The volcanic Mt Rainier is grumbling. But it’s not what you think. At least not yet.

According to reports from the Seattle Times, the glaciers atop Rainier have melted to the point where they are becoming unstable. Particularly so with Tahoma Glacier which, all throughout July to mid August, has emitted large floods of muddy, ice-choked water. Tahoma sent its floods rumbling down the mountainsides, filling streams and rivers with roiling, brown outflows.

These glacier outburst floods issuing from Rainier have packed quite a punch. They’ve been strong enough to shake the earth, setting off seismographs in the region of Rainier. It’s a shaking and quaking that’s tumbled boulders down the mountainside, gouged out new flood channels and smashed great swaths of trees.

(Over recent months, the Tahoma Glacier on the southwestern face of Mt. Rainier has been issuing large flows of glacial outburst material. Those familiar with…

(Last week’s Calbuco eruption in Chile spews massive cloud of ash and sets off a fireworks display of volcanic lightning. Image source: IFLScience.)

If you look at the geological record of the end of the last ice age, there’s something that crops up that’s more than a little bit disturbing. The approximate 10,000 year period in which 4 degrees Celsius of warming took place was also punctuated by a rash of intense volcanic activity, earthquakes and tsunamis.

It was a time of extraordinary geophysical changes that not only saw the, sometimes catastrophic, melting of massive ice sheets and extreme rises in sea level — it also saw severe geological upheaval. In one region alone — Iceland — instances of volcanic eruption increased 30-50 fold during a period starting about 12,000 years ago. Overall, global spikes in volcanism began near the start of major melt events at around 18,000…

On Friday, amidst temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and at a time when California is now entering its fifth year of drought in a decade when seven out of the last ten years have been drought years, a rapidly growing and dangerous wildfire erupted in the hills north of Los Angeles.

(Sand Fire looms over Santa Clarita, California. Video source: Sand Fire Time Lapse.)

The Sand Fire, which some firefighters are calling practically unprecedented, sparked before typical wildfire season peak and began a rapid spread that consumed 10,000 acres per day from Friday through early Monday. Nearly 3,000 firefighters scrambled to gain a foothold against the blaze, but were somewhat unprepared as contracted water-bomb aircraft from Canada won’t be available until next month, during what is usually the worst part of fire season. The aircraft assistance was planned as extra fire-suppression capability for Santa Clarita, but typical fire…

A friend asked me how I would respond to someone who wrote this: “Hunters started the conservation movement in the early part of the last century, and in the United States are the largest financially contributing group to Wildlife Restoration and Conservation.”

My answer?: The only reason hunters got involved is that they’d overhunted so many species practically to extinction and they wanted to save their sport. John Muir and others were around in the 1800s, selflessly speaking for wildlife and against hunting.

And, as another commenter to this blog just pointed out: “The stark reality is this: National Wildlife “Refuges” were originally set up to serve as “duck factories” for the hunting & trapping industries, along with opportunities for livestock grazing.”

Before hunters go around tooting their own horns, they should consider the motives behind their actions. If they’re ultimately self-serving, they are not necessarily all that praiseworthy. Don’t let hunters ‘shit you, an overblown sense of entitlement…

You’ll never catch me making compromises by condoning the lesser of two evils or playing one type of wildlife killer off another.  I used to fish, but I don’t go around defending fishing while attacking hunting.

At the same time, I don’t hate myself for having gone along with a locally popular activity before finally seeing that fishing is not a victimless sport. “Hate” is not a word I use lightly; I reserve my hatred for those who get off on the killing and will never see the light or change their ways.

Farley Mowat used to be a hunter, I don’t “hate” him. My uncle and my wife’s father were hunters, but I didn’t hate them. I live where the vast majority of my neighbors and coworkers are hunters, but not all of them are rabid, Ted Nugent-types with lifetime subscriptions to wildlife snuff magazines. They just do it for the same stupid reasons I…