U.S. and European scientists collaborated in firing off the Rosetta spacecraft in 2004 for a 3.5 billion mile “catch and release” of Comet67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (Comet CG) that would take ten years. Rosetta pulled up next to it last Wednesday morning, preparing to place a lander called the Philae on the comet by using a harpoon method. The comet has very little gravity to hold the lander. It will measure what the comet is made of (ice, gas, chemicals, and other stuff) so scientists can determine what the planets were made of 4.6 billion years ago. We had better find out something—this enterprise is costing us $1.7 billion. After facts can be gleaned from Rosetta and its lander, the spacecraft will spin around the universe next to Comet CG for a year and a half, “spending quality time together,” as one scientist said.
Many countries have put thousands of things into space from spy, weather, and other mysterious satellites, including the International Space Station and millions of pieces of junk from microscopic dust to bus-sized metal carcasses of rockets. But there are a lot of things we cannot control, like solar flares from our central heat, the sun. NASA didn’t tell us that maybe a couple of billion of Earth’s passengers might have died from the effects of the biggest solar flare, called a coronal mass ejection (CME), in over 150 years on July 23, 2012.
That’s why my headline is “Better Lucky Than Good... Or Dead.” “Better lucky than good” is an old bridge game expression used when a card finesse works or the trumps split so you can make the game. Why didn’t NASA tell us about this near miss two years ago that, if we had been hit directly, might have put the earth back into the Dark Ages? Well, we are no longer equipped to live in the Dark Ages. There was no way to prepare for the flare, so why create worldwide panic? We had to depend on luck.
Pop Goes The Power

Our great modern philosopher Donald Rumsfeld comes as close as any to explaining the solar flare kerfuffle: “There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are some things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.” Got it? We know about solar flares but we don’t know what will happen to us if we experience one. That’s a relative unknown. Except that we know that electromagnetic radiation during major geomagnetic storms may cause the loss of electric power over large areas, perhaps even nationwide. The possibility exists that a real unknown unknown solar flare could cause major problems planet-wide.
The huge flare in 2012 that we knew nothing about until last week evidently had the potential to knock out or blow up any device, appliance, or thing that was plugged into a wall socket. We missed it by a hair. A flare in the 1980s disrupted a large portion of the eastern electric grid in Canada. A direct hit from a CME flare from the 2012 storm could have wiped out our communication networks, GPS systems, and electrical grids for months, possibly years. How long could seven billion live without electrical power? No water or sewer pumps. No heat from furnaces operated by electric and electronic power. No refrigeration or freezing. All transportation systems disabled.
According to the National Academy of Sciences, it might take years to repair multi-ton transformers and electric grids. Cellphones and other small devices might work, but there would be no power to charge batteries. Scientists have estimated that because of our dependence on electricity, we have a 12 percent chance of a solar storm totally disrupting lives on the planet within the next 10-year span. And there’s another thing. There is evidence that intense solar flare activity increases the chances of severe earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, tornadoes, and wind storms.
The Carlini Institute in British Columbia, Canada, studies the biological effects of solar flares on humans. It’s a very long list, including altering and suppressing brain activity and our sense of equilibrium. Solar flares can make us nervous, anxious, worrisome, jittery, shaky, irritable, lethargic, exhausted, nauseous, and queasy, and cause hot flashes, short-term memory problems, heart palpitations, headaches, cold feet, ringing in the ears, and tongue dryness. It makes me wonder if NASA might have missed something. I wonder how close those solar flares did come to the U.S. Look at the list. Name one side effect we have not had.

Why Didn’t NASA Announce The Size And Strength Of The 2012 Solar Flare?

Perhaps it was a wise decision. Who wants to know when you only have five days left? I suppose the evangelicals who believe in the Rapture would be celebrating, packing all their clothes to give to thrift stores, and giving wallets to perfect strangers on the street. Entering Heaven nude for the final inspection of St. Peter is one of the requirements.
One can guess what Congressional Republicans would have said about Obama’s failure to halt the solar flares. Could this failure be “high treason” and fall under “high crimes and misdemeanors”? Certainly such a failure to control the sun is the president’s fault and is an impeachable offense. Welcome to the ignorant flare of BS coming out of Washington.
All kinds of weird things could have happened in D.C. Senator John McCain could have been killed while dashing to reach a TV camera or appear on five Sunday morning news shows. In a recent New Yorker cartoon about the political decisions not made in the last decade in this country, two politicians are strolling out of the capitol, briefcases in hand, and one says to the other, “Politics is the art of nothing is possible.”

Knowledge That May Save You A Punch In The Nose

The fact that NASA did not spill the beans about the solar flares gave humankind two more years to do weird stuff. The National Media Research Planning and Placement firm established the fact that one can tell the political affiliation of people by what they drink. Democrats drink clear stuff, Republicans drink brown. I will resist making a snide comment here about what comes out of the Republican National Committee. Herbert Hoover drank bourbon, Franklin Delano Roosevelt loved martinis. By the way, wine drinkers are most likely to vote. This reinforces Mollie Ivins’ adage that sometimes you had to be drunk to vote for a member of your political party.
Knowledge about the users of clear or brown booze may save one from embarrassing incidents in discussions or strip bar debates. Under doctor recommendations I try to have a dry martini on the rocks every day to improve my health, bodily functions, and frame of mind. Actually, I drink a tribute to my favorite actor and juggler (and favorite drunk) W.C. Fields every day at five p.m. Often on a movie set at nine a.m., Bill kept a thermos of martinis handy to drink during breaks in filming. He called the clear stuff his “lemonade.”
One day the movie set crew emptied his thermos of martinis and substituted lemonade. During a break in the filming, Bill took a large quaff and loudly sputtered, “Who in hell put lemonade in my lemonade?” His crew totally broke up. Of course, his drinking habits tell me W.C. voted Democrat. Democrats drink Grey Goose vodka or Burnett’s gin, while Republicans drink Jim Beam, Old Charter, and Canadian Club. Evidently the Libertarians and Tea Party members drink a lot of cheap wine and vote often.

I Wonder If The Sun Has Been Flaring A Lot Lately...

Not too long ago, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that Hobby Lobby could dictate to its 28,000 employees whether they could use certain kinds of contraceptives or not. Five conservative Roman Catholic justices (known widely as the five SCROTUMS) decided that the two evangelical owners would have the religious freedom to force 28,000 employees to lose their religious freedom because they worked for them. Again, money and religion trumped common sense and the personal liberty of the peons and pissants working for a corporation that had attained “personhood” by the same court members.
Liberal Court members in their minority opinion stated that the majority decision would open up a real can of worms. Well, the worms started crawling out of the rot of that decision last week when the Satanic Temple, a group of religionists who claim they “facilitate the communication and mobilization of politically aware Satanists, secularists, and advocates for personal liberty,” began applying for the same exemption from paying health insurance premiums for contraceptives that Hobby Lobby got. An exciting question: Will the Supreme Court conservatives representing the Vatican instead of the U.S. Constitution approve the Satanic Temple’s request?    
If the Court denies the request, they might also deny the birth of thousands of little Lucifers, because Satanists would probably use more contraceptives. If the Court agrees that the Satanic Temple is religiously equal to Hobby Lobby, the Republican majority may approve of the birth of millions of little Satanists. The Satanic Temple endorses prayer in schools because they want little children to pray to Satan for guidance. The members are religious activists. They recently commissioned a seven-foot-tall statue to be placed next to the Ten Commandments memorial at the Oklahoma State Capitol. Inquiring minds want to know if the conservatives on the court have started a landslide.

 Evidence That Solar Flares Are Affecting The Brain Functions Of Some Humans

The Carlini Institute may have something in their research about the effects of solar flares on the brain. Time magazine carried a small story about a federal judge in a case in Florida, the home of “Stand your Ground” idiocy, who overruled a lower court ruling that banned doctors from asking patients if they owned guns. The lower court had decided that the law interfered with the free-speech rights of medical personnel. But federal judge Gerald Tjoflat wrote in his opinion that “guns are a private matter irrelevant to health care.” This idiot must have been hit by a major solar flare all by himself. The U.S. has 11,000 murders and 19,000 more deaths by firearms each year, and 70,000 wounded by firearms. How many billions do we pay doctors to treat gunshot wounds? How many billions do we pay doctors to conduct autopsies of people shot to hell to determine cause of death? Doctors are irrelevant to gun use? This decision is not the result of a brain cramp. This is clearly a case of brain death.
There’s little doubt that solar flares have severely damaged the members of the financial department of the Bayonne Medical Center in New Jersey. A carpenter went to the emergency room to have one finger cut treated after it did not heal in a few days. He had hit it with a claw hammer. A clinic nurse practitioner told him he did not need stitches or an X-ray. Later the carpenter got a $9,000 bill for his few minutes in the emergency room. He was billed $180 for a tetanus shot, $8 for ointment, $242 for sterile supplies placed on his finger, and several hundred dollars for the practitioner’s time. The usual fee for treating one finger is in the neighborhood of $400.

Maybe Some Spots On Earth Have Not Been Touched By Flares

My French cousins not only live the longest in Europe, they have the highest-rated health care in the world certified by the World Health Organization—at half of what we pay. The French government also takes on foreign big business to protect the small business owners in France. It’s quite evident that France has not been deluged with major solar flares. France has over 3,500 bookstores, and French lawmakers have just protected them from Amazon and other book-selling conglomerates by forcing them to charge the same price for books as French bookstores. France’s Minister of Culture Aurelie Flippetti says that French bookstores are “unique in the world” and must be protected from book “dumping” and selling books at a loss to drive the small guy out of business. That’s government without solar flares.

Raymond is a former Marine officer and school board superintendent and resides in Detroit Lakes.