Inspire dialogue around the important scientific issues of our time. Tonights program is one of our afterhours offerings. These include film screenings, lectures conversations like tonight and. Our evening Literary Service features leading researchers and thinkers in conversation with the Museum Director and paleontologist kirk johnson. Many of you have already joined us for these engaging conversations between kirk and speakers or guests like evolutionary biologist ian wilson journalist ed young, Science Exchange director ann merchant, Philanthropist David Rubenstein and most recently president of the university of maryland Baltimore College friedman lebowski. Our final Evening Program of the season will take place later this spring and will feature Florence Williams as she explores the science of off and the Important Role that nature plays in our everyday life. At this point i would like to thank David Grinspoon not only for participating the series but for making the series possible. Thanks to his generous gifts we are able to hold tonights conversation and continue our public and engages in programming. Before we get started i would like to take a moment to encourage you to complete and turn in your surveys. We learned a lot from your input and we use the information to develop our programming so thank you in advance. Also please remember to turn off cell phones. Now i would like to introduce our guests dr. David grinspoon today that is an honesttogoodness astrobiologists, an awardwinning science communicator and a prizewinning author. His latest book. We are are leaving this event for live coverage of the u. S. Senate for a brief pro forma session. The senate will come to order. The clerk will read a communication of the Senate Washington d. C. July 3, 2017 to the senate. Under the provisions of her one paragraph 3 standing rules of the senate i hereby impart the honorable marco rubio senator from the state of florida to perform the duties of the chair signed orangey hatch president pro tempore. Under the previous order the Senate Stands adjourned until 9 00 a. M. On thursday, july 6, 2017. The senate will be back for legislative business a week from today live of 4 00 p. M. Interest to confirm naomi row two run the office of very Literary Affairs scheduled for that champagne is always watch the senate life here on cspan2. After biologist and author David Grinspoon reports on the anthropocene things of the ers history impacting humans will have and have had on the planet. For a couple of decades and whose work i have long admired. What i want to do now for the next how half hours till you a little bit about whats in my new book earth in human hands, why i wrote it and lead you through some of the ideas and then i will stop and we will talk and then we will hopefully hear what you guys have to say. So why would an astrobiologists write a book about humans on earth . After all we are people that study the possibility of life elsewhere. Well, i do feel that this perspective, my day job as a planetary scientist, someone who models the evolution of other planets in comparison to earths and thinks about habitability of other environments and how planets gain and lose habitable conditions i do feel that gives me a slightly different perspective on earth and even on the human presence on earth that i decided was worth trying to put down in some pages. I want to read you a little bit from the very beginning of the book where he tried to address this question of why astrobiology is relevant. First, i want to also start off with this quotation from dr. Martin luther king that i just love where dr. King says if we are to have peace on earth, which i also take to mean to build a sustainable civilization our loyalty must become, must transcend our differences and we must develop a world perspective i feel that one of the messages i try to get across in this book is that if we really look at ourselves on the sleep through the lens of science can give us and see where and who and what we are on this planet with the multigenerational and global perspective that Planetary Science naturally leads us to, then that knowledge does lead us towards developing a world perspective, so that is one of the things, which of you do read the book i hope youll take away. Why would an astrobiologists write about humans on earth . I will read you just a little bit from the intro of earth in human hands. Gazing over the complex fluctuations and transformations and earth multibillion. Year history im struck by the unique strangers and as the present moment. Suddenly find ourselves sort of running a planet a role we never anticipated or socks. Without knowing how it should be done where at the control but we are not in control. This book is my view of how we got into this situation and where leaves us now. We are witnessing and manifesting something unprecedented and completely unpredictable, the advent of selfaware geological change. As an astrobiologists i studied evolutionary relationships between life and the planets that may host it. I see the anthropocene is a tricky new step in the long intricate dance between earth and its biosphere that has been going on for 4 billion years. There are those who object to this name anthropocene is being too selfaggrandizing and serving eight destructive human centered viewpoint but this is well named because it represents a recognizable turning point in geological history brought about by one species, and throw. And are growing at knowledge meant can be a turning point in our ability to respond to the changes we have set in motion. I believe that more than extreme and undeniable physical changes to the planet being caused by human influence it is this dawning self recognition that is really fundamentally different and ultimately promising about the anthropocene. Many species have changed the planet for the benefit or detriment of others but there has never before been geological force aware of its own influence and i have another snippet here about the planetary perspective. A planetary perspective allows us to step away from the noise of the immediate presence to see ourselves from a distance and timelapse. When we do what we see is not just a problem facing our civilization but an entire letter new evolutionary stage of the development of life in seeing ourselves as a geological process we also see the planet entering a phase where cognitive processes are becoming a major agent of global change. Earths biosphere gave ers to these birth to these thought processes which are now reshaping its changing planetary cycle. A planet with brains . Not only brings that lambs with which to manipulate and build tools. We are just beginning to come to grips with the strange new Development Like an infant staring at his hands. We are becoming aware of our powers of better yet my gaining control over them. The planetary perspective provides us with the kind of out of body experience covering in orbit and watching ourselves sleepwalking through a slow disaster of our own making. Now, can this experience help us to shake ourselves awake . For virtually all of its history earth has evolved without us and we have always seen ourselves as autonomous actors on a path of planetary backdrop but now we are beginning to see that our futures, those of humanity and the planet earth, are tightly conjoined. If human civilization is to persist and drive we will need a completely new and different view of our planet and of ourselves. In which wed knowledge both are deep dependence and their increasing influence. We need visions of the future in which we have a creativity to the task of living on a finite world where we embrace our role, become comfortable and proficient as planet shapers and learn to use a technological skills to enhance the survival prospects not just in humanity but of all life on earth. My name for this vision is terra sapient or wise earth. A recent scientific breakthrough the exoplanet revolution that we have long suspected now have confirmed this universe is long of planets orbiting nearly every star. Its closing conceivable that we could be the only life and technological intelligence in the universe. An interplanetary perspective on oeste limits inside is to wonder whether parallel dramas may have emboldened on distant worlds. Two other planets also grow brains and causing themselves problems. Two other species develop technology and build civilizations that create dangerous instabilities on their planets . How do they cope . To planetary biospheres become selfaware . Anthropocene leads us to a new way of looking at the thirst for extraterrestrial intelligence which in turn eliminates changing notions about ourselves, how we fit into our planet and what kind of future we dare imagine. 100 million years from now what will our time have been, i briefed climate spasm that earth shrugged off and largely forgot leading leaving a thin layer infused with bizarre plastic objects . Or the beginning of a lasting new phase when the biosphere finally woke up and adjusted its grip on the planet. So thats all from the intro and hopefully gives you the perspective that im advancing, tempting to advance and then the first part of the book is called listening to the planets. I trace some of the history of this relatively recent ability that earth has two central bits of itself back out into the universe from whence it all once came and explore. After 4. 5 billion years of earth evolution one species involves this past drainage ability to start launching little bits of earth stuff circling the planet, observing ourselves and also visiting the neighbors and sending signals back. What if we learn from all back . What i focus on here is what we have learned about the earth from our explorations elsewhere that may be useful in our task to manage ourselves in a relationship with the planet. There are many insights that we have gained into earth, profound fundamental insights about how our planet works that have only come from examining other planets, getting some perspective on whats going on here. By cs elliott said in that famous poem that i will mangle about at the end of oligarchs pouring we return to the place we started as if for the first time. I think cs said it slightly better than that but you get the idea. Hey i met astrobiologist, not a public but there are many of these insights and i have a section in the book where i involve ideas about earths geology in a way that surface relates to the current smoothing of the interior and how that is bound up with climate evolution through these great cycles of carbon and nitrogen and oxygen that unite the atmosphere to the surface in the interior of the planet and the role of the other planets and the rest of the solar system and affect the nurse evolution both by impact on the fact that earth has been hit repeatedly like the famous asteroid and that hit dinosaurs 65 million years ago but many other events as well and the way in which our climate has been affected by the gravitational torquing from other planets in many of these connections between us and the rest of the solar system came out of this and large to view from interplanetary exploration. One of the most profound insights had to do with the role of life on earth. By comparing the earth to our apparently lifeless neighbors, venus and mars, we have gained an appreciation of the deep and profound extent to which earth has been transformed by life. Early on in its history age of these three planets went very kind of catastrophe, catastrophic change and it became an oven. Mars became the freezer and earth came to life and completely transform not just in the obvious ways. The atmosphere strange compared to the other planets because of the oxygen and methane and so on but the composition of the ocean and even the interior of the earth we now believe over the long run is affected and maybe even controlled by life. In a really deep way its hard to separate the living and nonliving parts of the earth and earth is in a sense a living world. Earth went down a path, a junction that the other neighboring planets didnt take. We are still trying to figure out why completely although we have some idea about earth went through branching point early on in its history and theres a planet, theres a chapter in the book about the profound role of life in determining the nature of our planet and in a way thats a bit of a setup for the next part of the book where i talk about human influence because i contend that we are at another branching point in planetary history. It may be as equally as profound as the origin of life wasnt transforming our planet, the origin of cognitive life or life that is influencing the planet through cognitive systems. So the next part of the book is where i sort of summarize human influence from the earths point of view if you will end and this section is called monkey with the world. I want to read you a little bit from the very beginning. This section, monkey with the world. Its called something new. It starts off of course with the grateful dead. Who can stop what must arrive now, something new is waiting to be born. Have you noticed that something strange is happening to the earth . Take a good long look at this world, dazzling blue orb spiraling in clouds spinning through darkness glinting and slowly brightening sun. Winter bite pulsing between north and south as earth and bolster its orbit. Now imagine you are very patient alien regarding earth over the eons. If youve been watching carefully for say the last several billion years you have seen a lot happen. The brown drifting around the oceanic globe coalescing and breaking apart, animated pieces in a spherical puzzle. The polar caps growing and shrinking, advancing and retreating as climate rocks between the ice age and hot house. Throughout all these changes the nightside remains a nearly unbroken black and the dayside continence arthus dark though gray of their rock. After 4 billion lonely years the green french first edges over the land and the night starts to sparkle with occasional forest fires. Still for the longest time the omelette hemisphere remains as black as the starry space around it. The dark interrupted only by fleeting fires and occasional glass of flash of lightning or flora until very recently in the last few hundred years in the life of the planet, whoa what is this . Something new. Suddenly the planet lights up in a peculiar spidering pattern that seems to reflect an organic process that Something Else as well, something cognitive. Starting in a few isolated River Valleys in coastal areas of glowing points appear abruptly dynamited stitching together and spreading a long brightening webs. Eventually growing nodal patterns across the interiors of the land. On the dayside amash of dark lines becomes visible winding between these nightlights each surrounded by a growing grid of novel angular geometry. Soon regular movements and small way of generating objectstore crossing the ocean and many clouds start streaking the skies. At the same time a host of other accelerating changes are observable in the atlas air, the land, the oceans and the ice. Finally just 60 years ago and interpol in this fastforward view began the curious anti secretion with small bits of earth stuff back into space little insectlike constructions of refined metal thrusters and radios start leaving back off the planet sailing first to the nearest world and those farther afield sending pictures and other information home to their inquisitive builders. Signaling the arrival on earth of curiosity and gravity defying technology. Yes after gravity finds technology, yes after billions of years of geology as usual something new and strange is definitely happening here. What is the meaning of these new changes . And then ill tell you, i make an attempt to characterize whats happening on earth now from our planet a logical point of view and one thing we learn when we do that if you study the long history of the earth is that earth has been through a lot of catastrophic changes. This is not the first catastrophe to the fall earth whats happening now and we are not the first life form, the first species to radically transform the planet. For instance these little guys the cyanobacteria about 2. 5 billion years ago completely transform the planet and you know they may not look like planet wreckers but they are. These guys discovered a new Energy Source and an exploiting bad Energy Source widely they polluted the entire atmosphere which a dangerous gas and they destroyed the climate led to mass extinction. They look innocent enough, dont they . But what they discovered was solar energy. They perfected photosynthesis and learned how to use solar energy to break apart Carbon Dioxide and water, spit out the oxygen and make organic stuff and in the process they polluted the planet with a dangerous gas 02. Of course we love the oxygen. I know i do. Good stuff, good stuff. But thats because we have evolved empower cells with these exothermic energy releasing actions that happen when a organic molecules made oxygen. When oxygen first appeared organic life was defenseless against those reactions until we evolve the restoration. You have a power plant in every cell of your body that uses those reactions. Thats how we live but when it first appeared not only was the poisonous but we think there was some methane greenhouse keeping the planet warm and the oxygen destroyer than lets are probably the greatest global nach and the planet has ever known where the planets became completely frozen over. These guys did a lot of damage but for me here the story of course we dont say oh those irresponsible siano bacteria. How could they . What were they thinking . Because bacteria dont think. Theyre just bacteria. At the same time we are cso of behaving in a way that is perhaps analogous and those of us that are paying attention feel a great sense of responsibility about this and concern. What is the difference . In an effort to probe that question a bit i looked at all the catastrophes that could befall planets and ive decided perhaps they fit into four categories for kinds of planetary change categorized with respect to the influence of life. What i call planetary changes are just the random things that happen, when bad things happen to good planets. A big first balkinism causes mass extinction. These are catastrophes where life had nothing to do with it. It was just in the wrong place at the right time and all planets in the universe to some degree will have this kind of catastrophe. They second biological catastrophe. I gave an example of the cyanobacteria, this is w