Steve,
At 08:37 02/07/2010 -0400, you wrote:
Asleep at the wheel... Food? Water? Energy? 'The Spirit in The Gene' at work.
Steve
I agree. I just wonder what the point of these sorts of polls are. Most
people have little idea of the scale of things, or the complexity of
things, nor the cost of them.
look at the first para, for example!
Poll: Americans Predict Life in 2050
A joint poll from the Pew Research Center and Smithsonian magazine finds
high hopes about science but anxiety about the environment
By T. A. Frail
Illustrations By Serge Bloch
Smithsonian magazine, August 2010
Within the next 40 years, most Americans believe, the United States will
get the bulk of its energy from sources other than oil.
Maybe not from oil but certainly the US (and all other advanced countries)
will still be heavily reliant on fossil fuels. There's no way that wind
turbines, solar technology, nuclear power (all needing massive governmental
subsidy anyway) or whatever can be scaled up to producing even half of
electricity requirements. None of these can produce stock organic chemicals
either (particularly nitrogenous fertilizers) at anywhere near economic cost.
Computers will converse like people.
Unlikely in the extreme. Ever since Japan's attempts at 5th Generation
computing 30 years ago every possible algorithm-based approach has failed.
Artificial Intelligence is a wasteland.
Cancer will be cured,
There are many sorts of cancers and most of them involve incredibly complex
associations between scores and sometimes hundreds of genes. As now, only a
few of the many cancers will be treatable (or postponable)
and artificial limbs will outperform natural ones.
Hardly. Nature has spent hundreds of millions of years perfecting limbs
with every conceivable ability. We can certainly invent prosthetics which
can do a few unusual things which our natural limbs can't do, but not the
all-round performance.
Astronauts will land on Mars,
Technically possible but will astronauts be able to remain fit and sane on
the journey there, and then on their return? All the evidence about basic
physiological and psychological limitations of the human body and brain is
pointing the other way. Robots perhaps, but live humans never.
and ordinary people will travel in space.
When ordinary parents cannot afford more than one or two children in
advanced countries how are they going to be able to afford the price of a
space ticket? Most ordinary people in advanced countries will still be
paying off their governmental debts in 40 years' time -- if there hasn't
been a catastrophic hyperinflation in between, and if they're lucky enough
to have a job.
Keith
But that optimistic outlook on scientific achievementdocumented in a
nationwide opinion poll conducted by the
<http://people-press.org/report/625/>Pew Research Center and
Smithsoniandoes not extend to the environment. A small majority of those
polled said most of the United States would face severe water shortages by
2050. Six in ten said the oceans would be less healthy than they are now,
and seven in ten foresaw a major energy crisis. Overall, fewer than half
expected the quality of Earths environment to improve.
If the U.S. has a national religion, the closest thing to it is faith in
technology,said Scott Keeter, director of survey research for the
<http://people-press.org/report/625/>Pew Research Center. But technology
is not seen as a panacea for fixing the environment.
The poll, occasioned by the magazines 40th anniversary and designed to
assess attitudes about the next 40 years, also documented a drop in
expectations. Americans remain generally positive, with 64 percent of
those surveyed saying they were somewhat or very optimistic about what the
next 40 years holds for them and their families; 61 percent said the same
about the nations future. But in a Pew poll taken in May 1999, the
questions garnered response rates of 81 percent and 70 percent, respectively.
Of course, the 1999 poll was taken at the height of the high-tech boom and
on the eve of a new millennium. Since then, terrorists attacked the United
States, the nation has engaged in two wars, the cost of living has
outpaced wages and a recession has damaged the economy, among other things.
In the new survey, 58 percent of respondents said a world war would occur
in the next four decades, 53 percent said terrorists would attack the
United States with nuclear weapons, and the same majority said the nation
would be less important in the world than it is now.
The Smithsonian/Pew poll was conducted April 21-26just after the BP oil
spill began in the Gulf of Mexico, but well before its magnitude became
apparent. The survey included 1,546 adults in the United States reached by
residential telephone or cellphone. The margin of error for the total
sample is no more than plus or minus 4.5 points.
The documented belief in technological advancement extended from the
laboratory (half said an extinct species would be resuscitated through
cloning) to outer space (half said evidence of life would be found
elsewhere in the universe) to the marketplace (a small majority said
gasoline-powered cars would go out of production).
In an exception to the pessimism about the environment, the poll found a
ten-point drop in the percentage of respondents who say the earth will get
warmer: from 76 percent in 1999 to 66 percent in 2010.
That trend is very consistent with data we've gathered on the issue of
global warming more generally,Keeter said. There are many possible
explanations, but one thing is quite clear: there is a strong partisan and
ideological pattern to the decline in belief in global warming.The vast
majority of the change since 1999, he said, has occurred among Republicans
and independents who lean Republican.
Because the U.S. population is expected to increase by more than 100
million by 2050, the poll asked about such growth. More than twice as many
respondents (42 percent) said it would be more harmful than beneficial (16
percent). And there was ambivalence about immigration. Roughly a third of
respondents said legal immigration had to be decreased to keep the economy
strong, but a slightly higher proportion said legal immigration had to be
kept at current levels; a quarter said it should be increased.
A clear majority expected race relations to improve (68 percent). Even
more expected a Hispanic candidate to be elected president of the United
States (69 percent). And 89 percentthe largest majority in the entire
pollsaid a woman would be elected president.
There was broad agreement that the cultural landscape, however else it
changes over the next 40 years, will have less paper. More than six in ten
respondents said they believed that paper currency and printed newspapers
would disappear and personal letters sent by mail would be exceedingly rare.
And a hopeful outlook on the U.S. economy56 percent said it would be
stronger in 2050 than it is nowcame with a caveat: 86 percent said
Americans would have to work into their 70s before retiring. Those longer
careers, in the respondentsview, would not be accompanied by longer lives.
Those who thought more people would live to be 100 (42 percent) were
outnumbered by those who did not (50 percent).
T. A. Frail is a senior editor at Smithsonian.
Read more:
<http://www.smithsonianmag.com/specialsections/40th-anniversary/Poll-Americans-Predict-Life-in-2050.html#ixzz0sTuGIa51>http://www.smithsonianmag.com/specialsections/40th-anniversary/Poll-Americans-Predict-Life-in-2050.html#ixzz0sTuGIa51
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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