Pre-industrial revolution

The Maunder minimum is the name given to a period of extreme solar inactivity that occurred between 1645 and 1710. Of particular interest is that this period of inactivity corresponds closely to one of the coldest periods of the so-called Little Ice Age in Europe, a time of long, cold winters that caused severe hardships in the pre-industrial revolution world. This has led scientists to extensively study the possible influences of solar activity on terrestrial climate, as well as examine other stars for evidence of activity cycle behavior similar to the Sun s. 

TABLE 22.2 Pre-Industrial Revolution and 1990 Predicted Compartmental Burdens of Carbon (Pg C)... 

Throughout this chapter many of the arguments are based on an assumption of steady state. Before the agricultural and industrial revolutions, the carbon cycle presumably was in a quasi-balanced state. Natural variations still occur in this unperturbed environment the Little Ice Age, 300-400 years ago, may have influenced the carbon cycle. The production rate of varies on time scales of decades and centuries (Stuiver and Quay, 1980,1981), implying that the pre-industrial radiocarbon distribution may not have been in steady state. 

Since the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century, the knowledge on chemistry was developed rapidly, together with several industries. Currently, under the REACH legislation more than 100,000 compounds have been pre-registered for use within the European Union. Chemicals are present in all kinds of industrial applications and consumer products. However, some of these compounds or their degradation products can cause damage to the environment and human health. 

Because of concern about its environmental toxicity, the use of Cd has decreased in recent years. A few studies of lake sediments and snowpacks have documented the rise in Cd pollution as a result of the industrial revolution and its sharp decrease since the 1970s (Fig. 2) [3-5]. According to the data of Fig. 2, the present inputs of Cd to remote northern regions through aeolian transport of aerosols are near their pre-industrial value. As the industrial use of Cd declines, much of the remaining Cd pollution results from its presence as a contaminant in Zn-containing materials. 

Dore (1973) suggested that pre-industrial history, exigencies and the nature of the industrialization process as such were three sources of the diversity of industrial societies. By exigencies he meant such relatively unique and powerful influences as wars, international relations, revolutions, the beliefs of elite groups, population size and density and its social and ethnic composition, and natural resources. 

At rather infrequent intervals, statistical issues in the pharmaceutical industry have been debated by the Royal Statistical Society. Three read papers contain much of relevance to the work of the pharmaceutical statistician. Even though the first (Lewis, 1983), appeared nearly twenty-five years ago (at the time of writing), it is interesting to note that a number of the issues are still live. The second paper (Racine et al., 1986) is an early exposition of the use of Bayesian methods within the pharmaceutical industry, which, despite the fact that it pre-dates the Markov chain Monte-Carlo revolution introduced by Gelfand and Smith (1990) is still ahead of current practice in many respects. The third (Senn, 2000a) was written by me and, as might be expected, touches on a number of issues covered in this book. 

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