Book
sources

Chapter 1, Crises

P. 4

Similar effects will typically occur in three unstable areas of the economy: inventories, capital spending, property.

There are general description of business cycles and their drivers in these sources:

Tvede, L.: Business Cycles, History, Theory and Investment Reality, Wiley & Co, 2006, pp. 257-269

Abramovitz, M.: Inventories and Business Cycles, NBER, New York, 1950.

Batini, N. & E. Nelson: The Lag from Monetary Policy to Inflation: Friedman Revisited, Bank of England, 2001.

Baum, A.: Evidence of Cycles in European Commercial Real Estate Markets – and Some Hypothesis, Henderson Investors, 2004.

P. 4

Inventories is the most predictable and least troublesome of these.

Metzler, L.A.: Factors Governing the Length of Inventory Cycles, Review of Economic Statistics, vol. 29, Feb. 1947, pp. 1-15.

Mezler, L.A.: The Nature and Stability of Inventory Cycles, Review of Economic Studies, 23, 1941.

Tvede, L.: Business Cycles, History, Theory and Investment Reality, Wiley & Co, 2006, pp. 265-266

Abramovitz, M.: Inventories and Business Cycles, NBER, New York, 1950.

P. 5

The next business cycle driver is capital spending,

Tvede, L.: Business Cycles, History, Theory and Investment Reality, Wiley & Co, 2006, pp. 264-265

P. 6

the most violent business cycle is caused by inherent volatility in property markets.

Tvede, L.: Business Cycles, History, Theory and Investment Reality, Wiley & Co, 2006, pp. 264, 3-7, 332

Matysiak, G. & S. Tsolacos: Identifying short-term leading indicators for real estate rental performance, Journal of Property Investment & Finance, Vol. 21, No. 3, 2003

Pyhr, S.A., S.E. Roulac, & W.L. Born: Real Estate Cycles and Their Strategic Implications for Investors and Portfolio Managers in the Global Economy, Journal of Real Estate Researxch, Vol. 18, No. 2, 1999

Quigley, J.M.: Real Estate Prices and Economic Cycles, International Real Estate Review, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1999.

Shiratsuka, S.: The asset price bubble in Japan in the 1980s: Lessons for Financial and Macroeconomic Stability, in; BIS Papers No. 21 - Real estate indicators and financial stability, 2005

Baum, A.: Evidence of Cycles in European Commercial Real Estate Markets – and Some Hyphothesis, Henderson Investors, 2004.

Chinley, P.: Real Estate Cycles: Theory and Empirical Evidence, Journal of Housing Research, Vol. 7, issue 2, 1996

Foldvary, F.E.: Real Estate and Business Cycles: Henry George’s Theory of the Trade Cycle, Latvia University of Agriculture, 1991.

Grissom & DeLisle: A Multiple Index Analysis of Real Estate Cycles and Structural Change, Journal of Real Estate Finance, 1997.

Heath, R.: Real Estate as Financial Soundness Indicators, BIS Papers 21, Bank of International Settlements, 2005.

Janssen, J., B. Kruijt & B. Needham: The Honeycomb Cycle in Real Estate, The Journal of Real Estate Research, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1993.

Krystaloyianni, A. Matysiak, G. and Tsolacos, S. Forecasting UK Real Estate Cycle Phases With Leading Indicators: A Probit Approach . Working Papers in Real Estate & Planning 15/04, 2004, Department of Real Estate & Planning: The University of Reading, 2004.

Matysiak, G. & S. Tsolacos: Identifying short-term leading indicators for real estate rental performance, Journal of Property Investment & Finance, Vol. 21, No. 3, 2003

Quigley, J.M.: Real Estate Prices and Economic Cycles, International Real Estate Review, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1999.

Shiratsuka, S.: The asset price bubble in Japan in the 1980s: Lessons for Financial and Macroeconomic Stability, in BIS Papers No. 21 - Real estate indicators and financial stability, 2005

Berger-Thomson, L & L. Ellis: Housing Construction Cycles and Interest Rates, Economic Group, Reserve Bank of Australia, 2004

Helbling, T.H.: Housing Price Bubbles – a Tale Based on Housing Price Booms and Busts, BIS Papers 21, Bank of International Settlements, 2005.

Hoyt, Homer: One Hundred Years of Land Values in Chicago: The Relationship of the Growth of Chicago to the Rise of Its Land Values, 1830-1933, Beard Books, 2000

P. 6

the average duration is 18-20 years.

Tvede, L.: Business Cycles, History, Theory and Investment Reality, Wiley & Co, 2006, pp. 324-325

Key, T., Z. Firoozeh & N. Haq: The UK property Cycle – a History from 1921 to 1997, The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, 1999

Ashton, T.S.: Economic Fluctuations in England 1700-1800, Claredon Press, Oxford, 1959.

Clarence, D. L.: Building Cycles and the Theory of Investment, Princeton University Press, 1940

Helbling, T.H., & M. Terrones: When Bubbles Burst, in World Economic, Outlook 2003, IMF 2003

Hoyt, Homer: One Hundred Years of Land Values in Chicago: The Relationship of the Growth of Chicago to the Rise of Its Land Values, 1830-1933, Beard Books, 2000

P. 7

The property cycle has been known for more than 150 years

Tvede, L.: Business Cycles, History, Theory and Investment Reality, Wiley & Co, 2006, pp. 307 – 310, 324

Hoyt, Homer: One Hundred Years of Land Values in Chicago: The Relationship of the Growth of Chicago to the Rise of Its Land Values, 1830-1933, Beard Books, 2000

Key, T., Z. Firoozeh & N. Haq: The UK property Cycle – a History from 1921 to 1997, The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, 1999

Ashton, T.S.: Economic Fluctuations in England 1700-1800, Claredon Press, Oxford, 1959.

P. 7

Why is it that property cycles are more dramatic than capital-spending cycles in developed countries?

Tvede, L.: Business Cycles, History, Theory and Investment Reality, Wiley & Co, 2006, pp. 264

P. 7

The answer relates partly to the so-called "wealth effect".

Tvede, L.: Business Cycles, History, Theory and Investment Reality, Wiley & Co, 2006, pp. 260-263, 265,-266, 276, 284,331

Case, K.E., J.M. Quigley & R. Shiller: Comparing Wealth Effects: The Stock Market Versus the Housing Market, NBER, 2001.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_effect

P. 9

it is also extremely useful to know about normal ‘‘market rotation’’.

Tvede, L.: Business Cycles, History, Theory and Investment Reality, Wiley & Co, 2006, pp. 399-420

P. 9

Equities have on average peaked some 9 months before a peak in the economy

Tvede, L.: Business Cycles, History, Theory and Investment Reality, Wiley & Co, 2006, pp. 382

Macaulay, F.R.: The Movements of Interest Rates, Bond Yields and Stock Prices in the United States since 1856, NBER, New York, 1938.

P. 10

equity markets on average turn back up some 5 months before the economic trough.

Tvede, L.: Business Cycles, History, Theory and Investment Reality, Wiley & Co, 2006, pp. 382

P. 11

Gordon & Rouwenhorst studied how different commodities fluctuated over U.S. business cycles from 1959 to 2004

Gorton, G. & K. G. Rouwenhorst: Facts and Fantasies About Commodity Futures, Yale IFC Working Paper No. 04-20, 2004.

P. 12

This previous event was called the ‘‘savings and loan crises’’,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis

P. 16

The market witnessed a marked increase in the use of a fourth funding method: so-called ‘‘commercial paper’’

There is a good explanation of what happened in the crises, which also emphasizes the effect of commercial paper lending in:

Krugman, Paul: The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, W. W. Norton & Company, 2009

Apart from that, the best source of the actual events of 2007-2009, told as a story with a time line, is probably:

Sorkin, Andrew Ross: Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System---and Themselves, Viking Adult, 2009

Chapter 2, Money and assets

P. 21

Central banks typically refer to three basic categories of money, which they called M0, M1, and M2.

http://www.safehaven.com/article/12305/growth-of-global-money-supply

P. 22

So, they will be placing their wealth in assets that aren’t defined as ‘‘money’’ by central banks,

Tvede, L.: Business Cycles, History, Theory and Investment Reality, Wiley & Co, 2006, pp. 284-287

P. 22

I made the calculation which you will see below, using all reasonable variable-price assets.

Tvede, L.: Business Cycles, History, Theory and Investment Reality, Wiley & Co, 2006, pp. 259-262

P. 23

Before we look at the details of these variable-price assets, I should add that the global money supply was just under $40 trillion in that year, so almost the same as global GDP.

There is an overview of international money supply developments here:

http://www.safehaven.com/article/12305/growth-of-global-money-supply

P. 26

Depression can in fact be a nasty equilibrium

Tvede, L.: Business Cycles, History, Theory and Investment Reality, Wiley & Co, 2006, pp. 117-126

Kindleberger, C.P.: The World in Depression, 1929-1939, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1986.

Sylos-Labini, P.: Keynes’s General Theory and the Great Depression, Sylos-Labini, P.: The Forces of Economic Growth and Decline, MIT Press, 1984, pp. 227-43.

Tobin, J.: Keynesian Models of Recession and Depression, American Economic Review, 65, 1975.

Kindleberger, C.P.: The World in Depression, 1929-1939, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1986.

Sylos-Labini, P.: Keynes’s General Theory and the Great Depression, Sylos-Labini, P.: The Forces of Economic Growth and Decline, MIT Press, 1984, pp. 227-43.

Keynes, J.M.: A Treatise on Money, Macmillan & Co., 1965.

Keynes. J.M.: The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Macmillan, London, 1936.

P. 26

Milton Friedman rightly has claimed, ‘‘a monetary problem’’.

Tvede, L.: Business Cycles, History, Theory and Investment Reality, Wiley & Co, 2006, pp. 157-164

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman

P. 27

This equation, which is called the ‘‘quantity theory of money’’,

Tvede, L.: Business Cycles, History, Theory and Investment Reality, Wiley & Co, 2006, pp. 74-76,79, 283-286

Chapter 3, Bubbles, scares, and crashes

P. 34

A large part of the increase in money spills over to asset markets: you get ‘‘asset inflation’’.

Tvede, L.: Business Cycles, History, Theory and Investment Reality, Wiley & Co, 2006, pp. 284-286, 412, 416

P. 35

It was also around that time that the international bestseller Limits to Growth came out.

Meadows, H. Donella, Dennis L. Meadows, Jorgen Randers & William W. Behrens III: The Limits to Growth, Universe Books, 1972

P. 35

Science Digest had in 1973 published an article about the subject which stated:

“Brace Yourself for Another Ice Age”, Science Digest, February 1973

P. 36

Anne and Paul Ehrlich published a book called The End of Affluence

Ehrlich, Anne & Paul Erhlich: The End of Affluence: A Blueprint for Your Future, Amereon Limited, 1976

P. 37

Christopher Booker, a columnist for the Sunday Telegraph, and Dr. Richard North, a former research director in the European Parliament wrote the book Scared to Death

Booker, Christopher & Richard North: Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming- Why Scares Are Costing Us the Earth, Continuum, 2009

P. 37

But I had a new worry: The millennium bug, or ‘‘Y2K’’, as it was called. It was widely predicted in the press that large parts of the world economy would grind to a halt after 12:01 am on the first day of 2000,

There is a description of the threat as it was perceived before the end of year 2000 in:

Tiggre, Don L.: Y2K: The Millenium Bug, Xlibris Corporation, 1998

As for what actually happened (very little!), see:

Booker, Christopher & Richard North: Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming- Why Scares Are Costing Us the Earth, Continuum, 2009, pp. 161-164

P. 37

Scares, the way I see them, are episodes where an initial concern over an existing or potential problem evolves into a media frenzy that is out of any proportion to the actual problem. Furthermore, many if not most scares lead to a public response that is also out of proportion with the problem, and which for that reason does more harm than good.

Booker and North describe scares as having the following characteristics:

It must be universal; something that could hurt almost anyone
It must be novel
There must be some form of scientific evidence that can be seen to support it
It must be exaggerated and often extrapolated to areas beyond what the evidence might indicate
It must be promoted by the media

Booker, Christopher & Richard North: Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming- Why Scares Are Costing Us the Earth, Continuum, 2009, p. ix, 164-165

P. 39

The World Health Organization called birdflu the greatest single health threat to mankind, and their senior official in charge of the issue predicted, that the death toll might be anywhere up to 150 million people. That was an astronomical number; far more than the combined killings during World War I and II. In fact, in order to be the biggest contemporary health threat to mankind it would have to beat malaria, which caused about 250 million cases of fever annually. Four years later the accumulated human death caused by birth flu was less than 200.

Booker, Christopher & Richard North: Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming- Why Scares Are Costing Us the Earth, Continuum, 2009, p. 3

P. 39

the chairman of the British Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee agreed in a TV interview that the death toll might be as high as 500,000 and The Observer ran a major story describing how this disease might kill half a million Brits a year,

It actually killed 210 people until it stopped.

Booker, Christopher & Richard North: Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming- Why Scares Are Costing Us the Earth, Continuum, 2009, p. 6

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopathy

P. 40

To understand why, we must look at the psychology involved

I have personally spent a considerable time on this subject and published the following book describing how I believe psychological phenomena influence overall market behavior and drive individual mistakes:

Tvede, L.: The Psychology of Finance, Wiley & Sons, London, revised Edition, 2002

Some other books that look at irrationality in financial markets and the history of crashes include:

Shiller, R.J. (2000), Irrational Exuberance, Princeton University Press.

Kindleberger, C.P.: Manias, Panics, and Crashes, Macmillan, USA, 2000.

Mackay, C.: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, reprint, Harmony Books, New York, 1980.

Beckman, R.: Crashes, Grafton Books, London, 1990.

Bose, M.: The Crash, Bloomsbury, London, 1988.

Galbraith, J.K.: The Great Crash 1929, Houghton Mifflin, 1955.

Kindleberger, C.P.: Manias, Panics, and Crashes, Macmillan, USA, 1978.

Kindleberger, C.P.: The World in Depression, 1929-1939, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1986.

Patterson, R.T.: The Great Boom and Panic 1921-1929, Henry Regnery Co., Chicago, 1956.

Kindleberger’s book contains a good overview over historical crashes and has been one of my main sources in developing my own list of crashes.

Below are a number of sources on psychological errors in financial markets as well as in general, that have been useful to me:

American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV-TR Fourth Edition (Text Revision), American Psychiatric Association, 2000.

Anderson, J.R. Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications, 2. Edition, New York: W.H. Freeman, 1985.

Azariadis, C.: Self-fulfilling Prophecies, Journal of Economic Theory, 25:380-96, 1981.

Belsky, G. og Gilovich, T. (1999), Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes – and How to Correct Them, New York: Simon and Schuster.

Benartzi, S. og Thaler, R.H. “Myopic Loss Aversion and the Equity Premium Puzzle”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 110(1), 73-92., 1995.

Campbell, J.D. og Tesser, A. “Motivational Interpretations of Hindsight Bias: An Individual Difference Analysis”, Journal of Personality”, 51, 605-620., 1983.

Darkes, H.R. og Blumer, C. (1985), “The Psychology of Sunk Cost”, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 35, 124-140. Reprinted in T. Connolly et al. (red.), Judgment and Decision Making: An Interdisciplinary Reader, Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Fischhoff, B. “Hindsight is Not Foresight: The Effect of Outcome Knowledge on Judgment under Uncertainty”, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1, 288-299, 1975.

Gilovich, T., Medvec, V.H. og Kahneman, D. (1998), “Varieties of Regret: A Debate and Partial Resolution”, Psychological Review, 105, 602-605.

Goetzmann, W.N. og Peles,: N. Cognitive Dissonance and Mutual Fund Investors, mimeo, Yale School of Management., 1993

Hawkins, S.A. & Hastie, R.: “Hindsight: Biased Judgements of Past Events after the Outcomes Are Known”, Psychological Bulletin, 107, 311-327, 1990

Kahneman, D. & Henik, A.: “Perceptual Organization and Attention”, in M. Kubovy og J. Pomerantz (red.), Perceptual Organization, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2981

Kahneman, D. & Riepe, M. “Aspects of Investor Psychology”, The Journal of Portfolio Management, 24, 52-65., 1998

Kahneman, D. & Tversky, A. “On the Psychology of Prediction”, Psychological Review, 80, 237-251., 1973

Kahneman, D. & Tversky, A. “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decisions under Risk”, Econometrica, 263-291, 1979

Kahneman, D. & Tversky, A. “Intuitive Prediction: Biases and Corrective Procedures”, Management Science, 12, 313-327, 1979

Kahneman, D. & Tversky, A. “The Psychology of Preferences”, Scientific American, 246, 160-173., 1982

Kahneman, D. & Tversky, A. “Choices, Values and Frames”, American Psychologist, 39, 341-350, 1984

Kahneman, D “Remarks on Attention Control”, in A.F. Sanders (red.), Attention and Performance III, pp. 118-131., 1970

Kahneman, D. “Judgment and Decision Making: A Personal View”, Psychological Science, 2, 142-145., 1991

Kahneman, D. “New Challenges to the Rationality Assumption, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 150, 18-36., 1994

Kahneman, D., Knetsch, J. & Thaler, R., “The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias”, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 5, 193-206, 1991

Kahneman, D., Slovic, P. & Tversky, A. Judgement under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press., 1974

Kahneman, D., Slovic, P. & Tversky, A. (red.), Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, New York: Cambridge University Press., 1982

Kahneman, D., Tursky, B., Shapiro, D. & Crider, A. “Pupillary Heart Rate and Skin Resistance Changes During a Mental Task”, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 79, 164-167., 1969

Katona, G. Psychological Economics, New York: Elsevier., 1975

Martin, L.L og Clark, L.F.: “Social Cognition: Exploring the Mental Processes Involved in Human Social Intercation”, i M.W. Eysenck (red.), Cognitive Psychology, An International Review, New York: John Wiles & Sons., 1990

Matlin, M: Cognition, 3. edition, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994

Mazursky, D. og Ofir, C. (1990), “I Could Never Have Expected It to Happen: The Reversal of the Hindsight Bias”, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 46, 20-33.

Odean T. & Barber, B: “Too Many Cooks Spoil the Profits: The Performance of Investment Clubs”, Financial Analysts Journal, jan./feb., 17-25, 2000.

Odean, T.: “Are Investors Reluctant to Realize Their Losses?”, Journal of Finance, LIII(5), October, 1998

Quattrone, G.A. & Tversky, A.: “Causal versus Diagnostic Contingencies: On Self-Deception and on the Voter’s Illusion”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46(2), 237-248., 1984

Ruysso, J.E. og Schoemaker, J.H.: Decision Traps: Ten Barriers to Brilliant Decision-Making and How to Overcome Them, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990

Shefrin, H. og Statman, M: “The Disposition to Sell Winners Too Early and Ride Losers Too Long: Theory and Evidence”, Journal of Finance, XL, 777-792., 1998

Shiller, Robert .J.: “Market Volatility and Investor Behavior”, American Economic Review, 80(2), 58-62, 1990.

Shiller, R.J. (1995), “Conversation, Information, and Herd Behavior”, American Economic Review.

Shiller, R.J.: “Human Behavior and the Efficiency of the Financial System”, working paper, Yale University, 1997

Statman, M.: “Investor Psychology and Market Inefficiencies”, in Katrina F. Sherrerd (red.), Equity Markets and Valuation Methods, Charlottesville, VA: The Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts, 1988

Statman, M.: “Behavioral Capital Asset Pricing Theory”, Journal of Financial and Quantitaive Analysis, September, 1994.

Statman, M. : “Tracking Errors, Regret, and Tactical Asset Allocation”, Journal of Portfolio Management, 1994.

Statman, M. “Behavioral Finance”, Contemporary Finance Digest, 1997

Thaler, R.H.: “Judgment and Decision Making Under Uncertainty: What Economists Can Learn from Psychology”, Risk Analysis in Agriculture: Research and Educational Developments, Proceedings of a seminar sponsored by the Western Regional Research Project W-149, Tucson, Arizona, June 1980.

Thaler, R.H.: The Winner’s Curse, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.

Thaler, R.H. (1993), Advances in Behavioural Finance, New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Thaler, R.H., Tversky, A., Kahneman, D. og Schwartz, A.: “The Effect of Myopia and Loss Aversion on Risk Taking: An Experimental Test”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1997

Thaler, R.J.: “Gambling with the House Money and Trying to Break Even: The Effects of Prior Outcomes in Risky Choice” (sammen med Eric Johnson), Management Science, June, 1990i.

Tversky, A. og Kahneman, D.: “The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice”, Science, 211, 453-458., 1981

Tversky, A. og Kahneman, D.: “Advances in Prospect Theory: Cumulative Representation of Uncertainty”, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 5, 297-323, 1992

Tversky, A. og Shafir, E. (1992), “The Disjunction Effect in Choice Under Uncertainty”, Psychological Science, 3(5), 305-309.

Van Raijn, W.F. , van Veldhoven, G.M. og Warneryd, K.E.: Handbook of Economic Psychology, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988

P. 43

nuclear energy (which has turned out to be far safer than coal, since coal has killed hundreds of thousands in addition to polluting the air massively),

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_accident

http://www.asianresearch.org/articles/2997.html

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf06app.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html#Health

P. 43

When asked if they are better drivers than the average person, most will say they are, for instance.

Svenson, O. (1981). Are we all less risky and more skillful than our fellow drivers? Acta Psychologica, 47, 143-148.r>

P. 44

they will almost consistently rate their local environment as better than that of their country, which they again will rate as better than that of the world as a whole.

Dunlap, Riley E., George H. Gallup & Alec M. Dunlap: Of Global Concern: Results of a Global Planetary Survey, Environment 35, pp. 7-39, 1993

P. 45

In dynamic terms, all this gets described as cascades, positive (selfreinforcing)

feedback loops, and dis-inhibitors (natural modifying forces are prevented from working).

Tvede, L.: Business Cycles, History, Theory and Investment Reality, Wiley & Co, 2006, p. 186

P. 45

Systems that have many positive feedback loops and tail events tend to become somewhat chaotic, or, as they say, ‘‘exhibit high-dimensional deterministic chaos’’.

For a general introduction to the concept of deterministic chaos, see:

Gleich, J.: Chaos - Making a New Science, Viking, USA, 1987.

Other sources on chaos in general as well as in financial and economic systems are given here:

Andersen, D.F.: Foreword: Chaos in System Dynamics Models, System Dynamics Review, 4, Numbers 1-2, 1988.

Brock, W.A.: Is the Business Cycle Characterized by Deterministic Chaos?, Journal of Monetary Economics, 22, pp. 71-90 , 1988

Brock, W.A.: Chaos and Complexity in Economic and Financial Science, Social Systems Research Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, paper no. 382, 1990, pp. 423-450.

Chen, P.: Empirical and Theoretical Evidence of Economic Chaos, System Dynamics Review, 4, 1988.

Chen, P.: Mode Locking to Chaos in Delayed Feedback Systems, Centre for Studies in Statistical Mechanics, University of Texas at Austin, 1986.

Mosekilde, E. and E.R. Larsen: Deterministic Chaos in the Beer Production-Distribution Model, System Dynamics Review, vol. 4, No. 1-2pp. 131-47. , 1988

Mosekilde, E., E.R. Larsen, J.D. Sterman and J.S. Thomsen: Non-linear Modeinteraction in the Macroeconomy, Annals of Operations Research, 37, 1992.

Peters, E.: Fractal Markets Analysis, Applying Chaos Theory to Investment and Economics, Wiley & Sons, 1994

Peters, E.: Chaos and Order in the Capital Markets, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1991

D.R. and E. Mosekilde: Bifurcations and Chaos in a Generic Management Model, North European Journal of Operational Research, 35, pp. 80-88. , 1988

Ploeg, F. van der (1985), “Rational Expectations, Risk and Chaos in Financial Markets”, Economic Journal, 96.

Rasmussen, S. and E. Mosekilde, and J.D. Sterman: Bifurcations and Chaos in a Simple Model of the Economic Long Wave, System Dynamics Review, vol. 1, Summer, 1985

Sayers, C.L.: Chaos and the Business Cycle, Department of Economics, University of Houston, May 1989.

Tvede, L.: Business Cycles, History, Theory and Investment Reality, Wiley & Co, 2006, p. 186

Yorke, J. og Tien-Yien Li: “Period Three Implies Chaos”, American Mathematical Monthly, 82, 1975

P. 57

Another important number is 2.1, which is the so-called ‘‘replacement fertility’’ in modern societies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate

P. 57

In those countries replacement fertility ranges from 2.5 to 3.3.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate

P. 62

A team from the National Bureau of Economic Research studied in 2007 how the introduction of cable television affected different rural communities in India.

http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/emily.oster/papers/tvwomen.pdf

P. 64

However, before we get too thrilled about that economic promise here, we should recall that the total GDP of the approx. 1 billion people living in Subsaharan Africa is less than that of Spain, in spite of Africa’s huge natural resources.

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, p. 195

P. 64

It seems likely that emancipation of women is contributing strongly to defusing the global population bomb, ensuring a better future for our children, and increasing per capita incomes.

According to the Urban Land Institute, in Algeria, women make up 70 % of the layers and 60 % of its judges. Furthermore, 60 % of university graduates theer are women and they dominate medicine and are more and more often contributing more to household incomes than their husbands.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/26/world/africa/26algeria.html

http://www.fco.cat/files/imatges/Butlleti%2096/NYT2.pdf

P. 64

I mentioned before that the world’s population is poised to increase approx. 30%, or by approx. 2 billion people between 2010 and 2050.

The growth in emerging market populations will lead to some shifts that would surprise most people. For instance, by 2050, there will be more people in Tanzania than in UK and substantially more in Turkey than in Germany. And Vietnam will have more inhabitants than either Russia or Japan.

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, p. 38

P. 65

One famous 2007 study by Harvard University showed what happened, when fishermen in Southern India got mobile phones.

http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/53206/2/ICTs_Agriculture_Jensen.pdf

http://www.nextbillion.net/news/upward-mobile-ity-for-indias-poor

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125126978512659859.html

P. 65

The London Business School has estimated that each time mobile phone penetration rises by 10% in the population; it increases GDP by 0.5%.

http://web.si.umich.edu/tprc/papers/2005/450/L%20Waverman-%20Telecoms%20Growth%20in%20Dev.%20Countries.pdf

http://emagazine.credit-suisse.com/app/article/index.cfm?fuseaction=OpenArticle&aoid=270782&lang=EN

P. 65

Amazingly, only 47% of the potential working population in the Middle East is actually working, and 25% are outright unemployed.

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, p. 202 & 207

P. 65

For instance, 40 years ago Egypt exported approximately as much as Taiwan or South Korea. As of 2010 their exports are fewer than 1% of those the Asian Tigers handle.

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, p. 209

I should add here that Magnus mentions on the same page in his book that the entire Arab world exports less manufactured products than Thailand.

P. 65

Another statistic that reveals a lot is the number of patents granted in Arab countries each year.

http://www.wipo.int/portal/en/news/2008/article_0032.html

P. 66

India’s fertility rate is twice as high as China’s (about three children per woman). Now, since the Indians have so many children, they actually have a fairly high dependency ratio (number of people depending on other people’s income), but children cost only one-third to one-quarter to take care of than old people. Furthermore - and this is important - as fertility levels will begin to drop around 2025, India will enjoy a huge demographic benefit: fewer children but still not many elderly.

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, pp. 179-181

P. 66

However, one concern for India is that it is largely divided into a rich, sophisticated

south with an older population and a more populous but less educated north, where fertility also is higher. In order to benefit from their overall demographic upside, the Indians need to spread education, or move people.

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, p. 184

P. 66

China has low fertility rates and will actually have an aging problem fairly soon and a workforce that will begin to decline from 2020.

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, pp. 157-158

P. 67

Populations in Japan and Eastern Europe are declining considerably.

http://esa.un.org/unpp/

P. 67-68

So, in other words, world population growth has already been decelerating steadily for around 50 years. Furthermore, this trend can be seen virtually over the globe, and it is fortunately, for the first time in history, overwhelmingly voluntary.

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, p. 41

P. 68

Children born in the United States in 1900 could expect to live to around 47 years, and in 1950 this number had grown to 68 years.

http://www.demog.berkeley.edu/~andrew/1918/figure2.html

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lifexpec.htm

http://www.efmoody.com/estate/lifeexpectancy.html

P. 70

Let’s just look at how much people over 65 on average spend on some items

and services compared with the rest of the population:

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, pp. 124,

P. 71

As I mentioned, the list is ordered by how problematic the numbers are, and Spain tops it. According to these forecasts, the Spanish will need tofind 13.5% of GDP to pay for aging. However, none of the numbers in the list are set in stone. The EU has, for instance, made some more favorable assumptions that show that age-related spending in the EU area will only grow by 4.3%.

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, pp. 128-129

P. 71

In the U.S. the Congressional Budget office made a study which projected that social security and healthcare spending would rise from 8.4% of GDP in 2005 to 19% in 2050_an increase of 11%. Total federal revenues were 18.5% of GDP in 2008, so an increase of 11% means a 40% increase in necessary taxation.

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, pp. 130-131

P. 74

Economists will also look at how many of the people of working age actually do work (‘‘labor participation’’), how much their productivity grows (‘‘unit labor cost’’), and, as an indicator of unit labor growth, how much capital is deployed per working person, since man plus machine obviously gives higher productivity than man without machine.

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, pp. 76-80

P. 74

However, about two thirds of Americans are not sufficiently prepared financially for retirement, and around a quarter tend to say in opinion polls that they will ‘‘never’’ retire.

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009. p. 84

Urban Land Institute: Global demographics 1209, Shaping Real Estate’s Future, Urban Land Institute p. 33

P. 74

The global average is 105 boys per 100 women, but China has an extreme ratio of 120 boys for every 100 women. One reason is that local tradition says that it’s the son who has to care for the elderly.

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, p. 169-170

P. 75

In emerging markets Russia stands out. Its workforce is set to decline rapidly from around 2014 at a typical pace of 1^1.5% annually. China comes next.

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, pp. 167-168; 186-191

P. 75

there are 600 million people, who often produce very little, living in Asian slum districts

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, pp. 164-165

P. 75

That the children of immigrants perform considerably worse in the education system than natives.

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, p. 249

However, the reality is that immigrants on average only have a slightly higher propensity to work than the local population, and that they often bring in

their (perhaps very extended) families after a while, who may then add to

social burdens.

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, p. 258, 265

P. 75

In the U.S., for instance, no fewer than 40% of PhDs are immigrants

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, p. 246

P. 76

According to Vivek Wadhwa of Harvard Law School, a quarter of the engineering and technology firms founded in America between 1995 and 2005 had an immigrant founder.

http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/lwp/people/staffPapers/vivek/Vivek%20Wadhwa%20Immigrants%20and%20Returnees.pdf

P. 78

How about Japan? I think that most people regard the Japanese as savers, and they really were for many years. After World War II their savings averaged around 15% of GDP, followed by an increase to around 20% in the 1970s. But then it peaked and nosedived to just 3% of GDP in 2005 - 2006. As of 2010, the people in Japan aged 30-40 saved 6^7% of their income.

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, pp. 115-116

P. 78

In Europe it has been the U.K. and Spain that have had some of the lowest savings rates,

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, pp. 118-120

P. 79

As of 2010 the most indebted developed countries are Italy and Greece with levels around 120%. Japan seems even higher with 180%, but more than half of it is held by government agencies. Countries with medium-level debt include the U.S.A., Canada, Germany, France, Sweden, Holland, and Portugal, and the less indebted countries include Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Denmark, Spain, the U.K., and Finland.

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, pp. 118-120

P. 80

There was a relative increase of people of working age in America during the 1920s and 1930s, and while share prices rose strongly up to 1929, they fell 85% during the subsequent crash and stayed depressed for years after. Conversely, during the years from the end of World War II and into the 1970s the working age group fell in proportion to the total population - but share prices rose steadily.

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, pp. 146-147

Chapter 5: Globalization, urbanization, and wealth explosion

P. 81

Meanwhile, communist China had fallen so far behind its peers that its GDP per capita was only 13% of that of Taiwan and 6% of Hong Kong’s.

http://www.gapminder.org/

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_gdp_percap-economy-gdp-per-capita&date=1970

Here is a great animation of how China changed from a long term of decline to rapid growth after the economic model was changed.

http://www.gapminder.org/

P. 81

On August 23, 1989, Hungary surprisingly removed its border defenses with Austria, and the following month more than 13,000 East German tourists took the chance and escaped to Austria.

http://www.wieninternational.at/en/node/14246

P. 82

Between 1945 and 1975 international statistics indicated that global capital flows between nations were approx. 1% of GDP. However, as soon as movement of capital became free, it was as if a dam had broken. Between 1975 and 2000, global capital flows grew to just over 5% of global GDP, which had meanwhile exploded upwards.

Magnus, George: The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, p. 221

P. 84

In late 2009, Goldman Sachs sent out a new report, where they indicated that they might have miscalculated quite a lot

http://www2.goldmansachs.com/ideas/brics/brics-at-8/index.html

P. 84

In 1800 only 3% of the world’s population lived in cities. By 1950 that had grown to about one-third.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacity

P. 85

People living in urban environments tend to use a lot less energy per capita than those living in suburban or rural places.

Gore, Al: Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, Rodale Books, 2009, p. 234

P. 87

At the start of 2009, the world’s population of HNWIs was down 14.9% from the year before, while their wealth had dropped 19.5%.

http://www.capgemini.com/insights-and-resources/by-publication/2009_world_wealth_report/

Chapter 6, Intelligence, knowledge, and innovation

P. 95

The human race (Homo sapiens) is somewhere around 200,000 years old, and for almost all that time we lived as hunters and gatherers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human#Evolution

P. 95

The IBM PC entered the scene in 1981, and was followed by the internet, which had an 80% penetration in the U.S. within 20 years. The next key innovation, mobile phones, took just 15 years to achieve an 80% coverage.

Kaku, Michio: Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century, Anchor, 1998, pp. 25-26

P. 96

According to a study by the University of California at Berkeley in 2005, the global

amount of digital information in the world had grown 60% during the previous year, which happened to mean that it grew by 57,000 times as much as the existing information available in the Library of Congress within just one year

http://www.forbes.com/2005/11/08/data-functions-coping-cx_rm_1107data.html

P. 98

The number of people taking tertiary education worldwide seems to double every 15 years or so,

http://stats.uis.unesco.org/unesco/TableViewer/tableView.aspx?ReportId=167

http://web.worldbank.org/

http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=46047&URL_DO=DO_PRINTPAGE&URL_SECTION=201.html

http://newsfan.typepad.co.uk/does_human_knowledge_doub/

P. 98

It was the New Zealand based James R. Flynn, who discovered what is now called the ‘‘Flynn Effect’’, which is a continuous, year-on-year rise of intelligence quotient

(IQ) scores in virtually all parts of the world.

Neisser, Ulric & American Psychological Association: The Rising Curve: Long-Term Gains in IQ and Related Measures, American Psychological Association, 1998

Flynn, James R.: What Is Intelligence?: Beyond the Flynn Effect, Cambridge University Press, 2009

P. 98

This is shown through so-called ‘‘general intelligence factor loaded’’ (g-loaded) tests such as the so-called ‘‘Raven’s Progressive Matrices’’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices

P. 98

The concept of general intelligence, or ‘‘g’’, is based on the extremely common observation that if you are smart in one area, you are also likely to be smart in many others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_intelligence_factor

P. 98

One likely factor is increasing heterosis, which in this case means the mixing of genes through interbreeding of people from different places and races. This can create something called ‘‘hybrid vigor’’ or ‘‘outbreeding enhancement’’, which means that mixing strengthens the genes (the opposite is inbreeding, which leads to deterioration).

Mingroni, M.A. (2004). "The secular rise in IQ: Giving heterosis a closer look". Intelligence 32: 65–83

P. 99

The global rate of IQ increase is approx. 3 % per decade, but with large

Differences

Lynn, Richard & Tatu Vanhanen: IQ and the Wealth of Nations, Praeger Publishers, 2002

P. 99

That is a gain of 21 points in just 30 years, which means about 7 points per decade.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

http://www.americanscientist.org/

P. 100

The highest intelligence recorded, according to the Guinness Book of Records, belongs to a young Korean named Kim Ung-Yong, who scored 210.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Ung-yong

P. 103

Ray Kurzweil is one of America’s leading technologists.

http://www.kurzweiltech.com/aboutray.html

http://money.cnn.com/

P. 103

If the number of people working with knowledge has more than tripled from 1985 to 2010 (doubling every 15 years), and if the average productivity of such people has almost quadrupled during the same time (improving 6^7% annually), then we have knowledge output that is around 12 times faster in 2010 than it was in 1985, taking overall compound annual growth in human knowledge to around 10%and the doubling time for knowledge to 8 - 9 years.

After I had made this estimate I discovered that Professor Michio Kaku had reached the same conclusion.

Kaku, Michio: Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century,Anchor, 1998, page 4

P. 104

To answer this, I would like to take a few steps back and look at the status of basic natural sciences. These are, in my opinion, (1) mathematics, (2) statistics, (3) classical physics, (4) chemistry, (5) quantum mechanics, and (6) genetics.

For a better understanding of quantum theory and the process of discovery in science, I strongly recommend:

Kaku, Michio: Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century, Anchor, 1998.

P. 104

The initial important breakthroughs in mathematics were made by the Greeks no fewer than 2,300 - 2,500 years

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics

P. 104

parts of the statistical models we use today were developed as far back as the 18th and 19^th centuries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_statistics

P. 104

chemistry is largely based on our understanding of the periodic system, which was first described in 1869

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table

http://www.wou.edu/las/physci/ch412/perhist.htm

P. 104

Most of the products we buy today, from toothpaste to automobiles, soap, magazines, airplanes, food, and our houses, would not be possible without application of some or all of these four sciences

For instance, R.W. Oliver mentioned in his book from 2003 that the chemical industry produces 70,000 products.

Oliver, Richard W.: The Biotech Age, McGraw-Hill, 2003

P. 106

The one that is most anticipated is a commercially viable fusion reactor, which heats up particles to 120,000,000 °K.

http://fusionforenergy.europa.eu/

http://www.iter.org/default.aspx

P. 106

The website of the Culham Center for Fusion Energy contained this formulation in December 2009:

http://www.fusion.org.uk/

P. 106

The quantum computer is one that uses the so called ‘‘spin state’’ of electrons to represent bits of information

http://www.howstuffworks.com/quantum-computer.htm

http://www.phys13news.uwaterloo.ca/pdfs/125.pdf

P. 107

The Human Genome Project started in 1990 with a budget of $3 billion and a timeframe of 13 years to map human DNA (using four samples).

I believe that the two best descriptions of this incredible project are:

Venter, Craig: A Life Decoded: My Genome: My Life, Viking Adult 2007.

Shreeve, James: The Genome War: How Craig Venter Tried to Capture the Code of Life and Save the World, Ballantine Books, 2000.

P. 107

This can now be done for $60,000 in two weeks and probably soon for $1,000 or less in a few days or even hours.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/science/06dna.html?_r=4

http://singularityhub.com/2008/12/30/whole-genome-sequencing-to-cost-only-1000-by-end-of-2009/

http://www.nature.com/embor/journal/v8/n10/full/7401070.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2527701/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1779559/

P. 107

artificial red blood cells that are 100 times more efficient than the ones nature gave us (so that you can dive for 30 minutes without using scuba diving compressed air bottles)

Kurzweil, Ray: The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Viking Adult, 2005.

P. 108

farming yield will accelerate, so that we will eventually be able to feed a growing population using less farmland.

Charles, Dan: Lords Of The Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, And The Future Of Food. Good Basic Books, 2002, p 270

P. 108

In 1965 Gordon E. Moore, one of the founders of Intel, wrote a paper describing that the number of transistors that could be placed inexpensively on a chip (or integrated circuit) had doubled approximately every two years.

The original paper plus discussions of how it has been achieved and where it may be headed are in:

Brock, David: Understanding Moore's Law: Four Decades of Innovation, Chemical Heritage Foundation, 2006

P. 108

There are, in fact, several major projects underway to imitate how the brain works with computers. DARPA and IBM are, for instance, working on it.

http://www.defensesystems.com/

http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/

P. 108

IBM developed the computer that beat world champion Gary Kasparov at chess;

http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/

Chapter 7, Environmental and resource strain

P. 116

Global oil production in 2010 is approx. 85 million barrels daily.color:red; > A barrel contains circa 165 liters of oil, and if you want to move a single day’s consumption in ships, you would need 50 supertankers, each the length of three football pitches.

Olah, George A., Alain Goeppert & G. K. Surya Prakash: Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy, John Wiley & Sons, 2006, p. 32

P. 117

warnings that we were close to the “the end of affluence”, ‘‘limits to growth’’, it was ‘‘5 minutes to 12’’, ‘‘high noon’’,

In December 1967, Ehrlich wrote in the New Scientist that "the battle to feed all of humanity is over ... In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." In 1974, Erlich, Paul & Anne H. Ehrlich: The End of Affluence. Ballantine Books, New York 1974. The book predicted that agricultural production and fisheries would decline due to a global climate crises (cooling). During the subsequent 35 years agricultural output rose more than 50% and fishing yields more than 75%. Furthermore, the earth stopped cooling and began warming.

Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III. The Limits to Growth. New York: Universe Books, 1972. The books made a number of predictions of mankind running out of commodities if our growth continued. The growth actually accelerated, but not a single one of the books predictions have been close to reality.

The “5 minutes to 12” analogy is frequently used in the debate, with wordings such as this: “Be at every summit that speaks of the near inevitability of our earth to lose its battle and become another barren planet and try as hard as you can to shake up the world. Put your political capital at stake and sound the alarm as loudly as the power of your office allows. It is 5 minutes to 12 and there are responsible and credible scientist who believe we have already passed the point of no return.”. Source:

http://www.shekharkapur.com/

P. 117

Calorie intake per capita has grown rapidly in emerging markets from approx. 2,430 calories in 1970 to an estimated 2,730 in 2010

One of the reasons that calorie instance has grown so rapidly is that plants grow faster and often bigger due to better farming methods and genetic selection/manipulation, and this results in higher yields per crop harvest as well as the possibility to harvest more times in a year in many instances.

World Wildlife Fund has repeatedly warned that we were about to reach the peak in calorie intake, or that grain prices would start to rise due to shortage. Howeverer, grain prices have continued their relentless downwards trend, which actually has persisted for several hundred years. WWF has also pointed out that global grain consumption per capita has peaked. However, this has two very natural explanations: 1) Production in developed countries (where there are obesity problems and surplus stores) has peaked, partly because governments have actively tried to bring it down, and 2) The proportion of the population that live in emerging markets grows, and since production per capita there is lower than in developed countries, this effect brings down the global number. However, what really matters here is whether production per capita in emerging markets has or is about to peak, and the answer is clearly no. It continues to rise rapidly.

Agriculture: Towards 2015/30. Technical Interim Report, FAO, April 2000.

FAO

http://www.fao.org/

Lomborg, Bjørn: The Sceptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 61 & 109

P. 117

The percentage of global population that is starving fell from 35% in 1970 to below 15% in 2010

Lomborg, Bjørn: The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 5

P. 117

Whereas only 30% of the world’s population had access to clean water in 1970, the number has increased to approx. 80% in 2010.

1.6 billion people have gained access to a safe water source between 1990 and 2008. To halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water is one of the Millennium Development Goals. This goal is projected to be reached.

The Millennium Development Goals Report, United Nations, 2008

http://www.un.org/

Lomborg, Bjørn: The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 5 & 22

http://water.org/learn-about-the-water-crisis/facts/

P. 117

Life expectancy grew in almost every part of the world, and particularly rapidly in fast-growing Asia.

Lomborg, Bjørn: The Sceptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 51

Kurzweil quotes the following historical numbers:

Period	Life expectancy
Cro-Magnon	18
Ancient Egypt	25
1400 Europe	30
1800 Europe and United States	37
1900 United States	48
2002 United States	78

Kurzweil, Ray: The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Viking Adult, 2005, p. 324

P. 117

Illiteracy fell dramatically.

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/

P. 117

In the past 50 years poverty has fallen more than in the previous 500,

“Few people realize me great advances already made. In the past 50 year poverty has fallen more than in the previous 500. And it has been reduced in some respects in almost all countries.”

Human Development Report 1997, UNDP, 1997 Chapter 2, page 2

http://hdr.undp.org/

P. 117

Fewer than a hundred years ago Europeans spent on average 6 hours a week carrying coal into their houses and on cleaning coal dust from carpets, removing ashes from stoves, etc. They spent about an equal amount of time carrying water to wash clothes,

Personally I doubt very much whether the average person would be happier in a world without dentists, antibiotics, glasses and soap, etc.

P. 118

After the last ice age, there were only between one and 10 million people on the Earth.

Wilson, E. O: Sociobiology: Abridged Edition, Belknap Press, 1980

P. 118

We know from examining skeletons that life expectancy in the Stone Age in North Africa was just 21 years. In imperial Rome it was about the same - 22 years. In England it was around 30 to 40 years from the mid-16th century to the mid-19th century. Then it started to rise dramatically. In China in 1930 it was 24 years.

Lomborg, Bjørn: The Sceptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 50-51

According to Leonard Hayflick, 99% of the time that humans have existed, their life expectancy has been just 18 years. People in previous ages did everything much earlier than they do today, and, for instance, Juliet from Hamlet’s story Romeo and Juliet is only 13 years of age.

Kaku, Michio: Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century,Anchor, 1998, pp. 204-206.

Kurzweil quotes the following historical numbers:

Period	Life expectancy
Cro-Magnon	18
Ancient Egypt	25
1400 Europe	30
1800 Europe and United States	37
1900 United States	48
2002 United States	78

Kurzweil, Ray: The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Viking Adult, 2005, p. 324

P. 118

Malaria, still the world’s second deadliest disease after AIDS, was endemic in Europe until the late 17th century and remained present until fairly recently. The last Dutch malaria epidemic occurred, for instance, during World War II. In the 1920s almost 2% of America’s population was infected by malaria every year. In the mid-1930s the country still experienced more than 400,000 cases each year and in 1933 almost a third of the inhabitants in Tennessee River valley were infected by this decease.

Lomborg, Bjorn: Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, Vintage, 2008, p. 95-96

Lawson, Nigel: An Appeal to Reason. A Cool Look at Global Warming, Overlook, 2008, p. 32-33

Paul Reiter from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention writes: Until the second half of the 20th century, malaria was endemic and widespread in many temperate regions, with major epidemics as far north as the Arctic Circle. From 1564 to the 1730s—the coldest period of the Little Ice Age—malaria was an important cause of illness and death in several parts of England. Transmission began to decline only in the 19th century, when the present warming trend was well under way. The history of the disease in England underscores the role of factors other than temperature in malaria transmission.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol6no1/ascii/vol6no1.txt

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/414687_1

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2627969/

P. 118

Studies show that when countries get an average income above 3,000 dollars per capita per year, they start to eradicate malaria.

Lomborg, Bjorn: Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, Vintage, 2008, p. 101

P. 118

At its highest point, forest is estimated to have covered around 37% of the Earth’s landmass, and today it only covers 30%.

Gore, Al: Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, Rodale Books, 2009, p 181

Also, Lomborg mentions that according to FAO statistics, global forest cover actually rose from 1950 to 1994

Lomborg, Bjørn: The Sceptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 31 & 111-112

Cunningham, William P. & An Mary Cunningham: Environmental Science: A Global Concern, McGraw Hill Higher Education,2009

P. 119

Its statistics show that global forest cover declined a total of 3% between 1985 and 2000, equal to 0.2% per year.

Lomborg points out that according to the longest ranging statistics of global forest cover that we have, FAO Production yearbook, it has actually increased from 30.04 % in 1950 (the first year covered by the statistics) to 30.89 % in 1994. The publication has since been discontinued, but I checked FAO Statistical Yearbook, in the section about “land use” to look for clues to why forest is not getting reduced. They showed that from 1995 to 2007, global arable land had increase from 1'398'405 to 1'411'117 thousand hectares, but global pastures had meanwhile declined from 3'405'752 to 3'378'173 thousand hectares, thus more than offsetting the increase in arable land.

http://www.fao.org/

http://www.fao.org/forestry/32032/en/

P. 119

in their Global Forest Assessment report from 2005, the researchers found that forest stocks had actually expanded over the past 15 years in 22 of the world’s 50 most forested nations and that overall decline from 2000 to 2005 had slowed to 0.18%, or 0.036% per year.

http://seoblackhat.com/

P. 119

Subsequent studies by the Smithsonian Institute have indicated that as people move to cities and abandon marginal farmland, the addition of rainforest in some places may now exceed its destruction in others.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/science/earth/30forest.html?_r=1

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/s-ass010609.php

P. 119

it now has the world’s largest tree-planting program,

Gore, Al: Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, Rodale Books, 2009, p 194

P. 119

Old reports talk about air that was so full of smoke and soot from residential coal fires and coal-fired factories that one could hardly breathe.

Stone, Lawrence: The Family Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800, Penguin Books Ltd; Abridged edition (November 29, 1990)

P. 119

We know that the Queen of England visited Nottingham in 1257 and found the stench of smoke from coal burning so awful, that she feared for her life and left.

Brimblecombe P., London air pollution, 1500-1900, Atmospheric Environment 11, 1977, 1, p. 159

P. 119

urban air pollution in London has decreased by more than 90% since 1930.

Elsom, Derek M: Atmospheric Pollution Trends in the United Kingdom, Oxford Brookes University, in Simon, Julian: Why do we hear prophecies of doom from every side?, Futurist 19, pp. 19-24, 1995

Apart from this, statistics from Japan, Canada, Germany, Spain, France and Greece show substantial decline in particle air pollution from the 1970s or 80s to the end of the century.

Lomborg, Bjørn: The Sceptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 169

P. 119

Previously, sewage was discharged directly into the Thames, which stank so much that the curtains in the Houses of Parliament had to be soaked in lime to stop the odor from preventing government from getting on with its business.

http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/great_stink.html

P. 120

‘‘The whole of the river was an opaque pale brownfluid . . . surely the river which flows for so many miles through London ought not to be allowed to become a fermenting sewer. Despite the foul smell, people continued to wash and bathe and drink from the river.’’

This letter to the Editor of the Times of London from Professor Michael Faraday, dated July 7, 1855 began as follows:

“SIR,

I traversed this day by steam-boat the space between London and Hangerford Bridges between half-past one and two o'clock; it was low water, and I think the tide must have been near the turn. The appearance and the smell of the water forced themselves at once on my attention. The whole of the river was an opaque pale brown fluid. In order to test the degree of opacity, I tore up some white cards into pieces, moistened them so as to make them sink easily below the surface, and then dropped some of these pieces into the water at every pier the boat came to; before they had sunk an inch below the surface they were indistinguishable, though the sun shone brightly at the time; and when the pieces fell edgeways the lower part was hidden from sight before the upper part was under water. This happened at St. Paul's Wharf, Blackfriars Bridge, Temple Wharf, Southwark Bridge, and Hungerford; and I have no doubt would have occurred further up and down the river. Near the bridges the feculence rolled up in clouds so dense that they were visible at the surface, even in water of this kind.

The smell was very bad, and common to the whole of the water; it was the same as that which now comes up from the gully-holes in the streets; the whole river was for the time a real sewer. Having just returned from out of the country air, I was, perhaps, more affected by it than others; but I do not think I could have gone on to Lambeth or Chelsea, and I was glad to enter the streets for an atmosphere which, except near the sink-holes, I found much sweeter than that on the river.”

https://eee.uci.edu/

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/

P. 120

In 1878 the steamship Princess Alice actually did, and most of the approx. 600 passengers who died from that incident were not killed by drowning, but because of the pollution in the river

http://vichist.blogspot.com/

http://www.shipsthatsunk.com/

P. 120

In fact, from 1830 to 1860, tens of thousands of people had died of cholera as a result of pollution in the Thames.

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/

P. 122

This is actually illustrated by an international study called Development and the Environment which was published by the World Bank in 1992.

http://www-wds.worldbank.org/

A good recent example of how new technologies can clean up an environment, given the money are available for the initial investments, is clean trash burning:

http://www.wbcsd.org/plugins/DocSearch/details.asp?type=DocDet&ObjectId=MzgyMDM

P. 122

First, the air in the atmosphere has roughly the following composition:

http://en.wikipedia.org/

P. 123

The numbers I have given are broad intervals, because this if where the first scientific disagreements (which are not small) start:

There may generally be a lot of confusion about all these numbers and different numbers are given in different sources. Al Gore, for instance, refer to contributors to global warming and puts CO2 at 43.1%, whereas the sources on the geocraft website (below) mentions that water vapor contributes 95% of the greenhouse effect and CO2 3.65%. The main reason for the difference between “43.1 %” and “3.65 %” is that Gore assumes that the climate change is not related to fluctuations in water vapor/cloud cover at all, whereas the geocraft numbers relate to the actual heat contribution; not the change. However, anyone studying the matter might want to bear in mind that CO2 only constitute less than 0.4% of the atmosphere and that only 3% of the annual emissions of CO2 are manmade.

Gore, Al: Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, Rodale Books, 2009.

Booker, Christopher & Richard North: Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming- Why Scares Are Costing Us the Earth, Continuum, 2009, p. 47

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

P. 124

We know with high certainty (from measuring bubbles in ice cores and other sources) that the CO2 concentration shortly before humans developed farming was around 0.028%.

I am referring to the previous centuries here; not millennia. If we go further back in time there have been recordings of CO2 concentrations that were far higher than today. From 250 to 600 million years ago it was as high as 3,600 ppm, or around 8 times the present level, and it was also far higher when the dinosaurs roamed Earth.

www.unece.org/oes/nutshell/2009/2_GlobalWarming.pdf

P. 124

A large part of this – somewhere between 7.5 and 10% - circulates through plants and oceans, etc. each year, and if we stopped emitting it approx. half would be reabsorbed by oceans and plants within 30 years.

Gore, Al: Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, Rodale Books, 2009, pp. 36, 204

P. 124

More than half of the methane comes from agriculture, and the rest from fossil energy production processes, as well as land fills, waste treatment, and fuel combustion.

Gore, Al: Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, Rodale Books, 2009, p. 34

P. 124

Fortunately methane interacts with other chemicals in the atmosphere that break it down over an average of 10-12years. The result is reduced CO2 plus water vapor, which soon after falls back to Earth as raindrops.

Gore, Al: Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, Rodale Books, 2009, p. 39

P. 124

It is an exceptionally powerful greenhouse gas, but fortunately it is washed out of the atmosphere within days or weeks.

Gore, Al: Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, Rodale Books, 2009, p. 44

P. 124-125

Current CO2 levels are being recorded at 0.038% (380 parts per million, or ‘‘ppm’’), and by 2050 carbon dioxide is expected to register between 0.045% and 0.055% unless a radical process to stop it is put in place.

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-3.html#2-3-1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Composition

http://www.thecommonwealth.org/EZInformation/176099/060308climate_change/

P. 125

Studies of individual glaciers show that many of them had been ice free in the past and that areas that are ice-free now have been ice-covered before.

Lomborg, Bjorn: Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, Vintage, 2008

P. 125

Mean temperatures in Alaska seem to have been 3-5 C higher than today.

Lomborg, Bjorn: Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, Vintage, 2008, p. 54

P. 125

There had been significant warming periods during the Roman Empire, where archeological evidence suggests that people were growing wine in Great Britain.

Lawson, Nigel: An Appeal to Reason. A Cool Look at Global Warming, Overlook, 2008, p. 16

Lamb discusses this in further detail and provides in his fig. 65 on page 179 a map of all known vineyards in England during medieval times.

Lamb, H. H.: Climate, History and the Modern World. London: Routledge, 1995, pp. 159, 179, 188r>

P. 125

as Alpine glacier ice retreats, archeologists have found many Roman artifacts that show that Romans frequently walked across passes that are now ice-covered.

"High-altitude regions seem to be more sensitive to the climate warming, and the retreat of glaciers is one sign," says Martin Beniston, a climate specialist at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. "During Roman times it was even warmer than it is now. From Val-d'Isère to Zermatt, people could cross passes where they go glacier skiing now. But today it's the speed of warming that concerns us the most. It's very rapid."

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/alps-meltdown.html#page=3

http://climateaudit.org/2005/11/18/archaeological-finds-in-retreating-swiss-glacier/

http://www.tagesspiegel.de/magazin/wissen/gesundheit/art300,2095933

P. 125

There were also indications of northern warming around the times when the Vikings

populated Greenland and briefly settled in Newfoundland, near L’Anse aux Meadows.

Lomborg, Bjorn: Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, Vintage, 2008, p. 53

P. 125

There also seems to have been a so-called ‘‘Medieval Warm Period’’ in the North Atlantic region from about 800 to 1300, and even a warming as recently as the 1930s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period

http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/Glacial.pdf

P. 125

However, there have also been cooling periods since the last ice age. In the so-called ‘‘Little Ice Age’’ from the 16^th century to the mid^19th century, temperatures apparently cooled very significantly, and amazingly we have six recordings of Eskimos landing their kayaks in Scotland, which suggests that ice reached from Greenland to very close to Scotland.

Lomborg, Bjorn: Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, Vintage, 2008, p. 54

P. 125

During this cold period, the Thames regularly froze over, and people held fairs on it,

Lawson, Nigel: An Appeal to Reason. A Cool Look at Global Warming, Overlook, 2008, p. 17

P. 125-126

Going even further back, there had been an abrupt global cooling of approx. 2.3 C as an absolutely enormous amount of melt water trapped by ice in North America had broken through and for a time disrupted the Gulf Stream.

The theory is the approx. 8,200 years ago, as the ice cover over North America was still in the process of melting; a huge lake of cold water had been trapped by ice around where the Great lakes are today. At one point this broke out and flowed into the Atlantic where it disrupted the normal currents and created a significant cooling in Northern Europe. According to the IPCC nothing like that is conceivable in the future climate scenarios.

Lomborg, Bjorn: Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, Vintage, 2008. pp. 87-88

P. 126

All in all the indications are that there have been 50 - 60 warming and cooling periods since the end of the last ice age.

http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/IceAgeBook/history_of_climate.html

P. 127

in that same year two Canadians, Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, asked Mann if they could get access to the model and the data behind it.

There is a detailed description of the affair in:

Montford. A. W: The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science, Stacey Intl, 2010

P. 128

In 2003 they published these disturbing findings in the magazine Environment and Energy.

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/MM03.pdf

P. 129

However, Mann’s model showed hockey stocks in the random data over 99% of the time. His model was in a very literal sense - well, a hockey stick model.

In 2006 a team of statisticians assembled by the US National Academy of Sciences’ (NAS) and the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics made a thorough review of the model and its critique and concluded that the critique by McIntyre and McKitrick was “valid and compelling."

Following this, the IPPC replaced the hockey stick with the so-called “spaghetti” graph, which superimposed a range of very different long term climate fluctuation estimates.

http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/108/home/07142006_Wegman_fact_sheet.pdf

P. 129

Mann had taken these data from a study called Detecting the Aerial Fertilization Effect of Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment in Tree-Ring Chronologies,

The name of the study containing the critical three ring data indicated quite clearly that aereal fertilization was assumed to be the effect that drove changes in tree rings:

Graybill, D.A., and Idso, S.B. (1993) “Detecting the aerial fertilization effect of

atmospheric CO2 enrichment in tree-ring chronologies,” Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 7, 81–95.

About this issue, the Wegman report stated:

“Although we have not addressed the Bristlecone Pines issue extensively in this report except as one element of the proxy data, there is one point worth mentioning. Graybill and Idso (1993) specifically sought to show that Bristlecone Pines were CO2 fertilized. Bondi et al. (1999) suggest [Bristlecones] “are not a reliable temperature proxy for the last 150 years as it shows an increasing trend in about 1850 that has been attributed to atmospheric CO2 fertilization.”

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanReport.pdf, p. 49

P. 129

What tree rings can be correlated to is the so-called ‘‘areal fertilization effect’’ of CO2 in the air,

http://www.co2science.org/articles/V8/N13/EDIT.php

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1993/92GB02533.shtml

P. 130

We have an interesting insight into this, as some hackers stole and anonymously distributed approx. 3,000 emails and other documents made over the course of 13 years by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia

(UEA) in Norwich, England.

http://www.usnews.com/

P. 130

‘‘And don’t leave stuff lying around on ftp sites - you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years.’’

We do not know who “the two MMs” refer to, but Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick reported that they had great difficulty obtaining data for independent review.

P. 130

‘‘When we’ve finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we’re in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards - some sort of climate Nuremberg.’’

http://www.grist.org/article/the-denial-industry/

http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264568

P. 131

(while exaggerating some of these rather massively, though).

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/

P. 131

As for global sea levels, these have been rising for as long as scientific records exist, averaging approx. 2 mm annually in the first half of the 20th century and 1.5mm in the second - perhaps because we are still exiting the Little Ice Age, or perhaps due to manmade warming.

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/figure-1-1.html

http://www.psmsl.org/data/longrecords/

http://www.psmsl.org/data/longrecords/ancill_rep.htm

P. 131

‘‘The Henrik Svensmark view’’: Virtually all the temperature fluctuations we have seen recently and in the distant past can be explained by fluctuations in cosmic rays and other natural phenomena.

The following link gives a good long term perspective of what we are talking about when we discuss historical climate change:

http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/IceAgeBook/history_of_climate.html

In addition to the potential effects of cosmic rays, there is wide agreement in the scientific community that the so-called Milancowitch cycles contribute to natural climate fluctuations. These relate to slight changes in the Earth’s movements relative to the sun – its orbit around the sun, its tilt angle, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

Perhaps connected with that is the seemingly fact that other planets in the solar system have heated up.

http://seoblackhat.com/

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2002/pluto.html

P. 131-132

It should be added here that if all glaciers and icecaps in the world melted, it would only raise the sea level by approx. 30 cm

Lomborg, Bjorn: Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, Vintage, 2008. p. 63

P. 132

If all of Antarctica’s land-based ice melted, sea levels would rise a whopping 57 meters (186 feet).

http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/icesheets

P. 132

He believes that if we combine solar, geothermal, wind, 2^nd and 3^rd generation biofuels and other alternative sources, and link all of those up to “intelligent” grids, where everyone can buy or sell power, we can make the energy transition away from fossil within a reasonable span of time.

Gore, Al: Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, Rodale Books, 2009. p. 274-297

P. 133

Another solution is to create biocharcoal.

Gore, Al: Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, Rodale Books, 2009. p. 216-219

P. 133

The U.S. ‘‘dust bowl’’ in the 1930s is perhaps the clearest example of this. He suggests a complete conversion to no-till farming, which is possible if combined with genetically engineered herbicides

Gore, Al: Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, Rodale Books, 2009. p. 203

P. 133

One scientist, whose thoughts on the matter have gained ground, is Henrik Svensmark,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrik_Svensmark

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/10/

A team of scientists from 18 institutes in 9 countries are jointly preparing to study if cosmic ray effects ion cloud cover can be replicated under laboratory conditions. The Hadron Collider is able to create particles that move with the speed of cosmic rays.

http://public.web.cern.ch/

Apart from that, since solar activity has moved from very high to very low over the last few years, it will be interesting to see if global temperatures cool down. If indeed they do, then one might assume that a part of the warming we saw from 1970 to 1997 might have come from elevated solar activity.

P. 133

Cosmic rays are, in spite of their name, actually not rays, but charged particles - approx. 90% are protons, fewer than 10% are helium nuclei, and just under 1% heavy elements and electrons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray

P. 133

When these particles emerge from somewhere within the Milky Way, they will be trapped by the combined gravity of all the billions of stars and will on average hurl around for 10 million to 20 million years before they hit a solid object such as the Earth.

The four sources below puts the average life time at 10, 16, 20 and 20 million years, respectively:

http://www.srl.caltech.edu/personnel/dick/cos_encyc.html

http://helios.gsfc.nasa.gov/qa_cr.html

http://www-astro.physik.tu-berlin.de/node/274

http://history.nasa.gov/EP-177/ch8-4.html

P. 133

To find out, Svensmark uses the so-called Frauenhofer Model

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunhofer_Society

P. 135

Lomborg accepts the IPCC estimates of possible climate changes but adds that the consequences are not fairly portrayed by the IPCC and many others.

This is a very long story, but some of the aspects that he mentions are:

IPPC (and World Wildlife Fund, Al Gore and many others) mention that polar bears are under significant threat by global warming and may very soon die out or at least be confined to zoos. However, the reality is that the population of polar bears has grown approx. 500 % since the 1960s and that the subpopulations that have grown most recently live in areas that have wormed while those that have declined live in areas that have cooled. Furthermore, out of a population of around 25,000 bears, 3-500 are shot by hunters each year.

The IPPC 2005 report mentioned heat 54 times and cold one time in their coverage of human health effect s of global warming. However, since there are far more people dying of cold than of heat each year, the net effect of any global warming will be less deaths from extreme temperatures. The IPCC report only mentions the increased number of deaths from excessive heat. Actually, projected extreme temperature deaths will decline by 1.4 million a year in 2050 if the projected warming takes place, and it will continue to save lives even until year 2200, according to models that show both heat and cold deaths.

Today, approx. four million people die annually from malnutrition, three million from AIDS, and 2.5 million from outdoor and indoor air pollution, two million from lack of micronutrients, and almost two million from lack of clean water. Wouldn’t money be better spent at promoting economic growth in emerging markets so that such problems could be mitigated?

Temperature measurements from Greenland shows that it didn’t participate in the warming elsewhere in the 1990s, but that the warmest year actually recorded was 1941. Furthermore, the temperature increases preceding a warm period in Greenland in the 1930s and 1940s happened faster than what we saw in the most recent temperature rise.

The net effect of global warming would be to reduce the number of people living in water stressed areas

There is much, much more, so these are only examples of a debate that seems to have had a distinct tilt.

Lomborg, Bjorn: Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, Vintage, 2008

P. 135

The total outcome is that the number of people under water stress will go down, not up, as a consequence of global warming.

http://online.wsj.com/

P. 137

Imagine you had $50 billion to donate to worthwhile causes. What would you do, and where would you start?

http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/

P. 138

A leading proponent for that view is Ray Kurzweil, whom I mentioned in the previous chapter.

http://www.silicon.com/

P. 139

The Kyoto Agreement, had all countries ratified it, would have postponed global warming by only 5 years as of 2100.

Lomborg, Bjorn: Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, Vintage, 2008, p. 23

P. 139

Absurdly, the U.S., which didn’t’t ratify the agreement, actually restricted its emission growth better than the EU over the Kyoto Agreement period.

I think this shows how much empty rhetoric and “greenwashing” there is in the whole debate. For instance, in 1997, the British Labour government took the lead in the global warming debate (since then backed up forcefully by the BBC) and promised to cut the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions by 15% by 2010. What actually happened was that the emissions in the country instead rose approx. 3% during the period. Similarly, the US emission rose a whopping 11% during the period when Al Gore vice president.

Lomborg, Bjorn: Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, Vintage, 2008, p. 150

P. 140

China is building a new coal -fired power plant every 5 days,

http://www.forumforthefuture.org/greenfutures/

P. 141

In 1939 the Department of the Interior in the U.S. predicted that America’s oil would run out within 13 years. It didn’t, but nevertheless the selfsame prediction was made in 1951: 13 years left!

Simon. J. Lincoln: The Ultimate Resource 2, Princeton University Press; Revised edition, 1998

P. 141

America has untapped shale oil reserves that exceed all conventional oil reserves in the world and could alone supply it for well over a century, should it decide to pursue this avenue.

In fact, it has been estimated that the global reserves of shale oil is approx. 242 times bigger than the conventional oil reserves, equal to 5,000 times our current annual total energy consumption.

Craig, James R., David J. Vaughan & Brian J. Skinner: Resources of the Earth: Origin, Use, and Environmental Impact, Prentice Hall; 3 edition, 2001

There is also a good description of oil shale in page 109-123 in:

Deffeyes, Kenneth S.: Beyond Oil. The View from Hubbert’s Peak, Hill and Wang, 2005.

P. 141

Furthermore, it turns out that where there is shale oil there is also shale gas - huge amounts of it. U.S. planners realized around 2007-2009 that the country had such large supplies of this gas that, instead of importing gas from the Middle East and other places, it might in fact end up as a net gas exporter. So far, they believe that there is enough for 90 years’ domestic supply.

http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/

http://www.api.org/policy/exploration/

http://www.star-telegram.com/

P. 141

As for resources outside the U.S., a study by IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates calculated that recoverable shale gas outside North America could turn out to be equivalent to between 211 and 690 times the present annual gas consumption in the U.S. This would be equal to somewhere between a 50% and a 160% increase in the world’s known gas reserves.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/10/business/

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8609131.stm

P. 142

How about copper? This metal constitutes 0.0058% of the Earth’s crust, which actually means that there is enough for 83 million years of consumption, if we could ind ways to mine it all (which of course, we can’t). But it’s not running out.

Lomborg, Bjørn: The Sceptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp.142-143

P. 142

After all, 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered with water, totaling 13,600,000 km3. Only 1% of that is freshwater, but that is still far more than 1,000,000 km3.

Lomborg, Bjørn: The Sceptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 149.

P. 142

However, the global consumption of wood for timber and paper within any timeframe is equal to just 5% of actual tree growth within that period.

Lomborg, Bjørn: The Sceptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 115

P. 142

Monsanto now expects that, due to the genomics revolution, corn productivity growth will increase dramatically to over 3.5% annually,

http://monsanto.mediaroom.com/

http://earth2tech.com/

http://www.bloomberg.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/

P. 142-143

The best would be if governments put a floor under a number of commodity prices - as they do in Europe for oil and gas, and guaranteed that any drop in wholesale prices would be offset by increasing taxes.

Here is an example of the consequences of not doing it:

http://www.e-energymarket.com/

P. 143

Would a crash replacement of fossil fuel be possible?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Chapter 8, Tribes and empires

P. 147-149

In its so-called Third Dynasty from 2737 bc to 2717 bc, for instance, the ruler Zoser developed an efficient bureaucracy and introduced stone blocks rather than traditional mud bricks for building construction. When he died, he was buried within the Step Pyramid, a 62-meter tall construction which still stands today.

http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/egypt/saqqara/zoser/zoser.html

P. 149

The Great Pyramid of Giza was built of approx. 2.3 million cut stone blocks with an average weight of approx. 2.6 tons.

Murray, Charles: Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. Harper Perennial, 2004, p. 19

P. 149

During the Song Dynasty, which lasted from 960 to 1279, Hangzhou served as the national capital and became the most advanced city anywhere.

Murray, Charles: Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. Harper Perennial, 2004., p. 36-42

P. 150

The reality is that from many hundred years prior to the birth of Christ and around 1,900 years after, China had an upper class that cultivated and appreciated products of extraordinary beauty and quality/products such as enamelled porcelain, gold, opulent jewelry, refined writing paper and pens, calligraphy, paintings, pearls, silver, ivory, and of course the world-famous Ming vases.

Lu, Pierre Xiao: Elite China: Luxury Consumer Behaviour in China, Wiley; illustrated edition, 2008, pp. 1-4 & 39-41

P. 150

that Zheng He for this purpose gathered a crew of approximately 30,000 men and equipped around 300 ships?

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/

http://www.google.ch/1

http://www.google.ch/2

P. 150 - 151

During its heyday period under Antoninus Pius (who reigned from 138 to 161), Rome had over 25 public libraries, where people could check out books for reading at home - in fact, most people of means even had their own, private libraries.

As an example of Rome’s power, Charles Murray points out that when the Romans evacuated Britain in year 407, they had ruled it for longer than the United States has existed.

Murray, Charles: Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. Harper Perennial, 2004., pp. 10, 26

P. 151

The Romans collected wine and raved about the 121 b.c. vintage, which people kept in their collections for centuries after.

Murray, Charles: Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. Harper Perennial, 2004, p. 28

P. 151

In 1785 there were 650 businesses in London making their money from producing or selling books, and the London art fairs, theater plays, and concerts drew huge crowds.

Murray, Charles: Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. Harper Perennial, 2004., p. 47

P. 154

The American scientist Charles Murray published in 2003 a book called

Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences,

800 BC to 1950.

Murray, Charles: Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. Harper Perennial, 2004.

An interesting question that Murray doesn’t pay much attention is whether the enormous scientific and artistic (and economic) success of the West has made its people happier. I look at the map below seems clearly to confirm that it has – Europe and the nations it build in the Americas, Australia, etc, are clearly more happy on average than the rest. The first map shows average happiness rating at any given moment in each nation and the second shows the number of years that an average person enjoys happiness:

http://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/statnat/statnat_fp.htm

http://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/hap_nat/maps/Map_HappyLifeYears.html

P. 155

The first was that until around year 1450, there were as many periods of actual decline in new human achievement as of progress.

R.W. Oliver mentions that during the 800 years preceding the economic take-off in around year 1450, global GDP per capita was essentially unchanged.

Oliver, Richard W.: The Biotech Age, McGraw-Hill, 2003, P. 71

In Murray’s opinion, the most sophisticated societies in year 800 b.c. were all less sophisticated than Egypt had been 1,500 years earlier. After Europe and the rest of the west took off from 1450, the rest of the world remained essentially static until into the 20^th century.

Murray, Charles: Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. Harper Perennial, 2004, pp. 16,

P.156

The will to achieve disappears.

George Friedman distinguishes between three types of civilization: 1) barbarism, where you think your own customs are the laws of nature and all others need to adapt or be destroyed, 2) civilization, where you can combine conflicting thoughts and are willing to study alternatives to your own ideas, and 3) decadence, where you believe nothing and think nothing is worth fighting for.

Friedman, George: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century, Doubleday, 2009, p. 29

P. 158

This is spelled out in the Tao Te Ching: ‘‘To seek the Tao one loses day by day, losing and yet losing some more, till one has reached the state of wu wei (doing nothing or inaction).’’

http://www.answers.com/topic/taoism

P. 159

The Renaissance, which spanned from the end of the 13th century to around 1600, was a separation process from the previously totally dominant church.

There is a very introduction to this era and what it meant in:

Johnson, Paul: The Renaissance: A Short History, Modern Library

P. 159

The most important inspiration for this movement was perhaps the monk Thomas Aquinas, who lived from approx. 1225 to 1274.

Aquinas seems to me to be one of the most important thinkers in human history, but not many know about him. There is a good introduction here:

Selman, Francis: Aquinas 101: A Basic Introduction to the Thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Christian Classics, 2007

P. 160

The Catholic Church eventually reacted to the Reformation by instituting a counter-reformation,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Reformation

P. 160

All of this became part of the process of Enlightenment, which put freedom, democracy, science, religious tolerance, the rule of law, and reason as primary values of society.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment

P. 160

The final step in Europe’s transition was the emancipation of women.

Bakas points out that technology can explain a lot of women’s emancipation. Due to more efficient household technology, much less time needs to be spent on maintaining a latrine, cooking and heating with wood and coal, provisioning fresh food in the absence of refrigerators and freezers, and cleaning without vacuum cleaners, etc.

Bakas, Adjiedj: World Megatrends. Towards the Renewal of Humanity, Infinite Ideas Limited, 2009, p. 201r>

P. 161

The British historian Charles Boxer has estimated that at the end of the 16th century the number of able-bodied Portuguese working overseas did not exceed 10,000.

http://www.jstor.org/pss/20139078

P. 162

The Spanish conquistador Pizarro beat around 7,000 Inca warriors at Cajamarca with a force of just 168 men,

http://teachers.sduhsd.k12.ca.us/

P. 162-163

and Hernando Cortes conquered more than 5 million Aztecs with a force of only 1,000 soldiers,

http://cortes-hernando.blogspot.com/search?q=million

P. 164

As of 2010, China plus Hong Kong has almost $1 trillion stashed away in four sovereign wealth funds and around $2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves.

http://www.swfinstitute.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_wealth_fund

P. 164

It may be a trivial observation, but in most of the world land can actually now be bought legally and peacefully in free markets. So can companies, mines, farming rights, precious metals, brands, equities, bonds, and much more.

I think this is mainly relevant because self/generated wealth drives human accomplishment, which again forms the basis for more wealth accumulation. Charles Murray writes it this way:

“Human accomplishment in the arts and sciences first became possible because of wealth. Only with the accumulation of a surplus beyond the necessities of survival could human communities support a class of people who were engaged in work that did not directly contribute to food, shelter, clothing, an raising the next generation.”

, and:

“Richer is better, but part of the effect comes from being richer compared to other countries during the same period, not from being richer in an absolute sense. Specifically, countries that have more per capita gross domestic product (GDP) than others at a given point in time tend to produce more significant figures than their poorer competitors, particularly in the visual arts and the sciences. “

Murray, Charles: Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. Harper Perennial, 2004, pp. 336, 339

P. 165

After World War II the U.S. State Department organized a series of international jazz concerts by some of its country’s finest musicians, including Dave Brubeck, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, and Duke Ellington. They was soon unofficially dubbed ‘‘the real ambassadors’’ because it worked wonders.

http://caliber.ucpress.net/doi/abs/10.1525/jm.2009.26.2.133

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_Ambassadors

http://www.amazon.com/Real-Ambassadors-Dave-Brubeck/

P. 165

http://caliber.ucpress.net/doi/abs/10.1525/jm.2009.26.2.133

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_Ambassadors

http://www.amazon.com/Real-Ambassadors-Dave-Brubeck/

P. 165

When Greek students threw rocks at the American embassy in Greece, for instance, the incredibly charming and talented Dizzy Gillespie showed up and gave a hilarious concert. After this, the attacks on America died down.

http://www.americanpopularculture.com/

P. 165

There is a wonderful concert recording, J.A.T.P. in Tokyo 1953, where the Japanese audience is clearly extremely enthusiastic.

http://www.amazon.com/

P. 167

The great empires by 2050 will not be defined by clear national borders, because they will be virtual, and they will grow organically. There will be two: One will be predominantly Chinese, and the other Latin/Germanic/Anglo-Saxon. Many people will feel attachment to both.

When you study World War II it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Allied Forces won mainly because of superior industrial production capability. In the more recent wars, it has been the possession of information technology such as smart bombs that has determined who won. The concept of future empires created without a fight is based on the belief that persuasion, and thus the attractiveness of culture and ideas, will be decisive.

I do not mention it at this stage of the book, but one possibility is that China may turn to genetic engineering of humans to gain a substantial competitive advantage over other nations.

Chapter 9, War, terror, and the bottom billion

P. 169

The anthropologist Lawrence Keeley, who authored the important book War before Civilization, estimates that approx. 25% of all people were killed in war or war-like events before the emergence of civilization.

Keeley found that warfare was far more common in ancient societies than it is today, and more surprisingly, perhaps, also orders of magnitude more deadly for those who participated. Whereas approx. 1% of the competent normally die in modern warfare, he estimated that up 60 % of those who participated in ancient battles died from it.

Keeley, Lawrence: War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage, Oxford University Press, 1997

P. 169

War and state-sponsored genocide was also clearly widespread during the first part of the 20th century, where it killed approx. 190 million people, with its culmination in

World War II.

As an example of the deckline in war deaths, Kurzweil shows a massive decline in US casualties since 1860:

Kurzweil, Ray: The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Viking Adult, 2005, p. 331

P. 169

approx. 15% have sadistic tendencies.

http://www.jaapl.org/cgi/content/full/34/1/61

P. 169-170

The Aztecs routinely made thousands of sacrifices where they sliced the living victim’s abdomen open with a flint knife, then pulled out the still-beating heart with their hands.

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/egipto/fingerprintgods/fingerprintgods03.htm

P. 170

Between 1276 and 1658, long after the Viking age had ended, a small enclave of Danish-minded people living in ‘‘Scania’’, which is now a part of southern Sweden, were attacked by Swedish armies no fewer than 34 times, until the Treaty of Roskilde, when they finally ceded to Sweden.

http://www.scania.org/facts/pages/wars.htm

P. 170

Within any country, and between nations, there seems to be a fairly strong tendency that the less intelligent are more prone to violence.

http://law.jrank.org/

P. 172

It seems that the main intellectual inspiration for the latter part of America’s military activities comes from Niccolo' di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, the Italian who authored a short political treatise called The Prince, which was published in 1513

http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/machiavelli.html

P. 172

Let’s take the case of Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq.

For a general and very easily read introduction to tension and conflict around the world, please see:

Harris, Bob: Who Hates Whom: Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts, and Various Things Blowing Up A Woefully Incomplete Guide, Three Rivers Press, 2007

P. 174

The latest numbers, which are estimates from 2009, show that America has approx. 45% of world military spending, whereas China is a very distant second with 6%. India is responsible for just 2% of world military spending. Furthermore, the U.S. is a partner in NATO which in total controls around 60% of global military spending.

http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending

P. 174

During World War II, The Soviet Union lost between 9 million and 11 million soldiers, Germany approx. 5.5 million, and Japan 2.1 million. Incredibly, the U.S. invaded Africa, Europe, and Japan simultaneously, and yet it suffered far fewer casualties than the other major combatants - America lost just over 400,000.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

P. 174

During subsequent wars America has seen very high kill ratios. American casualties for the first Gulf War were 148 killed in action, and its 36 allies lost 77. However, estimates of Iraqi casualties range from 30,000 to 100,000.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_war_1

P. 174-175

Another way to understand the dominance of America is by looking at a very small part of its combined war machine: the so-called carrier strike groups (CSGs).

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/navy/csg.htm

P. 175

It is scarcely populated (its population density is 34 inhabitants per square kilometer against 230 for Germany and 338 for Japan) and is a net exporter of agricultural products.

Friedman, George: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century, Doubleday, 2009, p. 17

P. 175

Finally, America has made great strides in developing robots for military purposes, which may further reduce its potential battle losses.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/

http://www.nytimes.com/

http://www.nature.com/news/

http://usmilitary.about.com/

P. 176

Furthermore, America has pioneered a very efficient ‘‘privatization’’ of war by using so-called ‘‘PMFs’’ (private military Firms) for facility protection, training, interrogation, etc.

http://www.privatemilitary.org/home.html

http://www.dcaf.ch/pfpc/proj_privmilitary.pdf

P. 177

The largest religion in the world is Christianity, which has approx. 2.1 billion adherents, followed by Islam (approx. 1.5 billion), secularism/irreligious/agnostic/atheism (approx. 1.1 billion), Hinduism (0.9 billion),

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations

P. 177

The Bottom Billion, as he calls them in a book of the same name,

Collier, Paul: The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, Oxford University Press, 2007

P. 177

The reason, which Paul Krugman and Anthony Vanbales also pointed out in their 2000 study Globalization and the Inequality of Nations is simple.

http://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/5098.html

P. 182

The World Bank investigated in 2004 what happened to money released by the Ministry of Health in Chad to regional administrations and 281 primary health care centers.

http://jae.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/18/1/52

P. 184

Collier published in 2003 the now famous report Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and the Development Policy under the auspices of the World Bank.

http://econ.worldbank.org/

P. 184

There is another common driver of violence: youth bulges. History tells us that if a society has a ‘‘male youth bulge’’ (a surplus of young men in the typical fighting age range of 15^29), it is extremely likely to have a big problem, unless the economy is really booming or the cultural life very rich.

Bakas, Adjiedj: World Megatrends. Towards the Renewal of Humanity, Infinite Ideas Limited, 2009, p. 110-111

http://www.cfr.org/publication/13093/

http://www.cfr.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clash_of_Civilizations

http://www.nytimes.com/

P. 185

The worst example in modern times was Rwanda, where in 1994 between 500,000 to 1 million of its approx. 8 million inhabitants were killed in internal battles within a few months.

http://www.yale.edu/gsp/rwanda/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1288230.stm

http://www.ppu.org.uk/genocide/g_rwanda1.html

P. 185

According to the Arab Human Development Report 2009, youth unemployment for Arab nations as a whole was a mind-boggling 30% in 2005 - 2006, with Iraq, Somalia, Algeria, and Sudan among the worst hit countries.

The report specifies these numbers as follows:

“ALO estimates for the year 2005/2006 show that youth unemployment rates vary from a high of about 46 per cent in Algeria to a low of 6.3 per cent in the UAE (figure 5-6). With the exception of the latter, high income Arab countries suffer from double digit youth unemployment rates: Saudi Arabia (26 per cent); Kuwait (23 per cent); Bahrain (21 per cent); and, Qatar (17 per cent). Relatively high youth unemployment rates are recorded for the middle income Arab countries: Jordan (39 per cent); Libya (27 per cent); Tunisia (27 per cent); Egypt (26 per cent); Lebanon (21 per cent); Oman (20 per cent); Syria (20 per cent); and, Morocco (16 per cent). The low income Arab countries also report relatively high rates: Mauritania (44 per cent), Sudan (41 per cent), Djibouti (38 per cent), and, Yemen (29 per cent).15 Overall, in the year 2005/6 the unemployment rate among the young in the Arab countries is nearly double that in the world

at large, 30 per cent compared to 14 per cent.”

http://www.arab-hdr.org/ , p. 109

P. 186

A study by Population Action International, a Washington-based private advocacy group, showed that between 1970 and 1999 80% of all civil conflicts in the world occurred in countries where at least 60% of the population were under the age of 30.

http://www.populationaction.org/

P. 186

In September 1928, a year before the Great Crash of 1929, Germany had 650,000 unemployed. Two years later it was 3,000,000, and by then Germany’s manufacturing had fallen 17% from its 1927 level. In 1932 unemployment reached 30% of the workforce, or 5,102,000 in September of that year, and when Hitler came to power in 1933, the number had increased to over 6 million

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/

P. 188

The list below is by no means complete, but it illustrates the relentless process of violence in these two regions in just 10 years

http://hiik.de/de/konfliktbarometer/

P. 189

In the 1880s America experienced a wave of anarchist terror, which continued until around 1920.

http://slackbastard.anarchobase.com/?p=12104

P. 191

Iran has seen one of the steepest declines in fertility anywhere, which should lead it to a demographic profile that is typically associated with more peaceful behavior.

There is a good description of how the Middle East is rapidly aging in:

Longmanm, Phillip: The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It, Perseus Books, 2004, pp.8-11

P. 192

Over the last 200 years there have barely been any cases of two democratic nations fighting each other.

http://www.peacemagazine.org/archive/v15n3p10.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4017305.stm

Chapter 10, The shape of things to come

P. 197

The following books contain some good general thoughts about the pattern of progression in business, technology and science.

Oliver, Richard W.: The Biotech Age, McGraw-Hill, 2003

Kurzweil, Ray: The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Viking Adult, 2005.

P. 203

Regarding great profit models, I can think of 40 which are frequently practiced, and which can be divided into 8 main categories:

These are elaborated in :

http://www.supertrends.com/supersectors/further-facts/

Chapter 11, Finance

P. 211

In 2004 the total trading in derivatives/forex (which I will explain later) constituted almost 30 times global GDP, and in 2007 it had grown to approx. 46 times global GDP.

The notional outstanding value of overt-the-counter (“OTC”) derivatives contracts rose by 36% from USD 197 trillion at end-2003 to USD 270 trillion in June 2005. They grew approximately 300% from 2000 to 2005. Average daily global turnover rose from USD 764 billion to USD 1,508 billion between April 2001 and April 2004. The latter equalled USD 550 trillion annually, or almost 13 times global GDP (derivatives are not included in GDP calculations). They should be at least 15 times bigger than global GDP by 2010.

This was over-the-counter derivatives. Let’s move now to foreign exchange markets that are not formally labeled as “derivatives”. According to a study made by Bank of International Settlements 2004, average daily turnover in traditional foreign exchange markets was estimated at USD 1,880 billion, or approx. 685 trillion dollars a year, equivalent to approximately 16 times global GDP. By 2007, it had grown 69% to 3.2 trillion a day, or approx. 20 times global GDP. These traditional contracts included spots, forex forwards and swaps, but not foreign exchange derivatives. The study is here:

http://www.bis.org/publ/rpfxf07t.htm

During the same period the global trade in OTC (over the counter) derivatives grew by 73% to 4.2 trillion. By adding OTC derivatives to traditional foreign exchange contracts we can conclude that total derivatives/Forex trading in 2004 constituted almost 30 times global GDP, and by 2007 the number had grown to 46 times GDP.

In addition to this, the BIS study showed that notional amounts of OTC derivatives rose at an even more rapid pace than turnover. Notional amounts outstanding went up by 135% to $516 trillion at the end of June 2007. This corresponds to an annualised compound rate of growth of 33%.

The market has grown rapidly during the last years. – Particularly the forex market has gained importance and has outrun spot transactions. Average daily global turnover in traditional foreign exchange market transactions totalled USD 2.7 trillion in April 2006 according to IFSL estimates based on semi-annual London, New York, Tokyo and Singapore Foreign Exchange Committee data.

Overall turnover, including non-traditional foreign exchange derivatives and products traded on exchanges, averaged around USD 2.9 trillion a day. This was more than ten times the size of the combined daily turnover on all the world’s equity markets.

color:red;>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_(finance)

P. 212

American university professor and author Jeremy Siegel published a landmark paper in 1991, where he compared long-term returns if someone had invested $1 in each of a number of different asset classes in 1800 and held them for 190 years until 1990.

http://finance.wharton.upenn.edu/~rlwctr/papers/9110.PDF

P. 218

Private equity is investment funds that are not listed and which are only available to particularly solid and professional investors.

For a good introduction to private equity I would recommend this book:

Fraser-Sampson, Guy : Private Equity as an Asset Class, Wiley & Sons, 2007

P. 222

According to a survey made by the Bank of International Settlements (a sort of central bank for central banks), approx. 24% of the global foreign exchange market was done through institutions in the U.K. The second biggest was the U.S. with 17%, followed by approx. 6% in each of Switzerland, Japan, and Singapore, respectively. Just over 4% was done through Hong Kong and Australia. India had only 0.9% and China 0.2% of global forex turnover.

http://www.bis.org/publ/rpfxf07t.htm

P. 223

The entrepreneur/venture capital - focused organization Red Herring gave awards in 2009 to whom they considered the 100 best venture capitalists in the world.

http://www.herringevents.com/globalvc09.html

P. 223

The World Economic Forum annually publishes the so-called Financial Development Report, which ranks 55 of the world’s leading financial systems and capital markets on over 120 variables.

http://www.weforum.org/

Chapter 12, Real estate

P. 228

There are many kinds of real estate.

Tvede, L.: Business Cycles, History, Theory and Investment Reality, Wiley & Co, 2006, pp. 313-315

P. 229

According to U.N. Habitat, no fewer than a third of all urban residents in global emerging markets (810 million by 2008) lived in slums in 2008.

http://www.unhabitat.org/pmss/listItemDetails.aspx

P. 231

According to an article in The Economist in 2008, whereas 78% of all houses in the U.S. had been resold, the equivalent number for Japan was just 13%.

“Building Wealth”, The Economist, January 3^rd, 2008

P. 235

Big cities have big buildings. The McKinsey Global Institute predicted in 2008 that China will build 20,000-50,000 skyscrapers by 2025. At that time, China alone should have at least 4 megacities and around 220 cities with at least one million inhabitants.

Some of the statements in the report:

McKinsey also lists that they will build 28,000 kilometers of railway, and 40,0000 billion square meters of floor space, involving partly the 20,0000 to 50,000 sky scrapers (buildings with more than 30 floors) Their urban construction boom from 2010 to 2030 would be equivalent to building a Chicago every year.

The scale and pace of China's urbanization promises to continue at an unprecedented rate. If current trends hold, China's urban population will expand from 572 million in 2005 to 926 million in 2025 and hit the one billion mark by 2030. In 20 years, China's cities will have added 350 million people—more than the entire population of the United States today. By 2025, China will have 219 cities with more than one million inhabitants—compared with 35 in Europe today—and 24 cities with more than five million people.

McKinsey Global Institute: Preparing for China’s Urban Billion, McKinsey, March 2009

http://www.mckinsey.com/ , p. 7

http://mkqpreview2.qdweb.net/Audio/

P. 235

International tourist arrivals worldwide have grown from 25 million in 1950, to 277 million in 1980, 438 million in 1990, 684 million in 2000, and then reaching 922 million in 2008. The World Tourist Organization forecast that this number will climb to 1.6 billion in 2020.

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/16268685/Tourism-2020-Vision/

http://www.tpdco.org/pdf/

http://pub.unwto.org/

P. 237

I once read a book called Gardens of the Roman World which described not only, well . . . the Roman gardens, but also their numerous summer houses by the shores of Lake Como in Northern Italy, among many other places.

Bowe, Patric: Gardens of the Roman World, Getty Publications, 2004

P. 238

It appears that skis have existed for almost 5,000 years, but the fist known civilian ski race took place in Norway in 1843. The first ski club was founded 32 years later, also in Norway, and the first ski tour in the Alps that we know of took place in 1894, when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - author of the Sherlock Holmes books - traversed from Davos to Arosa with two friends. The first resort-based ski school in the U.S. was opened in New Hampshire in 1929, and organized ski trains from Boston began running to the White Mountains of New Hampshire the same year.

http://www.skiinghistory.org/skitrains.html

http://www.markseaton.com/stories/s14.htm

http://www.aboutskischools.com/ski/instruction/history.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_skiing

P.239

Studies by NAR in the U.S. indicate that the average buyer is 52 years of age and has $82,800 in household income per year.

P. 240

A February 2007 Nielsen Online carried out an omnibus study and asked, among other things, which places people viewed as dream destinations.

China Outbound Travel Monitor 2007, A.C. Nielsen, 2007

http://www.forimmediaterelease.net/pm/677.html

http://cn.en.nielsen.com/reports/documents/

P. 242

This idea is largely based on the so called Laffer Curve, which is a generic way to describe what the optimum tax pressure is, if you want to maximize long-term tax revenues.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports

P. 242

A study from (left-leaning) Sweden showed that it was over 70%, whereas studies from (right-leaning) America have indicated that it was closer to 30%.

Stuart, C. (1981,October). Swedish tax rates, labor supply and tax revenues. Journal of Political Economy, 89, 1020-38.

Hsing, Y. (1996), "Estimating the Laffer curve and policy implications", Journal of Socio-Economics 25 (3): 395–401

P. 243

The organization Transparency International annually conducts a series of surveys among businessmen and analysts, who are asked about their perception of corruption in countries they are familiar with.

http://www.transparency.org/

P. 243

Dr. Richard Lynn has together with Tatu Vanhanen published comprehensive studies comparing intelligence and wealth in different countries and found very high correlation between GDP per capita and so-called general intelligence (‘‘g’’), which is unrelated to any specific education in, for instance, math or language.

Richard Lynn, Tatu Vanhanen: IQ and the Wealth of Nations, Praeger Publishers, 2002

P. 245

American scientist Richard Florida has studied where creative people want to live.

P. 245

If you calibrate global IQ tests, so that the global average is 100, then the Ashkenazi are around 112-115 on average. To put that in perspective, you typically need to be around 105 to qualify for college. Below the Ashkenazis come a group of Asian countries with IQs ranging from 105 to 108. Most of North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand average around 100, with some differences between regions. Many developing and poor nations range lower - some much lower.

Lynn, Richard: The Global Bell Curve: Race, IQ, and Inequality Worldwide, shington Summit Publishers, 2008

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_Global_Inequality

P. 245-246

A consulting company with the somewhat scary name Scorpio Partnership creates a Mobile Wealthy Residency Index which every year tracks the best places to live for the world’s ever-growing population of ‘‘mobile wealthy’’.

http://www.scorpiopartnership.com/

http://www.luxist.com/tag/mobile+wealthy+residency+index/

P. 248

There is a network effect in much of what I have described above.

This is confirmed by a study made by Siomonton, who investigated correlations between different indicators of creativity and other factors. He found that the most reliable predictor of creativity in given generation was the creativity in the same place in previous generations.

Simonton, Dean K.: Sociocultural context of individual creativity: a transhistorical time-series analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32, 1119–1133

Chapter 13, Commodities

P. 262

Let’s start with aluminum.

Tvede, L.: Business Cycles, History, Theory and Investment Reality, Wiley & Co, 2006, pp. 373-374

P. 263

Global copper production in 2010 is approx. 16 million tons.

http://www.indexmundi.com/

P. 266

The FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, undertakes frequent studies and forecasts of world food production. In 2006 they published a revised version of their World Agriculture: Towards 2030/2050, where they predicted that per capita calorie intake would continue to grow.

http://www.fao.org/es/esd/AT2050web.pdf

P. 268

Several, alternative developments now took place:

There are good, detailed descriptions of how fossil deposits form in Beyond Oil, especially page 13-16.

Deffeyes, Kenneth S.: Beyond Oil. The View from Hubbert’s Peak, Hill and Wang, 2005.

P. 268

This is called oil shale in the oil business, even though it contains neither oil nor shale. There are enormous deposits of it in the Rocky Mountains in the U.S. - about 1.5 trillion barrels equivalent, or probably more than all the conventional oil in the world.

Olah, George A., Alain Goeppert & G. K. Surya Prakash: Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy, John Wiley & Sons, 2006, pp. 38-39

P. 269

However, approx. 0.1% of it will eventually turn into coal. Your part of that coal would be 1,500 tons.

The actual known coal reserves are approx. 5.5 billion tons, amounting to some 170 years consumption at current levels. Nominal coal prices have fallen steadily - and inflation adjusted prices dramatically - during the last decades, as extraction methods have improved.

Olah, George A., Alain Goeppert & G. K. Surya Prakash: Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy, John Wiley & Sons, 2006, pp. 29, 31

P. 269

These are called tar sands - they have a fluid, but thick consistency. There are huge reserves of tar sands in Venezuela and Canada.

Olah, George A., Alain Goeppert & G. K. Surya Prakash: Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy, John Wiley & Sons, 2006, pp. 37-38

P. 270

For overseas delivery, it is compressed into a fuel called liquefied natural gas and sent via specially designed ships that are easily recognizable with LNG in huge letters emblazoned on the side.

Olah, George A., Alain Goeppert & G. K. Surya Prakash: Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy, John Wiley & Sons, 2006, pp. 43-44

P. 270

In discussing reserves, the oil and mining industry makes use of the so-called ‘‘Hubbert Peak’’ theory.

http://www.oilcrisis.com/summary.htm

http://www.hubbertpeak.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_peak_theory

P. 271

It is technically possible to convert coal to gasoline or gas. Nazi Germany actually did the former during World War II and South Africa started doing it during the boycott years.

Olah, George A., Alain Goeppert & G. K. Surya Prakash: Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy, John Wiley & Sons, 2006, pp. 45-46

P. 271

Another new technology that is currently being rolled out is the so-called ‘‘integrated gasification combined cycle’’ (IGCC), which turns coal into so-called ‘‘syngas’’ – synthetic gas.

http://www.worldcoal.org/

http://web.mit.edu/coal/working_folder/pdfs/

http://www.cogeneration.net/

P. 273

The second is that democratic nations purchasing oil and gas transfer vast sums to dictatorships, which in some cases are even hostile towards their clients. Experience tells us that the abominable behaviour of some of these states is directly proportional to the price of oil, the higher the oil price, the bigger the aggression.

Friedman has made an excellent mapping of how this has worked in a number of countries:

Friedman, Thomas L.: Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--And How It Can Renew America, Gale Cengage, 2008, pp. 03-100

Chapter 14, Alternative energy

P. 277

The typical geothermal installation for a single home in a building block has tubes that penetrate 150m to 500m into the ground.

http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/technology/heating/

http://www.geo-energy.org/

https://inlportal.inl.gov/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power

P. 277

There are approx. 440 nuclear reactors operating in the world delivering approx. 7% of all the energy currently used and approx. 17% of all electric power.

http://hubpages.com/hub/4th-Generation-Nuclear-reactors

Gore, Al: Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, Rodale Books, 2009, p 158

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors

However, several third-generation designs have been developed, including new pebble bed reactors. These are based on putting pebbles of uranium oxide on top of a large tank and taking them out from the bottom, making the whole thing appear like gumballs in a gumball machine.

Gore, Al: Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, Rodale Books, 2009, p 160

P. 277

To understand how this is possible, just consider that 1 kg of uranium contains as much energy as 3,000,000 kg of coal.

Gore, Al: Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, Rodale Books, 2009.

Olah et al mentions that by the use of breeder technology we would have enough uranium to last for at least 1,000 years.

Olah, George A., Alain Goeppert & G. K. Surya Prakash: Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy, John Wiley & Sons, 2006, pp. 29, 31

P. 278

The coal industry used to kill approx. 70,000 people a year in coal-mining accidents in the 1970s, and it still kills at least 10,000 annually.

http://www.asianresearch.org/articles/2997.html

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf06app.htm

http://fatknowledge.blogspot.com/2007/10/china-and-coal-deaths.html

P. 278

The highest estimates are 4,000 deaths, but as of 2010 the fallout has brought about approx. 4,000 additional cases of thyroid cancer (which is generally treatable) and 57 deaths. It has not been possible to observe the increase in rates of other cancers among the 800,000 who suffered radiation exposure.

Olah, George A., Alain Goeppert & G. K. Surya Prakash: Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy, John Wiley & Sons, 2006, p. 123

Olah et al also mention that the average nuclear power plants emits less radiation than a coal powered plant. Coal plants have released approx. 13,000 tons of thorium and 5,000 tons of uranium into the air through their smoke.

Olah, George A., Alain Goeppert & G. K. Surya Prakash: Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy, John Wiley & Sons, 2006, p. 125

color:red;>http://pebblebedreactor.blogspot.com/

P. 279

fusion would produce no radioactive waste,

Tradition fission reactors produce radioactive waste. Plutonium has a half-life of 24,100 years, although it should be added that after approx. 15,000 years the radioactivity has declined to the level it had when the raw materials were mined. If all electricity came fro this sort of nuclear reaction, we would each produce waste of a size of a door knob.

Deffeyes, Kenneth S.: Beyond Oil. The View from Hubbert’s Peak, Hill and Wang, 2005, p. 148

There is a good description in:

Olah, George A., Alain Goeppert & G. K. Surya Prakash: Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy, John Wiley & Sons, 2006, pp. 127-131

The book mentions that existing deuterium resources represent more than 10 billion years of current global energy consumption. That is approx. 50 times as long as humans have existed so ar.

P. 279

Methane hydrates have the potential to be the second largest form of alternative energy.

Olah, George A., Alain Goeppert & G. K. Surya Prakash: Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy, John Wiley & Sons, 2006, pp. 47-49

P. 279

However, the American ethanol business may turn out to make sense in the long run, because there are numerous projects underway to create so-called cellulosic ethanol, where not only the fruit of the plants but also structural material, which comprises much of the mass of plants, can be used. This requires more extensive processing but, apart from giving a higher yield, it also has the advantages that offal from farming and forestry can be used. Some of the resources that are being tested include corn stover, poplars, hybrid willows, sycamores, sweetgums, Eucalyptus, Miscanthus, and woodchips.

Gore, Al: Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, Rodale Books, 2009, p 123

There is also a good description of how liquid biofuels are made in:

Olah, George A., Alain Goeppert & G. K. Surya Prakash: Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy, John Wiley & Sons, 2006, pp. 104-108

http://www.syntheticgenomics.com/

P. 280

This involves far higher capital investments than the two other forms of biofuels, but algae and bacteria grow between 20 and 30 times faster than the fastest plants, and yields should be 15-300 times higher per unit area than conventional crops. Furthermore, since genomics has now become an information technology, one might suspect that efficiency might enter an exponential growth curve. Indeed, Craig Venter has spoken of making bacteria that are 1,000 or even 1,000,000 times as efficient at this process as they are today,

http://www.jcvi.org/

P. 281

PV has seen a cost decline of 20% each time its installed base doubled, which suggests that it is a hybrid between an industrial technology and an information technology.

Gore, Al: Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, Rodale Books, 2009, p. 68

Olah et al. Points out that installed base has made cumulative annual growth of 20% in the previous decade (until 2006) but that PV prices still were 10-15 times higher than prices of power produced by natural gas.

Olah, George A., Alain Goeppert & G. K. Surya Prakash: Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy, John Wiley & Sons, 2006, pp. 99-100

P. 283-284

That energy will always exceed what you gain when the hydrogen is subsequently burned - typically by 30 - 40%. This means that hydrogen is not an energy resource at all, but instead a costly way to transport energy.

There is an interesting remark in Beyond Oil, where the author mentions the possibility of uding microbes to develop hydrogen. I am not aware of this being pursued and I doubt that it would ever be as efficient as letting them develop oil instead and then using efficient engines to burn this cleanly.

Deffeyes, Kenneth S.: Beyond Oil. The View from Hubbert’s Peak, Hill and Wang, 2005, p. 159

Olah, George A., Alain Goeppert & G. K. Surya Prakash: Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy, John Wiley & Sons, 2006, pp. 144-155

I have not discussed use of hydrogen in fuel cells, but Olah et al propose to combine hydrogen, extracted through electrolysis, with recycled CO2 from power plant exhaust to create methanol as the fuel of the future:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol_economy

The three authors of this book are extremely well regarded in the scientific community, and two of them are Nobel Laureates.

I should perhaps add here that I personally have a Bugatti type 51 race car from 1929 which runs 210 km/h on methanol as opposed to 190 km/h on gasoline, even though it only runs just over half as far on a tank full of methanol.

P. 286

One way to get a handle on what is realistic is to look at the Desertec program, which was signed on October 30, 2009 by 12 founding companies, including heavyweights such as ABB, Deutsche Bank, E.ON, Munich Re, and Siemens.

http://www.desertec.org/

Chapter 15, Genomics and biotechnology

P. 291

However, there really existed a project in 1989 to spend $3 billion and 13 years to describe a molecule. It was called the ‘‘Human Genome Project’’, and it did get its funding. The work commenced in 1990.

A short overview is given here:

http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/home.shtml

There is also very good description of the whole project in Venter, Craig: A Life Decoded: My Genome: My Life, Viking Adult 2007. Here the world’s most important man today (in my view) writes about his work in genomics. What goes on in this sector is a series of great discoveries and engineering fetes that will change everything. Not understanding this is like not understanding the Internet when it took off or not listening to Columbus when he returned from his travels and explained that he had found new land.

Another description is here:

Shreeve, James: The Genome War: How Craig Venter Tried to Capture the Code of Life and Save the World, Ballantine Books, 2000. A well written and well researched book about the race to sequence the human genome

P. 291-292

For instance, there is a code called ALU which consists of 300 letters and which is repeated 300,000 times in our DNA. What’s that good for? Nothing, we think. It seems to be junk.

http://www.pnas.org/content/83/13/4665.full.pdf

P. 292

The one-celled amoeba Amoeba dubia has DNA chains that are 200 times as long as ours.

http://www.genomesize.com/

http://www.sciencechatforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=13933

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noncoding_DNA

P. 292

Human beings have around 23,000 genes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genome

P. 293

However, in 1998(eight years into the project (one of the scientists involved, Craig Venter, created a private company called Celera Corporation.

http://www.celera.com/

P. 294

By this means we have discovered, for example, that if a given gene is deactivated in a mouse the animal will contract colon cancer, which naturally indicates where we should focus our human colon cancer research and treatments.

Stock, Gregory: Redesigning Humans, First Mariner Books, 2003, p. 51.

P. 294

One of the methods applied to understand the genes of mammals is by

experimenting with so-called ‘‘knock-in and knock-out mice’’, where a specific gene is either implanted or deactivated to see the effect.

Stock, Gregory: Redesigning Humans, First Mariner Books, 2003, pp. 43 & 50-51.

P. 295

One of the reasons is the use of so-called DNA chips, which hold DNA sequences on a microscopic grid. Specific parts of the grid attract specific parts of a DNA sequence and, when this happens, the sequence can be viewed through fluorescent molecular tags that light up when a complementary strand binds to a particular spot.

Stock, Gregory: Redesigning Humans, First Mariner Books, 2003, p. 46

Abate, Tom: The Biotech Investor: How to Profit from the Coming Boom in Biotechnology, Holt Paperbacks, 2004, pp. 101 - 109.

Cynthia: From Alchemy to IPO: The Business of Biotechnology, Basic Books, 2001, pp. 73-81.

Kaku, Michio: Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century, Anchor, 1998, pp. 158-159

P. 295

It is also possible to insert a gene in a cow, which will then excrete a desired substance in its milk, a method known as ‘‘pharming’’.

Stock, Gregory: Redesigning Humans, First Mariner Books, 2003, p. 52

P. 295

This is extremely complicated, because proteins fold into 3D spaghetti and the way in which they fold is decisive for how they work.

The number of different proteins in the human body is at yet unknown, but it is commonly thought to be somewhere between 500,000 and 2 million Source:

Abate, Tom: The Biotech Investor: How to Profit from the Coming Boom in Biotechnology, Holt Paperbacks, 2004, p.75

It is not only each protein that is complex, but the number of them. Each cell typically produce several hundred thousand different proteins, and what and how much it produces varies a lot over time. Source:

Oliver, Richard W.: The Biotech Age, McGraw-Hill, 2003, p. 125

P. 295

As with many other new ideas, gene manipulation is viewed with suspicion and is indeed potentially dangerous.

It should be said that there is virtually no actual indication of transgenic crops ever posing a danger. See, for instance,

Transgenic plants and World Agriculture, Report prepared under the auspices of the Royal Society of London, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Science Academy, the Mexican Academy of Sciences and the Third World Academy of Sciences, July 2000, National Academy Press, 2000

http://www.nap.edu/html/transgenic/

http://www.agbios.com/docroot/articles/2000192-A.pdf

P. 296

Imagine a situation where the qualities of a carrot are changed so that it contains a gene from a nut. A person who is allergic to nuts eats the carrot, suffers an allergic reaction, and dies.

Charles, Dan: Lords Of The Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, And The Future Of Food. Good Basic Books, 2002. p. 223

P. 296

Among the end-goals are to replace today’s terrible chemotherapy with a pill or injection stopping the cancer and otherwise leaving the rest of the body alone and perfectly healthy

There is a good list of potential new cancer strategies in:

Oliver, Richard W.: The Biotech Age, McGraw-Hill, 2003, P. 111

A more detailed elaboration of three strategies - antibodies, vaccines and anti-angiogenesis - is described in:

Abate, Tom: The Biotech Investor: How to Profit from the Coming Boom in Biotechnology, Holt Paperbacks, 2004, pp. 28-36

P. 297

It was probably around 12,000 years ago that man started to live with gray wolves, and since then we have bred them into the more than 160 different dog races of today.

Kaku, Michio: Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century,Anchor, 1998, pp. 221-222

P. 297

One of the problems when we grow older is that cells that have started to function poorly due to these accumulated changes often stay alive. They may subsequently emit substances that bother other cells and, as this accumulates over the years, the body is generally weakened.

Stock, Gregory: Redesigning Humans, First Mariner Books, 2003, p. 84

P. 298

There are companies specializing in improving functionality in one particular gene.

Charles, Dan: Lords Of The Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, And The Future Of Food. Good Basic Books, 2002, p. 298

P. 299

In 2008, 15 years after the Jurassic Park movie was released, scientists reported that they believed they could recreate the mammoth (for around U.S. $10 million.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article609112.ece

http://www.livescience.com/technology/050412_mammoth_effort.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/nov/19/woolly-mammoth-genome

http://www.trussel.com/prehist/news50.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6246926.stm

P. 299

According to researchers, it might even be possible (perhaps even fairly easy) to recreate Neanderthal man, although this is hardly an option since the most suitable breeding animal would have to be human beings.

http://questuae.com/dev/

http://www.archaeology.org/1003/etc/neanderthals.html

http://www.nowpublic.com/scientists_create_neanderthal_genome

http://www.pocatelloshops.com/new_blogs/politics/?p=5935

P. 299

Daryl Macer from the Eubios Ethics Institute in Japan conducted a survey in 1993 on international attitudes towards using genetic manipulation and screening with

the purpose of preventing genetic diseases in children.

Macer, J., J. Azariah, & P. Srinives: International attitudes to biotechnology in Asia, International Journal of Biotechnology, Vol. 2, No. 4, 2000.

P. 300, 302

The first child conceived in this way was Louise Brown, who was born in 1978, and at the time there were critics maintaining that such children would become psychological monsters.

Stock, Gregory: Redesigning Humans, First Mariner Books, 2003, p. 53

P. 300

When it came to gene manipulation with the aim to increase child intelligence, there was overwhelming support in India (70%) and Thailand (72%), whereas approval was far weaker in Australia, Japan, and Russia.

Macer, J., J. Azariah, & P. Srinives: International attitudes to biotechnology in Asia, International Journal of Biotechnology, Vol. 2, No. 4, 2000

An additional source is this one:

http://www.eubios.info/EEIN/EEIN3O.HTM

P. 302

In fact, this first reaction towards in vitro children was more or less the same as people’s attitude toward having children delivered in a hospital. One hundred years ago, this was considered odd. Today, most people believe it to be an unnecessary risk for the child not to be delivered in a hospital.

Stock, Gregory: Redesigning Humans, First Mariner Books, 2003, p. 185

P. 302

We have already seen the first gene transplants in people with serious

genetic diseases

Abate, Tom: The Biotech Investor: How to Profit from the Coming Boom in Biotechnology, Holt Paperbacks, 2004. Pp 183-184

P. 302-303

In 1985 researchers discovered that the bacterium Caenorhabditis elegans lived more than twice as long if a single gene was altered; and in 1999 other biologists prolonged the life of a certain bacterium by 50% by implanting genes to create two antioxidants.

Stock, Gregory: Redesigning Humans, First Mariner Books, 2003, p. 47

Kaku, Michio: Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century, Anchor, 1998, pp. 211-212

P. 303

At a later stage, it may become possible to choose to have a few modifications made, in which details from genes that are known to give higher intelligence, better health, or longer life, are copied.

The single best source for the whole issue of modification of human genes is probably:

Stock, Gregory: Redesigning Humans, First Mariner Books, 2003

Stock describes how germ line therapy is far easier than somatic therapy:, on page 37-38 and goes into some of the potential steps on the road on page 56, but the entire book is essentially about that subject.

P. 303

I can envision a situation where someone at a birth clinic asks a couple whether they would like their child to have a natural pitch (the ability to remember a specific tone is known to be reflected in the location of a few atoms in a gene). If the answer is yes, some of the atoms are switched around.

Stock, Gregory: Redesigning Humans, First Mariner Books, 2003, p. 63 & 71

P. 303

others that only work on the condition that the individual on becoming an adult starts to take a pill activating the atoms, and (3) others that may be permanent. Technically, this can already be done.

Stock, Gregory: Redesigning Humans, First Mariner Books, 2003, p. 68

P. 304-305

Modern agriculture has taken plants from one part of the world and cultivated them elsewhere. Furthermore, as I mentioned earlier, we have manipulated them so that they bear little resemblance to their natural ancestor. When we cultivate them, we spray against infections and insects. When we plough we unwittingly create conditions that could lead to serious erosion of the soil, and if we use natural manure instead of artificial nitrate for fertilizing purposes, we end up destroying the habitat of wildlife in nearby streams.

Charles, Dan: Lords Of The Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, And The Future Of Food. Good Basic Books, 2002, prologue, pp xvii-xviii

P. 305

Furthermore, much of the food we produce via agriculture is in fact extremely unhealthy. In fact, many natural plants would fail to be approved as food today if tested by the same criteria used for genetically manipulated food.

Charles, Dan: Lords Of The Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, And The Future Of Food. Good Basic Books, 2002, p. 309

P. 305

Gene manipulation in farming was originally carried out at the University of California and Stanford University, and it started with very primitive techniques, such as breaking down cell walls in various plants and then mixing their genes to see what would happen, or speeding up random gene mutation using X-rays to see whether such random high-speed mutation could bring something new and better.

Abate, Tom: The Biotech Investor: How to Profit from the Coming Boom in Biotechnology, Holt Paperbacks, 2004, pp. 6-7

Robbins-roth, Cynthia: From Alchemy to IPO: The Business of Biotechnology, Basic Books, 2001.

Please note that these two books both give a very good general overview over how the biotech business has evolved.

Charles, Dan: Lords Of The Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, And The Future Of Food. Good Basic Books, 2002, pp. 9-11

P. 305

Abate, Tom: The Biotech Investor: How to Profit from the Coming Boom in Biotechnology, Holt Paperbacks, 2004, pp. 6-7

Robbins-roth, Cynthia: From Alchemy to IPO: The Business of Biotechnology, Basic Books, 2001.

Please note that these two books both give a very good general overview over how the biotech business has evolved.

Charles, Dan: Lords Of The Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, And The Future Of Food. Good Basic Books, 2002, pp. 9-11

P. 306

Some researchers noted that when the bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens infected a plant, the plant grew some odd nodules, which could be cut out and grown individually.

Charles, Dan: Lords Of The Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, And The Future Of Food. Good Basic Books, 2002, pp. 15-16

P. 306

Studies were later conducted on the soil-dwelling bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (or ‘‘Bt’’), which the Japanese had used as a pesticide since 1901.

Robbins-Roth, Cynthia: From Alchemy to IPO: The Business of Biotechnology, Basic Books, 2001, p. 106

Charles, Dan: Lords Of The Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, And The Future Of Food. Good Basic Books, 2002, pp. 42-46, 173

P. 306

In the 1970s the U.S. company Monsanto introduced the weedkiller Roundup, which was revolutionary when compared with other weedkillers on the market.

Abate, Tom: The Biotech Investor: How to Profit from the Coming Boom in Biotechnology, Holt Paperbacks, 2004, pp. 131-132

Charles, Dan: Lords Of The Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, And The Future Of Food. Good Basic Books, 2002, pp. 60-73

P. 306

The result was that farmers did not have to plough and their need to spray was reduced. Trials in Mississippi and Alabama showed, for instance, that farmers went from spraying an average of 8 times a season to only 1.5 times, after having gone over to RoundupReady.

Charles, Dan: Lords Of The Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, And The Future Of Food. Good Basic Books, 2002, pp. 174-175

P. 306

In 2008, 8% of all cultivated land in the world was planted with GM crops and the technology was evolving rapidly.

Gore, Al: Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, Rodale Books, 2009, p. 125

P. 306-307

In 2009 Monsanto launched Genuity Smartstaxx corn, which has 5-10% higher yields than before, and RoundupReady 2 Yield Soybeans, which seem to improve yields 7-11% over the original RoundupReady soybeans.

http://www.genuity.com/Traits/Corn/Genuity-SmartStax.aspx

http://www.zikkir.com/index/74940

P. 308

And since we keep on finding bacteria in the most bizarre places, such as 3 km under the surface of the Earth, many researchers now believe that bacteria constitute more than half of the total biomass of the world.

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_bacteria.html

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/ftf-gorby/

P. 308

It is estimated that man is the carrier of more bacteria than there are cells in his body.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/

P. 309

There are now several companies in the U.S. working hard to get there first by developing such bacteria, and the most likely outcome is that within a very short time such bacteria will be available on the market, where they will compete with genetically modified algae to create third-generation biofuels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

P. 309

So far the main players in this industry are located in the U.S., Switzerland, Singapore, Denmark, and a number of emerging markets, led by Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Israel, South Africa, and South Korea.

This statement fails to include the UK.

Abate, Tom: The Biotech Investor: How to Profit from the Coming Boom in Biotechnology, Holt Paperbacks, 2004, pp 209-215

P. 310

‘‘Nim eat. Nim eat. Drink eat me Nim. Nim gum me gum. You me banana me

banana you.’’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nim_Chimpsky

P. 310

‘‘If we apply a Hadamard gate to the first qubit in a quantum computer, the effect is to produce a new description for the quantum computer with numbers

t1; t2; . . . given by t1 ¼ ðs1 þ s2n=2 þ 1Þ=p2.’’

http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/quantum-computing-for-everyone/

P. 311

‘‘I could dance with you until the cows come home. On second thought I’d rather dance with the cows until you come home.’’

From “Duck Soup” from 1933

http://www.filmsite.org/duck.html

P. 311

By the way, according to Professor Steve Jones of University College in London, we share 50% of our DNA with bananas

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/sspp/education/annual/y2009.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6505691.stm

Chapter 16, Information technology

P. 313-314

In 1959, the Nobel Prize Winner Richard P. Feynman presented his views on the amount of data that could be compressed into a chip in the future. He said that if it was possible to build a computer where the physical representation of each bit was only 100 atoms, or 10 nm, it would be possible to store the full text of all the books that had ever been written (at the time 24 million books) in one computer chip of 100,000 - 100,000 nm or 1 - 10_8 m2 in each direction.

http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html

P. 316

The first transistors were big, but they soon got smaller, and the germanium was eventually exchanged with silicon and other materials, which like germanium could work as semiconductors, if you treated them with small impurities such as arsenic, phosphorus, antimony, boron, gallium, or aluminum (a process known as ‘‘doping’’).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_(semiconductor)

P. 317

To produce these chips you take a so-called ‘‘wafer’’, which is made of nearly defect-free, single-crystalline silicone.

317LINK

P. 317

This is in a way similar to putting a template on a surface before you paint-spray a logo onto it, for instance. However, the ‘‘paint-spray’’ in chip production is actually neither paint, nor spray - it is light.

Kaku, Michio: Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century,Anchor, 1998, p. 30

P. 317

However, when Gordon Moore first described it in a paper in 1965, he tracked it back to 1959, and almost 50 years later it is still working,

Brock, David: Understanding Moore's Law: Four Decades of Innovation, Chemical Heritage Foundation, 2006

P. 318-319

The first commercial PC, the Altair 8800 used an Intel 8080 CPU with a clock rate of 2 million cycles per second (2 MHz). By 1995 we had reached rates of 100 million, and around five years later we broke the billion-per-second barrier. By 2010 the norm is that a chip does over 3 billion (3 GHz).

http://web.njit.edu/~ziavras/Ziavras-history.pdf

http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/timeline/timeline-w-menu-r.html

P. 319

For how long will the law function? The experts don’t know, because they can only see as far as their current ideas reach into the future, but as at 2010 most say that they see fairly clearly that they can keep it going until 2020 or even 2025.

Brock, David: Understanding Moore's Law: Four Decades of Innovation, Chemical Heritage Foundation, 2006

P. 319

There will perhaps be 15 to 20 billion transistors on it, and the smallest gates in it are now down to only five hydrogen atoms wide, meaning just 20 cm. It contains 625 cores and the clock frequency is 73 GHz which means that 73,000 million times per

second it sends electromagnetic pulses racing

http://future.wikia.com/wiki/Scenario:_Target_2020

http://ce.et.tudelft.nl/publicationfiles/1557_68_powerHPPC08_final.pdf

P. 320

The production of transistors in 2010 will come close to 10,000,000,000,000,000,000, which means somewhere between 10 to 100 times bigger than the global population of ants.

Cressler, John D.: Silicon Earth: Introduction to the Microelectronics and Nanotechnology Revolution, Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp ??????

P. 321

The American robot specialist Hans Moravec has described it in terms of what a robot with that capacity in its brain would do,

Moravec, Hans P.: Robot: Evolution from Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 52

P. 322

Bell Labs announced in the spring of 2009 a new world speed record for fiber-optic transport. By transmitting 155 simultaneous wavelengths of light over a single 7,000 km long fiber, it managed to achieve a speed of 100 petabits per second per kilometer, equal to a payload of 15.5 terabits (trillion bits) per second.

http://www.physorg.com/news173455192.html

P. 322

Scientists at the University of California have demonstrated how it would be possible to store the equivalent of 250 DVDs on a device the size of a small coin

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/tag/memory/

P. 322-323

a new ‘‘5D’’ technology developed at the Center of Micro-Photonics at Swinburne University of Technology uses a color filter plus polarization to add two dimensions of data representation to the three that DVDs already have. The result should be a DVD with 2,000 times the normal capacity,

http://www.aussmc.org/DVDopticalstorageMay09.php

P. 324

How does this RFID work?

http://www.aimglobal.org/services/rfideducation.asp

P.325

The second location technology is GPS, or the global positioning system. This is based on a fleet of satellites orbiting the Earth which each transmit time signals. A GPS receiver reads signals from several of these satellites and uses a combination of these to locate itself to a typical accuracy of 5m

http://www.gps.gov/

P. 327

If we go back to 1997, an IBM computer called Deep Blue won a chess game against the ruling champion Gary Kasparov.

Deep Blue could analyze 200 million potential chess positions per second. The game was the first match that kasparov had ever lost.

Moravec, Hans P.: Robot: Evolution from Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 54, 67

P. 327

Maybe the ultimate solution will be something combining quick, precise and fault-tolerant chips in silicon with others based on optics

There exists already technical solution for optical computers (or “photonic computing”). Basically, the transistor is here replaced with self electro-optic effect device (SEED), using filters where light may or may not pass through. The main advantage is that this will create far less heat than current integrated circuits and will be less sensitive to disturbances. The challenge is to figure out a way to print such devices in micro scale.

P. 328

DNA is an extremely compact method to store information, since it uses 32 atoms to represent a bit of data.

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20020805010233data_trunc_sys.shtml

P. 328

The ultimate solution might just come from so-called quantum computing,

http://www.iqc.ca/

P. 329

One thing we do know is that three people actually built a quantum computer in 1998. They were Isaac Chuang from Los Alamos National Laboratory, Neil Gershenfeld from Massachusetts’s Institute of Technology (MIT), and Mark Kubinec from the University of California.

http://cryptome.sabotage.org/qc-grover.htm

P. 330

One of the most intriguing AI systems has been ‘‘TD-Gammon’’, a piece of software that could play backgammon.

http://www.research.ibm.com/massive/tdl.html

http://gammonline.com/articles/td-gammon.html

P. 330

In the perhaps less useful category of artificial intelligence, we find programs such as BRUTUS writing short stories that appear as if they were written by a competent writer.

Levi, David.: Robots Unlimited: Life in a Virtual Age, A K Peter, 2005, pp. 160-165

P. 330

EMI can listen to a portion of music from a given composer and then compose something new that sounds as if it came from that same hand. Douglas Hofstadter, an American professor of cognitive science, was so surprised by the way EMI worked that he invited the teachers from one of the U.S.’s leading music institutes to listen to a relatively unknown composition of Chopin and a Chopin-inspired composition made by the EMI program.

Levi, David.: Robots Unlimited: Life in a Virtual Age, A K Peter, 2005, pp. 170-175

P. 331

Other programs draw artistic paintings (the most well-known is AARON)

Levi, David.: Robots Unlimited: Life in a Virtual Age, A K Peter, 2005, pp. 181-186

P. 331

For instance, scientists have made software that searches the mathematical world for interesting theories and phenomena and have set up models to explain them.

Levi, David.: Robots Unlimited: Life in a Virtual Age, A K Peter, 2005, pp. 189-198

P. 331

If you entered the expression: ‘‘The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak’’ and had it translated to Spanish and back from Spanish to English, the result was: ‘‘The alcohol is arranged, but the meat is weak.’’

Levi, David.: Robots Unlimited: Life in a Virtual Age, A K Peter, 2005, p. 261

P. 331

My favorite is the program ELIZA, which was written for fun to simulate the questioning technique of a psychologist.

Levi, David.: Robots Unlimited: Life in a Virtual Age, A K Peter, 2005, pp. 250-254

P. 332

the world publishes approx. 80,000 mass-market periodicals, 40,000 scholarly journals, 40,000 newsletters, and 25,000 newspapers.

http://www.caslon.com.au/statsnote6.htm

P. 334

An example of that is MYCIN, a program for disease diagnostics that functions well, which is based on manually gathered input from a lot of doctors.

Actually, this program was in 1975 shown to be better than doctors in diagnosing meningitis.

Kaku, Michio: Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century,Anchor, 1998, p. 62

Levi, David.: Robots Unlimited: Life in a Virtual Age, A K Peter, 2005, pp. 235-243

P. 334

It consists of around 150,000 - 175,000 kilometers of nerve fibers

What is important here to understand that as each neuron is connected to 5,000 – 10,000 others (on average), the brain does massive parallel computing. And yet it only consumes the power of a normal light bulb. Transistors in computers operate orders of magnitudes faster but are currently not optimized for parallel computing, and they use far more power.

http://its.sdsu.edu/multimedia/mathison/neuron/index.htm

Kaku, Michio: Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century,Anchor, 1998, p. 80

P. 334

We know for sure that human intelligence - what makes us so much smarter than

Animals - is predominantly located in the so-called neocortex, which consists of six layers on the outer edge of the brain.

The biologist Paul Maclean calls the deepest layers of the brain, which we share with all primates and many other animals, “the neural chassis”. This includes spinal cord, brainstem and mid brain. This is largely responsible for automatic functions such as breeding, as well as for reflexes. The next layer (and level) is often called the “reptilian brain” and includes aggressive behavior, territorial instincts and social hierarchies.

Kaku, Michio: Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century,Anchor, 1998, p. 79

Fish brains consist almost entirely of the “chassis”, reptiles and other primitive animals may have “chassis” and “reptile brain”, but little less, whereas mammals have those two plus the cortex. The best description of the human neocortex is in my opinion:

Hawkins, Jeff: On intelligence, Holt Paperbacks, 2005.

Kurzweil, Ray: The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Viking Adult, 2005, pp. 157-203

P. 336

As for an ant’s brain, by the way, it contains approx. 250,000 cells, which probably have 1,250 - 2,500 million nerve connections, so about 10 times as many as my full stop sign on the previous page.

http://www.kaheel7.com/

P. 342

These servers are divided into clusters, which are each coordinated by proprietary software running on open source software. On these servers it maintains a copy of the entire internet, which it continually updates through use of ‘‘spider software’’ that automatically crawls from link to link in the web and copies everything it finds. It also updates digital copies of books, scientific magazine articles, etc., and uses a set of mathematical algorithms to index and rank every page and every other source it finds in connection with different search words and terms.

Carr, Nicholas: The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, W. W. Norton & Company, 2009, pp. 64-68

P. 344

The Allen Institute for Brain Science, a non-profit organization that was established in 2003 with a $100m seed donation from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, has since been working on mapping spines and brains.

http://www.alleninstitute.org/

http://autismsciencefoundation.wordpress.com/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25710243/

P. 344

The computer HAL 9000 did so in the film (and the book) 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the outcome wasn’t good.

http://www.amazon.com/2001-Space-Odyssey-Keir-Dullea/dp/B00005ASUM

P. 344

One of the companies that have already experimented with brain simulation is IBM, which in 1995 launched Blue Brain.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/blue-brain-status-and-future-of-whole.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090318090142.htm

P. 349

The two robot vehicles Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars in 2003; engineers had predicted that they would last 90 days.

http://marsrover.nasa.gov/home/index.html

P. 350

A fly has approximately 100 MIPS supplied by approximately 100,000 neurons, and it flies well enough to be almost impossible for us to catch in flight.

Moravec, Hans P.: Robot: Evolution from Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 56-57

P. 350

An example is the annual DARPA Grand Challenge.

http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/index.asp

P. 350

There is a rule in technology that it takes approx. 25 years from the time that an attractive technology concept works at the experimental/laboratory scale until it is widely adopted

This is a common rule of thumb in industry I have heard often. Friedman quotes an executive from Shell saying the same. He adds that their core scenario is that 30% of global energy production will be renewable by year 2050:

Friedman, George: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century, Doubleday, 2009, pp. 188, 190

http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/

P. 352

The alternative approach is the neocortex way; to teach robots from the ‘‘bottom-up’’, where the robot can do almost nothing to begin with, like the backgammon software I described earlier.

There is a good discussion of the difference between top-down and bottom up strategies in:

Kaku, Michio: Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century,Anchor, 1998, pp. 64-66 & 70-81

P. 352-353

When a person develops into an expert within a specific professional sphere, it is estimated that in general the individual has between 50,000 and 100,000 lumps of information and experience on the subject in question.

Simon, H.A. (1954). Productivity among American psychologists: An explanation. The American Psychologist, 9, 804-805.

Kaku, Michio: Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century,Anchor, 1998, p. 64-65

Need more resources

P. 355

This phenomenon is used in the SETI project, which stands for ‘‘Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence’’.

http://www.seti.org/Page.aspx?pid=1366

P. 357

Other systems scan people at airports for signs of nervousness or fever and still

others (like the one known as ‘‘Hyperactive Bob’’) can monitor each employee’s

productivity in a restaurant.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06167/698696-96.stm

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5936883/

P. 358

A Japanese web designer named Mac Funamizu has described some pretty bold ideas on what future mobile phones might look like, so that they not only record what you hear or see, but conceptualize it.

http://petitinvention.wordpress.com/

P. 360

This has created two highly successful phenomena: ‘‘cloud computing’’ and ‘‘as-a-service’’ models.

There are very good descriptions of could computing and as-a-service concept in the very well written:

Carr, Nicholas: The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, W. W. Norton & Company, 2009

A ‘‘cloud’’ is a computer park that is available to many different clients. Is this outsourcing, then? No, because in outsourcing you pay an organization to take care of your hardware and software. What cloud computing offers is like an IT hotel, where the clients rent a room, but don’t own it. This is called a ‘‘multi-tenant system’’.

Carr, Nicholas: The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, W. W. Norton & Company, 2009, p. 112

Chapter 17, Luxury

P. 366

Luxury is not a big market: Watches and jewelry is an approximately $40 billion market (annual turnover), ready-to-wear plus leather $35 billion, spirits and champagne $30 billion, still wine $50 billion, watches $10 billion, jewelry $30 billion, fragrances and cosmetics $30 billion, and ocean-going yachts $15 billion.

The estimate for yachts come from Campers & Nicholson’s and the rest from this source:

Chevalier, Michel & Gerald Mazzalovo: Luxury Brand Management: A World of Privilege, Wiley, 2008, pp. 22-32

There is an estimate of a global luxury brand market of 80 billion in Chada and Husband’s book, but that probably doesn’t include yachts, HiFi, etc.:

Chada, Radha & Paul Husband: The Cult of the Luxury Brand: Inside Asia's Love Affair With Luxury, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2007, p. 5

P. 366

In 1977 Louis Vuitton was a small family business with two shops and fewer than $10 million in turnover. In 2009 the company Interbrand estimated the commercial value of Louis Vuitton at $21 billion.

Pasols, Paul-Gerard: Louis Vuitton: The Birth of Modern Luxury, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2005, pp.51-91

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Vuitton

P. 366

Each year, Interbrand analyzes a very large number of brands to estimate their commercial value.

http://www.interbrand.com/best_global_brands.aspx

P. 336

But what is luxury?

There are good descriptions of the concept of luxury in these books:

Chevalier, Michel & Gerald Mazzalovo: Luxury Brand Management: A World of Privilege, Wiley, 2008

mso-fareast-language:DE-CH'>

Kapferer, Jean-Noel, & Vincent Bastien: The Luxury Strategy: Break the Rules of Marketing to Build Luxury Brands, Kogan Page, 2009

Chada, Radha & Paul Husband: The Cult of the Luxury Brand: Inside Asia's Love Affair With Luxury, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2007

P. 369

The English psychologist David Moxon once ran a test on 40 randomly selected men and women between 22 and 61, in which he swiped their mouths to test for testosterone in their saliva (a measure of sexual arousal) before letting each of them listen to the sound of a Maserati, Lamborghini, Ferrari, and a Volkswagen Polo in random order.

http://www.hiscox.com/news/press-releases/2008/02-09-08.aspx

P. 372

The world’s leading luxury brands.

The selection in the table is my own, but there are some suggestions in:

Chevalier, Michel & Gerald Mazzalovo: Luxury Brand Management: A World of Privilege, Wiley, 2008, p. vii, 168-170

mso-fareast-language:DE-CH'>

Chada, Radha & Paul Husband: The Cult of the Luxury Brand: Inside Asia's Love Affair With Luxury, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2007, pp. 25, 165

Stone, Gene: The Watch, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2006, p. 25

Martin, Keith: Keith Martin’s Guide to Car Collecting, Motorbooks, 2009

Solokin, David: Investing in Liquid Assets, Uncorking Profits in Today's Global Wine Market, Simon & Schuster, 2008

P. 373-374

One day in 2006 I saw a description of a painting from Yves Klein which was simply blue.

There is a description of the paintings in:

Thompson, Don: The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art, Palgrave Macmillan; 1 edition, 2010, pp. 54-55

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yves_Klein

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article413037.ece

http://www.independent.co.uk/

P. 374

Hirst has a long and rich (as in wealthy) history in the art world and is probably best known for describing the 9/11 mass murder as ‘‘kind of like an artwork in its own right’’ and saying to his shame that ‘‘So on one level they kind of need congratulating . . .’’

I should be said here that he apologized the day after.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/sep/11/arts.september11

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2268307.stm

P. 374

But he is also known for the tale of the stuffed sharks.

This story is very well told in:

Thompson, Don: The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art, Palgrave Macmillan; 1 edition, 2010, pp. 1-7, 61-71r>

P. 375

The real reason I introduced Hirst was actually to describe a longitudinal study, which in this case is about a painting of Stalin that a writer for the London Sunday Times had bought for £200.

Thompson, Don: The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art, Palgrave Macmillan; 1 edition, 2010, pp. 68-69

P. 376

In 1964 newsmen from Sweden’s Gøteborgs-Tidningen hung some paintings in a gallery and claimed that they were by the avant-garde artist Pierre Brassau.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,870835,00.html

P. 376

A similar case was when the director of the State Art Museum incolor:red; > Moritzburg, was shown an abstract painting and suggested that it was by Ernst Wilhelm Nay, a famous painter who had won the coveted Guggenheim Prize for his work.

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/comments/3836/

P. 377

The state of Abu Dhabi paid $525 million for the right to use the name ‘‘Louvre’’ locally, $40 million for renovation at the Louvre itself in Paris, as well as $675 million for art loans, special exhibitions, and advice on art acquisitions.

http://www.dilanchian.com.au/

P. 380

From that moment on, Japanese consumers embraced luxury to a degree that no one could have predicted, and this has continued ever since so that no fewer than 94% of Japanese women today own at least one Louis Vuitton piece, and 92% have something that is Gucci. Since shops such as Louis Vuitton in Paris have one-item-per-customer policies, the Japanese organize paid trips for retirees to Europe on the condition that they bring back luxury goods. The Japanese lust for luxury is in fact so enormous that they buy around 40% of many of the leading luxury brands’ global sales.

In fact, at one point it was estimated that 88% of Louis Vuitton’s global sales came from Japan.

Chada, Radha & Paul Husband: The Cult of the Luxury Brand: Inside Asia's Love Affair With Luxury, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2007, pp. 1-2

P. 380

This ideology has evidently faded, but nevertheless in 2005 the Communist Party issued an eight-point moral code for the country’s inhabitants, the last one of which said: ‘‘Live simply, work hard, and do not throw yourself into luxury and pleasure.’’

Lu, Pierre Xiao: Elite China: Luxury Consumer Behavior in China, Wiley; illustrated edition, 2008, p. 28, 47-48

P. 380

Luxury sales in China have grown more than twice as fast as GDP and there seems to be no end in sight to that.

Radha and Husband mentions that only 1% of the Chinese population has yet been touched by luxury, with the equivalent numbers being 25% in Japan, 15 % in Singapore and Hong Kong, and 12 % in South Korea. I cannot reconcile these numbers with the penetration of for instance Louis Vuitton in Japan, but it is in any case clear that luxury has a long way to go in Asia.

Chada, Radha & Paul Husband: The Cult of the Luxury Brand: Inside Asia's Love Affair With Luxury, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2007, p. 284

P. 381

‘‘The flying lady logo seems to be too much for China’s superrich, symbolizing extreme power as exercised by the like of emperors and kings: In China nobody wants to be seen challenging the rule of the communist party. The comparative discretion and modesty of the Bentley is more suited to the mentality of China’s superrich.’’

Lu, Pierre Xiao: Elite China: Luxury Consumer Behavior in China, Wiley; illustrated edition, 2008, p. 51

If you start to look at who is queuing to buy an exorbitantly expensive handbag at Louis Vuitton at Champs-Elyse.es 101, you will find that while the majority still may be Japanese, around 20% of those waiting are now Chinese from either China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Singapore.

Lu, Pierre Xiao: Elite China: Luxury Consumer Behavior in China, Wiley; illustrated edition, 2008, p. 61

P. 381

In an interview survey, 70% of the Chinese indicated that ‘‘earning a great deal of money and buying luxury goods is an important goal in life.’’

Lu, Pierre Xiao: Elite China: Luxury Consumer Behavior in China, Wiley; illustrated edition, 2008, p. 58

P. 381

The reality, however, is that the Rolls Royces for sale in China are normally sold on their first day in Chinese automobile exhibitions, in line with the Bentleys and Ferraris.

The same seems to be the case in India. In New Delhi, 3 months before the first Bentley dealership actually opened, it had already sold 18 Bentleys.

Kapferer, Jean-Noel, & Vincent Bastien: The Luxury Strategy: Break the Rules of Marketing to Build Luxury Brands, Kogan Page, 2009, pp. 112-113

Lu, Pierre Xiao: Elite China: Luxury Consumer Behavior in China, Wiley; illustrated edition, 2008, p. 21

P. 381

Today, China is the largest market in the world for the watch conglomerate Swatch, the fourth largest market for Louis Vuitton, the third largest for Mont Blanc, and the fifth largest for Gucci.

Lu, Pierre Xiao: Elite China: Luxury Consumer Behavior in China, Wiley; illustrated edition, 2008

P. 382

The Forbes list of India’s 40 richest, for instance, shows that half are entirely self-made, almost equally from information technology and pharmaceutical industries.

Chada, Radha & Paul Husband: The Cult of the Luxury Brand: Inside Asia's Love Affair With Luxury, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2007, p. 230

Chapter 18, Lifestyles

P. 385

In 2004 the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE),in cooperation with the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), published a study on the increasing role of robots.

World Robotics 2004: Statistics, Market Analysis, Forecasts, Case

Studies and Profitability of Robot Investment, United Nations Publications, 2004.

P. 385

The American university professor Richard Florida has written a number of interesting books and studies about different work sectors.

http://www.amazon.com/Richard-Florida/e/B000APN82W/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

P. 388

How can a computer be creative?

I think that Levi probably provide the best general introduction to this question. The issue is discussed numerous places in the book, with lots of examples given. See, for instance, pp. 224-234, which specifically discussed how computers can discover new hypothesis in chemistry, relationships between cause and effect in medicine, potential new patents, and much more.

Levi, David.: Robots Unlimited: Life in a Virtual Age, A K Peter, 2005

P. 389

Creative people need to be very focused when they work, so that they get into a ‘‘flow’’. If they get disturbed in that flow, it takes 20 - 30 minutes to pick up where they were.

The concept of “flow” was first developed by the psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In his pioneering work, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, he introduced the theory that people are most happy when they are in a state of wghat he called “flow”, which was concentration or complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situation they are in – a sense of full immersion in whatever one is doing. she is doing.

He has published numerous books and articales about flow and creativity and is widely regarded as the leading thinker in positive psychology (the psychology of people who are not mentally ill).

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008

P. 390

The experience dimension will also support a continued drive toward products that are not just functional, but also tell a story, or perhaps mainly the latter.

Two recommendable books about story-telling as a business are:

Jensen, Rolf: The Dream Society, McGraw-Hill, 2001

Pine, Joseph P.: The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage, Harvard Business Press, 1999

P. 396

A study by the PEW Forum showed that the majority of Americans mixed elements from different religions, and also mixed religion with other spirituality. For instance, among self-declared Christians, 23% believed in spiritual energy in trees, etc., 23% in astrology, 22% in reincarnation, 21% in yoga as a spiritual exercise, and 17% in evil eyes, etc.

http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=490

P. 396

A recent example combining science with mythical undertones was the Gaia Hypothesis (named after the Greek goddess of Earth) written by the scientist James Lovelock. This described Earth as a feedback system where the biosphere and the physical components of the Earth are closely integrated and interdependent.

http://erg.ucd.ie/arupa/references/gaia.html

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/G/Gaiahypoth.html

Chapter 19. Intelligence and happiness

P. 405

The first was what you might call ‘‘the cold, uniform world’’ along the lines of 1984 (published 1949) or 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

http://www.amazon.com/Nineteen-Eighty-Four-George-Orwell/

http://www.amazon.com/2001-Odyssey-Arthur-C-Clarke/

This falls into a category of literature (and other art forms such as music and movies) that is sometimes called “dystopian”, which stands for the opposite of utopian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia

P. 406

The other group of films depicted a post-apocalyptic world, where civilization had collapsed, perhaps because of some catastrophic event, and where warlords fought each other constantly in the anarchy that reigned. The Road Warrior (1981) and Blade Runner (1982) are examples.

http://www.amazon.com/Road-Warrior-Mel-Gibson/

http://www.amazon.com/Blade-Runner-Directors-Harrison-Ford/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dystopian_films

P. 408

In international communication, the English language has similarly become the de facto standard

I should be added, of course, that English is also the standard language for computer programming

Friedman, George: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century, Doubleday, 2009, p. 64

P. 411

For instance, this happened with the chemical industry, which moved from being alchemy-based to science-based

A good example is that Edison tested 1800 different gases in his light bulb in order to find the most suited. Evidently, with a more scientific understanding of chemistry, he could have zoomed in on the best alternatives much faster.

Oliver, Richard W.: The Biotech Age, McGraw-Hill, 2003, P. 81

P. 415

There exist magazines about happiness studies, happiness research institutes, and a scientific reference manual about personal ability to get happy (Character Strengths and Virtues)

http://www.springer.com/sociology/well-being/journal/10902

http://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/

http://harvardmagazine.com/2007/01/the-science-of-happiness.html

http://pursuit-of-happiness.org/pursuit-of-happiness/history-of-happiness

http://happier.com/

http://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/l

http://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/statnat/statnat_fp.htm

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1015902,00.html

Peterson, Christopher & Martin Seligman: Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification, Oxford University Press, 2004

P. 415

The world’s leading scientist in happiness research is Ruut Veenhoven, who founded the World Database of Happiness in 1984.

Of course, it is difficult to determine who is “leading”, but Veenhoven runs the leading, continuous meta study of the subject which makes his work exceptionally useful.

http://www2.eur.nl/fsw/research/veenhoven/

http://www2.eur.nl/fsw/research/veenhoven/work-main.htm

P. 415

China scores a happiness index of 6.4 on that scale; India 5.5, the U.S.A. 7.4, Indonesia 6.1, Brazil 7.5, Pakistan 5.4, and Japan 6.2.

http://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/

P. 419

The headings to these three happiness categories come from the psychologist Martin E. P. Seligman,

Seligman, Martin E. P.: Can Happiness be Taught?, Daedalus, 2004

Seligman, Martin E. P. : Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment, Free Press, 2002

P. 419

Typically, about one-third of the population will be against most change and one-third indifferent, as long as it doesn’t’t hurt them personally.

This is obviously a very broad generalisation, but it is the impression I got myself from doing consumer market research in my younger days and is also quoted in:

Bakas, Adjiedj: World Megatrends. Towards the Renewal of Humanity, Infinite Ideas Limited, 2009, p. 96

Jensen describes three types of reaction to change: Neo-Luddites, who resist change and points out its frightening perspectives, the deniers, who don’t look into the future and instead focus on the present, and the early adopters, who like and embrace change.

Jensen, Rolf: The Dream Society, McGraw-Hill, 2001, pp. 21-22

P. 442

Assuming that (1) average incomes rise massively over the coming 40 years and in particular in emerging markets, and (2) the overall trend toward more freedom continues, I think it is safe to expect a considerable increase in average human happiness.

Veenhoven finds that global average happiness has been growing and that local happiness has been growing fastest the nations that have had the fastest economic growth:

http://www2.eur.nl/fsw/research/veenhoven/Pub2000s/2006a-full.pdf

http://www2.eur.nl/fsw/research/veenhoven/interviews/Elequent_2001.pdf

In an interview about the main drivers of happiness, he states:

“One of the surprises is that economic freedom is such a powerful predictor of average happiness in nations, in particular among developing nations. The presence of a free market and the independence of political approval to set up a business seem to contribute to greater happiness of a greater number. It has appeared that economic freedom is even more important than political and religious freedom.”

And furthermore:

“The interesting thing is that in the relation between freedom and happiness, we see no decreasing marginal returns. With wealth and income we do see those decreasing marginal returns, but the extension of freedom still contains a lot of promises for us.”

http://www2.eur.nl/fsw/research/veenhoven/interviews/Elequent_2001.pdf

Here is a similar quote:

“Happy countries are, typically, rich countries," explains Veenhoven. "They are, typically, countries with a lot of freedom, often well-governed and democratic, and they tend to be tolerant.”

http://www2.eur.nl/fsw/

Booksources

Chapter 1, Crises

Chapter 2, Money and assets

Chapter 3, Bubbles, scares, and crashes

Chapter 5: Globalization, urbanization, and wealth explosion

Chapter 6, Intelligence, knowledge, and innovation

Chapter 7, Environmental and resource strain

Chapter 8, Tribes and empires

Chapter 9, War, terror, and the bottom billion

Chapter 10, The shape of things to come

Chapter 11, Finance

Chapter 12, Real estate

Chapter 13, Commodities

Chapter 14, Alternative energy

Chapter 15, Genomics and biotechnology

Chapter 16, Information technology

Chapter 17, Luxury

Chapter 18, Lifestyles

Chapter 19. Intelligence and happiness

Book
sources