David Grinspoon Quote
We left Earth to its own devices for long enough, it would eventually enter another ice age. This would be much more extreme than the kinds of climate changes we are potentially facing now. During the last ice age, up until about thirteen thousand years ago, an unbroken sheet of ice two or three miles thick extended from the poles down to the latitude of Minneapolis. Sea level dropped by around three hundred feet, completely redrawing coastlines and the paths of rivers around the world. There is no way that a civilization of many billion humans, tied to cities and dependent upon a global system of agriculture and trade, could survive such a transition intact.
David Grinspoon
We left Earth to its own devices for long enough, it would eventually enter another ice age. This would be much more extreme than the kinds of climate changes we are potentially facing now. During the last ice age, up until about thirteen thousand years ago, an unbroken sheet of ice two or three miles thick extended from the poles down to the latitude of Minneapolis. Sea level dropped by around three hundred feet, completely redrawing coastlines and the paths of rivers around the world. There is no way that a civilization of many billion humans, tied to cities and dependent upon a global system of agriculture and trade, could survive such a transition intact.
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About David Grinspoon
His research focuses on comparative planetology, with a focus on climate evolution on Earth-like planets and implications for habitability. He has also studied, written and lectured on the human influence on Earth, as seen in cosmic perspective.
He has published four books, Venus Revealed, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times book prize, Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life, which won the 2004 PEN literary award for nonfiction, Earth in Human Hands, which was named one of NPR's Science Friday "Best Science Books of 2016" and Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto, co-authored with Alan Stern. He is adjunct professor of Astrophysical and Planetary Science at the University of Colorado, a former Fellow of the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Engagement at Dartmouth College and a former Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the College of the Environment at Wesleyan University.