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" 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. "

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" What we should really be thinking about is what it would look like for a truly intelligent technological species to be interacting with their planet's atmosphere. "

David Grinspoon

Look

Thinking

Intelligent

" The mature Anthropocene begins when we acquire the ability to live sustainably and become a lasting presence on this world. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" In order to have a decent chance to be a communicating species, you would have to learn to think and plan and act over time scales of a century or a millennium. "

" When you think about alien intelligences making art, you then have to think about what art is and how bound up it is in the nature of consciousness. Why do we make art? And what can we expect to have in common with other creatures in universe? "

" I'm an astrobiologist, and I come from a planetary science background, so in a very broad sense, I study the evolution of planetary environments. "

" Part of the point of SETI has always been a search for answers about our own cosmic potential and destiny. If 'they' are out there, it means that there may be hope for us. "

" The basic ability to not wipe oneself out, to endure, to use your technological interaction with the world in such a way that has the possibility of the likelihood of lasting and not being temporary - that seems like a pretty good definition of intelligence. "

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

" 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 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. "

" A lot of the science fiction that I grew up reading was written when we still thought that Venus might be an oceanic planet. "

David Grinspoon

Reading

Science

" 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. "

" Literally, my earliest memory, my earliest vivid memory, is the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. Yeah, I was in fourth grade, and I was just so captivated. And I think you'll find a lot of space scientists of my generation will say the same thing. Apollo was a big event for them. "

" Even cynical, selfish people will realize, one way or the other, that it's not in their self-interest to act in self-destructive ways. "

" 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. "

" I think that an advanced planetary civilization will modify their own planets to be more stable, to prevent asteroid impacts and dangerous climate fluctuations. "

" Astrobiology is the science of life in the universe. It's an attempt to scientifically deal with the question of whether or not we're alone in the universe, looking at the past of life, the present of life, and the future of life. It's an interdisciplinary study incorporating astronomy, biology, and the Earth sciences. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Radiation is one of the important factors in evolution. It causes mutation, and some level of mutation is actually good for evolution. "

" The hallmark of the human species is great adaptability. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" There's eco-pragmatism, where you recognize, 'Yeah, we live on a planet that's permanently altered by humanity, and rather than seek to return to or preserve pure wilderness, we recognize that's an illusion, and we proceed under the new knowledge that we live, in fact, in a human-dominated planet.' "

" There are other planets besides the Earth and Mars. I'd like to remind you that studying Venus is vital to understanding life elsewhere. "

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

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