Venus has a runaway greenhouse effect. I kind of want to know what happened there because we're twirling knobs here on Earth without knowing the consequences of it. Mars once had running water. It's bone dry today. Something bad happened there as well.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the consequences of planetary changes, urging caution in our actions on Earth.
Neil Degrasse Tyson reflects on the drastic changes that have occurred on other planets like Venus and Mars, emphasizing the importance of understanding the implications of our actions on Earth. He draws a parallel to the effects of climate change and the unknown consequences of human interventions, suggesting that we should learn from the history of these planets to avoid making similar mistakes.
In practice
In a presentation about climate change, one might quote Tyson to emphasize the importance of understanding our actions.
The problem is that many people operate on the assumption that NASA should go to Congress every year with hat in hand and justify it every year. Well, I see it as the greatest economic driver that there ever was. Economic drivers don't need justification.
The press still thinks [global warming] is controversial. So they find the 1% of the scientists and put them up as if they're 50% of the research results. You in the public would have no idea that this is basically a done deal and that we're on to other problems, because the journalists are trying to give it a 50/50 story. It's not a 50/50 story. It's not. Period.
As a scientist, I want to go to Mars and back to asteroids and the Moon because I'm a scientist. But I can tell you, I'm not so naive a scientist to think that the nation might not have geopolitical reasons for going into space.
In just one year, the expenditure of of the U.S.'s military budget is equivalent to the entire 50-year running budget of NASA combined.
One of my great laments is that education today seems to have... be less about passion and more about process, more about tactic or technique.
Lots of people think, well, we're humans; we're the most intelligent and accomplished species; we're in charge. Bacteria may have a different outlook: more bacteria live and work in one linear centimeter of your lower colon than all the humans who have ever lived. That's what's going on in your digestive tract right now. Are we in charge, or are we simply hosts for bacteria? It all depends on your outlook.
A scientist's aim in a discussion with his colleagues is not to persuade, but to clarify.
Economists don't seem to have noticed that the economy sits entirely within the ecology.
The idea that you can ask one question and it makes the point - well, that wasn't how psychology was done at the time.
Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question 'How?' but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question 'Why?'
Those who know that the consensus of many centuries has sanctioned the conception that the earth remains at rest in the middle of the heavens as its center, would, I reflected, regard it as an insane pronouncement if I made the opposite assertion that the earth moves.
I think the next century will be the century of complexity.
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