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" 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. "

David Grinspoon

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" I'd like to jump a couple hundred years into the future and work with the scientists who are getting back the first information from our probes to planets orbiting nearby stars. "

David Grinspoon

" Whenever I see a nighttime picture of Earth from space, with its glowing lights, I am stirred by its beauty. "

David Grinspoon

" 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. "

David Grinspoon

" 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. "

David Grinspoon

" 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. "

David Grinspoon

" 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. "

David Grinspoon

" Earth is going to lose its oceans in the future, just as Venus did in the past. How long planets retain their oceans is a function of distance from the sun, all other things being equal. "

David Grinspoon

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

David Grinspoon

" 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. "

David Grinspoon

" We need visions of a future in which we have applied our infinite creativity to the task of living on a finite world, where we have embraced our role, become comfortable and proficient as planet-shapers, and learned to use our technological skills to enhance the survival prospects not just of humanity but of all life on Earth. "

David Grinspoon

" 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. "

David Grinspoon

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

David Grinspoon

" What if life is not carbon-based? Can life exist as a gas or a plasma? Could planets or stars in some sense be alive? What about an interstellar cloud? Could life exist on such a small or large scale, or move so fast or so slowly that we wouldn't recognize it? Could you have an intelligent virus? "

David Grinspoon

" In environments that are energy-rich but liquid-poor, like near the surface of Titan, natural selection may favor organisms that use their metabolic heat to melt their own watering holes. "

David Grinspoon

" 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. "

David Grinspoon

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

David Grinspoon

" 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. "

David Grinspoon

" I'm a strong advocate of new missions to Venus. "

David Grinspoon

" 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. "

David Grinspoon

" When I first went to college, I went into physics, and my goal was to help perfect nuclear fusion so I could solve the energy crisis and global warming. I probably would have done it, too, if I'd stuck to it. "

David Grinspoon

" 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. "

David Grinspoon

" There was a long history of people believing there was life on Venus. It was about the same size as Earth. It had clouds. It was commonly believed it was tropical - wet, hot and steamy. "

David Grinspoon

" What I wonder most about the Anthropocene is not when did it start - but when, and how, will it end? Will it end? Or is it possible that our own growing awareness of our role on Earth can itself play a pivotal role in shaping the outcome toward one that we would desire? "

David Grinspoon

" Humanity has at least a dim, and growing, cognisance of the effects of its presence on this planet. The possibility that we might integrate that awareness into how we interface with the Earth system is one that should give us hope. "

David Grinspoon

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

David Grinspoon

" The story of our species is one of overcoming existential risk through new forms of cooperation and innovation. "

David Grinspoon

" Now, humans have become a dominant force of planetary change and, thus, we may have entered an eon of post-biological evolution in which cognitive systems have gained a powerful influence on the planet. "

David Grinspoon

" Fixing global warming is more important than astronomy. "

David Grinspoon

" 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. "

David Grinspoon

" 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. "

David Grinspoon