@brianjakub,
I see that, like all of the IDiots, you've sidestepped the issue of proof for the alleged intelligence.
You're putting the cart before the horse, a hallmark of the theist. There is no "right" time, place or order of events. The woolly mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros were not waiting in the wings for conditions which would favor them. They arose in response to the conditions which existed at the time. Had there been no second ice age, there would have been no woollies to find in the fossil and archaeological records. It may well have put paid to
homo neanderthalis, as well. There are a variety of factors which contribute to climate change, and unpredictable and (only from our point of view) catastrophic events can lead to mass extinctions, and the sudden--in geological terms--rise of particular life forms. The Deccan Traps, a massive area of active volcanism, the major eruption of which, when combined with the completely fortuitous Chicxulub impact (a planetesimal or comet striking the earth) created the conditions which wiped out most of the dinosaurs. If one alleges that such events were ordained by an intelligence, your precious intelligence is either an idiot, or pretty damned ham-handed. We have dramatic evidence of this in the historical record, too.
From the 13th to the early 19th century, there was a climactic event now known as "the little ice age." The earth was actually climbing out of the temperature "hole" by the end of the 18th century, when the atmosphere suffered a series of body blows from volcanism. Five major volcanic eruptions occurred from 1812 to 1815, culminating in the massive eruption of Tambora in what is now Indonesia. The eruption of that stratovolcano, as well as the four preceding major eruptions put massive amounts of particulate and albedic gases (gases which reflect sunlight before it reaches the surface of the planet) in the upper atmosphere, reflecting solar radiation (known as insolation). Hundreds of thousands of people died of starvation or the diseases or malnutrition. Livestock, probably in the millions, died from a lack of fodder, a lack of grazing. That resulted from a decrease in the planetary average temperature of no more than three-quarters of one degree centigrade. That goes a long way to explaining how the catastrophic combination the Deccan Traps eruption combined with the Chicxulub impact event was a major event, given that average global temperatures dropped by two to three degrees centigrade. The notion that such events are controlled by an intelligence (the "god did it" theme about which you are so dishonest) can only mean that your intelligence is one vicious son of a bitch, or completely lacks a sense of the likely consequences of its actions.
You are really too ignorant to sustain your thesis in such a discussion.
EDIT: You could attempt to educate yourself, although I suspect that's not a part of your agenda. For a minimal start, do web searches for "the great oxygenation event," the first major extinction of which we know; for the Deccan Traps; for the Chicxulub impact event; for "the year without a summer" (1816). That will barely begin your education in the dynamics of planetary conditions and their impact on life (or life's impacts on planetary conditions as was the case in the great oxygenation event, 2.4 to 1.8 billions years before the present).
