); } else { // } with John Maunder
Some of the answers to the complexities of the climate system are given in my recently published book
Fifteen
The following are extracts are from pages 203- 207.
The 19th Century weather disaster - dubbed “The Year Without a Summer” - happened in 1816, when the weather in Europe and North America took a bizarre turn which resulted in widespread crop failures and famine.
On April 10, 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia produced the largest eruption known on the planet during the last 10,000 years. The volcano erupted more than 50 cubic kilometres of magma. The eruption produced global climatic effects and killed more than 100,000 people, directly and indirectly. Pyroclastic flows reached the sea on all sides of the peninsula, and heavy tephra fall devastated croplands, causing an estimated 60,000 fatalities. Entire villages were buried under thick pumice deposits. Some of the settlements have recently been brought back to light by archaeological excavations, making a site called ‘Pompeii of Indonesia’. While the death toll of people living on Sumbawa and surrounding coastal areas was high enough, even more fatalities can be attributed to an indirect effect of global climate deterioration after the eruption.
Part 2 of Sherelle Duckworth s contribution to our Critical Race Theory series. Sherelle Ducksworth Image: Canva We are launching a series on Critical Race Theory. It’s an important conversation today, since many are using the description and meaning different things. At the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center, we are committed to help Christians know and engage the culture with biblical discernment, so we are launching a conversation with, well, different views. As Christians, we want to think through these things together, and the series will include not just one opinion, but several. We started with a positive framing, and will include others who are more negative, and some in the middle. All will come from evangelicals. And, it is important that we hear from people of color, and, in this series, not all people of color will agree. It’s a conversation mature, Christ-like, and God-honoring. We hope it serves you and your church well.
Abstract This essay gives a brief overview of the events of 26-27 August 1883, when the volcanic island of Krakatoa in Indonesia exploded; it generated tsunamis which killed over 36,000 people, was heard 3,000 miles away, and produced measurable changes in sea level and air pressure across the world. The essay then discusses the findings of the Royal Society’s Report on Krakatoa, and the reports in the periodical press of lurid sunsets resulting from Krakatoa’s dust moving through the atmosphere. It closes by examining literature inspired by Krakatoa, including a letter by Gerard Manley Hopkins, a poem by Alfred Tennyson, and novels by R. M. Ballantyne and M. P. Shiel.