That Crazy Prediction Game

I'm reading a book where 60 of 'the best minds' in the world predict where we will all be in 50 years time. If these are the best we got, it's no wonder we are in such a mess.

Many of the essay authors are Nobel Laureates so they must know something. The trouble comes when they try to predict globally instead of within their little specialty. The first essay was so Pollyannaish I almost quit reading.

According to the first writer, there will be 11 billion people living on Earth and her colonies and everyone will be fed, clothed, and sheltered. There will be no menial labor because it will all be done by robots and humans will be engaged in 'information processing' of one sort or another. No word on what happens to the below average intelligence humans – or half the population.

Several other authors bemoan the serious reshaping of the continents due to global warming. The one person who claims there will be perhaps a six inch rise in water level worldwide and says it is impossible to tell what will really happen in the next 50 years regardless of what is done to pervert the world economies is the expert on Climatology. What John R. Christy does believe is "that the accumulating economic development throughout the world will not be sidetracked by calls to 'stop global warming,' which are ultimately designed to inhibit access to affordable energy." Especially for a high tide.

The expert on heart disease tells of a future with no more heart attacks. He laments the recent increase in heart disease, but is happy about the drop in cancers. Hello, Mr. Expert. But you see, we all have to die of something. When we started to halt demise from cancers, we got old enough to die of heart disease and stroke, both results of the aging vascular tree. What exactly does this expert think we are going to eventually die of?

And almost everyone in the book – so far anyway – has talked about increased lifespan. We are all going to live for 125-150 years or so and this isn't going to harm the population of the planet in any way. Only one person – again, so far – has noticed that an aging population is going to be somewhat detrimental and that we are going to have to do something drastic to halt the birth rate if we are postponing the death rate.

One author who has apparently come down out of his/her ivory tower has noticed that not only Americans, but everybody is getting fatter. We are eating an unhealthy diet of too much this and that, but mostly too much. Where we used to be plagued by scarcity, now much of the industrialized world is plagued by abundance.

One tree hugger opines that the world population will stabilize at around 8-9 billion and we will all be eating organically grown food and all will be healthy as horses. The person who actually understands farming points out that organically grown food means scarce food and without the technological advances of agribusiness, there won't be enough food even for the 6.5 billion people here today, let alone another couple billion here or there. That doesn't even account for the nincompoops calling for ethanol made from grain crops to fuel cars.

What I seem to be seeing is a bunch of smart people who are only smart in their one little area of expertise but without qualms about predicting what will happen across the board. Not understanding what they are talking about doesn't even seem to slow them down. It is no wonder the man-on-the-street can't keep up with where we are headed. Even the people in the upper reaches of intelligence can't seem to figure it out.

It is amazing to me how stupid these very smart people can be. They don't seem to be able to see beyond their own personal causes or agendas. They can't seem to figure out that their specialty isn't the whole ball of wax and there may just be a few other points to consider.

We are in a world of hurt here.