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"When he asked the audience of scientists to name the "most impossible problems facing us," they came up with: energy, water, selfishness, population, pollution, climate change, food, religion, wealth imbalance, health and war. "

Maybe the reporter's leaving something out, but he didn't say "name some...problems" he said "name the...problems".

It's not just religion and selfishness, its all of the problems:

energy - we've go enough to last centuries, if we could just get the envirowackos out of the way - hardly an impossible problem
water - it might be a problem longterm, but hardly insurmountable
population - debunked extensively
pollution - largely solved in the industrialized world
climate change - debunked extensively
wealth imbalance - only in communist/socialist countries
health - we're all living longer and healthier than ever in the history of mankind
war - what few, short wars we have are conducted with surgical precision to result in levels of peripheral damage unimaginable just short decades ago. Compare that to say the early and mid 20th century, or the early 19th century.

Most of these aren't even problems and certainly none are "impossible" I'd hate to fly in a plane these geniuses were responsible for designing. Maybe they should concentrate on figuring out where socks go in the dryer.

That's a defeatist attitude to some of those problems.

As I mentioned, energy *is* a long-term problem. Just because it won't come to a head tomorrow doesn't mean oil will last forever, and there's nothing wrong with finding something better even in the short term. What with it being the 21st century and all, it's about time we find a high tech way to power things.

No one said water was an impossible problem to solve, but it is still something to think about, and it's an issue that can improve.

Population is not a problem in some parts of the world, but tell that to the people in India or Africa.

Pollution is still an issue in some places, and certain types of pollution could have, until recently, had detrimental effects on the ozone layer. Things like that do get solved, but that doesn't mean they go away from ignoring them. Talking about issues like that doesn't make a person stupid.

I'd like to see how climate change has been debunked. Everything I've read says that recently the earth has been heating up, though eventually it will go back into an ice age.

Wealth imbalance is indeed a problem as long as there are commies out there, though that's clearly a problem scientists won't solve.

Our health is getting better, but WHY STOP NOW? There are still plenty of diseases and other maladies out there, and various fields are exhibiting enormous growth today. I'm biased toward biochemisty and neuroscience, but I can definitely say that recent advances in those have me practically drooling when I think about the future.

The U.S. may not have been involved in much war lately, but that doesn't mean other countries aren't still killing people wantonly.

It's easy to sit behind a computer and talk about how stupid you think our scientists are, but in the long run, they are the ones bringing us new technology and new knowledge. It's even more dishonest to complain about the wording of an article and use that as an excuse to try to bash scientists. I think it's about time conservatives stopped trying to separate themselves from those in academia, especially the scientific areas (though I still find much scholarship in the humanities nauseating), and embrace the future.

After all, this guy has a Nobel Prize. He's darned smart, and you know it.