Monday, January 16, 2012

Runaway GHG Effect and its likelihood (Technology Review/MIT)

 arXiv blog


How Likely Is a Runaway Greenhouse Effect on Earth?

The results of the latest analysis are not entirely reassuring.
KFC 01/13/2012
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Sometime in the last few billion years, disaster struck one of Earth's nearest neighbours. Planetary geologists think there is good evidence that Venus was the victim of a runaway greenhouse effect which turned the planet into the boiling hell we see today.
A similar catastrophe is almost certain to strike Earth in about 2 billion years, as the Sun increases in luminosity.
But that raises an important question: is it possible that we could trigger a runaway greenhouse effect ourselves by adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere?

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