Clinically geological

"The day the Earth nearly died" is a BBC documentary about one of the scariest events in the history of our planet: the Permian extinction 250 million years ago, when 95% of all species died out. The reason was some kind of "mother of all climate changes" with a combination of meteor impacts, intense volcanic activity and release of methane from the sea floor first creating a "nuclear winter" and then rising the temperature with about ten degrees Celsius (compared to the temperature before the nuclear winter). If you didn't freeze to death, you fried afterwards!

Luckily for us, whatever mammal-like reptile might have been our evolutionary ancestor survived. And here we are, 250 million years later, creating a little suicidal climate change of our own... I don't think the Permian fauna would have been amused. As for this documentary, it's so clinically non-sensationalist that it becomes frankly boring after a while. This is good for geology students (or ditto nerds), but a veritable snoozer for everyone else. Not a Dimetrodon in sight!