This year has witnessed signs of the long-predicted global warming: a scorching summer in Europe; a series of catastrophic hurricanes in the Caribbean and in Texas; and melting polar ice caps and glaciers.

"Killer heatwaves are set for a dramatic rise by 2100" the local media reported on 22 June. Another headline dealt with similar news: "Sweltering planet braces for deadly heat shocks" (25 September).

Former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon had warned delegates at the World Climate Conference in 2009 that, "Our foot is stuck on the accelerator and we are heading towards an abyss." He said that many of the "more distant scenarios" predicted by scientists were "happening now".

In 2006, James Lovelock, the scientist who came up with the now widely accepted Gaia theory that the earth functions as a single, safe-sustaining organism, predicted a planetary wipeout. "A hot earth couldn't support much over 500 million" (of its six billion people).

In his book The last generation, Fred Pearce believes that nature's revenge on us for our disrespect towards hers will be swift and terrifying, and that it will show no mercy.

We live in an impersonal universe, as Stanley Kubrick, the producer and director of 2001: A Space Odyssey observed: "The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent."

John Guillaumier

St Julian's