Just a sidenote on Sean Archer’s review of Annalee Newitz’s “Four Lost Cities”. Sean opines that the fate of Pompeii, destroyed by a volcanic eruption, is a reminder to people today of the importance of climate change. Well, yes, it is, but a very different kind of climate change from the global warming that people are concerned with today. For example, the volcanic eruptions in Iceland in the summer of 1783, in a chain of volcanoes that came to be called Laki. “As the ash and gases from the eruption entered the high layers of the atmosphere, they absorbed moisture and sunlight, changing the climate for years to come. From 1783 to 1785 accounts from both Japan and America describe terrible droughts, exceptional cold winters, and disastrous floods. In Europe, the exceptionally hot summer of 1783 was followed by long and harsh winters.” Without these volcanic eruptions, there might never have been a French Revolution in 1789. The thing is, we really don’t know when such unusual volcanic activity, cooling the earth for years to come, is likely to take place, so all of this fatalistic certainty about global warming between now and 2030 in the absence of drastic measures is misguided. If we got a heavy dose of volcanic activity between now and 2030, we might instead have substantial global cooling. Next month, is the book panel going to be discussing Bjorn Lomberg’s new book, “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet?” It really should.