Clearing the skies

The eruption of the volcano in southern Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull glacier is one of those remarkable moments, like the destruction of the twin towers in New York or the fall of the Berlin Wall. The skies above London have been clear of aircraft for days and it is possible to hear the sound of birdsong: a timely reminder of just how much we have lost thanks to cheap air travel. Where I live the birds used to sing at night since they had given up trying to compete against the traffic and the roar of jet engines. We are also promised spectacular sunsets. Quite wonderful.

But it is not all good news. The World Health Organisation has warned people suffering from asthma to stay indoors and wear masks if they really have to go out. Are they going to have to do that for 18 months (the length of time the last major eruption lasted in 1821-23)?

The economic impact could be even worse. According to one of the most famous economic papers (written by Robert Fogel) the railways played a major role in America's development in the 19th century. Are the airlines playing a similar role in the global economy in the 21st century? If so the consequence of a prolonged shutdown of airports in northern Europe would be devastating. Coming so soon after the worst economic downturn since the 1930s with most economies at best in a fragile state of recovery, the consequences could be appalling-- especially if Governments set about reigning in public expenditure that was allowed to balloon as a Keynesian remedy to the destruction caused by the bursting of the American housing bubble.

Then there is the environmental impact. Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines is believed to have caused a 0.5°C drop in global temperatures as well as the depletion of atmospheric ozone, when it erupted in 1991.

Right now no-one knows how long this volcano will continue to erupt or how serious the impact will be. Even if it stops today, the affect will last a long time. For one thing it will take weeks to sort out the world's airlines and rescue passengers stranded far from home.

Some of the insurance companies have been throwing their hands up in horror and saying this it is not their fault but an act of God, presenting stranded passengers with the prospect of paying huge sums to get home. As a consequence I wonder if we will ever trust cheap flights again. So now that we know that it is riskier than we imagined, will we continue to dash across the globe in search of a few days of sun, sand and sea? Since we have seen that the skies can be cleared I'd certainly like to see perhaps a month a year in which air traffic is completely banned and all the London airports shut down. I believe there would be massive support for this idea, not least from the environmentalists who worry about air transport exacerbating climate change.

Malthusianism and all that

Malthusians are people who if they discovered a silver mine would go running around panicking about the dark cloud they expected to envelope them.

No matter how good things get they always view it as a sign that things are about to get worse.

Imagine the scene. It is Victorian London and a group of scholars is meeting to debate the forthcoming shortage of horseshoes. We have reached peak horseshoe production, one says. By the middle of the 20th century, perhaps as early as 1940, there will be no more horseshoes. London will come to a standstill. Agriculture will virtually cease!

One of the problems with predicting trends based on past events is that things change.

A century and a half ago there were towns in northern England with hundreds of factory chimneys pouring out an appalling cocktail of poisonous chemicals.

Even thirty years ago there were scare stories about acid rain (as a result of the smoke pollution) destroying the forests of Scandinavia.

But these days in England there are few large factory chimneys and many of those that remain are protected by preservation orders. There is still a lot of talk about acid rain (more than 4 million pages mentioning it can be found listed in Google) but somehow it is not the hot topic it once was.

Another problem with predicting trends is that people are not very good at it. When it comes to building computer models, for example, they seem to need a lot of tweaking to make them work. Just think of dark matter or the Higgs Boson, in astrophysics, for example. These are just correcting factors thrown into the pot to make the maths work.

Of course, just because Malthusians have generally proved to be wrong in the past, it doesn't mean to say they will be wrong in the future. But there does seem to be a pessimistic, fearful streak in human nature that needs to be factored into these discussions.

Sexing up a campaign?

Silvio Berlusconi, would be the richest and most powerful man in Italy, even if he wasn't president. But maybe he would be in jail.

Many believe that his prime motive for becoming a politician was to avoid prosecution.

From a British perspective he appears to be far too much like Mussolini, the war time fascist dictator of Italy. Of course, Berlusconi is no fascist: he just happens to own or run most of the Italian tv stations and use them to promote his business and political interests.

Despite his virtual stranglehold over the media, he has recently been the subject of several sex scandals. Proof positive that Italy still has a flourishing media capable of exposing even the most powerful to scrutiny? Well, maybe.

At the age of 72 it is possible some might suspect that Berlusconi was getting a bit old for the job. Possibly the best way to counter such a slur would be to have a few sex scandals. After all no ordinary septuagenarian gets attacked for having too many lovers.

Certainly the stories seem to have done him no harm. His supporters did extremely well in recent Italian regional elections.

In a general election in the 1860s, Benjamin Disraeli was running against Lord Palmerston, who was still Prime Minister well into his 80s. Palmerston had fathered an illegitimate child with a working class woman in his constituency. Disraeli's campaign manager urged him to reveal Palmerston's shocking debauchery to the electorate. Disraeli refused categorically. "If we do," he answered, "the old man will win a landslide!"

Expect British political spin masters to learn the lesson: look out for unexpected sex scandals.