"far more than a hot day and wet feet"

peristaltor wrote a good summary post about mass extinctions (90+%) and their relation to global warming; scary stuff! He is summarizing things drawn from several sources, which I will have to look into separately.

I followed the link to one of his sources, an interview with the Chief Scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center, from which the subject line is drawn, and that gives even more stuff to think about (much of it going considerably beyond the energy and extinction question).

Both are highly recommended reads; the former takes less time to get through, but the latter is somewhat jaw-dropping in scope.