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:
“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live...”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 30:19.
“I held a bayonet
that was for the earth of your stomach.
The belly button singing its puzzle.
The intestines winding like the alpine roads.
It was made to enter you
as you have entered me....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“He had killed and put to earth so many that his sword broke in two. At length he thought to himself that that was enough massacring and killing for one day, and that the rest should be allowed to escape in order to spread the news.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)