The word catastrophic is a poor usage in the current context and may be what affects your conclusions about us'n nincompoops. I'm pretty sure no one here believes we'll simply, and suddenly, wake up to a world without snow leopards, Dutch skating ponds, or frozen yoghurt bars. No, we simply see a line on a graph on what appears to be an inexorable, but not inexplicable, upward trend; an upward trend that seems strongly associated with someone drilling a hole in your neck of the woods back in 1859.