Solar activity, electrical grids, and GPS

From the latest edition of Nature:

The findings could help researchers to improve their understanding of the fluctuations in solar activity that can, at their peak, scramble electricity grids and throw Global-Positioning-System devices off by dozens of metres.

Yikes!  Sounds dangerous, considering all the devices that rely on GPS.  Note that coronal mass ejections, a type of solar activity, is one of the “scientific explanations” used as “evidence” that the world will end in 2012, the idea being that such activity will destroy electrical grids in industrialized countries, leading to a general decay of civilization.  However, the National Academy of Sciences did issue a report a couple of years ago discussing the real threat posed by such solar activity, and it is sobering.  This is an example of how government should be engaged in low-probability disaster prevention.