Could Earth's 'evil twin' Venus carry a dire warning about climate change?

At least this article does say that Earth is unlikely to be turned into Venus by humans.

But, it seems to really short-shrift the discussion about why Venus' atmosphere is so different from Earth's, mentioning only that the various theories range from millions to billions of years ago when the greenhouse gas effect "ran away" to create the high temperatures we measure there not.

I would like to see more about those theories, mainly to know what to think about various exoplanet discoveries.

The article talks about Venus "only" being at about 70% if Earth's distance from the Sun. But, that results in Venus getting about twice as much solar energy hitting its atmosphere. That is a big difference to begin with.

And, speaking of the beginning of both planets as they condensed from the gas and dust cloud surrounding the Sun, why would we expect the initial atmospheric compositions to be much different? The article even says something about nitrous oxide and CO2 "which are released by the burning of fossil fuels". But, that is really irrelevant, because there may never have been any "fossil" fuels on Venus, much less a technological civilization to burn them.

The differences seem to be that Venus lost its water to space, or at least into its atmosphere, but did not lose its CO2. In contrast, Earth seems to have had its CO2 removed from its atmosphere and stored in the solid parts of the planet, by life forms. that also oxygenated the atmosphere, largely by removing the carbon into the ground.

So, it seems unlikely that this all happened by some process where Venus was much like Earth, with abundant life that created an atmosphere like Earth's, only to have had massive volcanic eruptions on Venus release CO2 from under ground in sufficient quantity to kick of the greenhouse effect only "millions" of years ago.

It would not surprise me if Venus simply had an initially dense atmosphere that promptly created sufficient greenhouse effect to have always made the planet too hot for liquid water or the hydrocarbon chemicals that are the basis for life on Earth. With twice the solar energy input, Venus would have an "advantage" to go in that direction, compared to Earth.

So, at least for me, what I think is important to learn from Venus about Earth is more about how Earth could have gone from a dense, heavy atmosphere to what we have today, instead of turning out like Venus. Is the 50% less solar energy input the only determinant?
 

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