The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), 6.
But even this spectacular event: Jennifer Chu, “Timeline of a Mass Extinction,” MIT News
Office, published online Nov. 18, 2011.
“It is the rate”: Lee Kump, Timothy Bralower, and Andy Ridgwell, “Ocean Acidification in
Deep Time,” Oceanography 22 (2009): 105.
CHAPTER VII: DROPPING ACID
“a wall of Coral Rock”: Quoted in James Bowen and Margarita Bowen, The Great Barrier Reef:
History, Science, Heritage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 11.
“thrown up to such a height?”: Quoted in ibid., 2.
Lyell’s theory: Dobbs, Reef Madness, 147–48. Lyell mistakenly attributed the idea to Adelbert
von Chamisso, a naturalist who accompanied Otto von Kotzebue.
“astoundingly correct”: Ibid., 256.
“It is likely that reefs”: Charles Sheppard, Simon K. Davy, and Graham M. Pilling, The Biology
of Coral Reefs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 278.
“rapidly eroding rubble banks”: Ove Hoegh-Guldberg et al., “Coral Reefs under Rapid
Climate Change and Ocean Acidification,” Science 318 (2007): 1737–42.
Caldeira published the first part of his paper: Ken Caldeira and Michael E. Wickett,
“Anthropogenic Carbon and Ocean pH,” Nature 425 (2003): 365.
The experiment, modeled on Hall-Spencer’s work: Katherina E. Fabricius et al., “Losers and
Winners in Coral Reefs Acclimatized to Elevated Carbon Dioxide Concentrations,” Nature Climate
Change 1 (2011): 165–69.
“A few decades ago”: J. E. N. Veron, “Is the End in Sight for the World’s Coral Reefs?” e360,
published online Dec. 6, 2010.
A recent study by a team of Australian researchers: Glenn De’ath et al., “The 27-Year
Decline of Coral Cover on the Great Barrier Reef and Its Causes,” Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences 109 (2012): 17995–99.
“all coral reefs will cease to grow”: Jacob Silverman et al., “Coral Reefs May Start Dissolving
when Atmospheric CO 2 Doubles,” Geophysical Research Letters 35 (2009).
in a square meter’s worth: Laetitia Plaisance et al., “The Diversity of Coral Reefs: What Are
We Missing?” PLOS ONE 6 (2011).
“that of most terrestrial animal groups”: Kent E. Carpenter et al., “One-Third of Reef-
Building Corals Face Elevated Extinction Risk from Climate Change and Local Impacts,” Science 321
(2008): 560–63.
“An island slumbering”: By June Chilvers, reprinted in Harold Heatwole, Terence Done, and
Elizabeth Cameron, Community Ecology of a Coral Cay: A Study of One-Tree Island, Great Barrier Reef,
Australia (The Hague: W. Junk, 1981), v.
CHAPTER VIII: THE FOREST AND THE TREES