> Its a balanced system that has taken millions of years to develop, and we might
> just be putting one huge oily spanner in the works...

There you go again with the same flawed line of thinking! IMHO the environment has been out of balance many, many times before and there is plenty of evidence of that, including EM polar shifts, etc...

Your statement suggests to me that today is like the "culmination" of millions of years of evolution to reach this "perfect balance" and that is, once again, a flawed linear way of thinking, just like your linear evolutionary way of thinking was!!!

If/when new energy is injected into any system, it will temporarily make it go out of balance during the energy transfer processes, until a new balance is eventually reached. Therefore, Earth is pretty much like any other system. Face it, it is NOT a closed system...

For example, without the Sun, there would be no life on Earth and that is the most obvious outside energy source...

eom