There's a typo in the article, the scale is actually in increments of 100,000 years, not the 10,000 it states. So the black bar is a period of 0.78 Ma (megaannum), or 780,000 years. The dotted line is the average strength since… well, the earliest date it can be measured.

Edit: Or what bikenbeer2000 said. I'll shut up now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brunhes_geomagnetism_western_US.png

Some re-writing of the page is necessary.

There is something about the magnetic field graph I don't understand however: if the jagged line on the right represents the variations in the field's strength over the last 780,000 years, how can the average strength then be all the way to the left of that jagged line? At first glance I would expect it to be around 5 or 6; almost the entire jagged line is to the right of the average, and the 3 or 4 times it comes to the left, it's only a relatively short period of time, and also less than it deviates to the right.

Because nobody else brought this up, it is likely that I just misinterpreted the graph, or the explanation of what it means. If so, could someone please tell me where I go wrong? I have some friends to convince that we aren't headed for a magnetic field reversal disaster, and I thought I'd use this graph to help prove my point; of course I will be more convincing if I actually know what it represents ;)

6.0 in tonga
massive quake swarms in iceland
earthquake in haiti
5.8 in chile
400 quakes in 24hours in iceland
6.4 in fiji
823 quakes after a 9.0 in japan
6.1 in panama
2 5.0+ quakes in gulf of california
quake swarm 6 5.0+ in vanuatu in 24 hours
5.0 quake struck at tristan da cunha one the planet's hotpots

Wow a lot quieter than previous years?

You for got the 7500 aftershocks Christchurch NZ has had since september last year. I suspect Japan will be in the 10,000 aftershocks before it goes back to normal… and by the way normal for Japan is the same as in NZ.

Napier 1935 (yes a few years back) had 8500 aftershocks. New Zealand alone gets over 15,000 Earthquakes a year. There has been no increase on average. There has been no increase world wide on average.
http://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake/

The 2 images show NZ quakes… they follow, and you can see the major fault line of the pacific plate it is following.
http://www.geonet.org.nz/var/storage/images/media/images/earthquake/shallow_seismicity.png/36823-1-eng-GB/Shallow_Seismicity.png.png

http://www.geonet.org.nz/var/storage/images/media/images/earthquake/deep_seismicity.png/36831-1-eng-GB/Deep_Seismicity.png.png

There is no eviedence that a magnetic pole shift would do anything other than us having to adjust our compasses…

nobody was around the last time to document it so we know nothing about ALL the factors which contribute to it.

Hey! Guess what? There wasn't a guy going round taking notes during the time when dinosaurs were alive.
Are all stories about dinosaurs 'dribble'?
There are other ways of finding out these things, you know.

Fossilized remains 1.8 to 1 million years old have been found in Africa.

You do the math.

Some of this is correct…

Aw, gee, I feel all warm and fuzzy…

…but the majority of the STORY in dribble.

Oh well, good feeling gone.

By the way, that should be "drivel" and no, it's not.

for example the quote < The current magnetic field is stronger now than it has been for most of the Earth’s history > So this person is how old?

I'm 50. But that's completely irrelevant, isn't it? The chart that was being referred to goes back to the last geomagnetic reversal, about 780,000 years ago. Now, I'm a lot younger than 780,000 years, so your next question should be "How do we know this?". Since you chose to ridicule rather than learn, I'll leave that to you to figure out.

BTW 1. If you have ever played with magnets, the stronger they are, the faster they flip.

Yes, but we're talking about a magnetic reversal, not a physical reversal, and the Earth is not a refrigerator magnet. There's a whole lot of inertia stored in the spinning Earth, and no magnetic flip-flop is going to change the orientation of the Earth.

2. nobody was around the last time to document it so we know nothing about ALL the factors which contribute to it.

We know it happened. We have a couple of good ideas why it happens. We also know that it did not change the orientation of the planet, and did not coincide with any extinctions, etc.

3. its only a few years ago that all people thought there was a god/gods and the world was flat. "dont EVER go to the horizon or you will fall off the edge" now we split our sides laughing at such ridiculous things.

Uh, ok, and the relevance here is what?

My thought on this is to take the solid logical facts and keep adding to the picture but dont go off and quote the solid facts with dribbled opinions on a scientific subject. go back to you comics.

"dribbled opinions"? My opinion is that a comic book would be a better read than your post. At least they usually use the right words.

This page was written in response to the claims that the earth is 'overdue' for a magnetic reversal, and that it will happen in 2012. As you have taken us to task for objecting to those claims (without actually pointing out where our arguments are incorrect), should we assume that you think that a field reversal will happen in 2012? If so, where's your evidence? What would you base that on?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/48390803/Magnetic-Pole-Shift-and-Chaotic-Weather

this site might prove your talking bull

What exactly does that prove, except that you apparently take the word of anonymous woo authors on Scribd over the opinion of professional scientists in relevant fields?

Your linked article is poorly-written and lost me at "HAARP," never mind the abundance of weasel words, sensationalism and hand-waving. You're so gullible, Sammy. It's almost cute. Almost.

i suppose if you think the pole shift is a hoax you think the same of the solar activity next year

And what activity would that be exactly? Didn't realise you were a fortune telling solar physicist. You must be as even the worlds best solar physicists can't predict to a high degree of accuracy that any solar storm will or won't happen, but apparently you can. If your referring to solar maximum, yes that will happen, it does so every 11 years, probably has done since earth was formed. So what? Also, keep in mind that although solar physicists can't really predict solar activity, they can follow trends and patterns of previous cycles and look for consistencies in the current cycles pattern as it "ramps up".
Solar physicists are now saying that looking at the patterns solar cycle 24 is showing, it seems to be consistent with previous cycles with very low activity, and indeed looks like it could be the weakest maximum in 100 years. Not to mention this is all predicted to happen in 2013, not "next year" so this looks to me like another bout of hand waving hysteria.