I really, REALLY, wish you hadn't posted this. My mind shudders at the comparisons that can be made to other, "eco-killers".

by a significant reduction of the human burden on the planet. How that might happen is an open question, but I don't think humans have the necessary lifting power any more - short of triggering a global thermonuclear winter. Absent that, it's going to be up to Mother Nature to decide how she wants to prune the bush.

Remember, if it wasn't for famine, disease and war, we'd have gone extinct already.

a full-on nuclear holocaust.

Global thermonuclear war, or a disintegration of techno-industrial civilization due to climate change. Not much of a choice really - they both seem to end up at much the same place.

The huge polar vortex has been a more or less stationary feature over the center of the country for the last couple of months. It occured to me that If it were to persist through the spring and into summer it would blow away the "normal variability" argument, and posibly arouse the public.. Some catastrophe of that magnitude is inevitable, probably sooner rather than later. Events may even bring about the spiritual turnover you've talked about.

PLAGUE!!! I guess it would have to take out at least 75% of us if it has any hope of sparing the rest of the species we're wiping out of existence forever.

This is what I'm hoping for. I'm afraid of what it would mean for all the nuclear reactors we'll leave running, and all the "farmed" animals who'll die. But starving to death would be nicer than the way we'd kill them anyway.

I'm totally holding out for disease, it's the planet's best hope!!