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Article by Jacob Sugarman for Salon
July 17, 2011

In this article for Salon, Jacob Sugarman interviews the author of the book, 'The Sun's Heartbeat', which explores the concept that the sun's natural cooling cycles can buy us enough time to switch from fossil fuels.

During the summer months, it's both difficult and remarkably easy to forget how dangerous the sun can be. Sometimes it takes a space weather event to reinforce the point. Last month, the Solar Dynamic Observatory recorded a massive eruption on the sun's surface that produced a mushroom cloud of ionized particles. Had the resulting solar winds struck the Earth's magnetic field directly, the damage to our electrical grids might have proven catastrophic. If you think our politicians have a tough time agreeing on debt ceilings, just imagine how much difficulty they'd have figuring out how to finance trillion-dollar repairs to our country's infrastructure.

As astronomy author Bob Berman's new book reveals, storms like these are actually a common byproduct of the Sun's 11-year cycle of pulsing, dimming and brightening. "The Sun's Heartbeat," which takes its title from this phenomenon, offers a compelling and surprisingly playful history of our solar system's most famous star -- from the alternately brilliant and misguided theories of the ancient Greeks, to the modern-day discoveries that would make Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick blush. Along the way, Berman, a columnist for Astronomy magazine and the science editor of the Old Farmer's Almanac, examines how solar cycles can offset global warming and how mankind has, by its own ambitions and neuroses, devolved into a collection of sun-starved troglodytes.

Over the phone, we discussed what the sun's cycles mean for global warning, what role it plays in our food shortages -- and why its rays actually prevent cancer.

What kind of effect does the sun's heartbeat have on our planet and its inhabitants?

The effects are myriad, but one of the things this pulsing is responsible for is "coronal mass ejections" -- bursts of solar wind, light isotope plasma and magnetic fields that are known to wreak havoc on our electrical lines. In 2008, an all-star, U.S. government panel very frighteningly predicted that a strong storm like the ones we had in 1859 and 1921 could potentially destroy our power grid. Then, of course, you've got polar-orbiting satellites and GPS systems that are vulnerable along with a space station where astronauts could be subjected to high levels of radiation. Even commercial airline passengers flying polar routes could be at risk.

How concerned should we really be about solar wind storms? What is the likelihood of one hitting us directly?

It will definitely happen in the next century. Judging from the dates of the last big storms, we're probably overdue.

There have been plans over the years to overhaul our power grid, but I haven't heard nearly as much about initiatives to shield against a solar weather event. Given the potential financial ramifications, why do you think this issue gets so little attention from politicians? Are there any preventative measures we could even take?

Experts often refer to these kinds of storms as "low frequency-high impact" events, which don't tend to call the public's attention until they're actually happening. The irony is that serious storms -- ones that can cause cascading power failures, blackouts and, potentially, harm to airline passengers and astronauts -- happen almost every solar cycle and people still remain oblivious. While they'll never bring us to the brink of apocalypse, they're certainly something that the public should take note of.

Another factor that might contribute to our general indifference toward these storms is that we're almost powerless to protect ourselves from them. Even if we discovered that one was heading right for us, we couldn't determine the threat it posed until a few hours before it hit. Every blast of material is like a swarm of bees carrying its own magnetic material, except these bees are traveling 500 miles per second, or a thousand times faster than a bullet. It won't transfer its energy to us, though, unless its magnetic field is aligned opposite planet Earth. I suppose the power grid could be secured in anticipation of a storm, but probably only to an extent and shutdowns could prove costly.

News outlets indicate that we're mired in the worst global food shortage of the past half-century. Man's contributions to this crisis have been well-documented, but what kind of role does the sun's erratic behavior play in all of this?

There are three major factors that affect the planet's temperature and, by extension, its agricultural development: volcanic activity, the presence or absence of El Niño and, finally, the heartbeat of the sun. If the latter slows down for long periods of time, the Earth gets colder. During the Maunder Minimum from 1645 to 1715, the sun effectively lost its heartbeat entirely. The result was unbearably cold winters and incredible hardship around the world.

Carbon emissions have warmed the planet dramatically, but we happen to be entering a new sunspot [i.e., heartbeat] cycle -- the 24th in our recorded history. Many experts believe that not only will it have weak maximum temperatures, but very deep minimums. If this is true, it's the best thing that can possibly happen. The sun would effectively buy us time to switch over to non-fossil fuels. If we end up having strong or even normal maximums, temperatures in 2015 could be hotter than humans have ever seen before.

I'm guessing that skeptics of global warming have willfully ignored this research.

They have, and to our great peril. The fact that the sun has kept global warming down over the last 10 years has given some people an excuse to declare that it simply doesn't exist.

Click here to read the rest of the article in Salon.