Dagomar Degroot — Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean: An Environmental History of Our Place in the Solar System - with Rebecca Helm

Our solar system is a dynamic place where asteroids careen off course and solar winds hurl charged particles across billions of miles of space. Yet we seldom consider how these events, so immense in scale, influence our comparatively minuscule corner of the cosmos: planet Earth.In Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean, Dagomar Degroot traces the surprising threads linking human endeavor to the rest of the solar system. He shows how variability in planetary environments shaped geopolitics, spurred scientific and cultural innovation, and encouraged new ideas about the emergence and ultimate fate of life. Martian dust storms altered the trajectory of the Cold War and inspired fantastical stories about alien civilizations. Comet impacts on Jupiter led to the first planetary defense strategy. And volcanic eruptions spewed sulfuric acid into Venus's atmosphere, exposing the existential risks of climate change at home.In the dawning era of space settlement, cosmic environments are becoming increasingly vulnerable to human activity. They may also hold the key to slowing the destruction of environments on Earth. Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean asks what it will take to develop an interplanetary environmentalism across a vast mosaic of entangled worlds.Dagomar Degroot is Associate Professor of Environmental History at Georgetown University. A contributor to the Washington Post, Nature, and Aeon, he is the author of The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560-1720, named one of the ten best history books of 2018 by the Financial Times.Degroot is in conversation with Rebecca Helm, a marine biologist studying life in the open ocean and at the ocean’s surface. Helm grew up in Arizona and completed her undergraduate degree in Marine Science at Eckerd College before conducting research on jellyfish life cycles as a Fullbright Fellow in South Africa. Helm received a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Brown University, where she was an NSF Graduate Student Research Fellow and an NSF EPSCoR fellow. Her Ph.D. work focused on the evolution of open-ocean and coastal jellyfish species. Helm then conducted research on circadian rhythms as a postdoc at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and later at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow, where she continued her research on coastal and open-ocean jellies. For the last four years, Helm has been an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina Asheville, where she has led multiple interdisciplinary projects on the biology of life on the high seas.https://politics-prose.com/book/9780674986503?ic_referral=Wedhh-wV9o635khXKeHqy6Ph4Nxs94lEz6_WdiI4u5gwM2wKxU3P0ClA2TYZVodLdGZWuGoG1tkbhPLQE9sZrAaBkUxtTs1hGvz6GMVogrg_o3ovxSbbOIcvZRc6ea1c5jrJiEo