When a headline starts with the little, head-shaking intro “No, …” and the story’s lede with a symmetrical “Yes,…” it is not unusual for the meaning to be: unlike what you may have heard from other outlets...
For instance…
- SciAm Blogs – Clara Moskowitz: No, Earth Wasn’t Nearly Destroyed By a 2012 Solar Storm.
A recent press release from NASA recounted from two years ago a solar explosion, or coronal mass ejection, that blew gouts of plasma parading in Earth’s direction and nearly hit us. It was a biggie. But its billowing clouds of electromagnetic chaos went on by. NASA’s analysts – university professors most of them – are now saying from satellite data from the event that had it nailed us it may have so buffeted Earth’s magnetosphere, have so blasted the ionosphere with electrons and ions, as to have induced havoc on modern technology. The heaving of the magnetic field at the planet’s surface would have induced power surges in long distance electric lines. That could easily have tripped breakers and blacked out power over wide area. If they didn’t go down in time, transformers may have generated fusion – the kind that means fuse, as in zap you are melted. They could have fried the processor brains of many communications and other satellites. The mighty internet may have been kayoed. It could be a bi-i-i-ig problem.
Moskowitz, longtime writer for space.com and associate editor at Scientific American, took a potshot in her blog post at some outlets for greatly overdoing just how dire the results may have been – which considering their genuinely possible severity is not easy to do. That is a service. Debunkery is among good reporters’ duties. While chastising media she provided two examples included this doozie:
- News Australia – James Billington (picked up in US by another Rupert Murdoch News Corp property, the New York Post) : Solar Flare nearly destroyed Earth 2 years ago: NASA ; So close to a near-truthful hysterical headline here. Had it said nearly destroyed life as we know it, or nearly destroyed modern civilization, or that it could’ve knocked us back to the stone age, it might have then sneaked over the low bar between utter inanity and merely standard tabloid sensationalism.
Billington to be fair shows some flair here. First, one must note he may not have written the headline. But his lede is pretty hyperbolic, telling us that NASA is just now telling us “that our planet almost plunged into global catastrophe.” He then deftly plucks a few ambiguous quotes from the NASA press release (down below in Grist), including one professor’s declaration that if it had hit we would still be picking up the pieces, another that if the blast had come just a week earlier Earth would have been in the line of fire.
Yes, the News.com.au / Post’s story – particularly its headline – is wildly overdone. While Billington leaves no sign he read anything but the press release and perhaps other outlets’ stories, he did have the handout’s verbiage in front of him. Thus, readers of this yarn eventually learn it is not about anything that might have sundered continents and vaporized seas. However, electrical gadgetry of many sorts could have gone haywire. Repairs would be costly and slow.
To experts, such massive flares and ejections of corona are called Carrington-class, after a 19th century UK astronomer who linked a series of huge flares on the sun to shorting and failure of many telegraph lines.
So good job plunking this yarn, Ms. Moskowitz. However, she needn’t have implied a mass failure by media. A quick run through of other outlets find most of them got the message correct – that this was a potential disaster for modernity and a lesson we need to obey, but joy to the world, it’d mean nothing to the fishes in the deep blue sea or to all other creatures – aside from you, me, and humanity. The lesson: Electrical grids and other sinews of modern society must be made tough enough to take such a geomagnetic assault and get back on line fast.
As news writing goes this was mainly a press release rehash fest. The general topic has been deeply covered over the years, now and again. Serious policy and economic decisions about preparing for the real thing are still to be made. A few more, probing media reports would be welcome.
Other stories:
- Washington Post (Capital Weather Gang) Jason Samenow: How a solar storm two years ago nearly caused a catastrophe on Earth ; Plenty scary while sticking to the NASA expert’s general line. It quotes one source at “CWG.” At first – talk about inside dope – I thought that meant Conversations with God but then realized it is where Samenow hangs out, the weather gang.
- Mirror (UK) John Kelly: Earth almost wiped out by massive solar flare that would have sent us back ot the Dark Ages ;
- Reuters – John Kemp: Time to be afraid – preparing for the next big solar storm ; Kemp is a financial writer for Reuters, and other than descriptions adapted from the press release does little to explain the physics of this sort of calamity. He also cites info from more than the release and a report from the Nat’l Academy of Sciences that the releaase links.
- Guardian (via Emirates news) Maev Kennedy – Solar storm could have pulled plug on Earth ; And that is a perfect, metaphor headline.
- National Post (Canada) Aileen Donnelly: In 2012, Earth narrowly escaped solar blast so powerful it could ‘knock civilization back to 18th century’;
Grist for the Mill: NASA Press Release ;
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