As a follow up to our 4/19 story about ash cloud modeling:
Ash cloud models – overrated? A word on Post Normal Science by Dr. Jerome Ravetz
I offer below a compendium of articles from Benny’ Pieser’s CCNET and GWPF of the UK
Above:
The Met Office has been blamed for triggering the “unnecessary” six-day closure of British airspace which has cost airlines, passengers and the economy more than £1.5 billion.–The Telegraph 19 April, 2010
…
Global airlines have lost about $1.7bn of revenue as a result of the disruptions caused by the Icelandic volcanic eruption, a body has said. Giovanni Bisignani, chief executive of IATA, criticised governments for the haste with which they closed airspace, and called on them to provide compensation to the airlines. “Airspace was being closed based on theoretical models, not on facts. Test flights by our members showed that the models were wrong.” —BBC, 21 April 2010
…
We are becoming a risk-averse society and that is dangerous. You cannot run a national economy on the precautionary principle; indeed, the sound position is to embrace as much risk as possible. Societies that embrace risk, such as the United States and recently the UK, tend to thrive, while those that seek to minimise risk, such as Britain during the 1970s, tend to wither. Financial capital is now fleeing Britain, heading to the Far East. A long queue of companies is chasing the money, including our own Prudential, which is floating a business on the Chinese stock market. The true venturers are over there, not in Britain. —The Times, 21 April 2010
…
Rational decisions have to be taken on the basis of some empirical understanding of the risks involved, and on the balance between risk and reward (or the cost of avoiding risk). Exposing the nonsense and muddle of the so-called precautionary principle is an essential part of the GWPF’s declared mission ‘to bring reason, integrity and balance to a climate debate that has become seriously unbalanced, irrationally alarmist, and all too often depressingly intolerant’. If the argument now raging over the policy response to the volcanic ash clouds assists in achieving this, it will demonstrate that ash clouds, too, have a silver lining. —The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 20 April 2010
The Met Office. The same computor that predicted higher temps than actual 9 of the last 10 years? They were wrong 10 of 10 years.
Theoretical models and alarmism costing billions? Barely a drop in the bucket compared to the UN-IPCC plans.
Gosh darn, they must have just read the wrong tree rings. So much for CRUde modeling. The MET doesn’t get the weather right for years on end and they want us to believe their global warming nonsense. Please. When your models predict something that occurs, then and only then get back to us.
Where has all the sea heat gone?
Long time passing.
Where has all the sea heat gone?
Long time ago.
Gone to sea floors every joule?
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Gone to ocean floors every erg
but heaven forbid if the airplane, if the skylanes were open,,,had an engine failure and crashed, because you know, people would Never sue the airlines/gov’t that allowed the planes to fly if that happened…. nope noone would Ever do that (that was sarcasm btw)
wish there was an edit:
yes the models were probably too “conservative” from a safety point of view, but i’d rather have safe + all the airlines all got a free cover your *** excuse.
If a plane had of gone down, everyone would be screaming for their heads. The Met Office is in a no-win situation, and chose “better safe than sorry.”
This should cause a great deal of rethinking on the subject of computer-based weather modeling. I’ve got a strong suspicion that the code developed by SUNY Stony Brook in the early 2000s using GPU acceleration was substantially superior to this. Los Alamos also did codes for dispersal of aerosols prior to the Salt Lake City Olympics. Both sets of code were tested to verify the results.
Non tested code shows arrogance of the worst sort.
Moderator. Please if you post my earlier post, kill the “Gone to sea floors every erg” line. Thanks. It was a mistake on my part. My bad.
Consensus among idiots (believers) has replaced reason and common sense. Freedom entails, thanks God, risk. The once adverture of the human spirit has been replaced by the imaginary stability of the Bee Queen protected bee-hive.
As normal parethood knew from the beginning of time, excess protection rear only future beggars or, worst, slaves.
A £30 million supercomputer, designed to predict climate change, has been named as one of Britain’s worst polluters in the latest embarrassment for the Met Office.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6098859/The-Met-Office-super-computer-by-numbers.html
With the new NEC computer, they can miscalculate faster than ever before possible.
What would you expect from the Met Office?
After all they have proven themselves totally incapable of accurately predicting sweltering BBQ summer weather and mild, snow free winters, so why would you expect them to build a model that accurately predicted the spread and impact of volcanic ash?
Looks like the Met Office needs an Royal Society inquiry to restore it tarnished image.
Stopping flights until somebody actually measured the ash was the proper thing to do.
I wonder if somebody resisted allowing flights to resume because they didn’t want to admit they were wrong?
BTW: I am once again perplexed about what this has to do with Post-Normal Science.
It seems normal science and engineering already had the proper methods to solve this problem — measure the actual ash and then estimate the risks.
Decisions cannot be made without good data.
Well… As much as I’m annoyed by people overreacting to computer models I think I’ll let this one slide. As I heard on the news from some talking head over the weekend “Would you rather be on the ground wishing you are in the air, or in the air wishing you were on the ground?”
ROFL, welcome to the club. ‘Climate Change’ Policy is based on Theoretical models, not fact as well.
Aha! AshGate?
Richard North’s take on this:
“Part of me – the unrealistic, hopeless optimist – says, surely people will read my blog and see that their story is crap”
“The responsibility for this failure lies initially with the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO) – which is made up delegates from the member states, which puts the individual governments in the frame. Regional responsibility then rests with the EU commission and Eurocontrol, which turns the “guidance” from ICAO into mandatory requirements.”
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/04/hook-line-and-sinker.html
You cannot even “run” a family on the precautionary principle ffs.
Maybe these guys could become our allies.
When a business suffers such a huge loss, it is also the employees and consumers who suffer. However, this is hysterical. “It is only funny until someone gets hurt, then it’s hysterical”. There is humor in the hubris and folly of mankind.
The Met Office models are actually quite good at modeling atmospheric circulation over a period of a few days.
Please fire the modelers. 1.7 billion – wow to make that fall on tax paying sheep. That’s a terrible idea.
Fire the modelers. That’s all I ask. Close them down. Don’t listen to them again.
Nice to have them on board for a change. Wonder if any one will notice that the 1.8 billion pound loss is peanuts compared to the losses associated with climate change legislation, and climate change is less demonstrated than the very obvious ash cloud?
It was not only the fear of the ash that motivated the MET, it is their disdain for industry and the needs of people as well.
Lots of misinformation here, I’m afraid.
The Met Office don’t have much say in closing airspace anywhere other than the UK, so can’t really be blamed for France, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and many more countries making the same decision. They could perhaps be blamed for not releasing restrictions just one day earlier, when some of these other counties did.
Given that the existing advice was that no ash was safe, all the Met office did was report that “there is measurable ash” – which was obviously true in Southern UK at least – just look at the cars!.
The Gruaniad has an interesting report that it was the airlines themselves who refused to agree on a safe limit over recent years, due to concerns about getting sued if they got the limits wrong.
And today, we have high-level haze again, back to normal – the crystal clear blue skies of the last few days probably never to be seen again (or till Katla goes off!).
I would propose those Met Office kids to donate their too expensive super-computer toy to the greatest ever science blog WUWT. In exchange we’ll give’em a lot of candies. A deal?