It’s plausible that conditions on Earth could get so hot and steamy that the oceans entirely evaporate and render the planet inhospitable to life, according to new calculations that suggest this so-called runaway greenhouse is easier to initiate than previously believed.

“We could go into the runaway greenhouse today if we could get the planet hot enough to get enough water vapor into the atmosphere,” Colin Goldblatt, a professor of Earth system evolution at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, and lead author of the study, told NBC News.

The reality, though, he said, is that burning all the planet’s fossil fuels such as oil and coal is “very unlikely” to trigger the uncontrollable warming.