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Answers to Global Warming Answers to Global Warming .................................................................................................................................................................. 1 Global Warming Defense F/L ................................................................................................................................................................ 3 Global Warming Defense F/L ................................................................................................................................................................ 4 Global Warming Defense F/L ................................................................................................................................................................ 5 Global Warming Defense F/L ................................................................................................................................................................ 6 Global Warming Defense F/L ................................................................................................................................................................ 7 Extns #1- No Impact .............................................................................................................................................................................. 8 Extns #2- Natural Causes ....................................................................................................................................................................... 9 Extns #2- Natural Causes ..................................................................................................................................................................... 10 Extns #3- Global Warming Irreversible ............................................................................................................................................... 11 Extns #5- Scrutinize Their Ev / Biased ................................................................................................................................................ 12 Extns #6- No Warming ........................................................................................................................................................................ 13 Extns #7- C02 Emissions ..................................................................................................................................................................... 14 Extns #7- C02 Emissions ..................................................................................................................................................................... 15 ************************Answers to Global Warming Bad Scenarios********************* ............................................... 16 AT: Arctic Destruction / Ice Caps Melting .......................................................................................................................................... 17 AT: Arctic Destruction / Ice Caps Melting .......................................................................................................................................... 18 AT: Kilimanjaro Proves .................................................................................................................................................................. 19 AT: Sea Level Rise (1/2)...................................................................................................................................................................... 20 AT: Sea Level Rise (2/2)...................................................................................................................................................................... 21 AT: Sea Levels - Tuvalu Island Proves ........................................................................................................................................... 22 AT: Sea Levels – Vanuatu and Tegua Prove ....................................................................................................................................... 23 AT: Sea Levels – Venetia Prove .......................................................................................................................................................... 24 AT: Sea Levels – Computer Data Prove .............................................................................................................................................. 25 AT: Sea Levels – Maldives Prove ........................................................................................................................................................ 26 AT: Sea Levels – Small Island Prove................................................................................................................................................... 27 AT: Sea Levels – Glacier Melt Causing ............................................................................................................................................... 28 Morner Qualifications ..................................................................................................................................................................... 29 AT: Economic Collapse ....................................................................................................................................................................... 30 AT: War (1/3)....................................................................................................................................................................................... 31 AT: War (2/3)....................................................................................................................................................................................... 32 AT: War (3/3)....................................................................................................................................................................................... 33 AT: War - Extns #3- Tyranny ......................................................................................................................................................... 34 AT: Forests (1/2) .................................................................................................................................................................................. 35 AT: Forests (2/2) .................................................................................................................................................................................. 36 AT: Disease .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 37 AT: Water Shortages / Water Wars...................................................................................................................................................... 38 AT: Water Shortages / Water Wars...................................................................................................................................................... 39 AT: Water Shortages / Water Wars...................................................................................................................................................... 40 AT: Water Shortages / Water Wars...................................................................................................................................................... 41 AT: Natural Disasters ........................................................................................................................................................................... 42 AT: Extreme Weather .......................................................................................................................................................................... 43 AT: Extreme Weather .......................................................................................................................................................................... 44 AT: Extreme Weather .......................................................................................................................................................................... 45 AT: Fires .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 46 AT: Refugees (1/2)............................................................................................................................................................................... 47 AT: Refugees (2/2)............................................................................................................................................................................... 48 AT: Refugees – Security K (1/3).......................................................................................................................................................... 49 AT: Refugees – Security K (2/3).......................................................................................................................................................... 50 AT: Refugees – Security K (3/3).......................................................................................................................................................... 51 AT: Biodiversity (1/3) .......................................................................................................................................................................... 52 AT: Biodiversity (2/3) .......................................................................................................................................................................... 53 AT: Biodiversity (3/3) .......................................................................................................................................................................... 54 AT: Biodiversity – Turn: Wetlands (1/2) ............................................................................................................................................ 55 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 2 AT: Biodiversity – Turn: Wetlands (2/2) ............................................................................................................................................. 56 AT: Plankton – Turn: Pollution Good .................................................................................................................................................. 57 AT: Plankton – Turn: Marine Mammals (1/2) ..................................................................................................................................... 58 AT: Plankton – Turn: Marine Mammals (2/2) ..................................................................................................................................... 59 AT: Plankton – No Impact ................................................................................................................................................................... 60 ************************Answers to Global Warming Science********************* ......................................................... 61 AT: Scientific Consensus (1/3) ............................................................................................................................................................ 62 AT: Scientific Consensus (2/3) ............................................................................................................................................................ 63 AT: Scientific Consensus (3/3) ............................................................................................................................................................ 64 AT: “Scientific Consensus- Oreskes” .................................................................................................................................................. 65 AT: IPCC (1/4)..................................................................................................................................................................................... 66 AT: IPCC (2/4)..................................................................................................................................................................................... 67 AT: IPCC (3/4)..................................................................................................................................................................................... 68 AT: IPCC (4/4)..................................................................................................................................................................................... 69 AT: Hockeystick Chart ........................................................................................................................................................................ 70 AT: Computer Models ......................................................................................................................................................................... 71 ************************Global Warming Good Scenarios********************* ............................................................... 72 Global Warming Good- S02 ................................................................................................................................................................ 73 Global Warming Good- Economy (1/2) ............................................................................................................................................... 74 Global Warming Good- Economy (2/2) ............................................................................................................................................... 75 Extns- Warming key to Economy ................................................................................................................................................... 76 Global Warming Good- Winter ........................................................................................................................................................... 77 Global Warming Good- Agriculture .................................................................................................................................................... 78 Deforestation Impact Module .......................................................................................................................................................... 79 Water Wars Impact Module ................................................................................................................................................................. 80 Global Warming Bad- Arctic Conflict (1/2) ........................................................................................................................................ 81 Global Warming Bad- Arctic Conflict (2/2) ........................................................................................................................................ 82 AT: Russia won’t use Nukes ........................................................................................................................................................... 83 Global Warming Good- Famine ........................................................................................................................................................... 84 Global Warming Good- Hurricanes ..................................................................................................................................................... 85 Global Warming Good- Coral Reef (1/2)............................................................................................................................................. 86 Global Warming Good- Coral Reef (2/2)............................................................................................................................................. 87 Global Warming Good- Ice Age .......................................................................................................................................................... 88 Global Warming Good- Rice (1/2)....................................................................................................................................................... 89 Global Warming Good- Rice (1/2)....................................................................................................................................................... 90 Random Economic Collapse Good Card.............................................................................................................................................. 91 Aff- Global Warming Bad Terrorism .............................................................................................................................................. 92 Aff- Global Warming Bad Terrorism .............................................................................................................................................. 93 2 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 3 Global Warming Defense F/L 1. No negative impact to global warming—history and modern science disproves all of their scenarios; their arguments are propaganda so scientists can get research grants. Jaworowski 8 [Professor, Zbigniew March,“Fear Propaganda”, http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/cycles/chap3.htm, chairman of the Scientific Council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw. In the winter of 1957-1958, he measured the concentration of CO2 in the atmospheric air at Spitsbergen. During 1972 to 1991, he investigated the history of the pollution of the global atmosphere, measuring the dust preserved in 17 glaciers—in the Tatra Mountains in Poland, in the Arctic, Antarctic, Alaska, Norway, the Alps, the Himalayas, the Ruwenzori Mountains in Uganda, and the Peruvian Andes. He has published about 20 papers on climate, most of them concerning the CO2 measurements in ice cores. M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc.] Doomsayers preaching the horrors of warming are not troubled by the fact that in the Middle Ages, when for a few hundred years it was warmer than it is now, neither the Maldive atolls nor the Pacific archipelagos were flooded. Global oceanic levels have been rising for some hundreds or thousands of years (the causes of this phenomenon are not clear). In the last 100 years, this increase amounted to 10 cm to 20 cm, (24) but it does not seem to be accelerated by the 20th Century warming. It turns out that in warmer climates, there is more water that evaporates from the ocean (and subsequently (17) falls as snow on the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps) than there is water that flows to the seas from melting glaciers. Since the 1970s, the glaciers of the Arctic, Greenland, and the Antarctic have ceased to retreat, and have started to grow. On January 18, 2002, the journal Science published the results of satellite-borne radar and ice core studies performed by scientists from CalTech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California at Santa Cruz. These results indicate that the Antarctic ice flow has been slowed, and sometimes even stopped, and that this has resulted in the thickening of the continental glacier (25) at a rate of 26.8 billion tons a year. In 1999, a Polish Academy of Sciences paper was prepared as a source material for a report titled "Forecast of the Defense Conditions for the Republic of Poland in 2001-2020." The paper implied that the increase of atmospheric precipitation by 23 percent in Poland, which was presumed to be caused by global warming, would be detrimental. (Imagine stating this in a country where 38 percent of the area suffers from permanent surface water deficit!) The same paper also deemed an extension of the vegetation period by 60 to 120 days as a disaster. Truly, a possibility of doubling the crop rotation, or even prolonging by four months the harvest of radishes, makes for a horrific vision in the minds of the authors of this paper. Newspapers continuously write about the increasing frequency and power of the storms. The facts, however, speak otherwise. I cite here only some few data from Poland, but there are plenty of data from all over the world. In Cracow, in 1896-1995, the number of storms with hail and precipitation exceeding 20 millimeters has decreased continuously, and after 1930, the number of all storms decreased. (26) In 1813 to 1994, the frequency and magnitude of floods of Vistula River in Cracow not only did not increase but, since 1940, have significantly decreased. (27) Also, measurements in the Kolobrzeg Baltic Sea harbor indicate that the Similar observations apply to the 20th Century hurricanes over the Atlantic Ocean (Figure 4,) and worldwide. number of gales has not increased between 1901 and 1990. (28) 3 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 4 Global Warming Defense F/L 2. Modern science is on our side-- Global Warming is not a product of human activity—natural causes like cosmic rays are consistent with heat patterns. Jaworowski 8 [Professor, Zbigniew Marc http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/cycles/chap7.htm, chairman of the Scientific Council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw. In the winter of 1957-1958, he measured the concentration of CO2 in the atmospheric air at Spitsbergen. During 1972 to 1991, he investigated the history of the pollution of the global atmosphere, measuring the dust preserved in 17 glaciers—in the Tatra Mountains in Poland, in the Arctic, Antarctic, Alaska, Norway, the Alps, the Himalayas, the Ruwenzori Mountains in Uganda, and the Peruvian Andes. He has published about 20 papers on climate, most of them concerning the CO2 measurements in ice cores. M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc. “The Cosmic Ray Connection”] The atmospheric temperature variations do not follow the changes in the concentrations of CO2 and other trace greenhouse gases. However, they are consistent with the changes in Sun's activity, which run in cycles of 11-year and 90-years' duration. This has been known since 1982, when it was noted that in the period 1000 to 1950, the air temperature closely followed the cyclic activity of our diurnal star. (49) Data from 1865 to 1985, published in 1991, exhibited an astonishing correspondence between the temperature of the Northern Hemisphere and the 11-year cycles of the sunspot appearances, which are a measure of Sun's activity. ( 50,51) The variations in solar radiation observed between 1880 and 1993 could account for 71 percent of the global mean temperature variance (compared to 51 percent for the greenhouse gases' part alone), and correspond to a global temperature variance of about 0.4°C. (34) However, in 1997, it suddenly became apparent that the decisive impact on climate change fluctuations comes not from the Sun, but rather from cosmic radiation. This came as a great surprise, because the energy brought to the Earth by cosmic radiation is many times smaller than that from solar radiation. The secret lies in the clouds: The impact of clouds on climate and temperature is more than a hundred times stronger than that of carbon dioxide. Even if the CO2 concentration in the air were doubled, its greenhouse effect would be cancelled by a mere 1 percent rise in cloudiness: The reason is simply that greater cloudiness means a larger deflection of the solar radiation reaching the surface of our planet. (See Figure 9.) In 1997, Danish scientists H. Svensmark and E. Friis-Christensen noted that the changes in cloudiness measured by geostationary satellites perfectly coincide with the changes in the intensity of cosmic rays reaching the troposphere: The more intense the radiation, the more clouds. (52) Cosmic rays ionize air molecules, transforming them into condensation nuclei for water vapour, where the ice crystals— from which the clouds are created—are formed. The quantity of cosmic radiation coming to the Earth from our galaxy and from deep space is controlled by changes in the so-called solar wind. It is created by hot plasma ejected from the solar corona to the distance of many solar diameters, carrying ionized particles and magnetic field lines. Solar wind, rushing toward the limits of the Solar System, drives galactic rays away from the Earth and makes them weaker . When the solar wind gets stronger, less cosmic radiation reaches us from space, not so many clouds are formed, and it gets warmer. When the solar wind abates, the Earth becomes cooler. Thus, the Sun opens and closes a climate-controlling umbrella of clouds over our heads. Only in recent years have astrophysicists and physicists specializing in atmosphere research studied these phenomena and their mechanisms, in the attempt to understand them better. Perhaps, some day, we will learn to govern the clouds. The climate is constantly Alternate cycles of long cold periods and much shorter interglacial warm periods occur with some regularity. The typical length of climatic cycles in the last 2 million years was about 100,000 years, divided into 90,000 years for Ice Age periods and 10,000 changing. years for the warm, interglacial ones. Within a given cycle, the difference in temperature between the cold and warm phases equals 3°C to 7°C. The present warm phase is probably drawing to an end—the average duration of such a phase has already been exceeded by 500 years. Transition periods between cold and warm climate phases are dramatically short: They last for only 50, 20, or even 1 to 2 years, and they appear with virtually no warning. 4 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 5 Global Warming Defense F/L 3. Impacts inevitable—we’re too late. Weather 7 [10/29, “James Lovelock on Global Warming”, Weather Forecast Blog, http://www.360weather.mobi/2007/October/James-Lovelock-on-Global-Warming.htm, qualifications: independent scientist, author, researcher, environmentalist, and futurist, Fellow of the Royal Society, President of the Marine Biology Association, Honorary Visiting Fellow at Oxford, awarded a number of prestigious prizes including the Tswett Medal (1975), an ACS chromatography award (1980), the WMO Norbert Gerbier Prize (1988), the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for the Environment (1990) and the RGS Discovery Lifetime award (2001). He became a CBE in 1990, and a Companion of Honor in 2003] According to Lovelock, global warming is irreversible. Endeavors to decrease your carbon footprint by taking steps cannot significantly reduce the effects of global warming now, because the damage has already been done. such as purchasing a hybrid car 4. Even if they win that Global Warming is real—it’s impossible to solve without capping entire world emissions by 80% Singer 7 [March 19th, S. Fred Singer, “'The Great Global Warming Swindle”, http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/swindle.htm, S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist, is Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, and former founding Director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service. He is author of Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate (The Independent Institute, 1997] If the cause of warming is mostly natural, then there is little we can do about it. We cannot control the inconstant sun, the likely origin of most climate variability. None of the schemes for greenhouse gas reduction currently bandied about will do any good; they are all irrelevant, useless, and wildly expensive: • Control of CO2 emissions, whether by rationing or elaborate cap–and–trade schemes• Uneconomic “alternative” energy, such as ethanol and the impractical “hydrogen economy” • Massive installations of wind turbines and solar collectors • Proposed projects for the sequestration of CO2 from smokestacks or even from the atmosphere Ironically, even if CO2 were responsible for the observed warming trend, all these schemes would be ineffective—unless we could persuade every nation, including China, to cut fuel use by 80 percent! 5 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 6 Global Warming Defense F/L 5. You should seriously scrutinize all their arguments-- All of their evidence are lies produced by scientists who are paid to make up scenarios – their ‘consensus’ arguments are simply a product of money. Morner 7 [June 22, Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, “Sea-Level Expert: It’s not Rising”, http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/sealevel.htm, Has studied sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. Recently retired as director of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department at Stockholm University, Mörner is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project] Yes. Again, this is for me, the line of demarcation between the meteorological community and us: They work with computers; we geologists work with observations, and the observations do not fit with these scenarios. So what should you change? We cannot change observations, so we have to change the scenarios! Instead of doing this, they give an endless amount of money to the side which agrees with the IPCC. The European Community, which has gone far in this thing: If you want a grant for a research project in climatology, it is written into the document that there must be a focus on global warming. All the rest of us, we can never get a coin there, because we are not fulfilling the basic obligations. That is really bad, because then you start asking for the answer you want to get. That's what dictatorships did, autocracies. They demanded that scientists produce what they wanted....You frighten a lot of scientists. If they say that climate is not changing, they lose their research grants. And some people cannot afford that; they become silent, or a few of us speak up, because we think that it's for the honesty of science, that we have to do it. 6. Earth hasn’t actually warmed: satellite and ice-core data prove Singer 7/18/00 [a degree in engineering from Ohio State and a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University).: President, The Science & Environmental Policy Project before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on Climate Change http://www.nationalcenter.org/KyotoSingerTestimony2000.html] Contrary to the conventional wisdom and the predictions of computer models, the Earth's climate has not warmed appreciably in the past two decades, and probably not since about 1940. The evidence is overwhelming: a) Satellite data show no appreciable warming of the global atmosphere since 1979. In fact, if one ignores the unusual El Nino year of 1998, one sees a cooling trend. b) Radiosonde data from balloons released regularly around the world confirm the satellite data in every respect . This fact has been confirmed in a recent report of the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences [1]. c) The well-controlled and reliable thermometer record of surface temperatures for the continental United States shows no appreciable warming since about 1940. [See figure] The same is true for Western Europe. These results are in sharp contrast to the GLOBAL instrumental surface record, which shows substantial warming, mainly in NW Siberia and subpolar Alaska and Canada. d) But tree-ring records for Siberia and Alaska and published ice-core records that I have examined show NO warming since 1940. In fact, many show a cooling trend. Conclusion: The post-1980 global warming trend from surface thermometers is not credible. The absence of such warming would do away with the widely touted "hockey stick" graph (with its "unusual" temperature rise in the past 100 years) [see figure]; it was shown here on May 17 as purported proof that the 20th century is the warmest in 1000 years. 6 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 7 Global Warming Defense F/L 7. The earth has shown no sign of warming from greenhouse gases SCIENCE DIRECTOR OF THE HEARTLAND INSTITUTE, 1-12-5 (Jay, Yearbook of Experts) Our most reliable sources of temperature data show no global warming trend. Satellite and weather balloon readings of temperatures in the lower troposphere (an area scientists predict would immediately reflect any global warming) show no warming since readings began 25 years ago, when the satellite system was first launched. Only land based temperature stations show a warming trend, and these stations do not cover the entire globe as satellite readings do, and these are often affected by heat generated by nearby urban development. 2 - All predictions of global warming are based on computer models not historical data. In order to get their models to produce predictions that are close to their designers expectations, modelers make adjustments to unknown variables that are many times greater than the effect of doubling carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. For example, knowledge of the amount of energy flowing from the equator to the poles is uncertain by an amount equivalent to 25 to 30 Watts per square meter (W/m2) of the earth's surface. the amount of sunlight absorbed by the atmosphere or reflected by the surface is also uncertain by as much as 25 W/m2. The role of clouds is uncertain by at least 25 W/m2. The heat added to the atmosphere by a doubling of CO2 is not uncertain. It is easily measured in laboratory experiments and amounts to only 4 Watts per square meter (4 W/m2) of When scientists analyzed the relationship between atmospheric CO2 levels and temperatures dating back 250,000 years in ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica, they found that sometimes concentration of CO2 was high when the temperature was low and sometime CO2 was low when temperature was high. 4 - While we hear much about one or another melting glaciers, a recent study of 246 glaciers around the world between 1946 and 1995 indicated a balance between those that are losing ice, gaining ice and remaining in equilibrium. There is the earth's surface. Obviously the uncertainties are many times larger than the input of energy resulting from a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. 3 no global trend in any direction. 5 - The gases in the atmosphere that absorb outgoing radiation forming the greenhouse effect are water vapor (absorbing 90% of outgoing heat), methane (4%), nitrous oxide (2%), carbon dioxide (4%). Thus a doubling of CO2 would not achieve a significant change in heat retained. 6 Temperature fluctuations during the current 300 year recovery from the Little Ice Age which ended around 1700AD, following the Medieval Warming Period correlate almost perfectly with fluctuations in solar activity. This correlation long predates human use of significant amounts of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. 7 - In defining the tremendous impact the sun has on climate one must really understands the actual movement of the earth around the sun. There are three variables, orbit shape, tilt and wobble which profoundly affect weather patterns. The earth's orbit does not form a circle as it moves around the sun - it forms an ellipse passing further away from the sun at the one end of the orbit than at the other end. During the 100,000 year cycle the tug of other planets on the earth causes its orbit to change shape. It shifts from a short broad ellipse that keeps the earth closer to the sun to a long flat ellipse that allows it to move farther from the sun and back again. 8 - There is no consensus of scientists in favor of human caused global warming. While opinion polls do not determine truth in science, more than 17,000 American scientists signed a petition drafted by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine which stated: "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth." 9 - A modest amount of global warming, should it occur would be beneficial to the natural world. The warmest period in recorded history was the Medieval Warm Period roughly 800 to 1200AD when temperatures were 7 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than today allowing great prosperity of mankind. 10 - Carbon dioxide is NOT a pollutant. On the contrary it makes crops and forests grow faster. Mapping by satellite shows that the earth has become about 6% greener overall in the past two decades, with forests expanding into arid regions. The Amazon rain forest was the biggest gainer, despite the much advertised deforestation caused by human cutting along their edges. Certainly climate change does not help every region equally, but careful studies predict overall benefit, fewer storms (not more), more rain, better crop yields, longer growing seasons, milder winters and decreasing heating costs in colder climates. The news is certainly not all bad and on balance may be rather good. 7 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 8 Extns #1- No Impact Zero impact to Global Warming—rising sea levels is long-term and inevitable and global warming increases standard of living. Singer 7 [March 19th, S. Fred Singer, “'The Great Global Warming Swindle”, http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/swindle.htm, S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist, is Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, and former founding Director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service. He is author of Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate (The Independent Institute, 1997] Finally, no one can show that a warmer climate would produce negative impacts overall. The much–feared rise in sea levels does not seem to depend on short–term temperature changes, as the rate of sea–level increases has been steady since the last ice age, 10,000 years ago. In fact, many economists argue that the opposite is more likely—that warming produces a net benefit, that it increases incomes and standards of living. Why do we assume that the present climate is the optimum? Surely, the chance of this must be vanishingly small, and the economic history of past climate warmings bear this out. But the main message of The Great Global Warming Swindle is much broader. Why should we devote our scarce resources to what is essentially a non–problem, and ignore the real problems the world faces: hunger, disease, denial of human rights—not to mention the threats of terrorism and nuclear wars? 8 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 9 Extns #2- Natural Causes Current climate change is a product of natural heat fluctuations—human contribution is insignificant. Jaworowski 8 [Professor, Zbigniew March, “Climate Change Reflects Natural Planetary Events”, http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/cycles/chap1.htm, chairman of the Scientific Council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw. In the winter of 1957-1958, he measured the concentration of CO2 in the atmospheric air at Spitsbergen. During 1972 to 1991, he investigated the history of the pollution of the global atmosphere, measuring the dust preserved in 17 glaciers—in the Tatra Mountains in Poland, in the Arctic, Antarctic, Alaska, Norway, the Alps, the Himalayas, the Ruwenzori Mountains in Uganda, and the Peruvian Andes. He has published about 20 papers on climate, most of them concerning the CO2 measurements in ice cores. M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc.] In fact, the recent climate developments are not something unusual; they reflect a natural course of planetary events. From time immemorial, alternate warm and cold cycles have followed each other, with a periodicity ranging from tens of millions to several years. The cycles were most probably dependent on the extraterrestrial changes occurring in the Sun and in the Sun's neighborhood. Short term changes—those occurring in a few years—are caused by terrestrial factors such as large volcanic explosions, which inject dust into the stratosphere, and the phenomenon of El Niño, which depends on the variations in oceanic currents. Thermal energy produced by natural radionuclides that are present in the 1-kilometer-thick layer of the Earth's crust, contributed about 117 kilojoules per year per square meter of the primitive Earth. As a result of the decay of these long-lived radionuclides, their annual contribution is now only 33.4 kilojoules per square meter. (10) This nuclear heat, however, plays a minor role among the terrestrial factors, in comparison with the "greenhouse effects" caused by absorption by some atmospheric gases of the solar radiation reflected from the surface of the Earth. Without the greenhouse effect, the average near-surface air temperature would be -18°C, and not +15°C, as it is now. The most important among these "greenhouse gases" is water vapour, which is responsible for about 96 to 99 percent of the greenhouse effect. Among the other greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, CFCs, N2O, and O3), the most important is CO2, which contributes only 3 percent to the total greenhouse effect. ( 11,12) The manmade CO2 contribution to this effect may be about 0.05 to 0.25 percent. (13) Now we are near the middle of the Sun's lifetime, about 5 billion years since its formation, and about 7 billion years before its final contraction into a hot white dwarf, (14) the heat of which will smother the Earth, killing all life. At the start of Sun's career, its irradiance was about 30 percent lower than it is now. This probably was one of the reasons for the Precambrian cold periods. In 1989, Joseph Kirschvink found 700 million-year-old rocks, near Adelaide, Australia, holding traces of the past glaciers. However, the magnetic signal of these rocks indicates that at that time, the glaciers were located at the Equator. This means that the whole of the Earth was then covered with ice. In 1992, Kirschvink called this stage of the planet the "Snowball Earth," and found that this phenomenon occurred many times in the Precambrian period. One such Snowball Earth appeared 2.4 billion years ago. […]Similar evidence comes also from more direct measurements of the temperature preserved in the Greenland ice cap (Figure 2). These studies stand in stark contradiction to the much smaller study, (21b) which shows a "hockey stick" curve, with the outstanding high temperature in the 20th Century, and a rather flat and slightly decreasing trend during the rest of the phenomena of Medieval Warming and the Little Ice Age had a global range, and that the contemporary period does not differ from the previous natural climatic changes. However, the Mann et al. study was incorporated into the the past millennium. The study, by Mann et al., is in opposition to the multitude of publications supporting the evidence that during the past 1,000 years, IPCC's 2001 (TAR) report, as a main proof that the 20th Century warming was unprecedented, and it was enthusiastically used by aficionados of the Kyoto Protocol to promote their case. 9 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 10 Extns #2- Natural Causes History is on our side—temperature variations are a natural cause of cloud fluctuation. Singer 7 [March 19th, S. Fred Singer, “'The Great Global Warming Swindle”, http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/swindle.htm, S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist, is Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, and former founding Director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service. He is author of Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate (The Independent Institute, 1997] The best evidence supporting natural causes of temperature fluctuations are the changes in cloudiness, which correspond strongly with regular variations in solar activity. The current warming is likely part of a natural cycle of climate warming and cooling that’s been traced back almost a million years. It accounts for the Medieval Warm Period around 1100 A.D., when the Vikings settled Greenland and grew crops, and the Little Ice Age, from about 1400 to 1850 A.D., which brought severe winters and cold summers to Europe, with failed harvests, starvation, disease, and general misery. Attempts have been made to claim that the current warming is “unusual” using spurious analysis of tree rings and other proxy data. Advocates have tried to deny the existence of these historic climate swings and claim that the current warming is "unusual" by using spurious analysis of tree rings and other proxy data, resulting in the famous “hockey–stick” temperature graph. The hockey-stick graph has now been thoroughly discredited. 10 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 11 Extns #3- Global Warming Irreversible We’ve already reached the tipping point—it’s too late to do anything about global warming. There evidence that says otherwise has a particular agenda and should be scrutinized. Hymas 5 [Lisa, Feb 14th, “It’s too late to stop climate change”, writer for an environmental news service, http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/2/14/144947/873, GristMill environmental news commentary] "At the core of the global warming dilemma is a fact neither side of the debate likes to talk about: It is already too late to prevent global warming and the climate change it sets off," writes environmental author and advocate Mark Hertsgaard in the San Francisco Chronicler. Environmentalists won't say this for fear of sounding alarmist or defeatist. Politicians won't say it because then they'd have to do something about it. The world's top climate scientists have been sending this message, however, with increasing urgency for many years. 11 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 12 Extns #5- Scrutinize Their Ev / Biased Scientists are influenced by politics and incentives – they alter their data to support warming- IPCC study proves Dr. David Demeritt (Professor of Geology at Kings College, London) 6/1 “The Construction of Global Warming and the Politics of Science” http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/0004-5608.00245 In this article, I reconsider the relationships between the science and the politics of climate change. Although commonly thought of as are linked in some important ways. Not only has the science of climate change largely driven the national and international politics, the politics in turn have also influenced the practice of that science. It is my contention that the demand for and expectation of policy relevance has subtly shaped the formulation of research questions, choice of methods, standards of proof, and the definition of other aspects of “good” scientific questions. This pattern of reciprocal influence belies the categorical distinction so often made between science, based purely on objective fact, and politics, which involves the value-laden decision making that is separable from the downstream of science. The global scaling aids and is underwritten by a second way in which climate scientists universalize the objects of their knowledge ontologically. Physical sciences represent GHGs in terms of certain objective and immutable physical properties. The specific global scaling of climate change highlights more general concerns about the effects of increasing GHG concentrations on the earth’s radiation balance at the expense of other ways of formulating the problem,, such as the structural imperatives of the capitalist economy driving those emissions, and indeed of other problems, such as poverty and disease. Given the immensely contentious politics, it is tempting for politicians to argue that climate policy must be based upon scientific certainty. This scienceled politics is attractive to some scientists since it enhances their power and prestige. The claim of the IPCC that GCM two separate domains, the two “simulation of present climate is generally realistic” reflects the largely tacit and informal judgment of modelers not to take model outputs at face value, but instead to “subjectively correct for known errors in the models”. In the face of growing criticism from those who are concerned about the role of models in the greenhouse policy debate, Mitchell and colleagues used recently published global aerosol data to account more explicitly for aerosols through a physically constrained parameterization. By providing an explanation for the slower than previously predicted onset of global warming, their paper lent scientific weight to the politically symbolical and intergovernmentally negotiated conclusion of the IPCC summary for policy makers that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence on the climate”. Climate skeptics now charge that the addition of aerosols to the models, ex post facto, is a desperate and politically motivated attempt to salvage an otherwise empirically falsified hypothesis about global warming. 12 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 13 Extns #6- No Warming 1. Alarmist predictions wrong – data does not support these conclusions Taylor and Bast 07[James M. Taylor and Joseph L. Bast, Environment Issue Suite, April 16, 2007] Global warming is a prime example of the alarmism that characterizes much of the environmental movement. Media coverage of the topic is heavily slanted toward alarmism because “bad news sells,” making it difficult for climate realists to get a fair hearing. Al Gore’s recent movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” has been severely critiqued by many experts, yet it is being shown in high schools across the country as an educational documentary. Climate science reveals that the world has warmed about 1 degree C during the past century, with half of that warming occurring before human emissions could have been responsible. Even if human activity is responsible for 100 percent of the warming since 1940, it is only about 0.5 degrees C., an amount so small it is within the error range of the instruments used to measure global temperatures. There is no consensus about the causes, effects, or future rate of global warming. Most climate scientists doubt the reliability of computer models and the accuracy of land-based temperature records Reports by the IPCC are unreliable due to political editing and rewriting of the reports’ conclusions. Some of the key evidence cited in past IPCC reports has been shown to be fraudulent. 2. Human readings are ineffective. Satellites prove there is no global warming. Taylor 01[James Taylor, December 16, 2001, “Polar Ice Cap Studies Refute Catastrophic Global Warming Theories”] Surface temperature readings taken by humans indicate the Earth has warmed by approximately 1 degree Fahrenheit over the past 100 years. This warming is certainly not much, but it is often cited as evidence that global warming is occurring, even if it is merely in its initial stages. However, precise satellite readings of the lower atmosphere (a region that is supposed to immediately reflect any global warming) have shown no warming since readings were begun more than 20 years ago. "We have seen no sign of man-induced global warming at all. The computer models used in U.N. studies say the first area to heat under the 'greenhouse gas effect' should be the lower atmosphere, known as the troposphere. Highly accurate, carefully checked satellite data have shown absolutely no warming," explained Tom Randall of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Global warming skeptics have pointed out that most of the surface temperature readings indicating a warming have been taken in underdeveloped nations, where reliability and qualitycontrol are questionable. In developed nations such as the United States, by contrast, the readings tend to show no warming. Moreover, skeptics note, surface temperature readings are influenced by artificial warming associated with growing urbanization, which creates artificial heat islands around temperature reading stations. "While the greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have grown in the last 50 years, the correlation with a warming of the world's climate is weak and far from being generally accepted by the scientific community," James L. Johnston, a member of The Heartland Institute's Board of Directors, observed in the August 4 Chicago Tribune. Global warming proponents, on the other hand, now counter that warming, despite prior consensus to the contrary, might occur in the lower atmosphere only after a general warming of the Earth's surface. 13 19 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 14 Extns #7- C02 Emissions C02 has nothing to do with climate change—historical inconsistencies and observational data prove. Jaworowski 8 [Professor, Zbigniew March,“Fear Propaganda”, http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/cycles/chap4.htm, chairman of the Scientific Council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw. In the winter of 1957-1958, he measured the concentration of CO2 in the atmospheric air at Spitsbergen. During 1972 to 1991, he investigated the history of the pollution of the global atmosphere, measuring the dust preserved in 17 glaciers—in the Tatra Mountains in Poland, in the Arctic, Antarctic, Alaska, Norway, the Alps, the Himalayas, the Ruwenzori Mountains in Uganda, and the Peruvian Andes. He has published about 20 papers on climate, most of them concerning the CO2 measurements in ice cores. M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc.] the concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the most important among the man-made greenhouse gases, were out of phase with the changes of near-surface air temperature, both recently and in the Contrary to the global warmers' computer predictions, distant past. This is clearly seen in Antarctic and Greenland ice cores, where high CO 2 concentrations in air bubbles preserved in polar ice appear 1,000 to 13,000 In ancient times, the CO2 concentration in the air has been significantly higher than today, with no dramatic impact on the temperature. In the Eocene period years after a change in the isotopic composition of H2O, signalling the warming of the atmosphere. (29) (50 million years ago), this concentration was 6 times larger than now, but the temperature was only 1.5°C higher. In the Cretaceous period (90 million years ago), the CO2 concentration was 7 times higher than today, and in the Carboniferous period (340 million years ago), the CO2 concentration was nearly 12 times higher. (30) When the CO2 concentration was 18 times higher, 440 million years ago (during the Ordovician period), glaciers existed on the continents of both hemispheres. At the end of the 19th Century, the amount of CO2 discharged into the atmosphere by world industry was 13 times smaller than now. (31) But the climate at that time had warmed up, as a result of natural causes, emerging from the 500-year long Little Ice Age, which prevailed approximately from 1350 to 1880. This was not a regional European phenomenon, but extended throughout the whole Earth( 19,20) During this epoch, the average global temperature was 1°C lower than now. Festivals were organized on the frozen Thames River, and people travelled from Poland to Sweden, crossing the Baltic Sea on sleighs and staying overnight in a tavern build on ice. This epoch is well illustrated by the paintings by Pieter Breughel and Hendrick Avercamp. In the mountains of Scotland, the snowline stretched down 300 to 400 meters lower than today. In the vicinity of Iceland and Greenland, the sea ice was so extensive that the access to a Greenland Viking colony, established in 985, was completely cut off; the colony was finally smashed by the Little Ice Age. All this was preceded by the Middle Ages Warming, which lasted for more than 300 years (900 to 1100), and during which the temperature reached its maximum (1.5°C more than today) around the year 990. Both the Little Ice Age and the Middle Ages Warming, were not regional phenomena as implied by Mann and his co-authors, (32) but were global and were observed around the North Atlantic Ocean, in Europe, Asia, South America, Australia, and Antarctica. (33,34) During the Medieval Warming, the forest boundary in Canada reached 130 kilometers farther north than today, and in Poland, England, and Scotland vineyards for altar wine production flourished—only to be destroyed by the Little Ice Age. Still earlier, 3,500 to 6,000 years ago, a long-lasting Holocene Warming took place, when the average air temperature exceeded the current one by 2°C (Figure 5). The Little Ice Age is not yet completely behind us. Stenothermal (warm-loving) diatom species, which reigned in the Baltic Sea during the Medieval Warming, have not yet returned. (35) Diatom assemblages obtained from sediment core from the seabed of the north Icelandic shelf indicate that during the past 4,600 years the warmest summer sea-surface temperatures, about 8.1°C, occurred at 4,400 years before the present. Thereafter the climate cooled, with a warmer interlude of about 1°C near 850 years before the present. This was followed again by a cold span of the Little Ice Age, which brought mean summer sea-surface temperatures down by The fastest temperature growth occurred in the early 20th Century, and the maximum was reached around 1940. It was then that the mountain and Arctic glaciers were shrinking violently, but their retreat from the record sizes (during the coldest part of Little Ice Age) had started 200 years earlier, around 1750, when no one even dreamed of industrial CO2 emissions. An about 2.2°C. Today's temperature of only 6.3°C still has not reached the Holocene warming level of 8.1°C. (36) illustration of this process is a map of glacier front changes between 1750 and 1961, at what is probably the best studied Storbreen Glacier in Norway, in which the first measurements of CO2 in ice were performed in 1956 (Figure 6). The attack of glaciers on Swiss villages in the 17th and 18th centuries—sometimes the velocity of ice movement reached 20 meters annually, destroying homes and fields—was perceived as a calamity. Yet, the withdrawal of glaciers in the 20th Century has Since the exceptionally hot 1940s, until 1975, the Earth's climate cooled down by about 0.3°C, despite a more than three-fold increase of annual industrial CO2 emission during this been deemed, somewhat foolishly, to be a disaster. period. After 1975, meteorological station measurements indicated that the average global temperature started to rise again, despite the decline in "human" CO 2 emissions. However, it turns out that it was probably a measuring artifact, brought about by the growth of the cities and resulting "urban heat island" effect. Meteorological stations, which used to be sited outside of urban centers, have been absorbed by the cities, where the temperature is higher than in the countryside. Outside the cities of the United States and Europe, the observed temperature is lower, rather than higher, as demonstrated by the data of NASA's Goddard Institute, reviewed recently by J. Daly. (37) The same is true also for the polar regions, where the models predict the largest increase in air temperature. As stated by Rajmund Przybylak, a climatologist from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland, in polar regions "warming and cooling epochs should be seen most clearly. . . and should also occur earlier than in other parts of the world." Therefore, these regions, he says, "should play a very important role in the detection of global changes." (38) Przybylak collected data covering the period 1874 to 2000, from 46 Arctic and subarctic stations managed by Danish, Norwegian, American, Canadian, 14 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 15 Extns #7- C02 Emissions and Russian meteorological and other institutes. His study demonstrates the following: 1 In the Arctic, the highest temperatures occurred clearly in the 1930s; 2 Even in the 1950s, the temperature was higher than in the 1990s; 3 Since the mid-1970s, the annual temperature shows no clear trend; and 4 the temperature in Greenland in the last 10 to 20 years is similar to that observed in the 19th Century. 15 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 16 ************************Answers to Global Warming Bad Scenarios********************* 16 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 17 AT: Arctic Destruction / Ice Caps Melting 1. Their argument is categorically untrue—global warming is NOT heating up the arctic and even if it did it would help the entire ecosystem—statistics, history, and modern studies concur. Jaworowski 8 [Professor, Zbigniew March, “Climate Change Reflects Natural Planetary Events”, http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/cycles/chap1.htm, chairman of the Scientific Council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw. In the winter of 1957-1958, he measured the concentration of CO2 in the atmospheric air at Spitsbergen. During 1972 to 1991, he investigated the history of the pollution of the global atmosphere, measuring the dust preserved in 17 glaciers—in the Tatra Mountains in Poland, in the Arctic, Antarctic, Alaska, Norway, the Alps, the Himalayas, the Ruwenzori Mountains in Uganda, and the Peruvian Andes. He has published about 20 papers on climate, most of them concerning the CO2 measurements in ice cores. M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc.] Cold periods have always meant human calamities and ecosystem disasters. For example, the last cold period, the so-called Little Ice Age, brought famine and epidemics to Europe and in Finland that contributed to the extinction of two thirds of the population. On the other hand, during the warm periods, plants, animals, and human communities thrived and prospered. For many years we have been taught that climate warming will cause a series of disasters: ocean level rise, Arctic ecological disaster, droughts and floods, agriculture catastrophes, rising numbers and violence of hurricanes, epidemics of Let's take a look at the Arctic. At the request of the Norwegian government's Interdepartmental Climatic Group, together with three colleagues from the Norsk Polar Institute, I have studied the impact of a possible climate warming on the Arctic flora and fauna in the region of Svalbard. Special concerns involved possible polar bear extinction. Our report 23 states that in the period from 1920 to 1988, the temperature on Spitsbergen and on adjacent Jan Mayen isle dropped by nearly 2°C, contrary to the predictions by Dr. Schneider and his followers. For the study's sake, however, we made an assumption that, by some miracle, the Arctic climate would be warmed up by a few degrees Celsius, with a higher carbon dioxide concentration in the air. Under this assumption, we investigated the fate of plants, sea plankton, fish, bears, reindeer, seals, and millions of birds inhabiting this region. It turned out that at higher CO2 concentration and higher temperatures, the productivity of the Arctic ecological system always rises. Historic records and modern statistics show that in warmer periods, more fish have been caught in the Barents Sea, and the populations of reindeer, birds, seals, and bears also expanded. Over land, the mass of vegetation for reindeer increased, and in the sea, plankton became more plentiful. This allowed the fish population to increase, expanding food resources for birds and seals, which, in turn, are eaten by polar bears. In conclusion: Climate warming would be beneficial for the whole system of life in the Arctic, and polar bears would be more numerous than today infectious and parasitic diseases, and so on. The impacts of warming, so it seems, must be always negative, never positive. But is it really so? 17 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 18 AT: Arctic Destruction / Ice Caps Melting 2. Artic polar and Greenland ice caps increasing and thickening. No global warming. Taylor 01(James Taylor, December 16, 2001, “Polar Ice Cap Studies Refute Catastrophic Global Warming Theories”) A study published in Geophysical Research Letters (Winsor, P., "Arctic sea ice thickness remained constant during the 1990s," Volume 28: 1039-1041 (2001)) found the same to be true in the Arctic. The study concluded, "mean ice thickness has remained on a near-constant level around the North Pole from 1986-1997." Moreover, the study noted data from six different submarine cruises under the Arctic sea ice showed little variability and a "slight increasing trend" in the 1990s Just off the Arctic polar ice cap, ice coverage in Greenland was also shown to be steady and likely increasing. A study in Journal of Geophysical Research (Comiso, J.C., Wadhams, P., Pedersen, L.T. and Gersten, R.A., Volume 106: 9093-9116 (2001)) concluded that, annual variances notwithstanding, the Odden ice tongue in Greenland exhibited no statistically significant change from 1979 to 1998. Moreover, proxy reconstruction of the ice tongue utilizing air temperature data indicated the ice covers a greater area today than it did several decades ago. Viewed as a whole, the new ice cap studies indicate no global warming has occurred in recent decades, at least not in high latitudes. These findings also offer an important insight into one of the more significant controversies surrounding global warming theory. 3. Glaciers are not melting—Antarctic icecaps disprove and the glaciers that are melting don’t contribute to sea-level rise. Morner 7 [June 22, Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, “Sea-Level Expert: It’s not Rising”, http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/sealevel.htm, Has studied sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. Recently retired as director of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department at Stockholm University, Mörner is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project] Where is ice melting? Some Alpine glaciers are melting, others are advancing. Antarctic ice is certainly not melting; all the Antarctic records show expansion of ice. Greenland is the dark horse here for sure; the Arctic may be melting, but it doesn't matter, because they're already floating, and it has no effect. And like this State of Fear (book), by Michael Crichton, when he talks about ice. 18 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 19 AT: Kilimanjaro Proves The melting of Kilimanjaro is caused by deforestation—not by global warming Morner 7 [June 22, Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, “Sea-Level Expert: It’s not Rising”, http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/sealevel.htm, Has studied sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. Recently retired as director of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department at Stockholm University, Mörner is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project] A glacier like Kilimanjaro, which is important, on the Equator, is only melting because of deforestation. At the foot of the Kilimanjaro, there was a rain forest; from the rain forest came moisture, from that came snow, and snow became ice. Now, they have cut down the rain forest, and instead of moisture, there comes heat; heat melts the ice, and there's no more snow to generate the ice. So it's a simple thing, but has nothing to do with temperature. It's the misbehavior of the people around the mountain. So again, it's like Tuvalu: We should say this is deforestation, that's the thing. But instead they say, "No, no, it's global warming!" 19 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 20 AT: Sea Level Rise (1/2) 1. Law of physics, human observation, and satellite research prove there is no correlation between warming and seal-level rise; any trend is induced by computer programmers forcing models to produce information consistent with environmental community. Morner 7 [June 22, Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, “Sea-Level Expert: It’s not Rising”, http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/sealevel.htm, Has studied sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. Recently retired as director of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department at Stockholm University, Mörner is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project] There's another way of checking it, because if the radius of the Earth increases as a result of sea level rise, then immediately the Earth's rate of rotation would slow down. That is a physical law, right? You have it in figure-skating: when skaters rotate very fast, the arms are close to the body; and then when they increase the radius, by putting out their arms, they stop by themselves. So you can look at the rotation and you see the same thing: Yes, it might be 1.1 mm per year, but absolutely not more. It could be less, because there could be other factors affecting the Earth, but it certainly could not be more. Absolutely not! Again, it's a matter of physics. So, we have this 1 mm per year up to 1930, by observation, and we have it by rotation recording. So we go with those two. They go up and down, but there's no trend in it; it was up until 1930, and then down again. There's no trend, absolutely no trend. Another way of looking at what is going on is the tide gauge. Tide gauging is very complicated, because it gives different answers for wherever you are in the world. We have to rely on geology when we interpret it. So, for example, those people in the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), choose Hong Kong, which has six tide gauges, and they choose the record of one, which gives a 2.3 mm per year rise of sea level. Every geologist knows that that is a subsiding area. It's the compaction of sediment; it is the only record which you should not use. And if that (2.3 mm) figure is correct, then Holland would not be subsiding, it would be uplifting. And that is just ridiculous. Not even ignorance could be responsible for a thing like that. So tide gauges, you have to treat very, very carefully. Now back to satellite altimetry, which shows the water, not just the coasts, but in the whole of the ocean, as measured by satellite. From 1992 to 2002, (the graph of the sea level) was a straight line, variability along a straight line, but absolutely no trend whatsoever. We could see spikes: a very rapid rise, but then in half a year, they fall back again. But absolutely no trend, and to have a sea-level rise, you need a trend. Data Fudged Then, in 2003, the same data set, which in their (IPCC's) publications, in their website, was a straight line— suddenly it changed, and showed a very strong line of uplift, 2.3 mm per year, the same as from the tide gauge. And that didn't look so nice. It looked as though they had recorded something, but they hadn't recorded anything. It was the original data which they suddenly twisted up, because they entered a "correction factor," which they took from the tide gauge. So it was not a measured thing, but a figure introduced from outside. I accused them of this at the Academy of Sciences meeting in Moscow—I said you have introduced factors from outside; it's not a measurement. It looks like it is measured from the satellite, but you don't say what really happened. And they answered, that we had to do it, because otherwise we would not have gotten any trend! That is terrible! As a matter of fact, it is a falsification of the data set. Why? Because they know the answer. And there you come to the point: They know" the answer; the rest of us, we are searching for the answer. Because we are field geologists; they are computer scientists. So all this talk that sea level is rising, this stems from the computer modelling, not from observations. The observations don't find it! I have been an expert reviewer for the IPCC, both in 2000 and last year. The first time I read it (the report), I was exceptionally surprised. First of all, it had 22 authors, but none of them—none—were sea-level specialists. They were given this mission, because they promised to answer the right thing. Again, it was a computer issue. This is the typical thing: The meteorological community works with computers, simple computers. Geologists don't do that! We go out in the field and observe, and then we can try to make a model with computerization; but it's not the first thing. 20 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 21 AT: Sea Level Rise (2/2) 2. Sea levels aren’t rising—the shoreline is just eroding because of decreased sea levels. Morner 7 [June 22, Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, “Sea-Level Expert: It’s not Rising”, http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/sealevel.htm, Has studied sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. Recently retired as director of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department at Stockholm University, Mörner is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project] Isn't some of what people are talking about just shoreline erosion, as opposed to sea-level rise? Yes, and I have very nice pictures of it. If you have a coast, with some stability of the sea level, the waves make a kind of equilibrium profile—what they are transporting into the sea and what they are transporting onshore. If the sea rises a little, yes, it attacks, but the attack is not so vigorous. On the other hand, if the sea goes down, it is eating away at the old equilibrium level. There is a much larger redistribution of sand. We had an island, where there was heavy erosion, everything was falling into the sea, trees and so on. But if you looked at what happened: The sand which disappeared there, if the sea level had gone up, that sand would have been placed higher, on top of the previous land. But it is being placed below the previous beach. We can see the previous beach, and it is 20-30 cm above the current beach. So this is erosion because the sea level fell, not because the sea level rose. And it is more common that erosion is caused by a falling sea level, than by a rising sea level. 3. Sea level is not rising despite glacier melting—and their argument is empirically denied—there’s been warming for 5000 years. Morner 7 [June 22, Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, “Sea-Level Expert: It’s not Rising”, http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/sealevel.htm, Has studied sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. Recently retired as director of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department at Stockholm University, Mörner is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project] The only place that has that potential is Greenland, and Greenland east is not melting; Greenland west, the Disco Bay is melting, but it has been melting for 200 years, at least, and the rate of melting decreased in the last 50-100 years. So, that's another falsification. But more important, in the last 5,000 years, the whole of the Northern Hemisphere experienced warming, the Holocene Warm Optimum, and it was 2.5 degrees warmer than today. And still, no problem with Antarctica, or with Greenland; still, no higher sea level. 21 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 22 AT: Sea Levels - Tuvalu Island Proves Tuvalu Island variograph records prove that there is no rise in sea level—rising salt water came from over-extraction of freshwater. Morner 7 [June 22, Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, “Sea-Level Expert: It’s not Rising”, http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/sealevel.htm, Has studied sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. Recently retired as director of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department at Stockholm University, Mörner is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project] Another famous place is the Tuvalu Islands, which are supposed to soon disappear because they've put out too much carbon dioxide. There we have a tide gauge record, a variograph record, from 1978, so it's 30 years. And again, if you look there, absolutely no trend, no rise. So, from where do they get this rise in the Tuvalu Islands? We know in the Tuvalu Islands that there was a Japanese pineapple industry which extracted too much fresh water from the inland, and those islands have very little fresh water available from precipitation, rain. So, if you take out too much, you destroy the water magazine, and you bring seawater into the magazine, which is not nice. So they took out too much freshwater and in came salt water. And of course the local people were upset. But then it was much easier to say, "No, no! It's the global sea level rising! It has nothing to do with our extraction of freshwater." So there you have it. This is a local industry which doesn't pay. 22 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 23 AT: Sea Levels – Vanuatu and Tegua Prove Vanuatu and Tegua are not rising—tide-guage records prove. Morner 7 [June 22, Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, “Sea-Level Expert: It’s not Rising”, http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/sealevel.htm, Has studied sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. Recently retired as director of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department at Stockholm University, Mörner is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project] You have Vanuatu, and also in the Pacific, north of New Zealand and Fiji—there is the island Tegua. They said they had to evacuate it, because the sea level was rising. But again, you look at the tide-gauge record: There is absolutely no signal that the sea level is rising. If anything, you could say that maybe the tide is lowering a little bit, but absolutely no rising. And again, where do they (the IPCC) get it from? They get it from their inspiration, their hopes, their computer models, but not from observation, which is terrible. 23 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 24 AT: Sea Levels – Venetia Prove Observational Data disproves Venice argument Morner 7 [June 22, Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, “Sea-Level Expert: It’s not Rising”, http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/sealevel.htm, Has studied sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. Recently retired as director of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department at Stockholm University, Mörner is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project] We have Venice. Venice is well known, because that area is tectonically, because of the delta, slowly subsiding. The rate has been constant over time. A rising sea level would immediately accelerate the flooding. And it would be so simple to record it. And if you look at that 300-year record: In the 20th Century it was going up and down, around the subsidence rate. In 1970, you should have an acceleration, but instead, the rise almost finished. So it was the opposite. 24 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 25 AT: Sea Levels – Computer Data Prove Sea level rise is a myth—the only proof is computer modeling which is falsified and intentionally manipulated so others can complain and reap benefits. Morner 7 [June 22, Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, “Sea-Level Expert: It’s not Rising”, http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/sealevel.htm, Has studied sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. Recently retired as director of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department at Stockholm University, Mörner is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project] If you go around the globe, you find no rise anywhere. But they need the rise, because if there is no rise, there is no death threat. They say there is nothing good to come from a sea-level rise, only problems, coastal problems. If you have a temperature rise, if it's a problem in one area, it's beneficial in another area. But sea level is the real "bad guy," and therefore they have talked very much about it. But the real thing is, that it doesn't exist in observational data, only in computer modelling... 25 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 26 AT: Sea Levels – Maldives Prove Maldives argument is incorrect—storm levels have gone down, the government has an incentive to lie to get damage insurance from the West, and empirical scenarios disprove. Morner 7 [June 22, Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, “Sea-Level Expert: It’s not Rising”, http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/sealevel.htm, Has studied sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. Recently retired as director of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department at Stockholm University, Mörner is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project] .I'll tell you another thing: When I came to the Maldives, to our enormous surprise, one morning we were on an island, and I said, "This is something strange, the storm level has gone down; it has not gone up, it has gone down." And then I started to check the level all around, and I asked the others in the group, "Do you see anything here on the beach?" And after a while they found it too. And as we had investigated, and we were sure, I said we we made a very nice program for Maldive television, but it was forbidden by the government (!) because they thought that they would lose money. They accuse the West for putting out carbon dioxide, and therefore we have to pay for our damage and the flooding. So they wanted the flooding scenario to go on. This tree, which I showed in the documentary, is interesting. This is a prison island, and when people left the island, from the '50s, it was a marker for them, when they saw this tree alone out there, they said, "Ah, freedom!" ... I knew that this tree was in that terrible position already in the 1950s. So the slightest rise, and it would have been gone. I used it in my writings and for television. You know what happened? There came an Australian sea-level team, which was for the IPCC and against me. Then the students pulled down the tree by hand! They destroyed the evidence. What kind of people are those? And we came cannot leave the Maldives and go home and say the sea level is not rising, it's not respectful to the people. I have to say it to Maldive television. So to launch this film "Doomsday Called Off," right after that, and the tree was still green. And I heard from the locals that they had seen the people who had pulled it They call themselves scientists, and they're destroying evidence! A scientist should always be open for reinterpretation, but you can never destroy evidence. And they were being watched, thinking they were clever. down. So I put it up again, by hand, and made my TV program.... 26 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 27 AT: Sea Levels – Small Island Prove Small Island scenarios are lies—research institutions lie to them to sustain the sea-level myth and in turn the islands get damage payments from the West. If sea-level arguments were true—nobody would live on the island because everyone would drown. Morner 7 [June 22, Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, “Sea-Level Expert: It’s not Rising”, http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/sealevel.htm, Has studied sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. Recently retired as director of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department at Stockholm University, Mörner is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project] Question: How does the IPCC get these small island nations so worked up about worrying that they're going to be flooded tomorrow? Because they get support; they get money, so their idea is to attract money from the industrial countries. And they believe that if the story is not sustained, they will lose it. So, they love this story. But the local people in the Maldives—it would be terrible to raise children—why should they go to school, if in 50 years everything will be gone? The only thing you should do, is learn how to swim....Yes, and it's much better to blame something else. Then they can wash their hands and say, "It's not our fault. It's the U.S., they're putting out too much carbon dioxide." 27 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 28 AT: Sea Levels – Glacier Melt Causing Glaciers are not melting—Antarctic icecaps disprove and the glaciers that are melting don’t contribute to sea-level rise. Morner 7 [June 22, Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, “Sea-Level Expert: It’s not Rising”, http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/sealevel.htm, Has studied sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. Recently retired as director of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department at Stockholm University, Mörner is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project] Where is ice melting? Some Alpine glaciers are melting, others are advancing. Antarctic ice is certainly not melting; all the Antarctic records show expansion of ice. Greenland is the dark horse here for sure; the Arctic may be melting, but it doesn't matter, because they're already floating, and it has no effect. And like this State of Fear (book), by Michael Crichton, when he talks about ice. 28 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 29 Morner Qualifications Prefer our evidence—our author is best sea specialist in the world, president of a world renown sealevel commission, invented practically every sea-theory that exists, and owns a research institution dedicated to global warming. Morner 7 [June 22, Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, “Sea-Level Expert: It’s not Rising”, http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/sealevel.htm, Has studied sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. Recently retired as director of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department at Stockholm University, Mörner is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project] I am a sea-level specialist. There are many good sea-level people in the world, but let's put it this way: There's no one who's beaten me. I took my thesis in 1969, devoted to a large extent to the sea-level problem. From then on I have launched most of the new theories, in the '70s, '80s, and '90s. I was the one who understood the problem of the gravitational potential surface, the theory that it changes with time. I'm the one who studied the rotation of the Earth, how it affected the redistribution of the oceans' masses. And so on. I was president of INQUA, an international fraternal association, their Commission on Sea-Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, from 1999 to 2003. And in order to do something intelligent there, we launched a special international sea-level research project in the Maldives, because that's the hottest spot on Earth for (this topic)—there are so many variables interacting there, so it was interesting, and also people had claimed that the Maldives—about 1,200 small islands—were doomed to disappear in 50 years, or at most, I have had my own research institute at Stockholm University, which was devoted to something called paleogeophysics and geodynamics. It's primarily a research institute, but lots of students came, I have several Ph.D. theses at my institute, and lots of visiting professors and research scientists came to learn about sea level. Working in this field, I don't think there's a spot on the Earth I haven't been in! In the northmost, Greenland; and in Antarctica; and all around 100 years. So that was a very important target. the Earth, and very much at the coasts. So I have primary data from so many places, that when I'm speaking, I don't do it out of ignorance, but on the contrary, I know what I'm talking about. And I have interaction with other scientific branches, because it's very important to see the problems not just from one eye, but from many different aspects. Sometimes you dig up some very important thing in some geodesic paper which no other geologist would read. And you must have the time and the courage to go into the big questions, and I think I have done that. The last 10 years or so, of course, everything has been the discussion on sea level, which they say is drowning us. In the early '90s, I was in Washington giving a paper on how the sea level is not rising, as they said. That had some echoes around the world. 29 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 30 AT: Economic Collapse 1. There is an inconsequential impact-- Economists overestimated the impact of warming – only a small portion of the GDP is affected Washington 6 [The Washington Post, October 31 2006, “Warming Called Threat to Global Economy”, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103000269.html] Some economists questioned the British study's projections, however, saying they overestimated the impact of global warming on the world's economies, especially those of developed nations. At the same time, these critics said the report's assertion that it would cost only 1 percent annually of global GDP to curb climate change underestimated how much spending would be required. "There's just a very small part of GDP" in industrialized nations "that's affected by weather in a direct or indirect way," said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, which accepts some contributions from fossil-fuel companies. "It's very difficult to sketch out this disaster scenario." Yale University economics professor William Nordhaus, who has estimated that climate change will cost developed countries less than 1 percent of GDP over the next half-century, said the Stern report "appears to be an impressive effort to summarize the science and economics of climate change" despite the controversy surrounding its projections 30 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 31 AT: War (1/3) 1. No Impact and Turn—climate change does not cause resource shortages and even if it did—it would solve conflict Idean Salehyan 2007 (August, Assistant professor of political science at the University of North Texas, “The New Myth About Climate Change: Corrupt, tyrannical governments-not changes in the Earth’s climate-will be to blame for the coming resource wars”, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3922, Accessed 6/28/08) First, aside from a few anecdotes, there is little systematic empirical evidence that resource scarcity and changing environmental conditions lead to conflict. In fact, several studies have shown that an abundance of natural resources is more likely to contribute to conflict. Moreover, even as the planet has warmed, the number of civil wars and insurgencies has decreased dramatically. Data collected by researchers at Uppsala University and the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo shows a steep decline in the number of armed conflicts around the world. Between 1989 and 2002, some 100 armed conflicts came to an end, including the wars in Mozambique, Nicaragua, and Cambodia. If global warming causes conflict, we should not be witnessing this downward trend. Furthermore, if famine and drought led to the crisis in Darfur, why have scores of environmental catastrophes failed to set off armed conflict elsewhere? For instance, the U.N. World Food Programme warns that 5 million people in Malawi have been experiencing chronic food shortages for several years. But famine-wracked Malawi has yet to experience a major civil war. Similarly, the Asian tsunami in 2004 killed hundreds of thousands of people, generated millions of environmental refugees, and led to severe shortages of shelter, food, clean water, and electricity. Yet the tsunami, one of the most extreme catastrophes in recent history, did not lead to an outbreak of resource wars. Clearly then, there is much more to armed conflict than resource scarcity and natural disasters. 2. No impact and turn—cooperation not conflict happens as a result of resource scarcity—and resource abundance fuels conflict. Hartmann 2007 [November 26, “War Talk and Climate Change”, http://www.truthout.org/article/betsyhartmann-war-talk-and-climate-change, Accessed 6/28/08] These climate scare stories ignore the ways many poorly resourced communities manage their affairs without recourse to violence. Violent conflict in the Global South is generally more connected to resource abundance (competition over rich mineral reserves in the Congo or diamonds in Sierra Leone) than resource scarcity. Moreover, people and nations are as capable of cooperating as they are prone to fighting. The 1990s specter of violent water wars never materialized because of diplomacy and watersharing agreements. Despite grandiose claims that hundreds of millions of 'climate refugees' will roam the planet, we simply don't know how many people global warming will displace. So much will depend on how effectively the international community rises to the challenge of reducing poor people's vulnerability to drought, storms, floods and sea-level rise, and implements strong disaster-response strategies. 31 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 32 AT: War (2/3) 3. Turn: Tyranny A. Blaming climate change for conflicts fuels tyrannical governments by diverting blame. Salehyan 2007 [Idean, August, Assistant professor of political science at the University of North Texas, “The New Myth About Climate Change: Corrupt, tyrannical governments-not changes in the Earth’s climate-will be to blame for the coming resource wars”, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3922, Accessed 6/28/08] Second, arguing that climate change is a root cause of conflict lets tyrannical governments off the hook. If the environment drives conflict, then governments bear little responsibility for bad outcomes. That’s why Ban Ki-moon’s case about Darfur was music to Khartoum’s ears. The Sudanese government would love to blame the West for creating the climate change problem in the first place. True, desertification is a serious concern, but it’s preposterous to suggest that poor rainfall—rather than deliberate actions taken by the Sudanese government and the various combatant factions—ultimately caused the genocidal violence in Sudan. Yet by Moon’s perverse logic, consumers in Chicago and Paris are at least as culpable for Darfur as the regime in Khartoum. To be sure, resource scarcity and environmental degradation can lead to social frictions. Responsible, accountable governments, however, can prevent local squabbles from spiraling into broader violence, while mitigating the risk of some severe environmental calamities. As Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has observed, no democracy has ever experienced a famine. Politicians who fear the wrath of voters usually do their utmost to prevent foreseeable disasters and food shortages. Accountable leaders are also better at providing public goods such as clean air and water to their citizens B. Totalitarian tyranny renders individuals into docile subjects at the disposal of the government making nuclear extinction inevitable Kateb 92, Director of the Program in Political Philosophy at Princeton (George, The Inner Ocean, p.121-122) I have said that statism is one of the main ideas that are implied in official (and lay) rhetoric rationalizing the use of nuclear weapons. But the role of statism in the nuclear situation is not confined to this function. In another form it makes another contribution. The form is best called-once again a French name is most apt-dirigisme, the unremitting direction by the state of all facets of life. Let us translate the word as "state activism." The contribution is indirect but insidious and pervasive, and consists of the general tendency to leave citizens in a condition of dependence which borders on helplessness. The virulent practitioners of state activism are, of course, the police state, tyranny, despotism, and totalist rule in all their varieties. Whenever a nuclear power is also one of the latter regimes, then the disposition among a compliant population is to get used to the idea that the state, as the source of practically all benefits and penalties-all those outside the intimate sphere and many inside it-has the right to dispose of the fate of the people in any way it sees fit. The way it sees fit seems the unavoidable way. Such compliance strengthens the readiness of officials to think seriously about using nuclear weapons. Just as the people are used to the idea that the state has the right to dispose of their fate, so the state gets used to the idea that it may even use nuclear weapons in disposing of its people's fate. My concern here, however, is not with the mentality of unfree societies but rather with that of democratic societies. I propose the idea-it is no more than a hypothesis-that the growth of state activism in a democracy is the growth, as well, of that compliance creating and resting on dependence which makes it easier for the government to think of itself as a state-not only in our earlier sense of an entity whose survival is held to be equivalent to the survival of society itself, but in the related but separate sense of an entity that is indispensable to all relations and transactions in society. The state, in this conceptualization, is the very life of society in its normal workings, the main source of initiative, response, repair, and redress. Society lives by its discipline, which is felt mostly as benign and which is often not felt as The government becomes all-observant, all-competent; it intervenes everywhere; and as new predicaments arise in society, it moves first to define and attempt a resolution of them. My proposed idea is that as this discipline or felt at all. tendency grows-and it is already quite far advanced-people will, to an increasing degree, come to accept the government as a state. The tendency of executive officials (and some in the legislative and judicial branches) to conceive of government as a state will thus be met by the tendency of people to accept that conception. People's dependence on it will gradually condition their attitudes and their sentiments. Looking to it, they must end by looking up to it. I believe the "logic" of this tendency, as we say, is that officials become confirmed in their sense that they, too (like their counterparts in unfree societies), may dispose of the fate of the people. Entrusted with so much 32 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 33 AT: War (3/3) <continues> everyday power, the entire corps of officials must easily find confirmation for the rationalization of the use of nuclear weapons proposed by the foreign-policy sector of officialdom. There may be a strong, if subterranean, bond between the state as indispensable to all relations and transactions in everyday society and the state as entitled to dispose of the fate of society in nuclear war, even though officials receive no explicit confirmation of this bond by the people. Under pressure, however, a people that habitually relies on the state may turn into a too easily mobilizable population: mobilizable but otherwise immobile. My further sense is that a renewed understanding of the moral ideas of individualism is vital to the effort to challenge state activism. Continues (p. 122-124)I say this, knowing that some aspects of individualism do help to push democratic government in the direction of becoming a state, and to push the state into state activism. Tocqueville's prescient analysis of democratic despotism must never be forgotten. Even more important, we must not forget that he thought that democratic despotism was much more likely in those democracies in which individualism was narrowly or weakly developed and in which, therefore, the power of a full moral individualism had never corroded the statist pretensions of political authority. His main anxiety was for France and the Continent, not for America. Thus, following Tocqueville, we may say that anti-individualism provides no remedy for the deficiencies: the remedy is to be sought from individualism itself. One task of a renewed and revised individualism is to challenge every-day state activism. Remote as the connection may seem, the encouragement of state activism, or the failure to resist it, contributes to nuclear statism and thus to the disposition to accept and inflict massive ruin and, with that, the unwanted and denied possibility of extinction. In the nuclear situation, one must be attentive to even remote connections that may exist between human activity and human extinction. There are no certainties of analysis on these possible connections. And so far the worst speculative connection is not exemplified in American society. I only mean to refer to the hypothesis offered independently first by Hannah Arendt and then by Michel Foucault; namely, that where the state is regarded both by itself and by the population not as a mere protector of life against domestic or foreign violence but as the source of contented and adjusted and regularized life (through its welfarist policies and other interventions), it is subtly empowered to take the next step and become the source of mass death. What it gives it can take away, like God. But though still short of this extreme, American society is full of serious tendencies of state activism which indirectly cooperate with the possibility of extinction. By continuously expanding the scope of governmental activity, these tendencies work against one of the principal constituent elements of individualism, the idea that each person should be subject to the smallest possible amount of government regulation. The protection of rights and the restriction of governmental activity are jointly at the service of an individual's free life. One's life is not supposed to be arranged or designed by government or have meaning or coherence given to it by government; nor is one supposed to be helped too much, or saved from oneself, or looked at closely or continuously. One is supposed to be free, autonomous, self-reliant. Individual rights are not always abridged when government acts to substitute itself for the individual and tries to lead our lives for us. Government may abide by the constitutional limitations on itself and nevertheless fill up too many vacant places in a person's life, thus leaving too little raw material out of which a person develops on his or her own. This ideal of free being is under relentless attack, but the attack could not score its successes unless we cooperated. In cooperating we forget the ideal, or let preliminary aspects of it, like the pursuit of interests, exhaustively define the whole ideal. The very notion of rights becomes bloated because of obsession Resistance must be offered from within the ideal, not from collectivism or communitarianism, which are both on the side of making a people systematically docile and ready for mobilization. Even if nuclear weapons did not exist and there were no possibility of extinction, the fight against state activism would have to be carried on. But the link between state activism and extinction suggests itself, and a cultivated individualism must be enlisted against such activism and in behalf of avoiding massive ruin and the possibility of extinction. with interests and turns false to itself. 33 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 34 AT: War - Extns #3- Tyranny Viewing conflict in Darfur as part of climate change ignores the role of a corrupt government. Betsy Hartmann 2007 (November 26, “War Talk and Climate Change”, http://www.truthout.org/article/betsy-hartmann-war-talk-and-climate-change, Accessed 6/28/08) Above all, the nature of institutions and power structures at the local, regional, national and international levels determines whether conflict over resources turns violent or not. Blaming the deaths in Darfur on drought and land degradation caused by climate change naturalizes profoundly political forces. Sudan is one of the most unequal countries in the world, with wealth and power concentrated in the capital Khartoum. Government agricultural policies that stole land from small peasants and redistributed it to large mechanized farms not only triggered political and ethnic grievances in Darfur, but caused ecological damage. It is to history and human agency we should look to understand the roots of crises like Darfur, not to a weather map. 34 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 35 AT: Forests (1/2) Warming promotes forest growth Times Online 07 [“Climate Change may help Rainforests” September 21, 2007. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2500311.ece] Climate change may lead to lush growth rather than catastrophic tree loss in the Amazonian forests, researchers from the US and Brazil have found. A study, in the journal Science, found that reduced rainfall had led to greener forests, possibly because sunlight levels are higher when there are fewer rainclouds. Warming has positive effects on Ecosystems Owen 07 [James Writer for National Geographic) “Global Warming: Good for Greenland?” October 17, 2007. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/10/071017-greenland-warming.html ] For some in Greenland these days, the grass is looking greener. Rapid thawing brought on by global warming on the world's largest island has opened up new opportunities for agriculture, commercial fishing, mining, and oil exploration. The island's native people, though, may not be on the "winning" side of warming. Scientists now report Arctic temperatures are rising almost twice as fast as elsewhere in the world. (Related news: "Greenland Ice Sheet Is Melting Faster, Study Says" [August 10, 2006].) A new WWF Denmark report released last week studied the effects of climate change on the people of Greenland, which is a self-governing territory of Denmark. "The warmer climate will have a definite positive effect on Greenland's economic possibilities and development," the report said. In southwestern Greenland, for example, the grass-growing season gets longer each year, boosting productivity for some 60 sheep farms now established in the region. Up to 23,500 sheep and lambs are slaughtered annually. Dairy cattle have recently been reintroduced, and a government-led project is expected to yield 29,058 gallons (110,000 liters) of milk annually, according to the new report. Locally grown potatoes have appeared in supermarkets, alongside broccoli and other vegetables never before cultivated in Greenland. Commercial fishermen are anticipating bumper cod catches after the fish recently moved north into Greenland's waters. Halibut are also increasing in size. 35 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 36 AT: Forests (2/2) Warming stops famine and assists the environment Stampf 07 [Olaf (Writer for Spiegel Online) “Not the end of the World as we Know it” May 07, 2007 http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,481684,00.html] How bad is climate change really? Are catastrophic floods and terrible droughts headed our way? Despite widespread fears of a greenhouse hell, the latest computer simulations are delivering far less dramatic predictions about tomorrow's climate. Svante Arrhenius, the father of the greenhouse effect, would be called a heretic today. Far from issuing the sort of dire predictions about climate change which are common nowadays, the Swedish physicist dared to predict a paradise on earth for humans when he announced, in April 1896, that temperatures were rising -- and that it would be a blessing for all. Arrhenius, who later won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, calculated that the release of carbon dioxide -- or carbonic acid as it was then known -- through burning coal, oil and natural gas would lead to a significant rise in temperatures worldwide. But, he argued, "by the influence of the increasing percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates," potentially making poor harvests and famine a thing of the past. Arrhenius was merely expressing a view that was firmly entrenched in the collective consciousness of the day: warm times are good times; cold times are bad. During the so-called Medieval Warm Period between about 900 and 1300 A.D., for example, the Vikings raised livestock on Greenland and sailed to North America. New cities were built all across Europe, and the continent's population grew from 30 million to 80 million. 36 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 37 AT: Disease 1. Warming doesn’t cause diseases Donnelly 7 (John, 12-5, Staff, http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2007/12/05/a_tussle_over_link_of_warming_disease/) Donald S. Burke, dean of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health, noted that the 2001 study found that weather fluctuation and seasonal variability may influence the spread of infectious disease. But he also noted that such conclusions should be interpreted with caution. "There are no apocalyptic pronouncements," Burke said. "There's an awful lot we don't know." Burke said he is not convinced that climate change can be proven to cause the spread of many diseases, specifically naming dengue fever, influenza, and West Nile virus. 2. Other factors outweigh – Disease link limited World Press 7 [http://www.skepticism.net/articles/2001/does-global-warming-necessarily-mean-moredisease] A much hyped claim about global warming — that it will lead to an increase in infectious disease — is simply not true. Or more precisely, there is a decided lack of evidence to demonstrate the hypothesis according to a recent National Academy of Sciences report. Donald Burke, professor of international health for John Hopkins School of Public Health, headed the panel and said that, “The potential exists for scientists one day to be able to predict the impact of global climate change on disease, but that day is not yet here.” Climate conditions do certainly play a role in how diseases are distributed, but today housing conditions, vaccination, and sanitation systems play an enormous role in the spread of disease. As many commentators have noted, malaria was an enormous problem in North America well into the 20th century. The disease was eradicated in the United States and Canada thanks to a large public health intervention to rid the continent of the disease. Climate change could cause some changes in infectious diseases, but it is more likely that socioeconomic factors would play the key role in the spread, or lack thereof, of disease. 3. No link between climate and disease – Temperature records prove Kuennen 4 (Tom, http://www.expresswaysonline.com/expwys/diseases.html, Expressways) "Some scientists fear the effects [of global warming] will be disastrous in numerous ways," reported Dan Vergano in USA Today in January 2000. "Tropical diseases, such as dengue fever and malaria, might move north into vulnerable populations." But a new article published by a journal of the federally funded U.S. (CDCP) points out that malaria was most frequent in England and Europe during the well-documented "Little Ice Age" of the 16th and 17th centuries, and already was endemic throughout North America and elsewhere. The article puts ice on the idea that presumed global warming will lead to catastrophic spread of infectious disease. In From Shakespeare to Defoe: Malaria in England in the Little Ice Age, CDCP disease entomologist Dr. Paul Reiter proves that spread of so-called "tropical" infectious diseases is a function of depressed public health, not warmer average temperatures. Claims that malaria's reappearance is due to climate change ignore reality and disregard history, Reiter said. "For example, the many statements that recent climate change has caused malaria to ascend to new altitudes are contradicted by records of its distribution in 1880 to 1945," he said. "Public Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concern should focus on ways to deal with the realities of malaria transmission, rather than on the weather." 37 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 38 AT: Water Shortages / Water Wars 1. Experts say that Water Wars Will Not Occur—fuels cooperation centuries of history prove. Deen ’06 (IPS, Thalif, http://www.tradeobservatory.org/headlines.cfm?refID=88823, August 25th The world's future wars will be fought not over oil but water: an ominous prediction made by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the British ministry of defence and even by some officials of the World Bank. But experts and academics meeting at an international conference on water management in the Swedish capital are dismissing this prediction as unrealistic, far-fetched and nonsensical. "Water wars make good newspaper headlines but cooperation (agreements) don't," says Arunabha Ghosh, co-author of the upcoming Human Development Report 2006 themed on water management. The annual report, commissioned by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), is to be released in December. In reality, Ghosh told the meeting in Stockholm, there are plenty of bilateral, multilateral and trans-boundary agreements for water-sharing -- all or most of which do not make good newspaper copy. Asked about water wars, Prof. Asit K. Biswas of the Mexico-based Third World Centre for Water Management, told IPS: "This is absolute nonsense because this is not going to happen -- at least not during the next 100 years." He said the world is not facing a water crisis because of physical water scarcities. "This is baloney," he said. "What it is facing is a crisis of bad water management," argued Biswas, who was awarded the 2006 international Stockholm Water Prize for "outstanding achievements" in his field. The presentation ceremony took place in Stockholm Thursday. According to the Paris-based U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), one-third of all river basins are shared by more than two countries. Globally, there are 262 international river basins: 59 in Africa, 52 in Asia, 73 in Europe, 61 in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 17 in North America. Overall, 145 countries have territories that include at least one shared river basin. Between 1948 and 1999, UNESCO says, there have been 1,831 "international interactions" recorded, including 507 conflicts, 96 neutral or non-significant events, and most importantly, 1,228 instances of cooperation. "Despite the potential problem, history has demonstrated that cooperation, rather than conflict, is likely in shared basins," UNESCO concludes. The Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) says that 10- to 20-year-old arguments about conflict over water are still being recycled. "Such arguments ignore massive amounts of recent research which shows that waterscarce states that share a water body tend to find cooperative solutions rather than enter into violent conflict," the institute says. SIWI says that during the entire "intifada" -- the ongoing Palestinian uprising against Israel in the occupied territories of West Bank and Gaza -- the only thing on which the two warring parties "Thus, rather than reaching for arguments for the 'water war hypotheses,' the facts seem to support the idea that water is a uniting force and a potential source of peace rather than violent conflict." SIWI said. Ghosh, co-author of the UNDP study, pointed out several agreements which were "models of cooperation", continued to cooperate at a basic level was their shared waters. including the Indus Waters Treaty, the Israel-Jordan accord, the Senegal River Development Organisation and the Mekong River Commission. A study sponsored by the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars points that despite newspaper headlines screaming "water wars are coming!", these apocalyptic warnings fly in the face of history. "No nations have gone to war specifically over water resources for thousands of years. International water disputes -- even among fierce enemies -- are resolved peacefully, even as conflicts erupt over other issues," it says. The study also points out instances of cooperation between riparian nations -- countries or provinces bordering the same river -- that outnumbered conflicts by more than two to one between 1945 and 1999. Why? "Because water is so important, nations cannot afford to fight over it. Instead, water fuels greater interdependence. By coming together to jointly manage their shared water resources, countries can build trust and prevent conflict," argues the study, jointly co-authored by Aaron Wolf, Annika Kramer, Alexander Carius and Geoffrey Dabelko. The study also says most of the conflicts have been within nations, and that international rivers are a different story, although a vice president of the World Bank predicted in 1995 that "the wars of the next century will be about water." In the early 1990s, California farmers bombed pipelines moving water from Owens Valley to Los Angeles, and in 2000 Chinese farmers in Shandong clashed with police to protest government plans to divert irrigation water to cities and industries. Ghosh cited two recent incidents impacting on water supplies. When Israeli fighter jets recently reduced parts of the Lebanese capital Beirut into rubble, the U.S.-made F-16s also destroyed an important source of life sustenance: water pipelines from the Litani River to farmland along the coastal plain and parts of the Bekaa Valley. The longstanding conflict in Sri Lanka -- which has been dragging for over 20 years -- was resumed last month over the diversion of a canal by the rebel group, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, fighting for a separate nation state. "These are two more cases for those who predict water wars," Ghosh said. 38 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 39 AT: Water Shortages / Water Wars 2. Water wars would never happen – it is too critical a resource to provoke a lasting war. Asmal 00 (Professor Kader, Stockholm Water Symposium, 14 August, http://www.info.gov.za/speeches/2000/000911340p1001.htm] have battles been fought over water? Is water scarcity a casus belli? Does it in fact divide nations? My own answer is no, no and no. I recognise the obvious value to sensational Water War rhetoric. Alarmists awaken people to the underlying reality of water scarcity, and rally troops to become more progressive and interdependent. By contrast, to challenge or dispute that rhetoric is to risk making us passive or smug about the status quo, or delay badly needed innovations or co-operation against stress. And yet I do challenge 'Water War' rhetoric. For there is no hard evidence to back it up. If the 'water's-for-fighting' chorus is off key, then its disharmony affects lives as well. It shifts energy and resources from local priorities to foreign affairs. It scares off investment where it is most in need. It inverts priorities, delays implementation of policy. And it forgets that water management is, ultimately, about real people. Mahatma Gandhi said, "When you are unsure of a course of action, remember the face of the poorest, weakest person in society and ask With all due respect to my friends, yourself what impact the action you are about to take will have on that person." More recently Nelson Mandela reiterated that democratic systems lose their validity if they fail to combat and eradicate poverty. We thus would be well advised to remember that, for the poorest and weakest, water's for drinking, not fighting over. The poor are most affected by rhetoric, just as they are by war. It is easier to ignore their thirst than to divert attention to potential foreign threats, real or imagined. Easier, not better. To help the poor and weak, let us reform our unstable, consumptive, ultranationalistic habits to share our resource. 3. Disputes over water lead to peaceful agreements and further negotiations, not wars – it's easier to share such a valuable resource than fight a war. Asmal 00 (Professor Kader, Stockholm Water Symposium, 14 August, http://www.info.gov.za/speeches/2000/000911340p1001.htm] Indeed, just as rain does not start but rather cools and suppresses fire, so water, by its very nature, tends to induce even hostile co-riparian countries to co-operate, even as disputes rage over other issues. The weight of historical evidence demonstrates that organised political bodies have signed 3600 water related treaties since AD 805. Of seven minor water-related skirmishes in that time all began over non-water issues. Most dealt with navigation and borders, but since 1814 states have negotiated a smaller proportion of treaties over flood control, water management, hydropower projects and allocation for consumptive and Of all the 261 trans-boundary waters, in only a few cases: 1. is the downstream country utterly dependent on the river for water; 2. can the upstream country restrict the river's flow; 3. is there a legacy of antagonism between riparians; and 4. is the downstream country militarily stronger than upstream. Another reason involves scale and focus. For water peace to emerge, negotiators think local, act local, and draft treaties that stem from local water project on a specific local river, lake or aquifer that straddles two or more nations. These appear to have more real and lasting authority than broad, vague, undefined agreements with far reaching scope but little impact. This does not mean that states should not ratify the UN Convention on Shared Water Courses, as such ratification non-consumptive use. There are strategic reasons. would reflect a willingness to be bound by co-operative incentives, in which agreement over water leads to other things. North America's water treaties covering fisheries, acid rain, navigation, climate change, the Great Lakes, St. Lawrence and the Columbia Basin -- expanded directly from that tiny, focused accord between Yet another reason involves communication: keep talking before, during and after a project. Prior notification of water development plans goes a long way towards water security. This does not mean nations must obtain consent, or permission, for national interest comes first. To notify is not to end water disputes, or potential for stress and tension. But it engages both, or all-riparian parties, in a frank discussion from which "good faith negotiation" helps define where national interests, for a finite resource, compete and where, like a river or aquifer, they overlap and can be shared. In the treaty between Argentina and Brazil, the very principles that were farmers a century ago. at issue in the dispute -- prior notification and consultation -- were enshrined in the agreement that resolved it. 39 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 40 AT: Water Shortages / Water Wars 4. Their arguments are the efforts of the press to obscure the truth – in reality, water is a catalyst for peace – empirically proven across the globe. Asmal 00 (Professor Kader, Stockholm Water Symposium, 14 August, http://www.info.gov.za/speeches/2000/000911340p1001.htm, bcs) Water also becomes a catalyst for peace over equity. Most treaties that allocate quantity or quality between states, or establish ground rules for management, reflect the principle of equity, or equitable use. This may seem odd, when there is not a perfect balance of power between nations. And the definition of equitable varies from case to case, and according to facts and circumstance. But in this regard water, a potentially renewable resource, can be a common denominator, a leveller in the search for equity. The negotiated result may not be what a national spokesman or leader tells in the press. Between Pakistan and India, or the US and Mexico, both countries announced "they don't have the right to our water," then sat down and work out an equitable solution. Altruism and solidarity, as in the agreement between India and Bangladesh, can provide the basis for future collaboration, if the political will is there. Nations may vow war, and then quietly broker equitable water for peace. 5. Water tensions spur treaties, which lead to further beneficial cooperation – water wars have never and will never happen. Asmal 00 (Professor Kader, Stockholm Water Symposium, 14 August, http://www.info.gov.za/speeches/2000/000911340p1001.htm, bcs) For some of these reasons, nations repeatedly unite over water. In all cases, what could -- and by all indications, should -- erupt into violence and escalation over resource competition and environmental stress instead healed, like a scar or broken bone, into something stronger than before tensions flared. Hot words over resources were cooled by shared water. The first small water treaties spur later agreements over trade, weapons, transport, communications or fisheries. Somehow nations resolve their trans-national water stress without the help of great powers; and yet when looking at potential water conflicts elsewhere in the world, superpowers appear to forget their own history. Insofar as Secretary of State seeks to foster the growth of these river-specific treaties through the United Nations, World Bank or International Court of Justice has done in the past, fine. Judicial or multi-lateral dispute settlements is the only way, if we are to move away from great power politics that verges on hegemony: "Water War" rhetoric should not replace the vacuum left by the Cold War's end. For no nations have gone to war strictly over water and, even with supply running low, let me go on record to say that I doubt they ever will. That is not naivete, or even blind optimism. That is a belief -- based on our growing awareness of water scarcity weighed against the historical evidence of water as a catalyst for cooperation -- that we can infuse each generation who comes with the capacity, understanding and political will to experience, use and enjoy waters as much as our own generation has. 40 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 41 AT: Water Shortages / Water Wars 6. Water shortages wont be widespread – increased rainfall will compensate M. Falkenmark 7 (Prof at Stockholm International Water Institute)“Global warming: water the main mediator” http://www.uneca.org/awich/Reports/Global%20warming%20and%20Water%20WF2_07_globalwarming.pdf In terms of freshwater, annual average river runoff and water availability are projected to increase by 10-40% at high latitudes but decrease by 10-30% over some dry regions at mid-latitudes and in the dry tropics. It shows that large low- and mid-latitude areas will get up to 40% less runoff already some 40 years from now, while other low and high latitude areas will get up to 40% more runoff. 41 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 42 AT: Natural Disasters 1. Warming doesn’t cause disasters and status quo tools mitigate impact Grist`5 (Grist.com, environmental news & commentary, written by David Roberts, 2005, http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/1/6/162641/5470) Empirical research strongly suggests that global warming has not increased the harmfulness of weatherrelated natural disasters in the past century, though it is likely to do so in the future. But even that future increase pales beside the ongoing rise in disaster-related deaths, which is precipitous and immediate and calls out for an equally urgent response. Most tools needed to reduce disaster vulnerability already exist, such as risk assessment techniques, better building codes and code enforcement, land-use standards, and emergency-preparedness plans. The question is why disaster vulnerability is so low on the list of global development priorities. Sarewitz and Pielke are too hard on greens in their piece, saying those who link global warming and natural disasters are either "ill-informed or dishonest" -- even as they acknowledge such a link exists. Their point, though, is that the link is tenuous and speculative, while the death toll of natural disasters is not. There's a larger point here for environmentalists. Global warming is a serious issue and warrants concerted action. But it is not the only issue, and it will not serve the environmental cause well to be associated exclusively with unremitting climate-change alarmism as a response to every issue. Deforestation, wetlands loss, and over-development are all ecological issues more directly pertinent to disaster preparedness than global warming. And on a broader level, the only thing that will prevent these ecological losses is development: lifting the poor of the world out of poverty, reducing the distance between the gap and the core. Enviros are, as I've said before, often hobbled by their single-issue focus. If we, not as enviros but as progressives, really want to reduce human suffering and protect the global environment, our energy and time is often best spent tackling ecological problems indirectly -- by fighting poverty, pushing for third-world debt relief, lobbying for fairer and more progressive tax policy in developed nations, and working to find and celebrate examples of the kind of entrepreneurial innovations in energy, transportation, urban planning, medicine, politics, etc. that will create a world where ecological health is a natural (pardon the pun) side effect. 42 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 43 AT: Extreme Weather 1. There is no consensus and insufficient data to support the idea that warming increases weather extremes. Green Facts Digest 01 (peer-reviewed summary of scientific consensus, “Are recent extreme weather events due to global warming?”, Scientific Facts on Climate Change: 2001 Assessment http://www.greenfacts.org/studies/climate_change/l_2/global_warming_7.htm) Is the occurrence of extreme temperatures increasing? "Data on climate extremes in many regions of the world are inadequate to draw definitive conclusions about possible changes that may have occurred on a global scale. However, in some regions where good data are available, there have been some significant increases and decreases in extreme events over time. For example, there has been a clear trend to fewer extremely low minimum temperatures in several widely separated areas in recent decades (e.g., Australia, the United States, Russia, and China). The 7.2. impact of such changes can manifest itself in fewer freezing days and late season frosts, such as have been documented in Australia and the United States. Indeed, we expect that the number of days with extremely low temperatures should continue to decrease as global temperatures rise. Widespread, extended periods of extremely high temperatures are also expected to become more frequent with continued global warming , such as the unprecedented high nighttime temperatures during the 1995 heat wave in Chicago, Illinois, and the midwestern United States that caused an estimated 830 deaths. However, the global frequency of such heat waves has not been analyzed at this time."7 .3. Are precipitation levels changing? "Higher temperatures lead to higher rates of evaporation and precipitation. As the Earth warms, we expect more precipitation and it is likely to fall over shorter intervals of time, thereby increasing the frequency of very heavy and extreme precipitation events. Analyses of observed changes in precipitation intensity have been conducted only for a few countries. Perhaps the best evidence of increases in extreme and very heavy precipitation events comes from data in North America as depicted for the United States in Figure 8.1. In Australia, which is historically prone to heavy precipitation, an increase in rainfall amount from major storms has also been observed. Analyses for South Africa also show increases in extreme precipitation rates. In another area, China, where data have been analyzed for the last several decades, no obvious trends are apparent, but high concentrations of air pollution (such as sulfate particles that can cool the climate) may be counteracting such changes in this region. There is as yet no evidence for a worldwide rise in the frequency of droughts. In the future, however, it is expected that many regions will experience more frequent, prolonged, or more severe droughts, primarily due to the more rapid evaporation of moisture from plants, soils, lakes, and reservoirs. This is expected to occur even as precipitation increases and heavy precipitation events become more common." 7.4. Are storms affected by global warming? "Blizzards and snow storms may actually increase in intensity and frequency in some colder locations as atmospheric moisture increases. In more temperate latitudes, snowstorms are likely to decrease in frequency, but their intensity may actually increase, as the world warms. Observations show that snowfall has increased in the high latitudes of North America, but snow accumulations have melted faster because of more frequent and earlier thaws. There is evidence of an increase in the frequency of intense extra- tropical storms in the northern North Atlantic and adjacent areas of Europe, such as It remains uncertain as to whether these changes are natural fluctuations or relate to global warming , because there is little consensus about how global warming will affect these non-tropical, yet powerful storms. There is little evidence to support any significant long-term trends in the frequency or intensity of tropical storms, or of hurricanes in the North Atlantic during the past several decades. Although the hurricane frequency was high during 1995 and 1996, an anomalously low number of hurricanes occurred during the 1960s through the 1980s, including those hitting the United States the British Isles, but there has been a decrease in such events in the southern North Atlantic (south of 30°N) over the past few decades. during that period (Figure 8.2). Reliable data from the North Atlantic since the 1940s indicate that the peak strength of the strongest hurricanes has There is also some evidence for a decrease in the frequency of cyclones in the Indian Ocean during the past two decades relative to earlier records and an increase in the frequency of typhoons in the western Pacific. Wide variations in the total number not changed, and the mean maximum intensity of all hurricanes has decreased. of tropical storms including hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones occurring per decade have been observed, with no apparent long-term trends in most There is little consensus about how global warming will affect the intensity and frequency of these storms in the future." ocean basins. 43 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 44 AT: Extreme Weather 2. Alternate factors drive extreme weather such as El Nino effect. Terra Daily 07 (“Extreme weather? Sure. Blame global warming? Not so fast”, 8/10, http://www.terradaily.com/reports/070810015035.5a0gocwm.html) But establishing a link between climate change and extreme weather is a controversial matter. The UN's weather agency says its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has found that "the warming of the climate is unequivocal." Preliminary observations indicated global land surface temperatures in January and April reached the highest levels ever recorded for those months, it said. "Climate change projections indicate it to be very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent," it said recently. A study by researchers from the US National Center for Atmospheric Research and the Georgia Institute of Technology says about twice as many Atlantic hurricanes form each year on average than a century ago. It blames warmer sea surface temperatures and altered wind patterns associated with global climate change for "fueling much of the increase," the center said in a statement. But scientists caution there is not enough evidence to blame global warming for recent extreme weather, and there are those who say there is no proof that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent. Barry Gromett of Britain's Met Office weather service said much of the extreme weather was down to variability in the climate, which is affected by greenhouse gases but also other factors such as El Nino. El Nino events are when drastic changes in sea temperatures in tropical areas affect atmospheric pressure in the Pacific Ocean region, having a knock-on effect on rainfall. "There's a danger in taking isolated incidents in any given year and attributing this to something like climate change," he said. "It's really important to look for trends over a longer period of time. More heat equals more moisture equals probably higher rains, so in that respect some of it ties in quite nicely (with climate change). "But there are many different facets that appear to contradict each other." A study by British Met Office experts released on Thursday found that natural weather variations actually helped offset the effects of global warming the past couple of years, but with temperatures set to rise to new records beginning in "several more years would be needed to establish a link, or to not establish a link, between these extremes and global warming." "Are the extremes really changing? It's not so 2009. Jean Jouzel, a climatologist who represents France on the IPCC, said simple, because by definition, the extremes are rare events, and to come up with statistics, some hindsight is needed," he added. 44 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 45 AT: Extreme Weather 3. No crazy weather – ocean temperatures are constant and their scientists have bad data. World Climate Report 07 (climate change blog, category “Sea Level Rise”, “Questioning Ocean Warming”, 5/14, http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2007/05/14/questioning-ocean-warming/) We sampled a few and found exactly what we expected – endless stories of how the oceans of the world are heating up at an unprecedented rate; absolutely anything and everything related to the ocean is currently in peril according to these sites. Even if you live thousands of miles from the sea, ocean warming will negatively impact you given how ocean temperatures influence weather and climate any place on We just did an internet search on “Ocean Warming” and found an incredible 7.2 million sites! the planet. Our survey of “Ocean Warming” internet sites did not reveal anyone questioning whether or not the oceans are actually warming up – “Ocean Warming” is simply assumed to be a fact. Well, in a recent issue of the Journal of Physical Oceanography, an article appears entitled “Is the World Ocean Warming? Upper-Ocean Temperature Trends: 1950–2000”. Once again, we at World Climate Report are attracted to research that dares to question any of the pillars of the greenhouse scare, and from just the title alone, we knew we would enjoy this article. We were not disappointed. The article is written by scientists at the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington and the research was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Harrison and Carson begin their article noting that interest in ocean temperatures is at an all-time high given the buzz about climate change and the greenhouse effect. below-surface ocean temperature data are sparse, and the existing data sets involve substantial “interpolation, extrapolation, and averaging” that may compromise the integrity of results from such data sets. Harrison and Carson “present results that involve very little manipulation of the data and do not depend upon an analyzed field.” The scientists organized the temperature observations into 1° latitude by 1° longitude boxes, and over the past 50 years, huge areas of the southern oceans have no data whatsoever. Many other oceanic areas have data, but many of the 1° by 1° grid boxes have only one observation per year. They note that “Our results raise a number of questions about They state that the uncertainty that should be assigned at present to basin-scale integral ocean thermal quantities, whether zonal averages, basin averages, or averages over the World Ocean.” Harrison and Carson present a figure showing different characteristics of their data. Their figure is below (Figure 1) along with their own figure caption. Do you notice anything odd in the figure? Unless you are looking at this upside-down, you cannot help but notice cooling in all five graphs for the 1980-1999 time periods (note: the graphs are for different individual gridcells, not a worldwide average). Another figure in their article is just as interesting. As seen in Figure 2, temperature trends over the past 50 years reveal some areas of warming, but also many areas of cooling, as well. In their own words, we learn “The ocean neither cooled nor warmed systematically over the large parts of the ocean for the entire analysis period.” Also evident in the figure is the oceanic expanse without data for making such any such assessment; note in their figure caption that five observations in a decade for at least four decades is all that is required to stay in the analysis! They conclude “Evidently, oceanic regional trend estimates pose substantial sampling challenges and very long records are needed.” There are 1,000 ways to interpret their results, but several themes from the research are inescapable. First and foremost, the authors asked the question “Is the World Ocean Warming” and the answer At no point in the article do we find any global assessment of “World Ocean Warming” and no statement is made about any global trend over the past 50 years. Second, the ocean could be warming or cooling, and we may not have the data needed to detect such a change in heat content. The research pair tells us “There are no results to offer for most of the ocean south of 20°S.” Go look at a globe, look down at it with the South Pole is definitely not “yes.” pointing upward. Literally everything you see is south of 20°S, and with little exception, everything you see is water. Oops, there are no data available to assess whether the water you are looking at is either warming or cooling. 45 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 46 AT: Fires 1. Warming doesn’t cause fires Carpenter, Amanda (Political and Environmental Commentator) “Global Warming Examines committee analyzes forest fires” November 1, 2007 http://www.townhall.com/columnists/AmandaCarpenter/2007/11/01/global_warming_committee_examines_f orest_fires After Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) blamed climate change for California’s raging forest fires, House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D.-Calif.) newly created global warming committee tried to prove Reid’s contention true. In an October 24 news conference Reid told reporters, “One reason that we have fires burning in Southern California is global warming.” Soon after, the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, which Pelosi formed in one of her first acts as Speaker, scheduled a Thursday morning hearing devoted to “examining the scientific link between a changing climate and the frequency and intensity of wildfires." The committee’s website features a “skeptic watch” and labels California as a “global warming impact zone.” Other listed U.S. impact zones include Alaska, Florida and the Midwest. At his hearing, Chairman Rep. Ed Markey (D.-Mass.) said global warming was not the sole cause of the wildfires but was a contributing factor. He said, “Global warming does not cause an individual fire or hurricane, and global warming is not the cause of the California fires.” Rather, “Global warming’s contribution to wildfires is more subtle and more complex, and scientists and the firefighting community are just beginning to tease out this complex climate record from those factors which may be influencing these natural disasters in unnatural ways,” Markey’s written testimony said. He noted that it was important that authorities determine which fires were caused by a “young boy playing with matches…from what started with lighting or a power line collapse or some other common cause of such fires.” Ranking Member Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R.-Wisc.) expressed strong dissent from Markey. He said “global warming alarmists” were making Hurricane “Global warming alarmists are using these natural disasters to promote regulations that will have little or no effect on these forces of nature,” Sensenbrenner said. Katrina and the California fires “the poster children for global warming.” 46 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 47 AT: Refugees (1/2) 1. There are many alternate causalities to displacement of refugees: Viewing them as climate refugees distorts the situation and leaves out many other factors. Kolmannskog 2008 [Vikram Odedra, April, Norweigan Refugee Council, “Future floods of refugees: A comment on climate change, conflict and forced migration”, http://www.nrc.no/arch/_img/9268480.pdf, Accessed 6/28/08] The term “climate refugees” implies a mono-causality that one rarely finds in human reality. No one factor, event or process, inevitably results in forced migration or conflict. It is very likely that climate change impacts will contribute to an increase in forced migration. Because one cannot completely isolate climate change as a cause however, it is difficult, if not impossible, to stipulate any numbers. Importantly, the impacts depend not only on natural exposure, but also on the vulnerability and resilience of the areas and people, including capacities to adapt. At best, we have “guesstimates” about the possible form and scope of forced migration related to climate change. 2. Empirically, migration isn’t dangerous Kolmannskog 2008 (April, Norweigan Refugee Council, “Future floods of refugees: A comment on climate change, conflict and forced migration”, http://www.nrc.no/arch/_img/9268480.pdf, Accessed 6/28/08) Importantly, not all migration related to environmental change is necessarily forced migration. Migration is one of the oldest coping strategies for dealing with environmental change. Particularly in semi-arid regions such as the Sahel (the area between Sahara and the more fertile region in the south), there are traditions of migration such as nomadic pastoralism and long-distance trade. Much of this migration is internal and temporary following weather cycles. Where people have a history of crossing borders, it may be considered legitimate and legal due to custom and tradition, but the control of borders has increased drastically in the last decades. Having looked at case studies and historical material from the Sahel, Black concludes that much of the migration could be seen as an essential part of the economic and social structure of the region, rather than forced migration caused by environmental degradation.17 Migration can depend both on personal characteristics of the affected individuals and on various other external conditions. Vulnerability can be defined as the “susceptibility of individuals and societies to such hazards as conflict and climate change, and their capacity to plan for, adapt to and resist changes in their environment and living conditions.”18 The degree of vulnerability and resilience is contextual and depends on socio-economic condition (poverty often makes people vulnerable), gender, age, disability, ethnicity, the realisation of human rights and other criteria that influence people’s ability to access resources and opportunities. Factors often overlap or reinforce each other: families’ economic vulnerability may be increased by the regional economic structure or activity, such as unequal rights of ownership or the absence of social security arrangements.19 Migration is significantly determined by the role of local and national institutions, which in turn can be influenced by global socioeconomic and political factors. 47 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 48 AT: Refugees (2/2) 3. There are many factors associated with refugees besides the environment including poverty and disease. Norman Myers 2005 (May, Professor at Oxford University, “Environmental Refugees: An Emergent Security Issue”, http://www.osce.org/documents/eea/2005/05/14488_en.pdf, Accessed 6/28/08) Poverty serves as an additional "push" factor associated with the environmental problems displacing people. Other factors include population pressures, malnutrition, landlessness, unemployment, over-rapid urbanisation, pandemic diseases and faulty government policies, together with ethnic strife and conventional conflicts. In particular, it is sometimes difficult to differentiate between refugees driven by environmental factors and those impelled by economic problems. In certain instances, people with moderate though tolerable economic circumstances at home feel drawn by opportunity for a better livelihood elsewhere. They are not so much pushed by environmental deprivation as pulled by economic promise. This ostensibly applies to many Hispanics heading for the United States. But those people who migrate because they suffer outright poverty are frequently driven also by root factors of environmental destitution. It is their environmental plight as much as any other factor that makes them economically impoverished. This generally applies to those refugees who migrate to areas where economic conditions are little if any better than back home, as is the case with many people who migrate within Sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent. In this instance, with poverty and "life on the environmental limits" as the main motivating force, it matters little to the migrants whether they view themselves primarily as environmental or economic refugees. 48 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 49 AT: Refugees – Security K (1/3) [___]: Blaming climate change for conflict is only a security reason to intervene in African countries and divert attention away from the real solutions to climate change. Betsy Hartmann 2007 (November 26, “War Talk and Climate Change”, http://www.truthout.org/article/betsy-hartmann-war-talk-and-climate-change, Accessed 6/28/08) Why are climate change threat scenarios taking hold when there is so little credible evidence to support them? It is one of the oldest games in town to dress up issues as dangerous security threats to garner media attention, funding and political support. The climate change case is no exception. In Washington, DC, environmental lobbyists are linking climate change to national security in order to persuade conservative members of Congress to pass legislation capping carbon emissions.[…] Those who pursue such strategies usually claim they are simply being pragmatic in the service of worthy goals, but their appeals to fear and security have negative consequences. They buttress and expand national security agendas while undermining the role of civilian institutions seeking practicable, democratic solutions. And intentionally or not, they reinforce racial stereotypes. Take the notion of climate refugees. The image drawn is not of rich, white landowners losing their beachfront property, but of poor, dark people swarming toward our borders. A 2003 Pentagon-sponsored Abrupt Climate Change Scenario warned of the need to strengthen US defenses against "unwanted starving immigrants" from the Caribbean, Mexico and South America. Fomenting fear of climate refugees adds fuel to the fire of the anti-immigrant backlash in both the US and Fortress Europe. In January 2007, the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root won a contract from the US government to augment existing immigration The term climate refugee is also wantonly applied to poor African-Americans internally displaced by Hurricane Katrina. "The first massive detention and removal facilities "in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the US." movement of climate refugees has been that of people away from the Gulf Coast of the United States," stated environmentalist Lester Brown, director of the Even if we knew - which we don't - that Katrina was definitively caused by climate change, would it make sense to describe evacuees in such a manner? The extent of the disaster in New Orleans had much more to do with racial inequality and government incompetence than the strength of Katrina's winds. Equally worrying, climate change war talk gives the US military added justification for overseas interventions, especially in Africa. American defense officials are currently citing the threat of climate-induced disorder and terrorism to legitimize the establishment of AFRICOM, the Bush administration's controversial new regional military command for Africa. The CNA defense think tank's influential 2007 report, "National Security and the Threat of Climate Change," emphasizes how resource scarcity, environmental degradation and climate change are likely to trigger violent conflict in Africa. According to its recommendations: Some of the nations predicted to be most affected by climate change are those with the least capacity to adapt or cope. This is especially true in Africa, which is becoming an increasingly important source of US oil and gas imports. Already suffering tension and stress resulting from weak governance and thin margins of survival due to food and water shortages, Africa would be yet further challenged by climate change. The proposal by the Department of Defense (DOD) to establish a new Africa Command reflects Africa's emerging strategic importance to the US, and with humanitarian catastrophes already occurring, a worsening of conditions could prompt further US military engagement. Concern is also rising that the (DOD) may invest in expensive and risky technological schemes to control the climate. The Pentagon's Abrupt Climate Change Scenario, for example, recommended the DOD "explore geo-engineering options that control the Earth Policy Institute, in 2006. climate." A far better approach would be for the military to clean up its own act. The DOD is the largest single consumer of fuel in the US, and the present war in Iraq is not only wasting lives, but millions of gallons of oil daily. In the climate change arena, the appeal to the "high politics" of national security is low politics. It demonizes the people who have the least responsibility for global warming, turning them into a dangerous threat. Solutions to the urgent problem of climate change lie not in beating the war drums, but in taking responsibility for our own actions and working together across borders, in peace. 49 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 50 AT: Refugees – Security K (2/3) [___]: The use of the term “climate refugees” is just used to create a security agenda after the Cold War where the developed north feels scared of the refugees from the south. Vikram Odedra Kolmannskog 2008 (April, Norweigan Refugee Council, “Future floods of refugees: A comment on climate change, conflict and forced migration”, http://www.nrc.no/arch/_img/9268480.pdf, Accessed 6/28/08) Arguably, the prevalent use of the term today is linked to the agendas of environmentalists, conflict researchers and a heterogeneous group of security people. The estimated numbers of climate or environmental refugees are often used to sensitise public opinion and decision-makers to the issue of global warming. There seems to be some fear in the developed countries that they, if not literally flooded, will most certainly be flooded by the ”climate refugees”. With the end of the Cold War, attention shifted away from super-power rivalry, and the environment as a potential cause for conflict and forced migration has provided new material for conflict and security researchers. By “securitizing” the issue of climate change, environmentalists and others may have succeeded in getting it on the international agenda and into the minds of decision-makers. On the other hand, the security discourse can serve to make new areas relevant for military considerations and promote repressive tendencies. A fundamental critique is found in the context of north-south discourse where “environmental security” is seen as a colonisation of the environmental problems, suggesting that the underdeveloped south poses a physical threat to the prosperous north by population explosions, resource scarcity, violent conflict and mass migration.10 [___]: Securitizing conflict through military solutions only shifts focus away from technological solutions, which are the real solution to climate change, turning the case. Idean Salehyan 2007 (August, Assistant professor of political science at the University of North Texas, “The New Myth About Climate Change: Corrupt, tyrannical governments-not changes in the Earth’s climate-will be to blame for the coming resource wars”, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3922, Accessed 6/28/08) Third, dire predictions about the coming environmental wars imply that climate change requires military solutions—a readiness to forcibly secure one’s own resources, prevent conflict spillovers, and perhaps gain control of additional resources. But focusing on a military response diverts attention from simpler, and far cheaper, adaptation mechanisms. Technological improvements in agriculture, which have yet to make their way to many poor farmers, have dramatically increased food output in the United States without significantly raising the amount of land under cultivation. Sharing simple technologies with developing countries, such as improved irrigation techniques and better seeds and fertilizers, along with finding alternative energy supplies and new freshwater sources, is likely to be far more effective and cost saving in the long run than arms and fortifications. States affected by climate change can move people out of flood plains and desert areas, promote better urban planning, and adopt more efficient resource-management systems. 50 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 51 AT: Refugees – Security K (3/3) [___]: Securitizing climate change only takes responsibility away from governments and prevents true solutions of climate change. Idean Salehyan 2007 (August, Assistant professor of political science at the University of North Texas, “The New Myth About Climate Change: Corrupt, tyrannical governments-not changes in the Earth’s climate-will be to blame for the coming resource wars”, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3922, Accessed 6/28/08) Dire scenarios like these may sound convincing, but they are misleading. Even worse, they are irresponsible, for they shift liability for wars and human rights abuses away from oppressive, corrupt governments. Additionally, focusing on climate change as a security threat that requires a military response diverts attention away from prudent adaptation mechanisms and new technologies that can prevent the worst catastrophes. 51 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 52 AT: Biodiversity (1/3) 1. C02 saves more species than global warming hurts Center for Science and Public Policy 6 (Jan 12., http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/20060112/20060112_02.html) In concluding his analysis, Wallace says "there can be no greater global challenge today on which physical and social scientists can work together than the goal of producing the food required for future generations," and in this regard he notes that a "concerted focus on improving water use efficiency ... will increase the if we do nothing unwise or counter-productive with respect to the effort (such as trying to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions), then, as Wallace states in his final sentence, "the prize is that more areas of the world, and especially those arid and semi-arid areas where population growth is greatest, will be able to sustain their future populations." In light of the many productivity of both rain fed and irrigated agriculture." If this approach is taken, and significant problems we face in attempting to produce the food we will need to sustain ourselves in the not too distant future, one may well wonder, as did human populations "have encroached on almost all of the world's frontiers, leaving little new land that is cultivatable." And in consequence of humanity's ongoing usurpation of this most basic of natural resources, Raven (2002) notes that " species-area relationships, taken worldwide in relation to habitat destruction, lead to projections of the loss of fully two-thirds of all species on earth by the end of this century." If one were to pick the most significant problem currently facing the biosphere, this would probably be it: a single species of life, Homo sapiens, is on course to completely annihilate fully two-thirds of the ten million or so other species with which we share the planet within a mere hundred years, simply by taking their land. Global warming, by comparison, pales in significance. Its impact is nowhere near as severe, being possibly nil or even positive. In addition, its root cause is highly debated; and actions to thwart it are much more difficult, if not impossible, to both define and implement. Furthermore, what many people believe to be the cause of global warming, i.e., anthropogenic CO2 emissions, may actually be a powerful force for preserving land for nature. Waggoner (1995): "How much land can ten billion people spare for nature?" As noted by Huang et al. (2002), 2. C02 means more animal habitat- key to biodiversity Gregory 8 (B.A.Sc. Mechanical Engineering, http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FOS%20Essay/Climate_Change_Science.html) higher temperatures and CO2 concentrations enhance plant growth, especially for trees. This increases the habitat available for many animals. The bulk of scientific studies show an increase in biodiversity almost everywhere on Earth that is not restricted by habitat destruction in response to global warming and atmospheric CO2 enrichment. As indicated previously, both 52 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 53 AT: Biodiversity (2/3) 3. Arial fertilization of C02 increases agricultural efficiency, decreases demand on scarce land resources and prevents the largest species die-off in history. Center for Science and Public Policy 6 (Jan 12, http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/20060112/20060112_02.html) increases in the air's CO2 content pay huge dividends, helping to increase agricultural output without the taking of land away from nature. In conclusion, it would appear that the extinction of two-thirds of all species of plants and animals on the face of the earth is essentially assured within the next century, unless world agricultural output is dramatically increased. This unfathomable consequence hangs over us simply because we will need more land to produce what is required to sustain ourselves and, in the absence of the needed productivity increase, because we will simply take land from nature to keep ourselves alive. It is also the conclusion of scientists who have studied this problem in depth that the needed increase in agricultural productivity is not possible, even with anticipated improvements in technology and expertise. With the help of the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content, however, we should be able - but just barely - to meet our expanding food needs without bringing down the curtain on the world of nature. That certain forces continue to resist this reality is truly incredible. More CO2 means life for the planet; less CO2 Thus, with respect to all three of the major needs noted by Tilman et al. (2002), means death ... and not just the death of individuals, but the death of species. And to allow, nay, to cause the extinction of untold millions of unique plants and animals has got to rank close to the top of all conceivable immoralities. We humans, as stewards of the earth, have got to get our priorities straight by getting our facts straight. We have got to do all that we can to preserve nature by helping to feed humanity; and to be successful, we have got to let the air's CO2 content rise. Any policies that stand in the way of that objective are truly obscene. 53 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 54 AT: Biodiversity (3/3) 4. Arial fertilization of C02 raises agricultural efficiency and saves natural habitat and is key to sustaining biodiversity. Center for Science and Public Policy 6(Jan 12, http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/20060112/20060112_02.html) What parts of the world are likely to be hardest hit by the human land-eating machine? As described in our Editorials " 2 May 2001 and 13 June 2001, Tilman et al. (2001) note that developed countries are expected to actually withdraw large areas of land from cultivation over the next 50 years, leaving developing countries to shoulder essentially all of the burden of feeding the growing numbers of our species. In addition, they calculate that the loss of these countries' natural ecosystems to cropland and pasture will amount to about half of all potentially suitable remaining land, which "could lead to the loss of about a third of remaining tropical and temperate forests, savannas, and grasslands," along with the many unique species of both plants and animals that they support, which scenario has also been discussed. What can be done to alleviate this bleak situation? In another analysis of the problem, Tilman et al. (2002) introduce a few more facts before suggesting some solutions. They note, for example, that by 2050 the human population of the globe is projected to be 50% larger than it is today and that global grain demand could well double, due to expected increases in per capita real income and dietary shifts toward a higher proportion of meat. Hence, they but state the obvious when they conclude that "raising yields on existing farmland is essential for 'saving land for nature'." So how is it to be done? Tilman et al. (2002) suggest a strategy that is built around three essential tasks: (1) increasing crop yield per unit of land area, (2) increasing crop yield per unit of nutrients applied, and (3) increasing crop yield per unit of water used. With respect to the first of these requirements, Tilman et al. note that in many parts of the world the historical rate of increase in crop yields is declining, as the genetic ceiling for maximal yield potential is being approached. This observation, they say, "highlights the need for efforts to steadily increase the yield potential ceiling." With respect to the second requirement, they note that "without the use of synthetic fertilizers, world food production could not have increased at the rate it did [in the past] and more natural ecosystems would have been converted to agriculture." Hence, they say the ultimate solution "will require significant increases in nutrient use efficiency, that is, in cereal production per unit of added nitrogen, phosphorus," and so forth. Finally, with respect to the third requirement, Tilman et al. note that "water is regionally scarce," and that "many countries in a band from China through India and Pakistan, and the Middle East to North Africa either currently or will soon fail to have adequate water to maintain per capita food production from irrigated land." Increasing crop water use efficiency, therefore, is also a must. Although the impending biological crisis and several important elements of its potential solution are thus well defined, Tilman et al. (2001) report that "even the best available technologies, fully deployed, cannot prevent many of the forecasted problems." However, we have a powerful ally in the ongoing rise in the atmosphere's CO2 concentration that can provide what we can't. For a nominal doubling of the air's CO2 content, for example, the productivity of earth's herbaceous plants rises by 30 to 50% (Kimball, 1983; Idso and Idso, 1994), while the productivity of its woody plants rises by 50 to 80% (Saxe et al. 1998; Idso and Kimball, 2001). Hence, as the air's CO2 content continues to rise, so too will the land use efficiency of the planet rise right along with it. In addition, atmospheric CO2 enrichment typically increases plant nutrient use efficiency and plant water use efficiency 54 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 55 AT: Biodiversity – Turn: Wetlands (1/2) Turn – sea level rise increases wetland area. Titus 88 (James G., EPA, “Greenhouse Effect, Sea Level Rise, and Coastal Wetlands, p. 2, http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/GlobalWarming.nsf/content/ResourceCenterPublicationsSLRCoastalWetlands.ht ml) 17 Although most marshes could probably not keep pace with a substantial acceleration in sea level rise, three possible exceptions are the marshes found in river might be able to keep pace with a more rapid rise in sea level. For example, the sediment washing down the Mississippi river for a long time deltas, tidal inlets, and on the bay sides of barrier islands. River and tidal deltas receive much more sediment than wetlands elsewhere; hence they was more than enough to sustain the delta and enable it to advance into the Gulf of Mexico, even though relative sea level rise there is approximately one centimeter per year, due to subsidence (Gagliano, Meyer Arendt, and Wicker 1981). A global sea level rise of one centimeter per year would double the rate of relative sea level rise there to two centimeters per year; thus, a given sediment supply could not sustain as great an area of wetlands as before. It could, however, In response to sea level rise, barrier islands tend to migrate landward as storms wash sand from the ocean side beach to the bay side marsh (Leatherman 1982). This "overwash" process may enable barrier islands to keep pace with an accelerated rise in sea level. However, it is enable a substantial fraction to keep pace with sea level rise. also possible that accelerated sea level rise could cause these islands, to disintegrate. In coastal Louisiana, where rapid subsidence has resulted in a relative sea level rise of one centimeter per year, barrier islands have broken up. The Ship Island of the early twentieth century is now known as "Ship Shoal" (Pendland, Marshes often form in the flood (inland) tidal deltas (shoals) that form in the inlets between barrier islands. Because these deltas are in equilibrium with sea level, a rise in sea level would tend to raise them as well, with sediment being supplied primarily from the adjacent islands. Moreover, if sea level rise causes barrier islands to breach, additional tidal deltas will form in the new inlets, creating more marsh, at least temporarily. In the long run, however, the breakup of barrier islands mould result in a loss of marsh. Larger waves would strike the Suter, and Maslow 1986). wetlands that form in tidal deltas and in estuaries behind barrier islands. Wave erosion of marshes could also be exacerbated if sea level rise deepens the estuaries. This deepening would allow ocean waves to retain more energy and larger waves to form in bays. Major landowners and the government of Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, consider this possibility a serious threat and are taking action to prevent the breakup of Isle Demiere and others around Terrebonne Bay (Terrebonne Parish 1984). Loss of wetlands causes ecosystem destruction and species extinction Eco-Pros 6 http://eco-pros.com/wetlandsloss.htm DESTRUCTION FROM DEFORESTATION AND DEVELOPMENT Commercial deforestation and development in wetland areas have resulted in significant declines in habitat, species populations, and critical ecosystem functions. This destruction continues in unregulated regions of the world. TOXIC POLLUTION OF WETLANDS AND WILDLIFE Along with the destruction of wetlands, human beings added pesticides and pollution, so over the years wildlife and bird populations greatly declined. DECLINE OF WATER SOURCES AND WETLANDS FUNCTIONS Critical water changes occurred with alteration of wetlands; water tables dropped and wetland vegetation water filtration was no longer available to purify the wastes of civilization. Loss of water from various changes, led to inability of wetlands areas to maintain through normal dry periods. CHANGES TO ECOSYSTEMS AND WEATHER In some areas, weather even changed. As the wetlands were converted for all the various reasons, natural wetland ecosystems drastically changed or disappeared entirely. Many species were left without life-support systems. DECLINE AND LOSS OF NATIVE AND MIGRATORY SPECIES Some resident native mammals, nesting birds, amphibians, insects, reptiles and organisms which inhabited the wetlands have been lost or seriously impacted. 55 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 56 AT: Biodiversity – Turn: Wetlands (2/2) Sea level rise creates new wetlands Titus 88 (James G., EPA, “Greenhouse Effect, Sea Level Rise, and Coastal Wetlands, p. 2, http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/GlobalWarming.nsf/content/ResourceCenterPublicationsSLRCoastalWetlands.ht ml) A rise in sea level would flood areas that are now dry land, creating new wetlands. Moreover, wetlands can grow upward by accumulating sediment and organic material. The potential of these two factors to prevent a major loss of wetlands in the next century, however, may be limited. People who have developed the land just inland of today's wetlands may be reluctant to abandon their houses, which new wetland creation would require. Although wetlands have been able to keep pace with the rise in sea level of the last few thousand years, no one has demonstrated that they could Offsetting this potential threat are two compensating factors. generally keep pace with an accelerated rise. 56 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 57 AT: Plankton – Turn: Pollution Good 1. Pollutants from sulfur are critical to increasing photosynthesis in phytoplankton. Science Daily 2005 (February 17, “Pollution Can Convert Airborne Iron Into Soluble Form Required for Phytoplankton Growth”, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050213130304.htm, Accessed 6/28/08) So even though small storms are limited in the amount of dust they transport to the ocean and may not cause large plankton blooms, small storms still produce enough soluble iron to consistently feed phytoplankton and fertilize the ocean. This may be especially important for high-nitrate, low-chlorophyll waters, where phytoplankton production is limited because of a lack of iron. Natural sources of sulfur dioxide, such as volcanic emissions and ocean production, may also cause iron mobilization and stimulate phytoplankton growth. Yet emissions from human-made sources normally represent a larger portion of the trace gas. Also, human-made emission sites may be closer to the storm's course and have a stronger influence on it than natural sulfur dioxide, Meskhidze said. This research deepens scientists' understanding of the carbon cycle and climate change, he added. "It appears that the recipe of adding pollution to mineral dust from East Asia may actually enhance ocean productivity and, in so doing, draw down atmospheric carbon dioxide and reduce global warming," Chameides said. "Thus, China's current plans to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions, which will have far-reaching benefits for the environment and health of the people of China, may have the unintended consequence of exacerbating global warming," he added. "This is perhaps one more reason why we all need to get serious about reducing our emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases." 2. Air sulfur pollution increases the activity of plankton. Science Daily 2005 (February 17, “Pollution Can Convert Airborne Iron Into Soluble Form Required for Phytoplankton Growth”, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050213130304.htm, Accessed 6/28/08) A surprising link may exist between ocean fertility and air pollution over land, according to Georgia Institute of Technology research reported in the Feb. 16 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research — Atmospheres. The work provides new insight into the role that When dust storms pass over industrialized areas, they can pick up sulfur dioxide, an acidic trace gas emitted from industrial facilities and power plants. As the dust storms move out over the ocean, the sulfur dioxide they carry lowers the pH (a measure of acidity and alkalinity) level of dust and transforms iron into a soluble form, said Nicholas Meskhidze, ocean fertility plays in the complex cycle involving carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in global warming. a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Athanasios Nenes' group at Georgia Tech's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and lead author of the paper "Dust and dissolved iron is a necessary micronutrient for phytoplankton — tiny aquatic plants that serve as food for fish and other marine organisms, and also reduce carbon dioxide levels in Earth's atmosphere via photosynthesis. Phytoplankton carry out almost half of Earth's Pollution: A Recipe for Enhanced Ocean Fertilization." This conversion is important because photosynthesis even though they represent less than 1 percent of the planet's biomass. In research funded by the National Science Foundation, Meskhidze began studying dust storms three years ago under the guidance of William Chameides, Regents' Professor and Smithgall Chair at Georgia Tech's School of Earth and large storms from the Gobi deserts in northern China and Mongolia could carry iron from the soil to remote regions of the northern Pacific Ocean, facilitating photosynthesis and carbon-dioxide uptake," Meskhidze said. "But I was puzzled because the iron in desert dust is primarily hematite, a Atmospheric Sciences and co-author of the paper. "I knew that mineral that is insoluble in high-pH solutions such as seawater. So it's not readily available to the plankton." Using data obtained in a flight over the study area, Meskhidze analyzed the chemistry of a dust storm that originated in the Gobi desert and passed over Shanghai before moving onto the northern Pacific Ocean. When a high-concentration of sulfur dioxide mixed with the desert dust, it acidified the dust to a pH below 2 — the level needed for mineral iron to convert into a dissolved form that would be available to phytoplankton. His discovery: 57 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 58 AT: Plankton – Turn: Marine Mammals (1/2) Turn: Marine Mammals [___]: Loss of sea ice due to global warming is causing the death of whales. Geoffrey Lean and Robert Mendick 2001 (August 1, The Independent, “Whale Population Devastated by Warming Oceans, Scientists Say”, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/08/0801_wirewhales2.html, Accessed 6/29/08) Global warming has caused an unexpected collapse in the numbers of the world's most hunted whale, scientists believe. They think that a sharp contraction in sea ice in the Antarctic is the likeliest explanation behind new findings, which suggest that the number of minke whales in the surrounding seas has fallen by half in less than a decade. The findings—which were the talk of the annual meeting in London last week of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), the body that regulates whaling—has greatly strengthened the arguments of conservationists who are resisting moves to lift a 15-year-old official ban on the hunt. It also further underlines the importance of last week's agreement in Bonn on how to implement the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty to combat climate change. Commercial whaling has been banned officially since 1986, but Japan and Norway each continue to kill about 500 minke whales a year. Japan does so under the guise of "scientific research," allowed under the WIC's treaty; Norway by exempting itself from the ban, which is also permitted under the agreement. For years environmentalists have struggled to justify opposing the killing for conservation reasons. The last attempt to count the number of minke whales in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, between 1985 and 1991, estimated that there were some 760,000 of them—far more than could be endangered But the latest counts, during the 1990s, suggest that there are now only about 380,000 left. The minkes in the Southern Ocean are a distinct species, far more abundant than their cousins in the northern hemisphere. Whales are notoriously difficult to count at sea, and no one is certain of the true figures. But the IWC's Scientific Committee is reassessing its official estimate of their numbers as a result of the new evidence that they are sharply declining. No one knows why their numbers are crashing. But global warming is the main suspect because the krill on which they feed live at the edge of the sea ice, by any conceivable catch. and so their abundance depends on its circumference. Until recently scientists thought the sea ice in the area had not shrunk much, because satellite measurements have shown little change since they began in 1973. But Australian government research, based on more than 40,000 records from whaling ships since 1931, suggest that it dropped by a quarter between the mid-1950s and early 1970s, when global warming was beginning to take hold. As minke whales Last week Sidney Holt—who served on the Scientific Committee between 1960 and 1997, and is the world's senior scientist in the field—said he thought global warming was "the likeliest hypothesis" for the crash. live for 60 years, it could have taken until now for the effects to become clear. 58 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 59 AT: Plankton – Turn: Marine Mammals (2/2) [___]: Climate change is killing whales Veronique LaCapra 2007 (September 17, “Despite Gains, Gray Whale Population Still Not Recovered”, http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2007-09/2007-09-17voa26.cfm?CFID=6848366&CFTOKEN=10841436, Accessed 6/29/08) The new whale numbers may also help to explain more recent changes in the species' population dynamics. Between 1999 and 2001, gray whales began starving to death. Scientists hypothesized that the population might have recovered too well, that there were now more gray whales than the ocean could support. But the new research suggests that the ocean once supported many more whales than exist today. Liz Alter says that this finding supports an alternative explanation for why the whales are starving: large-scale, ecosystem level changes are affecting the whales' feeding grounds in the Bering Sea. Other research has suggested that climate change may have reduced the gray whale's food supply, by warming deep arctic waters. [___]: Blue whales are critical predators of plankton: A decrease in either one of them would ensure a huge increase in plankton every day. Enchanted Learning 2005 (May 11, “BLUE WHALES”, http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/whales/species/Bluewhale.shtml, Accessed 6/29/08) Blue whales (like all baleen whales) are seasonal feeders and carnivores that filter feed tiny crustaceans (krill, copepods, etc.), plankton, and small fish from the water. They are gulpers, filter feeders that alternatively swim then gulp a mouthful of plankton or fish - they lunge into dense groups of small sea organisms (krill or tiny fish) with an open mouth. 50 to 70 throat pleats allow the throat to expand a great deal, forming a gular pouch. The water is then forced through the baleen plates hanging from the upper jaw. The baleen catches the food, acting like a sieve. The blue whale has about 320 pairs of black baleen plates with dark gray bristles in the blue whale's jaws. They are about 39 inches long (1 m), 21 inches wide (53 cm), and weigh 200 pounds (90 kg). The tongue weighs 4 tons (3.8 tonnes). An average-sized blue whale will eat 2,000-9,000 pounds (900-4100 kg) of plankton each day during the summer feeding season in cold, arctic waters ( about 120 days). [___]: Minke whales have the same diet as blue whales, so a decrease in minke whales would also have the same effect of increasing plankton. Enchanted Learning 2004 (“MINKE WHALES”, August 31, http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/whales/species/Minke.shtml, Accessed 6/29/08) Minke whales (like all baleen whales) are seasonal feeders and carnivores. They sieve through the ocean water with their baleen. They filters out small polar plankton, krill, and small fish, even chasing schools of sardines, anchovies, cod, herring, and capelin. They have the same diet as blue whales. 59 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 60 AT: Plankton – No Impact Populations of plankton are resilient to climate change: Empirically proven. Messer 2006 [February 16, “Phytoplankton bounce back from abrupt climate change”, http://news.biomedicine.org/biology-news-3/Phytoplankton-bounce-back-from-abrupt-climate-change-8096-1/, Accessed 6/29/08] The majority of tiny marine plants weathered the abrupt climate changes that occurred in Earth's past and bounced back, according to a Penn State geoscientist. "Populations of plankton are pretty resilient," says Dr. Timothy J. Bralower, head and professor of geoscience. Bralower looked at cores of marine sediments related to thousands of years of deposition, to locate populations of these plankton during three periods of abrupt climate change. These abrupt changes were caused either by Oceanic Anoxic Events during the middle Jurassic to late Cretaceous when the oceans became uniformly depleted of oxygen or by a warming event in the early Paleocene around 55 Marine sediment cores contain calcareous plankton -- single-celled organisms with a coating or shell of calcium carbonate -- as fossils. These tiny photosynthesizing plants float in the ocean and move with the currents. They are around 10 micrometers in size, about half the width of a human hair. Anything bigger than phytoplankton eat them. Eventually, their calcium carbonate shell falls to the ocean floor to become part of the sediment. The factors that were altered in the upper marine environment during the abrupt climate change events included increases in temperature and changes in thermal structure, changes in salinity and alkalinity, and changes in nutrient patterns and trace elements. In every case, changes in surface habitats resulted in transient plankton communities," Bralower told attendees at the 2006 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . "Although we have a poor understanding of ancient plankton ecology, it appears that extinctions were selective and targeted more specialized and often deeper-dwelling species." For example, about 55 million years ago there was a warming event that geologists call million years ago. the Paleocene/Eocene thermal maximum. During that time, there were mass extinctions of organisms living on the ocean floor, but surface phytoplankton populations dipped and for the most part came back. During this event one genus of phytoplankton - Fasciculithus -- which had about five species went extinct. "We do not have anything like Fasciculitus in the oceans today," says Bralower. "But, these organisms were probably highly specialized and existed in a very narrow ecological niche. The other thing is that, as soon as some group disappears, another species comes in to occupy that niche." About 120 million years ago, during an episode of oxygen depletion another genus inhabiting surface waters -- Nannococus -- which also had about five species, went extinct. Otherwise only a few species here and there were unable to survive these abrupt changes. However, on the ocean floor during these same times, mass extinctions occurred. Other extinctions, such as that at the Cetaceous Tertiary boundary (K/T) that caused the demise of the dinosaurs, are thought to be caused by other than abrupt climate changes. The K/T event had mass extinctions on land and in the upper portions of the oceans, but not on the ocean floors. During the abrupt climate changes that Bralower investigated, the temperature of the oceans changed about 11 degrees Fahrenheit over the course of 1,000 years. "This rate of change in ocean temperature is probably slower than what is happening today in the oceans," the Penn State researcher adds. "We are not yet seeing the same effect in today's phytoplankton." Besides being a major food source, phytoplankton are also important in the balance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as opposed to the carbon that is sequestered in the ocean sediment. Photosynthesizing organisms use carbon dioxide to create energy and so remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Some of the carbon that phytoplankton take out of the air as carbon dioxide is used to make their calcium carbonate coatings. Because these coatings eventually make it into the sediment, they do not immediately return to the atmosphere. It is not until chalk or limestone beds are exposed to the "Today, we are sort of in the middle of a mass experiment," says Bralower. "With the oceans warming, we do not really know what the end result will be, but we can look to the fossil record to see how they were affected in the past. It appears that abrupt climate change affects plankton with selectivity and most of the organisms bounce right back after the change." elements that weathering returns the carbon to the atmosphere. 60 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 61 ************************Answers to Global Warming Science********************* 61 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 62 AT: Scientific Consensus (1/3) Consensus is a poor warrant – fringe opinions should not be deemed secondary just because they’re unpopular—otherwise we should deem the Earth flat because that was the consensus at some point. Corcoran 06 [Terence Corcoran, business editor for the Toronto National Post and one of Canada’s foremost business writers, June 16 2006, “Climate Consensus and the End of Science, Lexis] Back when modern science was born, the battle between consensus and new science worked the other way around. More often than not, the consensus of the time -- dictated by religion, prejudice, mysticism and wild speculation, false premises -- was wrong. The role of science, from Galileo to Newton and through the centuries, has been to debunk the consensus and move us forward. But now science has been stripped of its basis in experiment, knowledge, reason and the scientific method and made subject to the consensus created by politics and bureaucrats. As a mass phenomenon, repeated appeals to consensus to support a scientific claim are relatively new. But it is not new to science. For more than a century, various philosophical troublemakers have been trying to undermine science and the scientific method. These range from Marxists who saw science as a product of class warfare and historical materialism -- Newton was a lackey of the ruling classes and pawn of history -- to scores of sociological If science were to become a belief system, then the belief with the greatest number of followers would become established fact and received knowledge. Knowledge based on observation and rational inference would play second fiddle to what Barnes calls "customarily accepted belief." This belief is "sustained by consensus and authority." This is not just one science writer proposing a theorists and philosophers who spent much of the 20th century attempting to subvert the first principles of modern, Enlightenment science. theory. Barnes is reporting on the mainstream elements of new-science thought over more than a century. Ideas come from such well-known brand names such as Marx and Kant, but mostly from a procession of philosophers even most scientists have never heard of. It's a jungle, to be sure, filled with impenetrable language and Global warming science by consensus, with appeals to United Nations panels and other agencies as authorities, is the apotheosis of the century-long crusade to overthrow the foundations of modern science and replace them with collectivist social theories of science. "Where a specific body of knowledge is recognized and accepted by a body of scientists, there would seem to be a need to regard that acceptance as a matter of contingent fact," writes Barnes. This means that knowledge is "undetermined by experience." It takes us "away from an individualistic rationalist account of evaluation towards a collectivist conventionalist account." In short, under the new authoritarian science based on consensus, science doesn't matter much any more. If one scientist's 1,000-year chart showing rising global temperatures is based on bad data, it doesn't matter because we still otherwise have a philosophical jargon. But the trend is clear. consensus. If a polar-bear expert says polar bears appear to be thriving, thus disproving a popular climate theory, the expert and his numbers are dismissed as being outside the consensus. If studies show solar fluctuations rather than carbon emissions may be causing climate change, these are damned as relics of the old scientific method. If ice caps are not all melting, with some even getting larger, the evidence is ridiculed and condemned. We have a consensus, and this contradictory science is just noise from the skeptical fringe. 62 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 63 AT: Scientific Consensus (2/3) Their ev refers to the consensus of CO2 output increasing, not warming- there is no scientific consensus on global warming Christopher Walter 7/7 (Former policy advisor of Margaret Thatcher while she was Prime Minister) “Consensus? What Consensus?” Science and Public Policy Institute http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/monckton/consensus.pdf There is indeed a consensus that humankind is putting large quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere; that some warming has resulted; and that some further warming can be expected. However, there is less of a consensus about whether most of the past half-century’s warming is anthropogenic, which is why, rightly, Oreskes is cautious enough to circumscribe her definition of the “consensus” about the anthropogenic contribution to warming over the past half-century with the qualifying adjective “likely”. There is no scientific consensus on how much the world has warmed or will warm; how much of the warming is natural; how much impact greenhouse gases have had or will have on temperature; how sea level, storms, droughts, floods, flora, and fauna will respond to warmer temperature; what mitigative steps – if any – we should take; whether (if at all) such steps would have sufficient (or any) climatic effect; or even whether we should take any steps at all. Campaigners for climate alarm state or imply that there is a scientific consensus on all of these things, when in fact there is none. They imply that Oreskes’ essay proves the consensus on all of these things. Al Gore, for instance, devoted a long segment of his film An Inconvenient Truth to predicting the imminent meltdown of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice-sheets, with a consequent global increase of 20 feet (6 m) in sea level that would flood Manhattan, Shanghai, Bangladesh, and other coastal settlements. He quoted Oreskes’ essay as proving that all credible climate scientists were agreed on the supposed threat from climate change. He Oreskes’ definition of the “consensus” on climate change did not encompass, still less justify, his alarmist notions. Let us take just one example. The UN’s latest report on climate change, which is claimed as representing and did not point out, however, that summarizing the state of the scientific “consensus” insofar as there is one, says that the total contribution of ice-melt from Greenland and Antarctica to the rise in sea level over the whole of the coming century will not be the 20 feet luridly illustrated by Al Gore in his movie, but just 2 inches. Gore’s film does not represent the “consensus” at all. Indeed, he exaggerates the supposed effects of ice-melt by some 12,000 per cent. The UN, on the other hand, estimates the probability that humankind has had any influence on sea level at little better than 50:50. The BBC, of course, has not headlined, or even reported, the UN’s “counterconsensual” findings. Every time the BBC mentions “climate change”, it shows the same tired footage of a glacier calving into the sea – which is what glaciers do every summer. False numbers support the “consensus”- More reject it than support it Christopher Walter 7/7 (Former policy advisor of Margaret Thatcher while she was Prime Minister) “Consensus? What Consensus?” Science and Public Policy Institute http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/monckton/consensus.pdf Dr. Peiser used “global climate change” as a search term and found 1,117 documents using this term, of which 929 were articles and only 905 also had abstracts. Therefore it is not clear which were the 928 “abstracts” mentioned by Oreskes, and Science did not, as it would have done with a peer-reviewed scientific paper, list the references to each of the “abstracts”. Significantly, Oreskes’ essay does not state how many of the 928 papers explicitly endorsed her very limited definition of “consensus”. Dr. Peiser found that only 13 of the 1,117 documents – a mere 1% – explicitly endorse the consensus, even in her limited definition. Dr. Peiser’s research demonstrated that several of the abstracts confounded Oreskes’ assertion of unanimity by explicitly rejecting or casting doubt upon the notion that human activities are the main drivers of the observed warming over the last 50 years. Thus, in Oreskes’ sample, more than twice as many appeared to have explicitly rejected or doubted the “consensus” as had explicitly endorsed it. 63 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 64 AT: Scientific Consensus (3/3) The numbers in the IPCC report were exaggerated- many of the scientists don’t believe warming is anthropogenic Christopher Walter 7/7 (Former policy advisor of Margaret Thatcher while she was Prime Minister) “Consensus? What Consensus?” Science and Public Policy Institute http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/monckton/consensus.pdf First among these is that the UN’s latest report on climate change (IPCC, 2007) was written by 2,500 scientists – and “2,500 scientists can’t be wrong”. In fact, however, the scientific chapters were contributed by a far smaller number than this. Furthermore, we are now able to offer proof that the UN cannot have obtained the approval of as many as 2,500 scientists to the text before it was published. A growing number of scientists who had previously subscribed to the alarmist presentation of the “consensus” are no longer sure. They are joining the numerous climatologists – many of them with outstanding credentials – who have never believed in the more extreme versions of the alarmist case. Indeed, many scientists now say that there has been no discernible human effect on temperature at all. For instance, Buentgen et al. (2006) say: “The 20th-century contribution of anthropogenic greenhouse gases and aerosol remains insecure.” 64 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 65 AT: “Scientific Consensus- Oreskes” Oreskes is outdated- many scientists now reject the idea of warming Christopher Walter 7/7 (Former policy advisor of Margaret Thatcher while she was Prime Minister) “Consensus? What Consensus?” Science and Public Policy Institute http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/monckton/consensus.pdf Oreskes’ essay is now outdated. Since it was published, more than 8,000 further papers on climate change have been published in the learned journals. In these papers, there is a discernible and accelerating trend away from unanimity even on her limited definition of “consensus”. Schulte (2007: submitted) has brought Oreskes’ essay up to date by examining the 539 abstracts found using her search phrase “global climate change” between 2004 (her search had ended in 2003) and mid-February 2007. Even if Oreskes’ commentary in Science were true, the “consensus” has moved very considerably away from the unanimity she says she found. Dr. Schulte’s results show that about 1.5% of the papers (just 9 out of 539) explicitly endorse the “consensus”, even in the limited sense defined by Oreskes. Though Oreskes found that 75% of the papers she reviewed explicitly or implicitly endorsed the “consensus”, Dr. Schulte’s review of subsequent papers shows that fewer than half now give some degree of endorsement to the “consensus” 65 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 66 AT: IPCC (1/4) The IPCC is controlled by political hacks who reshape science to fit their political agenda. It’s not credible science. Novak 0 [Gary Novak, independent scientist who has published papers in the Canadian Journal of Microbiology and other scientific journals, http://nov55.com/ipcc.html] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is supposedly the last word on global warming. Those who promote global warming hype declare IPCC reports to be peer reviewed science, and peer reviewed science to be infallible. On that basis, critics are attacked for putting themselves above the unquestionable word of science. But the IPCC is controlled by political hacks who reshape the science for their agenda. There is no place in science for arbitrary authority—least of all a subject as complex as climate change. I'm an independent scientists, not a journalist. Alexander Cockburn is a journalist who describes the position of the critics fairly well. So "To identify either the government-funded climate modelers or their political shock troops, the IPCC's panelists, with scientific rigor and objectivity is as unrealistic as detecting the same attributes in a craniologist financed by Lombroso studying a murderer's head in a nineteenth-century prison for the criminally insane." I'll let him do the journalism, while I do the science. He says, The most recent IPCC report is full of uncertainty and scientific failings D’Aleo 7/9 [Joseph D’Aleo, Chief Meteorologist at Weather Services International Corporation and former professor of meteorology, July 9 2007, published in the Energy Tribune, “Global Warming – Is Carbon Dioxide Getting a Bad Rap?”, http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=544#] the word “uncertainty” appears 494 times in the recent “Summary for Policymakers,” produced by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Though the actual research scientists generally did a commendable job, the more alarmist interpretation was provided by a smaller cadre of agenda-driven scientists and statesmen. Then the media took the most extreme of the messages to hype them further. So what is the real story? The report’s final summaries had several failings. First, it blindly accepts a 20th-century carbon dioxide rise of 36 percent, when direct measurements(1) suggest the change is closer to 15 percent. Their models assume an annual increase of 1 percent, although over the last 50 years the long-term annual average consistently has been less than half that, 0.43 percent. Their models treat the oceans as distilled water when in reality they are an infinite buffer for atmospheric CO2. Burning all the earth’s fossil fuels would amount to no more than a 20 percent increase. It could never double(2). In any event, ice cores tell us carbon dioxide lags, not leads, the temperatures by as much as 800 years. Despite the 90 percent certainty that man is behind recent global warming trends , 66 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 67 AT: IPCC (2/4) The IPCC is a conspiracy to mislead policymakers. It sidesteps the peer review process and releases data that it knows is false. Fox 7/16 [Michael R. Fox, energy analyst with the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii and science and energy reporter for the Hawaii Reporter, July 16 2007, published in the Hawaii Reporter,“Flaws in the Global Warming Debate”, http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?8050a1d8-4e1c-457e-85d1-e8b3db316777] There are many scientific problems involved with global warming issues which are routinely downplayed. Some are related to numerous uncertainties being airbrushed away and replaced by statements of unsupportable certitude. These include errors in the early CO2 measurements, phenomenally poor and biased temperature readings, poor and non-uniform data bases, poor temperature data quality, unvalidated temperature data and computer programs. Also many are ignoring the roles of aerosols, particulates, and the Downplaying these uncertainties has been a major deception activity of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This seems to be an effort to deceive the policy makers. For example, the Summaries for Policy Makers (SPM) issued by the (IPCC) are flawed. Hundreds of comments from the authors themselves of the Scientific Assessment Report (SAR) have only recently surfaced (http://tinyurl.com/2a27nu) .These authors have expressed serious concerns for the IPCC claimed certainties in the SPMs. The legitimization of the "Hockeystick" by the IPCC now shown to be fraudulent is but another example of the scientific corruption within the IPCC, its editors, its reviewers, and it supporters. For example, the computer algorithm used to reproduce physics of cloud formation, and place undue reliance upon Global Climate Models (GCMs), which don't even agree with each other, etc. the Hockeystick chart, according to McIntyre and McKitrick (http://tinyurl.com/awwva), could produce such a chart from a table of random numbers. This is appalling, and is deception, not science. Nations of the world were expected to make energy policy using the IPCC chart. The IPCC quietly dropped the chart from the 4th Assessment Report, without apology to the nations of the world. The unscientific weaknesses at the IPCC have been known for years. In the June 12, 1996 Wall Street Journal, Dr. Fred Seitz stated, “In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report”. Yet in the eyes of the media, Hollywood, and the alarmists, the IPCC gets an unexamined free pass. 67 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 68 AT: IPCC (3/4) IPCC studies are flawed- aren’t actually peer reviewed and are selective in the data they share John McLean 9/7 “Fallacies About Global Warming” Science and Public Policy Institute http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/mclean/agwfallacies.pdf The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) undertakes no research for itself and relies on peer-reviewed scientific papers in reputable journals (see item 6). There is strong evidence that the IPCC is very selective of the papers it wishes to cite and pays scant regard to papers that do not adhere to the notion that manmade emissions of carbon dioxide have caused warming. The IPCC pronouncements have a powerful influence on the direction and funding of scientific research into climate change, which in turn influences the number of research papers on these topics. Ultimately, and in entirely circular fashion, this leads the IPCC to report that large numbers of papers support a certain hypothesis (see item 5). These fallacies alone are major defects of the IPCC reports, but the problems do not end there. Other distortions and fallacies of the IPCC are of its own doing. Governments appoint experts to work with the IPCC but once appointed those experts can directly invite other experts to join them. This practice obviously can, and does, lead to a situation where the IPCC is heavily biased towards the philosophies and ideologies of certain governments or science groups. The lead authors of the chapters of the IPCC reports can themselves be researchers whose work is cited in those chapters. This was the case with the so-called "hockey stick" temperature graph in the Third Assessment Report (TAR) published in 2001. The paper in which the graph first appeared was not subject to proper and independent peer review, despite which the graph was prominently featured in a chapter for which the co-creator of the graph was a lead author. The graph was debunked in 20066 and has been omitted without6 "Ad Hoc Committee Report on the 'Hockey Stick' The explanation from the Fourth Assessment Report (4AR) of 2007. The IPCC has often said words to the effect "We don't know what else can be causing warming so it must be humans" (or "the climate models will only produce the correct result if we include manmade influences"), but at the same time the IPCC says that scientists have a low level of understanding of many climate factors. It logically follows that if any natural climate factors are poorly understood then they cannot be properly modelled, the output of the models will probably be incorrect and that natural forces cannot easily be dismissed as possible causes. In these circumstances it is simply dishonest to unequivocally blame late 20th century warming on human activity.7 The IPCC implies that its reports are thoroughly reviewed by thousands of experts. Any impression that thousands of scientists review every word of the reports can be shown to be untrue by an examination of the review comments for the report by IPCC Working Group I. (This report is crucial, because it discusses historical observations, attributes a likely cause of change and attempts to predict global and regional changes. The reports by working groups 2 and 3 draw heavily on the findings of this WG I report.) The claim In actuality, the report represents the view of small and self-selected science coteries that formed the lead authoring teams. that the IPCC’s 4th Assessment Report carries the imprimatur of having been reviewed by thousands, or even hundreds, of expert and independent scientists is incorrect, and even risible. 68 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 69 AT: IPCC (4/4) IPCC puts pressure on participants to slant results in favor of warming Richard S. Lindzen 92 Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Alleged Scientific Consensus” http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv15n2/reg15n2g.html The notion of "scientific unanimity'' is currently intimately tied to the Working Group I report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued in September 1990. That panel consists largely of scientists posted to it by government agencies. The panel has three working groups. Working Group I nominally deals with climate science. Approximately 150 scientists contributed to the report, but university representation from the United States was relatively small and is likely to remain so, since the funds and time needed for participation are not available to most university scientists. Many governments have agreed to use that report as the authoritative basis for climate policy. The report, as such, has both positive and negative features. Methodologically, the report is deeply committed to reliance on large models, and within the report models are largely verified by comparison with other models. Given that models are known to agree more with each other than with nature (even after "tuning''), that approach does not seem promising. In addition, a number of the participants have testified to the pressures placed on them to emphasize results supportive of the current scenario and to suppress other results. That pressure has frequently been effective, and a survey of participants reveals substantial disagreement with the final report. Nonetheless, the body of the report is extremely ambiguous, and the caveats are numerous. The report is prefaced by a policymakers' summary written by the editor, Sir John Houghton, director of the United Kingdom Meteorological Office. His summary largely ignores the uncertainty in the report and The summary was published as a separate document, and, it is safe to say that policymakers are unlikely to read anything further. On the basis of the summary, one frequently hears that "hundreds of the world's greatest climate scientists from dozens of countries all agreed that.|.|.|.'' It hardly matters what the agreement refers to, since whoever refers to the summary insists that it agrees with the most extreme scenarios (which, in all fairness, it does not). I should add that the attempts to present the expectation of substantial warming as firmly based science. climatology community, until the past few years, was quite small and heavily concentrated in the United States and Europe. 69 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 70 AT: Hockeystick Chart Hockeystick Chart is a hoax—the algorithm used forced the Hockeystick shape regardless of the data and even the IPCC dropped the argument. Fox 7/16 [Michael R. Fox, energy analyst with the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii and science and energy reporter for the Hawaii Reporter, July 16 2007, published in the Hawaii Reporter,“Flaws in the Global Warming Debate”, http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?8050a1d8-4e1c-457e-85d1-e8b3db316777] legitimization of the "Hockeystick" by the IPCC now shown to be fraudulent is but another example of the scientific corruption within the IPCC, its editors, its reviewers, and it supporters. For example, the computer algorithm used to reproduce the Hockeystick chart, according to McIntyre and McKitrick (http://tinyurl.com/awwva), could produce such a chart from a table of random numbers. This is appalling, and is deception, not science. Nations of the world were expected to make energy policy using the IPCC chart. The IPCC quietly dropped the chart from the 4th Assessment Report, without apology to the nations of the world. The unscientific weaknesses at the IPCC have been known for years. In the June 12, 1996 Wall The Street Journal, Dr. Fred Seitz stated, “In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peerreview process than the events that led to this IPCC report”. Yet in the eyes of the media, Hollywood, and the alarmists, the IPCC gets an unexamined free pass. 70 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 71 AT: Computer Models Models are inaccurate and cannot account for water vapor Singer 7 [March 19th, S. Fred Singer, “'The Great Global Warming Swindle”, http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/swindle.htm, S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist, is Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, and former founding Director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service. He is author of Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate (The Independent Institute, 1997] There is no proof that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from human activity. Ice core records from the past 650,000 years show that temperature increases have preceded—not resulted from—increases in CO2 by hundreds of years, suggesting that the warming of the oceans is an important source of the rise in atmospheric CO2. As the dominant greenhouse gas, water vapour is far, far more important than CO2. Dire predictions of future warming are based almost entirely on computer climate models, yet these models do not accurately understand the role or water vapor—and, in any case, water vapor is not within our control. Plus, computer models cannot account for the observed cooling of much of the past century (1940–75), nor for the observed patterns of warming—what we call the “fingerprints.” For example, the Antarctic is cooling while models predict warming. And where the models call for the middle atmosphere to warm faster than the surface, the observations show the exact opposite. 71 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 72 ************************Global Warming Good Scenarios********************* 72 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 73 Global Warming Good- S02 CO2 decreases warming by scattering sunshine—emission cuts decrease S02 in the atmosphere leads to quick short term warming spikes—makes impacts inevitable. 73 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 74 Global Warming Good- Economy (1/2) A. Global Warming causes Arctic Melting which allows for Northwest Passage—key to international trade and the global economy. Mayer 7 [Daily Reckoning Australia, October 10th, “Northwest Passage Reopens Shipping Routes With Global Economic Impact”, Mayer is a veteran of the banking industry, specifically in the area of corporate lending. A financial writer since 1998, Mr. Mayer's essays have appeared in a wide variety of publications, from the Mises.org Daily Article series to here in The Daily Reckoning. He is the editor of Mayer's Special Situations and Capital and Crisis - formerly the Fleet Street Letter, http://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/northwest-passage/2007/10/10/] It started with a Russian expedition planting the Russian flag in a polar seabed. Though largely symbolic, it touched off a scramble among a handful of nations, all trying to lay claim to the Arctic. Among these claimants: the U.S., Canada, Russia and Denmark. Why the sudden interest in the Arctic? There are two big reasons. thanks to global warming, deposits of natural resources once layered over in impenetrable ice are now easier to get at. Second, thanks to melting ice, some previously icebound shipping lanes like the Northwest Passage are opening up. The available resources are still a long way from being developed. The climate is incredibly harsh, and easier-to-get-at First, resources still exist on the fringes of the Arctic. As an oil and gas story, this one has a long fuse. The Arctic thaw’s more immediate and bigger impact will be as a shipping lane. Since Aug. 21, the Northwest Passage has been open to navigation and free of ice for the first time. “Analysts… confirm that the passage is almost completely clear and that the region is more open than it has ever been since the advent of routine monitoring in 1972,” reports the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center. The fabled passage through the Arctic Ocean connects the Pacific and Atlantic oceans along the northern coast of North America. To pass through here from China on your way to Europe is about 5,000 miles shorter than going through the Panama or Suez canals. As the Financial Times observes, “A ship traveling at 21 knots between Rotterdam and Yokohama takes 29 days if it goes via the Cape of Good Hope, 22 days via the Suez Canal and just 15 days if it goes across the Arctic Ocean.” An oil tanker could make the trip from the Russian port city of Murmansk to the east coast of Canada in a week by crossing the Arctic Ocean. That is about half the time it takes to get an oil tanker from Abu Dhabi to Galveston, Texas. In the early 1900s, it took the famed Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team nearly two years to pick their way More than 90% of all goods in the world, measured by tonnage, make their way by sea. And as I’ve noted in the past, the rapid surge in trade with China and India is putting a lot of through the ice and narrow waterways. Now the Northwest Passage could revolutionize shipping. strain on ports around the world. In recent years, the volume of container shipments has grown 5-7% annually - basically, doubling every 10-15 years. The ships carrying those containers are getting bigger, and the old canals can’t hold these new seafaring beasts of burden as they once did. The Suez Canal can still handle the largest current container ships, but not the next generation. The Panama Canal is even smaller. It’s too small for ships that are now common on longer shipping routes. Panama plans to deepen its channels and make them wider. But even so, the new Panama Canal won’t be able to service the next generation of ships. So it looks like the world will have a new navigable ocean with the Northwest Passage. The effects on trade could be immense. Much shorter shipping distances and quicker shipping times will lower the cost of doing business. It could lead to big increases in trade and, certainly, a major shift in sea lanes. A freer-flowing Arctic Ocean would also bring fish stocks north - with fishing fleets not far behind. It could mean a new boom in fishing for salmon, cod, herring and smelt. It could also mean that sleepy old ports could become important new hubs in international trade. As the Financial Times recently wrote, “Leading world powers have an unprecedented chance to win navigation rights and ownership of resources in the Arctic seabed untouched since its The U.S. alone could lay claim to more than 200,000 square miles of additional undersea territory. The specific investment implications of this are still too early to say. But the cracking open of new trade routes or reopening of old ones - and their impact on global trade - always has ripple effects across financial markets. As for the Arctic, the Northwest Passage has got to be one of the most important new developments on that front in a long time. emergence during the twilight of the dinosaurs.” 74 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 75 Global Warming Good- Economy (2/2) B. Impact’s extinction Bearden 2K T.E., LTC U.S. Army (Retired), [“The Unnecessary Energy Crisis: How to Solve It Quickly,” http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3aaf97f22e23.htm, June 24] desperate nations take desperate actions. Prior to the final economic collapse, the stress on nations will have increased the intensity and number of their conflicts, to the point where the arsenals of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) now possessed by some 25 nations, are almost certain to be released. As an example, suppose a starving North Korea launches nuclear weapons upon Japan and South Korea, History bears out that suppose a desperate China-whose long-range nuclear missiles (some) can reach the United States-attacks Taiwan. In addition to immediate responses, the mutual treaties involved in such scenarios will quickly draw other nations into the conflict, escalating it significantly. Strategic nuclear studies have shown for decades that, under such extreme stress conditions, once a few nukes are launched, adversaries and potential adversaries are then compelled to launch on perception of preparations by one's adversary. The real legacy of the MAD concept is this side of the MAD coin that is almost never discussed. Without effective defense, the only chance a nation has to survive at all is to launch immediate full-bore pre-emptive strikes and try to take out its perceived foes as rapidly and massively as possible. As the studies showed, rapid escalation to full WMD exchange occurs. Today, a great percent of the WMD arsenals that will be unleashed, are already on site within the United States itself. including U.S. forces there, in a spasmodic suicidal response. Or The resulting great Armageddon will destroy civilization as we know it, and perhaps most of the biosphere, at least for many decades 75 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 76 Extns- Warming key to Economy Global Warming key to the economy Bernake 7 [Chairman of the Federal Reserve, http://www.newsgroper.com/ben-bernanke, “Global warming good for economy; Al Gore bad”] Global warming, like globalization, is good for the economy, and therefore humanity: * Rising water levels will force people to move, build new houses and spend more.* The struggling airline industry will be boosted by the increased amount of travel as people flee disaster zones.* Consumer spending will rise as there’s less concern about long-term savings.* Inflation will be curbed as excess US dollars are burned in wild fires. Al Gore has his hand in the monetary cookie jar, and he is essentially taking food out of the mouths of Americans. Global Warming makes Arctic inhabitable—key to secure fuels and boosts global economy. Technocrat 7 [March 29th, http://technocrat.net/d/2007/3/29/17033, “Global Climate Change Spurs Arctic Economic Boom”] “It's not all doom and gloom with the Arctic warming up, for a lot of people and companies it means an economic boom. So much so, that there are now some long simmering territorial disputes back on the high burner. ..."The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the Arctic has as much as 25% of the world's undiscovered oil and gas. Moscow reportedly sees the potential of minerals in its slice of the Arctic sector approaching $2 trillion."....more bucks there, and all this new Arctic boom is going to require technicians, engineers, scientists, and many workers of the sturdy yeoman sort....a new frontier. 76 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 77 Global Warming Good- Winter Global Warming saves millions from winter-related deaths—and no offense—humans adapt to heat but not to cold. Lomborg 7 [8/31, “Global Warming, the Great Life Saver”, economist and writer, http://discovermagazine.com/2007/sep/global-warming-the-great-lifesaver/article_print] Bjorn Lomborg says balmier weather could ward off millions of deaths. Yes, Bjorn Lomborg, the controversial Danish economist, believes that “global warming is real and man-made.” But he is convinced that we are not thinking the problem through correctly and are, in fact, lost in a kind of green fog about how best to deal with global warming and other major environmental threats. In this excerpt from his new book, Cool It, Lomborg illustrates how a major climate-related killer goes underreported, while human deaths from heat waves make front-page news. The heat wave in Europe in early August 2003 was a catastrophe of heartbreaking proportions. With more than 3,500 dead in Paris alone, France suffered nearly 15,000 fatalities from the heat wave. Another 7,000 died in Germany, 8,000 in Spain and Italy, and 2,000 in the United Kingdom: The total death toll ran to more than 35,000. Understandably, this event has become a psychologically powerful metaphor for the frightening vision of a warmer future and our immediate need to prevent it. The green group Earth Policy Institute, which first totaled the deaths, tells us that as “awareness of the scale of this tragedy spreads, it is likely to generate pressure to reduce carbon emissions. For many of the millions who suffered through these record heat waves and the relatives of the tens of thousands who died, cutting carbon emissions is becoming a pressing personal 2,000 people died from heat in the United Kingdom, it produced a public outcry that is still heard. However, the BBC recently ran a very quiet story telling us that deaths caused by cold weather in England and Wales for the past years have hovered around 25,000 each winter, casually adding that the winters of 1998–2000 saw about 47,000 cold deaths each year. The story then goes on to discuss how the government should make the cost of winter fuel economically bearable and how the majority of issue.” While 35,000 dead is a terrifyingly large number, all deaths should in principle be treated with equal concern. Yet this is not happening. When deaths are caused by strokes and heart attacks. It is remarkable that a single heat-death episode of 35,000 from many countries can get everyone up in arms, whereas cold deaths of 25,000 to 50,000 a year in just a single country pass almost unnoticed. Of course, we want to help avoid another 2,000 dying from heat in the United Kingdom. But presumably we also want to avoid many more dying from cold. For Europe as a whole, about 200,000 people die from excess heat each year. However, about 1.5 million Europeans die annually from excess cold. That is more than seven times the total number of heat deaths. Just in the past decade, Europe has lost about 15 million people to the cold, more than 400 times the iconic heat deaths from 2003. That we so easily neglect these deaths and so easily embrace those caused by global warming tells us of a breakdown in our sense of proportion. How will heat and cold deaths change over the coming century with global warming? Let us for the moment assume— very unrealistically—that we will not adapt at all to the future heat. Still, the biggest cross-European cold/heat study concludes that for an increase of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit in the average European temperatures, “our data suggest that any increases in mortality due to increased temperatures would be outweighed by much larger short-term declines in cold-related mortalities.” For Britain, it is estimated a 3.6°F increase will mean 2,000 more heat deaths but 20,000 fewer cold deaths. Likewise, another paper incorporating all studies on this issue and applying them to a broad variety of settings in both developed and developing countries found that “global warming may cause a decrease in mortality rates, especially of cardiovascular diseases.” But of course, it seems very unrealistic and conservative to assume that we will not adapt to rising temperatures throughout the 21st century. Several recent studies have looked at adaptation in up to 28 of the biggest cities in the United States. Take Philadelphia. The optimal temperature seems to be about 80°F. In the 1960s, on days when it got significantly hotter than that (about 100°F), the death rate increased sharply. Likewise, when the temperature dropped below freezing, deaths increased sharply. Yet something great happened in the decades following. Death rates in Philadelphia and around the country dropped in general because of better health care. But crucially, temperatures of 100°F today cause almost no excess deaths. However, people still die more because of cold weather. One of the main reasons for the lower heat susceptibility is most likely increased access to air-conditioning. Studies seem to indicate that over time and with sufficient resources, we actually learn to adapt to higher temperatures. Consequently we will experience fewer heat deaths even when temperatures rise. 77 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 78 Global Warming Good- Agriculture A. Global Warming boosts agriculture globally— causes economic development. Aronson 7 [12/14, “The Positive Effects of Global Warming”, google, article cites: http://www.misunderstooduniverse.com/Global_Warming_Benefits.htm] more arable land will become available for both residential and agricultural purposes. Large land-masses in the northern hemisphere, just south of the Canadian/U.S. border, have some very extreme climates that can be quite inhospitable for human habitation. Most Canadians live in a belt running along its southern border with the United States. But once global warming is factored in, vast northern regions will become arable and comfortably habitable. All of Canada will welcome an agricultural boon field with long growing seasons. Heretofore uninhabitable land will not As the ice retreats to the poles, only become inhabitable, but even temperate. Satellite measurements now show that our planet has become greener than it was prior to the onset of global warming. The rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere dramatically increases overall global food production. The presence of carbon dioxide has a fertilizing effect on the growth of plant life. The warmer weather means a longer growing season, and thus greater output. This, combined with fewer frosts and more precipitation, among other factors, will greatly benefit all of the agricultural economic sectors, plus the positive impacts on forestry and recreation. In addition to the dramatic increase of actual land available for cultivation, natural resources would be much easier to extract. The overall economic impact of global warming on the U.S. economy will actually be positive, creating a measurable increase in Gross Domestic Product.The deserts of China received rains and were fertile 8,000 years ago, and this would be good news for China, since they need all the fertile land they can get, with their huge population. The arable land was also hundreds of miles further north into China than it is now. As well, those areas of India which are now deserts, were also rained on and fertile in those days, and that’s also good news, given how desperate hard up India is, being so poor and having such a huge population. Winters in the northern hemisphere will be milder. So already we can see that Climate Change could very well prove to be good for Africa, China, and India. The results are mixed for Europe, but then they can always migrate north if someone can find the money in Europe to migrate people north, and the government can find the money to buy really poor people air conditioning so they won’t die by the tens or even hundreds of thousands every summer. B. 3 billion people die globally of poverty—agricultural boosts solve. Raisbeck 3 [David W. Vice Chairman, Cargill, Incorporated Address to the World Agricultural Forum, “The Role of Agriculture in the Global Economy”, http://www.cargill.com/news/media/030518raisbeck.htm] – 3 billion people – live in abject poverty. Roughly three-fourths of these poor people live in rural areas dependent upon agriculture. No country that has raised the majority of its people out of poverty has done so without attacking the causes of rural poverty In fact , agricultural development is a necessary trigger for broader, sustainable economic development for most countries. Agricultural development stimulates self-sustaining growth in two principal ways. First, through rising productivity it increases the incomes of farmers. Second, it releases labor from subsistence farming that can be employed in manufacturing or service activities. Agribusiness companies want to bring poverty-reducing tools to farmers in developing countries. We can offer more productive inputs; Today, about half the world’s population we can provide practical finance; we can reach out to new market opportunities; we can show farmers ways to lower or manage risks. But we cannot do these things alone. They require public investments in physical infrastructure and well-functioning marketing systems. They also require an economic climate that welcomes investment, as capital flows to where it’s needed and wanted. This does not mean “special incentives.” Rather, it means creating a predictable, level playing field in which competition through price and service determines success. 78 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 79 Deforestation Impact Module A. Improved agriculture key to prevent deforestation Raisbeck 3 [David W. Vice Chairman, Cargill, Incorporated Address to the World Agricultural Forum, “The Role of Agriculture in the Global Economy”, http://www.cargill.com/news/media/030518raisbeck.htm] The third area in which agricultural liberalization can help is in protecting fragile environmental resources. The pressures of hunger and poverty often result in agricultural practices in low-income countries that harm the environment in two ways: by exhausting the soil’s productivity rather than replenishing it; and by forcing agriculture to expand to new lands rather than to use the most highly productive lands better. B. Deforestation causes biodiversity loss and the spread of tropical diseases, resulting in extinction Rhett A. Butler, 1-9-06, Mongabay.com, Impact of Deforestation – Species Loss, Extinction, and Disease A fully functioning forest has a great capacity to regenerate. Exhaustive hunting of tropical rainforest species can reduce those species necessary to forest continuance and regeneration. For example, in Central Africa, the loss of species like gorillas, chimps, and elephants reduces the ability of seed dispersal and slows the recovery of damaged forest. Loss of habitat in the tropics also affects the regeneration of temperate species. North American migratory birds, important seed dispersers of temperate species, declined 1-3 percent annually from1978-1988. INCREASE OF TROPICAL DISEASES The emergence of tropical diseases and outbreaks of new diseases, including nasty hemorrhagic fevers like ebola and lassa fever, are a subtle but serious impact of deforestation. With increased human presence in the rainforest, and exploiters pushing into deeper areas, man [people are] is encountering "new" microorganisms with behaviors unlike those previously known. As the primary hosts of these pathogens are eliminated or reduced through forest disturbance and degradation, disease can break out among humans. Although not unleashed yet, someday one of these microscopic killers could lead to a massive human die-off as deadly for our species as we have been for the species of the rainforest. Until then, local populations will continue to be menaced by mosquito-borne diseases like dengue fever, Rift Valley fever, and malaria, and water-borne diseases like cholera. Many emergent and resurgent diseases are directly linked to land alterations which bring humans in closer contact with such pathogens. For example, malaria and snailborne schistosomiasis have escalated because of the creation of artificial pools of water like dams, rice paddies, drainage ditches, irrigation canals, and puddles created by tractor treads. Malaria is LOSS OF SPECIES FOR FOREST REGENERATION a particular problem in deforested and degraded areas, though not in forested zones where there are few stagnant ground pools for mosquito breeding. These pools are most abundant in cleared regions and areas where tractors tear gashes in the earth. Malaria is already a major threat to indigenous peoples who have developed no Malaria alone is cited as being responsible for killing an estimated 20 percent of the Yanomani in Brazil and Venezuela. Malaria—caused by unicelluar parasites transferred in the saliva of mosquitoes resistance to the disease nor any access to antimalarial drugs. when they bite—is an especially frightening disease for its drug-resistant forms. Thanks to poor prescribing techniques on the part of doctors, there are now strains in Southeast Asia reputed to be resistant to more than 20 anti-malarial drugs. There is serious concern that global climate change will affect the distribution of malaria, which currently infects roughly 270 million people worldwide and kills 1-2 million a year— 430,000-680,000 children in sub-Saharan Africa alone. The outbreak of disease in the tropics does not affect only the people of those countries, since virtually any disease can be incubated for enough time to allow penetration into the temperate developed countries. For example, any Central African doctor infected with the ebola virus from a patient can board a plane and land in London within 10 hours. The virus could quickly spread, especially if airborne, among the city's population of 8 million. Additionally, every person at the airport who is exposed can unknowingly carry the pathogen home to their native countries around the world. 79 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 80 Water Wars Impact Module A. Improved agriculture key to solve water shortages Raisbeck 3 [David W. Vice Chairman, Cargill, Incorporated Address to the World Agricultural Forum, “The Role of Agriculture in the Global Economy”, http://www.cargill.com/news/media/030518raisbeck.htm] These pressures will only intensify over time. Food demand will continue to rise as global population increases. Most of that population growth will be concentrated in developing countries. Higher per capita incomes and accelerating urbanization in the developing world will only further intensify agriculture’s use of scarce land and water resources. Unless productivity per acre, per dollar of investment and per hour of work rises, agriculture will continue to expand into more virgin areas, strain limited water resources and exhaust overworked soils. B. Absent this new biotechnology in Africa, African shortages spark nuclear war NASCA 6 National Association for Scientific & Cultural Appreciation “Water Shortages – Only A Matter Of Time.” http://www.nasca.org.uk/Strange_relics_/water/water.html) Water is one of the prime essentials for life as we know it. The plain fact is - no water, no life! This becomes all the more worrying when we realize that the world’s supply of drinkable water will soon diminish quite rapidly. In fact a recent report commissioned by the United Nations has emphasized that by the year 2025 at least 66% of the worlds population will be without an adequate water supply. As a disaster in the making water shortage ranks in the top category. Without water we are finished, and it is thus imperative that we protect the mechanism through which we derive our supply of this life giving fluid. Unfortunately the exact opposite is the case. We are doing incalculable damage to the planets capacity to generate water and this will have far ranging consequences for the not too distant future. The United Nations has warned that burning of fossil fuels is the prime cause of water shortage. While there may be other reasons such as increased solar activity it is clear that this is a situation over which we can exert a great deal of control. If not then the future will be very bleak indeed! Already the warning signs are there. The last year has seen devastating heatwaves in many parts of the of control, while other regions of the globe experienced drought conditions that were even more severe. Parts of Iran, Afgahnistan, China and other neighbouring countries experienced their worst droughts on record. These conditions also extended throughout many parts of Africa and it is clear that if circumstances remain unchanged we are facing a disaster of epic proportions. Moreover it will be one for which there is no easy answer. The spectre of a world water shortage evokes a truly frightening scenario. In fact the United Nations warns that disputes over water will become the prime source of conflict in the not too distant future. Where these shortages become ever more acute it could forseeably lead to the brink of nuclear conflict. On a lesser scale water, and the price of it, will acquire an importance somewhat like the current value placed on oil. The difference of course is that while oil is not vital for life, water most certainly is! It seems clear then that in future years countries rich in water will enjoy an importance that perhaps they do not have today. In these circumstances power shifts are inevitable, and this will undoubtedly create its own strife and tension. In the long term the implications do not look encouraging. It is a two edged sword. First the shortage of water, and then the increased stresses this will impose upon an already stressed world of politics. It means that answers need to be found immediately. Answers that will both ameliorate the damage to the environment, and also find new sources of water for future consumption. If not, and the problem is left unresolved there will eventually come the day when we shall find ourselves with a nightmare situation for which there will be no obvious answer. world including the USA where the state of Texas experienced its worst drought on record. Elsewhere in the United States forest fires raged out 80 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 81 Global Warming Bad- Arctic Conflict (1/2) A. Global Warming facilitates European conflict over Arctic resources—draws in United States and outside actors. Traynor 3/ 10 [2008, The Guardian, “Climate change may spark conflict with Russia, EU told”, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/10/eu.climatechange, European Editor] European governments have been told to plan for an era of conflict over energy resources, with global warming likely to trigger a dangerous contest between Russia and the west for the vast mineral riches of the Arctic. A report from the EU's top two foreign policy officials to the 27 heads of government gathering in Brussels for a summit this week warns that "significant potential conflicts" are likely in the decades ahead as a result of "intensified competition over access to, and control over, energy resources". The seven-page report, obtained by the Guardian, has been written by Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy supremo, and Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the commissioner for external relations. It predicts that global warming will precipitate security issues for Europe, ranging from energy wars to mass migration, failed states and political radicalisation. The report warns of greater rich-poor and north-south tension because global warming is disproportionately caused by the wealthy north and west while its impact will be most catastrophic in the poor south. The officials single out the impact of the thawing Arctic and its emergence as a potential flashpoint of rival claims, pointing to the Kremlin's grab for the Arctic last year when President Vladimir Putin hailed as heroes a team of scientists who planted a Russian flag on the Arctic seabed. Developments in the Arctic had "potential consequences for international stability and European security interests". "The rapid melting of the polar ice caps, in particular the Arctic, is opening up new waterways and international trade routes," the report notes. "The increased accessibility of the enormous hydrocarbon resources in the Arctic region is changing the geostrategic dynamics of the region." The report also stresses the volatility of the regions that hold large mineral deposits and predicts greater destabilisation in central Asia and the Middle East as a result of global warming. The report comes as the issue of energy security begins to loom large on the agenda of western policymakers. A summit of Nato leaders in Bucharest next month will discuss the problem for the first time, while a new manifesto for a radical overhaul of the western alliance moots the possibility of Nato being used "as an instrument of energy security". "There will be a discussion of these new security risks, including energy," said a senior Nato diplomat. "We will try to find areas where Nato can add value." The 150-page manifesto for a new Nato, penned by five former chiefs of staff and senior Nato commanders from the US, UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands, also points to the likely friction in the Arctic as a result of climate change. The Arctic thaw has already created "minor tensions" between Russia and Nato member Norway over fishing rights around the Spitsbergen archipelago. "The islands of Spitsbergen ... have large deposits of gas "If global warming were to allow this to become a viable source of energy, a serious conflict could emerge between Russia and Norway." This "potential crisis" would draw in the US, Canada and Denmark "competing for large and viable energy resources and precious raw materials". With specific reference to Arctic exploration, the EU's report says: "The scramble for resources will intensify." But the retired generals complain that the EU is not tackling the issue of "protection of energy resources and their means of transportation. The EU and oil that are currently locked under a frozen continental shelf," the document states. is using soft instruments and this is unlikely to protect energy security". The Solana report is the first high-level attempt to get the issue on the summit agenda. According to a draft outcome for this week's EU summit, the 27 prime ministers and presidents will order "appropriate follow-up action" by the end of the year. Solana and Ferrero-Waldner call on the EU to draw up an Arctic policy "based on the evolving geostrategy of the ... region, taking into account access to resources and the opening of new trade routes". Next month's Nato summit discussion of the alliance's role in energy security is fuelling speculation that western troops could by deployed as "pipeline police" in places such as the Caucasus. This was dismissed by the Nato diplomat. "Energy security and the security of installations and transportation routes are a national responsibility, not an alliance responsibility," he said. "We should be looking to offer advice and help, rather than putting boots on the ground." 81 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 82 Global Warming Bad- Arctic Conflict (2/2) B. Extinction Glaser 3 [Asst. Prof of Policy Studies at U of Chicago) 1993[ Charles, “Why NATO is Still the Best”, International Security, Summer 93] From an American perspective, a basic question is whether the United States still has security interests in Europe. The end of the Cold War is fueling calls for American Isolationists believe, now more than ever, that whatever dangers might threaten Europe will not threaten the United States. During the Cold War, the most serious challenge withdrawal from Europe, adding arguments to the already extensive debate over American grand strategy. to the traditional case for American involvement flowed from the nuclear revolution, which undermined geopolitical arguments for opposing a European hegemon. Isolationists now add that we can be confident that Western Europe will be free from military conflict, because the passing of the Soviet Union has eliminated the only although the lack of an imminent Soviet threat eliminates the most obvious danger, U.S. security has not been entirely separated from the future of Western Europe. The ending of the Cold War has brought many benefits, but has not eliminated the possibility of major power war, especially since such a war could grow out of a smaller conflict in the East. And, serious external threat, and relations within the West are so good that military conflict is virtually unimaginable. However, although nuclear weapons have greatly reduced the threat that a European hegemon would pose to U.S. security, a sound case nevertheless remains that a major European The United States could be drawn into such a war, even if strict security considerations suggested it should stay out. A major power war could escalate to a nuclear war that, especially if the United States joins, could include attacks against the American homeland. Thus, the United States should not be unconcerned about Europe’s future. war could threaten U.S. security. 82 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 83 AT: Russia won’t use Nukes Russia would HAVE to use nuclear weapons in a conflict – its conventional forces are too weak, and it relies too much on its ICBMs. Zaborsky 5 [associate director of the DFI government Services, a national security consulting firm in Washington, and writer for the Washington Quartlery, Summer 2005, lexis] Given the acknowledged decrepit state of Russia's conventional forces, Moscow would likely rely on a variation of its 2000 military doctrine, which assigns nuclear weapons the role of stopping aggression "if all other methods of resolving the crisis situation are exhausted or have been ineffective."n4 As the Russian Ministry of Defense emphasized in 2003, limited and regional wars are the most likely types of conflict Russia will face in the future, and nuclear weapons must be prepared to "de-escalate" a conflict if deterrence fails.n5 In this scenario, given the new threat to Russia's North Caucasus region and its economic interests more broadly, the incentives for Russia to strike first would be high. As opposed to the geographically distant United States, an asymmetry of interests would exist in this scenario. Russia's weakness in conventional arms and vital national interest in a secure Azerbaijan and Caspian Sea would enhance its incentive for nuclear use. For the foreseeable future, Russia's key deterrent will clearly continue to be its ICBM, submarine-launched ballistic missile, and bomber force, backed by modest theater missile defense systems. Although missile defense cooperation with the United States is on the rise, this scenario assumes that current cooperation would have failed to produce joint systems, let alone a collaborative strategy or plans to act in coordination against ballistic missile threats arising from the south of Russia. 83 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 84 Global Warming Good- Famine A. Global Warming facilitates plant life—solves famine Aronson 7 [12/14, “The Positive Effects of Global Warming”, google, article cites: http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=13860] According to climatologists, the villain causing a warmer world is the unprecedented amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) we humans keep pumping into the atmosphere. But as high school biology students nationwide know, plants absorb carbon dioxide and emit oxygen. Researchers have shown that virtually all plants will do better in a CO2-rich environment than in the current atmosphere, which contains only trace amounts of their basic food. Plants also prefer warmer winters and nights, and a warmer world would mean longer growing seasons. Combined with higher levels of CO2, plant life would become more vigorous, thus providing more food for animals and humans. Given a rising world population, longer growing seasons, greater rainfall, and an enriched atmosphere could be just the ticket to stave off famine and want. Forests will expand northward into the current tundra regions. Although forest growth increases carbon dioxide uptake, this beneficial effect will be overwhelmed by the release of large stores of methane and carbon dioxide as tundra regions thaw. B. The impact is staggering-- 30,000 people die a day because of famine that’s 1000 in this debate. Trudell 5 [Robert H., JD Candidate @ Syracuse Law, Fall 2005, Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce, 33 Syracuse J. Int'l L. & Com. 277] the United States could raise the awareness of the severity of the global problem of chronic hunger caused by severe food insecurity. A problem where more than 800 million people are chronically hungry, 1.2 billion live on less than a dollar a day, and more than 30,000 children die every single day. There is a potential for a global security catastrophe and treating food insecurity through improvements in agricultural productivity is one sure way to keep Malthusian prophecies at rest. Therefore, the power of eminent domain is an efficient way to treat a food security emergency and ensure that "all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food," for the continued security of us all. By announcing a clear policy embodying the power of eminent domain to utilize patented biotechnological research tool technology in times of emergency, 84 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 85 Global Warming Good- Hurricanes A. Global Warming prevents development of hurricanes. Nature GeoScience 3/18 [Journal of Nature GeoScience, 2008, “Global Warming Found To Stop Hurricanes From Developing”. http://www.dbtechno.com/science/2008/05/18/global-warming-found-to-stop-hurricanesfrom-developing/, DeFilippis] Boston (dbTechno) - According to a new study, global warming may actually prevent the development of hurricanes, cutting back on the number of hurricanes seen each year. The study was carried out by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The study found that warmer temperatures associated with global warming reduce the number of hurricanes which form in the Atlantic Ocean. The study was carried out through a simulation of warming temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean throughout the 21st century. They found that as the warming progressed, there were 27% fewer tropical storms, and 18% fewer hurricanes. This goes against the belief of many experts in the past which stated that the increase in the number of hurricanes was due to global warming and warmer waters. The study was published on Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience. B. 85 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 86 Global Warming Good- Coral Reef (1/2) A. Great Barrier Reef threatened now because of cold climate and low sea level—Global Warming allows reefs to thrive via warm water. Marohasy 7 [January 31st, “Reef may benefit from global warming”, Jennifer, senior fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21144521-601,00.html The idea that the Great Barrier Reef may be destroyed by global warming is not new, but it is a myth. The expected rise in sea level associated with global warming may benefit coral reefs and the Great Barrier Reef is likely to extend its range further south. Global threats to the coral reefs of the world include damaging fish practices and pollution, and the UN should work harder to address these issues. Most of the world's great reefs are tropical because corals like warm water. Many of the species found on the Great Barrier Reef can also be found in regions with much warmer water, for example around Papua New Guinea. Corals predate dinosaurs and over the past couple of hundred million years have shown themselves to be remarkably resistant to climate change, over the past 100 years, a period of modest global warming, there has been a statistically significant increase in growth rates of coral species on the Great Barrier Reef.[…] In other parts of the world many reefs are under increasing pressure from blast fishing, illegal capture of live fish for the restaurant trade in places such as Hong Kong, coral mining, industrial pollution, mine waste and land reclamation. In PNG, surviving both hotter and colder periods. Interestingly, scientific studies show that high sediment loads from uncontrolled forestry, with some of this wood probably ending up as furniture bought by Australians, has also affected coral reefs. There global warming may bring more opportunities than threats. Corals grow up. Interestingly, north of Cairns there are large areas of reef with dead coral because of localised falls in sea level. A significant rise in sea level as a consequence of global warming could make these reef flats come alive again. It will be the next ice age that will leave many of the world's coral reefs high and dry. Global warming may be the big environmental issue of our times and the UN may feel compelled to include the world's main environmental symbols in its climate models and assessments. But there are higher priorities for the world's coral reefs. clearly are global threats to coral reefs, but reef ecosystems have historically been resilient to climate change, and B. Great Barrier Reef key to biodiversity and species diversity. UNAOS 7 [ July, “Biodiversity and Coral Reefs”, cites senior research fellows http://www.oceansatlas.org/servlet/CDSServlet?status=ND0zMTc5NCY2PWVuJjMzPSomMzc9a29z] Coral reefs are among the most biologically rich ecosystems on earth. About 4,000 species of fish and 800 species of reef-building corals have been described to date. However, experts have barely begun to catalog the total number of species found within these habitats.Coral reefs have often been described as the Rainforests of the Sea. Coral reefs resemble tropical rainforests in two ways: both thrive under nutrient-poor conditions (where nutrients are largely tied up in living matter), yet support rich communities through incredibly efficient recycling processes. exhibit very high levels of species diversity. Coral reefs and other marine ecosystems, however, contain more varied life forms than do land habitats. All but one of the world's 33 phyla (major kinds of organisms) are found in marine environments-15 exclusively so.[…]* The Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest system of coral reefs, covers 349,000 square kilometers and occupying only one-tenth of one percent of the ocean surface, supports: o nearly 8 percent (1,500) of the world's fish species, o more than 700 species of coral, over 4,000 species of mollusks. o 252 species of birds nest and breed on the coral cays, five species of turtles live on the reef, and several species of whales and dolphins are associated with it. Additionally, both 86 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 87 Global Warming Good- Coral Reef (2/2) C. Species loss and ecosystem collapse leads to extinction Diner 4 [Ohio State University J.D, Winter 1994, Military Law Review 161,“The Army and the Endangered Species Act: Who’s Endangering Whom?” Lexis] By causing widespread extinctions, humans have artificially simplified many ecosystems. As biologic simplicity increases, so does the risk of ecosystem failure. The spreading Sahara Desert in Africa, and the dustbowl conditions of the 1930s in the United States are relatively mild examples of what might be expected if this trend continues. Theoretically, each new animal or plant extinction, with all its dimly perceived and intertwined affects, could cause total ecosystem collapse and human extinction. Each new extinction increases the risk of disaster. Like a mechanic removing, one by one, the rivets from an aircraft's wing, mankind may be edging closer to the abyss. 87 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 88 Global Warming Good- Ice Age An Ice Age is coming now that will cause extinction—the only way to avert inevitable death is through global warming which halts the freeze. Kenny 2 [July 14th, Andrew, The Sunday Mail, “The Ice Age Cometh”, http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/iceage.htm, FMF co-spokesperson on climate change] A new ice age is due now, but you wont hear it from the green groups, who like to play on Western guilt about consumerism to make us believe in global warming.THE Earth's climate is changing in a dramatic way, with immense danger for mankind and the natural systems that sustain it. This was the frightening message broadcast to us by environmentalists in the recent past. Here are some of their prophecies.The facts have emerged, in recent years and months, from research into past ice ages. They imply that the threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind [humynkind]. (Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist, in International Wildlife, July 1975) The cooling has already killed thousands of people in poor nations... If it continues, and no strong measures are taken to deal with it, the cooling will cause world famine, world chaos, and probably world war, and this could all come about by the year 2000. (Lowe Ponte, The Cooling, 1976) As recently as January 1994, the supreme authority on matters environmental, Time magazine, wrote :The ice age cometh? Last week's big chill was a reminder that the Earth's climate can change at any time ... The last (ice age) ended 10,000 years ago; the next one— for there will be a next on—could start tens of thousands of years from now. Or tens of years. Or it may have already started. The scare about global cooling was always the same: unprecedented low temperatures; the coldest weather recorded; unusual floods and storms; a rapid shift in the world's climate towards an icy apocalypse. But now, the scare is about global warming. To convert from the first scare to the second, all you have to do is substitute "the coldest weather recorded" with "the warmest weather recorded". Replace the icicles hanging from oranges in California with melting glaciers on Mt Everest, and the shivering armadillos with sweltering polar bears. We were going to freeze but now The most reliable measurements show no change whatsoever in global temperatures in the past 20 years. What has changed is the perception that global warming makes a better scare than the coming ice age. A good environmental scare needs two ingredients. The first is impending catastrophe. The second is a we are going to fry. Even the White House is making cautionary sounds about warming. What facts have emerged to make this dramatic reversal? Well, none really. suitable culprit to blame. In the second case, the ice age fails and global warming is gloriously successful. It is not the destruction itself of Sodom and Gomorrah that makes the story so appealing but the fact that they were destroyed because they were so sinful. One of the real threats to mankind is the danger of collision with a large asteroid. It has happened in the past with catastrophic effect, and it will probably happen again. But there are no conferences, resolutions, gatherings, protests and newspaper headlines about asteroid impacts. The reason is that you cannot find anyone suitable to blame for them. If you could persuade people that President Bush or the oil companies were responsible for the asteroids, I guarantee there would be a billion-dollar campaign to "raise awareness" about the asteroid danger, with sonorous editorials in all the papers. Global warming has the perfect culprit: naughty, industrialised, advanced, consuming, Western society, which has made itself very rich by burning a lot of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas). This, so the scare goes, is releasing a lot of carbon dioxide. which is dangerously heating up the world. THERE are two facts in the scare. First, it is true that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas one which traps heat on Earth. (Without it, the Earth would be too For the past 20 years or more, air temperatures have been measured with extreme accuracy. They show no warming whatsoever. Surface temperatures are much less reliable since the recording stations are often encroached on by expanding cities, which warm the local environment. The curve most often used by the global warmers is one showing surface cold for' life.) Second, it is true that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is rising. The rest is guesswork. The global warmers said the most accurate measure of climate change would be air temperatures. temperatures rising by about half a degree in the past 100 years. (The curve, incidentally, is a bad match against rising carbon dioxide but a good one against solar activity, which suggests the sun might be the reason for the warming.) However, there are accurate methods of measuring sea temperatures going back much further. Past temperatures for the Atlantic Ocean have been found by looking at dead marine life. The isotope ratio of carbon-14 in their skeletons tells you when they lived. The ratio of other isotopes tells you the temperature then. Thus we are able to know temperatures in the Atlantic and northern Europe going back thousands of years . They make nonsense of the global warming scare. The last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago. Temperatures rose to the "Holocene Maximum" of about 5000 years ago when it was about l.5°C higher than now, dropped in the time of Christ, and then rose to the "Medieval Climate Optimum" in the years 600 to 1100, when temperatures. were about 1°C higher than now. This was a golden age for northern European. agriculture and led to the rise of Viking civilisation. Greenland, now a frozen wasteland, was then a habitable Viking colony. There were vineyards in the south of England. Then temperatures dropped to "The Little Ice Age" in the 1600s, when the Thames froze over. And they have been rising slowly ever since, although they are still much lower than 1000 years ago. period. We are now in a rather cool What caused these ups and downs of temperature? We do not know. Temperature changes are a fact of nature, and we have no idea if the claimed 0.3C if Europe heats up by 1°C it would do it a power of good. We can see this from records of 1000 years ago. Moreover, increased carbon dioxide makes plants grow more quickly, so improving crops and forests. The Earth's climate is immensely complicated, far beyond our present powers of understanding and the calculating powers of heating over the past 100 years is caused by man's activities or part of a natural cycle. What we can say, though, is that modern computers. Changes in phase from ice to water to vapour; cloud formation; convection; ocean currents; winds; changes in the sun: the complicated shapes of the land masses; the ability of the oceans to absorb carbon dioxide — all of these and a thousand other factors operating with small differences over vast masses and distances make it practically impossible for us to make predictions about long-term climate patterns, and perhaps make such predictions inherently impossible. The computer models that the global warmers now use are ludicrously oversimplified, and it is no surprise they have made one wrong prediction after another. If the global warming scare has little foundation in fact , the ice-age scare is only too solidly founded. For the past two million years, but not before, the northern hemisphere has gone through a regular cycle of ice ages: 90,000 years with ice: 10,000 years without. The last ice age ended 10,000 years ago. Our time is up. The next ice age is due. We do not know what causes the ice ages. It is probably to do with the arrangement of northern land masses and the path of the Gulf Stream, but we do not know. However, a new ice age, unlike global warming, would be a certain calamity. It may be that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are actually warding off the ice age. In this case, we should give tax relief to coal power stations and factories for every tonne of carbon dioxide they rele 88 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 89 Global Warming Good- Rice (1/2) A. Even though prices are rising, global rice supplies just enough to avoid food shortages now Western Farm Press 8 (June 25, http://westernfarmpress.com/rice/rice-supply-0625/) Media attention was driven by news of increasingly tight supplies and rapidly escalating prices in many riceproducing countries, particularly in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. The price increases began in the fall of 2007 following several years of strong global demand. Rising fuel and fertilizer costs and recent full or partial export bans by major export markets prompted a one-two-punch of high costs and reduced supplies. Despite the media coverage and high prices, global supplies are adequate. B. High CO2 levels are key to high rice yields. Curtis 2(Pete, Ohio State Research news, 10-2-02, http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/co2plant.htm) To understand the role that rising CO2 levels may play on plant growth, Curtis and his colleagues conducted a meta-analysis – a technique in which researchers pull together data from a large number of similar studies (159, in this case) and summarize the results. Curtis said that this is the first time that researchers have used the meta-analysis technique to determine the effects of climate change on plant reproduction. The studies were published between 1983 and 2000. The results included data on crop and wild plant species’ reproductive responses to estimated CO2 levels at the end of this century. Scientists expect CO2 levels to nearly double by 2100. The researchers analyzed eight different ways plants respond to higher CO2 levels: number of flowers; number of fruits; fruit weight; number of seeds; total seed weight; individual seed weight; the amount of nitrogen contained in seeds; and a plant’s reproductive allocation, a measurement of a plant’s capacity to reproduce. Plants grown at higher CO2 levels had more flowers (an average of 19 percent more in the species studied); more seeds (16 percent more); greater individual seed weight (four percent more); greater total seed weight (25 percent more) and lower concentration of nitrogen in the seeds (a decrease of 14 percent) than those grown at current levels of atmospheric CO2. Under higher CO2 levels, crop plants showed a notable increase in reproduction while wild plants did not. On average, crops produced more fruits than did wild species (28 percent higher in crops vs. 4 percent higher in wild plants) as well as seeds (21 percent higher vs. 4 percent higher, respectively).Individual crops varied in their response to increased CO2 levels. Rice seemed to be the most responsive, as its seed production increased an average of 42 percent. Soybean followed with a 20 percent increase in seed, then wheat (15 percent increase) and, finally, corn (5 percent increase).While crop plants and wild plants had similar increases in total growth (a 31 percent increase), crops allocated the additional weight to reproduction, while wild plants seem to funnel much of it to tasks other than reproduction, Curtis said. 89 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 90 Global Warming Good- Rice (1/2) C. Enough rice stops 3 billion deaths. ScienceDaily 7 (“Protecting Rice: The Planet’s Most Important Food Source”, ScienceDaily, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070319175803.htm, March 21, 2007) An unprecedented new agreement --part of an aggressive move to safeguard the world's food production - aims to protect thousands of the world's unique rice varieties. The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the Rome-based Global Crop Diversity Trust announced the historic new agreement at a special dedication ceremony at IRRI's Genetic Resources Center, which houses more than 100,000 samples of rice, the biggest and most important such collection in the world. The funding agreement is expected to help conserve and manage forever the extraordinary diversity of arguably the world's most important crop. Today, about three billion people depend on rice for their survival, with the thousands of varieties carefully stored at IRRI providing the last line of defense between them and possible famine, especially in times of war, natural disasters, and attacks from pests and diseases. The agreement offers for the first time in the history of modern agricultural research stable and long-term support to an unrivaled collection of genetic diversity that is estimated to include at least 80,000 distinct rice varieties. The collection is considered the Institute's "crown jewels" and is kept in a special earthquake-proof and fireproof facility that must be maintained at temperatures as low as --19 degrees Celsius. At a special ceremony on the same day, the Institute also dedicated the Genetic Resources Center (GRC) to Dr. Te-Tzu Chang, the founder of the International Rice Germplasm Center -- one of the predecessors of the GRC. Dr. Chang, who passed away last year in Taiwan, China, was a world authority on rice genetics and conservation and spent 30 years at IRRI collecting and storing rice varieties from all over Asia and the world. From now on, the GRC will be known as the T.T. Chang Genetic Resources Center. "With almost half the world's population depending on rice, we wanted to make sure IRRI's genebank was insulated from the whims of fluctuating funding," said Cary Fowler, the Trust's executive secretary. "The agreement goes to the core of the Trust's mission, which is to guarantee the conservation of the world's crop diversity, and it's hard to imagine a more important crop for sustaining humanity than rice." This agreement, the first major conservation grant made by the Trust, is structured to reflect the long-term vision of both organizations. "Short-term thinking about funding has wreaked havoc with effective conservation," continued Dr. Fowler. "This agreement is probably unique among funding contracts in having no end date. I am pleased that our first long-term grant protects the crop which feeds the most people, for the longest term imaginable -- forever." Under the agreement, IRRI has pledged to designate a portion of its financial assets to generate $400,000 in annual income that will be invested in the genebank, which will unlock $200,000 from the Trust each year. The agreement allows for inflationary increases and will remain in force "indefinitely." The money will go toward, among other things, acquiring any rice varieties not currently in the repository and making sure the storage systems for long-term conservation are up to international standards. "The rice genebank is not just a scientific exercise in seed genetics but a major hedge against disaster that ensures farmers throughout the world will always have the rice varieties they need to maintain food security," said Dr. Robert S. Zeigler, IRRI's director general. For example, after the Asian tsunami (December 26, 2004), IRRI was able to reach into its collection and provide farmers in areas that had been under seawater with varieties of rice capable of growing in salty soils. In addition, several countries, including Cambodia, East Timor, India, Nepal, and the Philippines, have turned to the IRRI genebank to restore native varieties of rice that, for a variety of reasons, had disappeared from domestic production. Last year, IRRI introduced a new variety of rice able to withstand being completely submerged in a flood. And, this variety is playing a central role in an initiative of IRRI's umbrella organization, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), to develop crops that will allow farmers to deal with the potentially devastating effects of climate change. In each case, the genebank played an essential role, helping to provide the genetic diversity needed to develop such varieties. According to Dr. Zeigler, the grant breaks "Rice diversity, like all crop diversity, is at risk for the want of relatively small amounts of money. Given that we are talking about the biological base upon which the global food supply is built, it is extraordinary that the current situation is so precarious. The new ground in the funding of arguably the most important resource in the world: economics speak for themselves." According to Dr. Fowler, an independent study estimated that adding just an additional 1,000 rice samples to IRRI's genebank would generate an annual stream of benefits to poor farmers of $325 million. 90 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 91 Random Economic Collapse Good Card No offense—human extinction in inevitable in the world of economic growth—economic collapse now allows biosphere to recover and harbor humanity. Barry 1/12 [“Economic Collapse and Global Ecology” Political ecologist and conservation biologist, a writer of essays and blogs, and a computer specialist and technology researcher. Recognized internationally by the environmental movement as a leading public intellectual and global visionary committed to communicating the severity of global ecological crises and actively organizing with others sufficient responses. Dr. Barry is the President and Founder of Ecological Internet (EI). http://earthmeanders.blogspot.com/2008/01/economiccollapse-and-global-ecology.html] Given widespread failure to pursue policies sufficient to reverse deterioration of the biosphere and avoid ecological collapse, the best we can hope for may be that the growth-based economic system crashes sooner rather than later Humanity and the Earth are faced with an enormous conundrum -- sufficient climate policies enjoy political support only in times of rapid economic growth. Yet this growth is the primary factor driving greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental ills. The growth machine has pushed the planet well beyond its ecological carrying capacity, and unless constrained, can only lead to human extinction and an end to complex life. With every economic downturn, like the one now looming in the United States, it becomes more difficult and less likely that policy sufficient to ensure global ecological from a biocentric viewpoint of needs for long-term global ecological, economic and social sustainability; it would be better for the economic collapse to come now rather than later. Economic growth is a deadly disease upon the Earth, with capitalism as its most virulent strain. Throw-away consumption and explosive population growth are made possible by using up fossil fuels and destroying ecosystems. Holiday shopping numbers are covered by media in the same breath as Arctic ice melt, ignoring their deep connection . Exponential economic growth destroys ecosystems and pushes the biosphere closer to failure. sustainability will be embraced. This essay explores the possibility that Humanity has proven itself unwilling and unable to address climate change and other environmental threats with necessary haste and ambition. Action on coal, forests, population, renewable energy and emission reductions could be taken now at net benefit to the economy. Yet, the losers -- primarily fossil fuel industries and their bought oligarchy -- successfully resist futures not dependent upon their deadly products. Perpetual economic growth, and necessary climate and other ecological policies, are fundamentally incompatible. Global ecological sustainability depends critically upon establishing a steady state economy, whereby production is right-sized to not diminish natural capital. Whole industries like coal and natural forest logging will be eliminated even as new opportunities emerge in solar energy and This critical transition to both economic and ecological sustainability is simply not happening on any scale. The challenge is how to carry out necessary environmental policies even as economic growth ends and consumption plunges. The natural response is going to be liquidation of even more life-giving ecosystems, and jettisoning of climate policies, to vainly try to maintain high growth and personal consumption. We know that humanity must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% over coming decades. How will this and other necessary climate mitigation strategies be maintained during years of economic downturns, resource wars, environmental restoration . reasonable demands for equitable consumption, and frankly, the weather being more pleasant in some places? If efforts to reduce emissions and move to a steady state economy fail; the collapse of ecological, economic and social systems is assured. Bright greens take the continued existence of a habitable Earth with viable, sustainable populations of all species including humans as the ultimate truth and the meaning of life. Whether this is possible in a time of economic collapse is crucially dependent upon whether enough ecosystems and resources remain post collapse to allow humanity to recover and reconstitute sustainable, relocalized societies. It may be better for the Earth and humanity's future that economic collapse comes sooner rather than later, while more ecosystems and opportunities to return to nature's fold exist. Economic collapse will be deeply wrenching -- part Great Depression, part African famine. There will be starvation and civil strife, and a long period of suffering and turmoil. Many will be killed as balance returns to the Earth. Most people have forgotten how to grow food and that their identity is more than what they own. Yet there is some justice, in that those who have lived most lightly upon the land will have an easier time of it, even as those super-consumers living in massive cities finally learn where their food comes from and that ecology is the meaning of life. Economic collapse now means humanity and the Earth ultimately survive to prosper again. Human suffering -- already the norm for many, but hitting the currently materially affluent -- is inevitable given the degree to which the planet's carrying capacity has been exceeded. We are a couple decades at most away from societal strife of a much greater magnitude as the Earth's biosphere fails. Humanity can take the bitter medicine now, and recover while emerging better for it; or our total collapse can be a final, fatal death A successful revolutionary response to imminent global ecosystem collapse would focus upon bringing down the Earth's industrial economy now. As society continues to fail miserably to implement necessary changes to allow creation to continue, maybe the best strategy to achieve global ecological sustainability is economic sabotage to hasten the day . swoon. 91 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 92 Aff- Global Warming Bad Terrorism A. Global Warming increases terrorism and decreases U.S. defenses CNN 6/25 [2008, “Global Warming could increase terrorism”, CNN Politics http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/25/climate.change.security/index.html] Global warming could destabilize "struggling and poor" countries around the world, prompting mass migrations and creating breeding grounds for terrorists, the chairman of the National Intelligence Council told Congress on Wednesday. Climate change "will aggravate existing problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions," Thomas Fingar said. "All of this threatens the domestic stability of a number of African, Asian, Central American and Central Asian countries." People are likely to flee destabilized countries, and some may turn to terrorism, he said. "The conditions exacerbated by the effects of climate change could increase the pool of potential recruits into terrorist activity," he said."Economic refugees will perceive additional reasons to flee their homes because of harsher climates," Fingar predicted. That will put pressure on countries receiving refugees, many of which "will have neither the resources nor interest to host these climate migrants," he said in testimony to the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. Reactions to the report broke down along partisan lines, with Democrats generally praising it and Republicans expressing doubts. Committee members had concerns about the report's secrecy, reliability and use of intelligence resources. Global warming may have a slight positive effect on the United States, since it is likely to produce larger farming yields, Fingar said But it is also likely to result in storm surges that could affect nuclear facilities and oil refineries near coasts, water shortages in the Southwest and longer summers with more wildfires, the study found. International migration may also help spread disease, Fingar added, and climate change could put stress on international trade in essential commodities. "The United States depends on a smooth-functioning international system ensuring the flow of trade and market access to critical raw materials, such as oil and gas, and security for its allies and partners. Climate change and climate change policies could affect all of these," he warned, "with significant geopolitical consequences." The report was the conclusion of the most comprehensive government analysis the U.S. intelligence community has ever conducted on climate change. Fingar emphasized that it could make no hard and fast predictions, saying that the operative word in his assessment was "may." Wealthy countries will be able to handle the situation better than poorer ones, he said. "We assess that no country will be immune to the effects of climate change, but some will be able to cope more effectively than others," he said. "Most of the struggling and poor states that will suffer adverse impacts to their potential and economic security are in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Central and Southeast Asia. "However, the spillover -- from potentially increased migration and water-related disputes -- could have a harmful global impact," he added. Fingar painted a mixed picture of the effects of climate change on the United States itself. "Most studies suggest the United States as a whole will enjoy modest economic benefits over the next few decades, largely due to the increased crop yields," he said. "Costs begin to mount thereafter, however, and some parts of the United States -- particularly built-up coastal areas -- will be at greater risk of extreme weather events and potentially high costs related to losses in complex infrastructure." The impact of fighting and preparing for climate change may be greater than the effect "Government, business and public efforts to develop mitigation and adaptation strategies to deal with climate change -- from policies to reduce greenhouse gases to plans to reduce exposure to climate change or capitalize on potential impacts -- may affect U.S. national security interests even more than the physical impacts of climate change itself," he said. The report, the "National Intelligence Assessment on the National Security Implications of Global Climate Change to 2030," relied of global warming itself, Fingar said. on U.S. government, military, academic and United Nations studies of climate change. The report itself is classified, which some members of the House committee objected to. "I am disappointed it is classified," said Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-California. Secrecy "prevents this report from being released and discussed in public domain." Committee Chairman Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said he would ask the administration to declassify it. Markey opened the hearing by saying "human beings all over the planet face death or damage or injury if we do not act." He blasted the White House stance on climate change, saying, "The Bush administration continues to limit what their experts know. The president doesn't want America to know the real risk of global warming."Republicans on the committee criticized the report as wasteful, with Rep. Darrell Issa of California calling it a "dangerous diversion of intelligence resources."Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Michigan, said that the report was unreliable and that its authors admitted as much. "We have a lot of information where we are incapable of assessing it," Fingar conceded. Hoekstra also questioned the committee's priorities. "There are a lot more pressing issues out there for the intelligence community to be focused on right now that would help keep America safe," he said. The assessment "was a waste of time, a waste of resources for the intelligence community to be focused on this issue versus other folks in the government that could have done this job and have a responsibility for doing it." Fingar said the intelligence community had relied on the science of others because it did not itself monitor climate change. He said the assessment was based on midrange predictions of global warming. 92 Baylor Debate Workshops Global Warming Answers Evan DeFilippis Page 93 Aff- Global Warming Bad Terrorism B. A terrorist attack would cause extinction. Sid-Ahmed 4, Political Analyst, 2K4 (Mohamed, “Extinction!” Al-Ahram Weekly On-Line, August 26 – September 1, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg /2004/705/op5.htm) We have reached a point in human history where the phenomenon of terrorism has to be completely uprooted, not through persecution and oppression, but by removing the reasons that make particular sections of the world population resort to terrorism. This means that fundamental changes must be brought to the world system itself. The phenomenon of terrorism is even more dangerous than is generally believed. We are in for surprises no less serious than 9/11 and with far more devastating consequences. A nuclear attack by terrorists will be much more critical than Hiroshima and Nagazaki, even if -- and this is far from certain -- the weapons used are less harmful than those used then, Japan, at the time, with no knowledge of nuclear technology, had no choice but to capitulate. Today, the technology is a secret for nobody. So far, except for the two bombs dropped on Japan, nuclear weapons have been used only to threaten. Now we are at a stage where they can be detonated. This completely changes the rules of the game. We have reached a point where anticipatory measures can determine the course of events. Allegations of a terrorist connection can be used to justify anticipatory measures, including the invasion of a sovereign state like Iraq. As it turned out, these allegations, as well as the allegation that Saddam was harbouring WMD, proved to be unfounded. What would be the consequences of a nuclear attack by terrorists? Even if it fails, it would further exacerbate the negative features of the new and frightening world in which we are now living. Societies would close in on themselves, police measures would be stepped up at the expense of human rights, tensions between civilisations and religions would rise and ethnic conflicts would proliferate. It would also speed up the arms race and develop the awareness that a different type of world order is imperative if humankind is to survive. But the still more critical scenario is if the attack succeeds. This could lead to a third world war, from which no one will emerge victorious. Unlike a conventional war which ends when one side triumphs over another, this war will be without winners and losers. When nuclear pollution infects the whole planet, we will all be losers. 93