Except, perhaps, by the standards of today’s US presidential candidates, George W Bush has never seemed intellectually formidable. He did, however, once say something wise: in 2005 Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans, convinced him that ‘nature is an awesome force’, outclassing his own homeland as the world’s greatest superpower. 

It is time someone else told the truth about environmental history. Human irresponsibility seems as lethal as when Pandora opened her box, but however much we try to slow down our rush towards self-destruction, nature has already anticipated the outcome. Even if we discount such imponderables as asteroid attacks, solar electromagnetic storms and seismic convulsions, the threats that face us are beyond our control. Private Frazer was probably right. We are all doomed – unless we are lucky enough to invoke new technologies without inviting unintended consequences. 

We can make the globe warmer but we can’t cool it down. Supposed experts forget or overlook the fact that the climate of Earth depends overwhelmingly on the sun – a star too distant and powerful for humans to affect it. In a spell of uncharacteristically low sunspot activity