The other night I dreamt that the earth’s atmosphere spontaneously boiled away. Magnificent special effects, the swirls of white carrying the blue sky into the blackness of space, but then we were all still there, standing around, wondering at it, talking about it. Shouldn’t we be dead of asphyxiation? I wondered. And wouldn’t the temperature be swinging wildly from day to night? So I checked my phone, as one does, and indeed Weather Underground predicted a high of 180°F the next day.