What's Up Your Ash?

The chaos theory states that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly's wings can cause a tornado halfway around the world. I don't know what kind of a butterfly caused the volcano to erupt in Iceland (this is a manner of speech, I am not that horrible at Science), but the Eyjafjallajokull volcano seems to have become a butterfly of its own, spreading a very modern species of chaos around the world. The flutter of a butterfly's wings 'cut off' thousands of metallic wings which have remained grounded in various airports around Europe, patiently awaiting further instructions. The crisis seems to have slowly hit Asia, and other continents that are linked to Europe by air:

In a sign of the crisis' impact on Asia's export-driven economies, the Japanese car giant, Nissan, says it is suspending several production lines due to the shortage of parts from Ireland. Honda will also partly halt production. (BBC Website)

Until today, I was only familiar with Iceland due to some of its excellent music exports, but from now on I shall forever remember it as the little country that screwed up the whole world and the vast majority of European airlines. Not that it's really Iceland's fault, but still.

There is still a question that stubbornly refuses to leave my mind, and it is about whether this chaos has not been caused by its source, the 'butterfly' itself, but by the intermediary - humans. Exaggeration, as everyone haply discovered last summer with the oh so morbid (not) spread of swine flu, seems to be embedded in human DNA, as is risk aversion (or else the world would be a mental place). Is Europe exaggerating in insisting that planes are unable to fly? Weren't the test flights enough? Aren't the clear blue skies enough? Aren't the airlines' complaints enough? I am confident they wouldn't be begging to fly if a big bad cloud of ash and debris was up there waiting to swallow their entire fleet and overall existence. I am no expert, but pure logic is telling me that it is not the airport the planes depart from that determines whether they are actually able to fly once they are up in the air. Are those who took the 'lockdown' decision afraid to admit they were not quite right, especially with the impending lawsuits they would be bombarded with by the airlines?

And while the EU remains mainly unresponsive, thousands of travelers remain stranded in foreign countries, or worse, airports, looking for ways to get home. Including my dad.

Has everyone overreacted to a mere flutter of some wings?