112 - Dorian Abbot - Earth 2.0

Two for Tea Podcast

Dorian’s academic profile: https://geosci.uchicago.edu/people/dorian-abbot/ Follow Dorian on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DorianAbbot References Dorian’s article ‘MIT Abandons Its Mission. And Me.’, in Bari Weiss’s ‘Common Sense’ Substack: https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/mit-abandons-its-mission-and-me Dorian’s ‘Wall Street Journal’ article, ‘The Views That Made Me Persona Non Grata at MIT’: https://www.wsj.com/articles/cancel-culture-college-mit-dorian-abbot-university-chicago-representation-equity-equality-11635516316? Watch Dorian’s cancelled lecture, ‘Climate and the Potential for Life on Other Planets’: https://jmp.princeton.edu/events/climate-and-potential-life-other-planets ‘Life on Mars: The Ethical Implications of Colonizing the Red Planet’ by Thomas Cortellesi in ‘Areo Magazine’: https://areomagazine.com/2018/07/02/life-on-mars-the-ethical-implications-of-colonizing-the-red-planet/ ‘Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe’ by Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rare-Earth-Complex-Uncommon-Universe/dp/0387952896 Timestamps 2:24 What makes a planet habitable and how we find exoplanets. 8:18 Dorian’s research on the cloud effects on tidally locked planets - and how these effects suggest these planets might be more habitable/Earth-like than previously thought. 14:10 How some exoplanets and their clouds provide a model for the possible future of climate change on Earth. 15:31 Dorian’s views on the Fermi paradox - where are the aliens? Why Dorian believes extraterrestrial life is more likely than not. 20:23 Why we should hope to find no life at all on exoplanets rather than finding lots of extinct civilisations. 21:10 Twitter question: what does Dorian think a realistic time scale and strategy for colonising exoplanets would be? 22:39 Twitter question: how useful is the Drake equation? 24:08 Twitter question: what are Dorian’s views on von Neumann self-replicating probes? (And a digression on ‘decolonisation’ and the possible impacts of us colonising other planets.) 27:50 Dorian’s views on the ‘Rare Earth’ thesis, which posits that complex life is very unlikely to be found elsewhere in the universe. 29:32 What does Dorian’s exoplanet work tell us about climate change? What does Dorian think are the main misconceptions about anthropogenic climate change? What we don’t know: the future of climate change 32:21 Dorian’s work on rogue planets - could these harbour life? 35:20 Has the atmosphere in physics departments changed recently? Is there pressure from the woke left and climate denialist right? Academia, cancel culture, and chilling. 39:52 Why science should be based on merit, not politics. 40:22 Who does Dorian think Iona should interview?