On Jan 9, 5:09*pm, Scott wrote:
Tom Gardner wrote:

Um, which planet earth do you live on? There have
been multiple "extinction events" which take all of 5
seconds to find on wackypedia.

Over billions of years, yes? *How long have we been burning fossil
fuels? *200 years perhaps?

You've forgotten the context in which I made my point.
Hence your points are true but irrelevant.


In particular, the "clathrate gun hypothesis" is particularly
relevant.
* ...
* However there is stronger evidence that runaway methane
* clathrate breakdown may have caused drastic alteration of
* the ocean environment and the atmosphere of earth on a
* number of occasions in the past, over timescales of tens
* of thousands of years; most notably in connection with the
* Permian extinction event, when 96% of all marine species
* became extinct 251 million years ago.

And human use of fossils fuels couldn't have caused that. *We weren't
using coal to generate electricity or burning gas for our cars 251
million years ago.

Correct but irrelevant to the context in which I made my point.

Sounds pretty drastic to me!

But it was caused by nature, not interfering humans...

True. So what.