Down to the wire : confronting climate collapse / David - Index of

222 S notes to pages 2-18
2. “Carbon cycle feedbacks” refers to positive feedbacks that occur as temperatures
rise above their normal range. The most commonly cited are those
presently occurring in the Arctic in which surfaces covered with ice with
high albedo that refl ects sunlight back into space melt and are replaced with
dark land and water surfaces that absorb solar radiation, thereby adding to
further warming. There are many, many such mechanisms that are sensitive
to slight changes that initiate accelerating changes. See Woodwell (1995) and
Archer (2009), pp. 125–136.
3. For the sake of clarity, I assume that scenarios presented by Lester Brown
(2008) as the “great mobilization,” Krupp (2008), and Thomas Friedman
(2008) more or less describe what will come to be true. In other words, I
will be as optimistic as the science and rationality permit one to be, but no
more.
4. See, for example, Holdren, “Science and Technology” (2008): “A 2007 report
for the UN Commission on Sustainable Development . . . concluded that the
chances of a ‘tipping point’ into unmanageable degrees of climatic change
increase steeply once the global average surface temperature exceeds 2°C
above the pre-industrial level. . . . Having a better-than-even chance of doing
this means stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and
particles at the equivalent of no more than 450 to 400 parts per million by
volume of CO 2 .” See also Gulledge (2008).
5. The evidence that climate change could be more rapid and more severe than
commonly thought is summarized in Pittock (2008); also Alley (2004).
6. For a good summary of the science about changes at given levels of climate
forcing see Lynas (2007) and Romm (2007), pp. 27–95.
7. See also Porritt (2006), p. 219.
Chapter 1
1. See also Robert Nelson’s thoughtful critique (Nelson, 2006).
2. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 is a notable exception, but
its infl uence has been considerably less than its authors hoped. See Caldwell
(1998).
3. See Kalinowski (unpublished manuscript).
4. Congressional politics has compounded the problems of executive power
by rendering the body less effective than it ought to have been. Mann
and Ornstein (2006) provide a useful analysis of the problem and possible
solutions.
5. See Sunstein (2004).
6. Useful summaries of climate change effects are in Lynas (2007) and Walker
and King (2008), pp. 53–86.