New York Times March 5, 2006 One of the hottest environmental
battles has been over oil drilling in the coastal plain of the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but the sad reality is that
much of the Arctic plain will probably be lost anyway in this
century to rising sea levels. That should be our paramount
struggle: to stop global warming. It threatens not only the
Arctic plain, but also low-lying areas around the world with 100
million inhabitants. And it could be accelerating because of the
three scariest words in climate science: positive feedback
loops. Bear with me now: a positive feedback loop occurs when a
small change leads to an even larger change of the same type.
For example, a modest amount of warming melts ice in northern
climates. But the bare ground absorbs three times as much heat
as ground covered by snow or ice, so the change amplifies the
original warming. Even more ice melts, more heat is absorbed,
and the spiral grows. That feedback loop is well understood and
part of climate models, but o