I used to be a pretty strong "doubter", if not a denier. I made a gradual shift away from that, but one strong instance of shift was when Neil Degrasse Tyson presented it as a (relatively) simple physics problem in his new Cosmos series. Before we started burning fossil fuels, x% of the sun's energy was reflected back into space. Now, with a higher concentration of CO2, x is a smaller number. That energy has to go somewhere, and at least some of that is going to be heat energy.

Still, I don't think that anything on the level of "average individual citizen/household of an industrial country" is really where anything needs to happen. Yes, collectively, normal people in their daily lives contribute to Climate Change. But the vast majority of us, even as a collective single unit, contribute less than industrial / government / infrastructure sources.

Fossil fuels have been a great source of energy that has massively contributed to global advances in the past century. BUT, although we didn't know it in the beginning, they have this associated cost/downside. Fossil fuels also have a weakness in that they are not by any means inexhaustible, and costs rise as that becomes more and more obvious. In turn, that tends to favor the status quo in terms of the hierarchy of industrial nations versus developing or 3rd world countries -- we've already got the money and infrastructure in place to use fossil fuels, developing countries can't afford the costs.

All of this makes me think that 2 things need to happen:
A) Governments need to encourage the development of energy sources etc. that move us away from using fossil fuels. Tax breaks to Tesla Motors, tax incentives to buyers of solar cells for their homes, etc. etc.
B) If scientists/pundits/whoever really want people to stop using fossil fuels (or just cut down), they need to develop realistic alternatives. I'll bring up Tesla Motors again for deserving huge kudos in this area. Americans (and in general citizens of developed countries) have certain expectations about how a car should perform. Electric cars have traditionally been greatly inferior to a car burning fossil fuels in terms of living up to those expectations, but Tesla threw all that out the window and made a car that car people actually like to drive. It isn't just "vaguely functional if you really want to brag about how green you are", it is actually competitive with or superior to a gas-engine car for most users/consumers (some caveats for people who need to drive long distances in a single day).

We need to get more companies / inventors / whoever developing superior, functional alternatives to fossil fuel technologies. We need governments to encourage and enable those developments, NOT to cave to lobbyist pressure from big oil etc. and do the opposite. Prices will start high (like Tesla), but if you really are making a superior product, economy of scale will eventually kick in and normalize that out.

Outside of the consumer level, the same thing goes for actual power production. Even if we did nothing (which I would certainly not advocate), eventually scarcity and increased difficulty in obtaining fossil fuels (kinda sad that the past 2 decades of pointless wars 95% driven by oil haven't taught us this lesson yet, but there it is) will make the more "green" alternatives (solar, wind, tidal, nuclear, whatever) more economically practical. That tipping point will be when we see the real change begin.

BTW, I wanted to add a small comment at the end of this. Something I didn't add back then (but, looking back upon it, I think I should have).

It is regarding the little comment I mad e about feeling a connection to "something" bigger than me, then describing what this "feeling" was like.

I wanted to make it clear that the human mind, our testimony, and our eye-witness accounts are very, very undependable... A sad, but absolute truth.

Most cases that have been thrown out of court later on--once new evidence is brought to light; like DNA evidence--has shown over and over again that in many of these cases, the "victims" or prisoners sent to jail--for doing nothing--were sent there almost entirely on eye-witness testimony and accounts. Then the DNA shows that their entire "story" (because that IS exactly what it should be called), merely served as a way to put an innocent man in jail, and to keep that DA/prosecutor's record as close to "awesome" as possible (because we really DO care FAR too much about a DA's record than whether the person being prosecuted should actually be here, let alone if they are guilty or not). The defense attorney has the same problem; I'm not really sure WE should care about these things (only so much as to whether the state IS actually bringing cases to court that SHOULD be there...).

I have severe sleep apnea and also narcolepsy. With this I get sleep paralysis (basically every night) and an extreme amount of hypnagogic hallucinations (more than powerful enough that i fully understand why many believe in both ghosts and aliens--amongst other creatures). The "feeling" and situation I described above can very easily be traced back into this little issue of mine. It creates everything you could imagine--I even had a hypnagogic hallucination powerful enough that it felt as though someone or something was trying to yank me "through" my bed (hello, Nightmare On Elm Street"--I was actually more intrigued by the event than anything else, akin to a researcher). While most people would have run yelling from there house, or at the least gone to get comfort and forgone sleeping in that room AND bed for quite sometime...I went right back to sleep.

This is why KNOWING what you are up against, what it can do to you, and how powerful it really can be (especially on your psyche and even your physical state is very important...). I knew all of this before it ever happened AND I had also noticed the hypnagogic hallucinations doing A LOT of very small auditory based things--all the time--to me, but they sounded realistic (like dogs barking off in the distance, people whispering outside your window...across the street, telephones ringing upstairs, people you know talking or saying things--like your name--sometimes to the point that you have to ask them if they called for you...and YES you do feel like an idiot, but if everyone knows your physical problems, due to the sleep disorders, they understand what it going on, and can laugh with you when it happens--EVEN the scary ones).

Sleep paralysis happens to be when your body tries to wake up, but it doesn't quite get there. hence you end up in a state were you are both awake and asleep at the same time (dreaming to be accurate). These events have a tendency to be a bit like the hypnagogic hallucinations, in that they can seem real, since you are half-awake. History has a great many examples of SP--the ones that don't seem that scary, like visiting angels. To those that can create bone-chilling "ghost stories", like demons and succubi. There is a very famous painting of a "breath-stealing" demon, depicting a SP event (many people did in fact DIE in their sleep from "lack of breathing", this is where SP fiction AND the reality of many of the SP sufferers having severe sleep apnea--something fully unknown in that day and age--were not taken into account, and instead it was a demon! Many people that DO have sleep paralysis events have dreams and dream like events that are close to and resemble each other, so there must be a basic psychological connection in the formation of many of these dreams--even space alien abductions seem to have this same thing in common...

So when a big SP or hypnagogic hallucination comes along, and just by chance it happens to mix with each either (if you suffer both), you can get some truly panic inducing events (go look these up, if you don't understand why they could be so panic inducing--you'll understand pretty quick why they SUCK; luckily, as I've gotten older my mind has created two ways to deal with sleep paralysis events; the first it created, and I don't know how to be honest, is that I realize in these "half-dreams" that if I relax I will gain all of my abilities back...sure enough it works every time, but it can be VERY hard to do this when you have a pure-evil, shadow of fear standing 10 feat from you; then lately...and I think this happened literally due to the shear volume and amount of SP events I've had...I can basically FORCE myself to move again through willpower alone, allowing me to wake up as well--doing this actually feels "odd", it feels uncomfortable, like you are "going against the grain" and then suddenly breaking through a wall that wasn't allowing you to do what you wanted; so I imagine this "ability" forcefully allows me to make my body stop it's "protective" mode that it is in as you sleep and it is ALSO what causes the "paralysis" in all sleep paralysis vents...it is just your body doing what it should)...

Also, from what I've noticed, it seems to me that almost all hallucinations at some level are directly linked with whatever in the mind allows us to dream or create very vivid "imaginations". Both my sleep paralysis events AND especially my hypnagogic hallucinations, accompanied by the fact that I have indeed ran into "run of the mill" hallucinations (caused by adverse effects from medical prescriptions in the past), they ALL seem to be essentially linked together from what I noticed. I'd have to look around and see if there are others that have as many vantage points as I do, and also agree that they seem linked.

Throughout history people have seen these two aspects as something they absolutely are not OR not even close too! Yet FAR too many people don't ask the absolutely obvious question that they ALWAYS should have! Why, do ghost, aliens, demons, angels, you name it, show up at NIGHT (or for those that have odd sleep schedules: when you are TIRED or about to SLEEP--or just have...)?!? The answer should, indeed, be obvious... All of these things have to do WITH our sleep or something with our ability TO sleep (you don't necessarily need to be asleep or need to have just woken up for this stuff to happen to you; my narcolepsy shows this is absolutely true--as I can get hypnagogic hallucinations at ANY time of the day, sometimes without warning). The creatures and gods we have created do indeed exist, but they are located at the border between where our brain can see clearly and when our brain could use some rest--then we all live in our dreams.

So, be careful about how much stock you put into anything you believe is true, especially because you "believe" you have witnessed or experienced something magnificent... Believe it or not, seeing is NOT believing! Science always had the right idea, you MUST allow others to confirm what you found, and if they cannot find it--no matter even IF you "found it"--you might need to be able to accept the harsh reality that somehow you didn't see or experience what you thought you did (but, it can still be amazing)...

@jonny - I'm pretty much with you. These same "dilemmas" were presented to me in a college class (Psych? Philo?) and I objected to the 2nd one on the basis that I can't imagine a bystander fat enough to reliably stop a train, and if they were I wouldn't be able to push them off a ledge.

The TA that was teaching the class said that the idea is to just treat it like a Newtonian Physics problem (ie., everything is a frictionless sphere or make all assumptions to reduce complexity wherever possible). In the scenario, just accept that you KNOW that you are capable of pushing the dude off, that you KNOW he will stop the train, and that you KNOW that you have insufficient mass/strength to jump off yourself and stop the train.

I get how that limits the variables and therefore draws a more concrete difference between various answers to the situation, but to me it also limits the interest I have in the question. My brain doesn't work that way, my problem solving center engages automatically and tries to find pitfalls and assign success rates rather than just "assume this will work".

I think I'd rather see the situations / dilemmas reworked to have a more realistic expectation of success. Maybe something like a rampaging lion on the loose, and you can swing a door currently blocking a room with 1 person inside to instead block a room with 5 people inside (situation 1); or you are above a hallway with a lion running towards 5 people and have an opportunity to push somebody into the lion's path which would give the 5 people enough time to run out of the hall and lock a door (situation 2). I think my "hungry lion" dilemmas have fewer physics pitfalls than the traditional train dilemmas.

It's unfortunate that his learning will be limited by the extents of knowledge determined by his lower potential predecessors.
What will he do when he runs out of books?
His ultimate 'knowledge' will come down to his own creativity, and less his ability to absorb previous discoveries.

Someone once made a comparison of us to hypothetical aliens.
How the alien children might do our most complex physics problems in their kindergarten equivalent.
How those aliens could encounter us, and think "oh, look how cute, the human can derive a series approximation".

People like Tanishq are a step/stage between us regular people, and those theoretical aliens. He can do more as a child - but he has the potential to do more as a maximum. A personal maximum that likely humanity can't supply him with today.

People in general are a mix of creatives, memorizers, knuckleheads, middle-grounders, etc.
So the question that comes to my mind is, which kind of person is Tanishq?

We know that he absorbs information better than a regular person.
But there's a difference between memorization, understanding, and intuition.

We've all met people that memorize like crazy. They get amazing grades, but you can tell that their understanding is weak when they ask painfully stupid questions. The kind that would never be asked had they even the slightest understanding of the 'mechanics' of the subject at hand. (This always made my jaw drop. Seeing a person with perfect grades just 'not get it' to badly)

We've all met people that have a strong sense of understanding. They see one example, and they can run with it, adapting it to all kinds of changes. They 'get it'.
(Not always the best grades though. Why study when you can figure it out as you go? Because you won't figure everything out on the spot come test time...)

Then there are those with real intuition. The kind of person that looks at a problem, and thinks "the solution is something like this, I can't say why, but I can feel it. Let me work on it and figure it out." Then some time later they return with a real solution and a proof of why... and it was right along the lines that they had suspected to begin with.
No one had to give them an example, and no one had to pump them full of set-up material. They could feel it, and knew enough to recognize what it was they were on to.
These are the people that make the big leaps for human understanding.

The saddest case for Tanishq would be that he turns out to be a very enthusiastic expert memorizer.

But I hope he, and humanity, can be lucky enough for him to be both a prodigy, and a true intuitive.

-scheherazade


P.S.
Something amazing about those parent's genes. Definitely should save a [consentual] copy... Too good to lose.
IMO there should be focus on creating a gene therapy program to improve learning/intellect.
That will in itself lead to greater progress in other fields, as there would be many more super-intelligent people available to work on those problems, and many more opportunities for big breakthroughs.
It's something that could raise the potential [and actual] achievement cap of all humanity. 'It's kind of a big deal'.
It's like figuring out 'how to become those hypothetical aliens'.

Crappy starcraft example : Don't rush... macro instead. You'll be farther along later than you would be otherwise.

It was probably the snow that saved him. This is an old physics problem. It takes about 5 feet of snow to survive a fall at terminal velocity.

>> ^Payback:

Most of you keep talking about how the road needs to be perfectly flat. Well, they don't. Otherwise the concrete pads of the interstates would need to be perfectly flat. These are 3x3 squares. Every video game character you play is made up of squares and triangles. A spiked ridge between the LED/P-V "pucks" would take care of any water caused splipping.
Just because you can find fault with the guy's "ultimate" roadway, a ton of the ideas could be implemented without full conversion.
How about using those LED/P-V pucks on highways to merely to show where the lanes are at night? They could "pave" the centre and shoulder areas to provide power for streetlights and not affect the traffic surface.


You could also have dynamic road deployment and redeployment. Need to rewire your entire highways system for an evacuation? No problem, reconfigure all signage and postings to make all available roads outgoing only, now, short of the likely bottlenecks, you have doubled your outbound traffic ability. Really, the sky is the limit. Any level of smartness to the roads brings with in untold innovation. The physical problems seem very manageable and knowable, but the benefits are easily hidden and largely unrealized. The potential is mind blowing though. Solar powered streets and buildings just makes to much since not to try and make work. So much free energy in these already used places, we just need the means to effectively harvest it, and this seems like a great idea, in any final form it takes. It is worth mentioning that glass is non-crystalline. Meaning it can flex and bend over time. Look at any old house and the windows are thicker on the bottom then the top. So it can deal with gradual gradient changes, how well is a matter of engineering.

It takes at least a year to get to light speed, then light years to get outside our own little bit of space...not to mention you can't actually get to light speed...There are some real physical problems with going to other stars atm ....now the rest of the solar system....

How is that a physics problem? Is it about light refraction?