4 ms·
There is a positive feedback loop, more water vapor in the athmosphere double the CO2 greenhouse effect, and factoring in other feedback loops we get over 3 tim
by bigbugbag 9y ago
There is a positive feedback loop, more water vapor in the athmosphere double the CO2 greenhouse effect, and factoring in other feedback loops we get over 3 times more greenhouse effect, which warms the earth and increase water vapor in the athmosphere, etc.
This process could lead to oceans boiling out (though not on Earth, but it may be the case for Venus).
- yters 9y agoIf it could go either way, why are we so sure it is an unstable loop in one particular direction? Our world used to be much warmer than it is now, yet somehow it cooled down a whole lot. There are just not enough lines connecting all the dots here.
- bigbugbag 9y agoI don't know what an unstable loop is. I was referring to the well defined cybernetics concept of feedback loop[1] which is simple: a feedback loop occurs when the output of a system applies to the input of the system. In the discussed case it is a positive feedback loop as outputs adds itself to input [2]. I don't understand what you are trying to say by pointing out earth was warmer and cooled down, but you can read about positive and negative feedback loop during glacial period on wikipedia[3]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedback#/media/File:General_Feedback_Loop.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedback#/media/File:General_F... [2]: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.energy.25.1.441 https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.energ... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age#Positive_and_negative_feedback_in_glacial_periods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age#Positive_and_negative_...