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" As a kid, I became a total SF geek. It started in the 5th grade with Asimov's 'Lucky Starr' series of what would now be called 'young adult' novels of adventures in the solar system. "

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" We have to learn to become a new kind of entity on this world that has the maturity and the awareness to handle being a global species with the power to change our planet and use that power in a way that is conducive to the kind of global society we want to have. "

David Grinspoon

Maturity

Change

World

" One of the weird things about modern physics is that we do find there are apparently these other dimensions that we don't directly experience that explain some aspects of the overall geometry and reality of our universe. "

" Earth is a stunningly lovely planet for so many reasons. Among these is the wondrous presence of curious, artful, inventive humanity. "

" As a young planet, Venus was losing hydrogen rapidly to space. The oceans boiled off, and after some period of time, perhaps 600 million years, there was no surface water. "

" In my Ph.D. thesis, written in 1989, I discussed the fact that when a civilization develops the technology to prevent catastrophic asteroid impacts, it marks a significant moment in the evolution of the planet. "

" As Earth's climate changes, we can expect more destructive hurricanes. As sea level and surface temperatures rise, more solar energy is trapped in the atmosphere, revving up the hydrological cycle of evaporation and precipitation and sometimes manifesting in terrifying storms. "

" Among the radio astronomers of SETI - the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - it's only sort-of a joke that the true hallmark of intelligent life is the creation of radio astronomy. "

David Grinspoon

Intelligence

True

" The reason you see so many volcanoes on Venus is partly due to the fact that there's virtually no erosion there. So on Venus, you're seeing features, some of which are hundreds of millions of years old on the surface. On Earth, we do not see any surface features nearly that old - you only see much more recent features. "

" We're going to get off fossil fuels, no question. We may not do it quickly enough to avoid some pain, and I'm quite worried about that. But by the 22nd century, there's no way we'll be on fossil fuels. "

" It is said that Mahatma Gandhi, when asked about Western civilization, remarked, 'I think it would be a good idea.' That's how I feel about intelligent life on Earth, especially when I think about the question of what truly intelligent life might look like elsewhere in the universe. "

" I was a science fiction geek from an early age, enthralled by the questions of life in the universe. As I got older, I learned that space exploration was real. I wanted to get involved in that. I knew I wanted to be a scientist. "

" Once we become a multiplanet species, our chances to live long and prosper will take a huge leap skyward. "

" You cannot study other planets without referring to Earth and without applying the techniques and the insights of Earth science. And you cannot really do a good job understanding the Earth without the insights from planetary exploration. "

" We don't know that Venus had oceans, but there's every reason to believe it did. "

" I intend to apply the perspective of astrobiology, which is a deep-time way of looking at life on Earth, towards the question of the Anthropocene. What does the human phenomenon on Earth look like viewed from an interplanetary perspective? "

" I think chemists always think they know more than they know, because nature has a lot of possible pathways it can try. "

" Earth's biosphere gave birth to humans and our thoughts, which are now reshaping its planetary cycles. A planet with brains? Fancy that. "

" We need to have a vision of the world we want to create so that we can see ourselves as collaborators with future generations in the project of shaping it. "

" I'd been politically active ever since my parents wheeled me in a stroller in a 'ban the bomb' march in Boston in 1963. "

" The planet Mars - crimson and bright, filling our telescopes with vague intimations of almost-familiar landforms - has long formed a celestial tabula rasa on which we have inscribed our planetological theories, utopian fantasies, and fears of alien invasion or ecological ruin. "

" It's quite possible that the end of us will not be the end of the Earth. Even if we really screw things up and things go badly for us and our civilization, the Earth is pretty resilient. "

" Mars does not belong to 'America,' nor to Earth, nor to human beings. "

" Responsible global behaviour is ultimately an act of self-preservation of, by, and for the global beast that modern technological humanity has become. "

" As long as we can imagine a better path, of course we are obligated to seek it. This is why unwarranted pessimism about our future is actually irresponsible. "

" Certainly for me, as an astrobiologist, science fiction has played an important role. One of the quandaries of our field is that we are trying to study and search for something - life - that we can't define in a rigorous way. We only have one example of a biosphere, so we can't really give a good definition. "

" Even as our unwitting alterations to Earth's carbon and hydrological cycles slowly make storms more damaging, our ability to monitor our planet from space and make reliable short-term forecasts have equipped us enormously to withstand them. "

" It's quite possible there's as much lightning on Venus as on Earth. "

" My high-school friends and I felt part of a community of smart, forward-looking space and technology freaks. "

" Through space-based climate studies, my colleagues and I have learned that a stable and comfortable climate is not something to take for granted. "

" The more we look at the kinds of soils and the nature of the atmosphere and the polar caps, it all adds up to tell us that some liquid, which we very much believe was water, did flow in abundance on Mars in the past. "