“Airlines Blame Flawed Computer Modelling For Up To $1.7 Billion Loss“. Anthony Watts rounds up some like-minded comments about the impact of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption. Apparently gubmints are ruining everything and computer models are all flawed.

The IATA, a lobby group for the airline industry, would have preferred to roll the dice and keep flying through the ash clouds from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland. The astroturf Global Warming Policy Foundation says ‘right on, them gubmits can’t tell us what to do!’

The GWFP is actually just co-opting this topic to declare that they want “to bring reason, integrity and balance to a climate debate that has become seriously unbalanced, irrationally alarmist, and all too often depressingly intolerant”. We have to “balance between risk and reward“, in this instance, the airline’s profits versus their passenger’s lives. Just like coal and oil company profits have to be ‘balanced’.

The dangers of flying through an ash cloud. Source: BBC News.

What’s happening in the air? The criticized Numerical Atmospheric-dispersion Modelling Environment (NAME) has been updated with new safety thresholds based on better detection and risk assessments. Commercial flight has resumed with much smaller “no-fly” zones.

Denialists are trying to paint this as another example of a computer modeling failure, but the system, which accurately modeled the ash dispersion, has simply been updated with better risk analysis.