Climate Change Could Kill Off Clouds And Return Us To A 'Hothouse Earth'

[dalton99a]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2019/02/25/we-could-be-on-the-verge-of-killing-off-clouds-and-returning-to-a-hothouse-earth/

Feb 25, 2019, 04:20pm
Climate Change Could Kill Off Clouds And Return Us To A 'Hothouse Earth'
Eric Mack

...

Now, new research suggests that another such feedback loop could explain a rapid and previously mysterious warming that took place over 50 million years ago. More importantly, the study warns that we might be on the verge of triggering the same cycle again.

"For the future, our results suggest that stratocumulus decks may break up if CO2 levels continue to rise," reads the paper out today in Nature Geoscience.

Translation: If levels of carbon dioxide and global temperatures continue to rise as in recent decades, the low clouds that cover a significant fraction of our oceans at any given moment will break up. Without the bright, fluffy rolling decks there to bounce the sun's energy back into space, it will instead be absorbed.

If those stratocumulus decks disappear, which the researchers say could happen within a century under the worst-case scenario, the result may be what happened during that period millions of years ago, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). At that time 56 million years ago, global temperatures suddenly spiked, increasing by 8 eight degrees Celsius. For some time, there wasn't exactly consensus on what unknown factor created such a dramatic spike, but that's beginning to change.

[cstanleytech]

1. Best bet really is to research and develop carbon sinks that can counter what we are producing.

Why that rather than cut back? Because I honestly doubt that the human race can or will do what it would take to do that.

[MontanaFarmer]

2. I could not agree more

We can't even agree in this country how to legislate this. We've made strides in green energy, but trump is undoing them. I still think, even though we all understand how menacing this is, that it's too abstract and too large for the non-politically-engaged public to bother to comprehend. It's maddening, but it's also true. I have believed for the last decade or so that it's going to have to be stripped or sunk because it's going to be emitted. Defeatist? Maybe. Or maybe just realistic.

[Duppers]

3. Could?

Will. We're committing mass suicide.