Landslides and earthquakes are even more dangerous now than in the past because around half of the world's population now live-in cities. Many people in cities and towns in South America and Asia are at risk from landslides. In April 2017,the city of Mocoa in Colombia was hit by a landslide, leaving many dead and injured. A great number of people live at risk from earthquakes too. These have claimed more than 1.6 million lives in the last hundred years.
Most disaster experts believe that things could get a lot worse. Professor Hou Ming of Peking University studies volcanoes. He warns that the world has not seen the worst yet. The worst eruption in human history was probably Mt Tambora in 1815,in Indonesia. Dust from the volcano rolled across the Earth's skies. There was no summer in Europe and America the following year. But evidence shows that 73,000 years ago there was a much greater eruption. "It reduced temperatures by maybe 6℃ in some places, and the whole planet was sent into winter for years. And there are about two of these events every 100,000 years..."
Why is Mt Tambora mentioned in the text?
