Energy Crises and 1816 the Year Without a Summer
In 1815, when a volcanic Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted, Northern American and European continents were affected dramatically. Then these effects became more widely known as “the year without a summer” in 1816 because of the spewed dust and ash from the volcano to the atmosphere, and hampered the coming sunshine. Consequently, millions of people underwent the cool weather conditions and famine, thousands of them migrated, and many unfortunate people died. This tragic event passed into history as “1800 and froze to death” by Vermont residents who were most affected. However, how did only one volcano create an enormous danger for the people and climate? How did the blocked sunshine become prominent for the modern daily-life? The answer is that the spewed parts of the volcano were non-ignorable things because they changed the climate temporarily and dropped the temperature by almost 3 degrees.
All these terminology as changing climate and increasing/decreasing temperatures are similar today’s hot topics in climate and energy fields. Environmentalists support the renewable sources to tackle with the climate change and many governments try to decrease energy independency. For instance, solar energy, one of the popular renewable energy sources, is offered an effective solution for climate change and environmental pollution problems caused by using fossil fuels to produce energy. Although it is the most abundant source, it is not a 7/24 reliable source in every geography. It produces energy as long as the sun is shining. Unfortunately, the technology to store the electricity is not yet commercial and this situation prevents to use solar energy effectively. Due to the unpredictability of solar energy, there can be unbalanced energy in the world in terms of supply and demand.
Energy, especially secure energy, is one of the fundamental necessities of a modern world and it has a highly important effect in order to develop a strong socio-economic structure and to create a welfare among societies. We provide many benefits from the sun for many centuries, from energy to agriculture, but we are not aware of this enough. When the sun taken at once, life is paralyzed as in the case of the 1816. A crisis in energy supply will lead us to a catastrophe. Moreover, there is no guarantee to it will not happen again. The big volcanoes can erupt at any time as Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland resulted cooler temperatures by 0.5 Celsius and disrupted air traffic in 2010. Even if it is unlikely to have any significant impact on climate, they have a potential to produce carbon dioxide. Nevertheless, it must be understood firstly why there are energy crises and secondly how they revolutionize the daily-life. Not just agriculture, heating systems, transportation, but also the literary world such as Mary Shelly’s famous horror novel Frankenstein and Lord Byron’s poem Darkness…
