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Lower Thermal Radiation Input Needed To Trigger Planetary 'Runaway Greenhouse'
vinces99 writes with this excerpt from the UW news service: "It might be easier than previously thought for a planet to overheat into the scorchingly uninhabitable 'runaway greenhouse' stage, according to new research (abstract, article paywalled) by astronomers at the University of Washington and the University of Victoria. In the runaway greenhouse stage, a planet absorbs more solar energy than it can give off to retain equilibrium. As a result, the world overheats, boiling its oceans and filling its atmosphere with steam, which leaves the planet glowing-hot and forever uninhabitable, as Venus is now. One estimate of the inner edge of a star's 'habitable zone' is where the runaway greenhouse process begins. The habitable zone is that ring of space around a star that's just right for water to remain in liquid form on an orbiting rocky planet's surface, thus giving life a chance. Revisiting this classic planetary science scenario with new computer modeling, the astronomers found a lower thermal radiation threshold for the runaway greenhouse process, meaning that stage may be easier to initiate."
If correct, the habitable zone shrinks a bit and a few exoplanets might lose their potentially habitable status. And the Earth will leave the habitable zone in a billion and a half or so years as the Sun gets brighter.
so long as we aren't responsible for it?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I think mars was doomed from the beginning but I wonder if Venus could be terraformed with some kind of aerosol cloud to shade it and reduce the thermal input.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
This article is so affordable. Only 22 pounds. We are so privileged to have the opportunity to read this study. Just imagine a world where such study results were just given away for free. Communism!
It really is a much better world where only paying customers have access to scientific research. It is destructive and dangerous to allow poor people access to knowledge. In that way lies anarchy! The horror. Next we'll be arguing not only that information wants to be free, but that it should be free. Cats and dogs living together and all that.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
"And the Earth will leave the habitable zone in a billion and a half or so years as the Sun gets brighter"
There, you said it, has nothing whatsoever to do with "climate change" here on earth, it's all the S-U-N!!! ;)
Well, when the next warmist story appears and another warmist tries to claim "nobody is suggesting the destruction of the planet what is wrong with you people" I will point out you and this story.