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:
“All you of Earth are idiots!... First was your firecracker, a harmless explosive. Then your hand grenade. They begin to kill your own people a few at a time. Then the bomb. Then a larger bomb, many people are killed at one time. Then your scientists stumbled upon the atom bomb—split the atom. Then the hydrogen bomb, where you actually explode the air itself.”
—Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1922–1978)
“Allow me, whom Fortune always desires to bury, lay down my life in these final trivialities. Many have freely died in longlasting loves, among whose number may the earth cover me as well.”
—Propertius Sextus (c. 50–16 B.C.)
“We are the party of all labor.
The whole earth shall be ours to share
And every race and craft our neighbor.
No idle class shall linger there
Like vultures on the wealth we render
From field and factory, mill and mine.
Tomorrow’s sun will rise in splendor
And light us till the end of time.”
—Eugène Pottier (1816–1887)