Luckily, that is extremely unlikely. Even if we were to burn all the fossil fuels on Earth, we wouldn’t even get close. Venus is 42% closer to the sun and has an atmosphere that is about 97% CO2 (compared to Earth’s 0.4%) and a bit over 90 times denser. Fun fact: the atmospheric pressure on the surface of Venus is the same as 900m underwater on Earth. Shit is soupy AF.
To hit Venus numbers, we’d need a greater than 50% increase in solar luminosity combined with an approximately 2,200,000% increase in atmospheric CO2. That means going from about 3340 gigatonnes of atmospheric CO2 (based on current estimates) to more than 73,000,000 gigatonnes (7.3 × 10¹⁹ tonnes). It’s a staggering increase that is impossible without a massive outside input, like half the earth’s crust splitting open and blasting out CO2.
Even if we were to substitute methane entirety for CO2, being a 28x more potent greenhouse gas, that still requires an additional 2,600,000 gigatonnes (2.6 × 10¹⁸ tonnes) of methane. Earth’s atmosphere in its entirety is only 5 × 10¹⁵ tonnes.
Just a small addition, Earth has a CO2 percentage of about 0.04.
We’re not going to be like Venus. But there may still be catastrophic consequences for life as we know it.
Luckily, that is extremely unlikely. Even if we were to burn all the fossil fuels on Earth, we wouldn’t even get close. Venus is 42% closer to the sun and has an atmosphere that is about 97% CO2 (compared to Earth’s 0.4%) and a bit over 90 times denser. Fun fact: the atmospheric pressure on the surface of Venus is the same as 900m underwater on Earth. Shit is soupy AF.
To hit Venus numbers, we’d need a greater than 50% increase in solar luminosity combined with an approximately 2,200,000% increase in atmospheric CO2. That means going from about 3340 gigatonnes of atmospheric CO2 (based on current estimates) to more than 73,000,000 gigatonnes (7.3 × 10¹⁹ tonnes). It’s a staggering increase that is impossible without a massive outside input, like half the earth’s crust splitting open and blasting out CO2.
Even if we were to substitute methane entirety for CO2, being a 28x more potent greenhouse gas, that still requires an additional 2,600,000 gigatonnes (2.6 × 10¹⁸ tonnes) of methane. Earth’s atmosphere in its entirety is only 5 × 10¹⁵ tonnes.
Just a small addition, Earth has a CO2 percentage of about 0.04. We’re not going to be like Venus. But there may still be catastrophic consequences for life as we know it.