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Social Studies Individual > Individual SS - Chapter 1 Nitpick > Flashcards

Individual SS - Chapter 1 Nitpick Flashcards

0
Q

How old is the Earth?

A

about 4 billion years old

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1
Q

Who said “The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present.” ?

A

-G. K. Chesterton (1933)

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2
Q

How old is the human race?

A

about 4 million years old

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3
Q

How old is environmental change on Earth?

A

about 4 billion years old

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4
Q

In environmental history, why does the twentieth century qualify as a peculiar century?

A

The screeching acceleration acceleration of so many processes that being ecological change.

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5
Q

What is an example of local concerns becoming global?

A

Air pollution

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6
Q

Mediterranean lead smelting in Roman times even polluted the air in the ____.

A

Arctic

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7
Q

Changes in scale can lead to ______.

A

Changes in condition

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8
Q

Air pollution has grown so comprehensive and large-scale that it affects the ____.

A

Fundamentals of global atmospheric chemistry.

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9
Q

In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler’s Germany acquired which areas/countries?

A

Austria, the Sudetenland, and the rest of Czechoslovakia.

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10
Q

In what year did Hitler try to conquer Poland?

A

September 1939

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11
Q

How long was the war that ruined Hitler?

A

6 years

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12
Q

At what temperature will the water in the tropical Atlantic begin to promote hurricanes?

A

26° Celsius

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13
Q

What brought total collapse in some oceanic fisheries?

A

Incremental increases in fishing effort

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14
Q

What is economic activity?

A

Most of the things people do that change environments

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15
Q

What is the GDP?

A

Gross domestic product; the total value of goods and services brought to market or otherwise officially noted.

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16
Q

What was the world’s annual GDP five hundred years ago?

A

About $240 billion (slightly more than Poland’s or Pakistan’s today, slightly smaller than Taiwan’s or Turkey’s.)

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17
Q

The world economy had grown extremely slowly over the millennia up to what year?

A

1500

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18
Q

By 1820, what was the world’s GDP?

A

$695 billion (more than Canada’s or Spain’s, less than Brazil’s in 1990s terms.)

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19
Q

By 1900, what was the world’s GPD?

A

$1.98 trillion (less than 1990s Japan’s.)

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20
Q

Between what two time periods did one spectacular growth spurt in the history of the world economy occur?

A

1870-1913

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21
Q

By 1950, what was the world’s GDP?

A

$5.37 trillion (as large as the United States’s economy in 1991.)

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22
Q

By 1992, what was the world’s GDP?

A

$28 trillion

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23
Q

The world’s economy in the late twentieth century was about how much larger than that of 1500?

A

120 times larger

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24
Q

The fastest growth came in what years?

A

1950-1973

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25
Q

Most of economic expansion was driven by what?

A

World population growth

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26
Q

While the world economy has grown 120-food since 1500, average income for individuals has only grown ____

A

9-fold

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27
Q

How much more income per capita do we have than our forebears had in 1900?

A

Four times

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28
Q

What is the income of an average Mozabican today?

A

Well under half the global average of 1500

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29
Q

What is the social price?

A

People enslaved, exploited, or killed so that “creative destruction” could make way for economic growth

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30
Q

When did humans first invent agriculture?

A

8,000 B.C.

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31
Q

What was the global population during the time agriculture was first invented?

A

Between 2 and 20 million

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32
Q

When agriculture was invented, population grew faster, between ________ as fast as before.

A

10 and 1,000 times as fast

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33
Q

By A.D. 1, the globe supported how many people?

A

around 200 or 300 million people (roughly equivalent to today’s Indonesia or United States.)

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34
Q

By 1500, world population had reached how many people?

A

400 or 500 million people

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35
Q

At what rate did population grow prior to the 1500s?

A

0.1 percent per year

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36
Q

How long did it take for the world population to double between A.D. 1 and 1500?

A

A millennia and a half

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37
Q

When did the world population reach 700 million people?

A

around 1730

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38
Q

When did the world population reach one billion?

A

1820

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39
Q

In the period since 1950, population has increased at roughly what pace?

A

10,000 times the pace that prevailed before the invention of agriculture

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40
Q

What would have happened if twentieth-century population growth had I regained since the invention of agriculture?

A

The earth would be encased in a squiggling mass of human flesh, thousands of light-years in danger, expanding outward with a radical velocity many times greater than the speed of light.

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41
Q

European demographics determine about how many hominids have been born in the past 4 million years?

A

80 billion

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42
Q

All together, all the hominids ever born have lived how many years?

A

About 2.16 trillion years

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43
Q

The twentieth century accounts for only how much of human history?

A

0.000025 percent (100 out of 4 million years)

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44
Q

Out of the total of every hominid lives ever lived, what percent of those years were lived after 1750?

A

28 percent

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45
Q

Out of the total of every hominid lives ever lived, what percent of those years were lived after 1900?

A

20 percent

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46
Q

Out of the total of every hominid lives ever lived, what percent of those years were lived after 1950?

A

13 percent

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47
Q

The twentieth century has hosted how much of all human years?

A

About a fifth

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48
Q

Before the Industrial Revolution began, what sources of power did we have?

A

Muscle power of our bodies, some domesticated animals, wind and water.

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49
Q

What was the chemical energy stored in wood and other biomass used for?

A

Heat

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50
Q

What new source of power did the Industrial Revolution introduce?

A

Fossil fuels

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51
Q

Physicists agree that the total quantity of energy in the universe is _____.

A

Constant

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52
Q

Ultimately, what is our source main source of energy?

A

Nuclear energy (the sun)

53
Q

What are the four types of energy?

A

Mechanical (kinetic), chemical, heat (or thermal), and radiant.

54
Q

What do converters do?

A

They change energy from one form to another, making it easier to store, transport, and use for work.

55
Q

What is the efficiency of human beings?

A

18 percent

56
Q

For every 100 calories I eat as food (chemical energy), only about how many are converted into chemical energy?

A

18

57
Q

The calories that aren’t turned into mechanical energy are often lost for what?

A

Practical purposes, mostly as heat.

58
Q

What is the efficiency of a horse?

A

10 percent

59
Q

Before the Industrial Revolution, what were the only important converters?

A

Biological ones

60
Q

How did the first human societies use their muscle power?

A

Chemical energy stored in plants and animal flesh

61
Q

For mechanical energy, our ancestors depended on their own bodies in what one might call the _______.

A

“somatic energy regime.”

62
Q

Shifting agriculture probably increased energy availability by how much?

A

10-fold

63
Q

How were oxen good sources of energy?

A

Oxen could plow heavy soils, opening up new food possibilities.

64
Q

During the Industrial Revolution in Europe (c. what year?), more than what percent of the mechanical energy used was supplied by human muscle?

A

70 percent

65
Q

How could an energy surplus make someone powerful? (ex. A pharaoh)

A

If applied judiciously, in war or irrigation for instance, surplus might create a windfall of increasing returns.

66
Q

What was the most efficient way by which the ambitious and powerful could become richer and more powerful?

A

Slavery

67
Q

How were big domesticated animals viewed as in preindustrial times?

A

Something of a luxury

68
Q

Slavery was widespread, especially in societies ______.

A

Short on draft animals

69
Q

What caused the supply of food to vary season to season and year to year in preindustrial societies?

A

Weather vagaries and crop pests

70
Q

For rulers, what did the stock of human and domestic animal populations serve as?

A

An energy store, a flywheel in the society’s energy system.

71
Q

For ordinary people, what purpose did livestock serve for them?

A

A store of energy

72
Q

How many watts of power can the human body muster?

A

1,000 watts of power

73
Q

What was the most amount of watts of energy that any society could devote to a given task?

A

A few million watts

74
Q

What are some examples of a task that a society could devote itself to?

A

Ditch digging, dam building, or fighting.

75
Q

How did the Industrial Revolution first affect human muscle power?

A

It first augmented and then quickly outstripped human muscle power.

76
Q

The Industrial Revolution replaced the somatic energy regime with what?

A

The “exosomatic energy regime”.

77
Q

The “exosomatic energy regime” might be better called the what?

A

Fossil fuel age

78
Q

Which three societies most notably benefitted from sails, windmills and watermills?

A

Persia, China, and Europe.

79
Q

What did sails, windmills and watermills do for societies?

A

They added slightly to the somatic energy supply of agrarian societies.

80
Q

What did steam engines do in the eighteenth century?

A

Tapped hundreds of millions of years’ worth of photosynthesis, burning coal to convert to chemical into mechanical energy.

81
Q

What was coal mainly used as?

A

A fuel for heating

82
Q

Who wrote this book?

A

J.R. McNeill

83
Q

Why were the first steam engines notoriously inefficient?

A

They lost more than 99 percent of their energy

84
Q

Improvements by 1800 allowed what in a single engine?

A

Efficiency of about 5 percent and a capacity of 20 kilowatts of power in a single engine, the equivalent of 200 men.

85
Q

By 1900, engineers had learned how to handle a high-pressure steam, and engines became ____ times as powerful as those of 1800.

A

30 times

86
Q

What made steam engines more efficient than watermills and windmills?

A

They could be put anywhere, even on ships and railroad locomotives.

87
Q

What was the world coal production in 1800?

A

about 10 million tons

88
Q

World coal production shot up by how much by 1900?

A

80- or 100-fold

89
Q

What was a positive feedback loop caused by the improvements of steam engines in 1900?

A

It allowed transport of coal on a massive scale, providing the fuel for yet more steam engines.

90
Q

Who proved in 1859 that oil could be drilled through deep rock?

A

An American, Edwin Drake

91
Q

Who found out how to refine crude oil in the 1850s?

A

A Scot, James Young

92
Q

So from 1900 forward, _______ provided larger quantities of energy.

A

Biomass, coal, and oil.

93
Q

In terms of usable energy, ____ overshadowed _____ from the 1890s forward.

A

Fossil fuels overshadowed biomass

94
Q

What furthered the transition into the oil age?

A

Internal combustion engines

95
Q

Where were internal combustion engines maintain developed?

A

In Germany after 1880

96
Q

How did internal combustion engines further the transition into the oil age?

A

They weighed less than coal-fired steam engines, they were much more efficient, especially at small scales.

97
Q

On larger scales, internal combustion engines could _________ than steam engines.

A

Deliver much more power

98
Q

Lenin famously defined communism as what?

A

Electrification plus Soviet power

99
Q

Electricity is also good at providing what?

A

Light and heat

100
Q

The worldwide energy harvest increased about how much in the nineteenth century, and under the impact of what?

A

Threefold; steam and coal.

101
Q

The worldwide energy harvest increased by another what in the twentieth century?

A

Thirteenfold

102
Q

What were causes of the worldwide energy harvest increase in the twentieth century?

A

Oil, natural gas (after 1950), and, less importantly, nuclear power.

103
Q

We have probably deployed more energy since 1900 than in all of human history before what year?

A

1900

104
Q

The world in the twentieth century used ______ times as much energy as in the thousand years before what year?

A

10 times as much energy as in the thousand years before 1900 A.D.

105
Q

In the 100 centuries between the dawn of agriculture and 1900, people used only about how much as energy as in the twentieth century?

A

Two-thirds

106
Q

Per-capita energy use grew by how much in the twentieth century?

A

Four- or fivefold

107
Q

In the 1900s the average global citizen deployed about how many “energy slaves”?

A

20

108
Q

20 “energy saves” means what?

A

20 human equivalents working 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

109
Q

What were two downsides to the energy intensification in the twentieth century?

A

Fossil fuel combustion generates pollution, and fossil fuel use has sharply increased the inequalities in wealth and power among different parts of the world.

110
Q

What is generated by biomass burning?

A

Pollution

111
Q

The requisite technologies and corresponding social and political structures developed first and most thoroughly in ____ and ____.

A

Europe and North America

112
Q

Until 1950 or so, what did other parts of the world depend on for mechanical energy and heat?

A

Muscle power and biomass

113
Q

Inequality in energy use peaked when?

A

The 1960s

114
Q

Predictions of dearth have been proved wrong since what year?

A

1860s

115
Q

By how much did the world economy grow in the twentieth century?

A

14-fold

116
Q

By how much did the world population grow in the twentieth century?

A

4-fold

117
Q

How much did energy use grow in the nineteenth century?

A

5-fold

118
Q

By how much did the world economy grow in the twentieth century?

A

14-fold

119
Q

By how much did the world population grow in the twentieth century?

A

4-fold

120
Q

How much did energy use grow in the nineteenth century?

A

5-fold

121
Q

Why has this expansion of the economy and world population happened in the nineteenth and twentieth century?

A

Human ingenuity. Part of the answer is luck.

122
Q

What was one factor that checked our numbers that was lifted in the eighteenth century?

A

Disease load

123
Q

When did the Little Ice Age start?

A

1550

124
Q

When did the little Ice Age end?

A

1850

125
Q

What were some things that allowed our numbers to grow after the eighteenth century?

A

The ending of the little Ice Age and the domestication of some of our killer diseases (quite intentionally).

126
Q

What was another factor of the explosion growth of modern times?

A

Human ingenuity. We gained access to new forms of energy and enhancing labor productivity.

127
Q

What are two things that helped ratchet up the pace of economic activity?

A

Social and business organization

128
Q

What was a downside to the surges in population, production, and energy use?

A

They affected different regions, maroons, classes, and social groups quite unevenly.

129
Q

What was the preferred policy solution after 1950?

A

Faster economic growth and rising living standards.

130
Q

Freshwater use, timber use, minerals use, industrial output, solid waste, air pollution and water pollution all boomed after what year?

A

1900

Social Studies Individual (5 decks)

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