Now what does this remind you of...

Lee Jakeman

No! You're not talking about - gulp! - GLOBAL WARMING are you?

I mean that's all PROVEN FACT ...!

Isn't it ...?

Ian Miller

Actually the Met. Office was spot on in everything it said, and its model of the ash cloud was not wrong in any respect that mattered in the slightest.

The problem was with the aviation authorities which had not given any real thought to what concentration of ash constitutes a threat to aviation, had applied the Precautionary Principle and set a very low limit. Unsurprisingly it took some time for this to reverse position, given that getting it wrong could have had aircraft dropping out of the sky.

The aviation authorities have some questions to answer, for their part in this. By contrast, the Met. Office consistently got their bit right.

Elaine

The Met Office. Again.

As ever, Richard Littlejohn refused to let any of this drivel about volcanic ash bother him and duly wrote a column poo pooing the whole thing. Cue critics underneath his web column nattering on about elf'n'safety.

Within a week we all knew who'd been vindicated. Still, when was the Sage of Ilford going to let an ocean of cant bother him? Exposing groupthink imbecility is his speciality.

Mel, you, Richard Littlejohn, Quentin Letts and Peter Hitchens make that paper what it is.

Tommy Udo

Swine Flu?

Hawkeye

As someone with a strong background in science, I find it dismaying that people put so much reliance on computer models rather than sampling reality and drawing conclusions.

I suspect that they do this because

1) Computer modelling is cheap

2) You don't have to leave your nice warm office

3) You can prove all your pet theories by picking the correcting starting values and boundary conditions.

4) We have a culture conditioned by the media that anything can be solved by a computer. All those years of things like CSI were the computer can construct a crime scene from a drop of blood, where programmes like "Walking with dinosaurs" present speculation as fact and so forth. Eventually people start believing this stuff.

It goes to show that people will believe anything if you get them young enough and say it often enough - a fact of human psychology that, in the past, has been used by all sorts of disreputable people such as communists and nazis. Of course, they pinched it off the Jesuits "Give a boy of 5 and I will give a man to Jesus for life" was the phrase they used IIRC.

michael

Ash tax...?

I really don't like giving inane ideas to politicians!

Charles

You're wrong on this Ms Phillips. The Met Office sent up aeroplanes to check the outputs of its model against where the ash was actually drifting, and they did in fact get it right.

Those responsible (not the Met Office) for giving the go ahead to fly were very cautious, not least because volcanic events of this sort, over air space dense with flight paths, have been a comparatively rare event in the fifty or so years that we've had commercial jet travel. Flying around this ash cloud wasn't an option, as it often is elsewhere.

This week's Economist has a good, balanced article on this topic.

Augustus

Too bad for the airlines. Too bad for the stranded passengers.
Volcanic ash will be thrown!

Tregonsee

Some military aircraft on test flights did suffer engine damage. Typhoons seemed particularly susceptible. As a card carrying "AGW Denier" I have a very sceptically view of computer models. As a retired airline pilot, I have no problem with them erring on the side of safety. It is obvious that the existing computer models are not good enough to either rule in or rule out dangerous levels of dust. With luck the data gathered will allow them to improve the models.

Ann Magsalik

Remember the election? Would ol' Brown really risk a rash of plane crashes in the lead up to a general election - even if one of them might have been carrying Blair?

Larry70

gotta say you are wrong on this Mel, I don't care for GW hysterics, but not everything the powers-that-be decide on is misguided and wrong. The risks for getting it wrong on this front and giving a greenlight to air-travel are planes dropping out of the sky. Better to err on the side of caution esp since too little is still known on how much volcanic ash density in the atmosphere it takes to gum up aircraft engines (these are rare events). You get it just a little wrong and the consequences are deadly, nobody could afford to take that risk.

C. Gee

The Precautionary Principal guides the inputs of the computer simulations. Whether consciously or not, scientists in the Met - or in any "climate" related fields - think socially, not objectively. That is how they have been trained to think.

Larry70:

How many planes have dropped out of the sky due to volcanic ash?
How many planes have dropped out of the sky due to birds gumming the works? Or terrorism? Or pilot error? Or mechanical failure?

On your evaluation of risk, all planes would be permanently grounded. (And wouldn't that be good for the planet).

The Precautionary Principle is now the motive and means for thought-control.

Original Tony

I like the way the safety level of ash in engines went from something like 200 bits per cubic metre to 20 000 bits per cubic metre when our illustrious leader suddenly realised the disaster may affect his chances of winning the elections.

Pathetic.

K

Get a grip, people. It is very wise to be cautious given the serious danger of the ash. Also, the cost of repairing a plane which runs into even a diffuse volcanic ash cloud can run into tens of millions of pounds. See this link: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-04/why-cant-planes-fly-through-volcanic-ash-because-nasa-tried-once

d1carter

I can't wait for all the emails ten years from now...

Archie

The Y2K "bug"?

Dixon

Well its a sign of how things have gone to pot since 1765 when that volcano last did this...back then they didnt suspend a single airline schedule!

Whats the country coming to?

Roy

Nobody ever wants to be responsible for an all clear message . . . so it goes on . . . and on.

Bogdan from Australia

Virtually hundreds of unmanned air vehicles - UAV's are being used by the US army in Afganistan and Iraq as well by Israelis. A small flotilla of those incredebly useful craft should be at the Europes' Aviation Authorities disposal immediately after the volcano has errupted, to test directly the ash concentration in the air.

There is no other factor here at work than an extreme cretinism of Europe's "leadership"

Haven't they been talking about the so called Rapid Reaction Forces fo the last twenty years as well? How has that ridiculous jabber ended up?

For how long the Airbus 400 smilitary transport airplane scandal going on now.

What is an excuse for such failures?

William Boyd

Election polls (especially YouGov ones) and their pundits.

Occasional Ostrich

Frequently, in late Spring, we are told that the fine pink dust that has appeared on our cars is from the Sahara, whipped up into the upper atmosphere and blown our way by the jet stream. Why is it that nobody has ever suggested shutting our airspace until this dust clears? It's silica based, just like volcanic dust; when ingested by jet engines, it will melt and then resolidify on the outer turbine blades; it's dense enough to appear on my car, which is more than I've yet noted about this volcanic dust.
Did anybody ever set a "zero tolerance" safety standard for Sahara dust? If not, why did they do so for Eyjafjallajökull dust?

Just a thought . . .

John.

The airlines were warned of this potential danger some time ago and did absolutely nothing about discovering what would be a safe level of ash to fly through. They brought this financial catastrophe upon themselves. However, ash can be a real danger, whreas trying to extort tax from people because of increased levels of CO2 in the air is quite a different matter. As the Earth had about 12 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere as there is now, about 12 million years ago, and was extremely cold at the time, as levels of CO2 only increase AFTER temperatures have risen and as changes in the ratio between the amount of magnetic radiation and the amount of cosmic radiation reaching the planet's surface correlate exactly with changes in climate and temperature, it is clear that the CO2 theory is a put-up job.

Dixon

Ive just come from Rod The Liddler's blog about fat people.

Ive a new theory of climate change. Its attributes it to a fluctuation in the Earths rotation and inclination due the concentration of massive, gargantuan behemoths stomping around in the Northern Hemishere.

The logic of Fatty-AGW is the same as that of CO2-AGW. That is, 1) it conforms to the laws of physics ( specifically regardin induction of oscillations in a rotating sphere ) and 2) cannot be disproven. It has the same implications ( America is the chief villain ). But it at least gives us a good scapegoat in the form of fatties all around us!

Augustus

Climategate:
Incompetent programs.
Tampering with data.
Bullying of journal editors.
Lying to the public.
Blocking FOIA requests.
Scientific and financial fraud.
Global racketeering.

THX1138

The MMR Vaccine causes autism ?

hazelli

re Occasional Ostrich: I live 21 road miles from Gatwick Airport,in a sometime overflight area.On the day after at least one friend and I had very gritty and painful eyes for no understood reason, dust appeared on all our local cars. On this dusty day flights were re-opened...

Sergey

Haim Harary, former president of Weizmann Institute of Science, has found the root cause of this debacle:
"The world is discovering that an important profession is missing: Scientifically trained political decision makers. Neither a good scientist lacking management experience, nor a smart politician with no scientific training, could spot the trouble. We need people who have both qualities."

gareth

Is Israel the cause of global warming? Is there a computer model to estimate this, developed with the aid of enlightened Islamic science?
I'm sure the UN and kind-hearted President Ahmedinejad will be looking into it with an open mind.

chris

Gareth,

I thought this one could have been pinned on George W. Bush.

........Mad cow disease?

Thomas

Hawkeye
April 25th, 2010 10:50am
I would be interested to know what science relies solely on "sampling reality and drawing conclusions".