I reached for a soda in the minibar to cool me down. I put the cool can on the table and it was steaming heavily, forming its own little cloud around itself.

It'd be very hard for a terra with an atmosphere to have no CCNs at all.

What makes you think that aliens would use radio? They may use something completely different that we are missing in our searches for life. Maybe they evolved past a physical state? And are invisible to us with no proof of their existence?

Nothing makes me think that. But We know of no hypercom, so we can not look for hypercom signals. We have to look for normal radio signals.

But who knows? When near the star a ship in the warp goes, or comes out of warp, perhaps we could receive a signal thereof. For example, gravitational waves.

Maybe the reason nobody has responded is because they don't communicate on the frequency we use? Or they don't know of it for some reason.

I think it is not possible. There are just too many ways to produce CCN, and they have such low terminal velocities that the atmosphere would have to be absolutely free of wind and convection for them to fall out. To give an idea, the typical terminal velocity of a cloud droplet is on the order of centimeters per second, which is easily overcome by thermals.

For a cloud condensation nucleus, it's on the order of micrometers per second, or centimeters per day. So if there's any mechanism to generate them, they'll go everywhere. Even in the extremely clear air of the Antarctic, there's enough of them around to generate clouds.

I guess the one sure-fire way to remove a planet of its CCN would be to freeze or blow off its atmosphere entirely.

many would argue that it would be wise to keep radio silence.

What about the atmosphere being wiped of water vapor instead, would enough to make clouds be able to get into the atmosphere before the lakes and seas become groundwater, even if the larger bodies of water weren't all that large?

17% O2 is like being at 2000m altitude. Humans can survive permanently up to about 5000 or 6000 meters, which is a pressure of about 55-50% of sea level, or 11% O2 concentration at sea level pressure. You would feel effects if subjected to that immediately (even fatal), but you can acclimate to it.

Maximum CO2 of a few percent is good. 5% is where it is considered toxic, but even at 1% you feel effects -- basically increased breathing rate and some tiredness. Maximum O2 is harder, there's actually no hard established limit to my knowledge. We can breathe 100% O2 for a little while, but it does have toxicity in the long term. For permanence, probably 30-40% is safe I would guess.