“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
In 2008 around 35,000 people died in road accidents in the EU
http://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/pdf/statistics/2008_transport_mode.pdf
That’s around 100 deaths per day in tragic accidents. Better safe than sorry, we should ban all cars right ? …. no you get in your car, you take the risk.
Better safe than sorry is for pathetic socialists.
I bet that 95% of people would have happily signed a disclaimer and boarded the planes and why shouldn’t they take the risk on themselves ?
I bet the airlines would have rather risked 1 or 2 accidents than been automatically out a quick billion.
The choice should be the people’s to make, not some snivelling bureaucrat hiding behind a computer model and fat Government paycheck.
No one has the right to tell people what to do. No one has the right to ban all air traffic over Europe. Charge everyone an extra $20 to cover the 1 in 50,000 chance of a crash. Then Govt. doesn’t have to pay for clean up….. but leave it open to the people to decide.
There should have been open riots over this issue, there is no excuse for this kind of Govt. heavy handedness, its none of their business frankly.
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!! Australia is now such a country (Queensland only) that’s why I dont live there anymore LOL.
You don’t need to know the science, you just have to follow the current logic:
Volcano erupts
Ash goes in the air
Planes will crash
Ban planes
Volcano erupts some more
More ash in the air
“EU experts” say situation is improving
Unban planes
Most science today appears to be what 40 years ago we called “magic”. No rules, no logic, no experiments, no empirical data. I’m reminded of those cardboard masks that used to be printed on the side of cereal packets, such that children could instantly be transformed into a wolf, or Batman, or the Lone Ranger. I must have missed the “scientist” one.
Mike Haseler (13:37:55) : wrote
“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 ….”
I have another more accurate description of the so called “precautionary principle”. “The politics of paranoid schizophrenia and main stream media propaganda”.
“reason (13:47:08) :
As am American, I am fed a steady diet of European Railway Superiority. Europe has trains EVERYWHERE! They go ANYWHERE! They can do ANYTHING! They are an unstoppable force of mass-transit awesomeness that silly wrong-thinking Americans are fools for ignoring!”
My colleague just bought an Opel because he was fed up with the ICE’s failing on the way from Berlin to Hamburg… they had a quite high failure rate this winter.
“[…]
All I see are poor stranded German Foreign Exchange Students living out the rest of their days in makeshift hobo-towns in various US international airport terminals.”
Great picture, thank you. If they are German, they probably already have installed some solar panels on their tents to be energy-independent in an ecological way… and are lecturing everybody else…
flying is quite safe, it is crashing that is dangerous!
The fat lady has yet to sing….
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8631144.stm
Tenuc “No need for post normal science in the decision process here. It’s a no brainer – inconvenience travellers or risk killing them!”
At an average death rate of 1 in 40,000 per day there have already been a dozen or so deaths abroad because of the precautionary principle.
This is just an absurd attitude to risk. Any kind of travelling brings a risk of death and only a complete idiot would try to say: “any risk is too high” because that totally ignores the fact that if people can’t fly they are forced to go by far more risky means of travel.
Can we please stop the ridiculous global warmist type nonsense that people won’t die from NOT BEING ABLE TO FLY
Since the author seems oblivious to mesoscale chemical transport models like MOZART, this article falls more under the heading of pre-school jumping the snark than post-doc , let alone post normal.
http://adamant.typepad.com/seitz/2007/02/climate_of_list.html
And to highlight the ridiculousness of this “no risk is small enough”, we have soldiers coming back from mine clearing in Afganistan where there is a real risk of death being prevented from seeing their families (some for the last time as they go back and will die) because of a diminishingly small risk of a little bit of dust.
We have people who are running out of prescription medicines abroad … who may well die because they are being prevented coming home because of a diminishingly small risk of a little bit of dust.
We have a UK economy which is going to rack and ruin and will not be able to afford health care treatment which will lead to real people dying because some official and the Met Office thought it was better to destroy the UK economy than risk people flying through a diminishingly small risk of a little bit of dust.
“Francisco (13:43:35) :
[…]
”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
”
You know, first i thought, it’s a postmenstrual scientist but then i realized it’s a he. Okay, i thought, maybe alarmism is a kind of mental decay like Alzheimer’s and this is a grave case.
But actually i think it’s most likely they just gave this McGuire guy a suitcase full of dough and said “See what you can do for us” and this is what he came up with.
But a funny flavor of alarmism nevertheless, one for the exposition…
Al Gore’s Holy Hologram (13:24:15) :
Oh come on. We already had one lame hoax post in this thread.
If it were a satellite in LEO (Low Earth Orbit) it would be above the horizon for only 15 minutes or so. If it were in geosynchronous orbit it would be way too faint to see during the day (people can take time exposures of geosynch satellites – no tracking required!)
I’ve seen Venus during the day (surprisingly difficult), and I think I heard that some people are looking for Iridium flares during the day (easy if you are looking in the right direction, I suspect). I don’t think there is an Earth orbit that would leave a satellite visible for an hour over London. Maybe something extremely eccentric, but most of those are too high to be readily visible at night.
Pictures from a Finnish Air Force F-18 Hornet engine after the first ash clouds.
” Five of the air force’s Hornets were involved in a training exercise on the morning of 15 April, just hours before the imposition of airspace restrictions due to the ash cloud spreading from a major volcanic eruption in Iceland. ”
http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2010/04/16/340727/pictures-finnish-f-18-engine-check-reveals-effects-of-volcanic.html
Dave Andrews (13:42:09) :
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?>>
Good point and not that I know of, but birds getting sucked into turbines yes, and the ill fated mission to rescue the hostages in Iran failed in part because the sand was too fine for the air filters in use and failed the engines. That said, a helicopter landing in fine sands likely injests a whole lot more particulate matter than what we are talking about (density wise) in an ash cloud.
That said, I would think that long term wear would be the greater issue than short term catastrophic failure. In a piston engine, the ash particles, which I assume to be abrasive, would become imbedded in the lead/tin babbit of the journal bearings, in turn cause scoring of the crank shaft. This would result in accelerated wear, but unlikely to cause a catastrophic failure and certainly would be picked up by the oil analysis that would be part of any decent preventive maintenance program.
What would happen in a jet engine as opposed to a piston engine? I don’t know, I never had the opportunity to take apart a jet engine to see how it works. I tried once, I really did, but the guy who owned the jet got very upset.
I’m uncertain what “the Local” is but they are way off-base with this statemant.
““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.””
To be fair, the Ash Detection Tool used by the Met Office isn’t NAME (a computer model). Its a “collection of polar orbiter and geostationary satellites” that use infrared sensors to distinguish volcanic ash from water in the atmosphere.
Met Office; Volcanic Ash detection Satellites
source: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/aviation/vaac/ash_detection.html
However, if they can so clearly define the ash clouds and their likely trajectory…
(“I can resist anything but temptation”)
Was HadCRU involved with writing the computer programs that forcast unflyable conditions?
Volcanic ash cloud: Met Office blamed for unnecessary six-day closure
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.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/7608722/Volcanic-ash-cloud-Met-Office-blamed-for-unnecessary-six-day-closure.html
According to the model a tendril of ash has backed across the Atlantic and is now over my house in New Hampshire.
Does that mean I can skip work?
maz2
Patrick Allard of the Paris Institute for Global Physics (IPGP) gave what he described as a “top-range” estimate of 300,000 tonnes per day.>>
So exactly how does cap and trade fit in now? It is Denmark’s volcano, but they have exported all the CO2 and ash to Europe. So who pays the taxes? I would think Europe. They’ve got all the CO2 now and the carbon credits they get for grounding the airplanes won’t come close to covering it. So I think Europe will have to pay up and transfer the money to Denmark, so that Denmark can reduce their industrial output by enough to off set the volcano and still maintain their standard of living.
Hmmm…. can I have a volcano too?
Pops (08:09:18)
I get the gist that for the thinking man, the mass of hummanity may seem glassy eyed and sheep like, however, they’re not.
If the Web has taught me one thing, in spite of the efforts of Media, Corporations and Governments, Men remain stubbornly distrusting of authorities.
There are, as far as I can see, no Sheeple. Humans are not flocks of birds, wheeling on a turn because the lead duck gets skittish. Thats what the Authorities would love to be true, and they don’t stop trying to make it so.
Whatever the E.U’s bloated desk jockeys intend, real or imagined, by shutting down air travel the results will be thousands of peoples, choosing to conduct their business in some OTHER way.
As fast as they make rules, we break em’, and may it always be so.
This is great. Puts the focus of many angry people on the Met and their models.
And it helps contain the swine flu pandemic so the WHO and their Big Pharma partners can finally get the credit they deserve for saving us from that catastrophe.
Since Dr Ravetz’s PNS keeps coming up on this site, some may be interested that there are alternative efforts at understanding these issues that have to do with needing to make decisions with less than complete knowledge.
Herbert A Simon wrote an excellent little book called “Sciences of the Artificial”, which I have always thought one of the most useful books I have read. in the book he uses a term “satisficing” as the process for most real world decision-making—–as opposed to “optimizing” or “maximizing”. Business firms do not maximize profits—to do so requires ignoring too many competing issues , including limited knowledge and decision-making resources. They know that in seeking that last dollar of profit, they may put their enterprise at risk, or suffer from choosing profits know over long term profis. They seek what is “good enough” or satisfactory, given what they know under current market conditions—-they “satisfice” profit-making.
When bureaucrats make a “zero tolerance” policy, they make the error of failing to satisfice. They optimize on one dimension, avoiding all damage to aircraft, in the volcanic ash case, but at a hugely disproportionate cost for that last aircraft saved. They pursue optimizing in one dimension while ignoring costs in other dimensions. Environmental bureaucrats tend to make such decisions, hence to common man’s reaction that their decisions are somehow stupid.
“Satisficing” is what all scientists must do in good experimental design. Lab time is expensive. Subjects are expensive. Papers must get published. How many times must an experiment be run, how many subjects used, etc, to get a result that is statistically robust (to use a term much maligned here)? Good scientists, with integrity, juggle these variables and make a compromising, satisficing decision.
Dr Ravetz’s approach is so Marxist-sounding, if not derived…..so close to the epistemologic issues of Truth and Deconstruction of Truths as serving a political or cultural power structure. Dr. Simon’s approach is far more satisfying to those who believe there is a real world out there and use the scientific method, classically understood, to gain knowledge of it.
KW
John Galt (14:12:22) – Just checked that link. Why doesn’t that surprise me?
They should have a video contest for sheep on why mutton is so good.
From the comments here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/7608299/Volcanic-ash-cloud-of-uncertainty.html
“Mr P on April 19, 2010 at 11:20 PM
You just don’t whether to laugh or cry about this one do you?
It has a distinct smell of the hysterical panic that was Bird Flu, Swine Flu, SARS etc….
What sort of idiot didn’t actually think about sending a plane or two up to test the hypothesis coming from the VAAC? It just beggars belief really.
Will someone carry the can for this blunder? I doubt, it’s Britain and it probably wasn’t their fault anyway. No one’s ever wrong in the civil service!”
Maybe, but it looks like the lawyers are tooling up for a few hefty fees:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/7608722/Volcanic-ash-cloud-Met-Office-blamed-for-unnecessary-six-day-closure.html
“‘Jeff Zindani, of Forum Law solicitors, said: “Legal analysis suggests that there may be a raft of class actions brought by airlines and companies that are dependent on air travel to move their goods. “‘
Sure we should play safe….But the problem, as implied by “post-normal science”, is that there is just no way to play safe. Each day of closed air space cost a lot of money, and each day more than the one before, due to indirect costs. On the other hand, each day the ashes should be less concentrated than before. There is a time where it is just not reasonable to “play it safe”, ie choose to avoid a smaller and smaller risk at an increasing cost. My feeling, as a Belgian guy, is that this time has passed already, fret flight (goods, not people) should have resumed a day ago. It would have relieved a little of the cost, and provided real-life testing on routes before passenger flight takes the risk.
Euro governements know it, but they are incredibly affraid of any popular backlash and are more and more paralized by the precautionary principle. Now they reluctantly open the airspace, because they have been kicked in the nuts by the big airplanes companies, who have reminded them that money does not grow on trees. They are forced to move, they simply can not push this much longer before causing even more economic damage (when the situation is bad already). Now the inevitable resume has started, but it will be a little bit slow because every actor will try its best to avoid any responsability, both in case of plane crash or market crash. Not easy, but it is always kind of “fun” to watch highly-payed cowards dance this complex dance in front of the medias (that are themselves in the comfortable position: the critic, ready to point anything that turned bad and throw them to the populace: an excellent way to earn a lot of money without any risk – they are even more despisable than the dancing cowards….)