Impact Defense
Warming
No Impact
Reject climate alarmism – their impacts are not backed by peer-reviewed data.
Idso, 11 (Craig D., PhD Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change,
6/15/11, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Climate Change,
“Estimates of Global Food Production in the Year 2050: Will We Produce Enough to
Adequately Feed the World?” AS)
Many people have long believed that the ongoing rise in the air’s carbon dioxide or CO2 content has
been causing the world to warm, due to the “greenhouse effect” of this radiatively-active trace gas of
the atmosphere; and they believe that the planet will continue to warm for decades -- if not centuries -to come, based upon economic projections of the amounts of future fossil fuel (coal, gas and oil) usage
and climate-model projections of the degree of global warming they expect to be produced by the CO2
that is emitted to the atmosphere as a result of the burning of these fuels. The same people have also
long believed that CO2-induced global warming will lead to a whole host of climate- and weatherrelated catastrophes, including more frequent and severe floods, droughts, hurricanes and other storms,
rising sea levels that will inundate the planet’s coastal lowlands, increased human illness and mortality,
the widespread extinction of many plant and animal species, declining agricultural productivity, frequent
coral bleaching, and marine life dissolving away in acidified oceans. And because of these theoretical
model-based projections, they have lobbied local, regional and national governments for decades in an
attempt to get the nations of the world to severely reduce the magnitudes of their anthropogenic CO2
emissions. But are the scenarios painted by these climate alarmists true portrayals of what the future
holds for humanity and the rest of the biosphere if their demands are not met?¶ This is the question
recently addressed in our Center’s most recent major report: Carbon Dioxide and Earth’s Future:
Pursuing the Prudent Path. In it, we describe the findings of many hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific
studies that analyzed real-world data pertaining to the host of climate- and weather-related
catastrophes predicted by the world’s climate alarmists to result from rising global temperatures. The
approach of most of these studies was to determine if there had been any increasing trends in the
predicted catastrophic phenomena over the past millennia or two, the course of the 20th century, or the
past few decades, when the world’s climate alarmists claim that the planet warmed at a rate and to a
degree that they contend was unprecedented over the past thousand or two years. And the common
finding of all of this research was a resounding No!¶ But even this near-universal repudiation of climatealarmist contentions has not been enough to cause them to alter their overriding goal of reducing
anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Invoking the precautionary principle, they essentially say that the
potential climatic outcomes they foresee are so catastrophic that we cannot afford to gamble upon
them being wrong, evoking the old adage that it is better to be safe than sorry, even if the cost is
staggering.¶ If this were all there were to the story, we all would agree with them. But it is not, for they
ignore an even more ominous catastrophe that is rushing towards us like an out-of-control freight train
that is only years away from occurring. And preventing this ominous future involves letting the air’s CO2
content continue its historical upward course, until the age of fossil fuels gradually peaks and then
naturally, in the course of unforced innovation, declines, as other sources of energy gradually become
more efficient and less expensive, and without the forced intervention of government.
2NC – No Try or Die
None of their studies have predictive validity – reject “try or die” framing.
Sadar 7/7 (Anthony J., Prof @ Geneva College specializing in Earth and Environmental Science,
Statistics, Air Pollution Meteorology and Engineering, Why the former Ice Age became global warming,
then climate change, Washington Examiner 7/7/14, http://washingtonexaminer.com/why-the-comingice-age-became-global-warming-then-climate-change/article/2550565)//mm
Today, it is fashionable to expect disaster from too much warmth. So the smart money is on promoting
dire predictions and consequences of rising thermometers, even in the face of no global warming for
more than 15 years. From my own 35 years of experience in the atmospheric science profession as an
air-pollution meteorologist, air quality program administrator and science educator, I can attest the fact
that long-range, global climate-change outlooks are nothing but insular professional opinion. Such
opinion is not worthy of the investment of billions of dollars to avoid the supposed catastrophic
consequences of abundant, inexpensive fossil fuels and, subsequently, to impoverish U.S. citizens with
skyrocket energy costs. I have conducted or overseen a hundred air-quality studies, many using
sophisticated atmospheric modeling. Such modeling — comparable to or even involving the same
models as those used in climate modeling — produced results for relatively short-term, local areas that,
although helpful to understanding air quality impact issues, were far from being able to bet billions of
taxpayer dollars on. Yet similar climate models that imagine conditions for the entire globe for decades
into the future are used to do just that — bet billions of taxpayer dollars. Bottom line, nobody can detail
with any billion-dollar-spending degree of confidence what the global climate will be like decades from
now. But, it’s easy to predict that, given enough monetary incentive and the chance to be at the
pinnacle of popularity, some climate prognosticators — and certainly every capitalizing politician — will
continue to proffer convincing climate claims to an unwary public.
2NC – IPCC says No Impact
New IPCC report proves no impact to warming
Lomborg 13 (Bjørn, adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre and a former director of the
Environmental Assessment Institute in Copenhagen, Climate Activists Need to Dial Back on the Panic, http://ideas.time.com/2013/09/30/climate-activists-need-todial-back-on-the-panic/)
On Friday, the U.N. climate panel, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), produced its first overview in six
years. It wasn’t about panic and catastrophe, which unfortunately has dominated our climate debate, leading to expensive but
ineffective policies. The IPCC is now extremely certain that more than half of the past six decades’ temperature rise was caused by man. But
it does not support the scary scenarios of temperature rises of 9°F or more bandied about by activists —
the likely rise over the 21st century is about 1.8°F to 6.7°F. Similarly it makes short shrift of alarmist
claims that sea levels will rise 3 ft. to 6 ft. In reality, the IPCC estimates the rise by the end of the century at 1.5 ft.
to 2 ft. Moreover, little or no temperature rise in the past 15 to 20 years reinforces this moderate message. Since 1980, the average of
all the current climate models have overestimated the actual temperature rise by 71% to 159%. This does
not mean that there is not some global warming, but it makes the worst scenarios ever more implausible. Yet, our
climate conversation has been dominated by fear and end-of-the-world thinking. While panic is a great
way to raise awareness and to win votes, it is a terrible way to ground smart policies. Remember Al Gore’s
movie, An Inconvenient Truth, which was all the rage just seven years ago? His most shown clip vividly illustrated how a sea-level rise of 20 ft.
would inundate Florida, along with Beijing and Bangladesh. Yes, it was terrifying. But it had no basis in reality. Sea-level
rise of 1.5 ft.
to 2 ft. poses a quite more manageable challenge. For scale, sea levels rose about 1 ft. over the past 150 years. Our
forefathers, poorer and less technologically adept than us, handled this challenge quite deftly, and there
was no catastrophe — in fact, it is unlikely even to be mentioned in a list of problems of the 20th century. We need to get back
to reality. Yes, global warming is happening. In the long run, it has an overall negative impact. But actually — and surprisingly for many —
economic models generally find that moderate global warming is a net global benefit. Worldwide and in
almost all regions, many more people die from cold than heat. With increasing temperatures, avoided
cold deaths will vastly outweigh extra heat deaths. By midcentury, researchers estimate 400,000 more heat deaths but 1.8
million fewer cold deaths. Likewise, CO2 fertilizes crops and will increase production more in temperate
countries than it will slow down crop increases in tropical countries. It will reduce heating costs more than it will
increase cooling costs. A new study by climate economist Richard Tol that is featured in my forthcoming book, How Much
Have Global Problems Cost the World?: A Scorecard From 1900 to 2050, shows that since 1900, global warming has been an
increasing net benefit for humanity and will peak around 2025 with an annual benefit of about 1.5% of GDP. Only
toward the end of the century will global warming turn to a net loss — so while we need to do something, it must be cost-effective.
No Clear Prediction on UN Climate Change Extinction Rates
Aulakh 7/17/14, (Raveena Aulakh, reporter at the Toronto Star covering the environment, “UN climate
body backtracks on risk of species extinction”,
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/03/30/un_climate_body_backtracks_on_risk_of_species_ex
tinction.html, 7/17/14, AC)
Scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change seem to have quietly backpedalled on
the risk of species extinction. In its last assessment report in 2007, the IPCC said humans had shrunk the
habitats of many life forms and it predicted that 20 to 30 per cent of all animal and plant species faced a
high risk for extinction if average global temperatures rose by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius. The UN climate
body now says it is no longer as certain. In the new report, scientists say “forecasts of very high
extinction rates due entirely to climate change may be overestimated.” While scientists agree that the
risk of species extinction will increase due to climate change, “there is low agreement concerning the
fraction of species at increased risk, the regional and taxonomic distribution of such extinctions and the
time frame over which extinctions could occur.” Hence, this new assessment does not include concrete
figures about the percentage of species that could become extinct due to global warming. So is it all OK
for other life forms? Not at all, says Jeremy Kerr, a biologist with the University of Ottawa. “There is a lot
of evidence of biological impact (of climate change) but there is not much evidence of specific
extinction,” he said. “There are projections, models of what we think could happen in 40 or 50 years,”
said Kerr. “The problem is they are models, unlike the evidence for climate change, which is supported
by recent past observations in the last several decades, models of extinction risk have not yet
demonstrated that those rates are rising right now.”
Warming Causes War
Climate change won’t cause conflict – their claims are highly speculative, driven by
political agendas, and are influenced by many alt causes.
Barnett 3 (Jon, School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies, University of
Melbourne, Security and Climate Change, Global Environmental Change 13 (2003) 7–17,
ScienceDirect)//rh
It is necessary to be cautious about the links between climate change and conflict. Much of the
analogous literature on environmental conflicts is more theoretically than empirically driven, and
motivated by Northern theoretical and strategic interests rather than informed by solid empirical
research (Barnett. 2000. Glcditsch. l99). This in part reflects the long-standing difficulties in finding
meaningful evidence of the determinants of violent conflict and war at international and subnational
levels.’ the basis of existing environment-conflict research there is simply insufficient evidence and too
much uncertainty to make anything other than highly speculative claims about the effect of climate
change on violent conflict, a point that both policy makers and climate scientists should not lose sight of.
Ultimately, as Baechlcr argue, there is a need for more ‘elaborate case studies” which are linked with
other studies of conflict that deal with interacting “crucial issues such as poverty. ethnicity and state”
(1999b, p. l0). Only then can assessments of utility for policy be delivered. Three criteria can be used to
frame and scale such a research programme: political scale (between or below states): the nature of
governance: and the nature of environmental (as opposed to resource) changes affected by climate
change. These will now be discussed in turn. 4.1 Political Scale Despite the ambiguity of past
environment-conflict research, there is common agreement that there are links (if vague) between
environmental change and violent conflict. However, it has not been shown that environmental factors
are the only or even important factors leading conflict (Homer-Dixon and Butt. ¡998; Buech 1er. 1999c).
Other factors such as poverty and inequities between groups, the availabiliy of weapons, ethnic
tensions, external indebtedness, institutional resilience, state legitimacy and its capacity and willingness
to intervene seem to matter as much if not more than environmental change per se (see Baechier.
1999b). Importantly, it has been comprehensively demonstrated that environmental factors do not, and
nor are they likely to trigger open conflict between nation-states (Baechlcr, 1999a; Homer-Dixon and
Percival. 1996; Wolf. ¡999). So, except in the case of a low probability/ high impact event such as
widespread loss of land as a result of melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (causing sea-level to risc by
some 4—6m), climate change impacts are unlikely to be a factor in violent conflicts between states (van
Ireland et al.. 1996 are in agreement). This applies equally to climate change mitigation where it seems
extremely unlikely that violence will erupt between states over disagreements about greenhouse gas
emission reductions, although changes in the political economy of energy resources may change the
nature of competition between states. Conflicts in which environmental change appears to be a
contributing factor tend to be within rather than between states, and it is at this sub-state level that a
climate change-conflict research agenda would most profìtably focus.
Warming does not cause war or economic decline – the IPCC underestimates adaptive
capacity.
Carter et al, 11 (Robert M. Carter, Craig D. Idso, S. Fred Singer, 2011,
Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, “Climate Change
Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report of the NIPCC,”
http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/2011/pdf/2011NIPCCinterimreport.pdf, AS)
The IPCC systematically ¶ underestimates adaptive capacity by failing to take ¶ into account the greater
wealth and technological ¶ advances that will be present at the time for which ¶ impacts are to be
estimated. ¶ ¶ Even accepting the IPCC‘s and Stern Review‘s ¶ worst-case scenarios, and assuming a
compounded ¶ annual growth rate of per-capita GDP of only 0.7 ¶ percent, reveals that net GDP per
capita in ¶ developing countries in 2100 would be double the ¶ 2006 level of the U.S. and triple that level
in 2200. ¶ Thus, even developing countries‘ future ability to ¶ cope with climate change would be much
better ¶ than that of the U.S. today. ¶ ¶
embrace of biofuels as a way to reduce ¶ greenhouse
gas emissions was premature, as many ¶ researchers have found ―even the best biofuels have ¶ the
potential to damage the poor, the climate, and ¶ biodiversity‖ (Delucchi, 2010). Biofuel production ¶
consumes nearly as much energy as it generates, ¶ competes with food crops and wildlife for land, and ¶
is unlikely to ever meet more than a small fraction ¶ of the world‘s demand for fuels. ¶ ¶ The notion that
global warming might cause war ¶ and social unrest is not only wrong, but even ¶ backwards – that is,
global cooling has led to wars ¶ and social unrest in the past, whereas global ¶ warming has coincided
with periods of peace, ¶ prosperity, and social stability
Irreversible
Warming is irreversible regardless of CO2 emissions- even complete cessation does
not solve.
Solomon 08 – Susan Solomon, Chemical Sciences Division, Earth System Research Laboratory,
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (“Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide
emissions”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Dec 16,
2008, Available at: http://www.pnas.org/content/106/6/1704.long, Accessed on: 7/17/2014, IJ)
Over the 20th century, the atmospheric concentrations of key greenhouse gases increased due to
human activities. The stated objective (Article 2) of the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC) is to achieve stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the
atmosphere at a low enough level to prevent “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate
system.” Many studies have focused on projections of possible 21st century dangers (1–3). However,
the principles (Article 3) of the UNFCCC specifically emphasize “threats of serious or irreversible
damage,” underscoring the importance of the longer term. While some irreversible climate changes
such as ice sheet collapse are possible but highly uncertain (1, 4), others can now be identified with
greater confidence, and examples among the latter are presented in this paper. It is not generally
appreciated that the atmospheric temperature increases caused by rising carbon dioxide concentrations
are not expected to decrease significantly even if carbon emissions were to completely cease (5–7)
(see Fig. 1). Future carbon dioxide emissions in the 21st century will hence lead to adverse climate
changes on both short and long time scales that would be essentially irreversible (where irreversible is
defined here as a time scale exceeding the end of the millennium in year 3000; note that we do not
consider geo-engineering measures that might be able to remove gases already in the atmosphere or to
introduce active cooling to counteract warming). For the same reason, the physical climate changes that
are due to anthropogenic carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere today are expected to be largely
irreversible. Such climate changes will lead to a range of damaging impacts in different regions and
sectors, some of which occur promptly in association with warming, while others build up under
sustained warming because of the time lags of the processes involved. Here we illustrate 2 such aspects
of the irreversibly altered world that should be expected. These aspects are among reasons for concern
but are not comprehensive; other possible climate impacts include Arctic sea ice retreat, increases in
heavy rainfall and flooding, permafrost melt, loss of glaciers and snowpack with attendant changes in
water supply, increased intensity of hurricanes, etc. A complete climate impacts review is presented
elsewhere (8) and is beyond the scope of this paper. We focus on illustrative adverse and irreversible
climate impacts for which 3 criteria are met: (i) observed changes are already occurring and there is
evidence for anthropogenic contributions to these changes, (ii) the phenomenon is based upon physical
principles thought to be well understood, and (iii) projections are available and are broadly robust
across models.
2NC – Irreversible
Warming is unstoppable- new IPCC report doesn’t account for long term CO2 or the
rate of CO2 uptake.
Eby et al 09 – M. EBY, K. ZICKFELD, AND A. MONTENEGRO (School of Earth and Ocean Sciences,
University of Victoria) D. Archer (Department of the Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago) K.J
Meissner and A.J Weaver (School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria) (“Lifetime of
Anthropogenic Climate Change: Millennial Time Scales of Potential CO2 and Surface Temperature
Perturbations”, Journal of Climate, May 15, 2009, Available at:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2008JCLI2554.1, Accessed On: 7/18/2014, IJ)
The projection of the climatic consequences of anthropogenic CO2 emissions for the twenty-first
century has been a major topic of climate research. Nevertheless, the long-term consequences of
anthropogenic CO2 remain highly uncertain. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) reported that ‘‘about 50% of a CO2 increase will be removed from the
atmosphere within 30 years and a further 30% will be removed within a few centuries’’ (Denmanet al.
2007, p. 501). Although the IPCC estimate of the time to absorb 50% of CO2 is accurate for relatively
small amounts of emissions at the present time, this may be a considerable underestimation for large
quantities of emissions. Carbon sinks may become saturated in the future, reducing the system’s ability
to absorb CO2. Atmospheric CO2 is currently the dominant anthropogenic greenhouse gas implicated in
global warming (Forster et al. 2007); therefore, estimating the lifetime of anthropogenic climate change
will largely depend on the perturbation lifetime of CO2. The perturbation lifetime is a measure of the
time over which anomalous levels of CO2 or temperature remain in the atmosphere (defined here to be
the time required for a fractional reduction to 1/e). Carbon emissions can be taken up rapidly by the
land, through changes in soil and vegetation carbon, and by dissolution in the surface ocean. Ocean
uptake slows as the surface waters equilibrate with the atmosphere and continued uptake depends on
the rate of carbon transport to the deep ocean. Ocean uptake is enhanced through dissolution of
existing CaCO3, often referred to as carbonate compensation. As CO2 is taken up, the ocean becomes
more acidic, eventually releasing CaCO3 from deep sediments. This increases the ocean alkalinity,
allowing the ocean to take up additional CO2. Carbonate compensation becomes important on
millennial time scales, whereas changes in the weathering of continental carbonate and silicate are
thought to become important on the 10 000 100 000-yr time scale (Archer 2005; Sarmiento and Gruber
2006; Lenton and Britton 2006).
Policy action can’t solve- claims that warming is reversible neglect CO2 longevity
Solomon 08 – Susan Solomon, Chemical Sciences Division, Earth System Research Laboratory,
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (“Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide
emissions”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Dec 16,
2008, Available at: http://www.pnas.org/content/106/6/1704.long, Accessed on: 7/17/2014, IJ)
It is sometimes imagined that slow processes such as climate changes pose small risks, on the basis of
the assumption that a choice can always be made to quickly reduce emissions and thereby reverse any
harm within a few years or decades. We have shown that this assumption is incorrect for carbon dioxide
emissions, because of the longevity of the atmospheric CO2 perturbation and ocean warming.
Irreversible climate changes due to carbon dioxide emissions have already taken place, and future
carbon dioxide emissions would imply further irreversible effects on the planet, with attendant long
legacies for choices made by contemporary society. Discount rates used in some estimates of economic
trade-offs assume that more efficient climate mitigation can occur in a future richer world, but neglect
the irreversibility shown here. Similarly, understanding of irreversibility reveals limitations in trading of
greenhouse gases on the basis of 100-year estimated climate changes (global warming potentials,
GWPs), because this metric neglects carbon dioxide's unique long-term effects. In this paper we have
quantified how societal decisions regarding carbon dioxide concentrations that have already occurred or
could occur in the coming century imply irreversible dangers relating to climate change for some
illustrative populations and regions. These and other dangers pose substantial challenges to humanity
and nature, with a magnitude that is directly linked to the peak level of carbon dioxide reached.
Feedbacks make climate change an unstoppable and inevitable force
Carey 12 (John, senior correspondent for Buisness Times, “Global Warming: Faster Than Expected?”, 10/16/12,
http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n5/full/scientificamerican1112-50.html, HG)
Over the past decade scientists thought they had figured out how to protect humanity from the worst
dangers of climate change. Keeping planetary warming below two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees
Fahrenheit) would, it was thought, avoid such perils as catastrophic sea-level rise and searing droughts.
Staying below two degrees C would require limiting the level of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere to 450 parts per million (ppm), up from today's 395 ppm and the preindustrial era's 280
ppm. Now it appears that the assessment was too optimistic. The latest data from across the globe show
that the planet is changing faster than expected. More sea ice around the Arctic Ocean is disappearing
than had been forecast. Regions of permafrost across Alaska and Siberia are spewing out more
methane, the potent greenhouse gas, than models had predicted. Ice shelves in West Antarctica are
breaking up more quickly than once thought possible, and the glaciers they held back on adjacent land
are sliding faster into the sea. Extreme weather events, such as floods and the heat wave that gripped
much of the U.S. in the summer of 2012 are on the rise, too. The conclusion? “As scientists, we cannot
say that if we stay below two degrees of warming everything will be fine,” says Stefan Rahmstorf, a
professor of physics of the oceans at the University of Potsdam in Germany. The X factors that may be
pushing the earth into an era of rapid climate change are long-hypothesized feedback loops that may be
starting to kick in. Less sea ice, for example, allows the sun to warm the ocean water more, which melts
even more sea ice. Greater permafrost melting puts more CO2 and methane into the atmosphere, which
in turn causes further permafrost melting, and so on. The potential for faster feedbacks has turned some
scientists into vocal Cassandras. Those experts are saying that even if nations do suddenly get serious
about reducing greenhouse gas emissions enough to stay under the 450-ppm limit, which seems
increasingly unlikely, that could be too little, too late. Unless the world slashes CO2 levels back to 350
ppm, “we will have started a process that is out of humanity's control,” warns James E. Hansen, director
of the nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Sea levels might climb as much as five meters this
century, he says. That would submerge coastal cities from Miami to Bangkok. Meanwhile increased heat
and drought could bring massive famines. “The consequences are almost unthinkable,” Hansen
continues. We could be on the verge of a rapid, irreversible leap to a much warmer world. Alarmist?
Some scientists say yes. “I don't think that in the near term, catastrophic climate change is in the cards,”
says Ed Dlugokencky of Noaa, based on his assessment of methane levels. Glaciologist W. Tad Pfeffer of
the University of Colorado at Boulder has examined ice loss around the planet and concludes that the
maximum conceivable ocean rise this century is less than two meters, not five. Yet he shares Hansen's
sense of urgency because even smaller changes can threaten a civilization that has known nothing but a
remarkably stable climate. “The public and policy makers should understand how serious a sea-level rise
of even 60 to 70 centimeters would be,” Pfeffer warns. “These creeping disasters could really wipe us
out.” Although scientists may not agree on the pace of climate change, the realization that specific
feedback loops may be amplifying the change is causing a profound unease about the planet's future.
“We have to start thinking more about the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns,” explains
Eelco Rohling, a professor of ocean and climate change at the University of Southampton in England.
“We might not know exactly what all possible feedbacks are, but past changes demonstrate that they
exist.” By the time researchers do pin down the unknowns, it may be too late, worries Martin Manning,
an atmospheric scientist at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand and a key player in the 2007
round of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports: “The rate of change this
century will be such that we can't wait for the science.” top of page Hot Past Suggests Hot Future One
big reason scientists are becoming increasingly concerned about rapid climate change is improved
understanding of our distant past. In the 1980s they were stunned to learn from the record written in
ice cores that the planet had repeatedly experienced sudden and dramatic swings in temperature. Since
then, they have put together a detailed picture of the past 800,000 years. As Hansen describes in a new
analysis, there are remarkably tight correlations among temperature, CO2 levels and sea levels: they all
rise and fall together, almost in lockstep. The correlations do not prove that greenhouse gases caused
the warming. New research by Jeremy Shakun of Harvard University and his colleagues, however, points
in that direction, showing that the CO2 jump preceded the temperature jump at the end of the last ice
age. They conclude in a recent Nature paper that “warming driven by increasing CO2 concentrations is
an explanation for much of the temperature change.” (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing
Group.) Some changes in the past were incredibly rapid. Work on Red Sea sediments by Rohling shows
that during the last warm period between ice ages—about 125,000 years ago—sea levels rose and fell
by up to two meters within 100 years. “That's ridiculously fast,” Rohling says. His analysis indicates that
sea levels appear to have been more than six meters higher than they are today—in a climate much like
our own. “That doesn't tell you what the future holds, but man, it gets your attention,” says Richard
Alley, a professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University. Also surprising is how little extra
energy, or “forcing,” was required to trigger past swings. For instance, 55 million years ago the Arctic
was a subtropical paradise, with a balmy average temperature of 23 degrees C (73 degrees F) and
crocodiles lurking off Greenland. The tropics may have been too hot for most life. This warm period,
dubbed the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), apparently was sparked by a preceding bump
of about two degrees C in the planet's temperature, which was already warmer than today. That
warming may have caused a rapid release of methane and carbon dioxide, which led to more warming
and more emissions of greenhouse gases, amplifying further warming. The eventual result: millions of
years of a hothouse earth [see “The Last Great Global Warming,” by Lee R. Kump; Scientific American,
July 2011]. In the past 100 years humans have caused a warming blip of more than 0.8 degree C (1.4
degree F). And we are pouring greenhouse gases into the atmosphere 10 times faster than what
occurred in the run-up to the PETM, giving the climate a mighty push. “If we spend the next 100 years
burning carbon, we are going to take the same kind of leap,” says Matthew Huber, a professor of earth
and atmospheric sciences at Purdue University. We are also shoving the climate harder than the known
causes of various ice ages did. As Serbian astronomer Milutin Milankovic´ noted nearly 100 years ago,
the waxing and waning of ice ages can be linked to small variations in the orbit and tilt of the earth. Over
tens of thousands of years the earth's orbit changes shape, from nearly circular to mildly eccentric,
because of varying pulls from other planets. These variations alter the solar energy hitting the planet's
surface by an average of about 0.25 watt per square meter, Hansen says. That amount is pretty small. To
cause the observed swings in climate, this forcing must have been amplified by feedbacks such as
changes in sea ice and greenhouse gas emissions. In past warmings, “feedback just follows feedback,
follows feedback,” says Euan Nisbet, a professor of earth sciences at the Royal Holloway, University of
London. The climate forcing from human emissions of greenhouse gases is much higher—three watts
per square meter and climbing. Will the climate thus leap 12 times faster? Not necessarily. “We can't
relate the response from the past to the future,” Rohling explains. “What we learn are the mechanisms
that are in play, how they are triggered and how bad they can get
Even a complete cessation won’t solve
Solomon 2010
(Susan, Atmospheric Chemist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 11-11-10,
“Persistence of Climate Changes Due To A Range Of Greenhouse Gases,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2972948/, HG)
Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other greenhouse gases increased over the course of the
20th century due to human activities. The human-caused increases in these gases are the primary
forcing that accounts for much of the global warming of the past fifty years, with carbon dioxide being
the most important single radiative forcing agent (1). Recent studies have shown that the human-caused
warming linked to carbon dioxide is nearly irreversible for more than 1,000 y, even if emissions of the
gas were to cease entirely (2–5). The importance of the ocean in taking up heat and slowing the
response of the climate system to radiative forcing changes has been noted in many studies (e.g., refs. 6
and 7). The key role of the ocean’s thermal lag has also been highlighted by recent approaches to
proposed metrics for comparing the warming of different greenhouse gases (8, 9). Among the
observations attesting to the importance of these effects are those showing that climate changes caused
by transient volcanic aerosol loading persist for more than 5 y (7, 10), and a portion can be expected to
last more than a century in the ocean (11–13); clearly these signals persist far longer than the radiative
forcing decay timescale of about 12–18 mo for the volcanic aerosol (14, 15). Thus the observed climate
response to volcanic events suggests that some persistence of climate change should be expected even
for quite short-lived radiative forcing perturbations. It follows that the climate changes induced by
short-lived anthropogenic greenhouse gases such as methane or hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) may not
decrease in concert with decreases in concentration if the anthropogenic emissions of those gases were
to be eliminated. In this paper, our primary goal is to show how different processes and timescales
contribute to determining how long the climate changes due to various greenhouse gases could be
expected to remain if anthropogenic emissions were to cease. Advances in modeling have led to
improved AtmosphereOcean General Circulation Models (AOGCMs) as well as to Earth Models of
Intermediate Complexity (EMICs). Although a detailed representation of the climate system changes on
regional scales can only be provided by AOGCMs, the simpler EMICs have been shown to be useful,
particularly to examine phenomena on a global average basis. In this work, we use the Bern 2.5CC EMIC
(see Materials and Methods and SI Text), which has been extensively intercompared to other EMICs and
to complex AOGCMs (3, 4). It should be noted that, although the Bern 2.5CC EMIC includes a
representation of the surface and deep ocean, it does not include processes such as ice sheet losses or
changes in the Earth’s albedo linked to evolution of vegetation. However, it is noteworthy that this
EMIC, although parameterized and simplified, includes 14 levels in the ocean; further, its global ocean
heat uptake and climate sensitivity are near the mean of available complex models, and its computed
timescales for uptake of tracers into the ocean have been shown to compare well to observations (16).
A recent study (17) explored the response of one AOGCM to a sudden stop of all forcing, and the Bern
2.5CC EMIC shows broad similarities in computed warming to that study (see Fig. S1), although there are
also differences in detail. The climate sensitivity (which characterizes the long-term absolute warming
response to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations) is 3 °C for the model used here.
Our results should be considered illustrative and exploratory rather than fully quantitative given the
limitations of the EMIC and the uncertainties in climate sensitivity. Results One Illustrative Scenario to
2050. In the absence of mitigation policy, concentrations of the three major greenhouse gases, carbon
dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide can be expected to increase in this century. If emissions were to
cease, anthropogenic CO2 would be removed from the atmosphere by a series of processes operating at
different timescales (18). Over timescales of decades, both the land and upper ocean are important
sinks. Over centuries to millennia, deep oceanic processes become dominant and are controlled by
relatively well-understood physics and chemistry that provide broad consistency across models (see, for
example, Fig. S2 showing how the removal of a pulse of carbon compares across a range of models).
About 20% of the emitted anthropogenic carbon remains in the atmosphere for many thousands of
years (with a range across models including the Bern 2.5CC model being about 19 4% at year 1000 after
a pulse emission; see ref. 19), until much slower weathering processes affect the carbonate balance in
the ocean (e.g., ref. 18). Models with stronger carbon/climate feedbacks than the one considered here
could display larger and more persistent warmings due to both CO2 and non-CO2 greenhouse gases,
through reduced land and ocean uptake of carbon in a warmer world. Here our focus is not on the
strength of carbon/climate feedbacks that can lead to differences in the carbon concentration decay,
but rather on the factors that control the climate response to a given decay. The removal processes of
other anthropogenic gases including methane and nitrous oxide are much more simply described by
exponential decay constants of about 10 and 114 y, respectively (1), due mainly to known chemical
reactions in the atmosphere. In this illustrative study, we do not include the feedback of changes in
methane upon its own lifetime (20). We also do not account for potential interactions between CO2 and
other gases, such as the production of carbon dioxide from methane oxidation (21), or changes to the
carbon cycle through, e.g., methane/ozone chemistry (22). Fig. 1 shows the computed future global
warming contributions for carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide for a midrange scenario (23) of
projected future anthropogenic emissions of these gases to 2050. Radiative forcings for all three of
these gases, and their spectral overlaps, are represented in this work using the expressions assessed in
ref. 24. In 2050, the anthropogenic emissions are stopped entirely for illustration purposes. The figure
shows nearly irreversible warming for at least 1,000 y due to the imposed carbon dioxide increases, as in
previous work. All published studies to date, which use multiple EMICs and one AOGCM, show largely
irreversible warming due to future carbon dioxide increases (to within about 0.5 °C) on a timescale of at
least 1,000 y (3–5, 25, 26). Fig. 1 shows that the calculated future warmings due to anthropogenic CH4
and N2O also persist notably longer than the lifetimes of these gases. The figure illustrates that
emissions of key non-CO2 greenhouse gases such as CH4 or N2O could lead to warming that both
temporarily exceeds a given stabilization target (e.g., 2 °C as proposed by the G8 group of nations and in
the Copenhagen goals) and remains present longer than the gas lifetimes even if emissions were to
cease. A number of recent studies have underscored the important point that reductions of non-CO2
greenhouse gas emissions are an approach that can indeed reverse some past climate changes (e.g., ref.
27). Understanding how quickly such reversal could happen and why is an important policy and science
question. Fig. 1 implies that the use of policy measures to reduce emissions of short-lived gases will be
less effective as a rapid climate mitigation strategy than would be thought if based only upon the gas
lifetime. Fig. 2 illustrates the factors influencing the warming contributions of each gas for the test case
in Fig. 1 in more detail, by showing normalized values (relative to one at their peaks) of the warming
along with the radiative forcings and concentrations of CO2 , N2O, and CH4 . For example, about twothirds of the calculated warming due to N2O is still present 114 y (one atmospheric lifetime) after
emissions are halted, despite the fact that its excess concentration and associated radiative forcing at
that time has dropped to about one-third of the peak value
2NC – Sea Level Rise Inev
Regardless of previous or future climate policies, ice-melt is unstoppable.
Rignot 14 – Eric Rignot , glaciologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the lead author of last
week's landmark scientific paper on West Antartica (“Global warming: it's a point of no return in West
Antarctica. What happens next?” The Guardian, May 17, 2014, Available at:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/17/climate-change-antarctica-glaciersmelting-global-warming-nasa, Accessed on: 7/17/2014, IJ)
We announced that we had collected enough observations to conclude that the retreat of ice in the
Amundsen sea sector of West Antarctica was unstoppable, with major consequences – it will mean that
sea levels will rise one metre worldwide. What's more, its disappearance will likely trigger the collapse
of the rest of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which comes with a sea level rise of between three and five
metres. Such an event will displace millions of people worldwide. Two centuries – if that is what it takes
– may seem like a long time, but there is no red button to stop this process. Reversing the climate
system to what it was in the 1970s seems unlikely; we can barely get a grip on emissions that have
tripled since the Kyoto protocol, which was designed to hit reduction targets. Slowing down climate
warming remains a good idea, however – the Antarctic system will at least take longer to get to this
point. The Amundsen sea sector is almost as big as France. Six glaciers drain it. The two largest ones are
Pine Island glacier (30km wide) and Thwaites glacier (100km wide). They stretch over 500km. What this
means is that we may be ultimately responsible for triggering the fast retreat of West Antarctica. This
part of the continent was likely to retreat anyway, but we probably pushed it there faster. It remains
difficult to put a timescale on it, because the computer models are not good enough yet, but it could be
within a couple of centuries, as I noted. There is also a bigger picture than West Antarctica. The
Amundsen sea sector is not the only vulnerable part of the continent. East Antarctica includes marinebased sectors that hold more ice. One of them, Totten glacier, holds the equivalent of seven metres of
global sea level.
Alt Cause – Other Countries
China and India will continue to produce CO2 even if the US stops
Bastasch 14 (Michael, reporter for the Daily Caller, “Obama admits his climate agenda won’t curb
global warming”, 1/23/14, http://dailycaller.com/2014/01/23/obama-admits-his-climate-agenda-wontcurb-global-warming/, HG)
President Barack Obama admitted in an interview with The New Yorker that his plan to lower U.S.
carbon dioxide emissions by banning new coal plants would do little to curb global warming since
developing countries like China and India will still use coal power. The Obama administration published
its proposed carbon dioxide emissions limits for new coal plants which would effectively ban coal power.
That is, unless they use commercially unproven carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. Tighter
emission controls for coal plants are part of Obama’s plan to fight global warming. Critics of the
administration argue that banning coal plants won’t curb global warming because developing countries
continue to build coal plants, frustrating U.S. efforts to lower global carbon emissions. Obama conceded
that fact, but argued that limiting emissions here will only help the U.S. because other countries will
come to us for the technology once we’ve developed it. “And so if we can figure out a carbon-capture
mechanism that is sufficiently advanced and works, then we are helping ourselves, because the Chinese
and the Indians are going to build some coal plants, and even if we don’t build another coal plant in this
country, there are going to be a lot of coal plants around the world that are built,” Obama told the New
Yorker. “And we have a huge investment in trying to figure out how we can help them do it more
cleanly,” he added. Obama hopes that by requiring new U.S. coal plants to use CCS technologies, the
country could become a world leader and export the technology abroad when other nations can afford
it. If the U.S. doesn’t lead, Obama argues, other countries will not follow. “And it’s not sufficient for us
to just tell them to stop,” Obama said. “We’re going to have to give them some help. We’re going to
have to take some of our research and development on things like clean-coal technology and be able to
export it to them or license it to them… There’s going to be a process where we help them leapfrog
some of the development stages that we went through.” “This is why I’m putting a big priority on our
carbon action plan here. It’s not because I’m ignorant of the fact that these emerging countries are
going to be a bigger problem than us,” Obama added. “It’s because it’s very hard for me to get in that
conversation if we’re making no effort. And it’s not an answer for us to say, ‘Well, since the Chinese and
the Indians are the bigger problem, we might as well not even bother.’” Indeed, countries like China and
India are set to ramp up their coal use dramatically. The World Resource Institute reports that 76
percent of the proposed coal-fired capacity is in India and China — nearly 1,200 coal plants have been
proposed globally, totaling more than 1.4 million megawatts of power. The Chinese greenlit 100 million
metric tons of new coal production capacity last year as part of the government’s plan to bring 860
million metric tons of coal production online by 2015. The U.S. coal industry, however, says CCS is not
yet proven technology as there are no commercial-scale coal plants in the country that uses the
technology. In fact, when the Environmental Protection Agency wrote its rule limiting coal plant
emissions it only cited CCS projects that were government funded and not in operation. “[I]t is
disingenuous to state that the technology is ‘ready,’” said Charles McConnell, former assistant secretary
of energy in Obama. “Studies have verified that implementation of [CSS] technology is necessary to
comply with EPA’s proposed [EPA carbon-emissions limits] regulation and meet the [greenhouse gas]
targets necessary for limiting CO2 emissions to our atmosphere.” “However, commercial [CSS]
technology currently is not available to meet EPA’s proposed rule. The cost of current CO2 capture
technology is much too high to be commercially viable,” said McConnell, who now serves as the
executive director of the Energy & Environment Initiative at Rice University. Read more:
http://dailycaller.com/2014/01/23/obama-admits-his-climate-agenda-wont-curb-globalwarming/#ixzz35oqakkuy
Alt Cause - Military
Alt cause warming – Military
Barnett 3 (Jon, School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies, University of
Melbourne, Security and Climate Change, Global Environmental Change 13 (2003) 7–17,
ScienceDirect)//rh
As the organizations principally responsible for national security, and commanding a large share of
public resources for that purpose, the world’s militaries will increasingly have to manage the challenges
of climate change. Militaries are major emitters of greenhouse gases. A crude indicator of the scale of
this can be gained from taking the share of a country’s GNP spent on its military as representative of the
military’s share of that country’s overall greenhouse gas emissions (assum ing military emissions per unit
of GNP are the same as the national mean of emissions per unit of GNP). Following this procedure:
military expenditure was 113% of 1995 GNP in the Russian Federation, so the Russian armed forces
emits roughly 185 million metric tons of CO2: military expenditure was 3% of 1995 (NP in the United
Kingdom, so the UK armed forces emit some 17 million metric tons of CO2; and military expenditure was
18% of 1995 GNP in the United States, so by this reckoning, the US armed forces emit some 210 million
metric tons of CO2 (data from World Bank. 2000b). Indeed, worldwide military activity may be
responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all of the United Kingdom. In this respect,
militaries are a problem rather than a solution to environmental insecurity.
Alt Cause – CFCs
CFC’s are the root cause- science proves- the Montreal accords are the key not the aff
Lu 13 (QB, Department of Physics and Astronomy and Departments of Biology and Chemistry, “COSMIC-RAY-DRIVEN REACTION AND
GREENHOUSE EFFECT OF HALOGENATED MOLECULES: CULPRITS FOR ATMOSPHERIC OZONE DEPLETION AND GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE”,
5/30/13, https://uwaterloo.ca/news/news/global-warming-caused-cfcs-not-carbon-dioxide-study-says, HG)
Furthermore, the substantial combined data of total solar irradiance, the sunspot number and cosmic rays from multiple measurements
have unambiguously demonstrated that the natural factors have played a negligible effect on Earth’s climate since 1970. Moreover, in-depth
analyses of time-series data of CO2, halogen-containing molecules and global surface temperature have shown solid evidence that the GH
effect of increasing concentrations of non-halogen gases has been saturated (zero) in the observed data recorded since 1850. In particular, a
statistical analysis gives a nearly zero correlation coefficient (R=-0.05) between CO2 concentration and the
observed global surface temperature corrected by the removal of the solar effect during 1850-1970. In
contrast, a nearly perfect linear correlation with coefficients of 0.96-0.97 is obtained between corrected or
uncorrected global surface temperature and total level of stratospheric halogenated molecules from the
start of considerable atmospheric CFCs in 1970 up to the present. These results strongly show that the recent global
warming observed in the late 20th century was mainly due to the GH effect of human-made halogen-containing molecules (mainly CFCs).
Moreover, a refined calculation of the GH effect of halogenated molecules has convincingly demonstrated that they (mainly CFCs) alone
-2002. Owing to the effectiveness of the Montreal Protocol, the
globally mean level of halogen-containing molecules in the stratosphere has entered a very slow
decreasing trend since 2002. Correspondingly, a very slow declining trend in the global surface
temperature has been observed. It is predicted that the success of the Montreal Protocol will lead to a long-term slow return of
the global surface temperature to its value in 1950-1970 for coming 50-70 years if there is no significant emission of new GH species into the
atmosphere. In
summary, the observed data have convincingly shown that CFCs are the major culprit not
only for O3 depletion via conspiring with cosmic rays but also for global warming
during
1970~2002. The successful execution of the Montreal Protocol has shown its fast effectiveness in
controlling the O3 hole in the polar region and a slow cooling down of the global surface temperature.
The O3 loss in the polar region is estimated to recover to its 1980 value by 2058, faster than recently
expected from photochemical model simulations,68,69 while the return (lowering) of global surface
temperature will be much slower due to the slow decline of the stratospheric halogenated molecules in
low and mid latitudes. This leads to an interesting prediction that global sea level will continue to rise in
coming 1~2 decades until the global temperature recovery dominates over the O3 hole recovery. After
that, both global surface temperature and sea level will drop concurrently. It should also be noted that
the mean global surface temperature in the next decade will keep nearly the same value as in the past
decade, i.e., “the hottest decade” over the past 150 years. This, however, does not agree with the
warming theory of CO2. If the latter were correct, the current global temperature would be at least
a slow cooling trend has begun. This study also
shows that correct understandings of the basic physics of cosmic ray radiation and the Earth blackbody
radiation as well as their interactions with human-made molecules are required for revealing the
fundamental mechanisms underlying the ozone hole and global climate change. When these
understandings are presented with observations objectively, it is feasible to reach consensuses on these
scientific issues of global concern. Finally, this study points out that humans are mainly responsible for
the ozone hole and global climate change, but international efforts such as the Montreal Protocol and
the Kyoto Protocol must be placed on firmer scientific grounds. This information is of particular
importance not only to the research community, but to the general public and the policy makers.
2NC – Other Countries
India and China override any gains that Western countries make- other countries
won’t model b/c of profit motive
Mcardle 12 ( Megan, editor at The Atlantic, “Why We Should Act to Stop Global Warming—and Why
We Won't”, 2/28/12, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/why-we-should-act-tostop-global-warming-and-why-we-wont/253752/, HG)
This for a set of targets that, from the planet's perspective, did roughly nothing to delay the onset of
global warming. If it's this hard to make weak targets work, how are we going to get a global consensus
for strong ones? Addressing global warming is the mother of all collective action problems. The
reductions needed to avoid catastrophe are very sizeable, and they must occur across the globe. Yet
fossil fuel resources are fungible. Oil that is not burned in the United States does not stay tidily in the
ground; it gets shipped somewhere else, like China. This is especially true these days, when there's
basically no spare capacity; close to every available barrel is being pumped. In this environment,
lowering our oil consumption lowers the price, but not supply. This is a nice charitable gift to emerging
nations, but the climate does not care whether the carbon comes from fat, disgusting Americans
thundering around in their mongo SUVs, or soulful Indian peasants getting their first tractor. It will warm
up, or not, just the same. And I've seen no evidence that the Chinese, or the Indians, plan to do much of
anything to reduce their emissions in the near-term. They talk a bunch about green initiatives, which
makes westerners all excited, but from what I can tell, their green initiatives with teeth are aimed at
reducing their deadly, ubiquitous air pollution, not their carbon emissions. Oh, they may reduce the
carbon intensity of their Gross Domestic Product as their economy upskills. But the United States is
actually relatively carbon-efficient per dollar of GDP compared to China or India. It's just that we have a
lot more dollars worth of GDP. For China to grow while merely holding its emissions steady--and their
carbon output already surpasses ours and Canada's combined--then the improvement in carbon
intensity will have to match their rate of growth. So far, this hasn't happened, and given that China has
vast coal deposits that it's using to bring electricity to its citizens, it doesn't seem likely to in the near
future. Yes, they've made a big investment in solar panel production . . . for export to rich countries that
subsidize them. I'm not criticizing China or India, mind you--I'd be less than enthusiastic about a bunch
of rich countries telling me that I wasn't allowed to get rich, too, because that would be bad for the
planet. But I don't find the alternative--a one-for-one offset by the rich world--very plausible either.
Energy is a key input into GDP. And note how cranky we've gotten about a fairly small and temporary
reduction in our national income
Plan fails- China has to curb emissions
Atkin 14 (Emily, reporter for climate progress and has a degree in journalism, “Stopping Climate Change ‘Almost Impossible’ If China
Can’t Quit Coal, Report Says”, 5/12/14, http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/12/3436673/coal-dependent-
china/, HG)
If China doesn’t begin to limit its coal consumption by 2030, it will be “almost impossible” for the world
avoid a situation where global warming stays below 2°C, a new study released Monday found. The
study, led by the U.K.’s Center for Climate Change Economics and Policy and the Grantham Research
Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, recommends China put a cap on greenhouse gas
emissions from coal by 2020, and then swiftly reduce its dependency on the fossil fuel. The reductions
would not only increase public health and wellness and decrease climate change, but could also “have a
major positive effect on the global dynamics of climate cooperation,” the report said. “The actions China
takes in the next decade will be critical for the future of China and the world,” the study said. “Whether
China moves onto an innovative, sustainable and low-carbon growth path this decade will more or less
determine both China’s longer-term economic prospects in a natural resource-constrained world, … and
the world’s prospects of cutting greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to manage the grave risks of
climate change.” The general question surrounding the prevention of climate change is whether the
earth can avoid a 2°C situation — that is, whether we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions swiftly
enough to keep global average surface temperatures from rising to 2°C (3.6°F) above pre-industrial
levels. World leaders, including China, agreed to avoid that 2°C situation in 2009 by signing the
Copenhagen Accord in 2009, a three-page nonbinding pledge to fight climate change. In 2011, one-fifth
of the world’s total fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions came solely from China’s coal, and coal was
responsible for more than 80 percent of the country’s 8 gigatons of fossil fuel emissions that year. But
despite increasing calls for China to reduce its coal-burning — not only because of climate impacts but
because of infamous, choking air pollution — it has been unclear whether the country has made enough
effort to actually make a dent in its consumption. The country has taken steps to replace thousands of
small-scale coal mines with large ones, and its largest cities have pledged to make drastic reductions in
emissions. However, a Chinese government report recently found that only a tiny fraction of Chinese
cities fully complied with pollution standards in 2013, while approving the construction of more than
100 million tonnes of new coal production capacity in 2013, according to a Reuters report. “Coal, in
absolute terms, is growing in China,” Fergus Green, one of the authors of the study, told ThinkProgress.
“But its share of electricity is declining as other sources of electricity take up additional shares of
capacity. So we see absolute growth, but signs of serious moderation.” Green, who co-authored the
study along with London School of Economics scholar Nicholas Stern, said the effort was less of an
empirical game to try to predict what would happen in China, and more of a recommendation for how
the country could realistically reduce its emissions and how those reductions would benefit the country
and the world. The paper, he said, was a response to indications from China’s leadership that it is
looking to transform growth models to be more efficient over the coming years. “One doesn’t just go to
China and tell them what they should do, but there are serious discussions that are happening in China
about when their coal consumption will peak,” he said. “Really what we’re saying is that there are strong
benefits for China and for the world in terms of greenhouse gas mitigation if China were to peak at the
early end of 2020.” Green noted that one of the less obvious benefits of China peaking its coal
production would be the catalyzing effect it would have on other countries’ efforts to combat climate
change. With China as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, politicians in other countries —
including the United States — have made the argument that nothing they do can actually stop climate
change from happening. “If other countries, particularly the United States, can see that China is serious
about declining its consumption, it could be potentially a tipping point that does stimulate more
ambitious action from other countries,” Green said. “We could actually get an international agreement.”
However, if China does not become serious about reducing its coal consumption soon, the chances of
climate change mitigation become lower and lower. “If China goes beyond 15 gigatons of carbon
emissions by 2030, then [mitigation] would be almost impossible,” Green said. “The longer you delay,
the more faster the decline has to be, and the more implausible that becomes.”
2NC – CFCs
CFC’S responsible for global warming, not CO2-disregard ___________ because they
focus on CO2
Bastasch 13 (Michael Bastach, quoting studies “REPORT: CO2 IS NOT RESPOSNIBLE FOR GLOBAL
WARMING” May 30, 2013 http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/30/report-co2-not-responsible-for-globalwarming/2/”, HG)
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) — not carbon emissions — are the real culprit behind global warming,
claims a new study out of the University of Waterloo.¶ “Conventional thinking says that the emission of
human-made non-CFC gases such as carbon dioxide has mainly contributed to global warming. But we
have observed data going back to the Industrial Revolution that convincingly shows that conventional
understanding is wrong,” said Qing-Bin Lu, a science professor at the University of Waterloo and author
of the study.¶ “In fact, the data shows that CFCs conspiring with cosmic rays caused both the polar
ozone hole and global warming,” Lu said.¶ Ads by Google¶ Ads by CouponDropDown ¶ Lu’s findings
were published in the International Journal of Modern Physics B and analyzed data from 1850 to the
present.¶ Lu’s study runs counter to the long-standing argument that carbon dioxide emissions were the
driving force behind global warming. Recently scientists warned that carbon concentrations were
nearing the 400 parts per million level. Scientists say that carbon dioxide levels must be lowered to 350
ppm to avoid the severe impacts of global warming.¶ “The 400-ppm threshold is a sobering milestone
and should serve as a wake-up call for all of us to support clean-energy technology and reduce emissions
of greenhouse gases before it’s too late for our children and grandchildren,” said Tim Lueker, an
oceanographer and carbon cycle researcher who is a member of the Scripps CO2 Group.¶ Lu notes that
data from 1850 to 1970 show carbon emissions increasing due to the Industrial Revolution. However,
global temperatures stayed constant.¶ “The conventional warming model of CO2, suggests the
temperatures should have risen by 0.6°C over the same period, similar to the period of 1970-2002,”
reads the study’s press release.¶ Ads by Google¶ CFCs “are nontoxic, nonflammable chemicals
containing atoms of carbon, chlorine, and fluorine” that are used to make “aerosol sprays, blowing
agents for foams and packing materials, as solvents, and as refrigerants” according to the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Montreal Protocol phased out the production of CFCs as
they were believed to be linked to ozone depletion. According to the National Institutes of Health, CFCs
are considered a greenhouse gas, like carbon dioxide, because they absorb heat in the atmosphere and
send some of it back to the earth’s surface, which contributes to global warming.¶ “From the University
of Waterloo, an extraordinary claim,’ writes global warming blogger Anthony Watt. “While plausible,
due to the fact that CFC’s have very high [Global Warming Potential] numbers, their atmospheric
concentrations compared to CO2 are quite low, and the radiative forcings they add are small by
comparison to CO2.”¶ “This may be nothing more than coincidental correlation,” Watt added. “But, I
have to admit, the graph is visually compelling. But to determine if his proposed cosmic-ray-driven
electron-reaction mechanism is valid, I’d say it is a case of ‘further study is needed’, and worth funding.”
¶ When Barack Obama promised to slow the earth’s rising sea levels and heal the planet during the 2008
campaign, he probably had no idea that curbing carbon dioxide emissions might not lower the sea
levels.¶ A study published in the Journal of Geodesy found that the sea level has only risen by 1.7
millimeters per year over the last 110 years — about 6.7 inches per century — all while carbon dioxide
concentrations in the air have risen by a third, suggesting that rising carbon concentrations have not
impacted the rate at which sea levels are rising.¶ The study used data from the Gravity Recovery And
Climate Experiment satellite mission and analyzed “continental mass variations on a global scale,
including both land-ice and land-water contributions, for 19 continental areas that exhibited significant
signals” over a nine-year period from 2002 to 2011.¶ The results echoed a study conducted last year,
which also found that sea level has been rising on average by 1.7 mm/year over the last 110 years. This
was also suggested by two other studies conducted in the last decade.¶ “The latest results show once
again that sea levels are not accelerating after all, and are merely continuing their modest rise at an
unchanged rate,” said Pierre Gosselin, who runs the climate skeptic blog NoTricksZone. “The more
alarmist sea level rise rates some have claimed recently stem from the use of statistical tricks and the
very selective use of data. Fortunately, these fudged alarmist rates do not agree with real-life
observations. Overall the latest computed rates show that there is absolutely nothing to be alarmed
about.”¶ Other experts agree, citing data regarding the Earth’s rate of rotation.¶ “For the last 40-50
years strong observational facts indicate virtually stable sea level conditions,” writes Nils-Axel Mörner,
former head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University , in the
Journal Energy and Environment. ”The Earth’s rate of rotation records a mean acceleration from 1972 to
2012, contradicting all claims of a rapid global sea level rise, and instead suggests stable, to slightly
falling, sea levels.Ӧ But in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, U.S. coastal states have been more concerned
about the possible effects of global warming on rising sea levels.¶ A report by 21 U.S. scientists,
commissioned by Maryland Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley, found that the sea levels are rising faster
than they predicted five years ago. Florida Keys residents are also concerned about sea levels by the
island that have risen 9 inches in the past decade, according to a tidal gauge that has operated since preCivil War days.¶ “It doesn’t need a lot of rocket science,” said Donald Boesch, president of the University
of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. “We’ve got tide gauges that show us sea level is
increasing. This is a real phenomenon. We should take it seriously and have to plan for it.Ӧ The
Maryland report found that ocean waters and the Chesapeake Bay might only rise about one foot by
2050, but the study’s authors said that it would be prudent to plan for a two-foot rise in sea levels to
account for the risks of flooding caused by storms. The state has already seen sea levels rise by about a
foot in the past century — half coming from the natural sinking of the land and the other half coming
from rising seas from a warming ocean.¶ New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has also announced a
$20 billion plan to adapt to global warming to prepare the city for rising sea levels and hotter
summers.¶ A report commissioned by New York City found that the number of sweltering summer days
could double, maybe even triple, and that waters surrounding the city could rise by 2 feet or more¶ New
York City can “do nothing and expose ourselves to an increasing frequency of Sandy-like storms that do
more and more damage,” Bloomberg remarked. “Or we can make the investments necessary to build a
stronger, more resilient New York — investments that will pay for themselves many times over in the
years go to come.Ӧ
Biodiversity
No Impact
Humans will survive despite biodiversity loss
Sagoff 97 (Mark, Senior Research Scholar at the Institute for Philosophy and Public policy in at the
University of Maryland, William and Mary Law Review, “INSTITUTE OF BILL OF RIGHTS LAW SYMPOSIUM
DEFINING TAKINGS: PRIVATE PROPERTY AND THE FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT REGULATION: MUDDLE OR
MUDDLE THROUGH? TAKINGS JURISPRUDENCE MEETS THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT”, 38 Wm and
Mary L. Rev. 825, March 1997,
http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1679&context=wmlr, CH)
Although one may agree with ecologists such as Ehrlich and Raven that the earth stands on the brink of an episode of massive extinction, it
may not follow from this grim fact that human beings will suffer as a result. On the contrary, skeptics such as science writer Colin
Tudge have challenged biologists to explain why we need more than a tenth of the 10 to 100 million
species that grace the earth. Noting that "cultivated systems often out-produce wild systems by 100-fold
or more," Tudge declared that "the argument that humans need the variety of other species is, when you think
about it, a theological one." n343 Tudge observed that "the elimination of all but a tiny minority of our fellow creatures
does not affect the material well-being of humans one iota." n344 This skeptic challenged ecologists to list more than 10,000 species (other
than unthreatened microbes) that are essential to ecosystem productivity or functioning. n345 "The human species could survive just as well if
99.9% of our fellow creatures went extinct, provided only that we retained the appropriate 0.1% that we
need." n346 [*906] The monumental Global Biodiversity Assessment ("the Assessment") identified two positions with respect to redundancy of species. "At one extreme is the idea
that each species is unique and important, such that its removal or loss will have demonstrable consequences to the functioning of the community or ecosystem." n347 The authors of the
Assessment, a panel of eminent ecologists, endorsed this position, saying it is "unlikely that there is much, if any, ecological redundancy in communities over time scales of decades to
centuries, the time period over which environmental policy should operate." n348 These eminent ecologists rejected the opposing view, "the notion that species overlap in function to a
biologists
believe, however, that species are so fabulously redundant in the ecological functions they perform that the
life-support systems and processes of the planet and ecological processes in general will function
perfectly well with fewer of them, certainly fewer than the millions and millions we can expect to
remain even if every threatened organism becomes extinct. n350 Even the kind of sparse and miserable world
depicted in the movie Blade Runner could provide a "sustainable" context for the human economy as long as people
sufficient degree that removal or loss of a species will be compensated by others, with negligible overall consequences to the community or ecosystem." n349 Other
forgot their aesthetic and moral commitment to the glory and beauty of the natural world. n351 The Assessment makes this point. "Although any ecosystem contains hundreds to thousands of
species interacting among themselves and their physical environment, the emerging consensus is that the system is driven by a small number of . . . biotic variables on whose interactions the
balance of species are, in a sense, carried along." n352 [*907] To make up your mind on the question of the functional redundancy of species, consider an endangered species of bird, plant,
or insect and ask how the ecosystem would fare in its absence. The fact that the creature is endangered suggests an answer: it is already in limbo as far as ecosystem processes are concerned.
What crucial ecological services does the black-capped vireo, for example, serve? Are any of the species
threatened with extinction necessary to the provision of any ecosystem service on which humans
depend? If so, which ones are they? Ecosystems and the species that compose them have changed, dramatically, continually, and totally in virtually every part
of the United States. There is little ecological similarity, for example, between New England today and the land
where the Pilgrims died. n353 In view of the constant reconfiguration of the biota, one may wonder why
Americans have not suffered more as a result of ecological catastrophes. The cast of species in nearly every environment changes
constantly-local extinction is commonplace in nature-but the crops still grow. Somehow, it seems, property values keep going up on Martha's Vineyard in spite of the tragic disappearance of
One might argue that the sheer number and variety of creatures available to any ecosystem
buffers that system against stress. Accordingly, we should be concerned if the "library" of creatures ready, willing, and able to colonize ecosystems gets too small.
(Advances in genetic engineering may well permit us to write a large number of additions to that "library.") In the United States as in many other parts of
the world, however, the number of species has been increasing dramatically, not decreasing, as a result
of human activity. This is because the hordes of exotic species coming into ecosystems in the United
States far exceed the number of species that are becoming extinct. Indeed, introductions may outnumber extinctions by more than ten to one, so
the heath hen.
that the United States is becoming more and more species-rich all the time largely as a result of human action. n354 [*908] Peter Vitousek and colleagues estimate that over 1000 non-native plants grow in California alone; in
Hawaii there are 861; in Florida, 1210. n355 In Florida more than 1000 non-native insects, 23 species of mammals, and about 11 exotic birds have established themselves. n356 Anyone who waters a lawn or hoes a garden knows
how many weeds desire to grow there, how many birds and bugs visit the yard, and how many fungi, xcreepy-crawlies, and other odd life forms show forth when it rains. All belong to nature, from wherever they might hail, but not
many homeowners would claim that there are too few of them. Now, not all exotic species provide ecosystem services; indeed, some may be disruptive or have no instrumental value. n357 This also may be true, of course, of
native species as well, especially because all exotics are native somewhere. Certain exotic species, however, such as Kentucky blue grass, establish an area's sense of identity and place; others, such as the green crabs showing up
around Martha's Vineyard, are nuisances. n358 Consider an analogy [*909] with human migration. Everyone knows that after a generation or two, immigrants to this country are hard to distinguish from everyone else. The vast
majority of Americans did not evolve here, as it were, from hominids; most of us "came over" at one time or another. This is true of many of our fellow species as well, and they may fit in here just as well as we do. It is possible to
distinguish exotic species from native ones for a period of time, just as we can distinguish immigrants from native-born Americans, but as the centuries roll by, species, like people, fit into the landscape or the society, changing and
often enriching it. Shall we have a rule that a species had to come over on the Mayflower, as so many did, to count as "truly" American? Plainly not. When, then, is the cutoff date? Insofar as we are concerned with the absolute
numbers of "rivets" holding ecosystems together, extinction seems not to pose a general problem because a far greater number of kinds of mammals, insects, fish, plants, and other creatures thrive on land and in water in America
The Ecological Society of America has urged managers to maintain biological diversity
as a critical component in strengthening ecosystems against disturbance. n360 Yet as Simon Levin
observed, "much of the detail about species composition will be irrelevant in terms of influences on
ecosystem properties." n361 [*910] He added: "For net primary productivity, as is likely to be the case for any system property, biodiversity matters
only up to a point; above a certain level, increasing biodiversity is likely to make little difference." n362
What about the use of plants and animals in agriculture? There is no scarcity foreseeable. "Of an
estimated 80,000 types of plants [we] know to be edible," a U.S. Department of the Interior document says, "only about 150
are extensively cultivated." n363 About twenty species, not one of which is endangered, provide ninety percent of the food the world takes from plants. n364 Any new food has to take "shelf space"
today than in prelapsarian times. n359
or "market share" from one that is now produced. Corporations also find it difficult to create demand for a new product; for example, people are not inclined to eat paw-paws, even though they are delicious. It is hard enough to
get people to eat their broccoli and lima beans. It is harder still to develop consumer demand for new foods. This may be the reason the Kraft Corporation does not prospect in remote places for rare and unusual plants and animals
to add to the world's diet. Of the roughly 235,000 flowering plants and 325,000 nonflowering plants (including mosses, lichens, and seaweeds) available, farmers ignore virtually all of them in favor of a very few that are profitable.
Has anyone found any
consumer demand for any of these half-million or more plants to replace rice or wheat in the human
diet? There are reasons that farmers cultivate rice, wheat, and corn rather than, say, Furbish's lousewort. There are many kinds of louseworts, so named because these weeds were
n365 To be sure, any of the more than 600,000 species of plants could have an application in agriculture, but would they be preferable to the species that are now dominant?
thought to cause lice in sheep. How many does agriculture really require? [*911] The species on which agriculture relies are domesticated, not naturally occurring; they are developed by
artificial not natural selection; they might not be able to survive in the wild. n366 This argument is not intended to deny the religious, aesthetic, cultural, and moral reasons that command us
to respect and protect the natural world. These spiritual and ethical values should evoke action, of course, but we should also recognize that they are spiritual and ethical values. We should
recognize that ecosystems and all that dwell therein compel our moral respect, our aesthetic appreciation, and our spiritual veneration; we should clearly seek to achieve the goals of the ESA.
There is no reason to assume, however, that these goals have anything to do with human well-being or welfare as economists understand that term. These are ethical goals, in other words,
not economic ones. Protecting the marsh may be the right thing to do for moral, cultural, and spiritual reasons. We should do it-but someone will have to pay the costs. In the narrow sense of
protecting nature often represents a net "cost," not a net "benefit." It is largely for moral,
not economic, reasons-ethical, not prudential, reasons- that we care about all our fellow creatures. They are
promoting human welfare,
valuable as objects of love not as objects of use. What is good for [*912] the marsh may be good in itself even if it is not, in the economic sense, good for mankind. The most valuable things
are quite useless
Ecosystem redundancy prevents collapse
Davidson, 00 (Carlos, Conservation biologist with background in economics Economic Growth
and the Environment: Alternatives to the Limits Paradigm 5-1)
Biodiversity limits. The original rivet metaphor (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1981) referred to species
extinction and biodiversity loss as a limit to human population and the economy. A wave of
species extinctions is occurring that is unprecedented in human history (Wilson 1988, 1992, Reid and
Miller 1989). The decline of biodiversity represents irreplaceable and incalculable losses to
future generations of humans. Is biodiversity loss a case of limits, as suggested by the rivet
metaphor, or is it a continuum of degradation with local tears, as suggested by the tapestry
metaphor? In the rivet metaphor, it is not the loss of species by itself that is the proposed limit
but rather some sort of ecosystem collapse that would be triggered by the species loss. But it is
unclear that biodiversity loss will lead to ecosystem collapse. Research in this area is still in its
infancy, and results from the limited experimental studies are mixed. Some studies show a
positive relationship between diversity and some aspect of ecosy stem function, such as the
rate of nitrogen cycling (Kareiva 1996, Tilman et al. 1996). Others support the redundant species
concept (Lawton and Brown 1993, Andren et al. 1995), which holds that above some low number,
additional species are redundant in terms of ecosystem function. Still other studies support the
idiosyncratic species model (Lawton 1994), in which loss of some species reduces some aspect
of ecosystem function, whereas loss of others may increase that aspect of ecosystem function.
The relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem function is undoubtedly more complex
than any simple metaphor. Nonetheless, I believe that the tapestry metaphor provides a more
useful view of biodiversity loss than the rivet metaphor. A species extinction is like a thread
pulled from the tapestry. With each thread lost, the tapestry gradually becomes threadbare.
The loss of some species may lead to local tears. Although everything is linked to everything else,
ecosystems are not delicately balanced, clocklike mechanisms in which the loss of a part leads to
collapse. For example, I study California frogs, some of which are disappearing. Although it is possible
that the disappearances signal some as yet unknown threat to humans (the miner's canary argument),
the loss of the frogs themselves is unlikely to have major ecosystem effects. The situation is the same for
most rare organisms, which make up the bulk of threatened and endangered species. For example, if the
black toad (Bufo exsul) were to disappear from the few desert springs in which it lives, even careful
study would be unlikely to reveal ecosystem changes. To argue that there are not limits is not to
claim that biodiversity losses do not matter. Rather, in calling for a stop to the destruction, it is
the losses themselves that count, not a putative cliff that humans will fall off of
somewheredown the road.
Status quo solves - Warming
Scientific study says climate change solves ecosystem biodiversity
Bastasch 5/15 (Michael Bastasch, Global Warming Is Increasing Biodiversity Around The World 1:00
PM 05/15/2014 Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/05/15/global-warming-is-increasingbiodiversity-around-the-world/#ixzz37jn1MRk6)
A new study published in the journal Science has astounded biologists: global warming is not harming
biodiversity, but instead is increasing the range and diversity of species in various ecosystems. Environmentalists have long warned that
global warming could lead to mass extinctions as fragile ecosystems around the world are made unlivable as temperatures increase. But a
team of biologists from the United States, United Kingdom and Japan found that global warming has not
led to a decrease in biodiversity. Instead, biodiversity has increased in many areas on land and in the
ocean. “Although the rate of species extinction has increased markedly as a result of human activity across the biosphere, conservation
has focused on endangered species rather than on shifts in assemblages,” reads the editor’s abstract of
the report. The study says “species turnover” was “above expected but do not find evidence of
systematic biodiversity loss.” The editor’s abstract adds that the result “could be caused by
homogenization of species assemblages by invasive species, shifting distributions induced by climate
change, and asynchronous change across the planet.” Researchers reviewed 100 long-term species monitoring studies from around the
world and found increasing biodiversity in 59 out of 100 studies and decreasing biodiversity in 41 studies.
The rate of change in biodiversity was modest in all of the studies, biologists said. But one thing in particular that shocked the study’s authors
was that there
were major shifts in the types of species living in ecosystems. About 80 percent of the ecosystems
than anyone has previously
predicted. This, however, doesn’t mean that individual species aren’t being harmed by changing
climates. The study noted that, for example, coral reefs in many areas of the world are being replaced by a type of algae. “In the oceans we
analyzed showed species changes of an average of 10 percent per decade — much greater
no longer have many anchovies, but we seem to have an awful lot of jellyfish,” Nick Gotelli, a biologist at the University of Vermont and one of
the study’s authors, told RedOrbit.com. “Those kinds of changes are not going to be seen by just counting the number of species that are
present.” “We move species around,” Gotelli added. “There is a huge ant diversity in Florida, and about 30 percent of the ant species are nonnatives. They have been accidentally introduced, mostly from the Old World tropics, and they are now a part of the local assemblage. So you
can have increased diversity in local communities because of global homogenization.” The study comes with
huge implications for current species preservation strategies, as most operate under the assumption that biodiversity will decrease in a
warming world. But if biodiversity is increasing, then conservationists may need a new way to monitor the effects of global warming on
ecosystems.
Coral
Coral reefs are incredibly resilient – survived atomic bombs, ice ages, and oil drilling
Forbes 13 (Viv, degree in Applied Science Geology, a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, “Coral
reefs, the great survivors,” Published December 19, 2013 in American Thinker,
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/12/coral_reefs_the_great_survivors.html, CH)
For at least fifty years, agitated academics have been predicting the end of Australia's Great Barrier
Reef. Now international "experts" are also sprouting coral calamity. But despite the alarms, the reef is still there. An early
scare focused on the Crown of Thorns Starfish which was going through one of its sporadic population booms. Such plagues come and
go with the natural cycles of growth and decay. But the reef survived. Then experts got scared in case
someone drilled for oil on the Reef - so we had a Royal Commission and banned all that. However
marine life seems to flourish around all artificial reefs such as jetties, shipwrecks and drilling platforms.
Rigs have to be regularly cleaned of marine growth. Natural hydrocarbons have been part of the wild
environment for longer than corals, which may explain why corals are remarkably tolerant of
hydrocarbons. Despite natural oil and gas seeps, man-made spills, and hundreds of offshore drilling rigs,
corals still thrive. After the worst oil spill ever during the First Gulf War there was no clean-up attempt
apart from oil skimming because the 700 oil-well fires had priority. Fresh crude oil floats and is a danger
to sea birds, but it soon reacts with air and salt water to become solid tar balls which sink to the sea
floor. An inspection of the sea bed later to catalogue "the disaster" found teeming wildlife, with seagrass, snails and fish thriving after the fertilising effect of the oxidising oil. Corals are even thriving at the
exact spot in the Montebello Islands where two atomic devices were tested by the British in 1952. Another
scare concerned coastal development and agricultural run-off. Again destruction of the Great Barrier Reef was forecast. Academics were
summoned and a huge national park was established for their playground. Run-off still occurs, rivers still flood, but the reef is still there. Lately
global warming scares such as coral bleaching and ocean acidity have mesmerised the media. These are supposedly caused by wicked humans
burning hydrocarbons and using energy by doing things. So we introduced a carbon tax, despite the fact that no unusual warming or acidity can
be measured. And the reef is still there. Now we are told that port dredging near Bowen is going to destroy the Reef. The Great Barrier Reef is
2,400 km long - stirring some mud at one small spot 40 km from the reef is unlikely to be noticed by the coral. Moreover, the stuff being
dredged is comprised of natural material eroded from the land and put there over millennia by coastal rivers. Compared with the silt load
discharged by rivers like the mighty Burdekin in a normal wet season, or stirred up by cyclonic surges, dredging is a non-event. The Reef has
been coping with sediments like that for thousands of years. All plants and animals need minerals for optimum health. Marine life gets its
minerals from erosion of rocks on the land. Coastal rivers (and dredging of river silt) stir up the minerals which supply the off-shore
environment. Like all nutrients, some is necessary, too much brings harm. Corals
are among the greatest survivors on Earth
and have been here for about 500 million years. Many of the types of corals found on reefs today were
present in similar forms on reefs 50 million years ago. Since corals first appeared there have been five
mass extinctions when over 50% of all life forms on land and in the seas died. These episodes usually
included massive volcanic events that filled air and sea with debris, lava, heat and acid fumes. And still
corals survived. Then there were asteroid impacts that created huge craters that dwarf man's puny
ports. Debris, rock, mud and slush were flung in all directions - far more and further than man's dredging
will ever do. Corals even survived this. Corals also survived several deadly ice ages when sea levels fell so
low that many coral reefs left their skeletons stranded as limestone hills on dry land. But always some
colonisers followed the retreating seas and survived. Then came the hot climate eras when the great ice sheets melted and sea levels rose
dramatically. Some coral reefs drowned, but others just built on top of the old drowned corals forming the beautiful coral atolls we see today.
Corals flourish in gently rising seas such as we have today - it gives them room to refresh and grow vertically. And if the water gets too warm,
coral larvae just drift into cooler waters closer to the poles. The Great Barrier Reef would move slowly south. Corals have outlasted the
dinosaurs, the mammoths and the sabre-toothed tiger. Captain Cook's ship was almost disembowelled by the sturdy corals of the Great Barrier
Reef in 1770. If Cook came back today, he would be unable to detect any changes in the Reef. We should of course minimise soil erosion,
human pollution of offshore waters and direct damage or interference with the Reef. However, green extremists would like to sacrifice all of
Queensland's coastal industry on the coral altar - exploration, mining, farming, land development, tourism, forestry, fishing, and shipping. They
need reminding it is only rich societies who can afford to care for their environment. No matter what the future holds, corals
are more
likely than humans to survive the next major extinction. In the event of yet another Ice Age we must hope that reef
alarmists have not denied us the things we will need to survive - food, energy, chemicals, shelter, concrete and steel generated by carbon fuels.
2NC – No impact
Species extinction won't cause human extinction – humans and the environment are
adaptable
Doremus, 00 (Holly, Professor of Law at UC Davis Washington & Lee Law Review, Winter 57 Wash & Lee
L. Rev. 11, lexis)
In recent years, this discourse frequently has taken the form of the ecological horror story . That too is
no mystery. The ecological horror story is unquestionably an attention-getter, especially in the hands of
skilled writers [*46] like Carson and the Ehrlichs. The image of the airplane earth, its wings wobbling as
rivet after rivet is carelessly popped out, is difficult to ignore. The apocalyptic depiction of an impending
crisis of potentially dire proportions is designed to spur the political community to quick action .
Furthermore, this story suggests a goal that appeals to many nature lovers: that virtually everything
must be protected. To reinforce this suggestion, tellers of the ecological horror story often imply that
the relative importance of various rivets to the ecological plane cannot be determined. They offer reams
of data and dozens of anecdotes demonstrating the unexpected value of apparently useless parts of
nature. The moth that saved Australia from prickly pear invasion, the scrubby Pacific yew, and the
downright unattractive leech are among the uncharismatic flora and fauna who star in these anecdotes.
n211 The moral is obvious: because we cannot be sure which rivets are holding the plane together,
saving them all is the only sensible course. Notwithstanding its attractions, the material discourse in
general, and the ecological horror story in particular, are not likely to generate policies that will satisfy
nature lovers. The ecological horror story implies that there is no reason to protect nature until
catastrophe looms. The Ehrlichs' rivet-popper account, for example, presents species simply as the
(fungible) hardware holding together the ecosystem. If we could be reasonably certain that a particular
rivet was not needed to prevent a crash, the rivet-popper story suggests that we would lose very little
by pulling it out. Many environmentalists, though, would disagree. Reluctant to concede such losses,
tellers of the ecological horror story highlight how close a catastrophe might be, and how little we know
about what actions might trigger one. But the apocalyptic vision is less credible today than it seemed in
the 1970s. Although it is clear that the earth is experiencing a mass wave of extinctions, the complete
elimination of life on earth seems unlikely. Life is remarkably robust. Nor is human extinction probable
any time soon. Homo sapiens is adaptable to nearly any environment. Even if the world of the future
includes far fewer species, it likely will hold people. One response to this credibility problem tones the
story down a bit, arguing not that humans will go extinct but that ecological disruption will bring
economies, and consequently civilizations, to their knees. But this too may be overstating the case. Most
ecosystem functions are performed by multiple species. This functional redundancy means that a high
proportion of species can be lost without precipitating a collapse.
2NC – No collapse
Species extinctions don’t translate to ecosystem collapse – new ones fill in
Biello 14 (David Biello, Scientific American, 4/20/14 Biodiversity Survives Extinctions for Now
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/biodiversity-survives-extinctions-for-now1/)
We are living during what seem to be the opening stages of the sixth mass extinction in our planet's 4.5
billion year history. Species of birds, fish, mammals and plants are disappearing at speeds rarely
experienced, thanks in large part to human activities: pollution, climate change, habitat destruction and
other damage. But extinction apparently does not mean less biodiversity—at least not yet. A new look at
ecosystems from the poles to the tropics shows that losses in the number of species in any given place
do not yet translate to large changes in the overall number of different species there. The study is in the
journal Science. [Maria Dornelas et al, Assemblage Time Series Reveal Biodiversity Change but Not
Systematic Loss] The researchers analyzed 100 surveys that followed more than 35,000 different species
over various lengths of time. These long-term studies found that the number of different species in, say,
a coral reef remains relatively constant. Because the loss of a species, either locally or entirely, is often
balanced by the arrival of a new species. The meta-analysis showed that 40 percent of places had more
species present, 40 percent had less and 20 percent were unchanged. In other words, the ecosystems of
the current Anthropocene era are transformed, but just as diverse—so far anyway. We are living in a
world of novel ecosystems.
Marine ecosystems are resilient
Kennedy 02 (Victor, PhD Environmental Science and Director of the Cooperative Oxford Lab, 2002,
“Coastal and Marine Ecosystems and Global Climate Change,” Pew,
http://www.c2es.org/docUploads/marine_ecosystems.pdf, CH)
There is evidence that marine organisms and ecosystems
are resilient to environmental change. Steele (1991) hypothesized that the
biological components of marine systems are tightly coupled to physical factors, allowing them to
respond quickly to rapid environmental change and thus rendering them ecologically adaptable. Some
species also have wide genetic variability throughout their range, which may allow for adaptation to
climate change.
AT – Ocean Acid = Coral collapse
No coral reefs or acidification impact – warming triggers adaptive responses and Co2
isn’t responsible.
Carter et al, 11 (Robert M. Carter, Craig D. Idso, S. Fred Singer, 2011,
Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, “Climate Change
Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report of the NIPCC,”
http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/2011/pdf/2011NIPCCinterimreport.pdf, AS)
While some corals exhibit a propensity to bleach ¶ and die when sea temperatures rise, others exhibit a
¶ positive relationship between calcification, or ¶ growth, and temperature. ―Such variable bleaching ¶
susceptibility implies that there is a considerable ¶ variation in the extent to which coral species are ¶
adapted to local environmental conditions‖ ¶ (Maynard et al., 2008). ¶ ¶
corals have effective ¶ adaptive responses to climate change, such as ¶ symbiont shuffling, that allow
reefs in some areas ¶ to flourish despite or even because of rising ¶ temperatures. Coral reefs have been
able to recover ¶ quickly from bleaching events as well as damage ¶ from cyclones. ¶ ¶ Bleaching and
other signs of coral distress ¶ attributed to global warming are often due to other ¶ things, including rising
levels of nutrients and ¶ toxins in coastal waters caused by runoff from ¶ agricultural activities on land
and associated ¶ increases in sediment delivery. ¶ ¶
C expresses concern that rising ¶ atmospheric
CO2 concentrations are lowering the ¶ pH values of oceans and seas, a process called ¶ acidification, and
that this could harm aquatic life. ¶ But the drop in pH values that could be attributed ¶ to CO2 is tiny
compared to natural variations ¶ occurring in some ocean basins as a result of ¶ seasonal variability, and
even day-to-day variations ¶ in many areas. Recent estimates also cut in half the ¶ projected pH
reduction of ocean waters by the year ¶ 2100 (Tans, 2009). ¶ ¶
-world data contradict predictions
about the ¶ negative effects of rising temperatures, rising CO2 ¶ concentrations, and falling pH on aquatic
life. ¶ Studies of algae, jellyfish, echinoids, abalone, sea ¶ urchins, and coral all find no harmful effects ¶
attributable to CO2 or acidification.
Disease impact
Alt cause - deforestation
Center for Health and Global Environment 12 (Biodiversity and Infectious Diseases,
http://www.chgeharvard.org/topic/biodiversity-and-infectious-diseases#sthash.3R9G4pGB.dpuf,
Harvard School of Public Health, no specific date)
While deforestation typically reduces forest mosquito diversity, the species that survive and become
dominant, for reasons that are not well understood, almost always transmit malaria better than the
species that had been most abundant in the intact forests. This has been observed essentially
everywhere malaria occurs—in the Amazon, East Africa, Thailand, and Indonesia. In the Amazon, for
example, in the past few decades, deforestation has led to a proliferation of Anopheles darlingi, a
mosquito species that is highly effective at transmitting malaria, and that has, in some instances,
replaced some twenty other less effective Anopheles species that were present before the forests were
cut down. Deforestation can also influence diseases carried by certain snails. As with mosquitoes, it has
been shown that deforestation alters snail diversity in the forests, with few of the original snail species
able to adapt to the new, deforested conditions. But the ones that do adapt to the more open, sunlit
areas are generally also those better able to serve as intermediate hosts for the parasitic flatworms that
cause the disease schistosomiasis in people. Deforestation can affect the emergence and spread of
human infectious diseases in other ways as well. With forest loss comes a loss of habitat and food for
some species that serve as reservoirs for human diseases. The original outbreak of Nipah virus infections
in Malaysia provides an example. Fruit bats, such as the Malayan Flying Fox, driven from the forest by
deforestation, were drawn to mango trees at the edges of pig farms There they transmitted Nipah virus,
present in their saliva and their excrement, to the pigs, which, in turn, infected 257 people, killing 105 of
them. The large size of new pig farms where the outbreak occurred may have been a contributing
factor.
Dilution Effect for Disease
The dilution effect is wrong – err neg – we are the FIRST formal study done on the
subject
Jordan 13 (Rob Jordan, Biodiversity does not reduce transmission of disease from animals to humans, Stanford researchers find,
http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2013/pr-disease-theory-challenge-032013.html, citing “A meta-analysis suggesting that the relationship between
biodiversity and risk of zoonotic pathogen transmission is idiosyncratic” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.12101/abstract)
In the first study to formally assess the dilution effect, Jones, Salkeld and California Department of
Public Health researcher Kerry Padgett tested the hypothesis through a meta-analysis of studies that
evaluate links between host biodiversity and disease risk for disease agents that infect humans. The
analysis, published in the journal Ecology Letters, allowed the researchers to pool estimates from
studies and test for any bias against publishing studies with "negative results" that contradict the
dilution effect. The analysis found "very weak support, at best" for the dilution effect. Instead, the
researchers found that the links between biodiversity and disease prevalence are variable and
dependent on the disease system, local ecology and probably human social context. The role of
individual host species and their interactions with other hosts, vectors and pathogens are more
influential in determining local disease risk, the analysis found. "Lyme disease biology in the Northeast is
obviously going to differ in its ecology from Lyme disease in California," Salkeld said. "In the Northeast,
they have longer winters and abundant tick hosts. In California, we have milder weather and lots of
Western fence lizards (a favored tick host) that harbor ticks but do not transmit the Lyme disease
bacterium." So, these lizards should be considered unique in any study of disease risk within their
habitat. Or, as Salked put it, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
Broadly advocating for the preservation of biodiversity and natural ecosystems to reduce disease risk is
"an oversimplification of disease ecology and epidemiology," the study's authors write, adding that
more effective control of "zoonotic diseases" (those transmitted from animals to humans) may require
more detailed understanding of how pathogens are transmitted. Specifically, Jones, Salkeld and Padgett
recommend that researchers focus more on how disease risk relates to species characteristics and
ecological mechanisms. They also urge scientists to report data on both prevalence and density of
infection in host animals, and to better establish specific causal links between measures of disease risk
(such as infection rates in host animals) and rates of infection in local human populations. For their
meta-analysis, the researchers were able to find only 13 published studies and three unpublished data
sets examining relationships between biodiversity and animal-to-human disease risk. This kind of
investigation is "still in its infancy," the authors note. "Given the limited data available, conclusions
regarding the biodiversity-disease relationship should be regarded with caution."
Turn - Biodiversity loss leads to decline in pathogens
Wood et al. 14 (CHELSEA L. WOOD, 1,2,8 KEVIN D. LAFFERTY, 3 GIULIO DELEO, 1,4 HILLARY S. YOUNG, 5,6 PETER J. HUDSON, 7 AND
ARMAND M. KURIS5, Does biodiversity protect humans against infectious disease?, published in the Ecological Society of America journal,
Ecology, 95(4), 2014, pp. 817–832, April, 2014)
But despite the attention devoted to it, numerous theoretical studies and empirical examples belie the
generality of the dilution effect. These examples demonstrate that free-living species diversity can
facilitate the diversity and abundance of infectious agents. Because hosts serve as habitats and
resources for pathogens, if pathogens depend on hosts that decline as biodiversity loss proceeds,
pathogens may decline alongside their hosts (Hudson et al. 2006). Mathematical models show how
biodiversity loss can decrease the prevalence of an infectious disease, depending on the relative effects
on host density, susceptibility, parasite mortality, and food web complexity (Lafferty and Holt 2003,
Lafferty 2012). Some disease agents are predicted to be even more sensitive to biodiversity loss than are
their hosts (Lloyd-Smith et al. 2005, Dunn et al. 2009, Colwell et al. 2012, Bush et al. 2013), particularly
parasites with complex life cycles that require multiple host species to support their various life stages
(Rudolf and Lafferty 2011, Lafferty 2012). Undisturbed ecosys tems are also often problematic sources
of infectious diseases, including leishmaniases (Lainson 1983, Lain son 1988), malaria (Sharma et al.
1991, Marrelli et al. 2007), onchocerciasis (Walsh et al. 1993), loaisis (Boussinesq and Gardon 1997), and
brugian filariasis (Mak et al. 1982, Chang et al. 1991). In particular, several important human infectious
diseases are more common in settlements near forests or other sources of wildlife than in settlements
distant from undisturbed ecosystems (e.g., Llanos-Cuentas and Campos 1987, Walsh et al. 1993). The
hypothesis that biodiversity begets infectious disease supports the use of clear cutting, brush clearance,
vector control, wetland drain ing, and wildlife culling as management strategies for some diseases (e.g.,
Mak et al. 1982, Esterre et al. 1986, Mott et al. 1990, Walsh et al. 1993, Gadelha 1994, Stafford and
Kitron 2002): strategies that are antithetical to biodiversity conservation. Thus, despite increasing
acceptance of the idea that the dilution effect governs the biodiversity–disease relationship (LoGiu dice
et al. 2003, Keesing et al. 2006, 2010, Keesing and Ostfeld 2012, Ostfeld and Keesing 2012), the
abundance of examples in which undisturbed ecosystems serve as sources of pathogens to human
settlements suggests that this phenomenon is not ubiquitous and that we should not expect consistent
unidirectional responses.
Indo-Pak War
No Indo-Pak War
No Indo-Pak war – recent elections and future trade shore up relations.
Islam 7/20, (“Bilateral trade may be the key to bolster Indo-Pak relationship” – The American Bazaar, Frank - entrepreneur,
philanthropist, civic leader and thought leader,heads the FI Invest Group, serves on the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees, the U.S. Institute of
Peace, the Woodrow Wilson Center, and the Brookings Institution, July 20, 2014, http://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2014/07/20/bilateraltrade-may-key-bolster-indo-pak-relationship/,GV)
WASHINGTON, DC: While Narendra Modi’s victory in the Indian elections was widely predicted, the
newly elected Indian leader’s decision
to invite Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to attend his swearing-in ceremony was a pleasant surprise
catching almost all observers off guard. During his tenure as the chief minister of Gujarat, which shares a border with the province of Sindh, Modi had never given
the impression of being a peace-maker, when it came to Pakistan. Indeed, during the campaign, he and other BJP leaders consistently attacked the Indian
government led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for not being tough enough on Pakistan. That is why Modi should be lauded for transcending parochial politics
by inviting Sharif, along with leaders of other neighboring countries to his inauguration. It
has once again raised hopes about normalization
of ties between Islamabad and New Delhi. Now the challenge for both leaders is to use the positive energy generated in New Delhi, to take relations to the next
level. Twice in the past decade and a half, Indian and Pakistani leaders had made similar high-profile bilateral visits. In 1999, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee
famously crossed the Wagha Border for a historic summit in Lahore. They signed a treaty, the Lahore Declaration, whose cornerstone was “reducing the risk of
accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons.” It came just months after both nations conducted nuclear tests. Six years later, during President Pervez
Musharraf’s highly televised visit to India, the two nations agreed again on a series of measures, declaring that the peace process was “irreversible.” But on both
occasions the bonhomie did not last long and the relations reverted to the default position within a short period of time. In fact, less than three months after
Vajpayee visited Lahore, the two nations went to war over the Kargil heights. It is not necessary here to comment on why those visits and agreements failed to
serve as the basis for transforming the ties between Pakistan and India. Those reasons are well documented and each side has a litany of grievances against the
other. That was the past. The relevant question relevant now is: What should the two sides do to ensure that hopes are not dashed going forward? The best
weapon against the burdens of the past is the promises of the
future. And that future looks bright for both countries at the moment. India
is the third largest economy in the world in purchasing power parity. Its growth is fueled by an ever-growing middle class, which is projected by McKinsey Global
Institute to grow to a whopping 583 million by 2025. Pakistan is one of the “Next 11” (“N-11”) countries identified by Goldman Sachs as major emerging 21st
century economic powers, along with the BRICS nations, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Its middle class is already bigger in size than the populations of
all but two European nations, Russia and Germany. With hundreds of millions of young people poised to be added to the workforce in the coming decade, both
nations will benefit immensely by boosting their economic relations. Therefore, Sharif and Modi should put enhancing economic relations at the front and center of
the ties. A first step in that direction would be to increase bilateral trade, which, until now, has been a casualty of political differences Currently, the trade between
the two countries is only $2.6 billion, according to India’s Ministry of Commerce. In March alone, India exported to the United States nearly double the amount of
goods—in dollar terms—it exported to Pakistan in the whole of last year. The volume of India’s imports from America for the same month was 315% more than its
imports from Pakistan in the last fiscal year. Last year, there were 36 other countries that bought more Indian goods than Pakistan, and 66 nations that sold more
commodities to India than Pakistan did. It is not just the economic powerhouses in the west and oil-rich Middle Eastern nations that benefited more from the
growing Indian market, smaller countries such as Angola, Tanzania, Gabon and Ecuador exported more goods to India than Pakistan did. Because it is so small at
present,
Pakistan-India bilateral trade should only go one way: up and up. A report released recently by the Atlantic Council says
bilateral trade between the two nations “has the potential of growing to $40 billion in just a few years.” Shuja
Nawaz, director of the Council’s South Asia Center made an even bolder prediction. If India and Pakistan “were to go back to the level
of trade that they had at the time of independence in 1947, you could have between $40 and $100 billion
worth of trade between the two countries,” he said, speaking to NPR last week. “And more important, if they open their borders to each other, you would
have tourism trade. You would have religious tourism from both sides and you would have trade with Central Asia through Afghanistan.” In Gujarat, Modi was
defined by two things: his hard-line politics and his laser sharp focus on the economy. During Modi’s tenure as the chief minister, Gujarat was more businessfriendly than any other Indian state. As a result, it was able to attract foreign investments worth billions of dollars. The
Pakistani prime minister’s
presence at Modi’s swearing-in ceremony, and the fact that bilateral talks were held with Pakistan on his first day in office, not to
mention a number of pro-growth measures he took in the first few days in office, signal that Modi will follow the same pragmatic and
business-friendly policies in Delhi as well. If both leaders continue on the path they trod and the journey they started on
May 22, we may be witnessing a new era in Pakistan-India relations. Rhetoric will be translated into reality
and both nations and their citizens will be the beneficiaries.
Alt Cause To Indo-Pak
Alt causes to Indo-Pak conflict – arms race, elections, and Indian aggression.
Raza 14, (“INDIA-PAKISTAN: MINI-COLD WAR – OPED” - Eurasia Review, Ali – Strategic Vision Institute, JULY 9, 2014,
http://www.eurasiareview.com/09072014-india-pakistan-mini-cold-war-oped/, GV)
A similar situation, as that of US and USSR, is also prevailing in South Asia, although to a limited extent, due to the
conflicting interests between two nuclear weapon states of the region, i.e. Pakistan and India. It is an admitted fact that Pakistan and
India both are key players of the South Asia and also having the importance like ‘life-line for the region’. The friendly and healthy relations between these two states
can ensure a more prosperous and secure South Asia. Due to good relations between these two states, a number of horizons for the development and prosperity of
the region can be explored. Whereas, the cold and tense relations between these two states, can bring only instability and deterioration, not only for these two
nations, but also for the whole region. A
number of factors can be taken into consideration as litmus test to assess whether a mini-
Cold War is being carried out in South Asia or not. It has been seen that during the Cold War era, the two powers of that time were engaged in an arms race to gain
nuclear superiority over each other. An arms race is an important activity that can be associated with the Cold War regime. An
arms race is the major
symptom of this miniature cold war in South Asia. India is continuously adding more in its nuclear
weaponry through which atmosphere of destructive competition is drastically nurturing between India
and Pakistan. The arms race between India and Pakistan is particularly initiated by India to weaken Pakistan … but in response to those steps which have
been undertaken by India with respect to enhancement of number of weapons as well as to get technology regarding weaponry to make them more powerful,
Pakistan is also exploring new avenues to undertake new technology as well as increasing its number of weapons through which it would be able to defend itself
from the aggression of India. Another
most important factor that testifies that a mini-Cold War is on-going between India and Pakistan is the
new leadership of India, which has recently come into power, and it is said that the new government of India comprises such persons, who are highly
radical and also having such kind of values which are extremely anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan. These anti-Muslim cum Pakistan values most likely are going to play a
very negative role for the region. The new leadership of India is showing that it will not resolve the issues with Pakistani government with a flexible approach.
Continuous signaling of aggression from the Indian side is actually compelling Pakistan to retaliate in
same manner, which could not only be proved painful for India but also for the whole region. The role of Pakistan, as far as the stability and prosperity of
South Asia is concerned, as compared to India is more steady and wise. Pakistan is only pursuing a defensive policy, but on the other side
India is moving in opposite direction, and rather than understanding the sensitivity of matter as a nuclear state it is continuously
increasing its number of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD’s), which in other words amounts to instigating Pakistan to
indulge in the terrible race of increasing its arsenals, as the only option to ensure its integrity and survival.
2NC – No war
No escalation with Pakistan
Loudon 8
[Bruce, The Australian, Doomsday dread, December 04, 2008,
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24746635-25837,00.html]
Three wars with Pakistan have demonstrated that India, despite its historical association with Mahatma
Gandhi's principles of pacifism, is not a non-violent country. It has an army that is more than a million strong
and would be prepared to go to war against Pakistan were there to be more attacks such as the one in
Mumbai. But recourse to nuclear weapons, most observers believe, is unlikely, especially given the
country's long-standing adherence to a policy of no first strike. Similarly, the reality behind the
chest-thumping in Pakistan is that the country, in trouble on almost every front, would effectively
be committing suicide were it to launch a nuclear attack against India, as one analyst puts it.
"It's just not on. Only a madman would even think about it. It would amount to national selfdestruction. They would not survive it as a nation. They'd be destroyed, and everyone in Islamabad knows
that," the South Asian analyst says. When, only a few days before the Mumbai attack, Zardari,
addressing an Indian audience, pledged Pakistan to a new no-first-strike policy
, there was expected to be a reaction against him among the generals who hold the real power in Islamabad.
But none was forthcoming, and that is seen as an important indication that they, too, in the context of
Pakistan's fledgling democratic rebirth, have concluded that the country's nuclear arsenal should
be restricted to serving a deterrent purpose.
China War
No China War
Even if limited conflicts break out it won’t escalate – Asian countries will do whatever
it takes to avoid war
Kaplan, 14
(Robert D. Kaplan, Chief Geopolitical Analyst for Stratfor, a private intelligence firm. He is a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for a New
American Security, Foreign Policy, March 17, 2014, " The Guns of August in the East China Sea",
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/03/17/the_guns_of_august_in_the_east_china_sea_world_war_one)
But before
one buys the 1914 analogy, there are other matters to consider. While 1914 Europe was a landscape, with large
armies facing one another inside a claustrophobic terrain with few natural barriers, East Asia is a seascape, with vast maritime distances separating national capitals.
The sea impedes aggression to a degree that land does not. Naval forces can cross water and storm beachheads, though with great difficulty, but moving
inland and occupying hostile populations is nearly impossible. The Taiwan Strait is roughly four times the width of the English
Channel, a geography that continues to help preserve Taiwan's de facto independence from China. ¶ Even the fastest warships travel slowly,
giving diplomats time to do their work. Incidents in the air are more likely, although Asian countries have erected strict
protocols and prefer to posture verbally so as to avoid actual combat. (That said, the new Chinese Air Defense Identification Zone is a particularly
provocative protocol.) Since any such incidents would likely occur over open water there will be few casualties, reducing the prospect that a single incident will lead
to war. And because of the speed, accuracy, and destructiveness of postmodern weaponry, any
war that does break out will probably be
short -- albeit with serious economic consequences. Something equivalent to four years of trench warfare is almost impossible to imagine. And remember that it
was World War I's very grinding length that made it a history-transforming and culture-transforming event: it caused 17 million military and civilian casualties; the
disputes in the Pacific Basin are certainly not going to lead to that. ¶ World War I also featured different and unwieldy alliance systems. Asia
is simpler:
almost everyone fears China and depends -- militarily at least -- on the United States. This is not the Cold War where few
Americans could be found in the East Bloc, a region with which we did almost no trade. Millions of Americans and Chinese have visited
each other's countries, tens of thousands of American businessmen have passed through Chinese cities, and
Chinese party elites send their children to U.S. universities. U.S. officials know they must steer between the two extremes of allowing China's Finlandization of its
Asian neighbors and allowing nationalistic governments in Vietnam, the Philippines, and Japan to lure the United States into a conflict with China. ¶ Nationalistic as
these democracies may be, the best way to curb their excesses and make them less nervous is to give them the assurance of a U.S. security umbrella, born of
credible air and sea power. A strong U.S.-China relationship can keep the peace in Asia. (South Korea also fears Japan, but the United States is successfully managing
that tension.) Unlike empires mired in decrepitude that characterized 1914 Europe, East Asia
features robust democracies in South
Korea and Japan, and strengthening democracies in Malaysia and the Philippines. An informal alliance of democracies -that should also include a reformist, de facto ally like Vietnam -- is the best and most stable counter to Chinese militarism. Some of these democracies are fraught,
and fascist-cum-communist North Korea could implode, but this is not a world coming apart. Limited
eruptions do not equal a global
cataclysm.¶ Yet the most profound difference between August 1914 and now is historical self-awareness. As Modris Eksteins meticulously documents in his
1989 book Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, European capitals greeted the war with outbursts of euphoria and a feeling of liberation.
Because 19th century Europe had been relatively peaceful since the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, people had lost the sense of the tragic that enables them to
avoid tragedy in the first place. Aging, one-child societies like those of China, Japan, and South Korea, with memories of war, revolution, and famine, are less likely
to greet violent struggle with joy and equanimity. And the
United States, the paramount military player in Asia, by its very conscious fear of a
World War I scenario, will take every measure to avoid it.¶ A profusion of warships in the Pacific certainly suggests a more anxious,
complicated world. But U.S. generals and diplomats need not give in to fate, especially given the differences with a century ago. The United States entered World
War I too late. Projecting a strong military footprint in Asia while ceaselessly engaging the Chinese is the way that conflict can be avoided this time around
South China Sea War
No war in the South China Sea
Thayer 13 (Carlyle, “Why China and the US won’t go to war over the South China Sea” Published in the
East Asian Forum May 13th, 2013. Carlyle Thayer is a graduate of Brown University who currently holds
an M.A. in Southeastern Asian Studies from Yale and a PhD in International Relations from ANU, CH)
China’s increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea is challenging US primacy in the Asia Pacific.¶ Even before Washington announced its official policy of rebalancing its force posture to
the Asia Pacific, the United States had undertaken steps to strengthen its military posture by deploying more nuclear attack submarines to the region and negotiating arrangements with
Australia to rotate Marines through Darwin.Since then, the United States has deployed Combat Littoral Ships to Singapore and is negotiating new arrangements for greater military access to
developments do not presage armed conflict between China and the United States. The
People’s Liberation Army Navy has been circumspect in its involvement in South China Sea territorial
disputes, and the United States has been careful to avoid being entrapped by regional allies in their
territorial disputes with China. Armed conflict between China and the United States in the South China
Sea appears unlikely.¶ Another, more probable, scenario is that both countries will find a modus vivendi enabling them to collaborate to maintain security in the South China
Sea. The Obama administration has repeatedly emphasised that its policy of rebalancing to Asia is not
directed at containing China. For example, Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, Commander of the US Pacific
Command, recently stated, ‘there has also been criticism that the Rebalance is a strategy of containment.
This is not the case … it is a strategy of collaboration and cooperation’.¶ However, a review of past US–China military-to-military
the Philippines.¶ But these
interaction indicates that an agreement to jointly manage security in the South China Sea is unlikely because of continuing strategic mistrust between the two countries. This is also because
the currents of regionalism are growing stronger.¶ As such, a third scenario is more likely than the previous two: that China and the United States will maintain a relationship of cooperation
and friction. In this scenario, both countries work separately to secure their interests through multilateral institutions such as the East Asia Summit, the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus
and the Enlarged ASEAN Maritime Forum. But they also continue to engage each other on points of mutual interest. The Pentagon has consistently sought to keep channels of communication
open with China through three established bilateral mechanisms: Defense Consultative Talks, the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement (MMCA), and the Defense Policy Coordination
Talks.¶ On the one hand, these multilateral mechanisms reveal very little about US–China military relations. Military-to-military contacts between the two countries have gone through
repeated cycles of cooperation and suspension, meaning that it has not been possible to isolate purely military-to-military contacts from their political and strategic settings.¶ On the other
hand, the channels have accomplished the following: continuing exchange visits by high-level defence officials; regular Defense Consultation Talks; continuing working-level discussions under
the MMCA; agreement on the ‘7-point consensus’; and no serious naval incidents since the 2009 USNS Impeccable affair. They have also helped to ensure continuing exchange visits by senior
military officers; the initiation of a Strategic Security Dialogue as part of the ministerial-level Strategic & Economic Dialogue process; agreement to hold meetings between coast guards; and
agreement on a new working group to draft principles to establish a framework for military-to-military cooperation.¶ So the bottom line is that, despite ongoing frictions in their relationship,
the United States and China will continue engaging with each other. Both sides understand that military-to-military contacts are a critical component of bilateral engagement. Without such
interaction there is a risk that mistrust between the two militaries could spill over and have a major negative impact on bilateral relations in general. But strategic mistrust will probably persist
Sino-American relations in the South China Sea are more
likely to be characterised by cooperation and friction than a modus vivendi of collaboration or, a worst-case scenario, armed conflict.¶
in the absence of greater transparency in military-to-military relations. In sum,
Squo Solves
Squo solves - Navy presence in the South China Sea and is effectively shaping
cooperation.
Beattie 14, (“US Navy ‘Shaping Events’ in South China Sea”, -Voice of America, Victor – editor of Voice of America, 20 May 2014,
http://www.voacambodia.com/content/us-navy-shaping-events-in-south-china-sea/1918369.html, GV)
WASHINGTON — The United States' top naval officer said the
Navy’s growing presence in the Asia-Pacific region is beginning
to show results and shape events, but acknowledges it will be ‘a long-term effort.’ Admiral Jonathan Greenert, the Chief of Naval Operations, said he hopes
the U.S. Navy will be able to expand cooperation with India once its new government takes its place. Speaking Monday at the
Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Greenert said the growing military-to-military dialogue with
China is beginning to show results, especially in the South China Sea, where maritime tensions between China and its
neighbors are on the rise. He said China was among the Asia-Pacific powers that joined the United States last month
in adopting a Code of Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES) during a meeting in Qingdao. "They have had situations where they
(China’s navy) have intervened on our behalf, where one of our ships was being approached by a non-navy Chinese ship and being kind of harassed, and the
commander of the [Chinese] warship said, ‘I’ve spoken with this guy (U.S. ship commander), he’s on constant course and speed, get out of the way, and actually
positioned himself [between the ships]. And, there are a few examples of this. We are starting to shape events. We have got to manage our way through this, in my
opinion, through this East China Sea and South China Sea [tensions]. We’re not leaving. They know that. They would be the leadership of the Chinese navy. We
believe that we have to manage our way through this," said Greenert. The Philippines and Vietnam are among the nations that have territorial disputes with China.
During President Obama’s Asia trip last month, the United States signed a 10-year security agreement with Manila. Greenert said navy-to-navy “interoperability”
with the Philippines today is “reasonably good,” but how the two countries build on that, he said, is a matter of discussion and could involve a status of forces-type
agreement (SOFA). The U.S. Navy has also requested more port calls in Vietnam. Greenert also said he would like to see more cooperation with Hanoi “in a
deliberate manner.” Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the admiral also expressed the hope the United States could renew a strategic
partnership with India, a relationship he said the two navies once enjoyed. “Stable mil-to-mil relations are there, they’ve been there with India. We need to improve
our communications and our interoperability. Currently, we do exercise with the Indian navy. It’s a lot of humanitarian assistance, search-and-rescue, [and] medical.
But, my goal would be to get back to where we were in the mid-2000s. We were doing very comprehensive events in an exercise called Malabar, which is an annual
exercise we have with the Indian navy. We were doing carrier operations together, very, very complex, integrating air wings, and I think it would be great if we could
get back to that level,” said Greenert. Greenert said with the new Indian leadership coming to power, perhaps they would be willing to have a greater presence in
the western Pacific. He said it will depend on what the political ramifications are and where they are willing to go. The chief of naval operations said the
Navy
is fully committed to the Asia rebalance. Today, 51 of the Navy’s 289 ships are deployed in the Asia-Pacific
region, and that presence will grow to 58 ships next year and 67 by 2020. Greenert says 23 nations are to take part in Rim of Pacific war game
exercises off Hawaii, running June 26 to August 1, involving hundreds of aircraft, 40 warships and 25,000 military personnel, including army and navy forces from
China for the first time.
New regional developments solve Asian war
Robert, 13
(Brad Roberts was a visiting fellow at the National Institute for Defense Studies of the Ministry of Defense of Japan in spring 2013. From 2009 to
early 2013 Dr. Roberts served in the Obama administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Missile Defense Policy;
“Extended Deterrence and Strategic Stability in Northeast Asia” NIDS Visiting Scholar Paper Series, No.1, 9th August 2013)
Abstract A changed and changing security environment has created interest in Northeast Asia in the role of U.S. extended deterrence and the
requirements of strategic stability in the 21st century. North Korea’s continued progress in developing long-range missiles and nuclear weapons
brings with it new challenges, as does China’s progress in military modernization and its increasingly prominent regional military role. The
Obama administration is pursuing a three-part strategy to: (1) comprehensively strengthen the regional
deterrence architecture, (2) preserve strategic stability with China (and Russia), and (3) cooperate with allies
towards these ends. In recent years, Japan and the United States have taken significant steps to strengthen their
cooperation for deterrence and stability, with positive results. The regional deterrence architecture is
strong and getting stronger, especially with the introduction of non-nuclear elements such as ballistic missile defense. Japan’s
contributions to this regional deterrence architecture are significant and increasing, and add credibility to U.S. security guarantees. As Japan
and the United States continue to work together to advance this strategy, they face a number of emerging policy questions. Four such
questions are likely to attract significant attention in both Tokyo and Washington in the coming months and years. First, on missile defense of
Japan: how much is enough? Second, on conventional strike: what should Japan contribute, if anything? Third, on the U.S. nuclear umbrella: is
more tailoring of the U.S. posture required for Northeast Asia? Fourth, on strategic stability: can China, the United States, and Japan agree on
the requirements? The analytic communities in all of the interested countries can help generate the new insights needed to advance policy
objectives.
2NC – No China War
US-China nuclear war is not plausible-Conflict is driven by politics and nuclear war is
terrible for politics
Keck 13 (Zachary, “Why China and the US (Probably) Won’t Go to War” Published in the Diplomat July
12th, 2013. Zachary Keck is an Associate Editor at The Diplomat He also writes a monthly column for The
National Interest and is an analyst on the Middle East desk at Wikistrat. He is currently pursuing an MA
at George Mason University, CH)
Even today, China’s allegedly unfair trade policies have created resentment among large political constituencies in the United States.¶ But
U.S.-China war is virtually unthinkable because of two other
factors: nuclear weapons and geography.¶ The fact that both the U.S. and China have nuclear weapons
is the most obvious reasons why they won’t clash, even if they remain fiercely competitive. This is
because war is the continuation of politics by other means, and nuclear weapons make war extremely
bad politics. Put differently, war is fought in pursuit of policy ends, which cannot be achieved through a
total war between nuclear-armed states.¶ This is not only because of nuclear weapons destructive power. As Thomas Schelling
while trade cannot be relied upon to keep the peace, a
outlined brilliantly, nuclear weapons have not actually increased humans destructive capabilities. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that
wars between nomads usually ended with the victors slaughtering all of the individuals on the losing side, because of the economics of
holding slaves in nomadic “societies.” ¶ What makes nuclear weapons different, then, is not just their destructive power but also the
certainty and immediacy of it. While
extremely ambitious or desperate leaders can delude themselves into
believing they can prevail in a conventional conflict with a stronger adversary because of any number of
factors—superior will, superior doctrine, the weather etc.— none of this matters in nuclear war. With
nuclear weapons, countries don’t have to prevail on the battlefield or defeat an opposing army to
destroy an entire country, and since there are no adequate defenses for a large-scale nuclear attack,
every leader can be absolute certain that most of their country can be destroyed in short-order in the
event of a total conflict. Since no policy goal is worth this level of sacrifice,
Oil Shocks
No impact to oil shocks
US strategic oil reserves ensure that oil shocks have no impact
Victor 08 (David G., Ph.D., Professor of International Relations and director of the Laboratory on
International Law and Regulation at UC San Diego, “In the Tank: Making the Most of Strategic Oil
Reserves,” Published in Foreign Affairs July 2008, CH)
Since the Arab oil embargo of the early 1970s, the United States has spent nearly $50 billion (in today's
dollars) to build and maintain a huge strategic stockpile of crude oil. Stored in underground salt domes
along the coasts of Louisiana and Texas, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) now holds more
than 700 million barrels of oil. Other major oil importers -- notably European countries and Japan -- have spent heavily to accrue their own reserves,
and many are evaluating whether they should build even larger ones. In his January 2007 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush urged increasing the
country's stocks to 1.5 billion barrels in the near future. With the price of crude oil likely to continue to rise above $100 per barrel, the venture could cost between
$70 billion and $100 billion. Congress has authorized boosting the SPR to one billion barrels but has not yet appropriated the necessary funds. (And in May,
motivated by high oil prices and election-year politics, it temporarily blocked efforts by the Bush administration to keep filling the SPR.) After the military resources
spent to keep oil supplies flowing reliably from the Persian Gulf and other significant oil-producing regions, the SPR is the United States' costliest investment in
energy security. The theory behind the effort is that a
well-coordinated system of oil stocks can buffer the country against
foreign and domestic shocks to the world oil market. Strategic reserves allow governments to relieve the
pressure of unexpected interruptions in oil supplies by releasing some of their stocks on the market.
They can help the governments of oil-importing countries dampen the effects of crises in oil-exporting
regions or along critical supply routes, such as the Strait of Hormuz, through which about one-third of all
the world's oil exports pass. Strategic reserves reduce dependence on pivotal suppliers prone to using
oil as a bargaining chip when the market is tight, such as Iran and Venezuela. And they may reduce (at least a bit) the
massive revenues that flow to oil exporters such as Russia, helping to make them less formidable troublemakers.
The recent violence in Iraq won’t cause an oil price shock – 90% oil in peaceful South
Maharg-Bravo 6-24-14 (Fiona, Reuters columnist, “Iraq premium,” Published 6-24-14, in Reuters
Breakingviews, http://www.breakingviews.com/iraq-troubles-are-unlikely-to-bring-new-oilcrisis/21152352.article, CH)
The continued violence in Iraq looks like a harbinger of a sharp cutback from the world’s seventh-largest oil producer. But the
bulk of Iraq’s
production is still secure. Even though the Middle East has clearly become less stable, it will still take a cascade of problems to
create a big oil price shock. The oilfields which account for around 90 percent of Iraq’s production are in
the still peaceful south of the country, far from the conflict zones. Oilfield security is tight and has
recently been increased. The evacuation of non-essential staff by BP and other foreign operators is not an immediate threat to output, since these
large fields are predominantly staffed by locals. Oil exports were near record rates in June, according to industry sources cited by Reuters. Of
course, the oil price would spike if every drop of Iraqi exports disappeared altogether. An Iraqi conflict that extended into the southern Shi’ite strongholds would be
likely to spark trouble in other producers in the region. Current Iraqi production is 3.4 million barrels of oil a day, of which 2.7 million are exported. There is unlikely
to be enough spare capacity elsewhere to compensate comfortably if supply suddenly dropped. The International Energy Agency is probably optimistic in its
estimate that OPEC has 3.3 million daily barrels of effective spare capacity, four-fifths of which is in the hands of Saudi Arabia. Even if the Saudi capacity is not
tested, the advance of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants has made the whole Middle East look less safe for investment, with Iraq at the top of the
worry list for foreign companies. That might discourage oil companies. The IEA’s forecast that Iraq will supply 60 percent of the growth in OPEC output for the rest
of the decade was made in less volatile times. For now, though, it looks like the market’s assessment of the situation is about right. The price of a barrel of Brent has
retreated from its nine-month high of $115. On Tuesday morning, it was trading around $114 a barrel, only 4 percent above the pre-insurgency level. Iraqi
violence does not yet threaten the stability of the global oil market.
No Resource Wars
Resource wars don’t happen – other variables at play
Victor, professor of law at Stanford Law School and the director of the Program on
Energy and Sustainable Development, 2007
(David, “What Resource Wars?,” November 12, Online:
http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=16020)
RISING ENERGY prices and mounting concerns about environmental depletion have animated fears that
the world may be headed for a spate of "resource wars"-hot conflicts triggered by a struggle to grab
valuable resources. Such fears come in many stripes, but the threat industry has sounded the alarm bells especially loudly in three areas.
First is the rise of China, which is poorly endowed with many of the resources it needs-such as oil, gas, timber and most minerals-and has
already "gone out" to the world with the goal of securing what it wants. Violent conflicts may follow as the country shunts others aside. A
second potential path down the road to resource wars starts with all the money now flowing into poorly governed but resource-rich countries.
Money can fund civil wars and other hostilities, even leaking into the hands of terrorists. And third is global climate change, which could
multiply stresses on natural resources and trigger water wars, catalyze the spread of disease or bring about mass migrations.¶ Most of this is
bunk, and nearly
all of it has focused on the wrong lessons for policy. Classic resource wars are good
material for Hollywood screenwriters. They rarely occur in the real world. To be sure, resource money
can magnify and prolong some conflicts, but the root causes of those hostilities usually lie elsewhere.
Fixing them requires focusing on the underlying institutions that govern how resources are used and
largely determine whether stress explodes into violence. When conflicts do arise, the weak link isn't a dearth in resources
but a dearth in governance.
Environmental resource conflicts settled by negotiation and compromise, not war
Goldstone, professor of public policy at George Mason, 2002
(Jack, “Population and Security: How Demographic Change Can Lead to Violent Conflict,” JOURNAL OF
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Fall, Vol. 56, p. 123)
Should we therefore dismiss the environment as a cause of conflict? No, although I believe we can be free of the fear that environmental decay
will unleash wars and revolutions across the globe. Rather, what research
has shown is that although environmental
issues do cause international and domestic conflicts, they are of the kind that are generally settled by
negotiation and compromise and do not lead to taking up arms. The reason for that is straightforward.
Where the problem faced by two groups, or two nations, is over the degradation or depletion of an
environmental resource, war neither solves the problem (it cannot make more of the resource) nor is it
an economically efficient way to redistribute the resource (the costs of war almost invariably far
outweigh the cost of gaining alternative resources or paying more for a share of the resource). For example,
if two nations have a conflict over sharing river water—such as India and Bangladesh over the Ganges, Israel and Jordan over the river Jordan or
Hungary and Slovakia over the Danube they may threaten violence but in fact are most likely to produce non-violent resolution through
negotiation or arbitration rather than war (and indeed all of these conflicts led to treaties or international arbitration. The reason is that for one
party to insist on all the water would in fact be a casus belli; and to risk a war to simply increase one's access to water is economically
foolhardy. Throughout the world, the main use of freshwater (over three-quarters) is for irrigation to produce food. A reduction in water can be
compensated either by adopting more efficient means of irrigation (drip rather than ditch); by switching to less water-intensive crops (dry
grains rather than rice; tree crops rather than grains); or by importing food rather than producing it. All of these steps, though costly, are far,
far, less costly than armed conflict. Thus for
both the country with the ability to take more water and the country
dependent on downstream flows, the issue will be how to use and negotiate use of the resource most
efficiently; resort to war would inevitably be more costly than any gains that could be made from
increased access to the resource. No nations have ever gone to war strictly over access to water; nor are
any likely to do so in the future
Arctic War
No Arctic War
Artic Conflict won’t happen
Stavridis 13(Admiral James Stavridis, retired US navy admiral, “High North or High Tension?”
online:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/21/high_north_or_high_tension_arctic_competition)
Good humor aside, the general's point is reasonably well taken. The likelihood
of a conventional offensive military
operation in the Arctic is very low, despite some commentators' overheated rhetoric. While there are many diplomatic and
ecological challenges, the odds are good that the international community will eventually find its way to a true
zone of cooperation around the Arctic Circle and manage to avoid turning the region -- the last frontier
on Earth -- into a zone of needless conflict.
Russia will cooperate with US in the artic
Stavridis 13(Admiral James Stavridis, retired US navy admiral, “High North or High Tension?”
Third, we need to work
as closely as we can with Russia in the Arctic. Although we will inevitably have disagreements over other
topics, it is possible the High North could be a zone of cooperation with the Russian Federation. We
have shown the ability to work together in Afghanistan, on counternarcotics and counterterrorism, in
combating piracy, and in strategic arms control and reductions. We should do what we can -- working
with NATO allies -- to make it so.
online:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/21/high_north_or_high_tension_arctic_competition)
Sub dominance US would decisively win an Arctic war- no escalation
Axe 2011 [David, Military correspondent and contributor or editor to the Washington Times, C-SPAN, Wired, World Politics Review, and
more, “How the U.S. Wins the Coming Arctic War”, Wired, 1/11/11, http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/01/how-the-u-s-wins-thecoming-arctic-war/]
But these tales, my versions included, usually omit two vital points: that Arctic
conflict is unlikely to occur at all; and even if
it does, the U.S. will have an overwhelming advantage over any rival. The Washington Post was the latest to repeat
the Arctic-war theme, in a story published yesterday. “The Arctic is believed to hold nearly a quarter of the world’s untapped natural resources
and a new passage could shave as much as 40 percent of the time it takes for commercial shippers to travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific,”
Jacquelyn Ryan wrote. But, she added, “government and military officials are concerned the United States is not moving quickly enough to
protect American interests in this vulnerable and fast-changing region.” Specifically, the U.S. does not have enough icebreakers or permanent
bases on the Alaskan north slope. Canada andRussia, by contrast, are buying ice-hardened Arctic ships and building new facilities to enforce
their Arctic claims, Ryan pointed out. The thing is, it’s
not icebreakers and patches of wind-blasted tarmac that would
really matter in some future North Pole showdown. In the Arctic, as in any sea battle, American nuclear
attack submarines — quiet, versatile and lethal — would make all the difference. U.S. subs have been sneaking around under
the Arctic ice, and occasionally surfacing, for decades. Today, they even carry geologists and other scientists in order to
help map Arctic mineral deposits. “In addition to being more heavily armed than most foreign boats,
U.S. submarines generally have superior quieting and combat systems, better-trained crewmen, and
much more rigorous maintenance standards,” Bob Work wrote in 2008, before becoming Navy undersecretary. “As a result,
the U.S. submarine force has generally been confident that it could defeat any potential undersea opponent, even if significantly
outnumbered.” But in
the Arctic, facing only the Canadians, Russians, Danes and Norwegians — none of
whom have large or healthy sub fleets — the U.S. Navy’s 50 Los Angeles-, Seawolf- and Virginia-class
subs would be more numerous as well as more powerful. And besides, an Arctic war is highly unlikely, at
best. “Militarized conflict over the Arctic is unlikely, and regional disputes are unlikely to cause an overall
deterioration in relations between or among polar nations,” the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace concluded in a 2009 conference. “Security issues should not be sensationalized in order to attract
attention towards the Arctic.” But it’s rare anyone writes stories about how we’ve got enough weapons — and don’t really need
them, besides. After all, it’s the sensational stories about shortages and looming disaster that sell newspapers.
Cooperation Checks
Cooperation NOW deescalates conflict – and Canada checks too
Gastaldo 7/24 (Vanessa Gastaldo, 7/24/14 “Protecting the Arctic Council from Crimean Flu”,
http://opencanada.org/features/the-think-tank/comments/protecting-the-arctic-council-from-crimeanflu/ )
Thus far, efforts to implement the agreements on search and rescue and oil spill response negotiated
under the auspices of the Arctic Council are a sign that Arctic states have prioritized cooperation in
spite of political differences. Moreover, cooperation in areas including environmental protection, most
notably with Norway, continues in spite of suspensions of military-to-military activities between Russia
and many NATO countries. Last month, Canada welcomed delegations from Arctic states, including
Russia, and indigenous Permanent Participants to Ottawa to continue talks on an agreement to prevent
marine pollution. This agreement will be the third for the Arctic Council in six years. Arctic states and
their residents no doubt recognize the importance of developing best practices for using modern
technology and equipment to protect the region from the risks of rising demand in shipping, tourism
and offshore resource extraction. Through the negotiations, Russia and Norway have submitted a joint
proposal for a legally binding agreement. However, the extent of legal force that is agreeable to all
parties has yet to be determined with the final agreement slated to be signed in 2015. Participation
from all Arctic states and indigenous Permanent Participants would not be possible without concerted
efforts by all to focus on areas of mutual concern, even when relationships are strained. Encouraging
cooperation is almost always in Canada’s national interest and providing opportunities for
cooperation will be essential to adequately prepare for continuing challenges facing the Arctic.
No Energy Conflict
No one except Russia is even considering drilling in the Arctic – conflict most likely
between foreign companies and government and even then, they will cooperate
Keil 13 (Kathryn Keil, 1/31/13 Opening Oil and Gas Development in the Arctic - A Conflict and Risk
Assessment, http://www.thearcticinstitute.org/2013/01/opening-oil-and-gas-development-in.html, The
Arctic Institute)
Given that the
US and Canada show little interest in Arctic hydrocarbons and Norway and Greenland focus
on their own national hydrocarbon base, this leaves Russia as the most prevalent location of Arctic oil and gas development,
which requires the involvement of foreign actors. In other words, if any conflict over Arctic hydrocarbon development
were to arise, it would most likely concern business relationships between Russian (state) and foreign
companies over access to Russia’s resources and the cost-and-benefit sharing of joint ventures.
Importantly, the interests of all actors involved point in the same direction: Russia wants to develop its resource base and
sell it to high-price-paying Europeans, while foreign energy companies want a share in this profitable
endeavour. What remains is a coordination problem: cooperation increases the benefit for all parties involved, but the distribution of those
benefits and the sharing of the investment costs necessary to reap them is problematic as the players’ preferences diverge on the distribution
foreign and Russian energy companies are able to agree on business
cooperation (compare the recent deals between Rosneft and Exxon, Statoil and Eni), and Russian oil and gas development
is thus unlikely to provide an incentive for conflict thanks to existing mutual interests. However, a number of
of costs and benefits. The crucial point is that
hazard problems remain, mostly in form of Russia’s generally challenging and demanding legal and political environment for foreign investors.
No energy conflict – too difficult to drill so no one’s wants to do it
Johnston 10 (Peter F. Johnston, Arctic Energy Resources and Global Energy Security, Journal of Military
and Strategic Studies VOLUME 12, ISSUE 2, WINTER 2010 http://oceans.mit.edu/wpcontent/uploads/arctic_energy_security.pdf)
The Arctic region continues to interest countries concerned about energy security for its promise of
increasing oil and gas supply. At the same time, the topographical conditions of the region impose
distinct technological and environmental challenges on those companies that might attempt to harvest
the resources. The technology required to overcome these challenges does exist and is being used at the
few contemporary oil and gas developments operating in the region. However, there are increased costs
associated with these operations and given the current economic situation, it is not likely that many
independent companies will be interested in embarking on large-scale Arctic projects when there are
still other options available in less demanding regions. NOCs, particularly Russian ones, may be less
deterred by the financial considerations, although even these companies have to have funds to operate.
This suggests that in the near- to mid-term Arctic energy operations are unlikely to increase rapidly.
Developments wi006Cl occur, but the pace and scope is likely to be limited. Russian plans to increase
shipments of energy resources via the Arctic will have a greater impact as the shipping traffic will
increase.
Russia Stuff
Oil Spills
No chance of oil spill – Russia follows comprehensive regulations
Ghoneim 13 (G.A, Ghoneim. "Arctic Regulations Overview: Flexibility, Cooperation Needed | Drilling Contractor."
Www.drillingcontracter.com. N.p., 10 Sept. 2013. Web. 26 July 2014. Ghoneim is a reporter and writer for the drillingcontracter.com Eric).
The existence of comprehensive Arctic-specific regulatory regime is paramount for ensuring the safety
of Arctic drilling and to lead to the successful development of vast Arctic resources. That’s estimated at more
than 25% of world reserves, or approximately 90 billion barrels of oil and 1,669 trillion cu ft of natural gas. The US Geological Survey in 2010
estimated that an undiscovered 412 billion barrels of oil equivalent is present in the Arctic. Figure 1 outlines the geographical area of the
Arctic.¶ It should be noted that Arctic drilling has been successfully undertaken by several Arctic coastal states, such as Canada and Russia.
Arctic drilling has been carried out by companies, such as Dome Petroleum subsidiary Canadian Marine Drilling, Esso Resources Canada and
Gulf Canada, since at least the early ’70s. Currently,
Russia is leading in Arctic drilling and production. The country
has comprehensive regulations in place and has been cooperating very effectively with Norway in this regard,
through venues such as the Barents 2020 project.¶ This article will present the current status of the regulatory schemes of the five Arctic coastal
states: US, Canada, Russia, Greenland (Denmark) and Norway. Much of what’s discussed here was referenced during the regulatory panel
discussion at the Arctic Technology Conference held in Houston in December last year focusing on Arctic drilling. A Pembina Institute study
published in June 2011, conducted for Canada’s National Energy Board (NEB), is an excellent source of identifying the necessary regulatory
elements that must be addressed.¶ Regulatory approaches¶ The
regulatory regimes include the laws used to govern
offshore drilling activities and the regulations that provide details on how to comply with laws. The
regulatory regime applies to environmental protection, safety, employment standards and worker
safety, health protection, emergency planning, oil spill response and liability for accidents. Two basic
approaches are the prescriptive and the goal-based, where the former specifies the methodology for achieving the goals of the regulator and
the latter identifies the goals that must be achieved while allowing the operator the flexibility to choose the methodology that fits his proposed
technology
No war
No Russia-US war; both sides understand the risks
Peck 14 (Peck, Michael. "7 Reasons Why America Will Never Go To War Over Ukraine." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 05 Mar. 2014. Web.
26 July 2014. I'm a defense writer, avid gamer and history buff. I'm currently a contributing editor for Foreign Policy Magazine, a writer for
the War is Boring defense blog and of course a contributor at Forbes. My work has also appeared in the Washingon Post,Slate, Defense
News, USA Today, the Philadelphia Inquirer and other fine publications. Eric).
Regardless of
whether Russia continues to occupy the Crimea region of Ukraine, or decides to occupy all of Ukraine, the U.S. is
not going to get into a shooting war with Russia.¶ This has nothing to do with whether Obama is strong
or weak. Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan would face the same constraints. The U.S. may threaten to impose economic sanctions, but here is
why America will never smack Russia with a big stick:¶ Russia is a nuclear superpower. Russia has an estimated 4,500 active nuclear
America is the mightiest military power in the world. And that fact means absolutely nothing for the Ukraine crisis.
warheads, according to the Federation of American Scientists. Unlike North Korea or perhaps Iran, whose nuclear arsenals couldn’t inflict
substantial damage, Russia could totally devastate the U.S. as well as the rest of the planet. U.S. missile defenses,
assuming they even work, are not designed to stop a massive Russian strike.¶ For the 46 years of the Cold War, America and Russia were deadly
The one time that U.S.
and Soviet forces almost went to war was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Neither Obama nor Putin is
crazy enough to want to repeat that.¶ Russia has a powerful army. While the Russian military is a shadow
of its Soviet glory days, it is still a formidable force. The Russian army has about 300,000 men and 2,500 tanks (with another
rivals. But they never fought. Their proxies fought: Koreans, Vietnamese, Central Americans, Israelis and Arabs.
18,000 tanks in storage), according to the “Military Balance 2014” from the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Its air force has almost
1,400 aircraft, and its navy 171 ships, including 25 in the Black Sea Fleet off Ukraine’s coast.¶ U.S. forces are more capable than Russian forces,
which did not perform impressively during the 2008 Russo-Georgia War. American troops would enjoy better training, communications, drones,
sensors and possibly better weapons (though the latest Russian fighter jets, such as the T-50, could be trouble for U.S. pilots). However, better
is not good enough. The Russian military is not composed of lightly armed insurgents like the Taliban, or a hapless army like the Iraqis in 2003.
With advanced weapons like T-80 tanks, supersonic AT-15 Springer anti-tank missiles, BM-30 Smerch multiple rocket launchers and S-400
Growler anti-aircraft missiles, Russian forces pack enough firepower to inflict significant American losses.¶ Ukraine is closer to Russia. The
distance between Kiev and Moscow is 500 miles. The distance between Kiev and New York is 5,000 miles. It’s much easier for Russia to send
troops and supplies by land than for the U.S. to send them by sea or air.¶ The
U.S. military is tired. After nearly 13 years of
war, America’s armed forces need a breather. Equipment is worn out from long service in Iraq and
Afghanistan, personnel are worn out from repeated deployments overseas, and there are still about 40,000 troops
still fighting in Afghanistan.¶ The U.S. doesn’t have many troops to send. The U.S. could easily dispatch air power to Ukraine if
its NATO allies allow use of their airbases, and the aircraft carrier George H. W. Bush and its hundred aircraft are patrolling the Mediterranean.
But for a ground war to liberate Crimea or defend Ukraine, there is just the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Italy, the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit
sailing off Spain, the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment in Germany and the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.¶ While the
paratroopers could drop into the combat zone, the Marines would have sail past Russian defenses in the Black Sea, and the Stryker brigade
would probably have to travel overland through Poland into Ukraine. Otherwise, bringing in mechanized combat brigades from the U.S. would
be logistically difficult, and more important, could take months to organize.¶ The
American people are tired. Pity the poor
politician who tries to sell the American public on yet another war, especially some complex conflict in a distant
Eastern Europe nation. Neville Chamberlain’s words during the 1938 Czechoslovakia crisis come to mind: “How horrible, fantastic, incredible it
is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we
know nothing.”¶ America‘s allies are tired. NATO sent troops to support the American campaign in Afghanistan, and has little to show
for it. Britain sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, and has little to show for it. It is almost inconceivable to imagine the Western European public
marching in the streets to demand the liberation of Crimea, especially considering the region’s sputtering economy, which
might be snuffed out should Russia stop exporting natural gas. As for military capabilities, the Europeans couldn’t evict Libyan dictator
Muammar Gaddafi without American help. And Germans fighting Russians again? Let’s not even go there.
Econ Decline = Inevitable
Lack of foreign investors and infrastructure makes Russian economic decline
inevitable
Wynn 6/23 (Gerard, Energy and Climate Analyst for RTCC, “Russia failing to reap benefit of oil and
gas”, http://www.rtcc.org/2014/06/19/russia-failing-to-reap-benefit-of-oil-and-gas-iea/)
Russia will have to liberalise energy prices, upgrade its infrastructure, curb domestic demand and appeal to
foreign investors to reap the benefit of its oil and gas resources, the International Energy Agency said. Such
measures would boost the country’s competitiveness, turn around a sluggish economy, and help cut carbon
emissions to tackle climate changes which would impact Russia, the IEA added. Russia would have to attract foreign
investors, to develop unconventional oil and gas resources and maintain output, where western condemnation of
Moscow’s annexation of Crimea may not have helped. “These challenges will require large investments in a range of USD
100 billion per year over the next 20 years, mainly from private domestic and foreign sources,” the IEA said in its report, “Russia
2014”. “Infrastructure in the electricity and heat sectors is ageing and needs rapid replacement and
modernisation: This poses risks to the country’s energy security (especially for heat and power supplies), as well as its competitiveness and
well‐being.
2NC – No war
Russia is far too weak to attack the US
Lieber, 07 (Professor of Government and International Affairs at Georgetown University - Robert J.,
"Persistent Primacy and the Future of the American Era", APSA Paper 2007,
http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/1/1/0/5/pages211058/p2110581.php)
Constraints on the capacity of adversaries also needs to be taken into account. Russia under Putin has
put pressure on its immediate neighbors and seeks to rebuild its armed forces, but Moscow’s ability to
regain the superpower status of the former Soviet Union remains limited. The Russian armed forces are
in woeful condition, the total population is half that of the USSR and declining by 700,000 per year, the
economy is overwhelmingly dependent on revenues from oil and natural gas and thus vulnerable if
world market prices soften, and the long term stability of its crony capitalism and increasingly
authoritarian political system are uncertain. China, despite extraordinary economic growth and
modernization, will continue to depend on rapid expansion of trade and the absorption of vast numbers
of people moving from the countryside to the cities. It may well become a major military challenger of
the United States, first regionally and even globally, but only over the long term.
Heg
No Impact
Heg doesn’t solve war – The US doesn’t have enough leverage to stop conflict
Mastanduno 9 (Michael Mastanduno is a Professor of Government at Dartmouth. 2009. World
Politics 61, No. 1, Ebsco)
During the cold war the United States dictated the terms of adjustment. It derived the necessary
leverage because it provided for the security of its economic partners and because there were no viable
alter natives to an economic order centered on the United States. After the cold war the outcome of adjustment struggles is less
certain because the United States is no longer in a position to dictate the terms. The United States, notwithstanding its preponderant
power, no longer enjoys the same type of security leverage it once possessed, and the very success of
the U.S.-centered world economy has afforded America’s supporters a greater range of international
and domestic economic options. The claim that the United States is unipolar is a statement about its cumulative economic, military, and other
capabilities.1 But preponderant capabilities across the board do not guarantee effective influence in any given arena. U.S. dominance in the
international security arena no longer translates into effective leverage in the international economic
arena. And although the United States remains a dominant international economic player in absolute terms, after the cold war it has found
itself more vulnerable and constrained than it was during the golden economic era after World War II. It
faces rising economic challengers with their own agendas and with greater discretion in international
economic policy than America’s cold war allies had enjoyed. The United States may continue to act its
own way, but it can no longer count on getting its own way.
Yes retrenchment – decline means no US intervention
MacDonald and Parent 11 (Paul K. MacDonald, Assistant Professor, Political Science, Willians College and Joseph M. Parent, Assistant
Professor, Political Science, University of Miami, "Resurrecting Retrenchment: The Grand Strategic Consequences of U.S. Decline," POLICY BRIEF, Belfer Center for
Science and International Affairs, Harvard University, 5--, http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/macdonald-parent-may-2011-is-%20brief.pdf)
To date, there has been no comprehensive study of great power retrenchment and no study that defends retrenchment as a probable or
practical policy. Using historical data on gross domestic product, we identify eighteen cases of "acute relative decline" since 1870. Acute
relative decline happens when a great power loses an ordinal ranking in global share of economic production, and this shift endures for five or
more years. A comparison of these periods yields the following findings: Retrenchment is
the most common response to
decline. Great powers suffering from acute decline, such as the United Kingdom, used retrenchment to shore up their fading power in eleven
to fifteen of the eighteen cases that we studied (61–83 percent). The rate of decline is the most important factor for explaining and predicting
the magnitude of retrenchment. The faster a state falls, the more drastic the retrenchment policy it is likely to employ. The rate of decline is
also the most important factor for explaining and predicting the forms that retrenchment takes. The
faster a state falls, the more
likely it is to renounce risky commitments, increase reliance on other states, cut military spending, and
avoid starting or escalating international disputes. In more detail, secondary findings include the following: Democracy does
not appear to inhibit retrenchment. Declining states are approximately equally likely to retrench regardless of regime type. Wars are infrequent
during ordinal transitions. War broke out close to the transition point in between one and four of the eighteen cases (6–22 percent).
Retrenching states rebound with some regularity. Six of the fifteen retrenching states (40 percent) managed to recapture their former rank. No
state that failed to retrench can boast similar results. Declining great powers cut their military personnel and budgets significantly faster than
other great powers. Over a five-year period, the average nondeclining state increased military personnel 2.1 percent—as compared with a 0.8
percent decrease in declining states. Likewise, the average nondeclining state increased military spending 8.4 percent—compared with 2.2
percent among declining states. Swift declines cause greater alliance agreements. Over a five-year period, the average great power signs 1.75
new alliance agreements—great powers undergoing large declines sign an average of 3.6 such agreements. Declining great powers are less
Compared to average great powers, they are 26 percent less likely to initiate
an interstate dispute, 25 percent less likely to be embroiled in a dispute, and markedly less likely to
escalate those disputes to high levels. IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICYMAKERS From the analysis above, three main implications follow
for U.S. policy. First, we are likely to see retrenchment in U.S. foreign policy. With a declining share of relative power, the
United States is ripe to shift burdens to allies, cut military expenditures, and stay out of international
likely to enter or escalate disputes.
disputes. This will not be without risks and costs, but retrenchment is likely to be peaceful and is preferable to
nonretrenchment. In short, U.S. policymakers should resist calls to maintain a sizable overseas posture because they fear that a more
moderate policy might harm U.S. prestige or credibility with American allies. A humble foreign policy and more modest
overseas presence can be as (if not more) effective in restoring U.S. credibility and reassuring allies. Second,
any potential U.S.-Sino power transition is likely to be easier on the United States than pessimists have advertised. If the
United States acts like a typical retrenching state, the future looks promising. Several regional allies—foremost India and
Japan—appear capable of assuming responsibilities formerly shouldered by the United States, and a forward defense is no longer
as valuable as it once was. There remains ample room for cuts in U.S. defense spending. And as China grows it will find, as the United States did,
that increased relative power brings with it widening divisions at home and fewer friends overseas. In brief, policymakers should reject
arguments that a reduction in U.S. overseas deployments will embolden a hostile and expansionist China. Sizable forward deployments in Asia
are just as likely to trap the United States in unnecessary clashes as they are to deter potential aggression. Third, the United States must
reconsider when, where, and how it will use its more modest resources in the future. A sensible policy of retrenchment must be properly
prepared for—policymakers should not hastily slash budgets and renounce commitments. A gradual and controlled policy of reprioritizing
goals, renouncing commitments, and shifting burdens will bring greater returns than an improvised or imposed retreat. To this end,
policymakers need to engage in a frank and serious debate about the purposes of U.S. overseas assets. Our position is that the primary role of
the U.S. military should be to deter and fight conventional wars against potential great power adversaries, rather than engage in limited
operations against insurgents and other nonstate threats. This suggests that U.S. deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan should be pared down;
that the United States should resist calls to involve itself in internal conflicts or civil wars, such as those in Libya and elsewhere in North Africa;
and that the Asia-Pacific region should have strategic priority over Europe and the greater Middle East. Regardless of whether one accepts
these particular proposals, the United States must make tough choices about which regions and threats should have claim to increasingly scarce
resources. CONCLUSION Retrenchment is probable and pragmatic. Great powers
may not be prudent, but they tend to
become so when their power ebbs. Regardless of regime type, declining states routinely renounce risky commitments, redistribute
alliance burdens, pare back military outlays, and avoid ensnarement in and escalation of costly conflicts. Husbanding resources is simply
sensible. In the competitive game of power politics, states must unsentimentally realign means with ends or be punished for their profligacy.
Attempts to maintain policies advanced when U.S. relative power was greater are outdated, unfounded, and imprudent. Retrenchment
policies—greater burden sharing with allies, less military spending, and less involvement in militarized disputes—hold the most promise for
arresting and reversing decline
Heg is self-correcting; there’s not impact to decline
Brooks and Wohlforth 2 (Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth, Both are Associate Professors in
the Government Department at Dartmouth, “American Primacy in Perspective,”
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/58034/stephen-g-brooks-and-william-c-wohlforth/americanprimacy-in-perspective MV)
TO UNDERSTAND just how dominant the United States is today, one needs to look
at each of the standard components of national power in succession. In the military arena, the United States is poised to
spend more on defense in 2003 than the next 15 -- 20 biggest spenders combined. The United States has
PICK A MEASURE, ANY MEASURE
overwhelming nuclear superiority, the world's dominant air force, the only truly blue-water navy, and a unique capability to project power
around the globe. And its military advantage is even more apparent in quality than in quantity. The United States leads the world in exploiting
the military applications of advanced communications and information technology and it has demonstrated an unrivaled ability to coordinate
and process information about the battlefield and destroy targets from afar with extraordinary precision. Washington is not making it easy for
others to catch up, moreover, given the massive gap in spending on military research and development (R&D), on which the United States
spends three times more than the next six powers combined. Looked at another way, the United States currently spends more on military R&D
No state in the modern history of international politics has
come close to the military predominance these numbers suggest. And the United States purchases this
preeminence with only 3.5 percent of its GDP. As historian Paul Kennedy notes, "being Number One at great cost is one thing;
being the world's single superpower on the cheap is astonishing." America's economic dominance, meanwhile -- relative to either
the next several richest powers or the rest of the world combined -- surpasses that of any great power in modern history, with
the sole exception of its own position after 1945 (when World War II had temporarily laid waste every other major economy). The U.S.
economy is currently twice as large as its closest rival, Japan. California's economy alone has risen to become the fifth largest in
than Germany or the United Kingdom spends on defense in total.
the world (using market exchange-rate estimates), ahead of France and just behind the United Kingdom. It is true that the long expansion of
the 1990s has ebbed, but it would take an experience like Japan's in that decade -- that is, an extraordinarily deep and prolonged domestic
recession juxtaposed with robust growth elsewhere -- for the United States just to fall back to the economic position it occupied in 1991. The
odds against such relative decline are long, however, in part because the United States is the country in the best position to take advantage of
globalization. Its status as the preferred destination for scientifically trained foreign workers solidified during the 1990s, and it is the most
U.S. military
and economic dominance, finally, is rooted in the country's position as the world's leading technological
power. Although measuring national R&D spending is increasingly difficult in an era in which so many economic activities cross borders,
efforts to do so indicate America's continuing lead. Figures from the late 1990s showed that U.S. expenditures on R&D nearly
equaled those of the next seven richest countries combined. Measuring the degree of American dominance
in each category begins to place things in perspective. But what truly distinguishes the current
international system is American dominance in all of them simultaneously. Previous leading states in the modern
popular destination for foreign firms. In 1999 it attracted more than one-third of world inflows of foreign direct investment.
era were either great commercial and naval powers or great military powers on land, never both. The British Empire in its heyday and the
United States during the Cold War, for example, each shared the world with other powers that matched or exceeded them in some areas.
Following the Napoleonic Wars, the United Kingdom was clearly the world's leading commercial and naval power. But even at the height of the
Pax Britannica, the United Kingdom was outspent, outmanned, and outgunned by both France and Russia. And its 24 percent share of GDP
among the six leading powers in the early 1870s was matched by the United States, with Russia and Germany following close behind. Similarly,
at the dawn of the Cold War the United States was clearly dominant economically as well as in air and naval capabilities. But the Soviet Union
retained overall military parity, and thanks to geography and investment in land power it had a superior ability to seize territory in Eurasia.
Today, in contrast, the United States has
no rival in any critical dimension of power. There has never been a
system of sovereign states that contained one state with this degree of dominance. The recent tendency
to equate unipolarity with the ability to achieve desired outcomes single-handedly on all issues only
reinforces this point; in no previous international system would it ever have occurred to anyone to apply
such a yardstick. CAN IT LAST? MANY WHO ACKNOWLEDGE the extent of American power, however, regard it
as necessarily self-negating. Other states traditionally band together to restrain potential hegemons, they say, and this time will be no
different. As German political commentator Josef Joffe has put it, "the history books say that Mr. Big always invites his own demise. Nos. 2, 3, 4
will gang up on him, form countervailing alliances and plot his downfall. That happened to Napoleon, as it happened to Louis XIV and the
What such
arguments fail to recognize are the features of America's post -- Cold War position that make it likely to buck
the historical trend. Bounded by oceans to the east and west and weak, friendly powers to the north and south,
the United States is both less vulnerable than previous aspiring hegemons and also less threatening to others. The main potential
challengers to its unipolarity, meanwhile -- China, Russia, Japan, and Germany -- are in the opposite position. They
cannot augment their military capabilities so as to balance the United States without simultaneously
becoming an immediate threat to their neighbors. Politics, even international politics, is local. Although American power
attracts a lot of attention globally, states are usually more concerned with their own neighborhoods than with the global equilibrium. Were
any of the potential challengers to make a serious run at the United States, regional balancing efforts would
almost certainly help contain them, as would the massive latent power capabilities of the United States,
which could be mobilized as necessary to head off an emerging threat.
mighty Hapsburgs, to Hitler and to Stalin. Power begets superior counterpower; it's the oldest rule of world politics."
No decline
Heg is durable – accommodation and nuclear peace sustain unipolarity
Monteiro 11 - Nuno P., Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University (June 13, 2011, “BALANCING ACT WHY UNIPOLARITY MAY BE DURABLE,”
http://www.nunomonteiro.org/wp-content/uploads/Nuno-Monteiro-Balancing-Act-20110613.pdf)
What is, then, wrong with the argument that unipolarity is indeed durable? Why are primacists not right? If the
impact of the nuclear revolution
on the structure of international politics reduces the salience of survival concerns for major powers, then
unipolarity should necessarily last . 44 This should settle the debate on unipolar durability in favor of primacist views. Not so fast. Survival is
indeed the first goal of states and, therefore, nuclear weapons, by guaranteeing state survival, eliminate the
need for major powers to balance against a unipole. But states do not care only about survival. Economic growth is also important for
states, for at least two reasons. First, states care about economic growth as an end in itself. 45 One of the primary raisons d’être of the state is, after all, the wellbeing of its citizens, defined largely in terms of material wealth. Second, and more importantly for the purposes of this paper, states care about economic growth
also for security reasons. If a major power is prevented from continuing to grow economically, then its future security may be imperiled. Nothing ensures xthat
nuclear weapons will continue to guarantee survival indefinitely. A major technological breakthrough, such as comprehensive missile defense, might erode the
deterring effect of a survivable nuclear arsenal. Major powers therefore have strong incentives not to fall behind in economic terms. But this pursuit of wealth is
subordinated to survival concerns. In other words ,
I expect major powers to pursue wealth only once the goal of state survival
is fully ensured and in ways that do not undermine it. To borrow a concept from John Rawls, this means that survival has ‘lexical
priority’ over all other state aims, including wealth creation. 46 What does this mean for balancing and, consequently, for the
durability of a unipolar world? In the previous section, I introduced a revised logic of balancing focused exclusively on the goal of state survival. It is now time to
expand it to account for the secondary goal of economic growth. This means that (2’) must be revised to include not only threats to state survival but also to their
economic growth. In the expanded logic, then, states will (3’) balance against concentrated power to the extent that it threatens both these goals. Consequently,
states will now balance until they minimize (4’’) both threats to their survival and to their economic growth. The
expanded logic goes like this (with italics indicating change from the revised version above): 1) States care first and foremost about their own
survival and only pursue other goals, such as wealth, to the extent they do not threaten survival; 2’’) An unmatched concentration
of power in one state may threaten the survival of others as well as their pursuit of economic growth; 3’) To the
extent that it does, other states will balance against concentrated power; 4’’) Threats to survival and to economic
growth may be minimized short of amassing as much or more power than any other state; 5’) Balancing efforts
will therefore not necessarily lead to shifts in the systemic balance-of-power; 6’) As a result, unmatched
concentrations of power in one state may be longlasting. The result (6’) is the same. But the conditions of possibility for
an unmatched concentration of power in one state to be long-lasting have changed. Now, the durability of
unipolarity depends, beyond major powers’ guaranteed survival, on a second factor: the presence of international
conditions that make the continuation of their economic growth possible. The absence of such conditions, by endangering the
long-term ability of the state to maintain its deterrent capability, ultimately places the survival of the state at risk. Therefore, major powers have a
strong incentive to balance against a unipole that is -- purposely or not -- containing their economic growth. This extends
the conditions of possibility of a durable unipolar world from the structural to the strategic level. In a nutshell , if a major power’s economic
growth is constrained by the unipole’s strategy then that major power has incentives to continue to balance
against the unipole beyond the point at which nuclear weapons ensure its immediate survival. In sum, a strategy
of containment on the part of the unipole, by constraining the economic growth of major powers, will lead the latter to balance, converting
their latent capabilities into military power. Containment, therefore, leads major powers to balance beyond the point at which
their immediate survival is guaranteed, up to the point at which they effect a shift in the systemic balance of power, bringing about the end of
unipolarity. A strategy of accommodation, on the contrary, allows major powers to continue their economic growth,
thus guaranteeing that their immediate ability to secure their own survival will not be eroded over time. By
doing so, accommodation takes away the incentives major powers might have to balance beyond the point at
which their immediate survival is guaranteed. Consequently, a strategy of accommodation -- when implemented under
conditions in which survival may be guaranteed even in the absence of a systemic balance of power -- makes unipolarity durable. V. EMPIRICAL
IMPLICATIONS AND ILLUSTRATION This section extracts empirical implications from my theory and tests the argument against the evolving empirical record. My
“qualified durability” argument yields two empirical implications for contemporary world politics. First, for
as long as the United States pursues
a strategy of economic accommodation, major powers, all of which today possess a survivable nuclear
arsenal, should not pursue further balancing against the United States. Second, in case the United States shifts
towards a strategy of containment, major powers should initiate a balancing effort, increasing the rate at
which they convert their latent power into military capabilities and pooling those capabilities together
through the formation of alliances, eventually shifting the systemic balance of power and putting an end to
unipolarity
Economy
Competitiveness
Alt cause – manufacturing decline because climate regulations
Loris, Fellow in Energy and Environment at the Heritage Foundation, 2014 (Nicolas, with Filip
Jolevski, The Heritage Foundation, “EPA’s climate regulations will harm American manufacturing,”
March 4, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/03/epas-climate-regulations-will-harmamerican-manufacturing, last accessed 6.4.14 RG)
America’s manufacturing base will be particularly harmed by the EPA’s climate regulations.
Manufacturing accounts for over 330,000 of the jobs lost.[4] This occurs for a number of reasons.
As more coal generation is taken offline, the marketplace must find a way to make up for
that lost supply. The Heritage Energy Model builds in the most cost-effective means of replacing the lost
coal through a combination of consumers decreasing energy use as an adjustment to higher prices and
increased power generation from other sources. Manufacturing is an energy-intensive industry, and the
impact of the higher energy prices on manufacturing averages to more than 770 jobs losses per
congressional district. However, not all regions are affected the same, as districts in Wisconsin,
Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois are especially hit hard. In fact, 19 out of the top 20 worse
off congressional districts from the Administration’s war on coal are located in the Midwest
region. In those districts, the manufacturing industry, on average, will slash more than 1,600
jobs by 2023. The table at the end of the paper shows the estimates of the decrease of manufacturing
employment per congressional district by 2023. Furthermore, manufacturing growth will be harmed as
a result of the fuel switching that will occur to make up for lost coal generation. Natural gas
will be diverted away from manufacturing and to power generation. As a result, the Heritage
Energy model projects that natural gas prices will increase 28 percent by 2030. Natural gas and
liquids produced with natural gas provide a feedstock for fertilizers, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, waste
treatment, food processing, fuel for industrial boilers, transportation fuel, and much more. The chemicalmanufacturing base alone is building 148 new operations topping over $100 billion in response to current and
projected low natural gas prices from the shale gas boom.[5] As the U.S. is experiencing a renaissance
in manufacturing and energy- intensive industries, the Administration’s war on coal could
adversely affect America’s competitive advantage.
Economic decline doesn’t kill heg—American leadership is unique and their
predictions have been denied for decades
Blackwill, 09 – former associate dean of the Kennedy School of Government and Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National
Security Advisor for Strategic Planning (Robert, RAND, “The Geopolitical Consequences of the World Economic Recession—A Caution”,
http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2009/RAND_OP275.pdf, WEA)
First, the United States, five years from today. Did
the global recession weaken the political will of the United
States to, over the long term, defend its external interests? Many analysts are already forecasting a “yes” to this question.
As a result of what they see as the international loss of faith in the American market economy model and in U.S. leadership, they
assert that Washington’s influence in international affairs is bound to recede, indeed is already diminishing. For some,
the wish is the father of this thought. But where is the empirical evidence? From South Asia, through relations
with China and Russia through the Middle East peace process, through dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions and
North Korea’s nuclear weaponization and missile activities, through confronting humanitarian crises in Africa and
instability in Latin America, the United States has the unchallenged diplomatic lead. Who could charge the
Obama Administration with diplomatic passivity since taking office? Indeed, one could instead conclude that the current global
economic turbulence is causing countries to seek the familiar and to rely more and not less on their American connection. In any event,
foreigners (and some Americans) often underestimate the existential resilience of the United States. In this
respect, George Friedman’s new book, The Next Hundred Years,14 and his view that the United States will be as dominant a force in the
21st century as it was in the last half of the 20th century, is worth considering. So once again, those
who now predict, as they
have in every decade since 1945, American decay and withdrawal will be wrong 15— from John Flynn’s
1955 The Decline of the American Republic and How to Rebuild It,16 to Paul Kennedy’s 1987 The Rise and Fall of Great Powers,17 to
Andrew Bacevich’s 2008 The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism,18 to Godfrey Hodgson’s 2009 The Myth of American
Exceptionalism19 and many dozens of similar books in between. Indeed, the policies of the Obama Administration, for better or worse,
are likely to be far more influential and lasting regarding America’s longer-term geopolitical power projection than the present economic
decline. To sum up regarding the United States and the global economic worsening, former Council on Foreign Relations President Les
Gelb, in his new book, Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy,20 insists that a nation’s power
is
what it always was—essentially the capacity to get people to do what they don’t want to do, by pressure and coercion, using
one’s resources and position. . . . The world is not flat. . . . The shape of global power is decidedly pyramidal—with
the United States alone at the top, a second tier of major countries (China, Japan, India, Russia, the United
Kingdom, France, Germany and Brazil), and several tiers descending below. . . . Among all nations, only the United States is a true
global power with global reach
No Competitiveness Decline
The US will remain the financial hegemon because of interdependency – a
fragmenting crisis is required to break that
Danzman and Winecoff 13 (Sarah Bauerle Danzman and W. Kindred Winecoff, Why U.S. Financial Hegemony Will Endure,
Symposium Magazine, an innovative digital publication that provides a central address for academics to talk with the broader public, and with
each other across disciplines, October 7th, 2013)
The difference between these two approaches is significant. When we conceptualize the international
financial system as a network, we see that the U.S. has become more central since 2007, not less. Rather
than shift from West-to-East, global financial actors have responded to crisis by reorganizing around
American capital to a remarkable extent. This is partially due to proactive responses to the crisis by
policymakers such as the Federal Reserve, but it is also the result of factors outside the U.S. Above all,
American capital markets remain attractive because complex networks contain strong path
dependencies, which reinforce the core position of prominent countries while keeping potential
challengers in the periphery. That is to say, policymakers and market players were limited in the
decisions they could take because of factors that had already been locked in. As a result, the structure of
the global financial system keeps the U.S. at the core and will continue to do so unless the entire
network is fragmented, as it was during the 1930s when Great Britain lost its dominance. Some who do
see continuing U.S. financial resiliency contend that American power serves to the disadvantage of
smaller countries. Indeed, they are correct that when a crisis occurs in the core – where the U.S. remains
— the effects are felt throughout the system. But they miss the fact that American prominence also
provides important stabilization mechanisms that can contain crises. To explain this, we need to look at
what network scientists call “topology,” which refers to the organization of the components of a
network, whether we are looking at a computer system or a financial system. Once we view the
international financial system in this context, we see that it is robust when facing crises in peripheral
countries, but fragile when facing crises occrring in the core. This explains why the U.S. subprime crisis
destabilized the global economy, while upheavals such as the 1990s East Asian crisis did not. Even the
euro zone crisis has remained localized, to this point. A network perspective also explains how policy
interventions by the U.S. prevented the collapse of the global system, thus ensuring that U.S. centrality
persists. Finally, a network model should make us more cautious about promoting policies meant to
erode U.S. financial hegemony. In fact, American centrality contained crises in peripheral countries from
spreading globally, and the U.S. government demonstrated both the capacity and the willingness to
pursue monetary and fiscal policies to moderate crises emanating from its own banking system.
Returning to a world in which the structure of global financial relationships devolves outside the U.S.
would therefore reintroduce a type of systemic risk not seen since the 1930s.
US will remain financial hegemon – banking
Danzman and Winecoff 13 (Sarah Bauerle Danzman and W. Kindred Winecoff, Why U.S. Financial Hegemony Will Endure,
Symposium Magazine, an innovative digital publication that provides a central address for academics to talk with the broader public, and with
each other across disciplines, October 7th, 2013)
What does the international banking network look like? First, the U.S. is strongly central, with over 70
percent of all countries placing a substantial amount of their overseas portfolio assets in the U.S.,
according to the Bank for International Settlements. After that, the distribution of international holdings
is widely dispersed. The U.K. is the next most central, with about 35 percent of all countries significantly
tied to its banking system. But most countries are only weakly tied there, even those with large financial
sectors. Moving to Asia, Hong Kong — which supposedly passed New York and London as the world’s
preeminent financial center — attracts a large amount of finance from fewer than 5 percent of the
world’s economies. Mainland China barely exists in these networks, because the yuan is not convertible
and foreign investment is tightly regulated. Moreover, this network topology has reinforced itself over
time, as ties to the U.S. have become increasingly strong. That progression paused briefly as a result of
the 2007-08 shock, but quickly resumed. Perhaps most astonishingly, the U.S. has actually become more
central in the aftermath of the crisis. The current international banking system is what we would call
“hierarchical” – with the U.S. at its core and most other countries’ banking systems in the periphery –
and displays dynamics of preferential attachment that reinforce this kind of “system hierarchy” through
time.
Foreign countries insure themselves against crises with dollars – no way that America
will lose competitiveness
Danzman and Winecoff 13 (Sarah Bauerle Danzman and W. Kindred Winecoff, Why U.S. Financial Hegemony Will Endure,
Symposium Magazine, an innovative digital publication that provides a central address for academics to talk with the broader public, and with
each other across disciplines, October 7th, 2013)
Second, the
actions that peripheral countries take to insulate themselves against crisis often paradoxically
reinforce U.S. centrality. This dynamic is generally a net positive for network stability so long as macroeconomic imbalances are
managed carefully. In Asia, for example, countries amassed foreign exchange reserves as self-insurance against
negative current account shocks – a move that further entrenched U.S. centrality, since the dollar is the
primary global reserve currency. As discussed above, the dollar’s primacy allows the U.S. to respond to
negative shocks with large injections of liquidity into the global financial system. U.S. financial centrality, along
with its demonstrated willingness to respond to shocks with the policies necessary to keep markets liquid, raises investors’ confidence in its
financial system while tying their financial health to the strength of this network. This leads investors to continue to buy U.S. debt, further
allowing the U.S. to borrow cheaply even after ratings agencies downgrade or threaten to downgrade U.S. debt. Indeed, our argument
complements economist Barry Eichengreen’s conclusion in his book Exorbitant Privilege that the U.S. dollar will persist as the main global
reserve currency due to lack of a fit alternative. Third, our argument about “preferential attachment”
suggests that the
emergence of a better alternative is a rare phenomenon, since positive feedback perpetually structures
the network around the center. Moreover, even if such an alternative did exist, we would not see a change
to the network structure unless a shock emanating from the core was large enough to destroy the
topology of international relationships. Even when shocks are large enough to destroy the system, core countries may pursue
policies that prevent network collapse. Thus, preferential attachment makes the emergence of a new financial
hegemon highly unlikely. At the same time, because so many countries are highly connected to the center, hierarchical networks are
susceptible to hugely disruptive tail events with systemic effects. One important implication of our research is that it may be incredibly difficult
to predict when we might experience a destabilizing crisis — but we do know that such
a crisis must originate in the U.S.
No risk of offense – only a severe crisis will dethrone the US
Danzman and Winecoff 13 (Sarah Bauerle Danzman and W. Kindred Winecoff, Why U.S. Financial Hegemony Will Endure,
Symposium Magazine, an innovative digital publication that provides a central address for academics to talk with the broader public, and with
each other across disciplines, October 7th, 2013)
Finally, our network model describes the necessary and sufficient conditions for the persistence and change of systemic orders. It does not
mean the U.S. will forever be the center of the international financial system. But for
the U.S. to be dethroned, three things
need to happen jointly: a severe crisis in the U.S., the inability or unwillingness of the U.S. government
to pursue policies necessary to stabilize the system, and the emergence of an alternative that is ready to
move into a position at the center. Network dynamics suggest that under these three conditions, a
network transformation could happen quite rapidly. Historically, such transitions have been accompanied by political
instability and major power conflicts. The most recent transition – from British to American financial centrality – occurred within the context of
two World Wars and a Great Depression. It appears that none of these conditions exists at present. Because of the
persistence created by preferential attachment, policies aimed at eroding U.S. centrality probably will not work. But if they did, world order
would be threatened.
No War
Economic decline doesn’t cause war
Barnett, 2009
(Thomas, senior managing director of Enterra Solutions LLC and a contributing editor/online columnist
for Esquire magazine, columnist for World Politics Review, Thomas P.M. “The New Rules: Security
Remains Stable Amid Financial Crisis,” World Politics Review, 8/25,
Online: http://www.aprodex.com/the-new-rules--security-remains-stable-amid-financial-crisis-398bl.aspx)
When the global financial crisis struck roughly a year ago, the blogosphere was ablaze with all sorts of scary predictions of, and commentary
regarding, ensuing conflict and wars -- a rerun of the Great Depression leading to world war, as it were. Now, as global economic news
brightens and recovery -- surprisingly led by China and emerging markets -- is the talk of the day, it's interesting to look back over the past year
and realize how globalization's
first truly worldwide recession has had virtually no impact whatsoever on the
international security landscape. None of the more than three-dozen ongoing conflicts listed by GlobalSecurity.org
can be clearly
attributed to the global recession. Indeed, the last new entry (civil conflict between Hamas and Fatah in the Palestine) predates the economic
crisis by a year, and three quarters of the chronic struggles began in the last century. Ditto for the 15 low-intensity conflicts listed by Wikipedia
(where the latest entry is the Mexican "drug war" begun in 2006). Certainly, the Russia-Georgia conflict last August was specifically timed, but
by most accounts the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was the most important external trigger (followed by the U.S. presidential
campaign) for that sudden spike in an almost two-decade long struggle between Georgia and its two breakaway regions. Looking over the
various databases, then, we see a most familiar picture: the usual mix of civil conflicts, insurgencies, and liberation-themed terrorist
movements. Besides the recent Russia-Georgia dust-up, the only two potential state-on-state wars (North v. South Korea, Israel v. Iran) are
both tied to one side acquiring a nuclear weapon capacity -- a process wholly unrelated to global economic trends. And with the United States
effectively tied down by its two ongoing major interventions (Iraq and Afghanistan-bleeding-into-Pakistan), our involvement elsewhere around
the planet has been quite modest, both leading up to and following the onset of the economic crisis: e.g., the usual counter-drug efforts in Latin
America, the usual military exercises with allies across Asia, mixing it up with pirates off Somalia's coast). Everywhere else we find serious
instability we pretty much let it burn, occasionally pressing the Chinese -- unsuccessfully -- to do something. Our new Africa Command, for
example, hasn't led us to anything beyond advising and training local forces. So, to sum up: No significant uptick in mass violence or unrest
(remember the smattering of urban riots last year in places like Greece, Moldova and Latvia?); The usual frequency maintained in civil conflicts
(in all the usual places); Not a single state-on-state war directly caused (and no great-power-on-great-power crises even triggered); No great
improvement or disruption in great-power cooperation regarding the emergence of new nuclear powers (despite all that diplomacy); A modest
scaling back of international policing efforts by the system's acknowledged Leviathan power (inevitable given the strain); and No serious efforts
by any rising great power to challenge that Leviathan or supplant its role. (The worst things we can cite are Moscow's occasional deployments
of strategic assets to the Western hemisphere and its weak efforts to outbid the United States on basing rights in Kyrgyzstan; but the best
include China and India stepping up their aid and investments in Afghanistan and Iraq.) Sure, we've finally seen global defense spending
surpass the previous world record set in the late 1980s, but even that's likely to wane given the stress on public budgets created by all this
unprecedented "stimulus" spending. If anything, the friendly cooperation on such stimulus packaging was the most notable great-power
dynamic caused by the crisis. Can we say that the world has suffered a distinct shift to political radicalism as a result of the economic crisis?
Indeed, no. The
world's major economies remain governed by center-left or center-right political factions
that remain decidedly friendly to both markets and trade. In the short run, there were attempts across the board to
insulate economies from immediate damage (in effect, as much protectionism as allowed under current trade rules), but there was no
great slide into "trade wars." Instead, the World Trade Organization is functioning as it was designed to function, and regional efforts
toward free-trade agreements have not slowed. Can we say Islamic radicalism was inflamed by the economic crisis? If it was, that shift was
clearly overwhelmed by the Islamic world's growing disenchantment with the brutality displayed by violent extremist groups such as al-Qaida.
And looking forward, austere economic times are just as likely to breed connecting evangelicalism as disconnecting fundamentalism. At the end
of the day, the economic crisis did not prove to be sufficiently frightening to provoke major economies into establishing global regulatory
schemes, even as it has sparked a spirited -- and much needed, as I argued last week -- discussion of the continuing viability of the U.S. dollar as
the world's primary reserve currency. Naturally, plenty of experts and pundits have attached great significance to this debate, seeing in it the
beginning of "economic warfare" and the like between "fading" America and "rising" China. And yet, in a world of globally integrated
production chains and interconnected financial markets, such "diverging interests" hardly constitute signposts for wars up ahead. Frankly, I
don't welcome a world in which America's fiscal profligacy goes undisciplined, so bring it on -- please! Add it all up and it's fair to say that this
global financial crisis has proven the great resilience of America's post-World War II international liberal
trade order. Do I expect to read any analyses along those lines in the blogosphere any time soon? Absolutely not. I expect the fantastic
fear-mongering to proceed apace.
Science Diplomacy
Doesn’t Solve Anything
Scientific diplomacy does not solve
Dickson 10 (David. Director of SciDev.net. “Science in diplomacy: “On tap but not on top”.” June 28,
2010. http://scidevnet.wor...onference-2010 FRED).
There’s a general consensus in both the scientific and political worlds that the principle of science diplomacy, at least
in the somewhat restricted sense of the need to get more and better science into international negotiations, is a desirable objective.
There is less agreement, however, on how far the concept can – or indeed should – be extended to embrace
broader goals and objectives, in particular attempts to use science to achieve political or diplomatic
goals at the international level. Science, despite its international characteristics, is no substitute for
effective diplomacy. Any more than diplomatic initiatives necessarily lead to good science. These seem to have been the broad
conclusions to emerge from a three-day meeting at Wilton Park in Sussex, UK, organised by the British Foreign Office and the Royal Society, and
attended by scientists, government officials and politicians from 17 countries around the world. The definition of science diplomacy varied
widely among participants. Some saw it as a subcategory of “public diplomacy”, or what US diplomats have recently been promoting as “soft
power” (“the carrot rather than the stick approach”, as a participant described it). Others preferred to see it as a core element of the broader
concept of “innovation diplomacy”, covering the politics of engagement in the familiar fields of international scientific exchange and technology
transfer, but raising these to a higher level as a diplomatic objective. Whatever definition is used, three particular aspects of the debate became
the focus of attention during the Wilton Park meeting: how science can inform the diplomatic process; how diplomacy can assist science in
achieving its objectives; and, finally, how science can provide a channel for quasi-diplomatic exchanges by forming an apparently neutral bridge
between countries. There was little disagreement on the first of these. Indeed for many, given the increasing number of international issues
with a scientific dimension that politicians have to deal with, this is essentially what the core of science diplomacy should be about. Chris
Whitty, for example, chief scientist at the UK’s Department for International Development, described how knowledge about the threat raised
by the spread of the highly damaging plant disease stem rust had been an important input by researchers into discussions by politicians and
diplomats over strategies for persuading Afghan farmers to shift from the production of opium to wheat. Others pointed out that the scientific
community had played a major role in drawing attention to issues such as the links between chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere and the
growth of the ozone hole, or between carbon dioxide emissions and climate change. Each has made essential contributions to policy decisions.
Acknowledging this role for science has some important implications. No-one dissented when Rohinton Medhora, from Canada’s International
Development Research Centre, complained of the lack of adequate scientific expertise in the embassies of many countries of the developed and
developing world alike. Nor – perhaps predictably – was there any major disagreement that diplomatic initiatives can both help and
occasionally hinder the process of science. On the positive side, such diplomacy can play a significant role in facilitating science exchange and
the launch of international science projects, both essential for the development of modern science. Europe’s framework programme of
research programmes was quoted as a successful advantage of the first of these. Examples of the second range from the establishment of the
European Organisation of Nuclear Research (usually known as CERN) in Switzerland after the Second World War, to current efforts to build a
large new nuclear fusion facility (ITER). Less positively, increasing restrictions on entry to certain countries, and in particular the United States
after the 9/11 attacks in New York and elsewhere, have significantly impeded scientific exchange programmes. Here the challenge for
diplomats was seen as helping to find ways to ease the burdens of such restrictions. The broadest gaps in understanding the potential of
scientific diplomacy lay in the third category, namely the use of science as a channel of international diplomacy, either as a way of helping to
forge consensus on contentious issues, or as a catalyst for peace in situations of conflict. On the first of these, some pointed to recent climate
change negotiations, and in particular the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as a good example, of the way that the
scientific community can provide a strong rationale for joint international action. But others referred to the failure of the Copenhagen climate
summit last December to come up with a meaningful agreement on action as a demonstration of the limitations of this way of thinking. It was
argued that this failure had been partly due to a misplaced belief that scientific consensus would be sufficient to generate a commitment to
collective action, without taking into account the political impact that scientific ideas would have. Another example that received considerable
attention was the current construction of a synchrotron facility SESAMEin Jordan, a project that is already is bringing together researchers in a
range of scientific disciplines from various countries in the Middle East (including Israel, Egypt and Palestine, as well as both Greece and
Turkey). The promoters of SESAME hope that – as with the building of CERN 60 years ago, and its operation as a research centre involving, for
example, physicists from both Russia and the United States – SESAME will become a symbol of what regional collaboration can achieve. In that
sense, it would become what one participant described as a “beacon of hope” for the region. But others cautioned that, however successful
SESAME may turn out to be in purely scientific terms, its potential impact on the Middle East peace process should not be exaggerated. Political
conflicts have deep roots that cannot easily be papered over, however open-minded scientists may be to professional colleagues coming from
there was even a warning that in the developing world, high profile scientific
projects, particular those with explicit political backing, could end up doing damage by inadvertently
favouring one social group over another. Scientists should be wary of having their prestige used in this way; those who did so
could come over as patronising, appearing unaware of political realities. Similarly, those who hold science in esteem as
other political contexts. Indeed,
a practice committed to promoting the causes of peace and development were reminded of the need to
take into account how advances in science – whether nuclear physics or genetic technology – have also
led to new types of weaponry. Nor did science automatically lead to the reduction of global inequalities. “Science for diplomacy”
therefore ended up with a highly mixed review. The consensus seemed to be that science can prepare the ground for
diplomatic initiatives – and benefit from diplomatic agreements – but cannot provide the solutions to
either. “On tap but not on top” seems as relevant in international settings as it does in purely national ones. With all the caution that even
this formulation still requires.
2NC – Science Diplomacy
Science diplomacy fails – political motives corrupt such actions and make it ineffective
Dickinson 9 (Dickinson, David. "The Limits of Science Diplomacy." SciDev.Net. N.p., 4 June 2009. Web. 26 July 2014.
<http://www.scidev.net/en/editorials/the-limits-of-science-diplomacy.html>. David Dickson, founding director of SciDev.Net and
inspirational figure in the science journalism and global development communities Eric).
But — as emerged from a meeting entitled New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy, held in London this week (1–2 June) — using
science for
diplomatic purposes is not as straightforward as it seems.¶ Some scientific collaboration clearly demonstrates what
countries can achieve by working together. For example, a new synchrotron under construction in Jordan is rapidly becoming a symbol of the
whether scientific cooperation can become a precursor for political
collaboration is less evident. For example, despite hopes that the Middle East synchrotron would help bring peace to the region,
potential for teamwork in the Middle East.¶ But
several countries have been reluctant to support it until the Palestine problem is resolved.¶ Indeed, one speaker at the London meeting
(organised by the UK's Royal Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science) even suggested that the changes scientific
innovations bring inevitably lead to turbulence and upheaval.
In such a context, viewing science as a driver for peace may
be wishful thinking.¶ Conflicting ethos¶ Perhaps the most contentious area discussed at the meeting was how science diplomacy can
frame developed countries' efforts to help build scientific capacity in the developing world.¶ There is little to quarrel with in collaborative
efforts that are put forward with a genuine desire for partnership. Indeed, partnership — whether between individuals, institutions or countries
true partnership requires transparent relations
between partners who are prepared to meet as equals. And that goes against diplomats' implicit role: to
promote and defend their own countries' interests.¶ John Beddington, the British government's chief scientific adviser, may
have been a bit harsh when he told the meeting that a diplomat is someone who is "sent abroad to lie for his country".
— is the new buzzword in the "science for development" community.¶ But
But he touched a raw nerve.¶ Worlds apart yet co-dependent¶ The truth is that science and politics make an uneasy alliance. Both need the
other. Politicians need science to achieve their goals, whether social, economic or — unfortunately — military; scientists need political support
to fund their research.¶ But they also occupy different universes. Politics
is, at root, about exercising power by one means
or another. Science is — or should be — about pursuing robust knowledge that can be put to useful
purposes.¶ A strategy for promoting science diplomacy that respects these differences deserves support.
Particularly so if it focuses on ways to leverage political and financial backing for science's more humanitarian goals, such as tackling climate
change or reducing world poverty.¶ But
a commitment to science diplomacy that ignores the differences — acting
for example as if science can substitute politics (or perhaps more worryingly, vice versa), is dangerous.
Basic scientific nature and self-preservation make global scientific cooperation
inevitable
Potocnik, 06 (Janez, European Commissioner for Science and Research, 1AC Article, 3/7/2006. “Between
cooperation and Competition - Science and Research as a Transatlantic Bridge Builder”,
http://www.iterfan.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=139&Itemid=2)
Cooperation shortens the path leading from science to innovation and from knowledge to solutions in
areas such as nanotech, biotech, environment, climate and cybersecurity. In all these areas, and in many
more, we share information, knowledge, practices and results. In nanotechnology, for example, the Commission works
together with the National Science Foundation to exchange information and organise seminars and workshops. Coordinated calls for joint EUUS research proposals have been launched since 1999, to draw on the best expertise on both side of the Atlantic. We
work together
because we realise that it is in the interest of both Europe and the US to do so. And often, of course, it is
also in the interest of many other countries around the globe, whether they are directly involved in the
cooperation, or not. But – of course – we also cooperate simply because that is what scientists do. Naturally,
spontaneously and, often, effectively. Scientists are, by the mere nature of their work, mobile and
outward looking. Research does not know of any national frontiers and scientists simply work where and
with those that offer the best opportunities. But perhaps even more important for our transatlantic links is the dynamism and
creativity that competition brings. Competition is part of our natural disposition as social individuals, and also an imperative of the societies we
live in. Whether it’s the market share of our companies that we have at heart, or the wellbeing of our people, or the next breakthrough in
science and technology, or - indeed, all of the above - competition is the name of the game. We compete because we
know that today’s
discoveries will most probably underpin tomorrow’s economic achievements. And we compete because – in the
US as much as in Europe – we draw healthy stimuli and encouragement from comparing our respective figures.
Numbers of science and engineering graduates, researchers as percentage of the workforce, figures for R&D investment, numbers of
publications and patents and so on... This
mix of cooperation and competition is a key engine of progress. That’s
how we discover and advance. How we set and reach objectives, improve performances and achieve
results. By finding the right mix or the right balance between cooperation and competition. Be it between individuals, organisations,
economies or societies. And isn’t this also what scientists spontaneously do? They compete for excellence, for recognition, for results and for
funds. They strive to be the first to publish or to patent.
But they also learn from one another. They compare and
exchange and they join forces aiming for common achievements. The same is true for companies and
other organisations, for which a balanced mix of cooperation and competition is often the key to
performance and achievement.
And, even if scientific cooperation on a national level ceases, micro-level cooperation
will not be affected – that’s where the majority of cooperation occurs anyways
Leifert and Wagner, 08 (Harvey, American Geophysical Union Public Information Manager) and Caroline
S. Wagner (Researcher at the Center for International Science and Technology Policy @ George
Washington U), 1/16/2008. Article by Leifert, Cites Wagner, “Author Caroline Wagner Urges More
Inclusive Global Science Cooperation”, American Association for the Advancement of Science,
http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2008/0116stls_wagner.shtml)
Wagner told the participants that science has evolved considerably since the era of the original Invisible
College. She cited the rise of professionalism in the 18th century, the expansion of distinct scientific
disciplines in the 19th century, and the era of big, nationalistic science in the 20th century, when some
scholars suggested that 80 to 90% of all scientists in human history (up until that time) lived. National
science reached its epitome during the Cold War, she said, when the U.S. and Soviet Union built
redundant scientific systems on a competitive basis. This national innovation system, which operated
through the 1990s, has become dysfunctional from the point of view of the governance of science,
Wagner said, because knowledge creation does not honor national borders. In the 21st century, science
mostly self-organizes, she emphasized, including and most influentially on the international level. It
functions through networks that are generally informal, she said, but they do have structure, norms, and
rules that scientists must understand if they are to participate successfully. Although large,
government-funded, international science projects are highly visible, they are just the tip of an iceberg
in terms of overall international scientific activities, Wagner said; they are not in fact typical of
international collaboration. "The bulk of international collaboration in science and technology happens
below the waterline," she told the seminar, as scientists organize themselves into teams and conduct
research of mutual interest, without regard to national boundaries or government agencies. Wagner
identified four kinds of collaborative scientific activities, based on a combination of how projects are
initiated and where they take place. In the first category, she described top-down and bottom-up
projects: * Top-down science includes large, directed programs, usually based in an office that one
can visit, such as NASA programs, CERN, and polar research. * Bottom-up science is based on the
interests of individual researchers who contact colleagues all over the world to work ad hoc on a selfgenerated project; their partnerships are often invisible to outsiders. In the second category, there are
centralized and distributed projects: * Centralized projects depend on specialized laboratories or
installations, such as the earthquake shake table in Japan, or the Rain Forest Research Institute in Costa
Rica. * Distributed projects take place all around the world by individuals or small teams, such as
happened in the Human Genome Project; they do not depend on large facilities. Each area of scientific
research combines one aspect of each of the two categories. Policy-makers must understand each of the
resulting four types of international collaboration in their efforts to assure that taxpayers, who fund
most of the research, get their money's worth and that the knowledge produced "comes home" and is
usable at the local level, Wagner said. Science operates on a reward system, in which researchers are
seeking to enhance their reputation and gain recognition from their colleagues in their fields, their own
countries and worldwide. As a result, Wagner said, in many developing countries where she has worked,
government officials complain that local scientists are better connected with colleagues abroad than
with the needs of their own society. For example, she was amazed at how much "great science" is being
conducted in ethnobotany in Mozambique—and how little it impacts Mozambique. Mozambican
scientists are working with colleagues at Stanford University in the U.S., but their research has little
impact on local farmers. The scientists are not against improving the lives of their countrymen, Wagner
said, but they realize that "the more you gain recognition within science, the more you are able to
access the resources of science. And ultimately, scientists the world over are seeking freedom—the
freedom to pursue their own interests." Wagner gave the example of the Department of Energy's Center
for Nanoscale Materials at its Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. Argonne had recently hired 15
scientists recruited on a worldwide basis for this cutting edge nanotechnology laboratory. They were
seeking the best scientists they could find, regardless of nationality, and 10 of the 15 chosen were from
outside the United States, Wagner said. This select group includes Yugang Sun, a 29-year-old Chinese
postdoctoral scientist who, in his first year at Argonne, published a seminal paper that has already been
cited in the literature over 1,500 times. The Department of Energy offered Sun additional laboratory
resources he needed to continue his research, Wagner said, "but these people are free agents; they can
go anywhere." Sun is, at 29, "an unbelievable superstar in nanosciences," she said, and is—so far—still
at Argonne