World-Class Fear Mongering

Daniel Baker, a space weather expert based at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and chair of the NAS committee responsible for the report has just pronounced:

We're moving closer and closer to the edge of a possible disaster.

What's he referring to?

A predicted possible solar flare of record-breaking proportions that is supposed to happen at midnight on 22 September 2012, which could possibly - within 90 seconds - knock out electrical power to the entire eastern half of the US, just for starters.


The photo above is a of typical solar flare, pretty scary looking... but remember... It's over 90 million miles away, and the photo's enhanced, and not visible light.

OK, losing all that power on the east coast would be bad, and the predicted ensuing calamities itemized in the article would be far worse, so let's look at this disaster prediction a bit closer.

They are peering into their crystal ball over three years into the future at a time when reliable predictions cannot be make two weeks into the future.

Daniel Baker says we're moving closer and closer to the edge of a possible disaster.

That's quite a collection of maybes.

At any rate, it's just the edge he's taking about, not the dead center.

Of a possible disaster, a predicted possible disaster, sorta like standing on the very edge of a predicted cliff, instead of a real cliff when mountain-climbing:

"Bob! Get away from where you're standing! They've predicted a cliff is going to be there in three years!"

No doubt a student of the Bush fear-mongering tactics of yesteryear, he still missed a very important exclamation point: The world is supposed to come to an end on December 21, 2012, NOT September 22nd. Or so says the Mayan calendar.

Well, Ho-hum.