SOLAR STORMS ARE DRIVING FARMERS CRAZY: Planting
season is a hectic time for farmers. For many, it means working
through the night using GPS-guided tractors to plant thousands of
acres in a short period of time. The season was in full swing on
May 10, 2024, when the biggest solar storm in decades struck
Earth.
"Our tractors acted like they
were demon possessed," says Elaine Ramstad, a Spaceweather.com
reader and aurora chaser who helps out on a family farm in
Northern Minnesota. "All my cousins called me during the May 10th
storm to tell me that 'my auroras' were driving them crazy while
they were planting."
Northern Lights over the Ramstead family beet farm on May 10, 2024
Modern farmers rely heavily on
GPS. Guided by satellites, smart tractors can work around the
clock, seeding perfectly straight rows with precise amounts of
seed and fertilizer. When harvesting time comes, the tractors can
return to exactly the same spots to pick the crops.
This kind of precision
agriculture has become widespread. "I would guess 80% or more of all
farmers in the Midwest use at least basic GPS for
something--whether it's auto-steer or yield mapping," says Ethan
Smidt, a service manager for John Deere. "At least 50% of all
farmers are VERY reliant on GPS and use it on every machine all
year long."
Solar activity poses a growing problem for farm-tech. During big solar storms, a layer of Earth's atmosphere called "the ionosphere" fills with bubbles, waves, and turbulence,
which severely distort radio signals from GPS satellites. tractors and harvesters can't lock on, which stops them in their
tracks. Or the signal may be garbled, causing them to juke back and
forth.
Crooked rows in Iowa caused by a solar storm.
May 10th wasn't the end of it. Tractors went off-course again during the autumnal storms of Oct. 6th and 10th.
Ramstad was helping her
cousins defoliate sugar beets on Oct. 6th when her tractor
started acting up: "As the aurora activity began, my GPS was off
by close to a foot. Twice while on Autosteer, the tractor danced a
row to the left, to the right — and then the defoliator was off a
row, so I had to loop around and start over. By
nightfall, there was no controlling the Autosteer."
Indiana farmer Michael Spencer
had a similar experience: "This fall was the first time I was
able to see the aurora. My hair was standing on end from the
beauty, however, it did make the John Deere tech dance. When the
storms were strongest around Oct. 7th, my tractor's Autosteer
system would 'jump the line'--meaning, the tractor would make a
quick jolt left or right and I would have to manually reset."
A beet defoliator--an example of massive hardware thrown off course by solar activity.
It doesn't take an historic solar storm to cause problems. While the May 10th storm was a rare and extreme category G5, storms in October were much more common category G3 and G4 events. All of them sent massive pieces of hardware off course.
NASA says that Solar
Maximum has arrived, and it could last for another 1 to 2 years,
confusing tractors again in 2025 and 2026. Stay tuned for more crooked
rows. Solar storm alerts:SMS Text
The Earth can support us - climate science is part of the programming to get us to be afraid... DO NOT BE AFRAID - resist fear! THE UN and other agencies are eugenicists... What they are not telling you, this is all a part of their campaign to "eliminate the useless eaters" - you and me ... TRACE
Can Earth Support a Human Future? Maybe, If the Rich Consume Less. (OH SURE)
Due to their extravagant habits, the richest 1 percent produces more greenhouse gas than half the global population.
Climate
activists including Greta Thunberg march to protest against private jet
flights and the proposed expansion of Farnborough Airport on January
27, 2024, in Farnborough, United Kingdom.Mark Kerrison / In Pictures via Getty Images
The
latest study by renowned Dutch climate scientist Klaus Hubacek and his
team offers an eye-opening look at the 1 percent’s extravagant consumer
behaviors that — in combination with rampant militarism and the
continued dominance of the fossil fuel industry — are pushing the Earth
toward disastrous climate tipping points from which there might be no
return.
Published last week in the journal Nature, the study found that the world’s richest 1 percent are responsible for a staggering 50 times more greenhouse gas pollution than the 4 billion people on the bottom half of the global economic scale combined.
Disparities are only growing. The global wealth gap has exploded over the past decade, according to the aid group Oxfam International. Since 2020, the world’s richest 1 percent has captured nearly two-thirds of all newly created wealth.
The
United States and other wealthy fossil fuel economies are
disproportionately responsible for the climate crisis compared to poorer
nations, creating a constant source of tension
at international climate talks. However, massive disparities in
resource and energy consumption also exist within individual countries,
and Hubacek’s study breaks an extensive dataset down to 201 “consumption
groups” across 168 nations.
In
the U.S. and many other wealthy countries, the environmental footprint
left behind by the richest 10 percent dwarfs the footprint of the bottom
10 percent on the economic ladder, the study finds. The top 10 percent
of consumers living in wealthy nations such as Germany or Luxembourg
have vastly different consumption habits than the richest 10 percent in
the Republic of Congo, for example, and the study goes beyond previous
research to account for these disparities.
Hubacek, a professor at the University of Groningen and a lead author
of the most recent United Nations climate report, has devoted his
career to examining how humans are performing within what are known as
“planetary boundaries.” Scientists use these planetary boundaries as
frameworks to examine how much human exploitation the planet can absorb
before the ecosystems we depend on collapse.
“The
basic calculation is, given a certain number of people on the planet
and the planetary boundaries, how much can we consume to stay inside
these limits?” Hubacek explained in a statement last week. (THAT IS THEIR BULLSHIT THEORY)
(In 60 years WATER HAS BEEN SEVERELY POLLUTED by BIG BIZ)
With
8 billion people living on Earth, we are burning through resources and
accelerating climate disruption at a rapid pace. The study examines how
different consumer groups contribute to key indicators such as climate
change and carbon pollution emissions, fertilizer usage, land loss and
system change, and freshwater consumption to gauge what needs to change
before the planet is pushed to the brink.
The
world’s top 10 percent of consumers were responsible for a whopping 43
percent of climate-warming carbon pollution, the study found. On a per
capita basis, the environmental impacts of the top 10 percent were 4.2
to 77 times that of the bottom 10 percent, with large disparities in
terms of climate-warming carbon emissions and the extinction of animal
species.
Scientists determined in 2023 that humanity has already crossed six of nine observed “planetary boundaries,” overshooting the safe limits for human life
in terms of carbon in the atmosphere, biosphere integrity and the
availability of fresh drinking water. At this point, the rate of species
extinction is estimated to be at least 10 times faster than the average
rate over the past 10 million years, meaning that the planet’s genetic
diversity has crossed over into the danger zone.
Even
though many emissions result from institutions such as large militaries
that would require government action to change (emissions that exist
outside the sphere of individual consumer choices), the study emphasizes
that the people with the most wealth and agency — higher-income people
living in high-income countries — can make much more of a difference
than everyone else. The study stresses that the choices made by those
with the most privilege present both a threat to global ecological
stability and an opportunity for change.
“Our
results challenge the pessimistic view that reducing consumption
requires a return to primitive lifestyles, showing instead that
substantial environmental benefits can be achieved by moderating the
consumption of the affluent,” the authors wrote.
If
those with the most privilege were, en masse, to stop engaging in
excessive travel on airplanes, excessive consumption of luxury goods and
the consumption of red meat, the study suggests the results could be
dramatic.
For
example, if the top 10 percent adopted the consumption habits of the
average European, or even the modest consumers within their own economic
class, global pressure on the environment would decrease by 9 to 23 percent, and “overshoots” of the planetary boundaries would be mitigated by 18 to 81 percent.
For
this reason, Hubacek’s team argues that new technology is not necessary
to save the planet; rather, a massive, global sea change in the diet and
lifestyles of top consumers would do the trick. The authors point to numerousstudies
showing that progressive taxes on luxury goods can start to curb
overconsumption among the rich while funding environmental cleanup
programs.
This is far from the first time scientists have warned
that the rich people of the world are responsible for the most
environmental damage. A global explosion of affluence over the past
half-century has continuously increased pollution and gobbled up
resources far more rapidly than advances in technology can keep up with.
Meanwhile, billionaires are building luxury doomsday bunkers
and launching themselves into space as they fantasize about relocating
to a different planet entirely if humanity happens to burn this one out. While Hubacek’s latest study shows that solutions to existential
environmental crises are right in front of us, the authors are also
sober about today’s political realities.
“Targeting
affluent groups with mitigation measures may face resistance owing to
their political power,” the authors wrote. “Bottom-up actions, which
play a crucial role in cultural and value changesare vital for pushing
top-down changes and establishing maximum consumption thresholds through
democratic decision-making.”
THE RICH DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU AND ME - they are inbred psychopaths...
