Earth Day 2010

Happy Earth Day to all Earthlings!!

Forty years after the first Earth Day, the world is in greater peril than ever. While climate change is the greatest challenge of our time, it also presents the greatest opportunity – an unprecedented opportunity to build a healthy, prosperous, clean energy economy now and for the future.

Earth Day 2010 can be a turning point to advance climate policy, energy efficiency, renewable energy and green jobs. Earth Day Network is galvanizing millions who make personal commitments to sustainability. Earth Day 2010 is a pivotal opportunity for individuals, corporations and governments to join together and create a global green economy. Join the more than one billion people in 190 countries that are taking action for Earth Day.

On another note, regarding the crisis in Europe caused by the volcano eruption at Iceland with its hard to pronounce volcano's name, Eyjafjallajokull also affected us at Labquip. Our principal who was supposed to come to Singapore has to postpone his flight due to the closure of air space in major parts in Europe.
 
Airlines toted up losses topping $2 billion and struggled to get hundreds of thousands of travelers back home Wednesday after a week of crippled air travel, as questions and recriminations erupted over Europe's chaotic response to the volcanic ash cloud.


Civil aviation authorities defended their decisions to ground fleets and close the skies — and later to reopen them — against heated charges by airline chiefs that the decisions were based on flawed data or unsubstantiated fears.
The aviation crisis sparked by a volcanic eruption in Iceland left millions in flightless limbo, created debilitating losses for airlines and other industries and even threatened Europe's economic recovery. An aviation group called the financial fallout worse than the three-day worldwide shutdown after the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.

It was a lesson in mankind's dependency on air travel, the vulnerability of a vital industry, and the confusion that can ensue when each nation decides for itself how to handle a problem that crosses borders.

The air space over most of Europe opened Wednesday after the vast, invisible ash-laden cloud dispersed to levels deemed safe. Restrictions remained over parts of Britain, Ireland, France and the Scandinavian countries.

Electronic boards in Europe's biggest hubs — London's Heathrow, Paris' Charles de Gaulle and Germany's airport at Frankfurt — showed about 80 percent of flights on schedule as airlines began filling vacant seats with those who had been stranded for days. But with 102,000 flights scrapped worldwide over the last week, it could take over a week to get everyone home.

In Iceland, the volcano under the Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH-lah-yer-kuhl) remained active Wednesday — throwing magma chunks the size of cars into the air, bubbling lava and producing tremors. But it was not shooting ash and smoke four to six miles (6 to 10 kilometers) into the air like it did previously.
Civil aviation officials said their decision to reopen terminals where thousands of weary travelers had camped out was based on science, not on the undeniable pressure put on them by the airlines.
Despite their protests, the timing of some reopenings seemed dictated by airlines' commercial pressures.
The European decision to partially reopen airspace did not come until the fifth day of the crisis, when transport ministers of the affected states met by teleconference. The plan carved up the sky into relative zones of safety where the flight ban remained in place or was lifted according to the concentration of ash.