[old salty]

Considering that the Earth has been through five "known" mass extinction periods, and several ice ages, I would say that the Earth has an ability to destroy and rebuild itself without the aide of humans, cars, industrial revolutions, CO2, or whatever buzz word of the week is the sole cause of irreversible destruction. Not to mention that without humans, the Earth also managed to put into extinction just about 99% of all animal and plant species that have ever existed.

I can go into my buddy's backyard in Independence, Kentucky, overturn just about any stone, and find a coral fossil. Marine fossils have been found at some of the highest mountain peaks of the world.

The Great Barrier Reef wasn't always so great. In fact, every ice age has lowered the ocean levels to the point where the entire reef died from exposure to the sun. Every time the ice age ends and the water returns, the reef regrows on top of the old reef, gets larger, and is even more abundant with life. What you see now is the fourth generation.


So, to answer your questions, the answers are yes to them all. The world would be in peril, the animals would be in peril, as would the reefs, and rain forests. This is nature and it could care less about human feelings. Consider that the location of some of the worlds largest oil reserves (Middle East) are located in what we see as deserts; barren waste lands. They weren't always deserts, hence all of the oil.