[1] http://www.stopfluoridation.homestead.com/ (accessed March, 2007)

[2] The National Academies Report in Brief, Fluoride in Drinking Water, March 2006.

[3] National Academies Report in Brief: 1-2.

[4] For simplicity, we use CO2 for the equivalent in CO2 of all emissions of greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gas emissions are therefore measured in equivalent tonnes of CO2: CO2e.

[5] Science magazine published by the AAAS claimed that of 928 abstracts published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, none opposed the consensus view on global warming: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686 See also "Consensus About Climate Change?" Roger A. Pielke, Jr.; and Naomi Oreskes, Science 13 May 2005 308: 952-954 [DOI: 10.1126/science.308.5724.952] (in Letters)

[6] economic impact of Climate Change Policy: The Role of Technology and Economic Instruments, ABARE research report, 06/7.

[7]  ABARE research report: 12-20.

[8] ABARE research report: 52.

[9] Nevertheless, Stern's assumptions do not follow the consensus view of economists, as Martin Weitzman (2007: 5-8) strongly argues.

[10] Weitzmann, 2007: 8-10 discusses the appropriate discount rate with uncertainty, which he shows tends to the risk free interest rate. Weitzmann concludes that Stern may have reverse engineered his low rate of discount to get from prudential reasoning the policy response appropriate to precautionary concern about disastrous outcomes: ‘But I think progress begins by recognizing that the hidden core meaning of Stern vs. Critics may be about tails vs. middle and about catastrophe insurance vs. consumption smoothing.'(2007: 24).

[11] This, famously, is the position of Hume himself, who says in the Treatise of Human Nature: ‘Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.' (Ch. 36: 269)

[12] This is also the fundamental assumption of Byatt, Castles, et al (2006), who cite the third IPCC report: ‘In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system's future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions.' They use this in support of their claim that the Stern review papers give ‘insufficient weight to the pervasive uncertainties which still surround projections of climate change, largely because of the extraordinary complexity of the system under study'(2006:2).

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