&gt; otherwise uber-smart idiots routinely underestimate its miraculous powers<p>The uber-smart idiots who call themselves human race already burned in just 100 years what nature produced during some hundreds of millions (the half of everything ever expected to be found in Earth is already used, according to the estimates), pushing to the atmosphere the results, making the rate of change in the CO2 concentration which certainly never happened since life exists on the planet. No other natural process would be able to pump half of all fluid hydrocarbon material out out the depths of the Earth crust and burn it in just hundred years.<p>One Russian professor half-joked that maybe the only reason why humans evolved, from the point of view of the nature, is to burn the hydrocarbons and get extinct, or that at least that is what is most probably going to happen.