JaggedEdge, how do you account for atmospheric methane having risen 145% in the last century? Fossil fuel production is a documented cause of this, and the past century has seen a steady explosion in human fussil fuel consumption, but there couldn't be any kind of link, right?

There's plenty of evidence, if you didn't immediately begin thinking of how to contradict it and instead considered it for thirty seconds. Anything's "easily refutable" if you have the right bias

May I ask what motive institutions would have for fabricating such an uncomfortable problem that will be so expensive to remedy? The corporate giants don't exactly benefit from the idea that their practices are doing the earth great harm. The conservative/Republican strategy is to pretend that there is no problem, and the libertarians tend to side with them on this one. Typically I'm for the libertarian view, but this is probably the lamest and most irrational conspiracy theory ever devised.

JaggedEdge, you can scream "I AM RIGHT" to the rafters; doesn't make it so. This is far too complex an issue to simply be dismised...I also have perused the evidence and have found at least significant portions of it to be solid.

My point about a pre-emptive cleanse was that unless I grossly overestimate your cognitive faculties, you can't possibly believe that humans can continue their vicious rape of the earth and its natural resources without consequences cropping up sooner or later, even if they haven't already. The Native Americans analogy is a seriously patchy one, because there is very little similarity between strategic, partial pre-colonial deforestation by peoples who had at least a vestige of respect for the earth, and the debacle we see now by profit-hungry industries who don't give a fuck if the earth goes up in flames so long as they can get some kind of monopoly on the fire-hoses.