The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland is creating quite a pickle and getting worse and more serious by the day.

The incident is showing the impotence of western governments and leadership.  Dither is the order of the day.  Strong action and leadership are required.

First item of business is to listen to the right expert, and understand what he is saying.  The situation has thrown up The Man of the hour Haraldur Sigurðsson, a supremely eminent Icelandic Volcanologist.

I first became aware of this eminent scientist  when Al Roker interviewed him on 04/16/2010.  At once he impressed, by being quite honest about the limits of his knowledge.  He gave is opinions in a delightfully dour Scandinavian way reminiscent of the Scandinavian characatures on Prairie Home Companion.

His basic position was that he did not know how long this eruption would continue, but that even if it subsides, there will be frequent discharges over the next year to 18 months.  Further the possibility of even larger discharges in the near future from other dormant volcanoes in the area was very high.  He felt that Europe was in for a prolonged period of disruption of air travel.

You can read his blog here.  It has to be translated by Google from Icelandic, so you will have to read it carefully.

Here is a page of quotes from  Haraldur Sigurðsson which are quite funny.

There are problems rapidly building in Europe.  Large numbers of people are stranded without adequate food and shelter and out of funds.  Yet the government fondly imagine this will all magically end.  Well it might, but more likely than not it won’t.  These individuals need protection and plans made for repatriation in face of the likely probability this situation will not soon end and if it does will likely soon recur.

Fresh produce in Europe is running short, and will to all sense and purposes disappear from warehouses and shelves in the next day or two.

It is not too soon for the Royal Navy to requisition Cunard’s ships and prepare to repatriate the stranded.

Its time to stop electioneering and get down to the serious business of government.

04/18/2010.

It now seems that the extent of this infamous volcanic cloud over Europe is based on a computer model and not hard data!  This will probably be as misleading as computer models of C02 induced global warming.  Modern man is lazy and wants results from the arm chair.

However there is still a problem as volcanic ash is harmful to jet engines, that is hard data.  The volcano is spewing large amounts of harmful material which is going somewhere.

Test of aircraft over European air space have shown no sandpaper effect on the cockpit wind shields and no engine damage.  More hard data.

Today a data gathering plane flew from the British Isles over the Atlantic and ran into harmful pockets of volcanic material.  More hard data.

A BA jet airliner, flew for four hours over the Atlantic and has returned to Cardiff, where the engines are receiving intensive inspections, the results of which are expected tomorrow.

So the suspicion is that the computer model only shows areas where an airplane could encounter dangerous concentrations of  volcanic material, but probably won’t.

Now Satellite imagery is of little help in knowing where the ash is.  So the only solution is to send lots of aircraft frequently into the debris field to get hard data.  The problem is daunting because the area over which potential problems could be found is vast.

So if after flights resume while this volcano is still active and spewing and a plane encounters a problem, the faith and trust of the public will be lost, and people are unlikely to fly where a computer model shows there could be a volcanic ash.  So this problem is not easily solved, and I suspect that with all the care in the world, the safety of the air space down wind of this volcano is to an extent going to be based on an educated guess.

In the meantime the situation for people trapped on other continents by this dilemma continues to worsen rapidly.

The British Government are negotiating putting an air hub in Spain.  Then requisition ships, and putting them under naval control.  Passengers would the go by ship from Spain to the UK.  Residents of continental Europe could make their way home by rail and road.  This seems like a plan that should be activated immediately.