JK Gatto wrote:
> [...] man will suffer, not the planet.  The planet is self sustaining.  
> No matter what we do, nature will take care of itself and kick our 
> butt in the process.  Oliva

Yes, nature (Gaia) will take care of herself... but on her timescale, 
not ours.  And on her timescale a tick of the clock is thousands of 
years, and a million years is but a comfortable days work.

On /our/ timescale we can make the planet suffer and drive 90% of life
to extinction.  The suffering will be real... and "normal" to Gaia who
has after all been slammed several times by giant asteroids, flipped
climates from steaming the freezing and back dozens of times, sunk and
raised continents, changed the composition of her atomosphere from
life-giving methane to corrosive, toxic oxygen (or how was that again?),
etc., etc.

Lovelock says that humans have given Gaia a fever, but that's probably
childish anthropocentricism.  Gaia doesn't care what her temperature
is, she'll grow an ecology adapted to it, or one that's better at
regulating it.

In a few million years, maximum.  Hardly any time at all.

:-j