Simon,
I am surmising that your statement:
I'm not sure I agree with that article. A quick scan read gives the impression that the earth scientists were actively telling the UK govt/CAA about the threat of volcanos. I can't remember any such thing. I think the problem is more that one group of scientist isn't talking to another group. Earth scientists don't really talk to aerospace scientists, and neither group talks to the government.
Also, a quick literature search doesn't show up much evidence that Vulcanologists were warning of an imminent eruption, the only papers I can find realted to iceland are saying hte opposite.
is concluded from this statement in the article:
"The broader Earth science community had been predicting events around Iceland for some considerable time," Mr Miller said.
"That should have alerted the Civil Aviation Authority at a much, much earlier stage and we should have planned for that event."
As you will note from the article, Mr. Miller is Labour MP Andrew Miller, who's party was in administration during the farce. It can also be drawn from the quote above from Mr. Miller that he is attempting to direct responsibility to the CAA and away from the government failings.
However, this quote is rather telling :
Professor Beddington said: "We didn't expect volcanic ash - that wasn't on our risk assessment. It probably should have been when you look at the relative frequency of volcanic events in Iceland. We should have had that on the risk register".
When asked whether the the government had got it wrong over volcanic ash, Prof Beddington replied: "We failed to predict it was a likely event - absolutely."
The farce has been subject to thread discussions at length and there is not much point in rehashing the whole lot again and run around in circles. If you want to push an agenda then fine, thats up to you, but expect to be called on it.