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Assuming some negative feedback mechanism kicks in. There is a chance a positive feedback occurs, global warming spirals and Earth becomes uninhabitable. See Ve

Assuming some negative feedback mechanism kicks in. There is a chance a positive feedback occurs, global warming spirals and Earth becomes uninhabitable. See Venus for an example.

ecmascript 6y ago
Sure, but getting rid of life seems to be quite hard and for it to happen it must be some extraordinary event like the surface getting as hot as the surface of venus. People still believe there can be life on venus in it's clouds, most likely bacteria or something like it but it's not impossible that life will find a way. There has been extinction events where the surface of earth pretty much became uninhabitable, but bacteria lives in the earth and underground and life spirals back as soon as the surface or oceans are habitable again.
Aunche 6y ago
You realize that all of the carbon in fossil fuels was once in the atmosphere right? The earth spits out a little bit of CO2 naturally, and the sun is a bit hotter than it was 100 million years ago, but we aren't turning into Venus anytime soon.
- hdjdbtbgwjsn 6y ago
  Back then the continents were configured rather differently. That has a huge effect on hothouse vs icehouse regime. Right now we are in a continental configuration that should be icehouse (circumpolar currents with cold deep water). If we force the climate into hothouse against its natural state what will happen? It's very much not settled how balanced the mantle vs surface carbon cycle is. How much carbon is in MORB? Is subducted sediment actually entrained into the mantle? A major store of CO2 is sedimentary dolomite. We did't even really understand how that formed! (Last time I checked but I'm no sedimentologist so that might have been solved.) Speaking as a geologist your statement is dangerously naive. I'm not saying Venus and the end of all life is definite but it is the worst case scenario of a situation that we don't understand and that will soon be (maybe already is) out of our control.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >Speaking as a geologist your statement is dangerously naive. I'm skeptical of you being a working geologist because I haven't seen any credible claims that there is any reason to believe Earth could turn into Venus. But even outside of that, scaremongering with incredibly unlikely scenarios is also dangerous and detrimental to fighting climate change, because somebody is going to call bullshit on you and will result in your and even the general credibility of climate scientists, to be diminished.
    - hdjdbtbgwjsn 6y ago
      You should speak to some more Geologists then. We really don't understand the systems of our planet and we are currently sticking a big spanner into them. Many of us are more concerned than we can publish - precisely because we don't want to scaremonger. Will the Earth definitely turn into an out of control hothouse with a Venus - like climate? Very probably not there are many differences between Earth and Venus. Can we be sure than some positive feedback mechanism might make life as we know it untenable on Earth? I'm not sure myself and I don't think anyone can know.
      - aww_dang 6y ago
        "We really don't understand the systems of our planet and we are currently sticking a big spanner into them." There's a presumption that man is somehow an unnatural creature divorced from nature here. If only we had multiple Earths to experiment with. One without humans as a control, another with humans as we are now and a third with humanity following whatever dictates the warmist technocrats prescribe. Hypothetically speaking, I wonder how one would measure the utility of humanity existing at all? Some environmentalists may suggest that the Earth without humanity is the "best" of them all. There is a proximity between warmists and population control advocates. Unfortunately, we don't have that luxury. From my perspective the "spanner in the works" analogy better fits with the economic centralization & suffering the warmist dictates may cause.
        hdjdbtbgwjsn 6y ago
vonmoltke 6y ago
> There is a chance a positive feedback occurs, global warming spirals and Earth becomes uninhabitable. There is virtually no chance of this happening on Earth until the sun gets significantly larger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect#Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect#Eart...

Assuming some negative feedback mechanism kicks in. There is a chance a positive feedback occurs, global warming spirals and Earth becomes uninhabitable. See Venus for an example.

ecmascript 6y ago

Sure, but getting rid of life seems to be quite hard and for it to happen it must be some extraordinary event like the surface getting as hot as the surface of venus. People still believe there can be life on venus in it's clouds, most likely bacteria or something like it but it's not impossible that life will find a way. There has been extinction events where the surface of earth pretty much became uninhabitable, but bacteria lives in the earth and underground and life spirals back as soon as the surface or oceans are habitable again.

Aunche 6y ago

You realize that all of the carbon in fossil fuels was once in the atmosphere right? The earth spits out a little bit of CO2 naturally, and the sun is a bit hotter than it was 100 million years ago, but we aren't turning into Venus anytime soon.

hdjdbtbgwjsn 6y ago
Back then the continents were configured rather differently. That has a huge effect on hothouse vs icehouse regime. Right now we are in a continental configuration that should be icehouse (circumpolar currents with cold deep water). If we force the climate into hothouse against its natural state what will happen? It's very much not settled how balanced the mantle vs surface carbon cycle is. How much carbon is in MORB? Is subducted sediment actually entrained into the mantle? A major store of CO2 is sedimentary dolomite. We did't even really understand how that formed! (Last time I checked but I'm no sedimentologist so that might have been solved.) Speaking as a geologist your statement is dangerously naive. I'm not saying Venus and the end of all life is definite but it is the worst case scenario of a situation that we don't understand and that will soon be (maybe already is) out of our control.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >Speaking as a geologist your statement is dangerously naive. I'm skeptical of you being a working geologist because I haven't seen any credible claims that there is any reason to believe Earth could turn into Venus. But even outside of that, scaremongering with incredibly unlikely scenarios is also dangerous and detrimental to fighting climate change, because somebody is going to call bullshit on you and will result in your and even the general credibility of climate scientists, to be diminished.
  - hdjdbtbgwjsn 6y ago
    You should speak to some more Geologists then. We really don't understand the systems of our planet and we are currently sticking a big spanner into them. Many of us are more concerned than we can publish - precisely because we don't want to scaremonger. Will the Earth definitely turn into an out of control hothouse with a Venus - like climate? Very probably not there are many differences between Earth and Venus. Can we be sure than some positive feedback mechanism might make life as we know it untenable on Earth? I'm not sure myself and I don't think anyone can know.
    - aww_dang 6y ago
      "We really don't understand the systems of our planet and we are currently sticking a big spanner into them." There's a presumption that man is somehow an unnatural creature divorced from nature here. If only we had multiple Earths to experiment with. One without humans as a control, another with humans as we are now and a third with humanity following whatever dictates the warmist technocrats prescribe. Hypothetically speaking, I wonder how one would measure the utility of humanity existing at all? Some environmentalists may suggest that the Earth without humanity is the "best" of them all. There is a proximity between warmists and population control advocates. Unfortunately, we don't have that luxury. From my perspective the "spanner in the works" analogy better fits with the economic centralization & suffering the warmist dictates may cause.
      - hdjdbtbgwjsn 6y ago

vonmoltke 6y ago

> There is a chance a positive feedback occurs, global warming spirals and Earth becomes uninhabitable. There is virtually no chance of this happening on Earth until the sun gets significantly larger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect#Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect#Eart...