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Asked by niko to David, Helen, Ian, rhysphillips, Sarah on 24 Jun 2011.
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Rhys Phillips answered on 15 Jun 2011:
Good question but I’d say it’s probably global warming. It’s a serious issue and we need to find a way round it.
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David Corne answered on 15 Jun 2011:
Not enough government funding for science. Governments have a difficult job working out how to spend our tax money, and distributing it in the best way between defence, health, education, science, disaster relief, and other things. If more was spent on science, that leads to massive savings in the longer term on health, education, and disaster relief, because we’ll have more efficient ways to treat diseases, understand better how we can educate properly, and so on. But there are many more reasons why more spending on science is important. We don’t even know how many species there are, how viruses develop and work, how ecosystems interact, and so on. So we don’t know how to avoid a supervirus, or a major collapse in our food web caused by, say, a certain species of slug dying out, any of which might happen, leaving us helpless. But we can avoid that if more is spent on science, and less, say, on defence.
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Ian van der Linde answered on 15 Jun 2011:
I’d say the greatest threat to our society is that people are slipping back into the habit of relying on superstition and religion to answer questions rather than using science to explain things by looking for observable, testable facts.
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Helen Fletcher answered on 24 Jun 2011:
I would say overpopulation- it is getting increasingly difficult to feed all the world’s inhabitants and provide them with safe drinking water and shelter. Most importantly, in countries where the population is growing most rapidly, there are not enough schools for everyone to receive an education.
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