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" 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. "

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" There's no question to my mind that saving our civilization and many other species is more important than our ability to do ground-based astronomy for a few decades. "

David Grinspoon

Question

Mind

Important

" 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. "

" I do a lot of work with NASA and am involved in research projects studying planetary evolution, Earth-like planets, and potential conditions for life elsewhere. "

" Why should we consider defining intelligence as something global and as something that hasn't actually yet appeared on Earth? It may be useful for envisioning the future of our own civilization and any others that may be out there among the stars. It might give us something to strive for. "

" I will defend the NASA Earth Science Division with everything I've got. "

" 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. "

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

" If you were on the surface of Venus, assuming you could see the Sun, which, you know, would be hard because it's so cloudy there, but the Sun would actually rise in the west and set in the east. And, it would do so very, very slowly, because the planet rotates incredibly slowly. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" We can look out on an alien landscape that no one has seen before and find it beautiful. "

" Mars does not have an atmosphere and does not have a magnetic field today, so the planet doesn't have the protection from radiation that our atmosphere and magnetic fields provide us on Earth. "

" It turns out one of my dad's best friends was Carl Sagan when I was little. They were both Harvard professors. "

" What I'm interested in is the conversations going on about the Anthropocene and what it means to view ourselves as a part of Earth's geological history. "

" We have all this very clever technology and all these abilities to manipulate the world in all these ways, yet we are faced with the very real question of whether we can be sustainable on this planet - whether or not, in fact, we can endure. "

" 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

" Astrobiology is a great point of contact for science outreach. The public is naturally interested in extra-terrestrial life. Astrobiology provides an accessible point of access that leads to deeper questions. "

" It's OK to pursue speculative ideas because we don't want to be too cozy and safe and assume that we know everything about life in the universe. However, we have to be rigorous and careful and honest and logical and scientifically meticulous when we speculate. "

" It will be a long time, if ever, before we get to study Earth-like planets orbiting around other stars, so really, the study of Venus and Mars is the best opportunity that we have, and can imagine having anytime in the future, to understand the evolution of Earth-like planets. "

" There is a history of thinking about space science from an environmental ethics perspective. And part of what I want to do is turn that back and use that experience to see if it reflects how we think about the Earth. "

" Humans are possessed, to some degree, with the power of foresight. Yet we so often learn things the hard way, through disaster. "

" It's one of the big mysteries about Venus: How did it get so different from Earth when it seems likely to have started so similarly? The question becomes richer when you consider astrobiology, the possibility that Venus and Earth were very similar during the time of the origin of life on Earth. "

" If we gutted NASA Earth Science, it wouldn't be NOAA or some other agency that would take the lead. It would be the Chinese and the Europeans and the Japanese. "

" I think the best SF writers are very aware of what we, in the scientific community, are doing, thinking, and discovering. "

" I think Pluto has to be considered among the places in the solar system that are possible homes for life. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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 do comparative studies of climate evolution, and the interactions between planetary atmosphere and surfaces and their radiation environment, and try to understand the environmental factors that can affect a planet's habitability and how they change over time. "