id="id91">

452

Hinh Dinh (former World Bank economist) in discussion with the author, February 21, 2016.

453

Kerry Emanuel (MIT climate scientist) in discussion with the author, November 15, 2019.

454

Suparti (factory worker) in discussion with the author, June 8–9, 2015.

455

John P. Rafferty, “Titanosaurs: 8 of the World’s Biggest Dinosaurs,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/list/titanosaurs-8-of-the-worlds-biggest-dinosaurs.

456

Lance E. Davis, Robert E. Gallman, and Karin Gleiter, In Pursuit of Leviathan: Technology, Institutions, Productivity, and Profits in American Whaling (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 21.

457

Neil Pyenson, Spying on Whales: The Past, Present, and Future of Earth’s Most Awesome Creatures (New York: Penguin, 2018), 176.

458

Nguyen Van Vinh, “Vietnamese Fisherman Worship Whale for Safety,” Reuters, June 22, 2007, https://www.reuters.com.

459

“Vietnamese Fishermen Drag Giant Whale Carcass Inland for Burial,” Newsflare, May 29, 2019, https://www.newsflare.com/video/296461/animals/vietnamese-fishermen-drag-giant-whale-carcass-inland-for-burial.

460

Andrew Darby, Harpoon: Into the Heart of Whaling (Cambridge, MA: Hachette Books, 2009), 106.

461

George Francis Dow, Whale Ships and Whaling: A Pictorial History (New York: Dover Publications, 2013), 7.

462

John E. Worth, “Fontaneda Revisited: Five Descriptions of Sixteenth Century Florida,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 73, no. 3 (January 1995): 339–352, https://www.jstor.org/stable/30150454.

463

Davis et al., In Pursuit of Leviathan.

464

Johan Nicolay Tønnessen and Arne Odd Johnsen, The History of Modern Whaling (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 129.

465

Taylor Kate Brown, “Hunting Whales with Rowing Boats and Spears,” BBC, April 26, 2015, https://www.bbc.com.

466

Glover Morrill Allen, The Whalebone Whales of New England (Boston: Printed for the Society with Aid from the Gurdon Saltonstall Fund, 1916), 161.

467

Walter S. Tower, A History of the American Whale Fishery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1907), 50.

468

Davis et al., In Pursuit of Leviathan.

469

Johan Nicolay Tønnessen and Arne Odd Johnsen, The History of Modern Whaling (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 129.

470

“Development of the Pennsylvania Oil Industry,” National Historic Chemical Landmark, American Chemical Society, 2009, https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/pennsylvaniaoilindustry.html.

471

“Samuel Kier,” Pennsylvania Center for the Book, 2007, accessed December 5, 2019, https://www.pabook.libraries.psu.edu/literary-cultural-heritage-appa/bios/Kier__Samuel_Martin.

472

In 1845. W. S. Tower, A History of the American Whale Fishery (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania, 1907), 127.

473

“Development of the Pennsylvania Oil Industry.”

474

Davis et al., In Pursuit of Leviathan, 355–63. Had petroleum not replaced whale oil, it is possible that coal gas would have. Firms in New York, Boston, New Orleans, and Philadelphia copied the British in the early 1800s and started making hydrogen gas and pumping it into homes for lighting. They made the hydrogen from coal. “Coal was cheaper than whale oil,” the historians noted, but it had other problems that whale oil didn’t have. Those might have been worked out over time, but then petroleum came along and provided a cheap and better alternative to both whale oil and coal gas in most places. For a few years, and in some places, camphene, a kind of redistilled turpentine, also competed with whale oil. In other places, lard oil seemed cheaper, and of equal quantity. For a brief period it replaced sperm (whale) oil in US lighthouses. But eventually it was replaced by petroleum, which came to dominate the market. The historians concluded that “On the eve of the discovery of petroleum at Drake’s well, then, the whaling industry was already in a kind of retreat.” Even so, the big-picture conclusion of historians remains the same today as it was 160 years ago. As the historians noted, “the birth of a large-scale petroleum industry signaled the eventual death of the American whaling industry.” Davis et al.’s is the consensus view. “For lubrication and lighting, whale oil was squeezed out of the market by mineral oil [petroleum] and for various other purposes it could be replaced by vegetable oils, in particular cottonseed and linseed oil.”

475

“Grand Ball Given by Whales,” Vanity Fair, April 20, 1861.

476

Davis et al., In Pursuit of Leviathan, 516.

477

Davis et al., In Pursuit of Leviathan, 514.

478

Ibid., 498–499, 522. “Lower wages, lower opportunity costs of capital, and a lack of entrepreneurial alternatives pushed the Norwegians into exploiting the whale stocks. Higher wages, higher opportunity costs of capital, and a plethora of entrepreneurial alternatives turned Americans – even those from New Bedford – toward the domestic economy.” Johan Nicolay Tønnessen and Arne Odd Johnsen, The History of Modern Whaling (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 12. Again, there is agreement on this point. “In the United States there was simply no inducement for a regeneration of whaling.”

479

Ibid., 508.

480

Ibid., 11.

481

“New Butter Substitute,” New York Times, August 4, 1918, https://www.nytimes.com. By 1929, scientists had improved the process so much that margarine could be made from just whale oil. Davis et al., In Pursuit of Leviathan, 503.

482

Tønnessen and Johnsen, The History of Modern Whaling, 529.

483

Walter Sullivan, “Extinction of Blue Whale Feared,” New York Times, May 18, 1959, https://www.nytimes.com.