The Rational Optimist_ How Prosperity Evolves - Matt Ridley [204]
p. 336 ‘a jump in tick-borne disease in eastern Europe around 1990’. Randolph, S.E. 2008. Tick-borne encephalitis in Central and Eastern Europe: consequences of political transition. Microbes and Infection 10:209–16.
p. 337 ‘Kofi Annan’s Global Humanitarian Forum doubled the number of climate deaths to 315,000 a year’. For a good discussion of this issue see http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/what-is-wrong-with-non-empirical-science-5410; also http://www.climate-resistance.org/2009/06/the-age-of-the-age-of-stupid.html; also the Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124424567009790525.html.
p. 337 ‘Wheat, for example, grows 15–40 per cent faster in 600 parts per million of carbon dioxide’. Pinter, P.J., Jr., Kimball, B.A., Garcia, R.L., Wall, G.W., Hunsaker, D.J. and LaMorte, R.L. 1996. Free-air CO2 enrichment: Responses of cotton and wheat crops. In Koch, G.W. and Mooney, H.A. (eds). 1996. Carbon Dioxide and Terrestrial Ecosystems. Academic Press.
pp. 337–8 ‘leaving only 5 per cent of the world under the plough in 2100, compared with 11.6 per cent today’. Goklany, I. cited in Bailey, R. 2009. What planetary emergency? Reason, 10 March 2009. See http://www.reason.com/news/show/132145.html.
p. 338 ‘The richest and warmest version of the future will have the least hunger’. Parry, M.L., Rosenzweig, C., Iglesias, A., Livermore, M. and Fischer, G, 2004: Effects of climate change on global food production under SRES emissions and socio-economic scenarios. Global Environmental Change 14:53–67.
p. 338 ‘will have ploughed the least extra land to feed itself ‘. Levy, P.E. et al. 2004. Modelling the impact of future changes in climate, CO2 concentration and future land use on natural ecosystems and the terrestrial carbon sink. Global Environmental Change 14:21–30.
p. 338 ‘hunger, dirty water, indoor smoke and malaria, which kill respectively about seven, three, three and two people per minute’. UN estimates: 3.7m deaths from hunger each year; 1.7m from dirty water, 1.6m from indoor smoke; 1.1m from malaria.
p. 338 ‘Economists estimate that a dollar spent on mitigating climate change brings 90 cents of benefits’. Lomborg, B. 2008. How to get the biggest bang for 10 billion bucks. Wall Street Journal, 28 July 2008.
p. 338 ‘The polar bear, still thriving today (eleven of thirteen populations are growing or steady)’. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081020095850.htm. See also Dyck, M.G., Soon, W., Baydack, R.K., Legates, D.R., Baliunas, S., Ball, T.F. and Hancock, L.O. 2007. Polar bears of western Hudson Bay and climate change: Are warming spring air temperatures the ‘ultimate’ survival control factor? Ecological Complexity 4:73–84. See also Dr Mitchell Taylor’s presentation at http://www.you tube.com/watch?v=I63Dl14Pemc.
pp. 339–40 ‘Charlie Veron, an Australian marine biologist ... Alex Rogers of the Zoological Society of London’. Both quoted in the Guardian, 2 September 2009. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/02/coral-catastrophic-future.
p. 340 ‘not even in the Persian Gulf where water temperatures reach 35C’. This is what a Canadian biologist wrote on a blog in August 2008: ‘I just got back from Iranian side of the Persian Gulf – the Asaluyeh/Nyband Bay region. Air temps 40, sea temps 35. (Email me privately if you want comments on the joys of doing field work under those conditions.) We observed corals at depths from 4–15m. No corals, at any depths, were bleached. Gives perhaps some relevance to the term “resilience.” BTW, those mostly undescribed reefs had coral cover of approx 30% – higher than the Florida Keys.’ http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/pipermail/coral-list/2008-August /037881.html.
p. 340 ‘corals become more resilient the more they experience sudden warmings’. Oliver, T.A. and Palumbi, S.R. 2009. Distributions of stressresistant coral symbionts match environmental patterns at local but not regional scales. Marine Ecology Progress Series 378:93–103. See also Baker, A.C. et al. 2004. Coral reefs: Corals’ adaptive response to climate change. Nature