CAN LARGE SCALE VOLCANISM CAUSE THE HEAT DEATH OF TERRESTRIAL WORLDS?

Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs) are arguably the primary cause of many major climatic change events in Earth history, including mass extinctions. Yet they may play an even more impactful role on climate in cases in which multiple LIPs overlap in time such that they overwhelm the carbonate silicate cycle. Using the record of LIPs through Earth's history back to 2800 myr we statistically estimate the likelihood of overlapping events in timescales of 1 Myr and 100,000 years. We find such instances likely and postulate a similar LIP record for Venus and that such overlapping events may have driven Venus from an earlier hypothesized temperate period into a moist and then runaway greenhouse leading to the conditions we see today. Venus may have been unlucky at the same time that Earth may have been fortunate to escape a similar fate thus far.