we can learn a lot about climate change from Venus, our sister
planet. Venus currently has a surface temperature of 450℃ (the
temperature of an oven’s self-cleaning cycle) and an atmosphere
dominated by carbon dioxide (96 per cent) with a density 90 times
that of Earth’s.
Venus is a very strange place, totally uninhabitable, except perhaps
in the clouds some 60 kilometres up where the recent discovery of
phosphine may suggest floating microbial life. But the surface is
totally inhospitable.
Venus once likely had an Earth-like climate. According to recent
climate modelling, for much of its history Venus had surface
temperatures similar to present day Earth. It likely also had
oceans, rain, perhaps snow, maybe continents and plate tectonics,
and even more speculatively, perhaps even surface life.
Less than one billion years ago, the climate dramatically changed
due to a runaway greenhouse effect. It can be speculated that an
intensive period of volcanism pumped enough carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere to cause this great climate change event that evaporated
the oceans and caused the end of the water cycle.