From our "this explains a lot!" file...

In case you were wondering why there's STILL no replacement for the space shuttle, despite the program being almost 40 years old this year, here's a hint:

...reducing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim.

Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth's atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilisation growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat, the researchers explain.

This highly speculative scenario is one of several described by a Nasa-affiliated scientist and colleagues at Pennsylvania State University that, while considered unlikely, they say could play out were humans and alien life to make contact at some point in the future.

Shawn Domagal-Goldman of Nasa's Planetary Science Division and his colleagues compiled a list of plausible outcomes that could unfold in the aftermath of a close encounter, to help humanity "prepare for actual contact".

In their report, Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis, the researchers divide alien contacts into three broad categories: beneficial, neutral or harmful.

Here's the link and abstract at Elsevier Science.
I couldn't justify paying $31.00 for the actual paper to find out who paid for it, but my suspicion is that the US taxpayer did. Whoever paid got ripped off harshly, they just re-stated the plots from half the crappy Hollywood SciFi movies of the twentieth century.
Predictably, The Guardian takes a respectful tone to this bit of nonsense because it has Climate Change in it. Proving once again that you can't lampoon the Left, all you can do is report what they do, then point and laugh.

The Phantom

The Phantom Was WRONG! update:

Wow, I WUZ RONG! That almost never happens, but today it did. Underpaid, overworked NASA wretch Shawn Goldman reveals that NASA did not pay for this crapulous paper, he did it in his spare time with some friends. Therefore NASA is not guilty of wasting taxpayer money on this paper, and the Suspicious Phantom's suspicions were WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.

However Shawn and his friends are still doofi, and the Guardian is still a propaganda rag unfit to line bird cages with. Here endeth the mea culpa.