Earth
See also: Runaway climate changeEarth'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.
Read more about this topic: Runaway Greenhouse Effect
Famous quotes containing the word earth:
“Happy for us, that when we find our constitutions defective and insufficient to secure the happiness of our people, we can assemble with all the coolness of philosophers and set it to rights, while every other nation on earth must have recourse to arms to amend or to restore their constitutions.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“I took him for the plainest harmless creature
That breathed upon the earth a Christian;
Made him my book, wherein my soul recorded
The history of all her secret thoughts.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“If thou dost slander her and torture me,
Never pray more; abandon all remorse;
On horror’s head horrors accumulate;
Do deeds to make heaven weep, all earth amazed;
For nothing canst thou to damnation add
Greater than that.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)