)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Pointing out that a scary event could happen because there was once a small event is the exact logic failure I wrote about previously. Do you have any non fallacious arguments for why this should be done by Executive order and should not be done by Congress? Make sure you consider that a "Real" project would require tax payer funding and accountability.
I'm guessing that you can't find any, which is why you went to the appeal to emotion.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Who's this Obama fellow?
Never liked the term. You mean "Solar Flares".
Oh no, I understand the design just fine. But unlike you, I also understand what it is, and am not confused by the difference between the two. So when it comes to action today, I talk about what the government is -- not what it was designed to be. Because, sadly, the latter ship has sailed, capsized, sunk, and rotted at the bottom of the ocean of congressional, judicial, and executive dishonor. It's dead, Jim. Welcome to reality. Deal with it.
As for unemployment figures, the government has a particular way to compute them. I don't mind your way; however, if you want to point the finger at Obama as having presided over a failure characterized as increasing unemployment, you need to compare those figures with the Bush years. I'd be very interested to see you do so, btw.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The government and electrical industry moves slow, very slow. FERC and NERC has been on this for 3 years.
http://www.nerc.com/pa/Stand/Pages/Project-2013-03-Geomagnetic-Disturbance-Mitigation.aspx