A new Harris Poll measures how many people expect various events
will happen in the next decade, in the next 50 years and in the
rest of the 21st century. Large majorities believe that all 15
events on the list will happen eventually, and that many of them
will happen sometime in this century. However, only one of them
-- a major terrorist attack on the U.S. -- is seen by a majority
(54 percent) as likely to happen in the next 10 years. Other
events that are seen as likely to occur in the next 10 years by
sizable minorities are electing a female president (35 percent),
China replacing the U.S. as the world's most powerful economic
country (30 percent), a biological or chemical attack on the
U.S. (29 percent), and that global warming and climate change
will have a big impact (22 percent). At the other (least likely)
end of the spectrum, very few people expect that in the next
decade there will be an end to the obesity epidemic (7 percent),
a nuclear war (8 percent), a revolution overthrowing the U.S.
governmen