Runaway Greenhouse Effect - Earth

Earth

See also: Runaway climate change

Earth's climate has swung repeatedly between warm periods and ice ages during its history. In the current climate the gain of the positive feedback effect from increased atmospheric water vapor is well below that which is required to boil away the oceans. Climate scientist John Houghton has written that " is no possibility of runaway greenhouse conditions occurring on the Earth". However, climatologist James Hansen disagrees. In his Storms of My Grandchildren he says that burning coal and mining shale oil will result in runaway greenhouse on Earth.

Benton and Twitchett's have a different definition of a runaway greenhouse; events meeting this definition have been suggested as a cause for the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum and the great dying.

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Famous quotes containing the word earth:

    “Little deeds of kindness,
    Little words of love,
    Make our earth an Eden,
    Like the heaven above.”
    —Julia A. Fletcher Carney (1823–1908)

    “Man hath still either toys or care:
    But hath no root, nor to one place is tied,
    But ever restless and irregular,
    About this earth doth run and ride.
    He knows he hath a home, but scarce knows where;
    He says it is so far,
    That he has quite forgot how to go there.”
    —Henry Vaughan (1622–1695)

    “If from the earth we came, it was an earth
    That bore us as a part of all the things
    It breeds and that was lewder than it is.
    Our nature is her nature. Hence it comes,
    Since by our nature we grow old, earth grows
    The same. We parallel the mother’s death.”
    —Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)