Abstract
Here is how to boil a frog. Place the frog in a pan of tepid water. Raise the temperature so gradually that the frog does not realize it is being cooked. It may even fall into a stupor, as a person might in a hot bath. Eventually it will die. According to experiments done in the nineteenth century, you can indeed boil a frog this way. Biologists today claim that you can’t. Either way, please don’t try it.
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Further Reading
Tipping Points
Gladwell, M.: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Little Brown, Boston (2000)
Benefits and Costs of Complexity
Tainter, J.A.: The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1988)
Case Studies
Allen, T.F.H., Tainter, J.A., Hoekstra, T.W.: Supply-Side Sustainability. Columbia University Press, New York (2003)
Patzek, T.W.: How Can We Outlive Our Way of Life? OECD Paper, Paris, www.oecd.org/dataoecd/2/61/40225820.pdf. (2007). Accessed 6 August 2011
Smil, V.: Energy in World History. Westview, Boulder (1994)
Tainter, J.A., Allen, T.F.H., Little, A., Hoekstra, T.W.: Resource transitions and energy gain: contexts of organization. Conserv. Ecol. 7(3), 4 (2003). http://www.consecol.org/vol7/iss3/art4
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Tainter, J.A., Patzek, T.W. (2012). The Benefits and Costs of Complexity. In: Drilling Down. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-7677-2_6
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