Welcome back to The Cosmic Companion! This week, we kick off a new series, Why Explore Space? As we discuss how space travel and exploration are essential to help monitor and cure the effects of global climate change. Later on in the show, we are going to be talking with Alan Gratz. His new book, Two Degrees, is a young adult novel exploring the effects of catastrophic climate change around the world. Since the earliest days of the human race, people have been attempting to predict the weather. Such prognostications were essential for planting, hunting, and other reasons. The realization that climate is vital to understanding weather took quite a while for scientists to understand. And, the climates of Earth have changed over time, and will continue to change in the future. From the time of the Ancient Greeks, people have discussed the idea that human actions could change environmental conditions on Earth. By the 19th Century, researchers had started to realize, for the first time, that human activities — notably the consumption of fossil fuels — had started to alter the atmosphere of Earth, adding to the CO2 which naturally envelopes our planet. Listen to the podcast version of this episode here or watch it as a video!(technical video problems plague the first half of the episode. Sorry about that!)My birthday is next week, so I am on vacation! Join us again on 26 November for The Future of Cities in Space! w/ Nat Geo’s Joe Yogerst, author of 100 Cities 5000 Ideas from National Geographic.And - here is a look at our schedule for the rest of the year! I hope you listen and watch every week! Clear skies! James Get full access to The Cosmic Companion w/ James Maynard at thecosmiccompanion.substack.com/subscribe