Awesomeee, please, for the love of our sanity, read some Wikipedia from time to time.

anyways why are they connecting this to 2012?

Because, as you should already know, conspiracy theorists will connect anything to 2012.

But the only thing that troubles me is the research that the Russian scientists that Lawrence E. Joseph cites.

I assume you mean Alexey Dmitriev, debunked in this thread.

'Serious publications' if we're going to use that term all play by the rules of what sells to their audience, be it attention grabbing headlines for simple folk, or detailed articles for the brainier bunch, they both have to be targeted to their audiences tastes. That is to say the majority of readers would have to find magnetic ribbons somewhat interesting, even if they've never heard of them, in order for time to be spent putting it into the newspaper or whatever.

Somewhat contrary to that though are articles in lower-end papers framing the article as interesting, new, exciting and more often than not a deadly threat that nobody can explain (where it's usually not deadly and rather explainable, if you can be bothered to research it, which luckily, the audiences of lower-end papers rarely do…).

Credible research simply doesn't always equal interesting reading. I get hundreds of headlines from PhysOrg a day coming into my RSS reader, and the vast majority are skip read, not even past the headline in some cases. All credible, not all relevant to me. Simple as that.

As far as I can tell, no serious publications (save the Huffington Post link I posted earlier) have mentioned the local fluff affecting solar activity. But the only thing that troubles me is the research that the Russian scientists that Lawrence E. Joseph cites. But if it was credible research, surely it would have been reported seriously by now? Right? Please tell me I'm right.

We are talking about a gas that is probably lower in density that the pressure caused by the solar wind near earth right now.
Also a cloud means that it is neutrally charged, so no EU magic stuff.

Lawrence E Joseph

Woo artist and overall scumbag, ignore everything, and I mean everything he says.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-e-joseph/pass
ing-into-the-energy-c_b_405086.html
http://eands.caltech.edu/articles/LXXIII2/2010_Spring_VoyagerFluff.html
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/23dec_voyager/

They have made a discovery using IBEX. What the doomsayers would have you believe is that this 'ribbon' is dangerous. The simple truth of the matter is this is the first all sky survey of this type, so we have no way of knowing it's unusual at all, much less dangerous.

Here is a more down-to-earth analogy:

You look into a room for the first time, ever, and observe a red ball. The guy next to you yells, "OMG, it's a red ball, we're all gonna DIE!" Wouldn't a sane person observe we don't know if the presence of the red ball in the room is even unusual? And definitely, a sane person would want to know if red balls were really dangerous.

You'll see this time and time again with doomsayers. They love looking for new scientific discoveries and screaming it's gonna kill us. But really, they have no idea. All they are doing is filling the temporary void in information left open by real science, which doesn't make such grand declarations when lacking evidence.

But I'm more concerned about the nuclear plants, if even from some much more "mundane" extended power outage…. ???

Of course, nothing in the NASA article mentions anything about power plants, nuclear or otherwise, so I still have to wonder where you got your information.

That piece is from 2009, btw.

Whilst, in an extreme case, a CME may disrupt power transmission, it's highly unlikely to affect power generation. All that might be required is for power plants to be temporarily shut down or switched offline when a CME is detected heading towards us. The idea of any power plant, including nuclear plants, "blowing up" as a result of a CME is pure fantasy.

But I'm more concerned about the nuclear plants, if even from some much more "mundane" extended power outage…. ???

I don't know where you saw that claim, but I'm betting it didn't come from a science site. "Magnetic ribbon" claims usually come from Nemesis proponents (the woo kind), and they are complete bunk. Offhand, I'm going to guess you saw that crap at ATS or Godlike Productions. Really, just don't go to those places, and if you do go for some reason, don't believe anything you read there.

Godlike Productions even has disclaimers: "DON'T BELIEVE A DAMN WORD YOU READ ON THIS WEBSITE!" and "We do not discriminate against the mentally ill!" Those are probably among the few true statements you'll find on that site.

- ***long term power outage for any reason, e.g., because of a CME or any other reason, disrupting power to all or many plants and those plants going off like Fukushima is now, making the Earth unliveable.

The last one is really, really bothering me.

Thanks in advance.