Seriously, the runaway term is used to describe a planet where the
water vapor feedback is such that entire ocean evaporates and the
planet becomes completely unviable. This is believed to be the story
of the evolution of Venus.
I have seen formal calculations about this; apparently we are a bit
too far from the sun for this to happen here, but not by a huge
margin. If the sun warms up just a little bit it will happen. If the
earth were a cylinder and not a sphere, hence tropical everywhere, the
oceans would boil away post haste. Unfortunately I didn't track this
down on the first attempt.
(It's a Ray P question if there ever was one, though I don't think he
was the author of the definitive analysis of the question if I recall
right.)
That doesn't mean there aren't exacerbating feedbacks. The clathrates
may provide one on a millenial time scale. There are other candidates.
But "runaway" isn't the right word for that unless you think the world
will tip into complete uninhabitability as a result.
mt
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