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The current models basically say that if we burnt all of the oil, we’d turn our planet into Venus with runaway warming. I don’t think that’s the path we’re on n
by ashtonkem 5y ago
The current models basically say that if we burnt all of the oil, we’d turn our planet into Venus with runaway warming. I don’t think that’s the path we’re on now, but I think that would be the path we’d land on if we were bootstrapping another society with the oil we left behind at the end of this century.
And that’s presuming there’s enough of it left to bootstrap. We’ve wasted a lot of it to get to the point where solar and nuclear exist, whether we could replicate that with what will be left is unclear to me. There’s certainly not a lot of good coal left, for example. We burnt most of it in the 19th century, and a new industrial revolution would have to make do with the subpar stuff we’ve left behind.
- tablespoon 5y ago> The current models basically say that if we burnt all of the oil, we’d turn our planet into Venus with runaway warming. I don't think they say that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect#Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect#Eart...: > Within current models of the runaway greenhouse effect, carbon dioxide (especially anthropogenic carbon dioxide) does not seem capable of providing the necessary insulation for Earth to reach the Simpson–Nakajima limit.[7][8] > Debate remains, however, on whether carbon dioxide can push surface temperatures towards the moist greenhouse limit.[24][25] Climate scientist John Houghton has written that "[there] is no possibility of [Venus's] runaway greenhouse conditions occurring on the Earth".[26] The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has also stated that "a 'runaway greenhouse effect'—analogous to [that of] Venus—appears to have virtually no chance of being induced by anthropogenic activities."[27] However, climatologist James Hansen disagrees. In his Storms of My Grandchildren he says that burning coal and mining oil sands will result in runaway greenhouse on Earth.[28] A re-evaluation in 2013 of the effect of water vapor in the climate models showed that James Hansen's outcome would require ten times the amount of CO2 we could release from burning all the oil, coal, and natural gas in Earth's crust.[24]