Not the first to suggest this.... (Score 3, Interesting)

I know of at least one paper, published by Prof. Dewey McLean of Virginia Tech in the journal Science in 1978 that suggested that a major warming event was the cause of the K-T extinctions: "A terminal Mesozoic greenhouse: lessons from the past" (Science, 1978). Sometime later, he identified the Deccan Traps volcanism as a likely source of the CO2 that may have induced this warming: "Terminal Cretaceous Extinctions and Volcanism: a Link", in an abstract at the AAAS National Meeting, Toronto, Canada, in January 1981.