My New Year began with four days of non-stop, pounding rain. That is always enough to trigger dark moods, but I was nudged further towards thoughts of the apocalypse by the book, Our Final Hour, a rumination on the ways mankind is threatening its own survival, that of the Earth and perhaps even the cosmos.
It is a sombre and scary assessment. Author Martin Rees concludes: 'The odds are no better than 50-50 that our present civilisation on Earth will survive to the end of our present century ... Through malign intent, or just through misadventure, 21st century technology could jeopardise life's potential, foreclosing its human and post-human future.'
The threat is growing because science is putting more power in the hands of individuals and experts; because societies are becoming more integrated, more interdependent and more dependent on - and hence more vulnerable to - technology; and because communications amplify the psychological repercussions of disasters and mistakes.
It would be tempting to dismiss Rees as just another crank. But he is a Royal Society professor at Cambridge University, and Britain's Astronomer Royal. He is a leading authority on black holes and other astronomical phenomenon.
If those credentials are not convincing enough, his evidence and logic should be. History says we should take his complaint seriously. Governments have inflicted unprecedented destruction. Two world wars and their aftermath resulted in the loss of 187 million lives through war, massacre, persecution or policy-induced famine, making the 20th century the first in which more people died as a result of policy decisions than natural disasters.
Then, add the damage done by everyday living. Even though governments prefer to deny it, there is a consensus in the scientific community that human behaviour is altering the Earth's climate. Species are dying at perhaps 100 to 1,000 times the historical rate, leading some biologists to call this 'the sixth extinction', equating this era with that which wiped out the dinosaurs.
Not to be too blase about it, we have heard all this before. What distinguishes Rees' work is the hard eye he takes to the efforts of fellow scientists - and here he gets plain scary. Rees believes that the untrammeled pursuit of science is dangerous, and that civilisation runs risks it would never tolerate if we appreciated the possible consequences.