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IMPACT FILE
IMPACT FILE .................................................................................................................................. 1
CLIMATE CHANGE ......................................................................................................................... 2
Climate Change Yes .................................................................................................................. 5
Anthropogenic.......................................................................................................................... 10
Climate Change Not Happening Now/No Impact ................................................................ 13
Climate Change Bad................................................................................................................ 18
Climate Change Good ............................................................................................................. 25
MARINE BIODIVERSITY ............................................................................................................... 29
Yes Marine Biodiversity Loss Now/Bad ................................................................................ 30
CORAL REEFS............................................................................................................................... 40
Yes reef loss now/Reef Loss Bad ............................................................................................ 41
Reef Loss Good/No Impact ..................................................................................................... 44
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CLIMATE CHANGE
ARE NON-UNIQUE – CURRENTLY LOTS OF PEOPLE ARE DOING STUFF WITH CLIMATE, BUT
CLIMATE CHANGE ACTIONS WILL FALL WELL SHORT OF SOLVING FOR GLOBAL WARMING
DISADS
CURRENT
Rogelj et al 09
[Joeri Rogelj, Bill Hare, Julia Nabel, Kristen Macey, Michiel Schaeffer, Kathleen Markmann and Malte Meinshausen; June 11, 2009; Halfway to Copenhagen, no way
to 2° C; Nature; http://www.nature.com/climate/2009/0907/full/climate.2009.57.html; accessed 11 May 2014; AC]
Taken together, the
countries for which quantitative estimates of future emissions can be made currently represent the
lion's share of global population and emissions. These countries accounted for about 70 and 67 per cent of the global population in 1990 and
2005, respectively, and for 79 and 76 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions in those particular years. This exercise therefore serves as an
evaluation of the adequacy of current proposals to limit global warming. If additional countries come forward with quantifiable
ambitions to reduce their emissions, the projections of future warming presented here could conceivably be lowered, although only to a limited extent .¶ The issue
of interest now is to see how far these national positions, if fully implemented, would reduce total emissions
over time, and hence to determine a global emissions pathway that we term 'Halfway to Copenhagen', in light of the fact that a global climate treaty must be agreed
six months from now. The resulting pathway may be a best-case scenario, as full compliance with stated national
positions and international agreements is not guaranteed. The calculation of this pathway takes into account the specific gases and sectors
included in various national position statements.¶ We estimate each country's future emissions pathway and sum these to a global trajectory. Depending on the
countries' proposals, we assume limits on national emissions or only on individual sectors. The sum of all national emissions, including a business-as-usual (BAU)
projection5, 6, 7 for sectors and gases not covered, forms the basis of each national emissions pathway. If national positions result in estimated emissions exceeding the
BAU path, the BAU path is taken instead. In some cases, countries indicate a range of reductions that could be considered, depending on the ambition of other
countries. This range of reductions has been captured here by analysing two different scenarios, which we call 'current minimum' and 'current best'.¶ So what does all
for the Annex I countries as a group, greenhouse gas emissions from industrial sources —
that is, all sources except land-use change and forestry — would be in the range of 8–14 per cent below 1990
levels by 2020 if current commitments were followed through (Fig. 1). This is far less than the 25–40 per cent
reductions required from this group of countries for the same period, gases and sources if warming is to be
limited to around 2 °C (ref. 8). The collective commitments of non-Annex I countries would reduce their emissions to about 4 per cent below anticipated
BAU emissions for 2020. These reductions are also substantially less than those needed to get on a global emissions
pathway consistent with limiting warming to about 2 °C, which would require 15–30 per cent below BAU by 2020 (ref. 9). In the longer
this stack up to? Overall,
term, Annex-I industrial emissions would fall to 57–63 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050 — if current positions were faithfully implemented. Global industrial
emissions, however, would be approximately 102–111 per cent above 1990 levels by 2050. To calculate the climatic consequences of these global emission pathways,
we estimate total emissions of all the main greenhouse gases and aerosols10. We then use a reduced-complexity climate model11 to obtain probabilistic estimates of
future atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and global temperature, given uncertainties in our understanding of how the climate system responds to changing
According to this analysis, the current
best Halfway to Copenhagen pathway has virtually no chance of limiting warming to 2 °C (or 1.5 °C) above
pre-industrial temperatures — or, put another way, it is virtually certain to exceed 2 °C. A pathway that limits emissions to
concentrations of these gases. For the sake of conciseness, only the 'current best' pathway is presented here.
levels likely to meet current temperature goals would have quite different characteristics. Recent work has shown that the overall reduction in emissions by 2050
provides a good indicator of the likelihood of exceeding warming thresholds such as 2 or 1.5 °C in the twenty-first century; we show here a pathway for comparison
that has roughly a 70-per-cent reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 from 2000 levels and cumulative CO2 emissions of a trillion tonnes of CO2
between 2000 to 2050 (Fig. 2). This pathway has about a 25 per cent chance of exceeding 2 °C, and its median estimate would begin to approach 1.5 °C by 2100.¶
2
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MUST ACT NOW
IPCC 14
[International Panel on Climate Change, April 7-11, 2014; Summary for Policymakers; Final Draft; Working Group III; PDF;
http://report.mitigation2014.org/spm/ipcc_wg3_ar5_summary-for-policymakers_approved.pdf; accessed 17 May 2014; AC]
Delaying mitigation efforts beyond those in place today through 2030 is estimated to substantially increase the difficulty
of the transition to low longer‐term emissions levels and narrow the range ¶ of options consistent with maintaining
temperature change below 2°C relative to pre‐industrial ¶ levels (high confidence). Cost‐effective mitigation scenarios that make it at least as likely as not that ¶
temperature change will remain below 2°C relative to pre‐industrial levels (2100 concentrations ¶ between about 450 and 500 ppm CO2eq) are typically characterized
by annual GHG emissions in ¶ 2030 of roughly between 30 GtCO2eq and 50 GtCO2eq (Figure SPM.5, left panel). Scenarios
with ¶ annual GHG
emissions above 55 GtCO2eq in 2030 are characterized by substantially higher rates of ¶ emissions reductions from 2030
to 2050 (Figure SPM.5, middle panel); much more rapid scale‐up of ¶ low‐carbon energy over this period (Figure SPM.5, right panel); a larger reliance on CDR
technologies ¶ in the long term (Figure SPM.4, top panel); and higher transitional and long term economic impacts ¶ (Table SPM.2). Due to
these increased mitigation challenges, many models with annual 2030 GHG ¶ emissions higher than 55 GtCO2eq could not
produce scenarios reaching atmospheric concentration ¶ levels that make it as likely as not that temperature change will
remain below 2°C relative to pre‐¶ industrial levels. [6.4, 7.11, Figures TS.11, TS.13]
GLOBAL WARMING MAKES CORAL REEF BLEACHING WORSE
Buddemeir, Kleypas, and Aronson 04
[Robert W. Buddemeier, Kansas Geological Survey, Joan A. Kleypas, National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Richard B Aronson, Dauphin Island Sea Lab;
February 2004; Coral Reefs and Global Climate Change; Pew Center on Global Climate Change; http://www.c2es.org/docUploads/Coral_Reefs.pdf; accessed 17 May
2014; AC]
Coral reef alteration, degradation, and loss will continue for the foreseeable future, especially in those areas already
showing evidence of systemic stress. As we enter unprecedented climatic state, recent geological and biological history gives us little on which to base
predictions regarding the future of coral reef ecosystems. Key uncertainties include the extent to which human activities will continue to alter the environment, how
climate variability such as the frequency and intensity of El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events will change relative to global temperature, and the biological and
ecological responses of coral reef communities to unprecedented future conditions. However, there is no realistic doubt that continued climate
change will cause further degradation of coral reef communities, which will be even more devastating in combination
with the continuing nonclimate stresses that will almost certainly increase in magnitude and frequency. The effects of climate
change on global coral reef ecosystems will vary from one region to another. Although climate change has the potential to yield some benefits for certain coral species
in specific regions, such as the expansion of their geographic ranges to higher latitudes, most of the effects of climate change are stressful rather
than beneficial. Reef systems that are at the intersection of global climatic and local human stresses will be the most
vulnerable. Remote, deep, or well-protected reef communities are more likely to provide reserves and refuges for future generations of coral reef organisms and
aesthetic and scientific resources for future generations of humans.
TARGET CO2 EMISSIONS BY 2100 FOR 2 DEGREES C
IPCC 14
[International Panel on Climate Change, April 7-11, 2014; Summary for Policymakers; Final Draft; Working Group III; PDF;
http://report.mitigation2014.org/spm/ipcc_wg3_ar5_summary-for-policymakers_approved.pdf; accessed 17 May 2014; AC]
Mitigation scenarios in which it is likely that the temperature change caused by anthropogenic ¶ GHG emissions can be
kept to less than 2°C relative to pre‐industrial levels are characterized by ¶ atmospheric concentrations in 2100 of about 450 ppm CO2eq (high
confidence). Mitigation ¶ scenarios reaching concentration levels of about 500 ppm CO2eq by 2100 are more likely than not to
¶ limit temperature change to less than 2°C relative to pre‐industrial levels, unless they temporarily ¶ ‘overshoot’ concentration levels of roughly 530
ppm CO2eq before 2100, in which case they are ¶ about as likely as not to achieve that goal.15 Scenarios that reach 530 to 650 ppm CO2eq ¶
concentrations by 2100 are more unlikely than likely to keep temperature change below 2°C relative ¶ to pre‐industrial levels.
Scenarios that reach about 650 ppm CO2eq by 2100 are unlikely to limit ¶ temperature change to below 2°C relative to pre‐industrial levels. Mitigation scenarios in
which temperature increase is more likely than not to be less than 1.5°C relative to pre‐industrial levels by ¶ 2100 are characterized by concentrations in 2100 of below
430 ppm CO2eq. Temperature peaks ¶ during the century and then declines in these scenarios. Probability statements regarding other ¶ levels of temperature change can
be made with reference to Table SPM.1. [6.3, Box TS.6] ¶
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INTERNATIONAL COOP KEY
IPCC 14
[International Panel on Climate Change, April 7-11, 2014; Summary for Policymakers; Final Draft; Working Group III; PDF;
http://report.mitigation2014.org/spm/ipcc_wg3_ar5_summary-for-policymakers_approved.pdf; accessed 17 May 2014; AC]
Effective mitigation will not be achieved if individual agents advance their own interests ¶ independently. Climate change
has the characteristics of a collective action problem at the global ¶ scale, because most greenhouse gases (GHGs)
accumulate over time and mix globally, and emissions ¶ by any agent (e.g., individual, community, company, country) affect other agents.4 ¶
International ¶ cooperation is therefore required to effectively mitigate GHG emissions and address other climate ¶ change
issues [1.2.4, 2.6.4, 3.1, 4.2, 13.2, 13.3]. Furthermore, research and development in support ¶ of mitigation creates knowledge spillovers. International
cooperation can play a constructive role in ¶ the development, diffusion and transfer of knowledge and environmentally
sound technologies ¶ [1.4.4, 3.11.6, 11.8, 13.9, 14.4.3].
ALT CAUSE – POP AND ECON GROWTH
IPCC 14
[International Panel on Climate Change, April 7-11, 2014; Summary for Policymakers; Final Draft; Working Group III; PDF;
http://report.mitigation2014.org/spm/ipcc_wg3_ar5_summary-for-policymakers_approved.pdf; accessed 17 May 2014; AC]
Globally, economic and population growth continue to be the most important drivers of increases ¶ in CO2 emissions from
fossil fuel combustion. The contribution of population growth between ¶ 2000 and 2010 remained roughly identical to the previous three decades, while the
contribution of ¶ economic growth has risen sharply (high confidence). Between 2000 and 2010, both drivers ¶ outpaced emission reductions from improvements in
energy intensity (Figure SPM.3).
Increased use ¶ of coal relative to other energy sources has reversed the long‐standing trend of
gradual ¶ decarbonization of the world’s energy supply. [1.3, 5.3, 7.2, 14.3, TS.2.2]¶
THE TIME TO ACT IS NOW – THE GREAT BARRIER REEF WILL BE DESTROYED BY 2030 WITHOUT A 2 DEGREE
REDUCTION
AFP 14
[Agence France Presse; Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Will 'Disappear' Within Two Decades With No Intervention; Business Insider;
http://www.businessinsider.com/australias-great-barrier-reef-will-disappear-within-two-decades-with-no-intervention-2014-3#ixzz356ulfTCz; accessed 19 June 2014;
AC]
Time is running out for Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, with climate change set to wreck irreversible damage by 2030
unless immediate action is taken, marine scientists said on Thursday.¶ In a report prepared for this month’s Earth Hour global climate change campaign,
University of Queensland reef researcher Ove Hoegh-Guldberg said the world heritage site was at a turning point. ¶ “If we don’t increase our commitment
to solve the burgeoning stress from local and global sources, the reef will disappear,” he wrote in the foreword to the report.¶ “This is
not a hunch or alarmist rhetoric by green activists. It is the conclusion of the world’s most qualified coral reef experts.” ¶
Hoegh-Guldberg said scientific consensus was that hikes in carbon dioxide and the average global temperature were “almost certain to
destroy the coral communities of the Great Barrier Reef for hundreds if not thousands of years”.¶ “It is highly unlikely that
coral reefs will survive more than a two-degree increase in average global temperature relative to pre-industrial levels,” he
said.¶ “But if the current trajectory of carbon pollution levels continues unchecked, the world is on track for at least three degrees of warming. If we don’t act
now, the climate change damage caused to our Great Barrier Reef by 2030 will be irreversible.Ӧ The Great Barrier Reef, one of the
most biodiverse places on earth, teems with marine life and will be the focus of Australia’s Earth Hour – a global campaign that encourages individuals and
organisations to switch off their lights for one hour on April 29 for climate change.
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CLIMATE CHANGE YES
GHG EMISSIONS RISING
IPCC 14
[International Panel on Climate Change, April 7-11, 2014; Summary for Policymakers; Final Draft; Working Group III; PDF;
http://report.mitigation2014.org/spm/ipcc_wg3_ar5_summary-for-policymakers_approved.pdf; accessed 17 May 2014; AC]
Total anthropogenic GHG emissions have continued to increase over 1970 to 2010 with larger ¶ absolute
decadal increases toward the end of this period (high confidence). Despite a growing ¶ number of climate change
mitigation policies, annual GHG emissions grew on average by 1.0 giga ¶ tonne carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2eq) (2.2%) per year
from 2000 to 2010 compared to 0.4 ¶ GtCO2eq (1.3%) per year from 1970 to 2000 (Figure SPM.1).6,7 Total anthropogenic GHG emissions
¶ were the highest in human history from 2000 to 2010 and reached 49 (±4.5) GtCO2eq/yr in 2010. The ¶ global economic
crisis 2007/2008 only temporarily reduced emissions. [1.3, 5.2, 13.3, 15.2.2, Box ¶ TS.5, Figure 15.1]
97% OF SCIENTISTS IN THE FIELD SUPPORT THE UNEQUIVOCAL CLAIM THAT THE EARTH IS WARMING.
Walsh 14
(J.D. Walsh, University of Alaska Fairbanks, May 2014, Wuebbles, K. Hayhoe, J. Kossin, K. Kunkel, G. Stephens, P. Thorne, R. Vose, M. Wehner, J. Willis, D. Anderson, V. Kharin, T. Knutson, F. Landerer, T. Lenton, J. Kennedy, and R. Somerville, 2014: Appendix 3: Climate Science Supplement. Climate Change Impacts in the
United States: The Third National Climate Assessment, J. M. Melillo, Terese (T.C.) Richmond, and G. W. Yohe, Eds., U.S. Global Change Research Program, 735789. doi:10.7930/J0KS6PHH. On the Web: http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/appendices/climate-science-supplement)
Multiple analyses of the peer-reviewed science literature have repeatedly shown that more than 97% of scientists in this
field agree that the world is unequivocally warming and that human activity is the primary cause of the warming
experienced over the past 50 years. Spirited debates on some details of climate science continue, but these fundamental conclusions are not
in dispute.The scientific method is built on scrutiny and debate among scientists. Scientists are rigorously trained to conduct experiments to test a question, or
hypothesis, and submit their findings to the scrutiny of other experts in their field. Part of that scrutiny, known as “peer review,” includes independent scientists
examining the data, analysis methods, and findings of a study that has been submitted for publication. This peer review process provides quality assurance for scientific
results, ensuring that anything published in a scientific journal has been reviewed and approved by other independent experts in the field and that the authors of the
original study have adequately responded to any criticisms or questions they received. However, peer review is only the first step in the long process of acceptance of
new ideas. After publication, other scientists will often undertake new studies that may support or reject the findings of the original study. Only after an exhaustive
series of studies over many years, by many different research groups, are new ideas widely accepted. Given that new scientific understanding emerges from this
exhaustive process, the widespread agreement in the scientific community regarding the reality of climate change and the
leading role of human activities in driving this change is striking. This consensus includes agreement on the fundamental
scientific principles that underlie this phenomenon, as well as the weight of empirical evidence that has been accumulated
over decades, and even centuries, of research. The conclusion that the world is warming, and that this is primarily due to
human activity, is based on multiple lines of evidence, from basic physics to the patterns of change through the climate
system (including the atmosphere, oceans, land, biosphere, and cryosphere). The warming of global climate and its causes are not matters of
opinion; they are matters of scientific evidence, and that evidence is clear. Scientists do not “believe” in human-induced
climate change; rather, the widespread agreement among scientists is based on the vast array of evidence that has
accumulated over the last 200 years. When all of the evidence is considered, the conclusions are clear. There is more work to be
done to fully understand the many complex and interacting aspects of climate change, and important questions remain. Scientific debate continues on questions such as:
Exactly how sensitive is the Earth’s climate to human emissions of heat-trapping gases? How will climate change affect clouds? How will climate change affect
snowstorms in Chicago, tornadoes in Oklahoma, and droughts in California? How do particle and soot emissions affect clouds? How will cli- mate change be affected
by changes in clouds and the oceans? These detailed questions, and more, serve as healthy indicators that the scientific method is alive and well in the field of climate
science. But the fact that climate is changing, that this is primarily in response to human activities, and that climate will
continue to change in response to these activities, is not in dispute.
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CLIMATE CHANGE HAPPENING NOW, OCEANS FEELING THE EFFECTS
Kearney and McIvor 14
[William Kearney, Director of Media Relations for National Academy of Sciences, and Chloe McIvor, Press Officer for the UK Royal Society; February 27, 2014;
NAS, UK Royal Society release joint publication on climate change, http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=18730; accessed 8 July
2014; AC]
'As two of the world's leading scientific bodies, we feel a responsibility to evaluate and explain what is known about climate change, at least the physical side of it, to
concerned citizens, educators, decision makers and leaders and to advance public dialogue about how to respond to the threats of climate change,' said NAS President
Ralph J. Cicerone. 'Our aim with this new resource is to provide people with easy access to the latest scientific evidence on climate change, including where scientists
agree and where uncertainty still remains,' Royal Society President Sir Paul Nurse also said. "We have enough evidence to warrant action being
taken on climate change - it is now time for the public debate to move forward to discuss what we can do to limit the
impact on our lives and those of future generations." 'Climate Change: Evidence and Causes,' written and reviewed by
leading experts in both countries, lays out which aspects of climate change are well-understood and where there is still
uncertainty and a need for more research. Carbon dioxide (CO2) rose to levels not seen for at least 800,000 years and
observational records dating back to the mid-19th century show a clear, long-term warming trend. The publication explains
measurements that distinguish between different forms of carbon in the atmosphere provide clear evidence increased amount of CO2 comes
primarily from combustion of fossil fuels and discusses why warming that occurred along with increase in CO2 cannot be
explained by natural causes such as variations in the Sun's output. The publication delves into other commonly asked questions about climate
change. Examples of these are what the slower rate of warming since the very warm year in 1998 means as well as whether and how climate change affects strength and
frequency of extreme weather events. Many effects of climate change have already become apparent in the observational record but
possible extent of future impacts needs to be better understood. For example, while average global sea levels have risen
about eight inches (20 cm) since 1901 and are expected to continue rising, more research is needed to more accurately
predict size of future sea level rise. Chemical balance of the oceans also shifted towards a more acidic stat, which makes it
difficult for organisms such as corals and shellfish to form and maintain their shells. As oceans continue to absorb CO2,
their acidity will continue to increase over the next century along with as yet undetermined impacts on marine ecosystems
and the food web.
NEW REPORT
NOW.
SHOWS THAT HUNDREDS OF SCIENTISTS AGREE CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL AND HAPPENING
Times Union 14
[Times Union, May 10, 2014, Climate Change is Here Now; http://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/Editorial-Climate-change-is-here-now-5468375.php; accessed
8 July 2014]
Americans cannot afford to ignore it or even move slowly in our response. Even as one credible report after another describes with scary
detail how we, our children and our grandchildren will be affected by climate change, it remains frustratingly difficult to
make the substantive changes needed now to deal with the negative effects of our planet's rising temperatures. Last week,
in the third such national report released since 2000, more than 250 scientists and government officials presented evidence
and conclusions about the changes we will face in the coming decades. More importantly, it declares that, once considered
an issue for a distant future, climate change and its ill effects are firmly in the present. The document, known as the National Climate
Assessment, vividly describes how the Earth's warming has so far affected the United States. "For our kids today and coming generations, climate change is going to be
a part of their reality," said David Wolf, chairman of the Climate Change Focus Group at Cornell University. Professor Wolf delved into how the Northeast will fare.
Upstate New York will be wetter and warmer, an environment in which disease carrying ticks and mosquitoes will thrive while some of our traditional crops and
livestock will not.
Much that was predicted when the U.S. government released its last report in 2008 has started. The report cites recent events like increased flooding
from heavy rainfall, more coastal storm damage due to sea level rise and increased summer heat and drought. Detectable
patterns in birds and other wildlife migration have been documented.President Barack Obama underscored that the report's predictions are not
some problem for the distant future: "This is a problem that is affecting Americans right now. . . having an impact on Americans as we speak." The extent of the impact
of climate change may be questioned, but there's no question we're already feeling it. Even so, the most recent University of Texas energy poll found more Americans
are concerned about protecting their pocketbooks than the environment. Our nation continues to rely on 600 coal-fired power plants for electricity. They make up the
largest source of the nation's carbon emissions -- estimated to be about 40 percent of the total -- and contribute to global warming. Support is growing to change the tax
structure to better reward those who emit less carbon and to expedite change throughout our economy and our power infrastructure. Such sensible measures will
certainly help and must happen. Yes, other emerging economies are continuing to pollute the atmosphere. But how can the U.S. urge other nations to reduce emissions
unless we embrace the practice of reducing by example, and then press for treaties to force global environmental improvement?
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TEMPERATURE INCREASE SET TO OCCUR DUE TO WARMING.
Endenhofer et al 14 (Otto Endenhofer, IPCC scientist (Germany), Ottmar Edenhofer (Germany), Ramón Pichs-Madruga (Cuba), Youba Sokona (Mali),
Shardul ¶ Agrawala (France), Igor Alexeyevich Bashmakov (Russia), Gabriel Blanco (Argentina), ¶ John Broome (UK), Thomas Bruckner (Germany), Steffen Brunner
(Germany), Mercedes ¶ Bustamante (Brazil), Leon Clarke (USA), Felix Creutzig (Germany), Shobhakar Dhakal ¶ (Nepal / Thailand), Navroz K. Dubash (India),
Patrick Eickemeier (Germany), Ellie Farahani ¶ (Canada), Manfred Fischedick (Germany), Marc Fleurbaey (France), Reyer Gerlagh ¶ (Netherlands), Luis GómezEcheverri (Colombia / Austria), Sujata Gupta (India / Philippines), ¶ Jochen Harnisch (Germany), Kejun Jiang (China), Susanne Kadner (Germany), Sivan Kartha ¶
(USA), Stephan Klasen (Germany), Charles Kolstad (USA), Volker Krey (Austria / Germany), ¶ Howard Kunreuther (USA), Oswaldo Lucon (Brazil), Omar Masera
(México), Jan Minx ¶ (Germany), Yacob Mulugetta (UK / Ethiopia), Anthony Patt (Austria / Switzerland), Nijavalli ¶ H. Ravindranath (India), Keywan Riahi (Austria),
Joyashree Roy (India), Roberto Schaeffer ¶ (Brazil), Steffen Schlömer (Germany), Karen Seto (USA), Kristin Seyboth (USA), Ralph Sims ¶ (New Zealand), Jim Skea
(UK), Pete Smith (UK), Eswaran Somanathan (India), Robert Stavins ¶ (USA), Christoph von Stechow (Germany), Thomas Sterner (Sweden), Taishi Sugiyama ¶
(Japan), Sangwon Suh (Republic of Korea / USA), Kevin Chika Urama (Nigeria / UK), Diana ¶ Ürge-Vorsatz (Hungary), David Victor (USA), Dadi Zhou (China), Ji
Zou (China), Timm Zwickel ¶ (Germany); March 2014, Climate Change 2014: Mitigation for Climate Change; Summary for Policymakers;
http://report.mitigation2014.org/spm/ipcc_wg3_ar5_summary-for-policymakers_approved.pdf; accessed 8 July 2014]
Without additional efforts to reduce GHG emissions beyond those in place today, emissions growth is expected to persist
driven by growth in global population and economic activities. Baseline scenarios, those without additional mitigation,
result in global mean surface temperature increases in 2100 from 3.7 to 4.8°C compared to pre‐industrial levels (median
values; the range is 2.5°C to 7.8°C when including climate uncertainty) (high confidence). The emission scenarios
collected for this assessment represent full radiative forcing including GHGs, tropospheric ozone, aerosols and albedo
change. Baseline scenarios (scenarios without explicit additional efforts to constrain emissions) exceed 450 parts per
million (ppm) CO2eq by 2030 and reach CO2eq concentration levels between 750 and more than 1300 ppm CO2eq by
2100. This is similar to the range in atmospheric concentration levels between the RCP 6.0 and RCP 8.5 pathways in
2100. For comparison, the CO2eq concentration in 2011 is estimated to be 430 ppm (uncertainty range 340–520 ppm).
CLIMATE CHANGE IS HAPPENING NOW
Goldenberg 2014
(Suzanne Goldenberg, enviornmental correspondent for the Guardian, Guardian, May 4, 2014, Climate change is clear and present danger, says landmark US report
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/04/climate-change-present-us-national-assessment)
Climate change has moved from distant threat to present-day danger and no American will be left unscathed, according to
a landmark report due to be unveiled on Tuesday. The National Climate Assessment, a 1,300-page report compiled by 300
leading scientists and experts, is meant to be the definitive account of the effects of climate change on the US. It will be
formally released at a White House event and is expected to drive the remaining two years of Barack Obama's environmental agenda. The findings are expected to
guide Obama as he rolls out the next and most ambitious phase of his climate change plan in June - a proposal to cut emissions from the current generation of power
plants, America's largest single source of carbon pollution. The White House is believed to be organising a number of events over the coming week to give the report
greater exposure. "Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present," a draft
version of the report says. The evidence is visible everywhere from the top of the atmosphere to the bottom of the ocean,
it goes on. "Americans are noticing changes all around them. Summers are longer and hotter, and periods of extreme heat last longer
than any living American has ever experienced. Winters are generally shorter and warmer. Rain comes in heavier
downpours, though in many regions there are longer dry spells in between." The final wording was under review by the
White House but the basic gist remained unchanged, scientists who worked on the report said. On Sunday the UN secretary-general, Ban
Ki-moon, said the world needed to try harder to combat climate change. At a meeting of UN member states in Abu Dhabi
before a climate change summit in New York on 23 September, Ban said: "I am asking them to announce bold
commitments and actions that will catalyse the transformative change we need. If we do not take urgent action, all our
plans for increased global prosperity and security will be undone." Gary Yohe, an economist at Wesleyan University and
vice-chair of the NCA advisory committee, said the US report would be unequivocal that the effects of climate change
were occurring in real-time and were evident in every region of the country. "One major take-home message is that just
about every place in the country has observed that the climate has changed," he told the Guardian. "It is here and happening, and
we are not cherrypicking or fearmongering." The draft report notes that average temperature in the US has increased by
about 1.5F (0.8C) since 1895, with more than 80% of that rise since 1980. The last decade was the hottest on record in the
US. Temperatures are projected to rise another 2F over the next few decades, the report says. In northern latitudes such as
Alaska, temperatures are rising even faster. "There is no question our climate is changing," said Don Wuebbles, a climate
scientist at the University of Illinois and a lead author of the assessment. "It is changing at a factor of 10 times more than
naturally." Record-breaking heat - even at night - is expected to produce more drought and fuel larger and more frequent
wildfires in the south-west, the report says. The north-east, midwest and Great Plains states will see an increase in heavy
downpours and a greater risk of flooding.
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CLIMATE CHANGE WILL CONTINUE AND ACCELERATE.
NAS and the Royal Society 14
[U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the Royal Society, the national science academy of the U.K., 2014, Climate Change: Evidence and Causes,
https://royalsociety.org/~/media/Royal_Society_Content/policy/projects/climate-evidence-causes/climate-change-evidence-causes.pdf]
How confident are scientists that Earth will warm further over the coming century? Warming due to the addition of large
amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere can be understood in terms of very basic properties of greenhouse gases.
It will in turn lead to many changes in natural climate processes, with a net effect of amplifying the warming. The size of the
warming that will be experienced depends largely on the amount of greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere and hence on the trajectory of emissions. If the
total cumulative emissions since 1870 are kept below about 1 trillion (million million) tonnes of carbon, then there is a two-thirds chance of keeping the rise in global
average temperature since the pre-industrial period below 2 °C (3.6 oF). However, over half this amount has already been emitted. Based just on the
established physics of the amount of heat CO2 absorbs and emits, a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration from preindustrial levels (up to about 560 ppm) would by itself, without amplification by any other effects, cause a global average
temperature increase of about 1 °C (1.8 °F). However, the total amount of warming from a given amount of emissions
depends on chains of effects (feedbacks) that can individually either amplify or diminish the initial warming. The most
important amplifying feedback is caused by water vapour, which is a potent greenhouse gas in the atmosphere as warmer
air can hold more moisture. Also, as Arctic sea ice and glaciers melt, more sunlight is absorbed into the darker underlying
land and ocean surfaces causing further warming and further melting of ice and snow. The biggest uncertain factor in our knowledge of
feedbacks is in how the properties of clouds will change in response to climate change. Other feedbacks involve the carbon cycle. Currently the land and
oceans together absorb about half of the CO2 emitted from human activities, but the capacities of land and ocean to store
additional carbon are expected to decrease with additional warming, leading to faster increases in atmospheric CO2 and
faster warming. Models vary in their projections of how much additional warming to expect, but all such models agree
that the overall net effect of feedbacks is to amplify the CO2-only warming by a factor of 1.5 to 4.5. Very confident. If
emissions continue on their present trajectory, without either technological or regulatory abatement, then warming of 2.6
to 4.8 °C (4.7 to 8.6 °F) in addition to that which has already occurred would be expected by the end of the 21st century.
CLIMATE CHANGE IS HAPPENING NOW, IT’S GETTING WARMER.
NAS and the Royal Society 14
[U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the Royal Society, the national science academy of the U.K., 2014, Climate Change: Evidence and Causes,
https://royalsociety.org/~/media/Royal_Society_Content/policy/projects/climate-evidence-causes/climate-change-evidence-causes.pdf]
Earth’s average surface air temperature has increased by about 0.8 °C (1.4 °F) since 1900, with
much of this increase taking place since the mid-1970s. A wide range of other observations (such as reduced Arctic sea
ice extent and increased ocean heat content) and indications from the natural world (such as poleward shifts of
temperature-sensitive species of fish, mammals, insects, etc.) together provide incontrovertible evidence of planetaryscale warming. The clearest evidence for surface warming comes from widespread thermometer records. In some places,
these records extend back to the late 19th century. Today, temperatures are monitored at many thousands of locations, over both the land and ocean
surface. Indirect estimates of temperature change from such sources as tree rings and ice cores help to place recent
temperature changes in the context of the past. In terms of the average surface temperature of Earth, these indirect
estimates show that 1983 to 2012 was probably the warmest 30-year period in more than 800 years. A wide range of other
observations provides a more comprehensive picture of warming throughout the climate system. For example, the lower
atmosphere and the upper layers of the ocean have also warmed, snow and ice cover are decreasing in the Northern
Hemisphere, the Greenland ice sheet is shrinking, and sea level is rising [Figure 1b]. These measurements are made with a
variety of monitoring systems, which gives added confidence in the reality that Earth’s climate is warming.
Is the climate warming? Yes.
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CLIMATE CHANGE, IT’S REAL AND CAUSING PROBLEMS.
NAS and the Royal Society 14
[U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the Royal Society, the national science academy of the U.K., 2014, Climate Change: Evidence and Causes,
https://royalsociety.org/~/media/Royal_Society_Content/policy/projects/climate-evidence-causes/climate-change-evidence-causes.pdf]
Climate records show a warming trend Estimating global average surface air temperature increase requires careful analysis of
millions of measurements from around the world, including from land stations, ships, and satellites. Despite the many complications of synthesising
such data, multiple independent teams have concluded separately and unanimously that global average surface air
temperature has risen by about 0.8 °C (1.4 °F) since 1900. Although the record shows several pauses and accelerations in
the increasing trend, each of the last three decades has been warmer than any other decade in the instrumental record since
1850. Going further back in time before accurate thermometers were widely available, temperatures can be reconstructed using climatesensitive indicators (‘proxies’) in materials such as tree rings, ice cores, and marine sediments. Comparisons of the
thermometer record with these proxy measurements suggest that the time since the early 1980s has been the warmest 30year period in at least eight centuries, and that global temperature is rising towards peak temperatures last seen 5,000 to
10,000 years ago in the warmest part of our current interglacial period. Many other impacts associated with the warming
trend have become evident in recent years. Arctic summer sea ice cover has shrunk dramatically. The heat content of the
ocean has increased. Global average sea level has risen by approximately 20 cm (8 inches) since 1901, due both to the
expansion of warmer ocean water and to the addition of melt waters from glaciers and ice sheets on land. Warming and
precipitation changes are altering the geographical ranges of many plant and animal species and the timing of their life
cycles. In addition to the effects on climate, some of the excess CO2 in the atmosphere is being taken up by the ocean,
changing its chemical composition (causing ocean acidification).
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ANTHROPOGENIC
WARMING HAPPENING NOW DUE TO HUMAN RELATED ACTIVITIES
Walsh 14
(J.D. Walsh, University of Alaska Fairbanks, May 2014, Wuebbles, K. Hayhoe, J. Kossin, K. Kunkel, G. Stephens, P. Thorne, R. Vose, M. Wehner, J. Willis, D. Anderson, V. Kharin, T. Knutson, F. Landerer, T. Lenton, J. Kennedy, and R. Somerville, 2014: Appendix 3: Climate Science Supplement. Climate Change Impacts in the
United States: The Third National Climate Assessment, J. M. Melillo, Terese (T.C.) Richmond, and G. W. Yohe, Eds., U.S. Global Change Research Program, 735789. doi:10.7930/J0KS6PHH. On the Web: http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/appendices/climate-science-supplement)
This human-caused intensification of the greenhouse effect is the primary cause of observed warming in recent decades.
Carbon dioxide has been building up in the Earth’s atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial era in the mid-1700s.
Emissions and atmospheric levels, or concentrations, of other important heat-trapping gases – including methane, nitrous
oxide, and halocarbons – have also increased because of human activities. While the atmospheric concentrations of these
gases are relatively small compared to those of molecular oxy- gen or nitrogen, their ability to trap heat is extremely
strong. The human-induced increase in atmospheric levels of carbon di- oxide and other heat-trapping gases is the main
reason the planet has warmed over the past 50 years and has been an important factor in climate change over the past 150
years or more.
THE MAIN CAUSE OF WARMING IS HUMAN INDUCED CLIMATE CHANGE
Walsh 14
(J.D. Walsh, University of Alaska Fairbanks, May 2014, Wuebbles, K. Hayhoe, J. Kossin, K. Kunkel, G. Stephens, P. Thorne, R. Vose, M. Wehner, J. Willis, D. Anderson, V. Kharin, T. Knutson, F. Landerer, T. Lenton, J. Kennedy, and R. Somerville, 2014: Appendix 3: Climate Science Supplement. Climate Change Impacts in the
United States: The Third National Climate Assessment, J. M. Melillo, Terese (T.C.) Richmond, and G. W. Yohe, Eds., U.S. Global Change Research Program, 735789. doi:10.7930/J0KS6PHH. On the Web: http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/appendices/climate-science-supplement)
Determining the causes of climate changes is a field of research known as “detection and attribution.” Detection involves
identifying a climate trend or event (for instance, long-term surface air temperature trends, or a particularly extreme heat wave) that is strikingly
outside the norm of natural variations in the climate system. Similar to conducting forensic analysis on evidence from a crime scene,
attribution involves considering the possible causes of an observed event or change, and identifying which factor(s) are
responsible. Detection and attribution studies use statistical analyses to identify the causes of observed changes in
temperature, precipitation, and other aspects of climate. They do this by trying to match the complex “fingerprint” of the
observed climate system behavior to a set of simulated changes in climate that would be caused by different forcings. Most
approaches con- sider not only global but also regional patterns of changes over time. Climate simulations are used to test hypotheses regarding
the causes of observed changes. First, simulations that include changes in both natural and human forcings that may cause
climate changes, such as changes in energy from the sun and increases in heat-trapping gases, are used to characterize what effect those factors
would have had working together. Then, simulations with no changes in external forcings, only changes due to natural
variability, are used to characterize what would be expected from normal internal variations in the climate. The results of
these simulations are compared to observations to see which provides the best match for what has really occurred. Detection
and attribution studies have been applied to study a broad range of changes in the climate system as well as a number of specific extreme events that have occurred in
recent years. These studies have found that human influences are the only explanation for the observed changes in climate
over the last half-century. Such changes include increases in surface temperatures, changes in atmospheric vertical
temperature profiles, increases in ocean heat content, increasing atmospheric humidity, increases in intensity of
precipitation and in runoff, indirectly estimated through changes in ocean salinity, shifts in atmospheric circulation, and
changes in host of other indices. Taken together these paint a coherent picture of a planet whose climate is changing
primarily as a result of human activities. Detection and attribution of specific events is more challenging than for long-term trends as there are less data,
or evidence, available from which to draw conclusions. Attribution of extreme events is especially scientifically challenging. Many extreme weather and climate events
observed to date are within the range of what could have occurred naturally, but the probability, or odds, of some of these very rare events occurring has been
significantly altered by human influences on the climate system. For example, studies have concluded that there is a detectable human influence in recent heat waves in
Europe, Russia, and Texas as well as flooding events in England and Wales, the timing and magnitude of snowmelt and resulting streamflow in some western U.S.
states, and some specific events around the globe during 2011.
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VARIOUS TYPES OF OBSERVATIONS POINT TO THE CLIMATE CHANGING AND HUMANS BEING THE REASON.
Walsh 14
(J.D. Walsh, University of Alaska Fairbanks, May 2014, Wuebbles, K. Hayhoe, J. Kossin, K. Kunkel, G. Stephens, P. Thorne, R. Vose, M. Wehner, J. Willis, D. Anderson, V. Kharin, T. Knutson, F. Landerer, T. Lenton, J. Kennedy, and R. Somerville, 2014: Appendix 3: Climate Science Supplement. Climate Change Impacts in the
United States: The Third National Climate Assessment, J. M. Melillo, Terese (T.C.) Richmond, and G. W. Yohe, Eds., U.S. Global Change Research Program, 735789. doi:10.7930/J0KS6PHH. On the Web: http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/appendices/climate-science-supplement)
There are many types of observations that can be used to detect changes in climate and determine what is causing these changes.
Thermometer and other
instrument-based surface weather records date back hundreds of years in some locations. Air temperatures are measured at fixed
locations over land and with a mix of predominantly ship- and buoy-based measurements over the ocean. By 1850, a sufficiently extensive array of
land-based observing stations and ship-borne observations had accumulated to begin tracking global average temperature.
Measurements from weather balloons began in the early 1900s, and by 1958 were regularly taken around the world. Satellite records
beginning in the 1970s provide additional perspectives, particularly for remote areas such as the Arctic that have limited ground-based
observations. Satellites also provided new capabilities for mapping precipitation and upper air temperatures. Climate “proxies” – biological or physical records ranging from tree rings to ice cores that correlate with aspects of climate – provide further evidence of past climate that can stretch back hundreds of thousands of years. These diverse datasets have been analyzed by scientists and
engineers from research teams around the world in many dif- ferent ways. The most high-profile indication of the
changing climate is the surface temperature record, so it has received the most attention. Spatial coverage, equipment, methods of
observation, and many other aspects of the measurement re- cord have changed over time, so scientists identify and adjust for these changes . Independent
research groups have looked at the surface temperature record for land21 and ocean22 as well as land and ocean combined.23,24 Each group
takes a dif- ferent approach, yet all agree that it is unequivocal that the planet is warming.There has been widespread warming over the
past century. Not every region has warmed at the same pace, however, and a few regions, such as the North Atlantic Ocean (Figure 9) and some parts of the U.S.
Southeast (Ch. 2: Our Changing Climate, Figure 2.7), have even experienced cooling over the last century as a whole, though they have warmed over recent decades.
This is due to the stronger influence of internal variability over smaller geographic regions and shorter time scales, as mentioned in Supplemental Message 1 and
discussed in more detail in Supplemental Message 3. Warming during the first half of the last century occurred mostly in the Northern Hemisphere. The last three
decades have seen greater warming in response to accelerating increases in heat-trapping gas concentrations, particularly at high northern latitudes, and over land as
compared to ocean.
SCIENCE COMMUNITY AGREES CLIMATE CHANGE HAPPENING NOW AND HUMANS ARE THE CAUSE.
Lowenthal 14
[Rep. Alan Lowenthal, March 26, 2014, The Huffington Post, “Climate Change: Case Closed” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-alan-lowenthal/climate-changescience_b_5030346.html]
Today, we are at an environmental crossroads. Just as those that pioneered environmental protection in the 20th Century faced the threat of industrial pollution, this
generation faces a looming environmental disaster of our own creation. Human-caused climate change threatens almost every aspect of
human existence. Left unchecked, the world of tomorrow will be a vastly different world than the one we know today.
And yet, despite rising sea levels, shrinking glaciers, retreating arctic ice, ocean acidification, changing wildlife patterns,
and extreme weather events worldwide, polls continue to show that a large portion of the public believe there is
significant scientific disagreement as to whether human actions are contributing to climate change -- or even if climate
change is real. Nothing could be further from the truth. Disinformation by entities with conflicts of interest has fueled reports of
scientific disagreement, not scientists. Today, there is not a single scientific body of national or international standing that
rejects the findings of human-caused climate change. Not one. The same unanimity is true of articles published in diverse scientific journals.
Researcher Dr. James Powell, a geochemist and 12-year member of the National Science Board just completed the most
recent update to his survey of the peer-reviewed literature on climate change. Dr. Powell found that out of the 10,885
peer-reviewed scientific papers published on climate change in all of 2013 only two papers reject human-caused climate
change Two out of nearly 11,000. That is less than two-hundredths of one percent of all scientific papers that rejected
human-caused climate change. This is not disagreement. This is not a divided scientific community The reason for this is
simple: there is no convincing scientific evidence against a human role in climate change. Period. Those who deny human-caused
climate change offer no compelling evidence to better explain the undeniable rise in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and global temperature. The case
is closed. We need to put this illusion of major scientific disagreement behind us and take action.
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HUMAN ACTIVITIES ARE CAUSING INCREASES IN WARMING RESULTING IN CLIMATE CHANGE.
NAS and the Royal Society 14
[U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the Royal Society, the national science academy of the U.K., 2014, Climate Change: Evidence and Causes,
https://royalsociety.org/~/media/Royal_Society_Content/policy/projects/climate-evidence-causes/climate-change-evidence-causes.pdf]
GREENHOUSE GASES such as carbon dioxide (CO2) absorb heat (infrared radiation) emitted from Earth’s surface.
Increases in the atmospheric concentrations of these gases cause Earth to warm by trapping more of this heat. Human
activities—especially the burning of fossil fuels since the start of the Industrial Revolution—have increased atmospheric
CO2 concentrations by about 40%, with more than half the increase occurring since 1970. Since 1900, the global average
surface temperature has increased by about 0.8 °C (1.4 °F). This has been accompanied by warming of the ocean, a rise in
sea level, a strong decline in Arctic sea ice, and many other associated climate effects. Much of this warming has occurred
in the last four decades. Detailed analyses have shown that the warming during this period is mainly a result of the
increased concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Continued emissions of these gases will cause further
climate change, including substantial increases in global average surface temperature and important changes in regional
climate. The magnitude and timing of these changes will depend on many factors, and slowdowns and accelerations in warming lasting a decade or more will
continue to occur. However, long-term climate change over many decades will depend mainly on the total amount of CO2 and
other greenhouse gases emitted as a result of human activities.
HUMAN CAUSES HAVE INCREASE WARMING
NAS and the Royal Society 14
[U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the Royal Society, the national science academy of the U.K., 2014, Climate Change: Evidence and Causes,
https://royalsociety.org/~/media/Royal_Society_Content/policy/projects/climate-evidence-causes/climate-change-evidence-causes.pdf]
Human activities have added greenhouse gases to the atmosphere The
atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous
oxide have increased significantly since the Industrial Revolution began. In the case of carbon dioxide, the average
concentration measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii has risen from 316 parts per million (ppm) in 1959 (the
first full year of data available) to 396 ppm in 2013. The same rates of increase have since been recorded at numerous
other stations worldwide. Since pre-industrial times, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has increased by 40%,
methane has increased by about 150%, and nitrous oxide has increased by roughly 20%. More than half of the increase in
CO2 has occurred since 1970. Increases in all three gases contribute to warming of Earth, with the increase in CO2
playing the largest role. See page B3 to learn about the sources of human emitted greenhouse gases. Scientists have examined greenhouse gases in the context
of the past. Analysis of air trapped inside ice that has been accumulating over time in Antarctica shows that the CO2
concentration began to increase significantly in the 19th century after staying in the range of 260 to 280 ppm for the
previous 10,000 years. Ice core records extending back 800,000 years show that during that time, CO2 concentrations
remained within the range of 170 to 300 ppm throughout many ‘ice age’ cycles—see page B4 to learn about the ice ages—and no
concentration above 300 ppm is seen in ice core records until the past 200 years. Measurements of the forms (isotopes) of
carbon in the modern atmosphere show a clear fingerprint of the addition of ‘old’ carbon (depleted in natural radioactive
14C) coming from the combustion of fossil fuels (as opposed to ‘newer’ carbon coming from living systems). In addition,
it is known that human activities (excluding land-use changes) currently emit an estimated 10 billion tonnes of carbon
each year, mostly by burning fossil fuels, which is more than enough to explain the observed increase in concentration.
These and other lines of evidence point conclusively to the fact that the elevated CO2 concentration in our atmosphere is the result of human activities.
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CLIMATE CHANGE NOT HAPPENING NOW/NO IMPACT
CLIMATE CHANGE WON’T CAUSE EXTINCTION
Thomas 2014
(Cal Thomas, The Examiner (Washington, DC), April 16, 2014, Climate change cult has to shout louder to be heard amid public skepticism,
http://washingtonexaminer.com/climate-change-cult-has-to-shout-louder-to-be-heard-amid-public-skepticism/article/2547337)
The Times story was about a meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Berlin. To read it, one might
think there is unanimity of opinion on the subject by panel members. Maybe that's true of current members of the panel,
but it is instructive to read the comments by former IPCC member Richard Tol, who, among other things, is professor of
the economics of climate change at the Institute for Environmental Studies and Department of Spatial Economics, Vrije
Universiteit, Amsterdam. Professor Tol, writes globalwarming.org, recently "accused the IPCC of being too alarmist about global
warming and asked to have his name withdrawn from its recently released Working Group II report (WG2) on climate
change impacts." In a recent article for the Financial Times titled "Bogus prophecies of doom will not fix the climate," Tol
explains why: "Humans are a tough and adaptable species. People live on the equator and in the Arctic, in the desert and
in the rainforest. We survived the ice ages with primitive technologies. The idea that climate change poses an existential
threat to humankind is laughable."
NO RAPID WARMING
McGrath ’13
(Matt McGrath, Environment correspondent, BBC News, “Climate slowdown means extreme rates of warming 'not as likely'”, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/scienceenvironment-22567023, May 19, 2013)
Scientists say the recent downturn in the rate of global warming will lead to lower temperature rises in the short-term.
Since 1998, there has been an unexplained "standstill" in the heating of the Earth's atmosphere. Writing in Nature
Geoscience, the researchers say this will reduce predicted warming in the coming decades. But long-term, the expected
temperature rises will not alter significantly. “Start Quote The most extreme projections are looking less likely than before” Dr Alexander Otto
University of Oxford The slowdown in the expected rate of global warming has been studied for several years now. Earlier this
year, the UK Met Office lowered their five-year temperature forecast. But this new paper gives the clearest picture yet of
how any slowdown is likely to affect temperatures in both the short-term and long-term. An international team of
researchers looked at how the last decade would impact long-term, equilibrium climate sensitivity and the shorter term
climate response. Transient nature Climate sensitivity looks to see what would happen if we doubled concentrations of
CO2 in the atmosphere and let the Earth's oceans and ice sheets respond to it over several thousand years. Transient
climate response is much shorter term calculation again based on a doubling of CO2. The Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change reported in 2007 that the short-term temperature rise would most likely be 1-3C (1.8-5.4F). But in this
new analysis, by only including the temperatures from the last decade, the projected range would be 0.9-2.0C. Ice The
report suggests that warming in the near term will be less than forecast "The hottest of the models in the medium-term,
they are actually looking less likely or inconsistent with the data from the last decade alone," said Dr Alexander Otto from
the University of Oxford. "The most extreme projections are looking less likely than before."
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WARMING WON’T CAUSE EXTINCTION
Barrett ‘7
[Professor of natural resource economics – Columbia University, (Scott, Why Cooperate? The Incentive to Supply Global Public Goods, introduction)]
First, climate change does not threaten the survival of the human species.5 If unchecked, it will cause other species to
become extinction (though biodiversity is being depleted now due to other reasons). It will alter critical ecosystems
(though this is also happening now, and for reasons unrelated to climate change). It will reduce land area as the seas rise,
and in the process displace human populations. “Catastrophic” climate change is possible, but not certain. Moreover, and unlike
an asteroid collision, large changes (such as sea level rise of, say, ten meters) will likely take centuries to unfold, giving
societies time to adjust. “Abrupt” climate change is also possible, and will occur more rapidly, perhaps over a decade or
two. However, abrupt climate change (such as a weakening in the North Atlantic circulation), though potentially very
serious, is unlikely to be ruinous. Human-induced climate change is an experiment of planetary proportions, and we cannot be sure of its consequences.
Even in a worse case scenario, however, global climate change is not the equivalent of the Earth being hit by megaasteroid. Indeed, if it were as damaging as this, and if we were sure that it would be this harmful, then our incentive to
address this threat would be overwhelming. The challenge would still be more difficult than asteroid defense, but we would have done much more
about it by now.
GLOBAL COOLING LOCKED IN – CO2 DOESN’T CAUSE WARMING
Caruba, ’13 (Alan, founder of The National Anxiety Center, member of the Society of Professional Journalists, American Society of Journalists and Authors and
the National Association of Science Writers, “The Mini-Ice Age Has Arrived,” 3/19, http://www.albanytribune.com/HYPERLINK
"http://www.albanytribune.com/19032013-the-mini-ice-age-has-arrived%E2%80%8F-oped/" HYPERLINK "http://www.albanytribune.com/19032013-the-mini-iceage-has-arrived%E2%80%8F-oped/"HYPERLINK "http://www.albanytribune.com/19032013-the-mini-ice-age-has-arrived%E2%80%8F-oped/"19032013
One of the world’s most respected long-term climate forecasters is Piers Corbyn, an astrophysicist whose expertise is
relied upon by corporations and others who need to know what the weather will really be as opposed to the criminally
false claims about global warming. His website, WeatherAction, is well worth visiting. In his own words, “WeatherAction is involved in the Global
Warming/Climate Change debate where we point out that the world is now cooling not warming and there is no observational evidence in
the thousands and millions of years of data that changes in CO2 have any effect on weather or climate. There are no
scientists in the world who can produce such observational data. There is only effect the other way, namely that ocean
temperatures control average CO2 levels.” Recently Corbyn announced that “The CO2 story is over. It has been pointing the
world in the wrong direction for too long. The serious implications of the developing mini ice age to agriculture and the
world economy through the next 25 to 35 years must be addressed.” World cooling is now locked in says Corbyn, citing the
decrease in average solar activity and a jet stream that is often further south than normal, resulting in extreme weather
events. Following in the heels of Corbyn’s forecast was the release of a new report by Dr. David Whitehouse, published
by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, and what makes it fairly extraordinary after decades of global warming propaganda is that he concludes
that there has been no statistically significant increase in annual global temperatures since 1997. That’s seventeen years of
atrocious lies about a warming earth. The irony that Dr. Whitehouse includes in his report is that the atmospheric
composition of carbon dioxide has increased during that time from 370 ppm to 390 ppm. So, everything you have been told
about carbon dioxide emissions and those of other so-called greenhouse gases “causing” a warming earth is just lies, lies,
and lies.
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GLOBAL WARMING ISN’T HAPPENING AND THERE IS NO IMPACT
Francis ‘11
(Merlin Francis, writer for DNA India, “Climate Change is caused by Nature, not Human Activity,” DNA, 2/1/13, http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/HYPERLINK
"http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/1501621/report-climate-change-is-caused-by-nature-not-human-activity" HYPERLINK
"http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/1501621/report-climate-change-is-caused-by-nature-not-human-activity"HYPERLINK
"http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/1501621/report-climate-change-is-caused-by-nature-not-human-activity"1501621
“The current global warming is modest and is not of any threat to humanity,” said Dr Madhav Khandekar,
Environment Canada Expert Reviewer for the IPCC. Pointing out to various graphs at a lecture on Extreme Weather,
Monsoon Floods and the Uncertain Science of Global Warming, hosted by the Geological Society of India, he explained
that climate change has been a natural phenomena for centuries and it is premature to blame climate changes on
global warming. “From the geological perspective, the earth has been warming and cooling for long periods. Severe
droughts and floods happened even a hundred years ago. Let’s not rush in to say that climatic changes are due to
human activity,” he said. “Temperatures are impacted by road, buildings, and heat produced from air conditioners. We
do not take that into consideration when studies have shown that nearly 50% of increase in temperature is due to the urban
impact.” He also revealed that the present warming in Greenland is no more than what it was in the 1940s. “It was
significantly warmer then, so I don’t expect sea levels to rise much.” “We may be entering into a significantly colder era.
That’s what we should worry about and not global warming. “Several low temperature and snow accumulation records
have been broken in the last five years. Neither the IPCC nor climate change models offer any explanation for this,” he
said. “There is a disconnect when we say that there is global warming while we have been witnessing some of the
coldest winters.”
GLOBAL WARMING: NON-EXISTENT AND INCREDIBLY EXPENSIVE.
Kear ’13
(David Kear, former Director-General, NZ DSIR; United Nations consultant; & South Pacific geoscientist, “Global Warming alias Climate Change
[the Non-Existent, Incredibly expensive, Threat to us All, including to our Grandchildren]”, Climate Realists, 7/13,
http://www.climaterealists.org.nz/sites/climaterealists.org.nz/files/KearGW]
Astronomical Cost of Major Measures to Combat a Non-Existent Threat: Politicians and the Media have listened to the
proponents of Global-Warming Climate-Change, but don’t seem to have made any critical assessment of it all.
Perhaps they were bemused by the Global Warmers constantly naming themselves and associates as “Scientists”. As has been shown, those people disregarded the basic
rules of true Science. Their political and media audiences innocently believed the statements- which contained grave errors. Innocents
in politics and the
media were badly mis-led. They gladly supported projects to combat the non-existent threat of Global-WarmingClimate-Change. The projects were unnecessary because there was no threat; extremely costly in money time and
effort; full of praise where ridicule was deserved misleading about benefits & options; and above all diversionary
away from today’s real problems. A huge international bureaucratic industry was born - with Cabinet Ministers,
government departments, company sections, travel, conferences, treaties, carbon credits, and carbon trading, and very
much more. The challenge was often heard that we must curb our carbon emissions or sacrifice our
grandchildren’s well-being. In truth, those children were being saddled with a gigantic debt to pay for everything
encompassed by the Warmers’ “carbon footprints”, including the salaries and expenses of the loudest proponents.
WARMING IS SLOWING
Rojas, ’13
(John-Paul Ford, “Global warming at a standstill, new Met Office figures show,” 1/3, Global-warming-at-a-standstill-new-Met-Office-figures-show.html)
A new scientific model has revised previous figures for the next five years downwards by around a fifth. The forecast
compares how much higher average world temperatures are likely to be than the “long-term average” from 1971-2000. It
had been thought that this would be 0.54C during the period 2012 -2016 but new data puts the figure for the 2013-2017
period at 0.43C.
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NO WARMING
Todd 12 (Samuel, writer for Policy Mic, “A Really Inconvenient Truth: Global Warming is Not Real”,
http://www.policymic.com/articles/3824/a-really-inconvenient-truth-global-warming-is-not-real"
New data shows that in fact the Earth has not warmed at all over the last 15 years. In fact, theDaily Mail reports that the Met
Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit , after taking data from nearly 30,000 stations around the world, have
found that the earth stopped warming in 1997. The report suggests we are headed toward a new solar cycle, Cycle 25,
which NASA scientists have predicted will be significantly cooler than Cycle 24 which we are in now. This data largely
contradicts the accepted theory among the public that carbon dioxide pollution is causing global warming and even
proposes that we are actually heading toward global cooling.
GLOBAL WARMING EXAGGERATED-NUMBERS PROVE
Saad, 09
(Lydia Saad worked at Gallup, a world news source on the internet and conducted survays on the issue, “Increased Number Think Global Warming Is “Exaggerated”,”
3/11 "http://www.gallup.com/poll/116590/increased-number-think-global-warming-exaggerated.aspx")
As recently as 2006, significantly more Americans thought the news underestimated the seriousness of global
warming than said it exaggerated it, 38%
Environment survey, more Americans say the problem is exaggerated rather than
underestimated, 41% vs. 28%. The trend in the "exaggerated" response has been somewhat volatile since 2001, and the previous high point, 38%,
came in 2004. Over the next two years, "exaggerated" sentiment fell to 31% and 30%. Still, as noted, the current 41% is the highest since Gallup's
trend on this measure began in 1997.
vs. 30%. Now, according to Gallup's 2009
GLOBAL WARMING PREDICTIONS OVER-HYPED
Moore 95
(Thomas Gale Moore was a writer from Stanford about climate change and its impacts on the earth, some of his was work was cited in The Public Interest, a famous
book, “GLOBAL WARMING: A Boon to Humans and Other Animals,” Stanford.edu, http://www.stanford.edu/~moore/Boon_To_Man.html, ACCESSED: 7/17/13,
SH)
Senator Mitchell's forecast
and his history are both wrong. Warmer periods bring benign rather than more violent
weather. Milder temperatures will induce more evaporation from oceans and thus more rainfall -- where it will fall we
cannot be sure but the earth as a whole should receive greater precipitation. Meteorologists now believe that any rise in
sea levels over the next century will be at most a foot or more, not twenty. In addition, Mitchell flunks history: around 6,000
years ago the earth sustained temperatures that were probably more than four degrees Fahrenheit hotter than
those of the twentieth century, yet mankind flourished. The Sahara desert bloomed with plants, and water loving animals
such as hippopotamuses wallowed in rivers and lakes. Dense forests carpeted Europe from the Alps to Scandinavia. The Midwest of the United States was somewhat
drier than it is today, similar to contemporary western Kansas or eastern Colorado; but Canada enjoyed a warmer climate and more rainfall.
Climate swings are natural
Bell, ’13
(Larry, professor of architecture and space architecture at the University of Houston. He is the founder and director of the Sasakawa International Center for Space
Architecture, “The Feverish Hunt For Evidence Of A Man-Made Global Warming Crisis,” 3/19, http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/HYPERLINK
"http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/03/19/the-feverish-hunt-for-evidence-of-a-man-made-global-warming-crisis/" HYPERLINK
"http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/03/19/the-feverish-hunt-for-evidence-of-a-man-made-global-warming-crisis/"HYPERLINK
"http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/03/19/the-feverish-hunt-for-evidence-of-a-man-made-global-warming-crisis/"2013bgm)
Indeed, climate really does change without any help from us, and we can be very grateful that it does. Over the past 800,000 years,
much of the Northern Hemisphere has been covered by ice up to miles thick at regular intervals lasting about 100,000
years each. Much shorter interglacial cycles like our current one lasting 10,000 to 15,000 years have offered reprieves
from bitter cold. And yes, from this perspective, current temperatures are abnormally warm. By about 12,000 to 15,000
years ago Earth had warmed enough to halt the advance of glaciers and cause sea levels to rise, and the average
temperature has held fairly constant ever since, with brief intermissions. Although temperatures have been generally mild
over the past 500 years, we should remember that significant fluctuations are still normal. The past century has witnessed
two distinct periods of warming. The first occurred between 1900 and 1945, and the second, following a slight cool-down, began quite abruptly in 1975.
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That second period rose at quite a constant rate until 1998, and then stopped and began falling again after reaching a high of 1.16ºF above the average global mean.
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CLIMATE CHANGE BAD
WARMING TURNS EVERY IMPACT
Burke 08 (Sharon, sr fellow and dir of the energy security project at the Center for a New American Security, Chapter 6 of Climatic Cataclysm: The Foreign
Policy and National Security Implications of Climate Change, edited by Kurt Campbell, p 157-165)
At the same time, however, the implications of both trends for human society and
survival raise the stakes; it is crucial to try to
understand what the future might look like in one hundred years in order to act accordingly today. This scenario, therefore, builds a
picture of the plausible effects of catastrophic climate change, and the implications for national security, on the basis of what we know about the past
and the present. The purpose is not to "one up" the previous scenarios in awfulness, but rather to attempt to imagine the unimaginable future that
is, after all, entirely plausible. Assumed Climate Effects of the Catastrophic Scenario. In the catastrophic scenario, the year 2040 marks an
important tipping point. Large-scale, singular events of abrupt climate change will start occurring, greatly exacerbated by the
collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (MOC), which is believed to play and important role in regulating global climate, particularly in
Europe.8 There will be a rapid loss of polar ice, a sudden rise in sea levels, totaling 2 meters (6.6 feet), and a temperature increase
of almost 5.6°C (10.1°F) by 2095. Developing countries, particularly those at low latitudes and those reliant on subsistence,
rain-fed farming, will be hardest and earliest hit. All nations, however, will find it difficult to deal with the unpredictable,
abrupt, and severe nature of climate change after 2040. These changes will be difficult to anticipate, and equally difficult to
mitigate or recover from, particularly as they will recur, possibly on a frequent basis. First, the rise in temperatures alone
will present a fundamental challenge for human health. Indeed, even now, about 250 people die of heatstroke every year in the United States. In a
prolonged heat wave in 1980, more than 10,000 people died of heat-related illnesses, and between 5,000 and 10,00 in 1988.9 In 2003, record heat waves in Europe, with
temperatures in Paris hitting 40.4°C (104.7°F) and 47.3°C (116.3°F) in parts of Portugal, are estimated to have cost more than 37,000 lives; in the same summer there
were at least 2,000 heat-related deaths in India. Average temperatures will increase in most regions, and the western United States, southern Europe, and southern
Australia will be particularly vulnerable to prolonged heat spells. The rise in temperatures will complicated daily life around the world. In Washington, D.C., the
average summer temperature is in the low 30s C (high 80s F), getting as high as 40°C (104°F). With a 5.6°C (10.1°F) increase, that could mean temperatures as high as
45.6°C (114.5°F). In New Delhi, summer temperatures can reach 45°C (113°F) already, opening the possibility of new highs approaching sO.sOC (123°F). In general,
the level of safe exposure is considered to be about 38°C (lOO°F); at hotter temperatures, activity has to be limited and the very old and the very young are especially
vulnerable to heat-related illness and mortality. Sudden shifts in temperature, which are expected in this scenario, are particularly lethal. As a result of higher
temperatures and lower, unpredictable precipitation, severe and persistent wildfires will become more common,
freshwater will be more scarce, and agricultural productivity will fall, particularly in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, and the western
United States. The World Health Organization estimates that water scarcity already affects two- fifths of the world
population-s-some 2.6 billion people. In this scenario, half the world population will experience persistent water scarcity.
Regions that depend on annual snowfall and glaciers for water lose their supply; hardest hit will be Central Asia, the Andes, Europe, and western North America. Some
regions may become uninhabitable due to lack of water: the Mediterranean, much of Central Asia, northern Mexico, and South America . The southwestern
United States will lose its current sources of fresh water, but that may be mitigated by an increase in precipitation due to the MOC collapse, though
precipitation patterns may be irregular. Regional water scarcity will also be mitigated by increases in precipitation in East Africa and East and Southeast Asia, though
the risk of floods will increase. The lack of rainfall will also threaten tropical forests and their dependent species with
extinction. Declining agricultural productivity will be an acute challenge. The heat, together with shifting and unpredictable precipitation
patterns and melting glaciers, will dry out many areas, including today's grain-exporting regions. The largest decreases in precipitation will be in North Africa, the
Middle East, Central America, the Caribbean, and northeastern South America, including Amazonia. The World Food Program estimates that nearly
1 billion people suffer from chronic hunger today, almost 15 million of them refugees from conflict and natural disasters.
According to the World Food Program, "More than nine out of ten of those who die I of chronic hunger] are simply
trapped by poverty in remote rural areas or urban slums. They do not make the news. They just die." Mortality rates from hunger and
lack of water will skyrocket over the next century, and given all that wiII be happening, that will probably not make the
news, either--people will just die. Over the next one hundred years, the "breadbasket" regions of the world will shift northward. Consequently, formerly
subarctic regions will be able to support farming, but these regions' traditionally small human populations and lack of infrastructure, including roads and utilities, will
make the dramatic expansion of agriculture a challenge. Moreover, extreme year-to-year climate variability may make sustainable agriculture unlikely, at least on the
scale needed. Northwestern Europe, too, will see shorter growing seasons and declining crop yields because it will actually
experience colder winters, due to the collapse of the MOC. At the same time that the resource base to support humanity is
shrinking, there will be less inhabitable land. Ten percent of the world population now lives in low-elevation coastal
zones (all land contiguous with the coast that is 10 meters or less in elevation) that will experience sea level rises of 6.6 feet (2 meters) in this scenario and 9.8 feet (3
meters) in the North Atlantic, given the loss of the MOC. Most major cities at or near sea level have some kind of flood protection, so high tides alone will not lead to
the inundation of these cities. Consider, however, that the combined effects of more frequent and severe weather events and higher sea levels could well lead to
increased flooding from coastal storms and coastal erosion. In any case, there will be saltwater intrusion into coastal water supplies, rising water tables, and the loss of
coastal and upstream wetlands, with impacts on fisheries. The rise could well occur in several quick pulses, with relatively stable periods in between, which will
complicate planning and adaptation and make any kind of orderly or managed evacuation unlikely. Inundation plus the combined effects of higher sea levels and more
frequent tropical storms may leave many large coastal cities uninhabitable, including the largest American cities, New York City and Los Angeles, focal points for the
national economy with a combined total of almost 33 million people in their metropolitan areas today. Resettling coastal populations will be a
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crippling challenge, even for the United States. Sea level rises also will affect food security. Significant fertile deltas will become largely uncultivable because of
inundation and more frequent and higher storm surges that reach farther inland. Fisheries and marine ecosystems, particularly in the North
Atlantic, will collapse. Locally devastating weather events will be the new norm for coastal and mid-latitude locationswind and flood damage will be much more intense. There will be frequent losses of life, property, and infrastructure-and
this will happen every year. Although water scarcity and food security will disproportionately affect poor countries-they already do-extreme weather
events will be more or less evenly distributed around the world. Regions affected by tropical storms, including typhoons and hurricanes, will
include all three coasts of the United States; all of Mexico and Central America; the Caribbean islands; East, Southeast and South Asia; and many South Pacific and
Indian Ocean islands. Recent isolated events when coastal storms made landfall in the South Atlantic, Europe, and the Arabian Sea in the last few years suggest that
these regions will also experience a rise in the incidence of extreme storms. In these circumstances, there will be an across-the-board decline in human development
indicators. Life spans will shorten, incomes will drop, health will deteriorate-including as a result of proliferating diseases-
infant mortality will rise, and there will be a decline in personal freedoms as states fall to anocracy (a situation where
central authority in a state is weak or nonexistent and power has devolved to more regional or local actors, such as tribes)
and autocracy. The Age of Survival: Imagining the Unimaginable Future If New Orleans is one harbinger of the future, Somalia is another. With a weak and
barely functional central government that does not enjoy the trust and confidence of the public, the nation has descended into clan warfare. Mortality rates for
combatants and noncombatants are high. Neighboring Ethiopia has intervened, with troops on the ground in Mogadishu and elsewhere, a small African Union
peacekeeping force is present in the country, and the United States has conducted military missions in Somalia within the last year, including air strikes aimed at
terrorist groups that the United States government has said are finding safe haven in the chaos." In a July 2007 report, the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia reported
that the nation is "literally awash in arms" and factional groups are targeting not only all combatants in the country but also noncombatants, including aid groups.
Drought is a regular feature of life in Somalia that even in the best of times has been difficult to deal with. These are bad times, indeed, for Somalia, and the mutually
reinforcing cycle of drought, famine, and conflict has left some 750,000 Somalis internally displaced and about 1.5 million people-17 percent of the population-in dire
need of humanitarian relief. The relief is difficult to provide, however, given the lawlessness and violence consuming the country. For example, nearly all food
assistance to Somalia is shipped by sea, but with the rise of piracy, the number of vessels willing to carry food to the country fell by 50 percent in 2007.u Life
expectancy is forty-eight years, infant mortality has skyrocketed, and annual per capita GDP is estimated to be about six hundred dollars. The conflict has also had a
negative effect on the stability of surrounding nations. In the catastrophic climate change scenario, situations like that in Somalia will be
commonplace: there will be a sharp rise in failing and failed states and therefore in intrastate war. According to
International Alert, there are forty-six countries, home to 2,7 billion people, at a high risk of violent conflict as a result of
climate change. The group lists an additional fifty-six nations, accounting for another 1.2 billion people, that will have
difficulty dealing with climate change, given other challenges. 12 Over the next hundred years, in a catastrophic future, that means there are
likely to be at least 102 failing and failed states, consumed by internal conflict, spewing desperate refugees, and harboring and spawning violent extremist
movements. Moreover, nations all over the world will be destabilized as a result, either by the crisis on their borders or
the
significant numbers of refugees and in some cases armed or extremist groups migrating into their territories. Over the course of
the century, this will mean a collapse of globalization and transnational institutions and an increase in all types of conflict-most dramatically, intrastate and
asymmetric. The global nature of the conflicts and the abruptness of the climate effects will challenge the ability of governments all over the world to respond to the
disasters, mitigate the effects, or to contain the violence along their borders. There will be civil unrest in every nation as a result of popular
anger toward governments, scapegoating of migrant and minority populations, and a rise in charismatic end-of-days cults,
which will deepen a sense of hopelessness as these cults tend to see no end to misery other than extinction followed by
divine salvation. Given that the failing nations account for half of the global population, this will also be a cataclysmic
humanitarian disaster, with hundreds of millions of people dying from climate effects and conflict, totally overwhelming
the ability of international institutions and donor nations to respond. This failure of the international relief system will be
total after 2040 as donor nations are forced to turn their resources inward. There will be a worldwide economic depression
and a reverse in the gains in standards of living made in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. At the same
time, the probability of conflict between nations will rise. Although global interstate resource wars are generally
unlikely;" simmering conflicts between nations, such as that between India and Pakistan, are likely to boil over,
particularly if both nations are failing. Both India and Pakistan, of course, have nuclear weapons, and a nuclear exchange
is possible, perhaps likely, either by failing central governments or by extremist and ethnic groups that seize control of
nuclear weapons. There will also be competition for the Arctic region, where natural resources, including oil and arable
land, will be increasingly accessible and borders are ill defined. It is possible that agreements over Arctic territories will be worked out among
Russia, Canada, Norway, the United States, Iceland, and Denmark in the next two decades, before the truly catastrophic climate effects manifest themselves in those
nations. If not, there is a strong probability of conflict over the Arctic, possibly even armed conflict. In general, though, nations will be preoccupied with maintaining
internal stability and will have difficulty mustering the resources for war. Indeed, the greater danger is that states will fail to muster the resources for interstate
cooperation. Finally, all nations are likely to experience violent conflict as a result of migration patterns. There will be
increasingly few arable parts of the world, and few nations able to respond to climate change effects, and hundreds of
millions of desperate people looking for a safe haven-a volatile mix. This will cause considerable unrest in the United
States, Canada, Europe, and Russia, and will likely involve inhumane border control practices. Imagining what this will
actually mean at a national level is disheartening. For the United States, coastal cities in hurricane alley along the Gulf
Coast will have to be abandoned, possibly as soon as the first half of the century, certainly by the end of the century. New Orleans will obviously be first,
but Pascagoula and Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, and Houston and Beaumont, Texas, and other cities will be close behind. After the first couple of episodes of flooding
and destructive winds, starting with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, the cities will be partially rebuilt; the third major incident will make it clear that the risk of
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abandonment of oil and natural gas production facilities in the Gulf
region will push the United States into a severe recession or even depression, probably before the abrupt climate effects
take hold in 2040. Mexico's economy will be devastated, which will increase illegal immigration into the United States.
Other major U.S. cities are likely to become uninhabitable after 2040, including New York City and Los Angeles, with a
combined metropolitan population of nearly 33 million people. Resettling these populations will be a massive challenge that will preoccupy the
United States, cause tremendous popular strife, and absorb all monies, including private donations, which would have previously gone to foreign aid. The United
States, Canada, China, Europe, and Japan will have little choice but to become aggressively isolationist, with militarized
borders. Given how dependent all these nations are on global trade, this will provoke a deep, persistent economic crisis.
Standards of living across the United States will fall dramatically, which will provoke civil unrest across the country. The
imposition of martial law is a possibility. Though the poor and middle class will be hit the hardest, no one will be
immune. The fact that wealthier Americans will be able to manage the effects better, however, will certainly provoke
resentment and probably violence and higher crime rates. Gated communities are likely to be commonplace. Finally, the level of popular anger
toward the United States, as the leading historical contributor to climate change, will be astronomical . There will be an increase in asymmetric attacks
on the American homeland. India will cease to function as a nation, but before this occurs, Pakistan and Bangladesh will
implode and help spur India's demise. This implosion will start with prolonged regional heat waves, which will quietly kill
hundreds of thousands of people. It will not immediately be apparent that these are climate change casualties. Massive agricultural losses late in the first
renewed destruction is too high to justify the cost of reconstruction. The
half of the century, along with the collapse of fisheries as a result of sea level rise, rising oceanic temperatures, and hypoxic conditions, will put the entire region into a
food emergency. At first, the United States, Australia, China, New Zealand, and the Nordic nations will be able to coordinate emergency food aid and work with Indian
scientists to introduce drought- and saltwater-resistant plant species. Millions of lives will be saved, and India will be stabilized for a time. But a succession of crippling
droughts and heat waves in all of the donor nations and the inundation of several populous coastal cities will force these nations to concentrate on helping their own
populations. The World Food Program and other international aid agencies will first have trouble operating in increasingly
violent areas, and then, as donations dry up, will cease operations. Existing internal tensions in India will explode in the latter half of the
century, as hundreds of millions of starving people begin to move, trying to find a way to survive. As noted above, a nuclear exchange between either the
national governments or subnational groups in the region is possible and perhaps even likely. By mid-century, communal
genocide will rage unchecked in several African states, most notably Sudan and Senegal, where agriculture will completely collapse and the populations will depend on food imports. Both nations will be covered with ghost towns, where
entire populations have either perished or fled; this will increasingly be true across Africa, South Asia, Central Asia,
Central America, the Caribbean, South America, and Southeast Asia. Europe will have the oddity of having to deal with
far colder winters, given the collapse of the MOC, which will compromise agricultural productivity.
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ACCELERATED WARMING WOULD MAKE EXTINCTION EXTREMELY LIKELY.
Tickell, 08
(Oliver Tickell, The Guardian, “On a planet 4C hotter, all we can prepare for is extinction”, 8/11,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/11/climatechange)
We need to get prepared for four degrees of global warming, Bob Watson told the Guardian last week. At first sight this looks like wise counsel
from the climate science adviser to Defra. But the idea that we could adapt to a 4C rise is absurd and dangerous. Global warming on
this scale would be a catastrophe that would mean, in the immortal words that Chief Seattle probably never spoke, "the
end of living and the beginning of survival" for humankind. Or perhaps the beginning of our extinction.¶ The collapse of
the polar ice caps would become inevitable, bringing long-term sea level rises of 70-80 metres. All the world's coastal
plains would be lost, complete with ports, cities, transport and industrial infrastructure, and much of the world's most
productive farmland. The world's geography would be transformed much as it was at the end of the last ice age, when sea
levels rose by about 120 metres to create the Channel, the North Sea and Cardigan Bay out of dry land. Weather would
become extreme and unpredictable, with more frequent and severe droughts, floods and hurricanes. The Earth's carrying
capacity would be hugely reduced. Billions would undoubtedly die.¶ Watson's call was supported by the government's former chief scientific
adviser, Sir David King, who warned that "if we get to a four-degree rise it is quite possible that we would begin to see a
runaway increase". This is a remarkable understatement. The climate system is already experiencing significant
feedbacks, notably the summer melting of the Arctic sea ice. The more the ice melts, the more sunshine is absorbed by the
sea, and the more the Arctic warms. And as the Arctic warms, the release of billions of tonnes of methane – a greenhouse
gas 70 times stronger than carbon dioxide over 20 years – captured under melting permafrost is already under way.¶ To see
how far this process could go, look 55.5m years to the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, when a global temperature
increase of 6C coincided with the release of about 5,000 gigatonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, both as CO2 and as
methane from bogs and seabed sediments. Lush subtropical forests grew in polar regions, and sea levels rose to 100m
higher than today. It appears that an initial warming pulse triggered other warming processes. Many scientists warn that
this historical event may be analogous to the present: the warming caused by human emissions could propel us towards a
similar hothouse Earth.
CLIMATE CHANGE IS DESTROYING MARINE BIODIVERSITY, LEADS TO EXTINCTION.
Sify 2010
Sydney newspaper citing Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, professor at University of Queensland and Director of the Global Change Institute, and John Bruno, associate professor
of Marine Science at UNC (Sify News, “Could unbridled climate changes lead to human extinction?”, http://www.sify.com/news/could-unbridled-climate-changeslead-to-human-extinction-news-international-kgtrOhdaahc.html)
'The impact of climate change on the world's marine ecosystems' emerged from a synthesis of
recent research on the world's oceans, carried out by two of the world's leading marine scientists. ¶ One of the authors of
the report is Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, professor at The University of Queensland and the director of its Global Change
Institute (GCI).¶ 'We may see sudden, unexpected changes that have serious ramifications for the overall well-being of
humans, including the capacity of the planet to support people. This is further evidence that we are well on the way to the
next great extinction event,' says Hoegh-Guldberg.¶ 'The findings have enormous implications for mankind, particularly if
the trend continues. The earth's ocean, which produces half of the oxygen we breathe and absorbs 30 per cent of humangenerated carbon dioxide, is equivalent to its heart and lungs. This study shows worrying signs of ill-health. It's as if the
earth has been smoking two packs of cigarettes a day!,' he added.¶ 'We are entering a period in which the ocean services
upon which humanity depends are undergoing massive change and in some cases beginning to fail', he added.¶ The
'fundamental and comprehensive' changes to marine life identified in the report include rapidly warming and acidifying
oceans, changes in water circulation and expansion of dead zones within the ocean depths.¶ These are driving major
changes in marine ecosystems: less abundant coral reefs, sea grasses and mangroves (important fish nurseries); fewer,
smaller fish; a breakdown in food chains; changes in the distribution of marine life; and more frequent diseases and pests
among marine organisms.¶ Study co-author John F Bruno, associate professor in marine science at The University of
North Carolina, says greenhouse gas emissions are modifying many physical and geochemical aspects of the planet's
oceans, in ways 'unprecedented in nearly a million years'.¶ 'This is causing fundamental and comprehensive changes to the
way marine ecosystems function,' Bruno warned, according to a GCI release.¶ These findings were published in Science
The findings of the comprehensive report:
WARMING
CAUSES ACIDIFICATION AND COLLAPSES THE MARINE FOOD CHAIN, CAUSES ECOSYSTEM
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INSTABILITY
Doney ‘7
(Scott Doney, Senior Scientist @ Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, CQ Congressional Testimony, “EFFECTS OF
CLIMATE CHANGE AND OCEAN ACIDIFICATION ON MARINE LIFE”, 5-10, L/N)
Climate change and ocean acidification will exacerbate other human influences on fisheries and marine ecosystems such
as over- fishing, habitat destruction, pollution, excess nutrients, and invasive species. Thermal effects arise both directly,
via effects of elevated temperature and lower pH on individual organisms, and indirectly via changes to the ecosystems on
which they depend for food and habitat. Acidification harms shell- forming plants and animals including surface and
deep-water corals, many plankton, pteropods (marine snails), mollusks (clams, oysters), and lobsters (Orr et al., 2005).
Many of these organisms provide critical habitat and/or food sources for other organisms. Emerging evidence suggests
that larval and juvenile fish may also be susceptible to pH changes. Marine life has survived large climate and
acidification variations in the past, but the projected rates of climate change and ocean acidification over the next century
are much faster than experienced by the planet in the past except for rare, catastrophic events in the geological record. One
concern is that climate change will alter the rates and patterns of ocean productivity. Small, photosynthetic phytoplankton grow in the
well-illuminated upper ocean, forming the base of the marine food web, supporting the fish stocks we harvest, and underlying the biogeochemical cycling of carbon and
many other key elements in the sea. Phytoplankton growth depends upon temperature and the availability of light and nutrients, including nitrogen, phosphorus, silicon
and iron. Most of the nutrient supply to the surface ocean comes from the mixing and upwelling of cold, nutrient rich water from below. An exception is iron, which has
an important additional source from mineral dust swept off the desert regions of the continents and transported off-shore from coastal ocean sediments. The geographic
distribution of phytoplankton and biological productivity is determined largely by ocean circulation and upwelling, with the highest levels found along the Equator, in
temperate and polar latitudes and along the western boundaries of continents. Key climate-plankton linkages arise through changes in nutrient supply and ocean mixed
layer depths, which affect the light availability to surface phytoplankton. In the tropics and mid- latitudes, there is limited vertical mixing because the water column is
stabilized by thermal stratification; i.e., light, warm waters overlie dense, cold waters. In these areas, surface nutrients are typically low, which directly limits
phytoplankton growth. Climate warming will likely further inhibit mixing, reducing the upward nutrient supply and thus lowering biological productivity. The nutrientdriven productivity declines even with warmer temperatures, which promote faster growth. At higher latitudes, phytoplankton often have access to abundant nutrients
but are limited by a lack of sunlight. In these areas, warming and reduced mixed layer depths can increase productivity.A synthesis of climate-change simulations shows
broad patterns with declining low-latitude productivity, somewhat elevated high- latitude productivity, and pole-ward migration of marine ecosystem boundaries as the
oceans warm; simulated global productivity increased by up to 8.0% (Sarmiento et al., 2004). While not definitive proof of future trends, similar relationships of ocean
stratification and productivity have been observed in year to year variability of satellite ocean color data, a proxy for surface phytoplankton (Beherenfeld et al., 2006);
satellite data for 1997-2005 from GeoEYE and NASA's Sea- Viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS) show that phytoplankton declined in the tropics and
subtropics during warm phases of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) marked by higher sea surface temperatures and ocean stratification. Ecosystem dynamics
are complex and non-linear, however, and new and unexpected phenomena may arise as the planet enters a new warmer and unexplored climate state. Ocean nitrogen
fixation, for example, is concentrated in warm, nutrient poor surface waters, and it may increase under future more stratified conditions, enhancing overall
productivity.Changes in total biological productivity are only part of the story, as most human fisheries exploit particular
marine species, not overall productivity. The distributions and population sizes of individual species are more sensitive to
warming and altered ocean circulation than total productivity. Temperature effects arise through altered organism
physiology and ecological changes in food supplies and predators. Warming and shifts in seasonal temperature patterns
will disrupt predator-prey interactions; this is especially important for survival of juvenile fish, which often hatch at a
particular time of year and depend up on immediate, abundant source of prey. Temperature changes will also alter the
spread of diseases and parasites in both natural ecosystems and marine aquaculture. Warming impacts will interact and
perhaps exacerbate other problems including over-fishing and habitat destruction.
CLIMATE CHANGE TRIGGERS MASSIVE MARINE BIODIVERSITY LOSS.
Field 14 (Christopher Field, IPCC scientist (US) et al, March 2014, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, http://ipccwg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/IPCC_WG2AR5_SPM_Approved.pdf)
Due to projected climate change by the mid 21st century and beyond, global marine-species redistribution and marinebiodiversity reduction in sensitive regions will challenge the sustained provision of fisheries productivity and other
ecosystem services (high confidence). Spatial shifts of marine species due to projected warming will cause high-latitude
invasions and high local-extinction rates in the tropics and semi-enclosed seas (medium confidence). Species richness and fisheries catch
potential are projected to increase, on average, at mid and high latitudes (high confidence) and decrease at tropical latitudes (medium confidence).. The
progressive expansion of oxygen minimum zones and anoxic “dead zones” is projected to further constrain fish habitat.
Open-ocean net primary production is projected to redistribute and, by 2100, fall globally under all RCP scenarios.
Climate change adds to the threats of over-fishing and other non-climatic stressors, thus complicating marine management
regimes (high confidence).
WARMING
IS GOING TO CAUSE CATASTROPHIC BIODIVERSITY LOSS LEADING TO MASSIVE SPECIES
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EXTINCTION.
Roach 4
(John Roach, Staff, National geographic, “By 2050 Warming to Doom Million Species, Study Says”, 7-12-04,
"http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/01/0107_040107_extinction_2.html]
By 2050, rising temperatures exacerbated by human-induced belches of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases could
send more than a million of Earth's land-dwelling plants and animals down the road to extinction, according to a recent
study. "Climate change now represents at least as great a threat to the number of species surviving on Earth as habitatdestruction and modification," said Chris Thomas, a conservation biologist at the University of Leeds in the United
Kingdom. Thomas is the lead author of the study published earlier this year in the science journal Nature. His co-authors included 18 scientists from around the
world, making this the largest collaboration of its type. Townsend Peterson, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence and one of the study's
co-authors, said the paper allows scientists for the first time to "get a grip" on the impact of climate change as far as natural systems are concerned. "A lot of us are in
this to start to get a handle on what we are talking about," he said. "When we talk about the difference between half a percent and one percent of carbon dioxide
emissions what does that mean?" The researchers worked independently in six biodiversity-rich regions around the world, from Australia to South Africa, plugging
field data on species distribution and regional climate into computer models that simulated the ways species' ranges are expected to move in response to temperature
and climate changes. "We later met and decided to pool results to produce a more globally relevant look at the issue," said Lee Hannah, a climate change biologist with
Conservation International's Center for Applied Biodiversity Science in Washington, D.C. Study Results. According to the researchers' collective
results, the predicted range of climate change by 2050 will place 15 to 35 percent of the 1,103 species studied at risk of
extinction. The numbers are expected to hold up when extrapolated globally, potentially dooming more than a million
species. "These are first-pass estimates, but they put the problem in the right ballpark … I expect more detailed studies to refine these numbers and to add data for
additional regions, but not to change the general import of these findings," said Hannah. Writing in an accompanying commentary to the study in Nature, J. Alan
Pounds of the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve in Costa Rica, and Robert Puschendorf, a biologist at the University of Costa Rica, say these estimates "might be
optimistic." As global warming interacts with other factors such as habitat-destruction, invasive species, and the build up of
carbon dioxide in the landscape, the risk of extinction increases even further, they say. In agreement with the study
authors, Pounds and Puschendorf say taking immediate steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is imperative to
constrain global warming to the minimum predicted levels and thus prevent many of the extinctions from occurring.
"The threat to life on Earth is not just a problem for the future. It is part of the here and now," they write. Climate
Scenarios. The researchers based their study on minimum, mid-range, and maximum future climate scenarios based on information released by the United Nation's
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001. According to the IPCC, temperatures are expected to rise from somewhere
between 1.5 and more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 and more than 2 degrees Celsius) by the year 2050. "Few climate
scientists around the world think that 2050 temperatures will fall outside those bounds," said Thomas. "In some respects,
we have been conservative because almost all future climate projections expect more warming and hence more extinction
between 2050 and 2100." In addition, the researchers accounted for the ability of species to disperse or successfully move to a new area, thus preventing
climate change-induced extinction. They used two alternatives: one where species couldn't move at all, the other assuming unlimited abilities for movement. "We are
trying to bracket the truth," said Peterson. "If you bracket the truth and look at the two endpoints and they give the same general message, then you can start to believe
it." Outside of the small group of researchers working directly on the impacts of climate change to species diversity, "the numbers will come as a huge shock," said
Thomas. Extinction Prevention The researchers point out that there is a significant gap between the low and high ends of the
species predicted to be on the road to extinction by 2050. Taking action to ensure the climate ends up on the low end of
the range is vital to prevent catastrophic extinctions. "We need to start thinking about the fullest of costs involved with our
activities, the real costs of what we do in modern society," said Peterson. Thomas said that since there may be a large time
lag between the climate changing and the last individual of a doomed species dying off, rapid reductions of greenhouse
gas emissions may allow some of these species to hang on. "The only conservation action that really makes sense, at a global scale, is for the
international community to minimize warming through reduced emissions and the potential establishment of carbon-sequestration programs," he said.
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CLIMATE CHANGE LED TO THE LAST MASSIVE EXTINCTION, WIPING 95% OF ALL SPECIES.
Meacher 4
(Michael Meacher, Former Environment Secretary (UK), The Guardian, “Apocalypse Soon”, 4-24-04,
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/scienceandnature/0,,1201866,00.html)
What is really chilling about the catastrophes occurring with increasing frequency across the globe is that they have happened, as the overwhelming majority of the
world's scientists confidently believe, after a warming of only 0.6C over the past century. Imagine the consequences if, as predicted by the inter-
governmental panel of the top 3,000 scientists on climate change, global temperatures rise by 1.4C-5.8C over this century.
Even that is not the end of the story. A conference of top climate scientists concluded last year that previous models had
underestimated the cooling effect of smoke and other particles in the atmosphere, so that if it hadn't been for the smoky
haze from forest fires and coal-burning power stations, the world would have warmed up three times more than the 0.6C
rise actually experienced. Now that smoke pollution is in decline, mainly due to efforts to tackle acid rain, the scientists
calculate that global warming could rise by 7C-10C this century. That would be without precedent in recorded geological
history. Yet it could still be intensified by two more factors. One is the die-back of the drought-stricken Amazon forests in
the second half of this century, as predicted by the UK Hadley Centre, which would release all their locked-up carbon into
the atmosphere, thus raising global warming by another 1.5C. But the most frightening scenario is a feedback effect
whereby fast-rising temperatures unlock other global warming sources - notably vast quantities of methane in the oceans,
equal to more than double the world's fossil-fuel reserves - which could trigger a heating-up that would be unstoppable.
To put all this in perspective, Lynas ends his book with an epilogue recalling the mass extinctions at the end of the
Permian era 251 million years ago. It was the worst crisis to strike life on Earth, killing 95% of the world's species. It was
caused not by an asteroid strike like that which wiped out the dinosaurs, but by global warming. Siberian volcanoes
discharged enormous clouds of carbon dioxide in colossal eruptions, thus warming the climate enough to trigger vast
methane "burps" out of the oceans and releasing a runaway greenhouse effect. What increase in temperature produced this
catastrophic, near-total extinction of life? The oxygen isotopes in the end-Permian rocks indicate it was 6C. Draw your
own conclusions.
CLIMATE CHANGE WILL CAUSE MASSIVE SEA LEVEL RISES LEADING TO EXTINCTION.
Weier 8
The Capital Times, 8 (Anita Weier. UW scientist: Sea level changes a driving force in mass extinctions http://www.madison.com/tct/news/292715)
Watch out for the oceans. That's the lesson of an extensive study by University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor
Shanan Peters published June 15 in the journal Nature.Peters looked at data gathered by scientists over many years and
analyzed what they found at about 600 locations all over the continental United States and Alaska, going back more than
500 million years. Changes in ocean environments related to sea level exert a driving influence on rates of extinction,
which animals and plants survive or vanish, and the composition of life in the ocean, he found. "This breakthrough speaks
loudly to the future impending modern (oceanic) shelf destruction due to climate change on earth," said National Science
Foundation program manager Rich Lane.No matter what the cause of the ebb and flow of the oceans in various eras, the repeated and resultant
extinctions must be considered, Lane said. Scientists say there may have been as many as 23 mass extinction events over the last 3.5
billion years on earth, many involving simple forms of life such as single-celled microorganisms. Over the past 540
million years, there have been five well-documented mass extinctions, primarily of maritime plants and animals, with as
many as 75-95 percent of species lost. For the most part, scientists have been unable to pin down the causes of the dramatic events, though in the case of
the demise of the dinosaurs, they suspect that a large asteroid crashed into the planet. "Impacts, for the most part, aren't associated with most extinctions," Peters said in
an interview. "There have also been studies of volcanism, and some eruptions correspond to extinction, but many do not."So the assistant professor of geology and
geophysics looked at sea levels by reviewing previous studies of the geological record, which show a clear difference in composition of the earth when it is covered by
the sea and when it is not. He measured two types of marine shelf environments, one where sediments were derived from land erosion and the other composed primarily
of calcium carbonate, which is produced in place by shelled organisms and chemical processes.In the course of hundreds of millions of years the world's oceans have
expanded and contracted in response to movement of the Earth's crust and changes in climate. There were periods when vast areas of continents, including Wisconsin,
were flooded by shallow seas."Most of the major extinctions have come when sea levels were high," Peters explained. "Anything we can learn about how the physical
environment and life has changed in the past will tell us what to expect in the future."The sea level has changed dramatically in the past, with each ice age, for instance,
and 14,000 years ago there was ice over Madison, he said.So in respect to climate change, he said, sea level will change whether the
climate is warming or cooling. "The bottom line is that the biosphere is well primed for the type of sea level change we
are likely to see as a result of global warming," Peters said."The biggest thing we should worry about is the impact of sea
level rise on humans. The scariest part is sea level rise from a human perspective in my opinion, because so many people
live close to the sea. The toll will be large."
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CLIMATE CHANGE GOOD
CLIMATE CHANGE MAY BRING A NUMBER OF POSITIVE EFFECTS.
Ridley 13
[Matt Ridley; October 19, 2013; The Spectator: Why climate change is good for the world
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9057151/carry-on-warming/]
Climate change has done more good than harm so far and is likely to continue doing so for most of this century. This is not some barmy, right-wing fantasy; it is the consensus of expert opinion. Yet almost nobody seems to know this. Whenever I make the point in
public, I am told by those who are paid to insult anybody who departs from climate alarm that I have got it embarrassingly wrong, don’t know what I am talking about, must be referring to Britain only, rather than the world as a whole, and so forth.¶ At first, I thought
this was just their usual bluster. But then I realised that they are genuinely unaware. Good news is no news, which is why the mainstream media largely ignores all studies showing net benefits of climate change. And academics have not exactly been keen to push such
There are many likely effects of climate change:
positive and negative, economic and ecological, humanitarian and financial. And if you aggregate them all, the overall
effect is positive today — and likely to stay positive until around 2080. That was the conclusion of Professor Richard Tol
of Sussex University after he reviewed 14 different studies of the effects of future climate trends.¶ To be precise, Prof Tol
calculated that climate change would be beneficial up to 2.2˚C of warming from 2009 (when he wrote his paper). This
means approximately 3˚C from pre-industrial levels, since about 0.8˚C of warming has happened in the last 150 years. The
analysis forward. So here follows, for possibly the first time in history, an entire article in the national press on the net benefits of climate change. ¶
latest estimates of climate sensitivity suggest that such temperatures may not be reached till the end of the century — if at all. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose reports define the consensis, is sticking to older assumptions, however, which would
Now Prof Tol has a new paper, published as a chapter in a new book, called How Much
have Global Problems Cost the World?, which is edited by Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus
Centre, and was reviewed by a group of leading economists. In this paper he casts his gaze backwards to the last century. He concludes
that climate change did indeed raise human and planetary welfare during the 20th century.¶ You can choose not to believe the studies Prof Tol has collated. Or
mean net benefits till about 2080. Either way, it’s a long way off. ¶
you can say the net benefit is small (which it is), you can argue that the benefits have accrued more to rich countries than poor countries (which is true) or you can emphasise that after 2080 climate change would probably do net harm to the world (which may also be
true). You can even say you do not trust the models involved (though they have proved more reliable than the temperature models). But what you cannot do is deny that this is the current consensus. If you wish to accept the consensus on temperature models, then you
should accept the consensus on economic benefit.¶ Overall, Prof Tol finds that climate change in the past century improved human welfare. By how much? He calculates by 1.4 per cent of global economic output, rising to 1.5 per cent by 2025. For some people, this
means the difference between survival and starvation.¶ It will still be 1.2 per cent around 2050 and will not turn negative until around 2080. In short, my children will be very old before global warming stops benefiting the world. Note that if the world continues to grow
The chief benefits of global
warming include: fewer winter deaths; lower energy costs; better agricultural yields; probably fewer droughts; maybe
richer biodiversity. It is a little-known fact that winter deaths exceed summer deaths — not just in countries like Britain but also those with very warm summers, including Greece. Both Britain and Greece see mortality rates rise by 18 per cent
at 3 per cent a year, then the average person will be about nine times as rich in 2080 as she is today. So low-lying Bangladesh will be able to afford the same kind of flood defences that the Dutch have today. ¶
each winter. Especially cold winters cause a rise in heart failures far greater than the rise in deaths during heatwaves. ¶ Cold, not the heat, is the biggest killer. For the last decade, Brits have been dying from the cold at the average rate of 29,000 excess deaths each winter.
Compare this to the heatwave ten years ago, which claimed 15,000 lives in France and just 2,000 in Britain. In the ten years since, there has been no summer death spike at all. Excess winter deaths hit the poor harder than the rich for the obvious reason: they cannot
afford heating. And it is not just those at risk who benefit from moderate warming. Global warming has so far cut heating bills more than it has raised cooling bills. If it resumes after its current 17-year hiatus, and if the energy efficiency of our homes improves, then at
The greatest benefit from climate change comes not from
temperature change but from carbon dioxide itself. It is not pollution, but the raw material from which plants make
carbohydrates and thence proteins and fats. As it is an extremely rare trace gas in the air — less than 0.04 per cent of the air on average — plants struggle to absorb enough of it. On a windless, sunny day, a field of
some point the cost of cooling probably will exceed the cost of heating — probably from about 2035, Prof Tol estimates. ¶
corn can suck half the carbon dioxide out of the air. Commercial greenhouse operators therefore pump carbon dioxide into their greenhouses to raise plant growth rates.¶ The
increase in average carbon dioxide levels over the past
century, from 0.03 per cent to 0.04 per cent of the air, has had a
measurable impact on plant growth rates. It is responsible for a startling
change in the amount of greenery on the planet. As Dr Ranga Myneni of Boston University has documented, using three
decades of satellite data, 31 per cent of the global vegetated area of the planet has become greener and just 3 per cent has
become less green. This translates into a 14 per cent increase in productivity of ecosystems and has been observed in all
vegetation types.¶ Dr Randall Donohue and colleagues of the CSIRO Land and Water department in Australia also analysed satellite data and found greening to be clearly attributable in part to the carbon dioxide fertilisation effect. Greening is
especially pronounced in dry areas like the Sahel region of Africa, where satellites show a big increase in green vegetation since the 1970s.¶ It is often argued that global warming will hurt the world’s poorest hardest. What is seldom heard is that the decline of famines in
the Sahel in recent years is partly due to more rainfall caused by moderate warming and partly due to more carbon dioxide itself: more greenery for goats to eat means more greenery left over for gazelles, so entire ecosystems have benefited. ¶ Even polar bears are
thriving so far, though this is mainly because of the cessation of hunting. None the less, it’s worth noting that the three years with the lowest polar bear cub survival in the western Hudson Bay (1974, 1984 and 1992) were the years when the sea ice was too thick for
ringed seals to appear in good numbers in spring. Bears need broken ice. ¶ Well yes, you may argue, but what about all the weather disasters caused by climate change? Entirely mythical — so far. The latest IPCC report is admirably frank about this, reporting ‘no
significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century … lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency offloads on a global scale … low confidence in observed trends in smallscale severe weather phenomena such as hail and thunderstorms’.¶ In fact, the death rate from droughts, floods and storms has dropped by 98 per cent since the 1920s, according to a careful study by the independent scholar Indur Goklany. Not because weather has
become less dangerous but because people have gained better protection as they got richer: witness the remarkable success of cyclone warnings in India last week. That’s the thing about climate change — we will probably pocket the benefits and mitigate at least some
of the harm by adapting. For example, experts now agree that malaria will continue its rapid worldwide decline whatever the climate does.¶ Yet cherry-picking the bad news remains rife. A remarkable example of this was the IPCC’s last report in 2007, which said that
global warming would cause ‘hundreds of millions of people [to be] exposed to increased water stress’ under four different scenarios of future warming. It cited a study, which had also counted numbers of people at reduced risk of water stress — and in each case that
number was higher. The IPCC simply omitted the positive numbers.¶ Why
does this matter? Even if climate change does produce slightly more welfare for the next 70 years, why take the risk
that it will do great harm thereafter? There is one obvious reason: climate policy is already doing harm . Building wind turbines, growing biofuels and
substituting wood for coal in power stations — all policies designed explicitly to fight climate change — have had
negligible effects on carbon dioxide emissions. But they have driven people into fuel poverty, made industries
uncompetitive, driven up food prices, accelerated the destruction of forests, killed rare birds of prey, and divided
communities. To name just some of the effects. Mr Goklany estimates that globally nearly 200,000 people are dying every year,
because we are turning 5 per cent of the world’s grain crop into motor fuel instead of food: that pushes people into
malnutrition and death. In this country, 65 people a day are dying because they cannot afford to heat their homes properly,
according to Christine Liddell of the University of Ulster, yet the government is planning to double the cost of electricity
to consumers by 2030.¶
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CLIMATE CHANGE CLAIMS ARE EXAGGERATED, CLIMATE CHANGE MAY BE BENEFICIAL FOR HUMANITY.
Ridley 14
[Matt Ridley; April 5, 2014; The Spectator: We have a new climate change consensus — and it's good news everyone
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9176121/armageddon-averted/]
Nigel Lawson was right after all. Ever since the Centre for Policy Studies lecture in 2006 that launched the former chancellor on his late career as a critic of global warming policy, Lord Lawson has been stressing the need to adapt to climate change, rather than throw
public money at futile attempts to prevent it. Until now, the official line has been largely to ignore adaptation and focus instead on ‘mitigation’ — the misleading term for preventing carbon dioxide emissions.¶ That has now changed. The received wisdom on global
warming, published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was updated this week. The newspapers were, as always, full of stories about scientists being even more certain of environmental Armageddon. But the document itself revealed a far more striking
story: it emphasised, again and again, the need to adapt to climate change. Even in the main text of the press release that accompanied the report, the word ‘adaptation’ occurred ten times, the word ‘mitigation’ not at all.¶ The distinction is crucial. So far, the debate has
followed a certain bovine logic: that global warming is happening, so we need to slow it down by hugely expensive decarbonisation strategies — green taxes, wind farms. And what good will this do? Is it possible to stop global warming in its tracks? Or would all these
There is an alternative: accepting that the planet
is warming, and seeing if we can adjust accordingly. Adaptation means investing in flood defences, so that airports such as Schiphol can continue to operate below existing (and future) sea level, and air
green policies be the equivalent of trying to blow away a hurricane? This question — just how much can be achieved by mitigation — is one not often addressed.¶
conditioning, so that cities such as Houston and Singapore can continue to grow despite existing (and future) high temperatures. It means plant breeding, so that maize can be grown in a greater range of existing (and future) climates, better infrastructure, so that Mexico
Owen Paterson, the Secretary of State for the
Environment, in repeatedly emphasising the need to adapt to climate change in this way, has been something of a lone
voice in the government. But he can now count on the support of the mighty IPCC, a United Nations body that employs hundreds of scientists to put together the scientific equivalent of a bible on the topic every six years or so.
or India can survive existing (and future) cyclones, more world trade, so that Ethiopia can get grain from Australia during existing (and future) droughts.¶
Whereas the last report had two pages on adaptation, this one has four chapters. ¶ Professor Chris Field is the chairman of Working Group 2 of the IPCC, the part devoted to the effects of climate change rather than the cause. ‘The really big breakthrough in this report,’ he
says, ‘is the new idea of thinking about managing climate change.’ His co-chair Vicente Barros adds: ‘Investments in better preparation can pay dividends both for the present and for the future … adaptation can play a key role in decreasing these risks’. After so many
n his book An Appeal to Reason, Lawson devoted a chapter to the importance of adaptation, in which
he pointed out that the last IPCC report in 2007 specifically assumed that humans would not adapt. ‘Possible impacts,’ the
report said, ‘do not take into account any changes or developments in adaptive capacity.’ That is to say, if the world gets
warmer, sea levels rise and rainfall patterns change, farmers, developers and consumers will do absolutely nothing to
change their habits over the course of an entire century. It is a ludicrous assumption.¶ But this assumption was central, Lawson pointed out, to the estimated future cost
years, the penny is beginning to drop.¶ I
of climate change the IPCC reported. A notorious example was the report’s conclusion that, ‘assuming no adaptation’, crop yields might fall by 70 per cent by the end of the century — a conclusion based, a footnote revealed, on a single study of peanut farming in one
Lawson pointed out that adaptation had six obvious benefits as a strategy, which mitigation did not share. It
required no international treaty, but would work if adopted unilaterally; it could be applied locally; it would produce
results quickly; it could capture any benefits of warming while avoiding risks; it addressed existing problems that were
merely exacerbated by warming; and it would bring benefits even if global warming proves to have been exaggerated.¶ Ask
part of India.¶
yourself, if you were a resident of the Somerset Levels, whether you would prefer a government policy of adapting to anything the weather might throw at you, whether it was exacerbated by climate change or not, or spending nearly £50 billion (by 2020) on low-carbon
technologies that might in a few decades’ time, if adopted by the whole world, reduce the exacerbation of floods, but not the floods themselves.¶ It is remarkable how far this latest report moves towards Lawson’s position. Professor Field, who seems to be an eminently
sensible chap, clearly strove to emphasise adaptation, if only because the chance of an international agreement on emissions looks ever less likely. If you go through the report chapter by chapter (not that many people seem to have bothered), amid the usual warnings of
potential danger, there are many sensible, if jargon-filled, discussions of exactly the points Lawson made.¶ Chapter 17 concedes that ‘adaptation strategies … can yield welfare benefits even in the event of a constant climate, such as more efficient use of water and more
robust crop varieties’. Chapter 20 even acknowledges that ‘in some cases mitigation may impede adaptation (e.g., reduced energy availability in countries with growing populations)’. A crucial point, this: that preventing the poor from getting access to cheap electricity
from coal might make them more vulnerable to climate change. So green policies may compound the problem they seek to solve. ¶ In short, there is a great deal in this report to like. It has, moreover, toned down the alarm considerably. Even the New Scientist magazine
has noticed that the report ‘backs off from some of the predictions made in the previous report’ and despite the urgings of Ed Davey to sex up the summary during last week’s meeting in Yokohama, New Scientist noticed that ‘the report has even watered down many of
the more confident predictions that appeared in the leaked drafts’. ¶ For instance, references to ‘hundreds of millions’ of people being affected by rising sea levels were removed from the summary, as were statements about the impact of warmer temperatures on crops.
The
report bravely admits that invasive alien species are a far greater threat to species extinction than climate change itself.
Even coral reefs, the report admits, are threatened mostly by pollution and overfishing, which might be exacerbated at the
margin by climate change. So why don’t we have intergovernmental panels on invasive species and overfishing?¶ As these examples illustrate, perhaps most
encouraging of all, the report firmly states that the impact of climate change will be small relative to other things that
happen during this century: ‘For most economic sectors … changes in population, age structure, income, technology,
relative prices, lifestyle, regulation and governance will be large relative to the impacts of climate change.’ So yes, the
world is heating up. But in many ways, it will be a better world.¶ The report puts the global aggregate economic damage from climate change at
less than 2.5 per cent of income by the latter years of the century. This is a far lower number than Lord Stern arrived at in his notorious report of 2006, and this is taking the bleak view that there will be a further 2.5˚C
rise from recent levels. This is the highest of nine loss estimates; the average is only 1.1 per cent. ¶ And the IPCC is projecting two thirds more warming per increment of carbon dioxide than the best observationally based studies now suggest, so the warming the IPCC
In other words, even if you pile pessimism upon pessimism, assuming relatively little
decarbonisation, much global enrichment and higher climate ‘sensitivity’ than now looks plausible — leading to more
rapid climate change — you still, on the worst estimate, hurt the world economy in a century by only about as much as it
grows every year or two. Rather than inflict an awful economic toll, global warming would make our very rich
descendants — who are likely to be maybe eight or nine times as rich as we are today, on global average — a bit less
rich.¶ To avoid this little harm, we could go for adaptation — let poor people get as rich as possible and use their income to protect themselves and their natural surroundings against floods, storms, potential food shortages and loss of habitat. Or we could go for
outlines is not even likely with the highest emissions assumption.¶
mitigation, getting the entire world to agree to give up the fossil fuels that provide us with 85 per cent of our energy. Or we could try both, which is what the IPCC now recommends.¶ But the one truly bonkers thing to do would be to go unilaterally into a policy of
subsidising the rich to install technologies that drive up the cost of energy, desecrate the countryside, kill golden eagles, clear-cut swamp forests in North Carolina, turn grain into motor fuel, so driving up the price of food and killing people, and prevent poor people in
Africa getting loans to build coal-fired, cheap power stations instead of inhaling smoke from wood fires cut from virgin forests.¶ All this we are doing in this country, with almost no prospect of cutting carbon emissions enough to affect the climate. That’s the very
As
Rupert Darwall, author of The Age of Global Warming, has pointed out, it systematically ignores the benefits of climate
change and makes the unsupported claim that crop yields have been negatively affected by climate change, its only
evidence being recent spikes in crop prices — a big cause of which was climate policy, not climate change, in the shape of
biofuels programmes that diverted 5 per cent of the world’s grain crop into fuel. Did you gather from the press that the report warns of rising deaths from storms and
droughts, falling crop yields, spreading diseases, and all the usual litany? Did you conclude from this that deaths from storms will increase, crop yields will fall, and diseases will kill more people? Oh, how naive can you get! No, no, no — what they
mean is that the continuing fall in deaths from storms, floods and disease may not be as steep as it would be without
climate change, that the continuing rise in crop yields may not be as fast as it would be without climate change, and that
the continuing retreat of malaria might not be as rapid as it would be without climate change. In other words, the world
will probably heat up — but it’s not going to end. It’s going to be healthier and wealthier than ever before, just a tad less wealthy than it might otherwise have been. Assuming we do not adapt, that is.
opposite of adaptation — preventing the economic growth that would enable us to adapt while failing to prevent any climate change.¶ The report is far from ideal (don’t worry, Professor Field, I know that endorsement from the likes of me would kill your career).
¶
¶
¶
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BENEFITS OF CLIMATE CHANGE OUTWEIGH THE IMPACTS.
Bast, Singer, Idso 2014 (Joseph Bast, president, The Heartland Institute; Dr. S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of
Virginia; Dr. Craig D. Idso, founder, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, and others to be announced.March 25, 2014 Benefits of Global
Warming Greatly Exceed Costs, New Study Says http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2014/03/25/benefits-global-warming-greatly-exceed-costs-new-studysays)
An international panel of climate scientists and economists will release a massive new report April 9 that finds the
benefits of global warming “greatly exceed any plausible estimate of its costs.” The new report, the second and third
volumes of Climate Change Reconsidered II, were produced by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate
Change (NIPCC) and published by The Heartland Institute.¶ The new report summarizes scholarly research published as
recently as January 2014 on the impacts, costs, and benefits of climate change. Hefty chapters summarize thousands of
peer-reviewed studies of the impact of rising levels of carbon dioxide – a greenhouse gas produced during the burning of
fossil fuels – on plants and soils, agriculture, forests, wildlife, ocean life, and humankind.¶ The authors find higher levels
of carbon dioxide and warmer temperatures benefit nearly all plants, leading to more leaves, more fruit, more vigorous
growth, and greater resistance to pests, drought, and other forms of “stress.” Wildlife benefits as their habitats grow and
expand. Even polar bears, the poster child of anti-global warming activist groups such as the Natural Resources Defense
Council (NRDC), are benefiting from warmer temperatures.¶ “Despite thousands of scientific articles affirming numerous benefits of rising
temperatures and atmospheric CO2, IPCC makes almost no mention of any positive externalities resulting from such,” said one of the report’s lead authors, Dr. Craig D.
Idso. “Climate Change Reconsidered II corrects this failure, presenting an analysis of thousands of neglected research studies IPCC has downplayed or ignored in its
reports so that scientists, politicians, educators, and the general public can be better informed and make decisions about the potential impacts of CO2-induced climate
change.Ӧ The authors look closely at claims climate change will injure coral and other forms of marine life, possibly leading
to some species extinctions. They conclude such claims lack scientific foundation and often are grossly exaggerated.
Corals have survived warming periods in the past that caused ocean temperatures and sea levels to be much higher than
today’s levels or those likely to occur in the next century.¶ The authors contend the world’s economies are heavily dependent on fossil fuels
because such fuels are and will continue to be safer, less expensive, more reliable, and of vastly greater supply than alternative fuels such as wind and solar.
Dramatically reducing the use of fossil fuels would have devastating effects on workers and consumers of both the developed and developing worlds, leading to severe
hardship and even deaths.¶ Rather than continue to fight what is most likely a natural and unstoppable phenomenon, the authors call for adopting new energy and
environmental policies that acknowledge current market and environmental realities. Such policies would encourage economic growth as the foundation for a cleaner
environment, responsible development and use of fossil fuels until superior energy sources are found, and repeal of many of the regulations, subsidies, and taxes passed
at the height of the man-made global warming scare.¶ A Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the report, written in collaboration with the lead authors and approved by
them, will be available at the press conference. The complete study will be released digitally in April and available in printed form in May.¶ Previous volumes in the
Climate Change Reconsidered series were published in 2008, 2009, 2011, and 2013. Those volumes are widely recognized as the most comprehensive and authoritative
critiques of the reports of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In June 2013, a division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
published a Chinese translation and condensed edition of the 2009 and 2011 volumes.
Warming is good and more preferable for all species, plants, animals and humans, for sustaining
life.
Moore 95 (Thomas Gale Moore was a writer from Stanford about climate change and its impacts on the earth, some of his was work was cited in The Public
Interest, a famous book, “GLOBAL WARMING: A Boon to Humans and Other Animals,” Stanford.edu, http://www.stanford.edu/~moore/Boon_To_Man.html,
ACCESSED: 7/17/13, SH)
If mankind had to choose between a warmer or a cooler climate, humans, most other animals and, after adjustment, most plants
would be better off with higher temperatures. Not all animals or plants would prosper under these conditions; many are adapted to the current
weather and might have difficulty making the transition. Society might wish to help natural systems and various species adapt to warmer
temperatures (or cooler, should that occur).
H
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umans and wildlife will flourish for Global Warming- not anthropogenic
Mathur ‘11
(Aditi Mathur, writer for the International Business Times, “Study Claims Global Warming is ‘Beneficial’ for Human Health,” International Business Times, 9/15/11,
http://www.ibtimes.com/study-claims-global-warming-beneficial-human-health)
A new study by three non-profit climate research organizations has claimed that global warming is more likely to improve
rather than harm human health.” The study by Heartland Institute, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and
Global Change, and Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) says “mankind will be much better off in
the year 2100 than it is today and therefore able to adapt to whatever challenges climate change presents.”
However, this finding completely contradicts the observations and predictions of most researchers in the world. It directly
challenges the findings of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. The “Climate
Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report” was co-authored by a team of scientists recruited and led by Craig D.
Idso, Robert Carter and S. Fred Singer. It asserts that manmade greenhouse gases do not play a “substantial role” in
climate change and that previous reports about the effects of global warming overestimated the situation and “failed to
incorporate chemical and biological processes, which are as important as the physical ones. However, the conclusions of
the study contradict the findings of the widely cited reports of the IPCC and many climate research organizations. The
IPCC says that human activities (manmade greenhouse gases) are actually responsible for climate change. According to it,
CO2 contributes to the melting of polar ice caps, rising sea levels, reduced Arctic ice cover and alarming changes in the
environment. The authors of the new report say “the net effect of continued warming and rising carbon dioxide
concentrations in the atmosphere is most likely to be beneficial to humans, plants, and wildlife.” The report says that
“global warming is more likely to improve rather than harm human health because rising temperatures lead to a
greater reduction in winter deaths than the increase they cause in summer deaths.” The researchers found that global
warming “benefits” not only mammals but amphibians, birds, butterflies and insects also benefit from its myriad
ecological effects. The reports also states that the Medieval Warm Period of approximately 1,000 years ago was both
“global and warmer than today’s world.” The latest research reveals that corals and other forms of aquatic life have
effective adaptive responses to climate change enabling them to flourish. It says that averting hunger and ecological
destruction in the future can be done by increasing crop yield, which will be aided by rising temperatures and
atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
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MARINE BIODIVERSITY
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YES MARINE BIODIVERSITY LOSS NOW/BAD
ACIDIFICATION IS COLLAPSING MARINE ECOSYSTEMS.
Searcy 10 (Michael Searcy, contributor to skeptical science, run by John Cook, Climate Communication Fellow for the Global Change Institute at the University of
Queensland, citing a variety of peer reviewed papers, “Ocean acidification: global warming's evil twin,” 12/29/10)
http://www.skepticalscience.com/ocean-acidification-global-warming-intermediate.htm
Not all of the CO2 emitted by human industrial activities remains in the atmosphere. Between 25% and 50% of these
emissions over the industrial period have been absorbed by the world’s oceans, preventing atmospheric CO2 buildup from
being much, much worse. But this atmospheric benefit comes at a considerable price. As ocean waters absorb CO2 they
become more acidic. This does not mean the oceans will become acid. Ocean life can be sensitive to slight changes in pH
levels, and any drop in pH is an increase in acidity, even in an alkaline environment. The acidity of global surface waters
has increased by 30% in just the last 200 years. This rate of acidification is projected through the end of the century to
accelerate even further with potentially catastrophic impacts to marine ecosystems. Endorsed by seventy academies of science from
around the world, a June 2009 statement from the InterAcademy Panel on International Issues (IAP) stated the following. "The current rate of change is
much more rapid than during any event over the last 65 million years. These changes in ocean chemistry are irreversible
for many thousands of years, and the biological consequences could last much longer." - The InterAcademy Panel, June 1, 2009 As
surface waters become more acidic, it becomes more difficult for marine life like corals and shellfish to form the hard
shells necessary for their survival, and coral reefs provide a home for more than 25% of all oceanic species. Tiny creatures
called pteropods located at the base of many oceanic food chains can also be seriously impacted. The degradation of these
species at the foundation of marine ecosystems could lead to the collapse of these environments with devastating
implications to millions of people in the human populations that rely on them. The IAP also stated that, if atmospheric
CO2 were to reach 550 parts per million (ppm) along its current rapid ascent from its pre-industrial level of 280 ppm,
coral reefs around the globe could be dissolving.
MARINE BIODIVERSITY
LEVELS.
LOSS NOW, OCEAN ACIDIFICATION IS REACHING HISTORICALLY DEVASTATING
Hartz 12 (John Hartz, reposting a news release from the National Science Foundation, “Oceans Acidifying Faster Today Than in Past 300 Million Years,” 3/5/12)
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1334
The oceans may be acidifying faster today than they did in the last 300 million years, according to scientists publishing a
paper this week in the journal Science. "What we're doing today really stands out in the geologic record," says lead author
Bärbel Hönisch, a paleoceanographer at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "We know that life
during past ocean acidification events was not wiped out--new species evolved to replace those that died off. But if
industrial carbon emissions continue at the current pace, we may lose organisms we care about--coral reefs, oysters,
salmon." The oceans act like a sponge to draw down excess carbon dioxide from the air. The gas reacts with seawater to
form carbonic acid, which over time is neutralized by fossil carbonate shells on the seafloor. If too much carbon dioxide
enters the ocean too quickly, it can deplete the carbonate ions that corals, mollusks and some plankton need for reef and
shell-building. In a review of hundreds of paleoceanographic studies, the researchers found evidence for only one period
in the last 300 million years when the oceans changed as fast as today: the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or
PETM. In ocean sediment cores, the PETM appears as a brown mud layer flanked by thick deposits of white plankton fossils. About 56 million years ago,
a mysterious surge of carbon into the atmosphere warmed the planet and turned the oceans corrosive. In about 5,000
years, atmospheric carbon doubled to 1,800 parts per million (ppm), and average global temperatures rose by about 6
degrees Celsius. The carbonate plankton shells littering the seafloor dissolved, leaving the brown clay layer that scientists
see in sediment cores today. As many as half of all species of benthic foraminifera, a group of one-celled organisms that
live at the ocean bottom, went extinct, suggesting that deep-sea organisms higher on the food chain may have also
disappeared, said paper co-author Ellen Thomas, a paleoceanographer at Yale University. "It's really unusual that you lose
more than 5 to 10 percent of species," she said. Scientists estimate that ocean acidity--its pH--may have fallen as much as
0.45 units as the planet vented stores of carbon into the air. "These scientists have synthesized and evaluated evidence far back in Earth's history,"
said Candace Major, program officer in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the research. "The ocean
acidification we're seeing today is unprecedented," said Major, "even when viewed through the lens of the past 300
million years, a result of the very fast rates at which we're changing the chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans." In the
last hundred years, rising carbon dioxide from human activities has lowered ocean pH by 0.1 unit, an
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acidification rate at least 10 times faster than 56 million years ago, says Hönisch. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) predicts that pH will fall another 0.2 units by 2100, raising the possibility that we may soon see ocean
changes similar to those observed during the PETM. More catastrophic events have happened on Earth before, but perhaps not as quickly. The study
finds two other analogs for modern day ocean acidification--the extinctions triggered by massive volcanism at the end of the Permian and Triassic eras, about 252
million and 201 million years ago, respectively. But the authors caution that because ocean sediments older than 180 million years have been recycled back into the
deep Earth, scientists have fewer records to work with. During the "Great Dying" at the end of the Permian, about 252 million years ago,
about 96 percent of life disappeared. Massive eruptions from what is known as the Siberian Traps in present-day Russia
are thought to have triggered earth's biggest extinction. Over 20,000 years or more, carbon in the atmosphere rose
dramatically. Scientists have found evidence for ocean dead zones, and preferential survival of organisms predisposed to
carbonate-poor seawater and high blood-carbon levels, but so far they have been unable to reconstruct changes in ocean
pH or carbonate. At the end of the Triassic, about 201 million years ago, a second burst of mass volcanism associated with
the break-up of the supercontinent Pangaea doubled atmospheric carbon and touched off another wave of die-offs. Coral
reefs collapsed and an entire class of sea creatures, the eel-like conodonts, vanished. On land, large plant-eating animals gave rise to
meat-eating dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex as the Jurassic era began. A greater extinction of tropical species has led some scientists to question whether global
warming rather than ocean acidification was the main killer at this time. This study finds that the most notorious of all extinctions, the one that ended the Age of
Dinosaurs with a falling asteroid 65 million years ago, may not have been associated with ocean acidification. The asteroid impact in present-day Mexico 65 million
years ago released toxic gases and possibly set off fires that sent surges of carbon into the air. Though many species of plankton went extinct, coral reefs and benthic
foraminifera survived. In lab experiments, scientists have tried to simulate modern ocean acidification, but the number of
variables currently at play--high carbon dioxide and warmer temperatures, and reduced ocean pH and dissolved oxygen
levels--make predictions difficult. An alternative to investigating the paleo-record has been to study natural carbon seeps
from offshore volcanoes that are producing the acidification levels expected by the year 2100. In a recent study of coral
reefs off Papua New Guinea, scientists found that during long-term exposure to high carbon dioxide and pH 0.2 units
lower than today--at a pH of 7.8 (the IPCC projection for 2100)--reef biodiversity and regeneration suffered.
CURRENT ACIDIFICATION WILL LEAD TO MASSIVE MARINE BIODIVERSITY LOSS.
Payne 12 (Verity Payne, PhD from the University of Leeds, The Benning Experimental Biogeochemistry group, “New scientific study suggests ocean acidification
rate ‘unparalleled’ over last 300m years,” 3/2/12) \http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2012/03/new-scientific-study-suggests-ocean-acidification-rate-over-last-300m-years
The world's oceans might be acidifying 10 times faster than at any time during the last 300m years according to new
research. And if geological history is anything to go by, this is bad news for marine species. Oceans can soak up excess
carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. One side effect is that the sea water, which is naturally slightly alkaline, becomes
less alkaline and more acidic - a process called ocean acidification. Scientists are concerned about even quite small shifts
in ocean acidity, as it can affect how marine creatures grow their shells, which can be crucial to their survival. For this new
study, published in the journal Science, researchers looked for evidence of ocean acidification in the past, going back through hundreds of existing studies of oceans
throughout geological history. They found that over the last 300m years ocean acidification has never happened faster than it is
happening now. The only period that comes close to present acidification rates is the Palaeo-Eocene Thermal Maximum
(PETM), a turbulent period of climate history around 56 million years ago when large amounts of carbon were naturally
released into the atmosphere over a few tens of thousands of years. At the time, the changes in the climate and ocean were
accompanied by the extinction of many marine species. Over the past century carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere
have risen by almost a third. Oceans currently take in about a quarter of the carbon dioxide currently released from human
activity. This has led seawater pH (a measure of acidity - lower pH means more acidic) to decrease by 0.1. This is around
10 times faster than acidification during the PETM. Scientists also suggest that we are releasing carbon much faster than
carbon was released during the PETM. Study co-author Professor Andy Ridgwell, University of Bristol, says: "The
geological record suggests that the current acidification is potentially unparalleled in at least the last 300 million years of
Earth history, and raises the possibility that we are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change." Since
climate model projections suggest ocean acidification could become more severe by the end of the century, it is unlikely
that any past change in acidification can match what we might see in the future. Ridgewell says: "Although similarities
exist, nothing in the last 300 million years parallels rates of future projections in terms of the disrupting of ocean
carbonate chemistry - a consequence of the unprecedented rapidity of CO2 release currently taking place." Such an
unprecedented rate of change in seawater chemistry could affect some important marine species.
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CLIMATE CHANGE CAUSES OCEAN ACIDIFICATION THAT THREATENS THE ENTIRE FOOD CHAIN
Walsh 2014 (J.D. Walsh, University of Alaska Fairbanks, May 2014, Wuebbles, K. Hayhoe, J. Kossin, K. Kunkel, G. Stephens, P. Thorne, R. Vose, M.
Wehner, J. Willis, D. An- derson, V. Kharin, T. Knutson, F. Landerer, T. Lenton, J. Kennedy, and R. Somerville, 2014: Appendix 3: Climate Science Supplement.
Climate Change Impacts in the United States: The Third National Climate Assessment, J. M. Melillo, Terese (T.C.) Richmond, and G. W. Yohe, Eds., U.S. Global
Change Research Program, 735-789. doi:10.7930/J0KS6PHH. On the Web: http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/appendices/climate-science-supplement)
Dissolved calcium and carbonate ions are the building blocks for the skeletons and shells of many living things in the
oceans. Ocean acidification lowers the availability of carbonate ions in many parts of the ocean, affecting the ability of
some marine life to produce and maintain their shells. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the pH of surface
ocean waters has fallen by 0.1 pH units, representing approximately a 30% increase in acidity. The oceans will continue to
absorb carbon dioxide produced by human activities and become even more acidic in the future. Projections of carbon
dioxide levels indicate that by the end of this century the surface waters of the ocean could be as much as 150% more
acidic, resulting in a pH that the oceans have not experienced for more than 20 million years and effectively transforming
marine life as we know it. Ocean acidification is expected to affect ocean species to varying degrees. Some photosynthetic
algae and seagrass species may benefit from higher CO2 conditions in the ocean, as they require CO2 to live, as do plants
on land. On the other hand, studies have shown that a more acidic environment has dramatic negative effects on some
calcifying species, including pteropods, oysters, clams, sea urchins, shallow water corals, deep sea corals, and calcareous
plankton. When shelled species are at risk, the entire food web may also be at risk.
OCEAN ACIDIFICATION INCREASING
NAS and the Royal Society 14
U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the Royal Society, the national science academy of the U.K., 2014, Climate Change: Evidence and Causes,
https://royalsociety.org/~/media/Royal_Society_Content/policy/projects/climate-evidence-causes/climate-change-evidence-causes.pdf
Direct observations of ocean chemistry have shown that the chemical balance of seawater has shifted to a more acidic
state. Some marine organisms (such as corals and some shellfish) have shells composed of calcium carbonate which
dissolves more readily in acid. As the acidity of sea water increases, it becomes more difficult for them to form or
maintain their shells.
CO2 dissolves in water to form a weak acid, and the oceans have absorbed about a third of the CO2 resulting from human
activities, leading to a steady decrease in ocean pH levels. With increasing atmospheric CO2, the chemical balance will
change even more during the next century. Laboratory and other experiments show that under high CO2 and in more
acidic waters, some marine species have misshapen shells and lower growth rates, although the effect varies among
species. Acidification also alters the cycling of nutrients and many other elements and compounds in the ocean, and it is
likely to shift the competitive advantage among species, with as-yet-to-be-determined impacts on marine ecosystems and
the food web.
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OCEAN
Doney 2014 (Scott Doney, Scott Doney is a senior scientist in the Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry and director of the Ocean and Climate
Change Institute at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Oceans of Acid: How Fossil Fuels Could Destroy Marine Ecosystems, February 12th, 2014,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/earth/ocean-acidification/)
In 2005, hatchery-grown oyster larvae in the Pacific Northwest began mysteriously dying by the millions. Then it
happened again in 2006. And again in 2007 and 2008. Oceanographers and fisheries scientists raced to understand what
was behind the catastrophe. Was it bacterial infections? Or something more sinister? By 2008, after billions of shellfish
larvae had died, they had their answer. The waters of the Pacific Ocean had turned corrosively acidic. The changes were
too subtle to be noticed by swimmers and boaters, but to oysters, they were lethal. Many oyster larvae never made it to
adulthood. Those that did suffered from deformed shells or were undersized. A $110 million industry was on the brink of collapse.The
problem is with the water, of course—its pH had dropped too much—but the root cause is in the winds that blow above the Pacific Ocean. A
shift in wind patterns had pushed surface waters aside, allowing acidic water from the deep to well up onto the shore. Even a few decades ago, such upwelling events
the oceans absorb massive amounts of CO2—about one quarter of
our excess emissions—and as we pump more of the greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, we are driving the pH of ocean
water lower and lower. Today, ocean waters are up to 30% more acidic than in preindustrial times.Many people are
familiar with the link between using fossil fuels as an energy source and climate change. Less appreciated is how burning
fossil fuels changes ocean chemistry. Marine plants, animals, and microbes are bathed in seawater, and somewhat
surprisingly, even relatively small alterations in seawater chemistry can have big effects. Oysters are the canary in the coal
mine. The basic principles of seawater carbon dioxide chemistry were well understood even as far back as the late 1950s when David Keeling started his now famous
weren’t as acidic and probably wouldn’t have been cause for concern. But
time HYPERLINK "http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/"- HYPERLINK "http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/"series of atmospheric carbon dioxide
measurements in Hawaii. Then, levels were at 315 parts per million. Now, a little more than a half-century later, carbon dioxide levels are approaching 400 ppm and
continuing to rise as we burn more fossil fuels. The potential for serious biological ramifications, however, only began to come to light
in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Like other gases, carbon dioxide dissolves in water; but in contrast to other major
atmospheric constituents—oxygen, nitrogen, argon—carbon dioxide (CO2) reacts with the water (H2O) to form
bicarbonate (HCO3-) and hydrogen (H+) ions. The process is often called ocean acidification to reflect the increase in
acidity—more H+ ions—and thus lower pH. The other part of the story has to do with the composition of salty seawater.
Over geological time scales, weathering of rocks on land adds dissolved ions, or salts, to the ocean, including calcium
(Ca+) and carbonate (CO32-) from limestone. Seawater is on the basic end of pH—which greatly increases the amount of
carbon dioxide that can dissolve in seawater. Oysters are just one of many organisms that are dependent on ocean water
plentiful with carbonate ions, a building block that many marine plants and animals use to build hard calcium carbonate
(CaCO3) shells. These include corals, shellfish, and some important types of plankton, the small floating organisms that
form the base of the marine food web. Today, there are major research programs around the world that are tracking changes in seawater chemistry and
testing how those shifts affect marine organisms and ecosystems. Early experiments involved growing these organisms in the laboratory where seawater chemistry can
be easily manipulated. Many of the species tested under acidified conditions had a more difficult time building shell or skeleton
material, sometimes even producing malformed shells. Together these factors could slow growth and lower survival of
these species in the wild.
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MARINE BIODIVERSITY LOSS NOW DUE TO ANTHROPOCENTRISM.
Clark and Clausen 2008 (Brett Clark and Rebecca Clausen, Brett Clark teaches sociology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Rebecca Clausen
teaches sociology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. Volume 60 Issue 3 of The Monthly Review, July August Edition, The Oceanic Crisis: Captialism and
the Degradation of the Marine Ecosystem, http://monthlyreview.org/2008/07/01/the-oceanic-crisis-capitalism-and-the-degradation-of-marine-ecosystem)
At the start of the twenty-first century marine scientists focused on the rapid depletion of marine fish, revealing that 75
percent of major fisheries are fully exploited, overexploited, or depleted. It is estimated “that the global ocean has lost
more than 90% of large predatory fishes.” The depletion of ocean fish stock due to overfishing has disrupted metabolic
relations within the oceanic ecosystem at multiple trophic and spatial scales.2¶ Despite warnings of impending collapse of
fish stock, the oceanic crisis has only worsened. The severity is made evident in a recent effort to map the scale of human
impact on the world ocean. A team of scientists analyzed seventeen types of anthropogenic drivers of ecological change
(e.g., organic pollution from agricultural runoff, overfishing, carbon dioxide emissions, etc.) for marine ecosystems. The
findings are clear: No area of the world ocean “is unaffected by human influence,” and over 40 percent of marine
ecosystems are heavily affected by multiple factors. Polar seas are on the verge of significant change. Coral reefs and
continental shelves have suffered severe deterioration.¶ Additionally, the world ocean is a crucial factor in the carbon cycle, absorbing
approximately a third to a half of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. The increase in the portion of carbon dioxide has led to an
increase in ocean temperature and a slow drop in the pH of surface waters—making them more acidic—disrupting shellforming plankton and reef-building species. Furthermore, invasive species have negatively affected 84 percent of the
world’s coastal waters—decreasing biodiversity and further undermining already stressed fisheries.3¶
EXTINCTION
CHANGE.
DUE TO MARINE BIODIVERSITY LOSS IS BECOME MORE PROBABLE THANKS TO
CLIMATE
Sify 2010 – Sydney newspaper citing Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, professor at University of Queensland and Director of the Global Change Institute, and John Bruno,
associate professor of Marine Science at UNC (Sify News, “Could unbridled climate changes lead to human extinction?”, http://www.sify.com/news/could-unbridledclimate-changes-lead-to-human-extinction-news-international-kgtrOhdaahc.html)
'The impact of climate change on the world's marine ecosystems' emerged from a synthesis
of recent research on the world's oceans, carried out by two of the world's leading marine scientists. ¶ One of the authors of
the report is Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, professor at The University of Queensland and the director of its Global Change
Institute (GCI).¶ 'We may see sudden, unexpected changes that have serious ramifications for the overall well-being of
humans, including the capacity of the planet to support people. This is further evidence that we are well on the way to the
next great extinction event,' says Hoegh-Guldberg.¶ 'The findings have enormous implications for mankind, particularly if
the trend continues. The earth's ocean, which produces half of the oxygen we breathe and absorbs 30 per cent of humangenerated carbon dioxide, is equivalent to its heart and lungs. This study shows worrying signs of ill-health. It's as if the
earth has been smoking two packs of cigarettes a day!,' he added.¶ 'We are entering a period in which the ocean services
upon which humanity depends are undergoing massive change and in some cases beginning to fail', he added.¶ The
'fundamental and comprehensive' changes to marine life identified in the report include rapidly warming and acidifying
oceans, changes in water circulation and expansion of dead zones within the ocean depths.¶ These are driving major
changes in marine ecosystems: less abundant coral reefs, sea grasses and mangroves (important fish nurseries); fewer,
smaller fish; a breakdown in food chains; changes in the distribution of marine life; and more frequent diseases and pests
among marine organisms.¶ Study co-author John F Bruno, associate professor in marine science at The University of
North Carolina, says greenhouse gas emissions are modifying many physical and geochemical aspects of the planet's
oceans, in ways 'unprecedented in nearly a million years'.¶ 'This is causing fundamental and comprehensive changes to the
way marine ecosystems function,' Bruno warned, according to a GCI release.¶ These findings were published in Science¶
The findings of the comprehensive report:
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OCEAN ACIDIFICATION COLLAPSES THE MARINE FOOD CHAIN LEADING TO ECOSYSTEM INSTABILITY.
Doney ‘7
(Scott Doney, Senior Scientist @ Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, CQ Congressional Testimony, “EFFECTS OF
CLIMATE CHANGE AND OCEAN ACIDIFICATION ON MARINE LIFE”, 5-10, L/N)
Climate change and ocean acidification will exacerbate other human influences on fisheries and marine ecosystems such
as over- fishing, habitat destruction, pollution, excess nutrients, and invasive species. Thermal effects arise both directly,
via effects of elevated temperature and lower pH on individual organisms, and indirectly via changes to the ecosystems on
which they depend for food and habitat. Acidification harms shell- forming plants and animals including surface and
deep-water corals, many plankton, pteropods (marine snails), mollusks (clams, oysters), and lobsters (Orr et al., 2005).
Many of these organisms provide critical habitat and/or food sources for other organisms. Emerging evidence suggests
that larval and juvenile fish may also be susceptible to pH changes. Marine life has survived large climate and
acidification variations in the past, but the projected rates of climate change and ocean acidification over the next century
are much faster than experienced by the planet in the past except for rare, catastrophic events in the geological record. One
concern is that climate change will alter the rates and patterns of ocean productivity. Small, photosynthetic phytoplankton grow in the
well-illuminated upper ocean, forming the base of the marine food web, supporting the fish stocks we harvest, and underlying the biogeochemical cycling of carbon and
many other key elements in the sea. Phytoplankton growth depends upon temperature and the availability of light and nutrients, including nitrogen, phosphorus, silicon
and iron. Most of the nutrient supply to the surface ocean comes from the mixing and upwelling of cold, nutrient rich water from below. An exception is iron, which has
an important additional source from mineral dust swept off the desert regions of the continents and transported off-shore from coastal ocean sediments. The geographic
distribution of phytoplankton and biological productivity is determined largely by ocean circulation and upwelling, with the highest levels found along the Equator, in
temperate and polar latitudes and along the western boundaries of continents. Key climate-plankton linkages arise through changes in nutrient supply and ocean mixed
layer depths, which affect the light availability to surface phytoplankton. In the tropics and mid- latitudes, there is limited vertical mixing because the water column is
stabilized by thermal stratification; i.e., light, warm waters overlie dense, cold waters. In these areas, surface nutrients are typically low, which directly limits
phytoplankton growth. Climate warming will likely further inhibit mixing, reducing the upward nutrient supply and thus lowering biological productivity. The nutrientdriven productivity declines even with warmer temperatures, which promote faster growth. At higher latitudes, phytoplankton often have access to abundant nutrients
but are limited by a lack of sunlight. In these areas, warming and reduced mixed layer depths can increase productivity.A synthesis of climate-change simulations shows
broad patterns with declining low-latitude productivity, somewhat elevated high- latitude productivity, and pole-ward migration of marine ecosystem boundaries as the
oceans warm; simulated global productivity increased by up to 8.0% (Sarmiento et al., 2004). While not definitive proof of future trends, similar relationships of ocean
stratification and productivity have been observed in year to year variability of satellite ocean color data, a proxy for surface phytoplankton (Beherenfeld et al., 2006);
satellite data for 1997-2005 from GeoEYE and NASA's Sea- Viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS) show that phytoplankton declined in the tropics and
subtropics during warm phases of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) marked by higher sea surface temperatures and ocean stratification. Ecosystem dynamics
are complex and non-linear, however, and new and unexpected phenomena may arise as the planet enters a new warmer and unexplored climate state. Ocean nitrogen
fixation, for example, is concentrated in warm, nutrient poor surface waters, and it may increase under future more stratified conditions, enhancing overall productivity.
Changes in total biological productivity are only part of the story, as most human fisheries exploit particular marine
species, not overall productivity. The distributions and population sizes of individual species are more sensitive to
warming and altered ocean circulation than total productivity. Temperature effects arise through altered organism
physiology and ecological changes in food supplies and predators. Warming and shifts in seasonal temperature patterns
will disrupt predator-prey interactions; this is especially important for survival of juvenile fish, which often hatch at a
particular time of year and depend up on immediate, abundant source of prey. Temperature changes will also alter the
spread of diseases and parasites in both natural ecosystems and marine aquaculture. Warming impacts will interact and
perhaps exacerbate other problems including over-fishing and habitat destruction.
Massive Marine Biodiversity loss due to Climate Change.
Field 2014 (Christopher Field, IPCC scientist (US) et al, March 2014, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, http://ipccwg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/IPCC_WG2AR5_SPM_Approved.pdf)
Due to projected climate change by the mid 21st century and beyond, global marine-species redistribution and marinebiodiversity reduction in sensitive regions will challenge the sustained provision of fisheries productivity and other
ecosystem services (high confidence). Spatial shifts of marine species due to projected warming will cause high-latitude
invasions and high local-extinction rates in the tropics and semi-enclosed seas (medium confidence). Species richness and fisheries catch
potential are projected to increase, on average, at mid and high latitudes (high confidence) and decrease at tropical latitudes (medium confidence).. The
progressive expansion of oxygen minimum zones and anoxic “dead zones” is projected to further constrain fish habitat.
Open-ocean net primary production is projected to redistribute and, by 2100, fall globally under all RCP scenarios.
Climate change adds to the threats of over-fishing and other non-climatic stressors, thus complicating marine management
regimes (high confidence).
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MARINE BIODIVERSITY LOSS NOW- THREATENS HUMAN SURVIVAL.
Sielen 2013 (Allan Sielen, is Senior Fellow for International Environmental Policy at the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography. He was Deputy Assistant Administrator for International Activities at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 1995 to 2001. The
Devolution of the Sea, The consequences of oceanic development. www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140164/alan-b-sielen/the-devolution-of-the-seas
Of all the threats looming over the planet today, one of the most alarming is the seemingly inexorable descent of the
world’s oceans into ecological perdition. Over the last several decades, human activities have so altered the basic
chemistry of the seas that they are now experiencing evolution in reverse: a return to the barren primeval waters of
hundreds of millions of years ago. A visitor to the oceans at the dawn of time would have found an underwater world that was mostly lifeless. Eventually,
around 3.5 billion years ago, basic organisms began to emerge from the primordial ooze. This microbial soup of algae and bacteria needed little oxygen to survive.
Worms, jellyfish, and toxic fireweed ruled the deep. In time, these simple organisms began to evolve into higher life forms, resulting in the wondrously rich diversity of
fish, corals, whales, and other sea life one associates with the oceans today. Yet that sea life is now in peril. Over the last 50 years -- a mere blink in
geologic time -- humanity has come perilously close to reversing the almost miraculous biological abundance of the deep.
Pollution, overfishing, the destruction of habitats, and climate change are emptying the oceans and enabling the lowest
forms of life to regain their dominance. The oceanographer Jeremy Jackson calls it “the rise of slime”: the transformation
of once complex oceanic ecosystems featuring intricate food webs with large animals into simplistic systems dominated
by microbes, jellyfish, and disease. In effect, humans are eliminating the lions and tigers of the seas to make room for the
cockroaches and rats. The prospect of vanishing whales, polar bears, bluefin tuna, sea turtles, and wild coasts should be
worrying enough on its own. But the disruption of entire ecosystems threatens our very survival, since it is the healthy
functioning of these diverse systems that sustains life on earth. Destruction on this level will cost humans dearly in terms
of food, jobs, health, and quality of life. It also violates the unspoken promise passed from one generation to the next of a
better future.
POLLUTION IS CAUSING MARINE BIODIVERSITY LOSS NOW.
Sielen 2013 (Allan Sielen, is Senior Fellow for International Environmental Policy at the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography. He was Deputy Assistant Administrator for International Activities at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 1995 to 2001. The
Devolution of the Sea, The consequences of oceanic development. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140164/alan-b-sielen/the-devolution-of-the-seas
The oceans’ problems start with pollution, the most visible forms of which are the catastrophic spills from offshore oil and
gas drilling or from tanker accidents. Yet as devastating as these events can be, especially locally, their overall
contribution to marine pollution pales in comparison to the much less spectacular waste that finds its way to the seas
through rivers, pipes, runoff, and the air. For example, trash -- plastic bags, bottles, cans, tiny plastic pellets used in
manufacturing -- washes into coastal waters or gets discarded by ships large and small. This debris drifts out to sea, where
it forms epic gyres of floating waste, such as the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which spans hundreds of miles
across the North Pacific Ocean.
OVERFISHING IS CAUSING MARINE BIODIVERSITY LOSS NOW.
Sielen 2013 (Allan Sielen, is Senior Fellow for International Environmental Policy at the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography. He was Deputy Assistant Administrator for International Activities at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 1995 to 2001. The
Devolution of the Sea, The consequences of oceanic development http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140164/alan-b-sielen/the-devolution-of-the-seas
Another cause of the oceans’ decline is that humans are simply killing and eating too many fish. A frequently cited 2003
study in the journal Nature by the marine biologists Ransom Myers and Boris Worm found that the number of large fish -both open-ocean species, such as tuna, swordfish, and marlin, and large groundfish, such as cod, halibut, and flounder -had declined by 90 percent since 1950. The finding provoked controversy among some scientists and fishery managers.
But subsequent studies have confirmed that fish populations have indeed fallen dramatically.
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Marine Biodiversity Loss Good/No Impact
IMPACT FILE
MARINE BIODIVERSITY IS RESILIENT TO OCEAN ACIDIFICATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE.
Taylor ‘10 [James M. Taylor is a senior fellow of The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News., “Ocean Acidification Scare
Pushed at Copenhagen,” Feb 10
http://www.heartland.org/publications/environment%20climate/article/26815/Ocean_Acidification_Scare_Pushed_at_Copenhagen.html]
With global temperatures continuing their decade-long decline and United Nations-sponsored global warming talks falling
apart in Copenhagen, alarmists at the U.N. talks spent considerable time claiming carbon dioxide emissions will cause
catastrophic ocean acidification, regardless of whether temperatures rise. The latest scientific data, however, show no such
catastrophe is likely to occur. Food Supply Risk Claimed The United Kingdom’s environment secretary, Hilary Benn, initiated the Copenhagen ocean scare
with a high-profile speech and numerous media interviews claiming ocean acidification threatens the world’s food supply. “The fact is our seas absorb CO2. They
absorb about a quarter of the total that we produce, but it is making our seas more acidic,” said Benn in his speech. “If this continues as a problem, then it can affect the
one billion people who depend on fish as their principle source of protein, and we have to feed another 2½ to 3 billion people over the next 40 to 50 years.” Benn’s
claim of oceans becoming “more acidic” is misleading, however. Water with a pH of 7.0 is considered neutral. pH values
lower than 7.0 are considered acidic, while those higher than 7.0 are considered alkaline. The world’s oceans have a pH of
8.1, making them alkaline, not acidic. Increasing carbon dioxide concentrations would make the oceans less alkaline but
not acidic. Since human industrial activity first began emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere a little more than 200
years ago, the pH of the oceans has fallen merely 0.1, from 8.2 to 8.1. Following Benn’s December 14 speech and public
relations efforts, most of the world’s major media outlets produced stories claiming ocean acidification is threatening the
world’s marine life. An Associated Press headline, for example, went so far as to call ocean acidification the “evil twin”
of climate change. Studies Show CO2 Benefits Numerous recent scientific studies show higher carbon dioxide levels in
the world’s oceans have the same beneficial effect on marine life as higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have on
terrestrial plant life. In a 2005 study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, scientists examined trends in
chlorophyll concentrations, critical building blocks in the oceanic food chain. The French and American scientists
reported “an overall increase of the world ocean average chlorophyll concentration by about 22 percent” during the prior
two decades of increasing carbon dioxide concentrations. In a 2006 study published in Global Change Biology, scientists
observed higher CO2 levels are correlated with better growth conditions for oceanic life. The highest CO2 concentrations
produced “higher growth rates and biomass yields” than the lower CO2 conditions. Higher CO2 levels may well fuel
“subsequent primary production, phytoplankton blooms, and sustaining oceanic food-webs,” the study concluded. Ocean
Life ‘Surprisingly Resilient’ In a 2008 study published in Biogeosciences, scientists subjected marine organisms to
varying concentrations of CO2, including abrupt changes of CO2 concentration. The ecosystems were “surprisingly
resilient” to changes in atmospheric CO2, and “the ecosystem composition, bacterial and phytoplankton abundances and
productivity, grazing rates and total grazer abundance and reproduction were not significantly affected by CO2-induced
effects.” In a 2009 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists reported, “Sea star
growth and feeding rates increased with water temperature from 5ºC to 21ºC. A doubling of current [CO2] also increased
growth rates both with and without a concurrent temperature increase from 12ºC to 15ºC.” Another False CO2 Scare “Far too
many predictions of CO2-induced catastrophes are treated by alarmists as sure to occur, when real-world observations
show these doomsday scenarios to be highly unlikely or even virtual impossibilities,” said Craig Idso, Ph.D., author of the
2009 book CO2, Global Warming and Coral Reefs. “The phenomenon of CO2-induced ocean acidification appears to be
no different.
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OCEAN
ACIDIFICATION WILL BE SLOW AND STABLE, PROVEN BY
RESILIENCY
IMPACT FILE
1000
STUDIES- IT IMPROVES OCEAN
Codling ‘11 [Jo, received a Bachelor of Science first class and won the FH Faulding and the Swan Brewery prizes at the University of Western Australia. Her
major was microbiology, molecular biology. Nova received a Graduate Certificate in Scientific Communication from the Australian National University in 1989,[4] and
she did honours research in 1990, prize-winning science graduate, Jo has has done over 200 radio interviews, many on the Australian ABC. She was formerly an
associate lecturer in Science Communication at the ANU and is based in Perth, Western Australia, , “Ocean Acidification — a little bit less alkalinity could be a good
thing,” Sept. 11, http://joannenova.com.au/2011/09/ocean-acidification-a-little-bit-less-alkalinity-could-be-a-good-thing/]
Studies of how marine life copes with less alkaline conditions include many experiments with water at pH values in a range
beyond anything that is likely on planet Earth — they go beyond the bounds of what’s possible. There are estimates that the pH
of the ocean has shifted about 0.1 pH unit in the last 200 years, yet some studies consider the effects of water that is shifted by 2
or even 4 entire pH units. Four pH units means 10,000 fold change in the concentration of hydrogen ions). That’s a shift so
large, it’s not going to occur in the next few thousand years, even under the worst of the worst case scenarios by the most
sadistic models. Indeed, it’s virtually impossible for CO2 levels to rise high enough to effect that kind of change, even if we
burned every last fossil, every tree, plant microbe, and vaporized life on earth. (Yet still someone thought it was worth studying
what would happen if, hypothetically, that happened. Hmm.)¶ 1103 studies on acidification say there’s no need to panic¶ CO2
science has an extraordinary data base of 1103 studies of the effects of “acidification” on marine life. They reason that any
change beyond 0.5 pH units is “far far beyond the realms of reality” even if you are concerned about coral reefs in the year 2300
(see Tans 2009). Even the IPCC’s highest end “scenario A2″ estimate predicts a peak change in the range of 0.6 units by 2300.¶
Many of the headlines forecasting “Death to Reefs” come from studies of ocean water at extreme pH’s that will never occur
globally, and that are beyond even what the IPCC is forecasting. Some headlines come from studies of hydrothermal vents
where CO2 bubbles up from the ocean floor. Not surprisingly they find changes to marine life near the vents, but then, the pH
of these areas ranges right down to 2.8. They are an extreme environment, nothing like what we might expect to convert the
worlds oceans too.¶ Marine life, quite happy about a bit more CO2?¶ Studies of growth, calcification, metabolism, fertility and
survival show that, actually, if things were a little less alkaline, on average, marine life would benefit. There will be winners and
losers, but on the whole, using those five measures of health, the reefs are more likely to have more life on and around them,
than they are to shrink.¶ Figure 12. Percent change in the five measured life characteristics (calcification, metabolism, growth,
fertility and survival) vs. decline of seawater pH from its present (control treatment) value to ending values extending up to the
beginning pH value of "the warped world of the IPCC" for all individual data points falling within this pH decline range.¶ How
can this be?¶ First, marine life evolved under conditions where most of the time the world was warmer and had more CO2 in
the atmosphere than it does today. Second, like life above the water, life-below-water is based on carbon, and putting more
carbon into the water is not necessarily a bad thing. That said, the dots in the graph above represent study results, and the ones
below zero tell us there will be some losers, even though there will be more winners (above zer0). Thirdly, watch out for some
of the more devastating headlines which also come from studies where researchers changed the pH by tossing hydrochloric acid
into the tank. Chlorine, as they say, is not the same as the gas nature breathes — CO2. (The strange thing about the studies with
hydrochloric acid, is that it doesn’t seem to be bad as we might have expected– nonetheless, it seems like a dubious practice to
use in studying the health of corals.)¶ The Ocean Acidification Database is housed at CO2 science.¶ The graph above is just one
of many on their results and conclusions page.¶ The bottom line:¶ Yes, we should watch and monitor the oceans careful. No,
there is no chance the Great Barrier Reef will be gone in the next 100 years: 1103 studies show that if the worlds oceans were
slightly less basic then marine life as a whole will be slightly more likely to grow, survive, and be fertile.
NUMEROUS ALT CAUSES
- coastal development, ocean acidification, warming
Panetta, 7/17/13 (Leon, former US secretary of state, co-chaired the Pew Ocean Commission and founded the Panetta Institute at California State University,
Monterey Bay, “Panetta: Don't take oceans for granted,” http://www.cnn.com/HYPERLINK "http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/17/opinion/panetta-oceans/index.html"
HYPERLINK "http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/17/opinion/panetta-oceans/index.html"HYPERLINK "http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/17/opinion/panettaoceans/index.html"2013, bgm)
Despite the strides made in the 10 years since the Pew Oceans Commission issued its report, challenges remain. Coastal
development continues, largely
unchecked, and wetlands and marshes continue to shrink. That exposes more than half of the Americans who live along
the coasts to the physical and economic damage caused by increasingly high-intensity storms such as Hurricane Katrina
and Superstorm Sandy. On top of that, major challenges that the commission could not see as clearly in 2003, including ocean
acidification and rising ocean temperatures, further threaten some of our most valuable fisheries . The United States must pursue a
broader, ecosystem-based approach to build resilience in our oceans and respond to future threats.
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MARINE ECOSYSTEMS ARE RESILIENT – DIFFERENT FROM THE ORGANISMS THAT DIED OUT IN THE PAST
Dupont 2014
(Sam Dupont and Hans Portner, Senior post–doctoral fellow – Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences – Kristineberg and coordinator of the Ocean
Acidification Infrastructure Facility at Kristineberg, Nature – International Journal of Science, “Marine science: Get ready for ocean acidification,”
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v498/n7455/full/498429a.html, date accessed 6/30,)
Surprising resilience? We have known for decades that ocean acidification threatens calcifying organisms such as corals,
clams, mussels and brittlestars — some to the point of possible extinction within decades. It came as a surprise in the past
few years that some calcifier species are resilient to acidification, such as the mussels that thrive in Kiel fjord in Germany
despite a seasonal flow of CO2-rich waters1. Other organisms can be both vulnerable and resilient at different times in
their life cycles, such as some phytoplankton, fish and sea urchins. Initially, female green sea urchins (Strongylocentrotus
droebachiensis) that are exposed to acidification produce around one-fifth the number of eggs produced by urchins in
current ocean pH conditions. But after 16 months, adults acclimatize and reproduce as normal.
Ocean biodiversity is getting better – disproves their impact
Panetta, 7/17/13 (Leon, former US secretary of state, co-chaired the Pew Ocean Commission and founded the Panetta Institute at California State University,
Monterey Bay, “Panetta: Don't take oceans for granted,” http://www.cnn.com/HYPERLINK "http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/17/opinion/panetta-oceans/index.html"
HYPERLINK "http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/17/opinion/panetta-oceans/index.html"HYPERLINK "http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/17/opinion/panettaoceans/index.html"2013bgm)
Our oceans are a tremendous economic engine, providing jobs for millions of Americans, directly and indirectly, and a
source of food and recreation for countless more. Yet, for much of U.S. history, the health of America's oceans has been
taken for granted, assuming its bounty was limitless and capacity to absorb waste without end. This is far from the truth.
The situation the commission found in 2001 was grim. Many of our nation's commercial fisheries were being depleted and
fishing families and communities were hurting. More than 60% of our coastal rivers and bays were degraded by nutrient
runoff from farmland, cities and suburbs. Government policies and practices, a patchwork of inadequate laws and
regulations at various levels, in many cases made matters worse. Our nation needed a wake-up call. The situation, on
many fronts, is dramatically different today because of a combination of leadership initiatives from the White House and
old-fashioned bipartisan cooperation on Capitol Hill. Perhaps the most dramatic example can be seen in the effort to end
overfishing in U.S. waters. In 2005, President George W. Bush worked with congressional leaders to strengthen America's
primary fisheries management law, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. This included
establishment of science-based catch limits to guide decisions in rebuilding depleted species. These reforms enacted by
Congress are paying off. In fact, an important milestone was reached last June when the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration announced it had established annual, science-based catch limits for all U.S. ocean fish
populations. We now have some of the best managed fisheries in the world. Progress also is evident in improved overall
ocean governance and better safeguards for ecologically sensitive marine areas. In 2010, President Barack Obama issued a
historic executive order establishing a national ocean policy directing federal agencies to coordinate efforts to protect and
restore the health of marine ecosystems. President George W. Bush set aside new U.S. marine sanctuary areas from 2006
through 2009. Today, the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, one of several marine monuments created by
the Bush administration, provides protection for some of the most biologically diverse waters in the Pacific.
Oceans resilient
Kennedy 2 - Environmental science prof, Maryland. Former Director, Cooperative Oxford Laboratory. PhD. (Victor,
Coastal and Marine Ecosystems and Global Climate Change, http://www.pewclimate.org/projects/marine.cfm)
There is evidence that marine organisms and ecosystems
are resilient to environmental change. Steele (1991) hypothesized that the biological
components of marine systems are tightly coupled to physical factors, allowing them to respond quickly to rapid
environmental change and thus rendering them ecologically adaptable. Some species also have wide genetic
variability throughout their range, which may allow for adaptation to climate change.
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CORAL REEFS
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YES REEF LOSS NOW/REEF LOSS BAD
CORAL BLEACHING IS INCREASING AS A RESULT OF CLIMATE CHANGE CAUSING REEF DESTRUCTION.
Painting 2011 (Rob Painting, Coral: Life’s a bleach and then you die, January 13th, 2011http://www.skepticalscience.com/Coral-lifes-a-bleach-and-then-youdie.html)
Reef-coral are actually a symbiosis (a mutually beneficial relationship) between the coral polyp, an anemone-like creature, and tiny algae called zooxanthellae. The
coral provide shelter and nutrients for the algae , and in exchange the algae provide carbohydrates (food) to the polyp, using energy from the sun (photosynthesis) and
the nutrients provided by the coral. These algae live in the skin tissue of the polyp and produce the coloured pigments which make coral reefs so visually spectacular.
When this partnership breaks down the polyps expel the algae, which leads to the "bleached" effect. Although the polyp does feed using its tentacles to snare food, the
bulk of its nutrition (90%+) comes from the algae, and they are a critical component of coral skeleton formation and therefore reef maintenance and growth. Without
symbiotic algae, the coral can die from starvation, or become so weakened by a lack of food, that it succumbs to harmful bacteria and/or seaweeds which can poison
and kill coral on contact.¶ Because reef-coral have adapted tolerance to a narrow band of environmental conditions, bleaching can occur for a number of reasons, such as
ocean acidification, pollution, excess nutrients from run-off, high UV radiation levels, exposure at extremely low tides and cooling or warming of the waters in which
the coral reside. Typically these events are very localized in scale and if bleaching is mild, the coral can survive long enough to re-acquire new algal partners. So
bleaching in itself is not something new, but mass coral bleaching on the huge scale being observed certainly appears to
be, and represents a whole new level of coral reef decline. As coral reefs operate very near to their upper limit of heat
tolerance, bleaching en masse happens when the surface waters get too warm above their normal summer temperature,
and are sustained at this warmer level for too long. The intensity of bleaching corresponds with how high, and how long
temperatures are elevated and, as one might expect, the intensity of bleaching affects the rate of survival. Small rises of 1 2 degree C, for weeks at a time, usually induce bleaching. This episodic ocean warming has been most pronounced worldwide during El-Nino
events, when the Pacific Ocean exchanges heat to the atmosphere and surface waters. In recent years though , severe mass bleaching is happening
outside of El-Nino because of the "background" ocean warming. The huge mass bleaching in the Caribbean in 2005, a non
El-Nino year, and again this year is a prime example of this. Evidence connecting warm surface waters and mass coral
bleaching has strengthened to the extent that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has a coral
bleaching alert system in place. This alert system accurately forecasts mass coral bleaching based on satellite data of sea
surface temperatures. The critical issue with global warming induced coral bleaching, as it is for many eco-systems, is the
speed of warming. They are simply not being given sufficient time to evolve tolerance. The coral's algal partners have
short lifetimes and possess genetic traits which may enable successful adaptation to warming. Coral themselves aren't so
lucky, somewhat in contrast to their algae, they possess a poor genetic ability to combat warming stress and have decadal
lifetimes. It's likely therefore that many coral will die because the speed of warming is too great within an individual
communities lifetime.¶ Perhaps a useful way of looking at it, is that the "bar" is continually being set higher and higher, and the recovery time between
bleaching events becoming smaller and smaller. Gradually this continual ocean warming will start to impact areas which have so far escaped unscathed, and these coral
will succumb too. Of course coral reefs aren't just under fire from bleaching, as mentioned earlier, humans are hurting them in many other ways. Ocean Acidification in
particular is a large looming threat The increasing frequency and severity of bleaching, coupled with the persistent decline in coral
around the world, should however immediately dispel any myths about coral resilience.
CLIMATE CHANGE IS CAUSING CORAL BLEACHING NOW AND WILL WIPE REEFS COMPLETELY.
Cho 2011 (Renee Cho, Losing Our Coral Reefs, June 13th, 2011 Renee Cho is a staff blogger for the Earth Institute and a freelance environmental
writer who has written for www.insideclimatenews.com, E Magazine and On Earth. Previously, Renee was Communications Coordinator for
Riverkeeper, the Hudson River environmental organization. She is currently in the certificate program at Columbia University’s Center for
Environmental Research and Conservation. http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/06/13/losing-our-coral-reefs
Coral reefs, the “rainforests of the sea,” are some of the most biodiverse and productive ecosystems on earth. They occupy
only .2% of the ocean, yet are home to a quarter of all marine species: crustaceans, reptiles, seaweeds, bacteria, fungi, and over 4000 species
of fish make their home in coral reefs. With an annual global economic value of $375 billion, coral reefs provide food and resources
for over 500 million people in 94 countries and territories. But tragically, coral reefs are in crisis. Coral reefs are
endangered by natural phenomena such as hurricanes, El Nino, and diseases; local threats including overfishing, destructive fishing techniques, coastal
development, pollution, and careless tourism; and the global effects of climate change—warming seas and increasing levels of CO2 in
the atmosphere. According to Reefs at Risk Revisited, a recent report by the World Resources Institute (WRI), 75% of the
world’s coral reefs are at risk from local and global stresses. Ten percent of coral reefs have already been damaged
beyond repair, and if we continue with business as usual, WRI projects that 90% of coral reefs will be in danger by 2030,
and all of them by 2050. The global effects of climate change are also having critical impacts on coral reefs, and “the evidence is overwhelming
that the ability of corals and the reefs they build to keep pace with the current rate of climate change has been exceeded”
according to a recent study. The average temperature of tropical oceans has increased by .7˚ C which,
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combined with natural fluctuations of warmer ocean temperatures, has resulted in extensive coral bleaching around the
globe, involving thousands of square miles of reefs. When El Nino occurred in 1997-1998, widespread and severe coral reef bleaching occurred in
the Indo-Pacific region and the Caribbean, killing 16% of the world’s coral reefs in 12 months. The 30 million tons of carbon dioxide our oceans
absorb every day is changing the chemistry of seawater and increasing acidification. Today, coral reefs are experiencing
warmer ocean temperatures and more acidity than they have at any time in the last 400,000 years. Acidification reduces
the water’s carrying capacity for calcium carbonate that corals need to build their skeletons. Even a small decrease in the
coral’s ability to construct its skeleton can leave it vulnerable to erosion, and research suggests that coral reefs will begin
to dissolve if atmospheric carbon dioxide levels double this century. It’s estimated that by 2050, only 15% of coral reefs
will have enough calcium carbonate for adequate growth.¶ A new study also shows that ocean acidification profoundly
alters coral reef ecosystems. As C02 levels rise and acidification increases, the biodiversity of coral reefs drops, resulting
in the elimination of key species needed for healthy reef formation. “The decline of the structurally complex corals means
the reef will be much simpler and there will be less habitat for the hundreds of thousands of species we associate with
today’s coral reefs,” said Katherina Fabricius, a scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science. All of these factors
act in concert on coral reefs, and complex interactions between the threats leave coral reefs even more vulnerable. Climate
change will also bring sea level rise that may result in drowned coral reefs, and more intense storms that produce
excessive nutrient or sediment runoff. The overfishing of herbivorous fish and excess nutrients decrease coral’s resilience in the face of increased CO2.
Rising ocean acidity lowers the threshold at which corals bleach.¶ If we reach 450 parts per million of C02 in the atmosphere (as of 2010,
we were at 388 ppm) ocean temperatures will rise 2˚ C, calcium carbonate levels in the oceans will decrease, and we will
largely destroy all our coral reefs. Coral reefs provide us with food, construction materials (limestone) and new
medicines—more than half of new cancer drug research is focused on marine organisms. They offer shoreline protection
and maintain water quality. And they are a draw for tourists, sometimes providing up to 80% of a country’s total income.
Losing the coral reefs would have profound social and economic impacts on many countries, especially small island
nations like Haiti, Fiji, Indonesia, and the Philippines that depend on coral reefs for their livelihoods.
REEF LOSS WILL ESCALATE TO MASSIVE PROPORTIONS BY THE END OF THE 21ST CENTURY.
Connor 2010 (Steve Connor, Science Editor for the Independent, Coral Reefs are in danger of being destroyed,
2/24/2010, http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/coral-reefs-in-danger-of-being-destroyed-1908544.html
All of the tropical coral reefs in the world will be disintegrating by the end of the century because of the rising acidity of
the oceans caused by a build-up of man-made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a study has found. Coral reefs start to
disintegrate when the acidity of the oceans rises beyond a certain threshold, and this point is likely to be reached before
2100, said Jacob Silverman of the Carnegie Institution of Science in Washington. Carbon dioxide in the air dissolves in
the sea to form carbonic acid, which interferes with the ability of coral organisms to make their calcium carbonate shells
which form coral reefs, Dr Silversman said. But once the shells stop forming, the reef quickly crumbles. A mathematical
model was used to study how 9,000 coral reefs from around the world would respond to rising levels of carbon dioxide
and increasing ocean acidity, Dr Silverman told the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego. "A global map produced
on the basis of these calculations shows that all coral reefs are expected to stop their growth and start to disintegrate when
atmosphere CO2 reaches 560 parts per million – double its pre-industrial level – which is expected by the end of the 21stcentury," he told the meeting. "Thus these ecosystems, which harbour the highest diversity of marine life in the oceans,
may be severely reduced within less than 100 years."¶ The findings were based on a detailed study of how increasing
acidity affects the metabolism and growth of a large area of fringing coral reef in the northern Red Sea. The scientists
found that the ability of corals to form their calcium skeletons was strongly dependent on acidity and, to a lesser extent,
temperature.Dr Simon Donner, of the University of British Columbia in Canada, said increasing ocean temperatures also
make coral reefs more susceptible to "bleaching", caused by the loss of the photosynthetic algae on which the coral
organisms depend.¶ Corals have a symbiotic relationship with the microscopic algae that live in their tissues. As well as giving coral its vibrant colour, the algae
provide the reef creatures with most of their energy.¶ Dr Donner said: "Even if we froze emissions today, the planet still has some warming
left in it. That's enough to make bleaching dangerously frequent in reefs worldwide."
¶
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IMPACT FILE
Reef Loss happening now as a result of Climate Change.
Science Daily 2007
Coral Reef Targeted Research Program. "Global Warming Is Destroying Coral Reefs, Major Study Warns." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 14 December 2007.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071213152600.htm
The largest living structures on Earth and the millions of livelihoods which depend upon them are at risk, the most
definitive review yet of the impact of rising carbon emissions on coral reefs has concluded. If world leaders do not
immediately engage in a race against time to save the Earth's coral reefs, these vital ecosystems will not survive the global
warming and acidification predicted for later this century. That is the conclusion of a group of marine scientists from
around the world in a major new study published in the journal Science on Dec. 13.¶ "It's vital that the public understands
that the lack of sustainability in the world's carbon emissions is causing the rapid loss of coral reefs, the world's most
biodiverse marine ecosystem," said Drew Harvell, Cornell professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and head of the
Coral Disease Research Team, which is part of the international Coral Reef Targeted Research (CRTR) group that wrote the
new study. The rise of carbon dioxide emissions and the resultant climate warming from the burning of fossil fuels are
making oceans warmer and more acidic, said co-author Harvell, which is triggering widespread coral disease and stifling
coral growth toward "a tipping point for functional collapse." The scientists argue that rising global CO2 emissions
represent an 'irreducible risk' that will rapidly outstrip the capacity of local coastal managers and policy-makers to
maintain the health of these critical ecosystems, if CO2 emissions are allowed to continue unchecked. "This crisis is on
our doorstep, not decades away. We have little time in which to respond, but respond, we must!" says Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, lead
author of the Science paper, The Carbon Crisis: Coral Reefs under Rapid Climate Change and Ocean Acidification. "Coral reefs have already taken a big
hit from recent warm temperatures, but rapid rises in carbon dioxide cause acidification, which adds a new threat: the
inability of corals to create calcareous skeletons," said Harvell. "Acidification actually threatens all marine animals and
plants with calcareous skeletons, including corals, snails, clams and crabs. Our study shows that levels of CO2 could
become unsustainable for coral reefs in as little as five decades." Professor Hoegh-Guldberg, who is based at The
University of Queensland, says coral reefs occupy a unique niche in the world's environment, where water temperatures
and other environmental factors are 'just right'. "But raising as little as 1°C the temperature that ocean surface waters reach
in summer subjects coral reefs to stresses which lead quickly to mass bleaching. Raise the temperature a little more, and
the corals that build reefs die in great numbers. No coral, no coral reef ecosystem," says Professor Hoegh-Guldberg.
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REEF LOSS GOOD/NO IMPACT
Coral Reefs more resilient to Climate Change than originally thought
Pash 2014 (Chris Pash, The Great Barrier Reef May Be More Resilient To Climate Change Than We Thought Business Insider Australia, June 18th 2014.
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-great-barrier-reef-may-be-more-resilient-to-climate-change-than-we-thought-2014-6)
Analysing fossilised corals suggests the Great Barrier Reef was more resilient to past climate change than we thought, say
scientists.¶ However, the researchers caution that temperature changes expected as a result of modern climate change will occur much more rapidly and could kill off
the reef.¶ According to a study published in the journal Nature Communications, there are fears that an increase in average
summer temperatures by more than 1°C will result in thermal stress, coral bleaching and death of the world’s largest coral
reef system.¶ Thomas Felis of the University of Bremen, Germany, and colleagues investigate the response of Great
Barrier Reef corals at the end of the last ice age, when global temperatures rose significantly. Through the analysis of
fossil coral geochemistry, the team show that between 20,000 and 13,000 years ago corals survived and adapted to
temperature changes of several degrees, much larger than previously recognised.¶ Researchers note, however, that Great
Barrier Reef corals adapted to these temperature changes over a period of several thousand years and suggest that further
work is required to determine the timescales required to adapt to future warming.¶ Professor John M. Pandolfi, from the
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and the University of Queensland, says the paper shows there was
remarkable variation in sea surface temperatures on the Great Barrier Reef between about 20,000 and 13,000 years ago.
44