“We sent ten Boeing 747 and Airbus 340 jets on transfer flights from Munich to Frankfurt,” Lufthansa spokesman Klaus Walther told the paper. The planes were moved in order to be in the most useful place once the ban is lifted, he explained.
“Our machines flew to a height of 24,000 feet, or around 8,000 metres. In Frankfurt the machines were examined by our technicians. They didn’t find the slightest scratch on the cockpit windscreens, on the outer skin nor in the engines.”
“The flight ban, which is completely based on computer calculations, is causing economic damage in the billions. This is why, for the future, we demand that dependable measurements must be available before a flight ban is imposed.”
Source: “the Local”
At left: the model from the Met Office used to look at dispersion.
The Nuclear Accident Model (NAME) was originally developed after the nuclear accident in 1986 at Chernobyl, which highlighted the need for a capability to predict the spread and deposition of radioactive material released into the atmosphere. The model has continued to be developed and is now applied to a wide range of atmospheric pollution problems, ranging from emergency responses to daily air-quality forecasts.
Over the years, NAME has been applied to a number of atmospheric releases, including radioactive releases, the Kuwaiti oil fires, major industrial fires and chemical spills, and two major volcanic eruptions that occurred in Iceland. Both of these eruptions resulted in aircraft having to be re-routed to avoid potentially dangerous ash clouds. An example of the volcanic ash guidance provided to the aviation community is shown in Figure 1.
Source: NWP Gazette
Here is what Professor Jerom Ravetz of Oxford has to say about the issue (via email):
Interim contribution to the Post-Normal Science debate.
Considering the effects of the Icelandic volcano on air transport, we seem to have:
- Facts Uncertain: how thin must the dust be, for it to be safe enough for flying?
- Values in Dispute: Regulators wanting safety at all costs, others needing to get flying now.
- Stakes High: Crippling costs to industry, versus big risks to aircraft and people.
- Decisions Urgent: Every day the immediate costs mount, and the long-term costs grow.
Is this analysis an invitation to scientists to cheat? Some of my critics would say so, and perhaps even some of my supporters as well!
h/t to WUWT readers Nigel Brereton and Bernd Felsche
What Are the Odds a single death may occur due to this issue?
Flying through volcanic dust at 32,000 feet may lower a persons odds of dying in a plane crash due to aircraft failure to the same odds as being struck by lighting twice in the same year. It’s about the same odds as being killed by a terrorist, yet we spend a trillion dollars a year on trying to beat those odds. I’ll take my chances of not being killed by a terrorist or being killed by the volcanic ash. My odds are better of something not happening to me than being struck by lighting twice in the same year for crying out loud. We need to stop wasting so much money on this nonsense. Your odds of dying due to a complete and total economic collapse are much greater caused by the paranoid schizophrenics running the world.
Knee-Jerk No Fly Ban Discredits Global Warming Alarmists
http://www.infowars.com/knee-jerk-no-fly-ban-discredits-global-warming-alarmists/
Somehow “post normal” just sounds like what the Doctor diagnoses when one finally ends up with Alzheimer’s … just observing…
Today’s engines have a lot of sensors. A “flying into ash” profile should be easy to develop. Data from all these engines could be downloaded in real time to a central location for analysis and monitoring.
As for sampling the air, a few dozen piston craft could do it. They can be fitted with air filters.
Good grief.
Mixing Governments into airline business.
Can never bring anything but Post Normal Results.
The point i this debate is that when you take the position that there is an No-Toleranze you actually take away the civilizations ability to adapt and develop!!
Well, if you were a conspiracy theorist, you would say that some green zealot in Europe saw a great opportunity for grounding the airline industry and, thereby, weakening it greatly.
One hopes the computer modellers are not in cahoots with them, as we all know the usefulness of computer models in climate change, don’t we??
Anent the Geothermal company
– I can’t find a company called “Icelandic Geothermal” per the emails in RajKapoor’s comment (but there is an “Icelandic Geothermal Company” company).
– neither Gunnar Skoleskar nor Hanfluss Janesbaer seem to exist (the supposed reporters in the emailed articles byline).
– “Professor David Sonnenbaum a climate specialist at the University of Berlin…” I think the University of Berlin is no longer the name of a German University. I think it’s called the Humboldt University of Berlin (I’m not sure about this though..) – oh yeah, and Sonnenbaum (Sun Tree) is not an unknown German surname. But for a climate specialist… it’s starting to get to be a bit much…
This whole ‘post-normal’ thing has gone just a bit too far, do you not all think?
Normally, in a ‘normal’ world we just fly around an erupting volcano. Common sense really.
In a ‘post-normal’ world we suspend air traffic across a continent.
Future dictated by computer models?
No thanks!
Austin (12:47:44)
Better make that a Lazy Susan of air filters, and a team replacing/shaking out the clogged ones.
Looks like ‘In-Flight Refueling’ capabilities are the only answer for commercial airlines. Short of every other volcano on the planet burping, they ought to be able to fly around anything Mother Nature throws up at them.
If things get worse, also looks like we need to call out the Air Guard to get our folks back from Europe. Wonder how many American tourists have flown a MAC flight across the Atlantic? What a story to tell their grandchildren!
Just been looking at the photos_ isn’t it beautiful?
God our planet is amazing!
On topic then off topic (a bit).
@ur momisugly Rich (10:35:59) :
“Youtube video from Norwegian Met. Office maps/model.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-4TB47N3_Y (Apr 18)
…. The Map Room
http://www.mcwetboy.net/maproom/2010/04/eyjafjallajoeku_1.php
Ash cloud forecasts at-
http://mapped.at/volcano/”
Thanks, Rich, for posting these fascinating links, especially the excellent Map Room, from where I’m now trying to install a Google Earth animation of “Global Paleogeographic Views of Earth History – Late Precambrian to Recent”. Wonderful stuff!
Michael (12:42:34) : quote:
“And, no, again. You needed wind shear around Max-Q, too. They could still fly when cold, just had to make sure there was little wind shear that would create a bending moment on the SRB joints when under max stress due to the flight profile. ”
Really? So no wind shear at max Q = no Challenger explosion? You assert that bending caused the SRB joints to fail ?
Are you unaware of the video showing the black plumes of smoke coming from the area of an O-ring on the right SRB *while still on the launch pad* ?
Are you unaware of video showing the flame emitting from the hole in the external tank for several seconds prior to max Q?
And that this hole is exactly opposite the point on the SRB where the hot gasses were venting from the failed O-ring?
And that the hole was likely cause by the cutting-torch effect of the hot SRB gases impinging on the external tank?
I dated a Cloud Model once.
True story, she looked cumulonimbus in her tight sweater, but she was really just cumulus.
Thats the thing with models, never exactly what they seem, can’t bet the farm on them, well maybe if you are a bit Post Normal.
But those guys never get models…
We always say Orwell is rolling in his grave but in the case of the grounding of the airline industry over a non-threat, I think the person rolling with laughter in his grave is Orson Welles.
Dr. Ravetz:
To the heart of the matter. Too much safety results in an embarassing lack of production. Then, as if on cue, the pendulum swings in favor of “we don’t need anybody telling us our own business” and we then have ersatz safety.
It’s not just an open invitation to scientists, but also to risk managers, engineers, panels, executives etc. to cheat. The envelope will be pushed, leapfrog style, until disaster strikes. Human nature will be what it has always been, and that is Normal.
The misery of cheating requires it’s own bad company.
So, no, I don’t really see this as an open invitation for scientist in particualr to cheat. The points you gave are common to any commercial enterprise. I do see it as a question of how close does science dare get to commercial interest without getting overly pressured and/or corrupted by it.
By the way guys, yesterday while looking at our crystal clear ash free skies over London I spotted a satellite (yes, in space) with my naked eyes and watched it for an hour. This was during the daytime. If there was ash, it would have reflected the sunlight bouncing off the satellite back into space and I would have not seen it at all.
I took a photo of it. It’s not as bright at I saw it with my eyes due to the lame camera lens…
http://img709.imageshack.us/i/img0395w.jpg/
1980 – 3 helicopters are forced to return to their carrier after damage flying through a sandstorm at the beginning of the ill fated Iran hostage rescue attempt. 30 years later, and I find it impossible to believe that airlines, engine manufactures, and the FAA don’t have exact tolerance levels for anything that be in the atmosphere that could damage an engine. No need for new tests … just look it up.
For example… just from one Google “turbine engine debris tolerance”
Foreign Object Impact Design Criteria. Volume II FEB 1982
Authors: Albert F. Storace; GENERAL ELECTRIC CO CINCINNATI OH AIRCRAFT ENGINE BUSINESS GROUP
The full text of this report is not available and therefore is not for sale. This information is provided for reference purposes only. The program objective is to establish specific design criteria and provide the analytical design tools to assess and improve the foreign object damage tolerance of turbine engine fan and compressor blading. This program will aid in the design of more efficient damage-tolerant blading through the replacement of trial and error FOD test and evaluation practices with systematic transient structural analysis methods, test procedures and design criteria. A design system structure …
OT
This study helps put the scale of you into perspective. I wonder what their carbon footprint is with all their off gassing combined. The planet is much bigger than people are willing to believe. Screw “It’s a small World”. It’s a huge world after all.
Census Of Marine Life Tries To Account For Thousands Of Microscopic Sea Creatures
“What ocean microbes lack in size they make up for in numbers. Marine census researchers calculate there are a “nonillion” of them.
Never heard of nonillion? Well, it’s a lot. It’s 1,000 times 1 billion, times 1 billion, times 1 billion.
Of course no one can really envision a number like that, so the researchers turned to the popular comparison measure — the African elephant.
A nonillion microbe cells, they say, is about the same weight as 240 billion African elephants — or the equivalent of 35 elephants for every person on Earth.
And that’s just the microbes.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/19/census-of-marine-life-tri_n_542652.html
It is interesting to see how some people here suddenly think the “precautionary principle” is perfectly OK when it is a diminishingly small risk of volcanic ash compared to a diminishingly small risk of global warming.
Both are inappropriate applications of computer models flying in the face of real experience and both are being condoned by risk-adverse officials who think it is far better that people have the appreciable risk of dying as a result of the added chaos on the roads, than that they have any risk at all in flying.
Basically this PC risk-adverse people have succeeded by their hysterical risk adversion in achieving what Hitler failed to do: to rid UK airspace of any UK based airplanes ….
To all the ‘better safe than sorry people’, is there an actual example where a plane was brought down by volcanic ash and loss of life resulted?
There is an article in the Telegraph today that reads almost like a parody of alarmist scientist. Earthquakes, eruptions, landslides, icequakes and tsunamies “could” be caused by “tiny environmental changes”
It’s a prime example of the “if-then-might-then-could-then-may” kind of “research”.
Some brief samples:
“As the land ‘rebounds’ back up once the weight of the ice has been removed – which could be by as much as a kilometre in places such as Greenland and Antarctica – then if, in the worst case scenario, all the ice were to melt – it could trigger earthquakes.”
“The increase in seismic activity could, in turn, cause underwater landslides that spark tsunamis.”
“A potential additional risk is from ”ice-quakes” generated when the ice sheets break up, causing tsunamis which could threaten places such as New Zealand, Newfoundland in Canada and Chile.”
“The reduction in the ice could also stimulate volcanic eruptions, according to the research.”
”One of the worries is that tiny environmental changes could have these effects.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7604188/Volcanic-ash-cloud-Global-warming-may-trigger-more-volcanoes.html
Many things are built using models. But we’re comparing apples to oranges, aren’t we? A computer model used for manufacturing gets tested each time something comes off the assembly line.
But in this case, the claims are being made the model overestimates danger from the ash. The real world is the test for the model and if the reports are accurate, then the model is wrong.
Some of our local TV stations have dedicated weather channels on cable. Often the meteorologists spend will time discussing the various model outputs and also how they tweaked the results from multiple models to get their forecasts. They never seem to rely upon model output alone or a single weather model.
Those models get tested daily (and tweaked regularly, I presume) but still give a divergent range of outcomes. Models have their limitations.
Ken Finney (12:53:34) :
“- neither Gunnar Skoleskar nor Hanfluss Janesbaer seem to exist (the supposed reporters in the emailed articles byline).”
(Ole) Gunnar Skolsjaer (approximately) is a Norwegian who used to play for Manchester United football club. I can’t figure out who Hanfluss Janesbaer is.
Read this and other to the point publications @ur momisugly: http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/04/virtual-cloud.html