[1] Susan McGrath, "Attack of the alien invaders," National Geographic, Mar/05, pp 92-115.
[2] Douglas McInnis, "The Plight of the Bumblebee," Popular Science, November 1997, pp 78-82.
[3] There are still plenty of horse chestnut trees in North America but the American chestnuts, which produced edible nuts, are almost extinct. The few edible chestnuts we find in North American grocery stores are imported from Italy.
[4] Kevin Cox, "Beetle cited as threat to nation's forests. Trees in major Halifax park must be felled immediately, ecologist warns" The Globe and Mail, 05/27/2000, National edition, pg A5. see also Kevin Cox, "Chain saws are circling bug-infested N.S. park. Culling of spruce trees could begin next week. The Globe and Mail, July 12/2000, Metro edition, pg A2.
[5] Kevin Cox: "Does this bug deserve to die? Absolutely, some scientists argue. If not, Canada's forests are in grave danger. Nonsense, others reply. "Somebody is scaremongering," The Globe and Mail, June 24/2000, Metro edition, pg A11.
[6] Leigh Gallagher, "Wine Lover, Plagues/ a yellow-eyed bug is sucking some of California's valuable vineyards dry," Forbes July 3/00, pg 58.
[7] Tom Blackwell, "Bug-tainted Ontario wine still hitting store shelves, National Post, Jan 27/03, pg A8.
See also Research Digest: snake plague, The Globe and Mail, Mar 1/97, pg D6, Complete with coiled suspension, The Globe and Mail, June 12/90, pg A22.
[9] FAO. 1961-1999. Quarterly Bulletin of Statistics, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, cited by Pimentel, David and Marcia in World Population, Food, Natural Resources, and Survival, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, February 28, 2002.
[10] P. Beaumont 1985, "Irrigated agriculture and groundwater mining on the high plains of Texas," Environmental Conservation 12: 11 pp., cited by Pimentel, 2002.
[11] Britannica 98, and J.D. Soule and D. Piper, Farming in Nature's Image: An Ecological Approach to Agriculture, Island Press, Washington, DC, 1992, cited by Pimentel, 2002.
[12] Info from Goddard space flight center website, report dated Feb 27/01.
[13] Peter Goodspeed, "Kazakh dam spells doom for grossly polluted Aral Sea," National Post, Oct 3/03.
[14] P.H. Gleick, Water in Crisis, Oxford University Press, New York, 1993, cited by Pimentel, 2002.
[15] "Glacier meltdown," New Scientist, May 8/04, pg 7.
[16] R.A. Houghton, "The worldwide extent of land-use change," BioScience, 44(5) 1994, 305-313, cited by Pimentel et al, 2002.
[17] B.R. Doeoes, "Environmental degradation, global food production, and risk for larger-scale migrations," Ambio 23 (2), 1994, pp 124-130, cited by Pimentel et al, 1995.
[18] USBC. 2000. Statistical Abstract of the United States 2000. Vol. 200th ed. Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Government Printing Office, cited by Pimentel et al, 2002.
[19] David Adam, "Goodbye Sunshine," The Guardian, Dec 18/03. See also David J Travis, Andrew M. Carlton, and G. Laurentsen Ryan, "Contrails reduce daily temperature range," Nature, Aug 8/02, pg 601.
[20] Stanley Johnson, The Green Revolution, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1972 pp 10-11.
[21] Robert Uhlig, "Banana's days cut short by rampant fungal disease" report from Daily Telegraph reprinted in National Post, Jan 17/03, pg A15. See also Fred Pearce, "Going Bananas" New Scientist, Jan 18/03, pp 26-28.
[22] It could be proved wrong by the loss of a crop but it could never be proved right because if the crop is not lost this year, that is no guarentee that next year's crop will not be lost. Fifty years ago some people thought the discovery of penicillin meant the end of infections.
[23] Russell L. Schweickart, Edward T. Lu, Piet Hut and Clark R. Chapman, "The Asteroid Tugboat," Scientific American Nov/03, Vol. 289 Issue 5, pp 54-62.
[24] David Keys, Catastrophe, Century Books, London, 1999.
[25] www.usgs.gov/yvo. Also search the site for "caldera" and "Long Valley."
[26] "Four days that shook the world," New Scientist, May 8/04, pg 33.
[27] Peter Cervelli, "The Threat of Silent Earthquakes," Scientific American, Mar/04, pp 58-63.
[28] A search for the words "canary AND tsunami" on the Google search engine produced nearly 85,000 hits.
[29] David Suzuki and Holly Dressel, From naked ape to Superspecies, Stoddart, 1999, pp 120-121.
[30] Given the plague of diet-caused obesity which has already affected much of North America, we have to assume that the prognosis is not good.
[31] Julieta Ramos-Elorduy, Creepy Crawly Cuisine, translated from Spanish by Nancy Esteban, Park Street Press, Rochester, VT, 1998.
[32] Andy Turnbull, "Research team studies virus cancer" Kingston Whig Standard Apr 3/65.
[33] Writer Laurie Garrett estimates that smallpox killed about 56 million natives of the Americas in the first years of the 'Spanish conquest.' The Coming Plague, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1994, pg 41.
[34] Harvard Working Group on New and Resurgent Diseases "Globalization, development and the spread of disease," The Case Against the Global Economy, pg 165.
[36] Marlene Cimons, "West Nile virus settling down for a long stay threat: Experts predict the mosquito-borne disease will spread throughout the U.S., Los Angeles Times 11/27/2000, Home Edition, pg S-1.
[37] The flu scare in Hong Kong is described in the article "The Flu Hunters" by Eric Larson in the Canadian issue of Time Magazine, Feb 23/98, pp 30-40.
[38] Larson, pg 33. See also, Laurie Garrett, The Coming Plague Farrar, Straus and Giroux, NY, 1994, pg 157.
[39] "A dangerous mix: The facts about bird flu", National Post, Mar 9/05, pg A15.
[40] Laurie Garrett, The Coming Plague, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1994, pp 53-60.
[41] Laurie Garrett, The Coming Plague, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1994, pg 598.
[42] Or worse. In the world of clashing systems the outbreak of a plague might be seen as a terrorist attack, and it might spark a war that could see the use of both biological and nuclear weapons.
[43] David J Travis, Andrew M. Carlton, and G Laurentsen Ryan, "Contrails reduce daily temperature range," Nature, Aug 8/02, pg 601.
[44] When governments do pretend to take action on overconsumption and/or pollution, the action may do more harm than good. After the power failure of August 14/03 the Canadian government announced a plan to 'reduce' emissions of greenhouse gasses. As announced the plan included $100 million in subsidies for the development of ethanol to fuel cars and $10 million subsidy for 'biodiesel' to fuel trucks. In fact scientists tell us that with North American farming practices it takes about 129 units worth of oil energy to make 100 units of ethanol energy. (Ref:] Pimentel, David, "Ethanol fuels: Energy Balance, Economics and Environmental Impacts are Negative," Natural Resources Research Vol 12, No 2, June 2003, pp 127-134.
Even if we could gain energy by producing ethanol a car running on ethanol and a truck running on biodiesel would produce about as much greenhouse gas as a car burning gas or a truck burning diesel and, because production of the substitute fuels would also release greenhouse gasses, the net result of a shift to either would increase the total of greenhouse gasses.
[45] Andy Turnbull, "Spotlight on housing #2, City land prices a major problem," Kamloops News, Dec 8/75, pg 22-23.
[46] Gary Hall, Automated Builder, Ventura, CA, Vol 40 #6,7,8; June, July and August of 2003.
[47] In fact planning does not offer as much protection as people think it does, or as much as common sense might. As I was writing this people who had bought new homes beside the Toronto stockyards were making very public complaints about the smell and the noise. If they had relied on common sense, rather than on some abstract city plan, they might have realized that the neighborhood of a stockyard generally has typical smells and noises. The people who bought the houses and the developer who sold them want the city to close the stockyard. That might work in a city of vegetarians but most of the people of Toronto eat meat, and we need the stockyards and the packing plants that are close to them.
[48] In April of 1974 Consumer Reports said the U.S. EPA estimated that emission controls would increase fuel consumption by about 10% and that oil and auto industry experts estimated 15%, but most drivers found that real-life consumption increased much more. On page 83 of the October 1973 issue Popular Science listed the predicted fuel consumption of new American cars -- which ranged from 7 miles per gallon for the largest Cadillac to 20 miles per gallon for an AMC Gremlin. My father's 1953 Cadillac sedan got better than 20 miles per US gallon on its first highway run and my 1965 Citroen 2CV got about 50 miles per US gallon. The Citroen had only 18 horsepower but it could cruise at 60 miles an hour and it carried four people in superb comfort. Like other very-efficient cars, it could not now be sold in the United States.
[49] Some of the dangers of automotive airbags are documented on cbc.ca/consumers/market/cars/airbags/index.html Canadian law does not demand air bags but, because they are so profitable, no manufacturer offers cars without them in Canada. This is a wonderful opportunity for lawyers, because the survivors of anyone killed by an air bag in a Canadian car have obvious grounds for a lawsuit.
[50] "The disposable car," Forbes, May 24/04, pg 68.
[51] Juliet Schor, The Overworked American, Basic Books, Harper Collins, 1991, pg 1.
[53] Wassily Leontiev, letter, Science, vol 217, July 9/82, pp 104-105.
[54] figures from Statistics Canada website, www.statcan.ca.