Act of God, or Act of Nature: The Insurance Industry gets Religion

While I appreciate that the ash cloud covering much of the UK and Europe is causing chaos for anyone unfortunate enough to have been traveling I must say that sitting in my back garden in West London and actually hearing the buzz of bees and the singing of birds was almost a revelation-or at least a journey back in time to when there were not over 2000 flights a day in and out of Heathrow.

But staying on theme I would like to call it a revelation, and just for kicks I would throw in the miracle of time travel!

More importantly however has been the discussion of the small print wording of insurance contracts to determine if a specific policy is enforceable or not due to a volcanic eruption. In the UK there are two terms to define such events. Some policies exclude "Acts of God"(AoG), others "Acts of Nature"(AoN).

So if your policy excludes AoN, you are stuffed for sure. But if it excludes AoG, you can argue that God had nothing to do with it-it is a volcano after all, and where's my compensation.
The insurance companies are of course quick to put on their cloaks of religion and make Nature subservient to God, which means volcanoes are God's work, and your AoG Policy means you aren't getting reimbursed. For the followers of Richard Dawkins I guess you could also get into a discussion as to whether there is a God who acts at all, but I'll leave that for the moment.

Another aside that no one seems to focus on. Over the weekend a German Television Weather reporter casually mentioned that due to the lack of planes and therefore the lack of vapour trails that the days would be hotter, and the nights colder.

Wait a minute. There are so many airplanes that their vapour trails act to block out the sun's rays during the day and to keep whatever warmth has developed during the day from dispersing at night!

That seems pretty conclusive that humans are affecting the environment...