Global warming? Who cares?

History is great. Since it always repeats itself, we can use it to find out what'll happen to us if we keep doing the same dumbass things we've been doing for 5000 years. Or, in this case, that the world has been doing in the past 250 million.

From Technology News:

"A slow process of climate warming rather than a comet or asteroid impact led to Earth's biggest mass extinction, according to research. Scientists have found no evidence of a major impact around the time of the event, known as the 'Great Dying,' 250 million years ago. They believe the extinction was the result of global warming due to volcanic eruptions and a drop in oxygen levels....The Great Dying wiped out 90 percent of marine species and nearly three-quarters of animals and plants on land."

90% of life, huh? That seems like an awful lot. And all that from some carbon dioxide that was released from volcanic eruptions. Of course, we don't have to wait for that, we've got plenty of factories and power plants to do it for us. To spare you the detailed scientific analysis, it basically came down to a few degree rise in temperature that killed all the plankton in the ocean. Since that produces the vast majority of the oxygen on the planet, oxygen levels quickly went down, and it created serious hardships, as can be imagined. Furthermore, plankton forms the foundation of the oceanic food chain, so everything that ate anything in the ocean died.

So, unless we all want to die of oxygen deprivation, let's try to clean up our act, eh?