The economy has dominated the headlines for years, but unforeseen consequences of life sciences and climate change mitigation are also beginning to weigh heavily on people's minds. The World Economic Forum experts and industry leaders have gauged the likelihood and potential impact of 50 risks of global significance (the 2013 Global Risks Report came out in January). We have arranged each risk according to how much views have changed in the past year (with the biggest combined increase in estimated likelihood and potential impact at the upper left of the page); orange shading highlights science and technology concerns. Population, species loss, weapons of mass destruction, pollution and information technology figure prominently. Climate change, including worries over greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation, also factor in significantly.
Credit: Jan Willem Tulp; SOURCE: WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ONLINE
For an interactive version of the report, see ScientificAmerican.com/feb2013/graphic-science
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Add CommentLooks to me like the World Economic Forum "experts" are pretty out of touch with reality. A scientific check on this would be to save this data and compare to actual results a few years from now. Or better yet, go back and look at any previous similar claims (if any are available) and check against what has actually happened.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOr maybe this shows what might have an impact on the lives of these people themselves, which is likely very different from what would affect most ordinary people.
Theologists know more about god than virtually all economists know about the economy and nobody knows anything about god.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat about rapidly declining sperm counts? What use will Davos be if by 2050 humans become sterile taking out most other species for the same reason?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmazing that widening of public debt and out of control public spending is not considered important enough to be much of a percieved threat.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTwo of the biggest awards ever made for research have gone to boosting studies of the wonder material graphene and an elaborate simulation of the brain. The winners of the European Commission’s two-year Future and Emerging Technologies ‘flagship’ competition, announced on 28 January, will receive €500 million (US$670 million) each for their planned work, which the commission hopes will help to improve the lives, health and prosperity of millions of Europeans.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Human Brain Project, a supercomputer simulation of the human brain conceived and led by neuroscientist Henry Markram at the Swiss Federal Insitute of Technology in Lausanne, scooped one of the prizes. The other winning team, led by Jari Kinaret at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, hopes to develop the potential of graphene — an ultrathin, flexible, electrically conducting form of carbon — in applications such as personal-communication technologies, energy storage and sensors.
Even losers say they benefited from the competition. When the interim rankings were published last July, FuturICT was tipped to win. That project aims to model human activities and their impact on global political stability, the environment and financial markets. Its coordinator, Dirk Helbing, a physicist-turned-sociologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, says he is disappointed, but that the interdisciplinary community the project created “will stay alive and active”.
“We know that covert FuturICT-like projects are being started in other parts of the world,” he says. “That makes it even more important to continue our open, transparent and participatory project.”
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The days of polling moree or less informed public opinion to sort out questions of likihood and impact are numbered. Probably the number is large, but not immense.
How about the impact of "World Economic Forum Experts" that have no clue...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat problem is seriously over stated. Sure sterility levels have risen, but not by all that much and many of the contributing factors are individually self induced. Sterility rates in most species are not of concern. The real issue is habitat destruction which is ameliorated by decreased human fertility so maybe it is a self correcting problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt mattered to the Greeks (and Mexicans, Icelanders, Spanish and Zimbabweans) when they ran out of credit and had austerity rammed down their throats. Apparently anything short of economic collapse doesn't get the average persons attention. Credit is just another word for "slave collar" but most people just don't get it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is a growing conspiracy (my choice of term as an avid supporter of the movement) among technologists and scientists to automate every facet of production and force a shift away from a production based economy to a creativity/knowledge based economy. Machines will grow and process the food, build the tools and use them. Humans will pursue entertainment and culture or advancing science. This will work better with a much lower human population but I'm sure there is a group of nut-cases out there even now working on an entire group of airborne deadly viruses.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you are familiar with market dynamics or behavioural finance etc,you will know that this tells you where complacency is highest/lowest and or what is "out of the news" at present.Given the exhausting 24h news cycle and it's masters in the social media,it is no surprise that the harder to explain,non current but potentially most serious issues are at the lower part of the page
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