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

2 S introduction
My starting point is the oddly tepid response by U.S. leaders at
virtually all levels to global warming, more accurately described as
“global destabilization.” I will be as optimistic as a careful reading
of the evidence permits and assume that leaders will rouse themselves
to act in time to stabilize and then reduce concentrations of
greenhouse gases below the level at which we lose control of the
climate altogether by the effects of what scientists call “positive
carbon cycle feedbacks.” 2,3 Even so, with a warming approaching
or above 2°C we will not escape severe social, economic, and
political trauma. In an e-mail to the author on November 19,
2007, ecologist and founder of the Woods Hole Research Center
George Woodwell puts it this way:
There is an unfortunate fi ction abroad that if we can hold the temperature
rise to 2 or 3 degrees C we can accommodate the changes.
The proposition is the worst of wishful thinking. At present temperatures,
which would drift upward if the atmospheric burden
were stabilized now, we are watching the melting of glaciers, frozen
soil, and the accelerated decay of large organic stores of carbon in
soils but especially in high latitude soils and tundra peat. A 2 degree
average rise in global temperature will be 4–6 degrees or more in
high latitudes, enough to trigger the release of potentially massive
additional quantities of carbon dioxide and methane [that] would
push the issue of control well beyond human reach.
John Podesta and Peter Ogden at the Center for American Progress
concur, saying that even in the most optimistic scenario imaginable,
“There is no foreseeable political or technological solution
that will enable us to avert many of the climatic impacts projected”
(Podesta and Ogden, 2008, p. 97).
The scientifi c evidence indicates that we have so far warmed
the Earth by 0.8°C, and even if we were to suddenly stop emitting
heat-trapping gases we would still be committed to another
0.5° to 1.0°C of warming, bringing us close to what many climate
scientists regard as a dangerous threshold of 2°C above the