We're losing our cover

Forget Global Warming (man-made or cyclical), forget about giant meteors (not much we could do about one slamming into us in the next decade anyway), forget about politics and errant children revolting against their parents, the real worry is a shift in the Earth's magnetic poles.

That's right. We are in a state of flux (pardon the pun) when it comes to the magnetosphere. The magnetosphere protects us from solar winds. And it is never really stable. As it breaks down, as it fluctuates, it affects the weather. On a global scale. This article lays out the argument fairly well. The writer is no scientist, let me say that now. He does not qualify as a climatologist or former vice-president. What he is, maybe, is a bit off the norm. In researching him, I came across an article he wrote suggesting the North Koreans blew up the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. So, we're not talking about total rationality here.

The problem is that I have often wondered (and worried) about a magnetic polar shift. You see, we haven't had one in over 700,000 years. We have no real idea what the immediate or near-immediate effects would be. We know that there have been several over the 4 and ¹/₂ billion years this planet has existed. The shifts aren't cyclical, they don't happen at regular intervals. And because the last one occurred when it did, there is little evidence of what affects it had on weather, continental shift, plate tectonics, or much of anything else. We have evidence of these shifts in the alignments found in rock strata.

Mr Aym's position is that this change in the magnetosphere is what is driving these massive storms of late. It's an interesting theory but he doesn't flesh it out well enough for me. He does, on the other hand, set the proper hysterical tone that I like. That he takes some valid information and extrapolates his argument well beyond the limits of the data doesn't bother me too much. I am enamored of the rather bizarre theories of Von Daniken and those that who are like-minded. Of course, the ancient astronaut theory can be fairly easily refuted but it is still fun to imagine, isn't it?

Where does this leave me? This waffling between practical reality and fanciful imagination? Right here on this blog, I'd say.

Resources the writer is alleged to have used to formulate his theory:

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2003/03dec_magneticcracks/

http://www.economist.com/node/9143913