It shouldn't surprise us that hundreds of bigwigs and politicians from around the world cannot agree on anything. Radical change doesn't happen through consensus, it happens through a few informed very smart people deciding to do something different.

How the heck are we going to feed ourselves in 2050? With 9 billion on the planet depleting resources like never before, plus the havoc of climate change, it's a humdinger of a problem.

Discussions on the matter are a tad of a stretch; mind-numbing stats and handwringing all round often leave people feeling vaguely pessimistic about it all, yet without a clue about what to do.

The New Optimists Forum here in Birmingham is veering a different tack.

Welcome to Brum, Dr Alice Roberts!

In the University PR blurb accompanying the announcement of her appointment, she's quoted as saying:

"I am very excited about this appointment. This new professorship emphasises Birmingham's commitment to public engagement in science, to a dialogue between scientists and the wider public. Science is so important to our economy, to politics and education, but perhaps more than anything, I'm keen to promote science as a integral part of our culture."

Integral part of the city's culture. Yes!

How would that change your travel patterns? And how, do you suppose it'd affect communities in this city? That's what Londoners have . . .

Looking at these two maps, one of Brum, t'other of London (courtesy of the brilliant crowd-sourced OpenStreetMap), and you can begin to grasp some of the social impact that connectivity has.

See the circles? Their diameters represent 10km.

At the time, I wrote a blogpost about it. It's still relevant today with all this talk about food futures for Birmingham 2050, so I've reproduced it here:

Only one contribution adds something surprising, even startling to the debate. It is by Roger Levett.

But let's start with the Foreword by Ian Austin MP. I quote: we know what we need to do to make the region the workshop of the world again.

We know? Eh? Workshop of the world? Which century is this man in? Or is he merely pandering to some vague nostalgia about what went on in Matthew Boulton's time?

The first event on 2nd November, kindly hosted at Minor Weir & Willis was a facilitated conversation among some New Optimists with a Podnosh team providing live social media.

This video of Jim Parle talking about food deserts in Brum generated a lot of interest, and Richard Burden MP dropped a line to Sainbury's boss Justin King as a result of various reactions to Ian Nabney's interview about supermarkets and data -- the story of that is told in this Podnosh blogpost.

Then last Tuesday, I sat in on the APPG on Agroecology at the House of Lords, and here's a summary of the brilliant stuff that happened there -- and the opportunities for Birmingham.

No question about it, Birmingham is behind the curve when it comes to food issues. We have nowt like the APPG speakers' stuff: Rosie Boycott's London's Capital Growth, Mary Clear's Todmorden's Incredible Edible and Clare Devereux' Food Matters in Brighton & Hove.

Yet because we've been tardy, we can learn a lot from everyone else. And here's The New Optimists starter-for-ten about the opportunities for Birmingham. . . Among all that, anyone up for:

Finally, here's my take on why it's so important.

Then in the evening you could have found me and others providing a running commentary under the hashtag #scicap at Science Capital's meeting in the city centre. Science Capital is where scientists, businesspeople and investors meet.

Two brill scientists, both New Optimists, Charlie Craddock and Paul Moss led the first half of the evening. In the second half, Charles de Rohan of The Binding Site took over along with Gordon McKenzie who co-founded Michelson Diagnostics in 2006 after completing his PhD at Warwick.

Broadcaster and journalist Sue Beardsmore introduces ten of them, all working in the West Midlands, in this Kindle book, The New Optimists: Challenging Cancer to tell us why they're optimistic about future cancer treatments. As editor, I can tell you it's an inspiring read.

It's all down to generic, universal, mathematical, topological features of networks. Or so Geoffrey West asserts.

I learned about his latest thinking at Peter Head's lecture on Monday evening at the the always-thought-provoking MADE Summer School.

Geoffrey West is a British theoretical physicist, one of the best. A Sante Fe Distinguished Professor since 2003, his work supports the Einstein maxim that there's nowt so practical as a good theory.

This protein is found on our T-cells which are, in his words "the command centre of our immune response" -- they're at the forefront of attacking invading infectious agents. But without some kind of damping down system, our T-cells attack our own bodies with potentially dangerous if not lethal impact. (Rheumatoid arthritis, Type-1 diabetes and inflammatory bowel syndrome are all thought to be autoimmune diseases; i.e. when our immune system attacks our bodies in some way.)

It's been known for some time that CTLA-4 is needed to prevent our immune system from attacking ourselves, how it works has been a mystery. Until now.

• Bionic eyes and Aston's James Wolffsohn
• Weighty matters at Aston -- about Prof Ian Nabney's computer science work in creating a new way of assessing risks associated with obesity.
• Controlling cancer within a generation -- about the implications of Prof Paul Moss' work at the School of Cancer Studies.
• Light, platinum, cancer & the wide-ranging mind of a chemist -- about a revolutionary way of using platinum in cancer treatment developed by Prof Peter Sadler.
• Paul Nurse and "science under attack"
• Science comms policy recommendations to the EU

There's also an article called Are human fossils our ancestors? here. I've linked it into this blogpost as it's largely composed by Birmingham Post Science blogger and Hon Wizard of the Unseen University, Professor Jack Cohen.

In a punchy four pages, the three headline policy recommendations to increase public interest and engagement with science across the European Union are plain to read, along with concrete proposals from delegates as to how these recommendations can be achieved.

So when he makes a BBC Horizon programme about Science under Attack, we should take note. If you haven't seen it, there's 27 days left on iPlayer to do so.

I've written about Paul Nurse before in the Post.

He's Professor Peter Sadler, Fellow of the Royal Society.

He's a chemist. Just finished his three-year stint as Head of the Chemistry Department at Warwick University in fact.

He's an inorganic chemist to be precise. So knowledgable about the hundred or so elements that make up everything in the known universe.

Like any scientist, though, he's more aware of what he doesn't know in his area of expertise than what he does. His optimism is grounded here, in what he doesn't know, and so in the excitement of discovery.

He has reason to be. His discoveries have made our world a better place.

Thus when Professor Paul Moss, current Head of the School, says he is optimistic about cancer being controlled within a generation, we should take note. "When I lecture my medical students today," he says, "I challenge them to think that they can be the first generation to be largely free of the fear of cancer."