[extropy-chat] Re: Animals

[Christian Weisgerber]

Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:

> http://www-astronomy.mps.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit3/thesun.html
> 
> says 
> 
> Mid-Life Crisis for the Earth
> 5.6 Gyr (1.1 Gyr from today):
>     * Sun 10% brighter: ~1.1 Lsun
>     * Cause a moist greenhouse effect on Earth, driving away most of the
>     * water in the air. 

Oh, okay.  That is of course a long shot from the previously claim
that "the sun's expansion would destroy life on Earth in 500 million
years".

> I have no idea how reliable is this. Even 1% of solar constant change
> typically can wreak havoc to climate, so 10% increase sounds pretty
> catastrophic to me.

Yes, but it's a slow, continuous process.  Anybody have any figures
how much hotter the sun has grown over the time we've had multicellular
life on earth?

-- 
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy at mips.inka.de