It is predicted that global warming could kill more than a quarter of the species on the planet. We have been warned, so why don’t we act? Is it that the problem is too overwhelming, that we are “frozen in the headlights as we watch the juggernaut hurtling nearer” - or do we just not believe it? After all, they can’t even get tomorrow’s weather forecast right. Our Inside Story this week takes a cool look at a hot topic (page 8). Comets were once the omens of change in human affairs. Yet the largest of its kind is ignored by the Victorians in William Dyce’s strange painting (page 16) which carries an eternal message about our place in the cosmos.