It’s not necessarily accurate to say placental mammals outcompeted them. It’s very tempting to say it, since they certainly outnumber them. Marsupials are very rare outside of Australia and New Zealand. But we need to be careful about the assumptions we make based on apparent winners in what looks to our human eyes…

This misses the entire point though. Sure those words are not “incorrect” descriptions.. but  ‘primitive’ and ‘weird/bizarre’ have connotations outside of their literal dictionary definitions - connotations that have a tremendous impact on how we frame our relationships to these species.

The Wikipedia generation is fascinating for any number of reasons, among them the idea that copy/paste is journalism rather than plagiarism, and that book reviews can be written without reading books.

too soon man

I was the exact same way. I feel like he was pretty much destined to become a Mars scientist with a name like that! Maybe even one day a Mars Prince! Ha ha!

“I think we have collectively oversimplified Mars,”

Highly Highly doubt any complex life ever formed on Mars..  As you said, we would have seen evidence of it.  Microbial and simple life, I think is likely, but not something we will see evidence of from these rovers.  That will require boots on the ground.  

Surface life is extremely unlikely now. Maybe something could seasonally survive down at the bottom of Hellas Planitia or Hebes Chasma when conditions in the soil are just about right, but it’s unlikely - if Martian life exists, it’s way down deep.

Did John Carter change his name once he became a Mars scientist?  Did his parents know something?  Did he feel trapped by fate from a very young age?

I’m sorry, but I’m still stuck on “planetary scientist, John Carter”

IIRC Scientists are leaning towards a “cold, icy early Mars”, where the global average temperature would have been below freezing and many of its bodies of water would have had icy crusts (which doesn’t preclude life potentially arising and living near hydrothermal vents) - except maybe the equatorial regions would…

Roverpox?  Woofypox?  Knick knack paddy whack give a dog a virus?

Don’t give MTG any ideas. She’s nuts enough as is.

That seems to be right, yea, though the report doesn’t go into much detail. Here’s the exact wording for anyone curious:

We went too far this time!! Not the doggos!!!!!!!

Well, I certainly hope you and your sources are right. Except for Bjørn Lomborg. He’s impossible to take seriously.

I watched the entire video. Thanks, EleanorSledge.

I think I’m going to go with Gaya Herrington on this one:

Considering that the last 50 years tracks with the “Business as Usual” model that predicts societal collapse around 2040, I’m hesitant to suggest that reality has superseded the study.

Basically, the MIT study ran several models. The “Business As Usual” model most closely tracks what has occurred over the past 50 years. This model concludes society is on track to collapse by around 2040.