An ash cloud is haunting Europe — and disrupting air travel severely. Which makes me happy, in a way. Well, it is a bit of a nuisance for those stranded because of it (which includes my parents in Istanbul). But, as the graphic on the right points out in a humorous way, grounding Europe’s planes significantly reduces CO2 emissions, much more than the volcano is emitting itself. Actually, I suspect the graphic highly unterrepresents the effect, as planes actually have a much higher climate impact than the one generated just by their CO2 emissions (see e.g. here), and due to sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions, the net warming due to the eruption will probably be negative. But who cares, I do not want to advocate to build more volcanoes here.
However, one has to question, why are so many people relying on air travel to such a high degree? Back in December 2009, when I was forced to take the ferry to get back to the continent from England because the Eurostar was impeded by a tunnel fire, I remember some people complaining that Eurostar had “not told them that they could take the ferry” — i.e. they seemed to be unaware of this mode of transportation. It surprised me. Many people do however seem to be even worse off than that — not even being aware that trains do exist. Well, you can get around in Europe pretty well using those. Admitted, not all countries have a decent high-speed network, and only those of few countries are well interconnected. It would be nice if this would get better in the future. Still, within one or maximum two days, you can get nearly anywhere. I did if between Naples and Cambridge recently, it was a nice and pleasant train trip. We really need to make trains cheaper, though…
If you want to learn anything from this, learn about other modes of transportation. It is better for our planet.