Sometimes, when you're in a hole, it's best to stop digging. This applies as much to messing with the climate as anything else, except even more so. Jane Haliwell put her head in her hands. To tell the truth, she was still in shock. All the samples she had taken from inside and around the lab contained the enigmatic spheres in huge numbers. She had only had a brief time to think about the implications, but she was pretty sure already what was going on. For the first time in the history of the world, it was literally raining carbon. Long before it stopped, the guilty would pay, but so would the innocent...

Bill McGuire is an academic, blogger, broadcaster and established popular science and speculative fiction writer. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London, a Co-director of the New Weather Institute and a Patron of Scientists for Global Responsibility. He writes regularly for Prospect magazine and The Guardian, and has also written for many other newspapers and science magazines including The Times, The Observer, The Daily Express, The Daily Mail, New Scientist and Science Focus. He blogs for Extinction Rebellion, the New Weather Institute, Scientists for Global Responsibility and Operation Noah. He has contributed to many television and radio programmes and presented two BBC Radio 4 series, Disasters in Waiting and Scientists Under Pressure, and the End of the World Reports on Channel 5 and Sky News. Most recently, he was Series Consultant for National Geographic’s X-Ray the Earth. Bill lives in the Peak District.