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Volcanic Ash Heading Towards North America
chocomilko writes "St. John's International Airport, the easternmost airport in Canada, has begun canceling flights due to worries of ash from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano, leaving travelers stranded after the weekend's Juno awards festival. Early reports stated that there was a 30% chance ash would reach the island by early Monday; Air Canada has issued an all-day travel advisory. A thick blanket of fog currently covering the city isn't helping matters, either."
Ireland's airspace as well as Englands, France, Germany, Finland etc all closed at present and has been since before the weekend, lots of people stuck in other countrys unable to get home and are trying any means available to try and get home. US/Canada will really feel it if the same thing happens. ....and people think we're not all connected in the world :)
"WebTV: bringing the Internet into the shallow end of the gene pool since 1995" - Martin Bishop
That just sucks ash... eh?
It's Eyjafjallajökull. I barely knew which volcano you were talking about.
This was overheard in London:
The English Banker to the Icelandic representative for Kaupthing Bank:
We said we wanted CASH... not ash!
Tell your friends about xenu.net
If this situation unfolds for Canada / North America as it has done for Europe, they may wish to revise their means of communicating cancellations to passengers. The 'marker pen on a whiteboard' technique may be suitable for a handful of flights at a small regional airport but doesn't scale very well once an entire continent's airspace has been closed. Also, the hand-drawn "Sorry" with a sad face next to each flight number will start to take on a somewhat patronising tone.
How 'bout you?
Bet you're feeling real good about driving that Prius designed to be oh-so-gentle on Mother Gaia, ain'tcha?
Meanwhile, the belch from one unpronounceable volcano wipes out the cumulative effort from all of mankind over the past hundred years to purify the water and soil, and dwarfs all of our species' feeble, amateurish efforts to pollute them in the first place.
Gimme a rainforest, a chainsaw, and a case of Red Bull. It's Payback Time!
Looks like Katla's getting ready to blow too
http://scienceray.com/earth-sciences/locals-believe-katla-volcano-in-iceland-near-eyjafjallajokull-will-erupt-in-seven-days/
ant
I think we here in the US have had that experience not too long ago. Not to be overly grim here, but the week after 9/11, there were no planes flying in the skies above the US. Not hearing the planes landing and taking off at a near-by major airport nor seeing them high in the sky flying into other airports in the region was pretty odd.
We have passenger rail outside the northeast. You just rent a car, drive 90 miles to the depot, arrive near your destination, rent another car to drive 90 miles to your home. What could be easier? ;)
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9
A few more strong eruptions like this in different regions around the world, and there'll be enough ash in the sky to knock the temperature down a little bit. Global Warming is solved!
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
All aircraft engine manufacturers call for zero ash. I'm guessing that they figured that was the easiest thing to do as opposed to doing actual testing. Since it's never been tested properly, I wouldn't blame the governments for following the written specifications. I also doubt that any engine company is going to be willing to take on the lilability of publishing updated specifications allowing some ash.
Kind of like everyone blamed Bush for anything that happened in the previous 8 years? Including a few hurricanes?
No one blamed bush for Hurricane Katrina. Just for sitting on his ass when it hit, for appointing unqualified and flagrantly incompetent butt-buddies, excuse me, political henchmen to run FEMA, and for deliberately underfunding and eviscerating FEMA and nearly every other non-military federal agency in order to deliberately make them incapable of carrying out their mandate. Which worked brilliantly in his war against "big government", until we actually needed that government to rescue tens of thousands of people.
Then we got our act together, at many times the expense, and with many times the casualties, than it would have entailed if a competent president had appointed a competent leader of FEMA, and not gutted the agency of funds and logistical support.
And yes, everyone (except the hard-core right) quite correctly blames him for that. And the illegal war he started, and the financial implosion that was a direct result of Republican lassaiz-faire bank regulation (and which the Republicans are trying to continue today by filibustering any meaningful bank reform).
It's bad enough they do these things and then try to make us feel bad for pointing out the error of their ways. It's even more disburbing how utterly incapable of learning from their mistakes, and correcting their ways, these idealogues are. They'd rather be stubbornly wrong regardless of the evidence, than have a hint of flip-flopping on an issue(what most of the rest of us would call "correcting a mistake")
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
What is so odd to me is that many Europeans thought that Americans were laughing at them because the volcano interupted their air travel. I don't know anyone who thought that was funny at all. Do Europeans really think that we are that petty?
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Here's a good, up-to-date list of eruptions in 2010. Updated fairly frequently, so it should give travelers a little insight before it hits the main media.
Here's an interesting animation of the dispersal from Denmarks's weather service: island_vulcano6000.gif
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
Actually, the danger isn't that planes will fall out of the sky or somesuch because they've encountered some ash. The problem comes from the glass/ash mixture having a rather big effect on engines and airframes' wear-and-tear. Flying thru the ash plume probably causes 10 or more times the normal wear on engines. However, the maintenance schedules are rather inflexible on planes.
Net result? The flights won't be dangerous now. They'll be in a couple weeks/months, when you have 90% of your airplane fleet that has engine problems early, the civil aviation inspectors can't inspect them all, and the average european company becomes no more reliable than the lowliest north-african charter plane company.
Sure, they could replace all those engines earlier. If they can find some outside of the counterfeit market at reasonable prices, that is.
(short: Resuming flights before we can figure out the length of the emergency is short-term good, long-term bad)
Generally, yes. However, you need to look at this: http://wxmaps.org/pix/NHanim.html, to understand why it's possible for this to occur.
Sig this!
What about the Norwegian air ambulance helicopter, the Finnish airforce jets, and the MET office aircraft that did fly up there and did come back with measurable effects on their aircraft?
Or were they conveniently ignored because that doesn't fit well into an attempt to blame the met office?
Oh, and besides:
"During all those next days this first data-set never got adapted, updated with actual data or even checked again."
[citation needed]
I can't see any evidence anywhere whatsoever for the above quote, only evidence to the contrary- i.e. that continuous satellite data is being used (and not just by the met office), and also that the met office has as mentioned above sent aircraft up to test the effects too.
Kind of like everyone blamed Bush for anything that happened in the previous 8 years? Including a few hurricanes?
No one blamed bush for Hurricane Katrina. Just for sitting on his ass when it hit, for appointing unqualified and flagrantly incompetent butt-buddies, excuse me, political henchmen to run FEMA, and for deliberately underfunding and eviscerating FEMA and nearly every other non-military federal agency in order to deliberately make them incapable of carrying out their mandate. Which worked brilliantly in his war against "big government", until we actually needed that government to rescue tens of thousands of people.
Then we got our act together, at many times the expense, and with many times the casualties, than it would have entailed if a competent president had appointed a competent leader of FEMA, and not gutted the agency of funds and logistical support.
And yes, everyone (except the hard-core right) quite correctly blames him for that. And the illegal war he started, and the financial implosion that was a direct result of Republican lassaiz-faire bank regulation (and which the Republicans are trying to continue today by filibustering any meaningful bank reform).
It's bad enough they do these things and then try to make us feel bad for pointing out the error of their ways. It's even more disburbing how utterly incapable of learning from their mistakes, and correcting their ways, these idealogues are. They'd rather be stubbornly wrong regardless of the evidence, than have a hint of flip-flopping on an issue(what most of the rest of us would call "correcting a mistake")
Regardless of whether or not the head of FEMA was qualified, what is FEMA's purpose? They are an "emergency" management agency. Louisiana and the city of New Orleans asked them to wait to come down.
The mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana should take most or all of the blame for damages and injuries incurred during that hurricane. Hurricanes happen. New Orleans is below sea level. Katrina was a hurricane. It was heading towards New Orleans. And yet no one ordered an evacuation of the city until the storm was just hours away?
Likewise, why were out-of-state contractors hired to work on the cleanup and rebuilding? Excluding folks like myself who volunteered to go work there with aid teams like the Red Cross, Samaritan's Purse, etc, why were local folks not hired? Sure, some of them were unqualified to build bridges. But how qualified do you ave to be to take a shovel and muck-out a building?
antipaucity
Finally. All Canucks & Americans who laughed at us Europeans now get to experience how nice it is: no hassle, quiet skies, no contrails, stay-at-home and work -- or be stranded in interesting cities at your bosses' expenses !
Maybe that's related, somehow?