Skies darkened, temperatures plunged, crops failed, and disease and famine ensued. These and other strange phenomena afflicted people around the world in 1816, known as "The Year without a Summer." We now know that the great eruption of Mount Tambora, in Indonesia, the previous year had triggered these changes. With Mount Tambora rumbling again this month, are we about to experience another global catastrophe?

Before we answer that, let's examine the 1815 eruption and its remarkable effects. Mount Tambora became restless in 1812 and in April 1815 produced a series of major explosions that peaked on April 10-11. Large ash plumes rose to great heights, and pyroclastic flows swept down the flanks for several days, wiping out entire villages. When the pyroclastic flows reached the sea, they triggered tsunamis that further devastated the surrounding areas.

The eruption was massive, rated as a 7 on the Volcanic Explosivity Scale of 0-8. By comparison, the volume of magma it erupted was about 40 times greater than that of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens and 10 times greater than that of the 1991 eruption of Pinatubo.

Sakurajima (桜島?) is an active composite volcano (stratovolcano) and a former island (now connected to the mainland) of the same name in Kagoshima Prefecture in Kyūshū, Japan. The lava flows of the 1914 eruption caused the former island to be connected with the Osumi Peninsula.

The volcanic activity still continues, dropping large amounts of volcanic ash on the surroundings. Earlier eruptions built the white sands highlands in the region.

The Mount Etna volcano in Sicily, Italy, erupted for the fifteenth time this year late on Wednesday.

Throughout 2011, activity at Sicily's Mount Etna has been characterised by paroxysms: short, violent bursts of activity. Each event has included volcanic tremors, ash emissions, and lava flows centered around the New Southeast Crater, just below the summit.

Satellite imagery suggests that the eruption of Nabro Volcano in northeast Africa, which began in June 2011, is continuing.

The volcano is located on the edge of the Danakil Desert, a remote and sparsely populated area on the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia, and few eyewitness accounts of the eruption are available.

Orbiting instruments such as the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) aboard Earth Observing-1 (EO-1), which acquired these images, may be the only reliable way to monitor Nabro.

The images show the volcano in false-color (top) and natural-color (lower) on September 28, 2011. Heat from vents in Nabro's central crater is visible as a red glow in the false-color image. Another hotspot about 1,300 meters (4,600 feet) south of the vents reveals an active lava flow. A pale halo surrounding the vents indicates the presence of a tenuous volcanic plume. South of Nabro's crater, the dark, nearly black areas are coated with ash so thick it completely covers the sparse vegetation. On either side of this region is a thinner layer of ash with some bright green vegetation (exaggerated in false-color) poking through.

Several Asian countries reeling under floods after some of wildest weather this summer

A tropical storm barreled toward Vietnam Friday, forcing 20,000 people to be evacuated, as the Philippines braced for a new typhoon and several Asian countries reeled under floods after some of the wildest weather this summer.

Prolonged monsoon flooding, typhoons and storms have wreaked untold havoc in the region, leaving more than 600 people dead or missing in India, Thailand, Philippines, Japan, China, Pakistan and Vietnam in the last four months. In India alone, the damage is estimated to be worth $1 billion, with the worst-hit Orissa state accounting for $726 million.

The state-run Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology said several studies suggest an intensification of the Asian summer monsoon rainfall with increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Still, it is not clear that this is entirely because of climate change, especially in India, it said.

After pummeling the Philippines and China this week, Typhoon Nesat was downgraded to tropical storm as it headed toward Vietnam where it was expected to make landfall later Friday with sustained wind speeds of up to 73 mph, according to the national weather forecasting center.

At least 150 people in Cambodia and southern Vietnam have died in the worst flooding along the Mekong River in 11 years after heavy rain swamped homes, washed away bridges and forced thousands of people to evacuate.

Worse could be in store if Typhoon Nesat, which killed at least 39 people in China this week and plowed into northern Vietnam on Friday, dumps rain deep enough inland to further swell the Mekong.

Flooding across the fertile Mekong Delta helped drive rice prices to a three-year high in Vietnam this week, traders said, which will add to inflation problems. The delta produces more than half of Vietnam's rice and 90 percent of its exportable grain.

In Cambodia, 141 people have died since August 13 due to Mekong flooding and flash floods, the Cambodian National Disaster Management Committee said.

"Now, more than 200,000 hectares (494,200 acres) of our rice paddies are under water but we don't yet know the full extent of the damage," said Keo Vy, deputy information director at the National Disaster Management Committee.

Ahead of a conference on the psychology of climate change denial, Brendan O'Neill says green authoritarians are treating debate as a disorder.

A few months ago, for a joke, I set up a Facebook group called 'Climate change denial is a mental disorder'. It's a satirical campaigning hub for people who think that climate change denial should be recognised as a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association, and that its sufferers - who probably engage in 'regular chanting and intensive brainwashing sessions in cult-like surroundings' - should be offered 'eco-lobotomies' to remove 'the denying part of their brain'. The group now has 42 members. Yes, some have signed up because they get the joke, but others are serious subscribers to the denial-as-insanity idea. 'Thank God I've found this group', says one new member, who is sick of other Facebook groups being 'hijacked' by unhinged eco-sceptics.

The idea that 'climate change denial' is a psychological disorder - the product of a spiteful, willful or simply in-built neural inability to face up to the catastrophe of global warming - is becoming more and more popular amongst green-leaning activists and academics. And nothing better sums up the elitism and authoritarianism of the environmentalist lobby than its psychologisation of dissent. The labeling of any criticism of the politics of global warming, first as 'denial', and now as evidence of mass psychological instability, is an attempt to write off all critics and sceptics as deranged, and to lay the ground for inevitable authoritarian solutions to the problem of climate change. Historically, only the most illiberal and misanthropic regimes have treated disagreement and debate as signs of mental ill-health.

This weekend, the University of West England is hosting a major conference on climate change denial. Strikingly, it's being organised by the university's Centre for Psycho-Social Studies. It will be a gathering of those from the top of society - 'psychotherapists, social researchers, climate change activists, eco-psychologists' - who will analyse those at the bottom of society, as if we were so many flitting, irrational amoeba under an eco-microscope. The organisers say the conference will explore how 'denial' is a product of both 'addiction and consumption' and is the 'consequence of living in a perverse culture which encourages collusion, complacency and irresponsibility' (1). It is a testament to the dumbed-down, debate-phobic nature of the modern academy that a conference is being held not to explore ideas - to interrogate, analyse and fight over them - but to tag them as perverse.

Okay, this picture is funny, but some take the comparison seriously.

The Wall Street Journal had an article a few months back when Harold Camping predicted the end of the world would occur on May 21, 2011, called Camping the "Christian Al Gore." Why?

Because the former Vice President is more and more being seen as part of a new doomsday cult that has grown out of the Green movement.

While there are environmental issues we should be concerned about, as Marc Morano of Climate Depot pointed out on my radio show this week , some Green devotees are using the movement to promote a radical agenda that includes population control, and exploiting people of color in third world countries, insisting on putting solar panels on grass huts!

Ophelia became the fourth hurricane of the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season Thursday afternoon.

Hurricane Ophelia was about 770 miles south-southeast of Bermuda at 5 p.m. Maximum sustained winds were 75 mph with higher gusts. Ophelia is a Category 1 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. Additional strengthening is possible, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Movement was to the north-northwest at about 9 mph. A tropical storm watch is in effect for Bermuda. Hurricane force winds extend outward up to 25 miles from the center. Tropical storm force winds extend outward up to 175 miles.

The NHC says tropical storm force winds are possible in Bermuda starting late Saturday.

Seismologist says 'seismic swarm' should be investigated

B.C.'s energy regulator is investigating a cluster of earthquakes in a busy gas drilling area of the province, CBC News has learned.

Since 2009, more than 30 earthquakes have been registered in the Horn River area, a region that has also seen extensive drilling and a process called hydraulic fracturing used by companies extracting natural gas.

Hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, involves injecting a pressurized mix of water and other substances into the rock to release trapped natural gas. The B.C. Oil and Gas Commission said it has not identified a direct link between hydraulic fracturing and the seismic activity, but is examining recent data collected from Horn River.

The coincidence of earthquakes and gas exploration warrants further investigation, said University of Calgary seismologist David Eaton.

"This would fall within the descriptor of a seismic swarm," Eaton told CBC News. "I think, you know, any links to hydrocarbon extraction of fluid injection would be really interesting."