I guess Bush paid off the Russians to leave our refineries alone...

Someone said:

"it's quite arrogant to believe that man can **** up a planet in 100 years, a planet that's existed for BILLIONS of years.

this is so laughable."

There's no analysis in this statement. More like whistling in the dark.

Man can certainly significantly affect animal species that have existed for 200 to 300 million years, with relatively little effort - actually just incidentally to our other activities. We could do an even better job if we really worked at it. How many years of concentrated effort would it take to decimate ancient (pre-dinosaur) species like sea turtles and sharks?

I think man could significantly change the planet's weather patterns in a few years, if we tried. Suppose we placed and then detonated a couple thousand nuclear warheads in the polar ice caps, breaking free a large portion of the ice to drift to warmer water, where they would melt, raise sea levels, lower ocean temperature, and even alter ocean currents.