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Climate
Change and the Cosmic Perspective: |
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How to Change Your Climate Denying
UncleÕs Point of View |
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The Takeawaysá
Of course we changed the climate. o
The laws of thermodynamics demand
there has to be planetary feedback from using all the energy required for
civilization building. á
Climate models work on Mars! o
The climate models we for the
Earth have been tested for other planets like Venus, Mars and Titan. á
YouÕre breathing Oxygen arenÕt you? o
Life has changed
the atmosphere before in the Great Oxygenation Event (GOE) á
Hey, habitability ainÕt
forever. o
Mars used to be
habitable but isnÕt any more. The
same could be true for planets and civilization. á
The planet will be fine thank you. o
Climate change is
not about saving the planet. ItÕs about saving our project of civilization. á
We ainÕt
the first to run into this wall. o
With so many
planets in the cosmos its possible and even likely weÕre not the first
civilization to drive its planet into climate change. Sustainability will be a
challenge for any planetary civilization á
Climate Change shows human beings are awesome. But can we be smart too? o
Human beings are not a virus on the planet. We triggered climate change by mistake
as part of our success as species. But are we smart enough now to make the
right choices? |
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Adam Frank (U of Rochester)
David Grinspoon (SWRI)
Ellen Stofan (formerly NASA)
The Planet and the Project
The cosmic perspective on climate change shows us whatÕs happening to
Earth is not a mystery. WeÕve been exploring the other worlds in our solar system via robot
probes for more than 50 years.
These missions have given us laboratories for how climate works on all
planets! We have also unpacked the whole of EarthÕs history going back 4.5
billion years to see how life and the planet have co-evolved. The biosphere has been a major force
in shaping the planet in ways we now understand. Finally we have seen how the universe is rich with planets. Every star you see in the sky hosts
its own worlds and one star out of every five has a planet in the right place
for life to form. For humans to
be the only civilization that evolved over all cosmic history the odds of
forming life on a habitable planet must be less than 1 in a hundred billion
trillion. We are probably not the first civilization to exist and probably not
the first to trigger climate change either. |