The Rational Optimist_ How Prosperity Evolves - Matt Ridley [192]
p. 231 ‘As the historian Tony Wrigley has put it’. Wrigley, E.A. 1988. Continuity, Chance and Change: the Character of the Industrial Revolution in England. Cambridge University Press.
p. 232 ‘an Indian weaver could not compete with the operator of a steam-driven Manchester mule’. Clark, G. 2007. A Farewell to Alms. Princeton University Press.
p. 233 ‘Today most coal is used for generating electricity.’ Fouquet, R. and Pearson, P.J.G. 1998. A thousand years of energy use in the United Kingdom. Energy Journal 19:1–41.
p. 234 ‘pulling ploughs by cable through a field at the Menier estate near Paris’. Rolt, L.T.C. 1967. The Mechanicals. Heinemann.
p. 234 ‘like the computer it took decades to show up in the productivity statistics’. David, P.A. 1990. The dynamo and the computer: an historical perspective on the modern productivity paradox. American Economic Review 80:355–61.
p. 234 ‘One recent study in the Philippines’. Barnes, D.F. (ed.). 2007. The Challenge of Rural Electrification. Resources for the Future Press.
p. 235 ‘Joule for joule, wood is less convenient than coal, which is less convenient than natural gas, which is less convenient than electricity, which is less convenient than the electricity currently trickling through my mobile telephone.’ Huber, P.W. and Mills, M.P. 2005. The Bottomless Well: the Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy. Basic Books.
p. 236 ‘in Adam Smith’s words’. The Wealth of Nations.
p. 236 ‘the average person on the planet consumes power at the rate of about 2,500 watts’. A watt is a joule per second. A calorie is 4.184 joules. The figures of energy consumption in watts per capita come from the International Energy Agency. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image: Energy_consumption_versus_GDP.png.
p. 236 ‘it would take 150 slaves’. By the way, twice as much energy is wasted turning grain into bicycle-cargo motion as is wasted turning oil into truck-cargo motion: or sixteen times as much if the grain goes into the cyclist via a chicken. Huber, P.W. and Mills, M.P. 2005. The Bottomless Well: the Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy. Basic Books.
p. 237 ‘an anxiety as old as fossil fuels themselves’. Jevons, W.S. 1865. The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of our Coal-mines. Macmillan.
p. 238 ‘If America were to grow all its own transport fuel as biofuel it would need 30 per cent more farmland’. Dennis Avery, cited in Bryce, R. 2008. Gusher of Lies. Perseus Books.
p. 239 ‘or hydroelectric dams with catchments one-third larger than all the continents put together’. The assumptions behind these calculations are optimistic, rather than conservative: that solar power can generate about 6 watts per square metre; wind about 1.2, hay-fed horses 0.8 (one horse needs 8 hectares of hay and pulls 700 watts, or one horse power); firewood 0.12; and hydro 0.012. America consumes 3,120 gigawatts. Spain covers 504,000 sq km; Kazakhstan 2.7m sq km; India and Pakistan 4m sq km; Russia and Canada 27m sq km; all the continents 148m sq km. All power density figures except horses are from Ausubel, J. 2007. Renewable and nuclear heresies. International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology 1:229–43.
p. 239 ‘Just one wind farm at Altamont in California kills twenty-four golden eagles every year’. Bird risk behaviors and fatalities at the Altamont Pass wind resource area, by C.G. Thelander, K.S. Smallwood and L. Rugge of BioResource Consultants in Ojai, California, NREL/SR-500-33829, December 2003. To those who say far more birds are killed flying into windows – yes, but not golden eagles, which are both peculiarly rare and peculiarly vulnerable to