The Big Ratchet: How Humanity Thrives in the Face of Natural Crisis (33 page)

    
92
   
“. . . [L]asting fertility of the soil”:
Quoted in Clark and Foster 2009, 315.

    
92
   
New sources for fertilizer:
Brown 1963.

    
93
   
Yams, banana, pearl millet, and sorghum:
The National Research Council (1996) described traditional African staple grains in detail.

    
94
   
Trade routes of his era in 1735:
Hadley wrote that “the action of the Sun is the original Cause of these Winds, I think all are agreed,” and further deduced that “without the assistance of the diurnal Motion of the Earth, Navigation, especially Easterly and Westerly, would be very tedious, and to make the whole circuit of the Earth perhaps impracticable” (Hadley 1735–1736, 62).

    
94
   
“. . . [S]tones and everything”:
Columbus et al. 1991, 93.

    
94
   
“. . . [R]etreat of the continental glaciers”:
Crosby 1972 [2003], 3. Mann (2011) also provided a detailed and readable account of the Columbian Exchange.

    
95
   
Plants back to Spain:
Barrera-Osorio 2006.

    
95
   
Scholars do not agree on this point:
Nunn and Qian (2010) discussed the controversies about whether syphilis came from the New World.

    
95
   
“. . . New England in America”:
Thorpe 1909, 1829.

    
95
   
“. . . Kind of Interests therein”:
Thorpe 1909, 1828–1829.

    
96
   
“. . . [T]itle to what we possess”:
Winthrop 1634.

    
96
   
Easy to grow in poor soil:
Li (1982) described the controversy about the degree to which New World crops contributed to population growth in China.

    
96
   
Completely transforming the diet:
Nunn and Qian 2010.

    
96
   
“. . . [T]otal consumption is immense”:
La Rochefoucauld 1995, 23; quoted in Macfarlane and Macfarlane 2003.

    
96
   
Twenty-three pounds within a century:
Hersh and Voth 2009, esp. Table 2.

    
97
   
Animals to the New World:
Barrera-Osorio 2006, 24.

    
97
   
Slave trade between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries:
Nunn and Qian 2010.

    
98
   
Flying dragon from Southeast Asia:
Van Ommen 2009.

    
99
   
Surreptitiously part of the trade:
Hoekstra and Hung 2005.

    
99
   
From one place to another:
The concept of virtual water originated in the early 1990s from Allan (1994) in his discussion of water in the Arab Middle East and North Africa.

  
100
   
“. . . [A]gain evaporates into the cloud”:
Zhou et al. 2011, 1108.

  
100
   
“. . . [O]f rivers and of winds”:
Nace 1974, 43.

  
101
   
Is not really the issue:
Oceans hold most of Earth’s water, leaving less than 3 percent as fresh water for crops, cities, and plants and animals. Of that 3 percent, more than two-thirds is tied up in glaciers and ice caps. The liquid water in lakes and rivers and stored beneath the ground that is available for human use amounts to a tiny fraction of all the water on Earth. Gleick and Palaniappan (2010) provided details on the quantities of the major stocks of water on Earth.

  
101
   
Water thousands of feet below the ground:
Details on Chinese drilling techniques since ancient times are found in Kuhn (2004) and Zhou et al. (2011).

  
102
   
Nearly 40,000 people:
The
qanats
in Gonabad, Iran, are a UNESCO World Heritage Site (Hassan 2011).

  
103
   
Tripled during the preceding century:
Population and urban/rural estimates are from United Nations (1980). Various estimates for total population and regional distributions are given at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency’s History Database of the Global Environment, “Population,”
http://themasites.pbl.nl/tridion/en/themasites/hyde/basicdrivingfactors/population/index-2.html
.

  
103
   
Swelled to over 2 million people:
United Nations (1980), Table 1, lists the largest cities in the world from 1360
BCE
to 1925
CE
.

Chapter 6: Smash Open the Bottlenecks

  
105
   
Swelled to nearly 5 million:
United Nations 1980.

  
106
   
“. . . [O]btaining this amount?” he asked:
Crookes 1898, 564.

  
106
   
“. . . [T]he fit and proper food”:
Ibid., 570.

  
106
   
“. . . [I]ngenuity of chemists”:
Ibid., 562, 573.

  
106
   
Civilization-changing theory:
Feller et al. 2003; T. 1941.

  
107
   
Growing fertilizer industry:
Liebig 1840. The reception of Liebig’s book is discussed in Browne (1944).

  
107
   
Some of his colleagues:
Van der Ploeg et al. (1999) discussed the contributions of German agronomist Carl Sprengel, whose obscure work in the 1820s had already identified the Law of the Minimum commonly attributed to Liebig.
Browne (1944) traced the long history of agricultural chemistry from ancient to modern times.

  
107
   
“. . . [F]acts that he has gathered”:
Moulton (1942, 6). The quotation is attributed to a remark by physician and botanist Hugo von Mohl in 1843 (Aulie 1974).

  
107
   
“. . . [D]iscoverer of new knowledge”:
The quotation from Browne is in the Preface to his 1944 book on the history of agricultural chemistry (Browne 1944, vi). Browne’s quotation is found also in Van der Ploeg et al. (1999).

  
109
   
Still critical ingredients:
Leigh (2004), Chapter 5, describes in detail the different attempts at nitrogen fixation.

  
109
   
Colleague Friedrich Bergius:
In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize, Haber noted that “toward the middle of the present century a major emergency would be unavoidable, unless the chemistry found a way out” (Haber 1920).

  
110
   
“. . . [P]ower and civilization”:
Emerson 2003, 22 (also cited in Daemen 2004).

  
110
   
Across the industrialized world:
The role of the Haber-Bosch process in Germany’s war effort is discussed in Hager (2008) and Leigh (2004).

  
111
   
The age of sixty-five:
The sad story of the end of Haber’s life is recounted in Hager (2008) and Larson (2011).

  
112
   
Second half of the century:
Keeney and Hatfield 2008; Galloway et al. 2013.

  
112
   
Dairy-producing animals:
Erisman et al. 2008.

  
114
   
“. . . [F]ield before the plough”:
Liebig 1840, 184–185.

  
114
   
Purchased Murray’s patent:
The history of superphosphate is described in Hall (1915).

  
114
   
“. . . 4s. 6d. per bushel”:
Quoted in Silvertown 2005, 91.

  
114
   
Were manufacturing superphosphate:
Russel and Williams 1977.

  
114
   
Couple of dollars per ton:
Sanders 2009.

  
115
   
“. . . [T]hought of justice to them”:
Morrison 1890, 262. It is unlikely that England actually took bones from battlefields as Liebig accused.

  
116
   
With Muspratt’s father:
The story of Liebig’s commercial venture is told in Brock (1997).

  
116
   
Bone fragments and teeth:
Daubeny and Widdrington 1844.

  
116
   
Stock for the superphosphate factories:
Hall 1915, 114–115.

  
116
   
Speculative land rush:
Russel and Williams 1977.

  
116
   
Built up on the ocean’s floor:
Goldhammer et al. (2010) provided an explanation of the mechanism in which anoxic conditions lead to formation of phosphorus deposits.

  
117
   
“. . . On the land”:
Huxley 1928, 57.

  
117
   
List with the largest reserves:
Vaccari 2009.

  
117
   
Bones ended before it:
Cordell et al. (2009) and Vaccari (2009) have put forward the argument of peak phosphorus. Smil (2000) has argued that supplies are sufficient. Cordell and White (2011) provided a balanced assessment of long-term phosphorus security. The amount of technologically and economically feasible reserves of phosphate rock by country is provided in Vaccari (2009). Lower-grade phosphate may become more feasible to mine in the
future. Analysts of the reserves differ on whether the depletion of phosphate is an impending global crisis within the time frame of decades (Vaccari 2009; UNEP 2011; Smil 2000).

  
117
   
Tough times as prices rise:
DAP (diammonium phosphate), MAP (monoammonium phosphate), and TSP (triple superphosphate) are the most commonly traded phosphate fertilizers.

  
118
   
Drive from Winnipeg:
Schindler (2009) has provided a personal history of the Experimental Lake Area.

  
118
   
Surrounding landscapes drain into lakes:
The book by Schindler and Vallentyne (2008) is a readable account of the history of the Experimental Lakes Area written by two pioneer researchers.

  
118
   
Have yielded some answers:
Schindler et al. (2008) and many others who have authored publications from the Experimental Lakes Area have documented the results.

  
118
   
Noxious algal bloom:
Experimental Lake Area pioneer scientists David Schindler and John Vallentyne (2008) defined eutrophication as “the complex sequence of changes initiated by the enrichment of natural waters with plant nutrients.”

  
119
   
Catching a native fish:
Lake Victoria’s fish populations have declined as a result of an explosion in the population of the Nile perch, an invasive species, in addition to eutrophication (Verschuren et al. 2002). The rise in the Nile perch population has been a boon to commercial fisheries but a disaster for local fishers who do not have the boats or nets needed to catch the large fish.

  
120
   
Nutrient-rich waste into the water:
McNeill 2000, 136.

  
120
   
Has never truly ended:
Kara et al. 2012; Carpenter and Lathrop 1999.

  
120
   
“. . . [T]his and coming generations”:
Franklin D. Roosevelt, “64—Message to Congress on Phosphates for Soil Fertility,” May 20, 1938, The American Presidency Project,
www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=15643#axzz1xQ3yclsK
.

  
120
   
Soaked in fixed nitrogen:
Galloway et al. 2003, 2008.

  
121
   
Made a mark as well:
Increasing concentrations of nitrous oxide have contributed 0.16 watts per square meter (W/m
²
) to radiative forcing since 1750, compared with combined radiative forcing from all long-lived greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and halocarbons) of 1.6 W/m
²
(Forster et al. 2007).