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New York Times, 1977
'One flight of fancy advanced by Dr. Woese, with an accompanying smile, is that the presence of this class of organisms might explain why life evolved here and not on the earth's sister planet, Venus.
The rationale goes as follows: Clouds of carbon dioxide originally enveloped both planets, but methanogens developed on earth and digested much of the cloud and in turn produced the hydrocarbons that developed into higher forms of life. But on Venus, according to this line of speculation, the lack of methanogens allowed the carbon dioxide to accumulate to the point that the so‐called “greenhouse effect” took over the Venusian surface, in turn making it too hot for life to evolve.'
@cyrilpedia Bill Balch's telling of that story (particularly his impression of Woese on the phone to the NYT) is ROTFLOL funny.