A climate scientist's approach to dealing with the latest global climate conference

 For the past two weeks, tens of thousands of delegates from, I believe, every country on the planet, were in Dubai for this year's global climate conference. There have been something like 30 of these over the past few decades. And unfortunately, no real progress has been accomplished. 

We just had the latest hottest year on record. We just had a record year for most CO2 emissions. And the 'agreement' signed in Dubai a couple days ago, looks to reduce and eliminate burning fossil fuels by 2050. That sounds great! But the trouble is history shows this will not come close to happening, and since there is no timetable or blueprint for actionable steps or goals along the way, it is easy to be skeptical that not much progress will be made even twenty years from now. 

Keep in mind more poorer countries will want to progress and develop, and population growth continues to happen. We will see 10 billion people in the next few decades. Our younger generation needs to be aware of all this and take the lead sooner than later, since you and your kids will inherit a massive problem. 

Does Gravity have to be quantized?

 For many decades, the assumption in physics has been that all the forces, including gravity, must be quantized - that is, we must look and find the quantum theory for gravity. And that the key to the "theory of everything" rests on that great discovery waiting to happen. 

But decades of work by the top theoretical and mathematical minds of multiple generations have not resulted in any testable theories. A good question to ask is: does gravity have to be quantized? Maybe, just maybe, gravity in this universe is 'classical' and continuous, and really just the result of warps in spacetime as Einstein proposed in general relativity! Some physicists are asking just that type of question, and developing theories based on gravity being classical with the others - electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces - follow quantum field theories. Maybe, just maybe, this is the reason gravity is SO different from the others and so difficult to link into the Standard Model. I am really interested in seeing how this evolves, and may very well create testable experiments in the near future...something that has not happened yet for quantum models of gravity. In the end, experimental results will determine how things really work.