Fire with fire: Extreme heat, unremitting since June (with more in the offing), has transformed much of Europe into a calamitous cauldron. Unruly wildfire, have destroyed hundreds of thousands of arable acres in France and Spain, the tinderbox also spreading east to Italy and Greece. If climate change is a green scam, the joke’s on all the nations now dealing with blazes burning out of control. What these bizarre and often lethal weather patterns suggest—and no, this is not science fiction—is a future in which whole cities and even parts of entire regions may exist under retractable domes.

Such protective medievalism is perfectly foreseeable as summer temperatures from London to Athens begin to slow down all aspects of social and commercial life. Also foreseeable are “firewall troopers,” men and women trained only and specifically in the art of fighting wildfires. These New Age firemen might eventually come to outnumber the military. This may for now seem the stuff of doomsday video games, but it is quite real. The Earth’s atmosphere, that great parasol against the sun’s full force, has been irreversibly shredded, giving those previously unfamiliar with the solar system a peek at the planets Mercury and Venus, born too close to the sun and largely scorched as a result, the proverb ‘fighting fire with fire’ turned ominously ironic. An overheated lesson in astronomy come home to roost.