In the last few days I’ve been trying to get my garden growing, but this year there is something different going on. It seems as though every morning when I begin stirring, it’s a lot colder out than normal for this time of year. All of my eggplant seedlings have died, and none of the young plants are growing like they should. I think it’s the cool nights – down in the forties every night – that are causing the problem.

While pondering the reason for the cooler than normal weather, I recalled seeing several news sources reporting on an exceptional number of volcanoes currently erupting. This along with scientific evidence that the aerosols injected into the atmosphere interfere with the natural warming of the sun by reflecting heat – well that just might be an explanation. If so – and several geologists are predicting more and possibly larger eruptions currently being brought to boil – we might be seeing the beginnings of climate cooling, at least to some degree.

There is geologic evidence of some pretty catastrophic weather fluctuations caused by major eruptions in the past, in fact, probably the most devastating volcanic activity took place in Russia in what they call the Siberian Traps, which fortunately for humanity happened millions of years ago. There were volcanoes that covered a massive area that apparently erupted continually for around two million years and sulfur dioxide polluted the world’s atmosphere to the extent that it caused a great extinction they call the Permian-Triassic extinction that almost wiped out life on the whole planet. There are areas over there where entire cliffs of large basaltic columns that formed as the volcanic material cooled and have stood for millions of years in silent testimony to that near life-ending event.

Much later in the earth’s geologic history, in fact, within recorded history, there have been humongous volcano eruptions that affected the climate for varying periods of time, depending on the size and severity of the event. Tambora, Krakatoa, and Pinatubo come to mind. The “year without a summer” in 1816 was precipitated by the major 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora. This event caused crop failures and food shortages across the whole Northern Hemisphere. The world suffered the coldest summer in human history in 1816.

Today Mount Etna in Sicily continues to burp out Lava and ash, The big Hawaiian shield volcano of Kilauea continues to pump out rivers of lava, Iceland’s volcano near Grindavik is alive and pouring. There are others, such as Karymsky on Kamchatka, Semeru in Indonesia, and Santiaguito in Guatemala to name a few, which are currently active and erupting. Campi Flegrei, a super volcano, Santorini, and Mount Vesuvius have recently undergone earthquake swarms, which some scientists believe to be precursors of volcanic activity. If Campi Flegri has a major eruption, there will be hundreds of thousands if not millions of people in imminent and immediate danger, with unforeseeable – but ever problematic – consequences to the world’s climate.

I’ve mentioned in other posts some of the volcanic calderas such as Campi Flegrei, Lake Toba, Mono Lake, and of course everyone knows about Yellowstone, but any of these dormant monsters could wreak havoc on the whole planet if they were to undergo a major eruption. There are a lot of pieces to what looks like a great geologic puzzle, and even though there are a lot of smart folks studying it, not all of the disciplines of geology, astronomy, and physics are able to connect the dots. For instance, do the guys who study the earth’s geology take into account the effects of solar radiation, especially in light of the undisputed weakening of our magnetic field? It seems like there’s just too much going on for any one discipline to understand how everything connects.

One scientist whom I watch with some degree of regularity says he has evidence, that if properly interpreted suggests that as part of the earth’s magnetic polarity reversal (which we are currently undergoing) there might be an “unlocking” of the crust from the mantle. This means that the entire crust will shift around on the semi-liquid inner parts of the world and all the surface features of the planet will relocate to other places. He says it could even result in entire oceans and continents moving somewhat rapidly and that the axis of rotation – what we now know as the north and south poles – would end up like in the Sahara and the western Pacific or some such. Of course, he thinks great tsunamis would accompany such crustal displacements such as would wash over low areas of entire continents. I’m not a geologist by a long stretch, but increases in volcanic activity around the world such as we are seeing these days would seem to be a reasonable indication of something big going on beneath our feet, whatever it might be.

I guess we can but wait and see what God has in store and how He chooses to end it, but the Bible says the world will end in fire, so volcanoes just might bring about the end, and maybe not in the form of a volcanic winter, but in a hellish nightmare of fire and lava. Volcanoes could indeed account for the darkening of the sun in prophecy, and the burned-down modern-day Babylon. But the details and timing of it all remain a mystery.

Meanwhile I’m going to keep trying to grow eggplants…

MK