Below is part of an article that talks about the technological effects that Cycle 24 can have on us, not to mention another mini ice age. When i first heard about 1 man fighting the world saying that we don't have to worry about global warming b/c an ice age is coming soon, it piqued my interest to investigate...which i put off until seeing this image on (shhhh) yahoo! So, if things are as they appear to be, perhaps switching to solar energy would be a smart move. [personally - If it continues to get colder and BGE (or soon to be Constellation - which i am slightly happy about being that this months BGE bill was $0! but who knows their plans once they take over), our heating bills are going to go through the roof!]
So, i'm interested in seeing how our modernized world will deal with this issue and how/if life as usual will be affected and how long it will take for it to become known. will a debate break off into global warming vs ice age groups? what about Al Gores efforts with An Inconvenient Truth: Global Warming Effect?
Anyway...
Here's part of the article:
The onset of a new solar cycle is significant because of our increasingly space-based technological society.
"Solar storms can disable satellites that we depend on for weather forecasts and GPS navigation," says Hathaway. Radio bursts from solar flares can directly interfere with cell phone reception while coronal mass ejections (CMEs) hitting Earth can cause electrical power outages. "The most famous example is the Quebec outage of 1989, which left some Canadians without power for as much as six days."
Air travel can be affected, too.[warfi!]
Every year, intercontinental flights carry thousands of passengers over Earth’s poles. It's the shortest distance between, say, New York and Tokyo or Beijing and Chicago. In 1999, United Airlines made just twelve trips over the Arctic. By 2005, the number of flights had ballooned to 1,402. Other airlines report similar growth.
"Solar storms have a big effect on polar regions of our planet," says Steve Hill of the Space Weather Prediction Center. "When airplanes fly over the poles during solar storms, they can experience radio blackouts, navigation errors and computer reboots all caused by space radiation." Avoiding the poles during solar storms solves the problem, but it costs extra time, money and fuel to "take the long way around."
Now for the good news: More solar storms also means more auroras—"the greatest show on Earth." During the last solar maximum, Northern Lights were spotted as far south as Arizona, Florida and California. Not so long ago, only visitors to the Arctic regularly enjoyed auroras, but with increasing attention to space weather and constantly improving forecasts, millions of people at all latitudes will know when to go out and look.
Here are a few good links:
Solar Cycle 24: Implications for the United States
The Deniers: Our spotless sun this article has pretty cool information about how art and literature was effected in previous cycles that brought on mini ice ages.