Earth Sweet Earth: The Deep Logic of the Planet

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As a science, geology was a late bloomer, particularly compared with physics. It's embarrassing to admit that the laws of thermodynamics and the structure of the atom were well known decades before plate tectonics – the way the solid Earth works – was figured out (in 1965). Unfortunately, the public perception of geology – and of the Earth itself -- remain stuck in the nineteenth century. The geosciences are now in fact in a golden age, with the analytical tools that allow us to glimpse Earth's hidden infrastructure. What we see dispels all the old notions about the planet – not a dull, inert, ordinary rock -- but a responsive, resilient, robust, and immensely complex biogeochemical system.

This is the talk I would like to give to Elon Musk and others who assert that we could 'terraform' Mars in a matter a few human generations, or surgically 'engineer' the climate without a torrent of unintended consequences. Such thinking reflects profound ignorance of both nature and human nature.