There is absolutely, unequivocally, no evidence that this will happen and no serious scientific prediction that this will happen from climate change has ever been made.
The science illiteracy here is getting almost as bad as the right wingers.
But we do know because thousands of hardworking scientists have devoted their lives to answering this question.
If you want to have fun speculating wildly then be clear that this is what you’re doing and don’t frame it as things that “will” happen.
Sorry this is a pet peeve of mine because I think it feeds into a paralyzing pessimism. People need to understand that we aren’t doomed to feel like they can work for a better future.
“Given the solar constant that we have today, how large a forcing must be maintained to cause runaway global warming? Our model blows up before the oceans boil, but it suggests that perhaps runaway conditions could occur with added forcing as small as 10-20 W/m2 (Watts per square meter – a 60 watt light bulb provides 3 to 6 times more forcing per unit of area than is required to turn the Earth into a Venus)”
“There may have been times in the Earth’s history when CO2 was as high as 4000 ppm without causing a runaway greenhouse effect {the Mesozoic period – time of the dinosaurs}. But the solar irradiance was less at that time. What is different about the human-made forcing is the rapidity at which we are increasing it, on the time scale of a century or a few centuries. It does not provide enough time for negative feedbacks, such as changes in the weathering rate, to be a major factor. There is also a danger that humans could cause the release of methane hydrates, perhaps more rapidly than in some of the cases in the geologic record. In my opinion, if we burn all the coal, there is a good chance that we will initiate the runaway greenhouse effect. If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale (a.k.a. oil shale), I think it is a dead certainty.”
There is absolutely, unequivocally, no evidence that this will happen and no serious scientific prediction that this will happen from climate change has ever been made.
The science illiteracy here is getting almost as bad as the right wingers.
It was fun thinking of it. Chill out.
But we do know because thousands of hardworking scientists have devoted their lives to answering this question.
If you want to have fun speculating wildly then be clear that this is what you’re doing and don’t frame it as things that “will” happen.
Sorry this is a pet peeve of mine because I think it feeds into a paralyzing pessimism. People need to understand that we aren’t doomed to feel like they can work for a better future.
Dr. Hansen from 2008:
I may have stated it slightly too strongly but this is wild speculation on Hansen’s part. Show me a published prediction.
Even if what he said was accurate, burning that much fossil energy is almost certainly impossible.