The conclusion came out of a chance meeting in between a zoologist, who has spent a lifetime studying tropical moths, and a group of engineers.

Dr Jeremy Holloway, who is a research associate with the Natural History Museum in London, has just published a paper about a 2007 repeat of a meticulous survey of insect wildlife on Mount Kinabalu in Borneo that was originally undertaken in 1965. What this has shown is that all the zones in which the different moths live has moved 67m higher. This may not sound a lot, except that it is part of a process that is believed to be happening all over the world, and is greater than can be accounted for by global temperature rise alone, which at 0.31 deg C, should result in a rise of only 48m.

Since nobody knows how important the moths are to the rain forest, on which the world depends for CO2 removal, the engineers agreed that what is happening now is similar to taking parts out of a machine whose function is poorly understood and hoping it will keep working.

And since those present at the gathering in Emmanuel College, Cambridge, agreed that global climate change seems to be accelerating, the general opinion was that finding engineering solutions to reducing carbon emissions is becoming increasingly urgent.