According to Reuters, all civil air traffic in UK controlled airspace has been suspended, with effect from midday until at least 6 pm and possibly longer.This is a consequence of resumed eruptions of a volcano under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland. But you would think the very least the Icelanders could do, in part recompense for all the trouble they are causing us, is rename the glacier to something more pronounceable.

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We were talking about this in the office this morning and joking whether our leaders would either blame the eruption on global warming, or if that wouldn't wash, try and figure out a way to control eruptions in the future and how it could be done. Perhaps the amount of water we drink effects volcano eruptions? I'm sure they can come up with something that isn't taxed yet and blame the eruption on that!

It had to happen, a confounding variable in the climate change debate which, depending on the time scale, could have interesting consequences?

The fragile Earth puts the puny contribution we humans make to the atmosphere and so called global warming in perspective?

I have never understood why the elite, politicians ha,ha, cannot understand just how powerful nature is compared to .as you rightly say, puny man. Yes we have done marvellous things but although we have changed the landscape, that is only scratching the surface.
I did see on the BBC text service this morning that the low sunspot activity has been noticed promising hard, cold winters they claim it does not mean that the planet is not warming. Considering the length of time it has taken them to realise this, they should notice the lack of global warming by about 2090, perhaps.

Eyjafjallajokull = Mount Eyja Glacier. "Fjalla' means mountain (much the same as 'fell' in english, from old norse) and Jökull means glacier. For your information.

Expect to see this eruption, and the blocking of sunlight being blamed for the lack of warming in the years to come. Something along the lines of otherwise our models were correct, and you still need to pay the taxes, because it's going to start again soon, and if you don't believe us we will commission an inquiry that says "Hey we don't understand statistics, but that doesn't mean our statistics are wrong".

Richard forgot to mention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer

There goes the neighbourhood's CO2 budget for a thousand years. Oh, it's all so hopeless :-)

No doubt we will be subjected to the 3 pygmy dolts outbidding one another on greenery insanity projects, this evening. All 3 morons blissfully unaware of the irony of the enormous black cloud literally hanging over them, shutting out all sunlight, as they blather on about stopping manmade Co2 emissions...meanwhile billions more tonnes of Co2 belch forth naturally, right round the corner.

As far as CO2 is concerned, human contribution is not exactly puny in comparison to volcanoes. For example, the second largest volcanic eruption in the 20th century (Pinatubo 1991) produced between 42 and 234 million tons of CO2:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/pinatubo/wolfe/
Human emissions in one year are something like 27 billion tons.

OTOH, the immediate influence of the volcanic aerosols on climate can be dramatic. I think that the dangers of a Tambora-sized eruption can be greater than, say, a 3C temperature rise happening over a 100 years. And things like the Toba eruption 70000 years ago can be really bothersome.

I can imagine the lib/lab/con coterie are kicking themselves that this didn't happen before they set out their stalls for the boot sale, especially Labour. Brown would have solemnly declared this will never happen again whilst Labour govern, we'd ban volcanic ash.

Still if anyone is affected by the ash they can always blame smokers, they do for everything else.

What is going to have a significant political impact is the cost ... if this lasts more than a day or so, the airlines are going to be flat broke and will be looking for a bail-out - especially BA. The government, if it decides to cough up, will have to go cap in hand to the EU to ask permission to give state aid. Whether to give aid could become an election issue.

Not keen to see anyone go out of business but it might just focus the minds of the electorate if the government had to go cap in hand to the EU and were refused. I hope they are asked and they refuse. But then we'd need the MSM to make a big loud noise of the EUs refusal, and that's like asking McSnot & Cameron to tell the truth.

Whatever way it goes I'm sure there's an enterprising hoaxer waiting in the wings to make money from volcanic ash.

Gerald Warner comments that the dust plume looks like a shoe.



Looks like a female one - a stiletto.

I wonder if any of the party leaders tonight will be asked to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull. Looks like "I'm full of jokes."

I hope this doesn't cause a cold summer.

As one farting cow may have said to another on observing the Greeland's flatulent Eyjafjallajökull: "My, my, Daisy...I do wish I'd done that."