More on the magnetic field and a couple of topics you might want to raise next time you see him, Skip:
Fast decline of magnetic field hints at reversal
by William J. Broad, July 12, 2004
The collapse of the Earth's magnetic field, which both guards the planet and guides many of its creatures, appears to have started in earnest about 150 years ago. The field's strength has waned 10 to 15 percent so far, and this deterioration has accelerated of late, increasing debate over whether it portends a reversal of the lines of magnetic force that normally envelop the Earth...
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/1045
Ships' logs give clues to Earth's magnetic decline
11 May 2006 by Patrick Barry
The voyages of Captain Cook have just yielded a new discovery: the gradual weakening of Earth's magnetic field is a relatively recent phenomenon. The discovery has led experts to question whether the Earth is on track towards a polarity reversal.
By sifting through ships' logs recorded by Cook and other mariners dating back to 1590, researchers have greatly extended the period over which the behaviour of the magnetic field can be studied. The data show that the current decline in Earth's magnetism was virtually negligible before 1860, but has accelerated since then...
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn91...cline.html
Delving Into Mysterious Irregularity Of Earth's Magnetic Field: Observatory Being Built In Middle Of Atlantic Ocean
ScienceDaily (Nov. 25, 2008) — A new Danish observatory on a remote island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean will provide researchers with new knowledge about the mysterious irregularity of the Earth’s magnetic field known as the South Atlantic Anomaly.
[...]
The Earth’s magnetic field is losing strength
At present the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field is decreasing by 5% every hundred years and researchers do not know why or what the consequences will be.
In the South Atlantic Anomaly, the strength of the magnetic field is decreasing ten times as fast and the measuring station will therefore also give the researchers the opportunity to learn more about the consequences of the global weakening of the magnetic field...
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...090348.htm
Earth’s Magnetic Field Has Massive Breach – scientists baffled
December 16, 2008 by Anthony Watts
I know. This sounds like a plot of a 1950′s scifi movie. But it is real. From my view, our localized corner of the solar system is now different than it used to be and changes in the magnetic interactions are evident everywhere. First we have the interplanetary magnetic field that took an abrupt dive in October 2005 and has not recovered since and remains at very low level:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/16/ea...s-baffled/
Earth’s Ionosphere drops to a new low
December 16, 2008 by Anthony Watts
The height of the ionosphere/space transition is controlled in part by the amount of extreme ultraviolet energy emitted by the Sun and a somewhat contracted ionosphere could have been expected because C/NOFS was launched during a minimum in the 11-year cycle of solar activity. However, the size of the actual contraction caught investigators by surprise. (Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center)
ScienceDaily (Dec. 16, 2008) — Observations made by NASA instruments onboard an Air Force satellite have shown that the boundary between the Earth’s upper atmosphere and space has moved to extraordinarily low altitudes. These observations were made by the Coupled Ion Neutral Dynamics Investigation (CINDI) instrument suite, which was launched aboard the U.S. Air Force’s Communication/Navigation Outage Forecast System (C/NOFS) satellite on April 16, 2008...
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/16/ea...a-new-low/