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Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

(www.science.org)
157 points Helmut10001 | 1 comments | 05 Apr 25 12:08 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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Shekelphile ◴[05 Apr 25 14:11 UTC] No.43593684[source]▶
My pet theory is that we are only a few decades away from turning earth into venus 2.0 at this point. It feels like we keep finding new catastrophic tipping points every few months at this point.

It is worth mentioning that we are already in the last few hundred million years of earth's lifespan -- the sun was much dimmer last time the planet had this much GHG and warming going on. We may have already set the conditions for the oceans to boil away and the heat death of our planet without massive geoengineering.

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banqjls ◴[05 Apr 25 14:14 UTC] No.43593708[source]▶
> My pet theory is that we are only a few decades away from turning earth into venus 2.0 at this point. It feels like we keep finding new catastrophic tipping points every few months at this point.

Given that the glaciers should’ve all melted by now, and that we can’t even predict with certainty whether it will rain tomorrow, I wouldn’t pay much attention to predictions.

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1. Shekelphile ◴[05 Apr 25 14:34 UTC] No.43593844[source]▶
It isn't a prediction as much as it is a simple fact. Runaway greenhouse is inevitable, if we continue doing things to increase the greenhouse effect while simultaneously dropping the planet's albedo then the runaway greenhouse will happen much sooner.

Pretty much every 'breakthrough' in climate research in the last few decades has been finding new data showing we are dropping the planet's albedo much faster than expected. The biggest climate shock we have experienced in the last 20 years has been reduction in use of bunker oil fuel in ships which was masking the albedo loss from ice melt by flooding the upper atmosphere with reflective particulate pollution.

I am not worried about the increase in severe weather as much as I am worried about runaway greenhouse pretty much instantly destroying all multicellular life on the planet.