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Transcribe page 2 of 79
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Download PDF for NASM-NASM.2014.0025-bx038-fd003_002 (project ID 25319)
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CLIMATE Preface When I was an astronaut, I spent hours gazing down at the Earth below. Our planet is beautiful. It's home to everything we know and hold dear. When I looked out the window, I could see the winding rivers emptying into blue oceans, mountainsides of a tropical rain forest, and muddy waters of river deltas. I could see city lights twinkle at night, and contrails of airplanes crisscross the sky. More than anything, though, I could see how fragile the Earth is. When I looked toward the horizon, I could see a thin, fuzzy blue line outlining the planet. At first, I didn't know what I was seeing. Then I realized it was Earth's atmosphere. It looked so thin and so fragile, like a strong gust of interplanetary wind could blow it all away. And I realized that this air is our planet's spacesuit — it's all that separates every bird, fish, and person on Earth from the blackness of space. In the last few decades we've started to change that atmosphere. Some of the changes, like the smog hovering over Los Angeles, are even visible to astronauts. Others are invisible to the eye, but are now easy to measure. [[bracket delete]] The most dangerous — the one that will affect everything on our planet — is the warming that we now know we humans are causing. [[/bracket delete]] Our warming climate is not visible to astronauts, but its effects will be. The next generation of astronauts could look down and see deserts where we now have lakes, meadows where we now have glaciers, and oceans where we now have beaches. [[right margin delete]][Future astronauts may even have to launch into space from a new launch pad — Cape Canaveral could be under water. They may look down and say "that's where Washington DC used to be" or "did you know farmers used to grow wheat in Kansas".] [[/right margin delete]]
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