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The Earth is not the only planet to undergo radical changes in its climate.  Even if we look at the nearby solar neighborhood, we can see that Venus and Mars underwent significant changes in their climate in the past.   Venus is a textbook example of the greenhouse effect gone haywire.  Mars most likely had flowing water on its surface.  Why did these planets change?

Even on Earth, we are not the first species to radically change the climate of the entire planet.  The Earth of the past was a very different place.  We, as humans, wouldn’t have liked it very much.

Today, we welcome Dr. Adam Frank on the podcast.  Adam is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester. His has written for Scientific American, The New York Times, and NPR, where he co-founded the blog 13.7: Cosmos and Culture. Most recently, he is the author of Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth.  We talk about how climate change on alien worlds can give us insights to the climate change we are creating on Earth, how likely it is we will survive this climate change, and what the fate of our own Earth may be.

You can follow Adam on Twitter at @adamfrank4.

Background music you hear are clips from Time Train by PC III licensed under CC BY 4.0, Out of the Fog at Podsummit licensed under CC0 1.0, Thunderbird  and Floating Cities by Kevin MacLeod licensed under CC by 3.0.