Ideaplants

Whilst the volcano Eyjafjallajökull in Island has impacted the lives of millions of travellers over the last days and cost airlines over 200 billion Euros per day. Non-volcanologists do not spend much time on considering environmental impacts of this event.


Experts confirm that this volcano eruption will not have any sever impact on our climate. However, I wonder if next to the airline crisis there is really no environmental impact of 140 million cubic metres of material spreading in the atmosphere.


About 1,900 volcanoes on Earth are considered active in the world. Something we certainly do not have on our radar in our day to day routine.


This might sound a bit philosophical: Since Vulcanos were there before us – shouldn’t they consider us as a threat rather than the other way around?


More seriously: As David Mc Candless points out in his blog Information is Beautiful, the amount of CO2 emissions that were prevented by the volcano eruption is significantly higher than the CO2 that the Volcano emitted.


As Michael McCarthy and Philip Boucher state in The Independent today, the erruption gave scientists the opportunity to prove the air pollution impact the aviation industry has around UK airports as figures dropped significantly during the last days.


We surely need to keep in mind that the root of climate change is not CO2 emissions but our demands (in this case for means of transport). This event hopefully makes some of us realize this connection > Let’s not forget that it is not a greener aviation industry and well treated passengers that will solve the climate change issue.


BBC News has developed a guide showing some of the world’s key volcanoes: