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Contents
Contents...................................................................................................................................................................................................1
CP and DAs..............................................................................................................................................................................................3
Positive feedback ext...............................................................................................................................................................................9
..............................................................................................................................................................................................................9
A2: Were already screwed....................................................................................................................................................................10
AT: G8 Solves.........................................................................................................................................................................................11
Climate Models Good...........................................................................................................................................................................12
AT: Recent Events Disprove Climate Change....................................................................................................................................13
AT: Recent Events Disprove Climate Change....................................................................................................................................14
AT: Climate Change Theory Inconsistent...........................................................................................................................................15
AT: Negative Feedbacks.......................................................................................................................................................................16
AT: Solar Radiation Causes Warming................................................................................................................................................17
AT: Natural Temperature Cycles.........................................................................................................................................................18
AT: Satellite Data Proves No Warming...............................................................................................................................................19
Warming Bad—Economy.....................................................................................................................................................................20
Warming Bad—Water Wars................................................................................................................................................................21
Ext. Warming Causes Water Scarcity.................................................................................................................................................22
Warming Bad—Forests........................................................................................................................................................................23
PICS Legit..............................................................................................................................................................................................24
FIRST, OUR OFFENSE – ...............................................................................................................................................................24
AND, OUR DEFENSE - ..................................................................................................................................................................24
AT: Unpredictable.................................................................................................................................................................................25
AT: Kills Ground...................................................................................................................................................................................26
AT: PICs Warrant the Plan..................................................................................................................................................................27
AT: PICs Redundant.............................................................................................................................................................................28
AT: Encourages Vague-Plan writing...................................................................................................................................................29
AT: Infinitely Regressive......................................................................................................................................................................30
AT: Kills Clash.......................................................................................................................................................................................31
AT: Makes 1AC Irrelevant...................................................................................................................................................................32
AT: Severs Extra Competitive Planks.................................................................................................................................................33
AT: Justifies Severance.........................................................................................................................................................................34
Intrinsicness Good Frontline................................................................................................................................................................35
1.Intrisicness tests competition: proves competition of plan and counter-plan is possible, rendering the counter-plan
noncompetitive..................................................................................................................................................................................35
2.Increases negative ground: they can run disads that link to the new portion, justifies new offense in the block.................35
3.Proves plan is a good idea: perms in addition to the 1AC plan test which means that the plan is still true.........................35
4.No advocacy shift: just clarifying 1AC intent, not changing our stance in round...................................................................35
5.Reciprocity: no different than counter-plans, test the germaneness of the link to the plan. If neg.......................................35
6.Not a voter: at best just reject the argument not the team........................................................................................................35
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AT: Kills Negative Ground...................................................................................................................................................................36
1.Reciprocity: negative can read advantage counter-plans to test the link to our advantages, affirmative can test
disadvantage links.............................................................................................................................................................................36
2.They can read a disadvantage to the test of intrinsicness, solves the offense...........................................................................36
3.No right to that ground: intrinsicness weeds out bad arguments, we shouldn’t be discussing arguments that aren’t
germane to the plan and kills real world education and policy making skills............................................................................36
4.They have plenty of ground: they can read inflation, immigration, military, and other disads.............................................36
AT: Moving Target................................................................................................................................................................................37
1.Not a moving target: it’s a no link argument, not an advocacy.................................................................................................37
2.No different than a counter-plan: has a text and they can read disads to it.............................................................................37
Topical CP legit......................................................................................................................................................................................38
A2: Perm................................................................................................................................................................................................39
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CP and DAs
TEXT: The USFG should add General Motors, Ford Motor Company and/or Chrysler LLC hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and
electric vehicles to the list of eligible purchases for the Individual Development Accounts tax credit program and eliminate
the vehicle asset test in relevant Temporary Assistance for Needy Families programs.

CP competes trough the net benefits

The CP solves, turns case, and has multiple benefits


Weiss and Lefton 2k10 (staff writers “Oil Dependence is a Dangerous Habit”
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/01/oil_imports_security.html)

America’s voracious oil appetite continues to contribute to another growing national security concern: climate change. Burning oil is
one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions and therefore a major driver of climate change, which if left unchecked could
have very serious security global implications. Burning oil imported from “dangerous or unstable” countries alone released 640.7
million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is the same as keeping more than 122.5 million passenger vehicles
on the road.
Recent studies found that the gravest consequences of climate change could threaten to destabilize governments, intensify terrorist
actions, and displace hundreds of millions of people due to increasingly frequent and severe natural disasters, higher incidences of
diseases such as malaria, rising sea levels, and food and water shortages.
A 2007 analysis by the Center for American Progress concludes that the geopolitical implications of climate change could include
wide-spanning social, political, and environmental consequences such as “destabilizing levels of internal migration” in developing
countries and more immigration into the United States. The U.S. military will face increasing pressure to deal with these crises,
which will further put our military at risk and require already strapped resources to be sent abroad.
Global warming-induced natural disasters will create emergencies that demand military aid, such as Hurricane Katrina at home and
the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami abroad. The world’s poor will be put in the most risk, as richer countries are more able to adapt to
climate change. Developed countries will be responsible for aid efforts as well as responding to crises from climate-induced mass
migration. Military and intelligence experts alike recognize that global warming poses serious environmental, social, political, and
military risks that we must address in the interest of our own defense. The Pentagon is including climate change as a security threat
in its 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, a congressionally mandated report that updates Pentagon priorities every four years. The
State Department will also incorporate climate change as a national security threat in its Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development
Review. And in September the CIA created the Center on Climate Change and National Security to provide guidance to
policymakers surrounding the national security impact of global warming.
Leading Iraq and Afghanistan military veterans also advocate climate and clean-energy policies because they understand that such
reform is essential to make us safer. Jonathan Powers, an Iraq war veteran and chief operating officer for the Truman National
Security Project, said “We recognize that climate change is already affecting destabilized states that have fragile governments. That’s
why hundreds of veterans in nearly all 50 states are standing up with Operation Free—because they know that in those fragile states,
against those extremist groups, it is our military that is going to have to act.”
The CNA Corporation’s Military Advisory Board determined in 2007 that “Climate change can act as a threat multiplier for
instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world, and it presents significant national security challenges for the United
States.” In an update of its 2007 report last year CNA found that climate change, energy dependence, and national security are
interlinked challenges.
The report, “Powering America’s Defense: Energy and the Risks to National Security,” reiterates the finding that fossil fuel
dependence is unequivocally compromising our national security. The board concludes, “Overdependence on imported oil—by the
U.S. and other nations—tethers America to unstable and hostile regimes, subverts foreign policy goals, and requires the U.S. to
stretch its military presence across the globe.”
CNA advises, “Given the national security threats of America’s current energy posture, a major shift in energy policy and practice is
required.”
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Warming guarantees multiple positive feedbacks triggering extinction – adaptation cannot solve
Tickell, 8 (Oliver, Climate Researcher, The Gaurdian, “On a planet 4C hotter, all we can prepare for is extinction”,
8/11http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/11/climatechange)

We need to get prepared for four degrees of global warming, Bob Watson told the Guardian last week. At first sight this looks like
wise counsel from the climate science adviser to Defra. But the idea that we could adapt to a 4C rise is absurd and dangerous. Global
warming on this scale would be a catastrophe that would mean, in the immortal words that Chief Seattle probably never spoke, "the
end of living and the beginning of survival" for humankind. Or perhaps the beginning of our extinction. The collapse of the polar ice
caps would become inevitable, bringing long-term sea level rises of 70-80 metres. All the world's coastal plains would be lost,
complete with ports, cities, transport and industrial infrastructure, and much of the world's most productive farmland. The world's
geography would be transformed much as it was at the end of the last ice age, when sea levels rose by about 120 metres to create the
Channel, the North Sea and Cardigan Bay out of dry land. Weather would become extreme and unpredictable, with more frequent
and severe droughts, floods and hurricanes. The Earth's carrying capacity would be hugely reduced. Billions would undoubtedly die.
Watson's call was supported by the government's former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, who warned that "if we get to a
four-degree rise it is quite possible that we would begin to see a runaway increase". This is a remarkable understatement. The
climate system is already experiencing significant feedbacks, notably the summer melting of the Arctic sea ice. The more the ice
melts, the more sunshine is absorbed by the sea, and the more the Arctic warms. And as the Arctic warms, the release of billions of
tonnes of methane – a greenhouse gas 70 times stronger than carbon dioxide over 20 years – captured under melting permafrost is
already under way. To see how far this process could go, look 55.5m years to the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, when a
global temperature increase of 6C coincided with the release of about 5,000 gigatonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, both as CO2
and as methane from bogs and seabed sediments. Lush subtropical forests grew in polar regions, and sea levels rose to 100m higher
than today. It appears that an initial warming pulse triggered other warming processes. Many scientists warn that this historical event
may be analogous to the present: the warming caused by human emissions could propel us towards a similar hothouse Earth.

The impact is quick – 81 months to extinction


Guardian Weekly, 8 (Andrew Simms, “Guardian Weekly: Just 100 months left to save Earth: Andrew Simms on a New Green
Deal that could forestall the climate change tipping point”, 8/15, L/N)
In just 100 months' time, if we are lucky, and based on a conservative estimate, we could reach a tipping point for the beginnings of
runaway climate change. Let us be clear exactly what we mean. The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere today,
the most prevalent greenhouse gas, is the highest it has been for the past 650,000 years. In just 250 years, as a result of the coal-fired
Industrial Revolution, and changes to land use such as the growth of cities and the felling of forests, we have released more than
1,800bn tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. Currently, approximately 1,000 tonnes of CO2 are released into the atmosphere every
second, due to human activity. Greenhouse gases trap incoming solar radiation, warming the atmosphere. When these gases
accumulate beyond a certain level - a "tipping point" - global warming will accelerate, potentially beyond control. Faced with
circumstances that threaten human civilisation, scientists at least have the sense of humour to term what drives this process as
"positive feedback". In climate change, a number of feedback loops amplify warming through physical processes that are either
triggered by the initial warming, or the increase in greenhouse gases. One example is the melting of ice sheets. The loss of ice cover
reduces the ability of the Earth's surface to reflect heat and, by revealing darker surfaces, increases the amount of heat absorbed.
Other dynamics include the decreasing ability of oceans to absorb CO2 due to higher wind strengths, linked to climate change. This
has already been observed in the Southern Ocean and North Atlantic, increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and adding to
climate change. Because of such self-reinforcing feedbacks, once a critical greenhouse concentration threshold is passed, global
warming will continue even if we stop releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. If that happens, the Earth's climate will shift
into a more volatile state, with different ocean circulation, wind and rainfall patterns, the implications of which are potentially
catastrophic for life on Earth. This is often referred to as irreversible climate change. So, how do we arrive at the ticking clock of
100 months? It's possible to estimate the length of time it will take to reach a tipping point. To do so you combine current
greenhouse gas concentrations with the best estimates for the rates at which emissions are growing, the maximum concentration of
greenhouse gases allowable to forestall potentially irreversible changes to the climate system, and the effect of those environmental
feedbacks.
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Plug-in hybrids and other electric vehicles get us off of oil fastest.
Brookings Institution 2007
(Januray 22nd, David Sandalow is Energy and Environment Scholar at The Brookings Institution, “ENDING OIL DEPENDENCE”,
http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/fellows/sandalow20070122.pdf)

To reduce oil dependence, nothing would do more good more quickly than making cars that could connect to the electric
grid. The United States has a vast infrastructure for generating electric power. However, that infrastructure is essentially
useless in trying to cut oil dependence, because modern cars can't connect to it. If we could build cars that ran on electricity
and plugged into the grid, the potential for displacing oil would be enormous. Fortunately, we can. Several small companies
are already doing this, with a first generation of “plug-in hybrid” engines designed to run both on gasoline and electricity from the
grid. General Motors recently announced plans to produce light duty plug-ins.
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DEPENDENCE ON OPEC FUELS TERRORISM AND LEAVES THE U.S. VULNERABLE TO


ATTACK – OIL IS THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT ENABLER OF INTERNATIONAL
TERRORISM.
Robert ZUBRIN, Contributing Editor to The New Atlantis, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies,
President of Pioneer Astronautics, an aerospace engineering R&D firm, and founder of the Mars Society, an international
organization dedicated to furthering space exploration, 2008 [“Breaking OPEC’s Grip,” The National Review, February 14th,
Available Online at http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=ZTg5NjkyMmJhNjJiNjIxMWIwNDkzNWZmOWZlMjgzZTg=

A lot has changed since the turn of the 15th century, but Marshal Trivulzio’s famous aphorism still holds a great deal of truth. Yet Americans don’t seem to be heeding
its implications. In fact, in waging the war on terror, the United States seems to be doing its best to fund its enemies.

Consider the following: In 1972, the U.S. paid out $4 billion for oil imports, an amount equal to 1.2 percent of our defense budget at
that time. In 2006, we paid $260 billion — about half of what we paid for national defense. Over the same period, Saudi oil revenues
have grown in direct parallel: from $2.7 billion in 1972 to $200 billion in 2006 — which will likely exceed $300 billion this year.
Much of that money is being used to fund an international network of front organizations and Wahhabist madrassas devoted to
spreading terrorist ideology. Meanwhile, Iran is using its share of the take to fund its nuclear bomb program, as well as terrorist
groups like Hezbollah.

If something isn’t done to break the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) — the cartel that dominates and manipulates the global oil market — the
situation is likely to get much worse: With China and India industrializing rapidly, world demand for fuel is going up. OPEC is positioned to exploit this new demand
with radical price hikes that go well beyond the 50-percent increase it effected during 2007 alone. Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Iran’s Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad are already calling for prices of $200 per barrel. In short, we Americans are financing a war against ourselves — and
the way things are going, we may soon be paying the enemy more than we are paying our own military.

The enemy’s unconstrained ability to loot us is also threatening our economy. Consider this: Congress is raiding the public purse to put $140 billion back in the
pockets of American consumers, in the hope that this will provide an economic stimulus to prevent recession. Yet by paying $100 per barrel of oil, we are allowing
OPEC to set oil prices high enough to take more than triple that amount out of Americans’ pockets. If Chávez and Amadinejad have their way, our economy will
soon be drained at a rate of nearly $900 billion per year, an economic de-stimulus tax package six times as large as anything
Congress has put on the table to push the other way.
The economic depression resulting from $200-per-barrel oil would be nothing compared with an oil cutoff, which could be accomplished by an OPEC or Arab
League embargo, or result from the irrational action of any number of lunatic forces at large in the Gulf. In 1973, the Arab oil embargo threw our economy into chaos
— and, at that time, we produced 70 percent of the oil we used annually. Today, we produce only 40 percent of our own fuel, and the consequences of another cutoff
would be catastrophic. Our continuing vulnerability on this score is a sword of Damocles hanging over the head of Western civilization — a disaster waiting to
happen, and a tool for blackmail that prevents us from taking the necessary steps to defeat the Islamist threat.
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The Risk of a Nuclear Terrorist Attack on the U.S. is High


Allison 7
Graham Allison, Director – Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Professor of Government, and Faculty Chair of the
Dubai Initiative – Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, “Symposium: Apocalypse When?”, The National Interest,
November / December 2007, Lexis

MUELLER IS entitled to his opinion that the threat of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism is “exaggerated” and
“overwrought.” But analysts of various political persuasions, in and out of government, are virtually unanimous in their
judgment to the contrary. As the national-security community learned during the Cold War, risk = likelihood x consequences.
Thus, even when the likelihood of nuclear Armageddon was small, the consequences were so catastrophic that prudent policymakers
felt a categorical imperative to do everything that feasibly could be done to prevent that war. Today, a single nuclear bomb
exploding in just one city would change our world. Given such consequences, differences between a 1 percent and a 20 percent
likelihood of such an attack are relatively insignificant when considering how we should respond to the threat. Richard Garwin, a
designer of the hydrogen bomb who Enrico Fermi once called “the only true genius I had ever met”, told Congress in March that he
estimated a “20 percent per year probability [of a nuclear explosion—not just a contaminated, dirty bomb—a nuclear explosion]
with American cities and European cities included.” My Harvard colleague Matthew Bunn has created a model in the Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science that estimates the probability of a nuclear terrorist attack over a ten-year period
to be 29 percent—identical to the average estimate from a poll of security experts commissioned by Senator Richard Lugar in 2005.
My book, Nuclear Terrorism, states my own best judgment that, on the current trend line, the chances of a nuclear terrorist attack
in the next decade are greater than 50 percent. Former Secretary of Defense William Perry has expressed his own view that my
work may even underestimate the risk. Warren Buffet, the world’s most successful investor and legendary odds-maker in pricing
insurance policies for unlikely but catastrophic events, concluded that nuclear terrorism is “inevitable.” He stated, “I don’t see any
way that it won’t happen.” To assess the threat one must answer five core questions: who, what, where, when and how? Who could
be planning a nuclear terrorist attack? Al-Qaeda remains the leading candidate. According to the most recent National Intelligence
Estimate (NIE), Al-Qaeda has been substantially reconstituted—but with its leadership having moved from a medieval
Afghanistan to Pakistan—a nation that actually has nuclear weapons. As former CIA Director George J. Tenet’s memoir reports,
Al-Qaeda’s leadership has remained “singularly focused on acquiring WMDs” and that “the main threat is the nuclear one.”
Tenet concluded, “I am convinced that this is where [Osama bin Laden] and his operatives want to go.” What nuclear weapons
could terrorists use? A ready-made weapon from the arsenal of one of the nuclear-weapons states or an elementary nuclear bomb
constructed from highly enriched uranium made by a state remain most likely. As John Foster, a leading U.S. bomb-maker and
former director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, wrote a quarter of a century ago, “If the essential nuclear materials
are at hand, it is possible to make an atomic bomb using information that is available in the open literature.” Where could terrorists
acquire a nuclear bomb? If a nuclear attack occurs, Russia will be the most likely source of the weapon or material. A close second,
however, is North Korea, which now has ten bombs worth of plutonium, or Pakistan with sixty nuclear bombs. Finally, research
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reactors in forty developing and transitional countries still hold the essential ingredient for nuclear weapons. When could terrorists
launch the first nuclear attack? If terrorists bought or stole a nuclear weapon in good working condition, they could explode it
today. If terrorists acquired one hundred pounds of highly enriched uranium, they could make a working elementary nuclear
bomb in less than a year. How could terrorists deliver a nuclear weapon to its target? In the same way that illegal items
come to our cities every day. As one of my former colleagues has quipped, if you have any doubt about the ability of terrorists to
deliver a weapon to an American target, remember: They could hide it in a bale of marijuana.

US will retaliate – risks nuclear conflagaration


Speice 6
Patrick F., Jr. "Negligence and nuclear nonproliferation: eliminating the current liability barrier to bilateral U.S.-Russian nonproliferation assistance
programs." William and Mary Law Review 47.4 (Feb 2006): 1427(59). Expanded Academic ASAP.

The potential consequences of the unchecked spread of nuclear knowledge and material to terrorist groups that seek to cause mass
destruction in the United States are truly horrifying. A terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon would be devastating in terms of
immediate human and economic losses. (49) Moreover, there would be immense political pressure in the United States to discover
the perpetrators and retaliate with nuclear weapons, massively increasing the number of casualties and potentially triggering a full-
scale nuclear conflict. (50) In addition to the threat posed by terrorists, leakage of nuclear knowledge and material from Russia will
reduce the barriers that states with nuclear ambitions face and may trigger widespread proliferation of nuclear weapons. (51) This
proliferation will increase the risk of nuclear attacks against the United States or its allies by hostile states, (52) as well as increase
the likelihood that regional conflicts will draw in the United States and escalate to the use of nuclear weapons. (53)
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Positive feedback ext.

Continued warming causing feedbacks—this amplifies warming beyond control.


Science Daily 2006 - based on research by the DOE's Climate Change Resarch Division and the National Science Foundation
(5/22, "Feedback Loops In Global Climate Change Point To A Very Hot 21st Century",
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060522151248.htm, WEA)

Studies have shown that global climate change can set-off positive feedback loops in nature which amplify warming and cooling
trends. Now, researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at
Berkeley have been able to quantify the feedback implied by past increases in natural carbon dioxide and methane gas levels. Their
results point to global temperatures at the end of this century that may be significantly higher than current climate models are
predicting.
Using as a source the Vostok ice core, which provides information about glacial-interglacial cycles over hundreds of thousands of
years, the researchers were able to estimate the amounts of carbon dioxide and methane, two of the principal greenhouse gases, that
were released into the atmosphere in response to past global warming trends. Combining their estimates with standard climate model
assumptions, they calculated how much these rising concentration levels caused global temperatures to climb, further increasing
carbon dioxide and methane emissions, and so on.
“The results indicate a future that is going to be hotter than we think,” said Margaret Torn, who heads the Climate Change and
Carbon Management program for Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division, and is an Associate Adjunct Professor in UC Berkeley’s
Energy and Resources Group. She and John Harte, a UC Berkeley professor in the Energy and Resources Group and in the
Ecosystem Sciences Division of the College of Natural Resources, have co-authored a paper entitled: Missing feedbacks,
asymmetric uncertainties, and the underestimation of future warming, which appears in the May, 2006 issue of the journal
Geophysical Research Letters (GRL).
In their GRL paper, Torn and Harte make the case that the current climate change models, which are predicting a global temperature
increase of as much as 5.8 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, may be off by nearly 2.0 degrees Celsius because they only
take into consideration the increased greenhouse gas concentrations that result from anthropogenic (human) activities.
“If the past is any guide, then when our anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions cause global warming, it will alter earth system
processes, resulting in additional atmospheric greenhouse gas loading and additional warming,” said Torn.
Torn is an authority on carbon and nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems, and on the impacts of anthropogenic activities on
terrestrial ecosystem processes. Harte has been a leading figure for the past two decades on climate-ecosystem interactions, and has
authored or co-authored numerous books on environmental sciences, including the highly praised Consider a Spherical Cow: A
Course in Environmental Problem Solving.

Also increases feedback mechanisms to cause runaway warming.


Adam 2009 (3/11, David, the Guardian, "Amazon could shrink by 85% due to climate change, scientists say",
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/11/amazon-global-warming-trees/print, WEA)

Positive feedback Amazon dieback is one of the key positive feedbacks brought about by global warming. These are typically
runaway processes in which global temperature rises lead to further releases of CO², which in turn brings about more global
warming. In the Amazon this happens on a more localised scale but the result, increased forest death, also releases carbon into the
atmosphere.
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A2: Were already screwed


It’s not too late but if we don’t act in the next couple years we’re screwed.
Jagger 2008 - chair of the World Future Council (3/6, Bianca, Testimony to the House Select Energy Independence and Global
Warming Committee, "Renewable energy", CQ Congressional Testimony, Lexis Congressional, WEA)

The threat of a global climate disaster is no longer up for debate. The majority of scientists are in agreement. Governments have
previously been reluctant to accept this reality. However, notwithstanding all this sobering information, the agreements reached in
Bali, were extremely weak and inadequate.
I am sure we all agree with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon when he says that climate change is "the defining challenge of our
age". How to meet that challenge, while dealing with the already devastating consequences of floods, droughts and rising
temperatures, remains the great unanswered question. And the time to answer it is running out.
In its final report, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that the world must reverse the growth of
greenhouse gas emissions by 2015 to avert a global climate disaster. "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late," said Rajendra
Pachauri, who headed the panel, which shared the Nobel Peace Prize in October with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. "What we
do in the next two to three years will determine our future."
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AT: G8 Solves

G8 agreements are worthless without Congressional follow-up.


LA Times 7/10/2009 ("Global warming: The heat is on the U.S.", http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-summit10-
2009jul10,0,4746209.story, WEA)

Such international pacts are usually meaningless without the backing of Congress; President Clinton, after all, signed the Kyoto
Protocol to fight global warming in 1998, but it was never ratified by the Senate. That chamber once again finds itself in a position
to overrule the president as it considers a sweeping climate-change bill that was narrowly approved last month in the House. It
would fulfill Obama's G-8 promise by meeting the 2050 goal.
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Climate Models Good

Climate models are pretty sweet even they’re not perfect – new study by meteorologists proves
Science Daily 2008 (4/6, "Climate Models Look Good When Predicting Climate Change",
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080402100001.htm, WEA)

The accuracy of computer models that predict climate change over the coming decades has been the subject of debate among
politicians, environmentalists and even scientists. A new study by meteorologists at the University of Utah shows that current
climate models are quite accurate and can be valuable tools for those seeking solutions on reversing global warming trends. Most of
these models project a global warming trend that amounts to about 7 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 100 years.
Scientific opinion on climate change
In the study, co-authors Thomas Reichler and Junsu Kim from the Department of Meteorology at the University of Utah investigate
how well climate models actually do their job in simulating climate. To this end, they compare the output of the models against
observations for present climate. The authors apply this method to about 50 different national and international models that were
developed over the past two decades at major climate research centers in China, Russia, Australia, Canada, France, Korea, Great
Britain, Germany, and the United States. Of course, also included is the very latest model generation that was used for the very
recent (2007) report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
"Coupled models are becoming increasingly reliable tools for understanding climate and climate change, and the best models are
now capable of simulating present-day climate with accuracy approaching conventional atmospheric observations," said Reichler.
"We can now place a much higher level of confidence in model-based projections of climate change than in the past."
The many hours of studying models and comparing them with actual climate changes fulfills the increasing wish to know how much
one can trust climate models and their predictions. Given the significance of climate change research in public policy, the study's
results also provide important response to critics of global warming. Earlier this year, working group one of the IPCC released its
fourth global warming report. The University of Utah study results directly relate to this highly publicized report by showing that the
models used for the IPCC paper have reached an unprecedented level of realism.
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AT: Recent Events Disprove Climate Change


Our arguments have gained credibility recently because of accelerated ice melting.
McKibben 7/15/2009 - resident scholar at Middlebury (Bill, The Guardian, "Environment: race against time",
http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/?page=editorial&id=1164&catID=17, WEA)

But two years ago, almost to the week, scientists


noticed that the Arctic was losing ice at an almost unbelievable
pace, outstripping the climate models by decades. Clearly we’d passed a threshold, and global warming had
gone from future threat to present crisis. It wasn’t just Arctic ice; at about the same time methane levels in the atmosphere
began to spike, apparently as a result of thawing permafrost. Surveys of high altitude glaciers showed they were uniformly melting,
and much faster than expected. Oceanographers reported – incredulously – that we’d managed to make the oceans 30% more acidic.
Those observations changed everything – and they produced what is almost certainly the most important number in the world. A
Nasa team headed by James Hansen reported that the maximum amount of carbon the atmosphere can safely hold is 350ppm, at least
if we want a planet “similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.” Since we’re already at
390ppm, the message was clear: we don’t need to buy an insurance policy to reduce the threat of future warming. We need a fire
extinguisher, and we need it now.
Scientists have heard that message – in March they gathered by the thousands at an emergency conference to declare that the five-
year-old findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were dangerously out of date.
But politicians haven’t caught up. As we head toward the crucial Copenhagen talks slated for December, Obama and the rest of the
world’s political class are still using the dated science and its now stale conclusions. It’s easy to understand why: reaching a deal that
would meet even that 2 degree target is incredibly hard, given the recalcitrance of everyone from China’s Central Committee to the
Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Aiming even higher could undermine the entire process – asked about
tougher targets Obama recently said that they risked making “the best the enemy of the good.”

They misinterpret short-term statistical blips—our overall climate theory is still intact.
LA Times 7/10/2009 ("Global warming: The heat is on the U.S.", http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-summit10-
2009jul10,0,4746209.story, WEA)

The clamor from global-warming deniers has heated up as the nation gets closer to taking action, yet their comprehension of climate
science hasn't improved. A particularly common obfuscation from right-wing pundits is the "revelation" that global temperatures
have been declining since 1998, even as carbon emissions during the intervening 11 years have risen. This hardly debunks the
climate change theory. The cyclical El Niño phenomenon and heavy greenhouse gas concentrations combined to make 1998 the
hottest year in recorded history. Such statistical blips are properly ignored by most climatologists, who look at average temperatures
over time rather than year-to-year data. And the last decade was on average the hottest ever recorded.
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AT: Recent Events Disprove Climate Change

Short-term cooling trends mean nothing—they are statistical blips due to regional ocean cycles.
Revkin 2008 (3/2, Andrew C., New York Times, "Skeptics on Human Climate Impact Seize on Cold Spell",
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/science/02cold.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print, WEA)

The world has seen some extraordinary winter conditions in both hemispheres over the past year: snow in Johannesburg last June
and in Baghdad in January, Arctic sea ice returning with a vengeance after a record retreat last summer, paralyzing blizzards in
China, and a sharp drop in the globe’s average temperature.
It is no wonder that some scientists, opinion writers, political operatives and other people who challenge warnings about dangerous
human-caused global warming have jumped on this as a teachable moment.
“Earth’s ‘Fever’ Breaks: Global COOLING Currently Under Way,” read a blog post and news release on Wednesday from Marc
Morano, the communications director for the Republican minority on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
So what is happening?
According to a host of climate experts, including some who question the extent and risks of global warming, it is mostly good old-
fashioned weather, along with a cold kick from the tropical Pacific Ocean, which is in its La Niña phase for a few more months, a
year after it was in the opposite warm El Niño pattern.
If anything else is afoot — like some cooling related to sunspot cycles or slow shifts in ocean and atmospheric patterns that can
influence temperatures — an array of scientists who have staked out differing positions on the overall threat from global warming
agree that there is no way to pinpoint whether such a new force is at work.
Many scientists also say that the cool spell in no way undermines the enormous body of evidence pointing to a warming
world with disrupted weather patterns, less ice and rising seas should heat-trapping greenhouse gases from burning fossil
fuels and forests continue to accumulate in the air.
“The current downturn is not very unusual,” said Carl Mears, a scientist at Remote Sensing Systems, a private research group in
Santa Rosa, Calif., that has been using satellite data to track global temperature and whose findings have been held out as reliable by
a variety of climate experts. He pointed to similar drops in 1988, 1991-92, and 1998, but with a long-term warming trend clear
nonetheless.
“Temperatures are very likely to recover after the La Niña event is over,” he said.
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AT: Climate Change Theory Inconsistent

Skeptics are the ones who are inconsistent—climate change theory has been the same for decades.
Moore 7/16/2009 (John, National Post, "John Moore: One world government and global warming/climate change/whatever",
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/07/16/john-moore-one-world-government-and-global-warming-
climate-change-whatever.aspx, WEA)

A major talking point amongst the skeptics is a certain indignation over how “global warming” became “climate change”. Some
people think this was a marketing move by the international forces of socialism to protect our Coke-like franchise. Actually, the
terms are irrelevant. The general theory has been roughly the same for 150 years. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for the
skeptics who made a very canny transition three or four years ago from the stance that the world isn’t warming up to “no-one denies
the planet is warming up, we dispute the cause.”
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AT: Negative Feedbacks

Feedbacks are NET positive.


Homer-Dixon 2007 - Centre for International Governance Innovation Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of
International Affairs, Professor in the Centre for Environment and Business in the Faculty of Environment at the University of
Waterloo, PhD in IR from MIT (11/14, transcript of an address to the conference for a Globally Integrated Climate Policy for
Canada, "Positive Feedbacks, Dynamic Ice Sheets, and the Recarbonization of the Global Fuel Supply: The New Sense of Urgency
about Global Warming", http://www.homerdixon.com/articles/excerpt-new_urgency-thomas_homer-dixon.pdf, WEA)

Let me now say a little bit more about some other feedbacks. This is one of the punch lines of my presentation today. I mentioned
earlier that there are two general kinds of feedback: those that operate more- or-less directly on temperature, such as the ice-albedo
feedback, and those that operate on Earth’s carbon cycle, where warming produces a change in the amount of carbon in the
atmosphere. We have a fairly good understanding of the former and not such a good understanding of the latter. One carbon
feedback that worries scientists involves the melting of the permafrost in Siberia, Alaska, and Northern Canada. As the permafrost
melts it releases large quantities of methane – a very powerful greenhouse gas that, in turn, causes more warming. Scientists are also
concerned about the potential release of more carbon dioxide from forests: just yesterday researchers reported evidence that, as the
climate has warmed, the Canadian boreal forest has gone from being a carbon sink to a slight carbon emitter. And then there’s the
matter of pine bark beetles. As you likely know, we’ve lost wide swaths of pine forest in British Columbia and Alaska – huge areas
of trees – to bark-beetle infestation. As the climate warms, bark-beetle populations reproduce through two generations during the
summer, and beetle mortality is lower during the winter. Both these changes mean that beetle populations become much larger
overall. If these larger populations cross the Rockies and get into the boreal forest that stretches from Alberta to Newfoundland, and
if they kill that for- est, the forest will be susceptible to fire that could release astounding quantities of carbon dioxide. I asked
Stephen Schneider, a leading cli- mate scientist at Stanford, about the implications of such a develop- ment. He just shrugged and
said, ‘well, we’re talking about billions of tonnes of carbon.’ Other potentially destabilizing carbon-cycle feedbacks include the
drying of the Amazon and the possibility that if it dries it will burn; the drying of peat bogs in Indonesia, which have already been
susceptible to wide-spread burning; and the saturation of ocean carbon sinks. The Southern Ocean around Antarctica is no longer
absorbing carbon diox- ide to the extent it did in the past. Warming has produced much more vigorous winds closer to Antarctica.
These winds have churned up the sea and brought to the surface deep carbon-rich water, which absorbs less carbon from the
atmosphere. Also, higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are acidifying the oceans, a change could reduce populations of
molluscs and phytoplankton that absorb carbon into the calcium carbonate of their shells. Our climate has both positive and negative
feedbacks. The positive ones are self-reinforcing, and the negative ones equilibrate the climate and counteract the tendency towards
self-reinforcing climate change. The big question for climate scientists then is: What is the balance is between the positive and
negative feedbacks? A consensus has emerged over the last two years – a consensus again not reflected in the recent IPCC reports –
that the positive feedbacks in the climate system are much stronger and more numerous than the negative feedbacks. In a paper
published last year in Geophysical Research Letters, Scheffer, Brovkin, and Cox carried out a comprehensive assessment of the
feed- back situation.7 They wrote, ‘[we] produce an independent estimate of the potential implications of the positive feedback
between global tem- peratures and greenhouse gasses.’ In other words, these researchers focused specifically on carbon cycle
feedbacks. They went on, ‘we sug- gest that feedback of global temperature and atmosphere CO2 will pro- mote warming by an
extra 15% to 78% on a century scale over and above the IPCC estimates.’ Let’s turn to the issue of dynamic ice sheets. The
Greenland ice sheet is the second largest mass of ice in the world, after that in Antarctica. If we melt Greenland entirely, we get
seven metres of sea-level rise. If we melt the West Antarctic ice sheet, we get another five metres. If we melt the rest of Antarctica,
we get an additional fifty or so metres. The Greenland ice sheet will probably be the first to melt, because it’s the most vulnerable.
During the last interglacial period 125,000 years ago, when temperatures were roughly what they’re going to be at the end of this
century, much of Greenland melted, and sea levels were four to six metres higher than they are right now.
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AT: Solar Radiation Causes Warming

Sunlight variation doesn’t explain warming.


Science Daily 2006 - based on research by the DOE's Climate Change Resarch Division and the National Science Foundation
(5/22, "Feedback Loops In Global Climate Change Point To A Very Hot 21st Century",
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060522151248.htm, WEA)

In examining data recorded in the Vostok ice core, scientists have known that cyclic variations in the amount of sunlight reaching the
earth trigger glacial-interglacial cycles. However, the magnitude of warming and cooling temperatures cannot be explained by
variations in sunlight alone. Instead, large rises in temperatures are more the result of strong upsurges in atmospheric carbon dioxide
and methane concentrations set-off by the initial warming.

Solar radiation theory is inaccurate; their authors are just stuck in denial in the face of insurmountable
evidence.
Homer-Dixon 2007 - Centre for International Governance Innovation Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of
International Affairs, Professor in the Centre for Environment and Business in the Faculty of Environment at the University of
Waterloo, PhD in IR from MIT (11/14, transcript of an address to the conference for a Globally Integrated Climate Policy for
Canada, "Positive Feedbacks, Dynamic Ice Sheets, and the Recarbonization of the Global Fuel Supply: The New Sense of Urgency
about Global Warming", http://www.homerdixon.com/articles/excerpt-new_urgency-thomas_homer-dixon.pdf, WEA)

The third argument concerns radiation from the sun. The most com- mon argument now put forward by climate sceptics is that the
recent warming is a result of changes in the intensity of the sun’s radiation. But a major review article last year in the journal
Nature showed that it’s virtually impossible to explain the warming we’ve seen in the last 40 years through changes in solar
radiation.5 This research is pretty well definitive, too. So, these three arguments used by sceptics have been largely put to rest. We
are now down to a hard core of climate change deniers who are essentially impervious to any evidence – and they write me all the
time. Sometimes I engage in an amusing exercise just to see how detached from reality they can actually be. I send them scientific
papers and reports on the latest climate research, and invariably the evidence in these reports makes absolutely no difference to
their point of view. This kind of psychological resistance points to something I think we need to confront directly: a process of
denial of evidence that is quite powerful in some parts of our society and in some individuals. I think there are three stages of
denial, which I talk about in my latest book.6 The first is existential denial, where one denies the actual existence of the
phenomenon. But existential denial is hard to sustain when the evi- dence becomes overwhelming, as is now the case with climate
change. So, people tend to move away from existential denial and start engag- ing in what I call consequential denial, in which they
deny that the con- sequences of the problem are going to be particularly serious. This is essentially the position taken by a lot of
climate change sceptics now. They’re saying, ‘okay, there’s climate change, but we can deal with it. It’s basically a pollution
problem that is not so serious. We can adapt as necessary.’ The evidence is also increasing, of course, that we won’t be able to
adapt adequately to the magnitude of the climate change that’s likely even this century – or that the economic and social
consequences of this change will be so great that, if we try to adapt, we’ll still need to aggres- sively mitigate our output of carbon
dioxide. So the final position, once it becomes impossible to support even consequential denial, is what I call fatalistic denial: one
basically accepts that the problem is real and that it’s going to hurt a lot, but then one simply says, ‘there’s nothing we can do about
it.’ In my future research I want to explore the larger social consequences of widespread fatalistic denial. I think they could be
astonishingly bad. Let me go on to quickly give you a sense of the three issues that I talked about before: positive feedback, ice-
sheet dynamics, and recar- bonization of the fuel system. Let’s talk first about what the recent IPCC Working Group I report said
about global warming to date – that the ‘warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of
increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.’
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AT: Natural Temperature Cycles

The last century’s warming was beyond the scope of normal temperature cycles—only our methodology
has been externally reviewed.
Homer-Dixon 2007 - Centre for International Governance Innovation Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of
International Affairs, Professor in the Centre for Environment and Business in the Faculty of Environment at the University of
Waterloo, PhD in IR from MIT (11/14, transcript of an address to the conference for a Globally Integrated Climate Policy for
Canada, "Positive Feedbacks, Dynamic Ice Sheets, and the Recarbonization of the Global Fuel Supply: The New Sense of Urgency
about Global Warming", http://www.homerdixon.com/articles/excerpt-new_urgency-thomas_homer-dixon.pdf, WEA)

The first argument concerns the long-term trend of Earth’s average surface temperature. In 1999, Mann, Bradley, and Hughes
released a paper that estimated average global temperature for the last millen- nium. This work was subsequently updated by Mann
and Jones in 2003 to provide a temperature record from the years 200 to 2000 AD.2 These researchers combined a number of
different paleoclimatological records – like tree rings and coral growth rates – that are ‘proxy’ measures of atmospheric
temperature during various historical epochs. They cobbled these proxy measures together to get a long-term record of the planet’s
temperature. Their graph famously showed a sharp uptick over the last half-century, which is why it was widely labelled the
‘hockey stick’ graph. It has been one of the most contentious pieces of evidence used to support the claim that we are experiencing
an abnormally warm period. You are probably familiar with this debate; it has been covered in the pages of the Globe and Mail. In
response to criticism of the statistical methodology used to cobble these records together, the National Acad- emy of Sciences in the
United States created a panel to examine the Mann et al. methodology. The panel released its results last year, saying that, overall,
while some questions remained about the methodology, the original study’s conclusions were largely correct: the warming of the
last 40 years very likely made Earth hotter than anytime in the last 1000 years, and it certainly made Earth hotter than anytime in the
last 400 years. I think the National Academy of Sciences report dealt with the hockey stick issue; it’s off the table now, except for
some – and I use this word deliberately – crazies out there.3
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AT: Satellite Data Proves No Warming

Recent reviews of satellite data discrepancies have discredited skeptics.


Homer-Dixon 2007 - Centre for International Governance Innovation Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of
International Affairs, Professor in the Centre for Environment and Business in the Faculty of Environment at the University of
Waterloo, PhD in IR from MIT (11/14, transcript of an address to the conference for a Globally Integrated Climate Policy for
Canada, "Positive Feedbacks, Dynamic Ice Sheets, and the Recarbonization of the Global Fuel Supply: The New Sense of Urgency
about Global Warming", http://www.homerdixon.com/articles/excerpt-new_urgency-thomas_homer-dixon.pdf, WEA)

The second argument concerns satellite data. There has been an enor- mous debate about an apparent discrepancy between data
from satel- lites that show no warming in the troposphere and data from ground- level instruments that show warming. The
argument was originally made by John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville. But recent studies have looked very
carefully at this apparent discrepancy between satellite and ground-level data and have shown that Christy and his colleagues made
a number of methodological and statistical errors. Once these errors are corrected, the discrepancy disappears.4 The satellite record
actually shows tropospheric warming – in fact, it shows both tropospheric warming and, as we would expect from glo- bal warming
theory, stratospheric cooling.
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Warming Bad—Economy

Climate change kills the insurance industry and the overall economy.
Gelbspan 2004 - longtime editor and reporter for the Philadelphia Bulletin Washington Post and Bostong Globe, covered the
Stockholm UN Conference on the Environment in 1973 and addressed the Davos World Economic forum in 1998 ("Boiling point",
http://www.wattpad.com/28668-Boiling-Point-by-Ross-Gelbspan-Excerpt, WEA)

The responses of the insurance industry have been equally schizophrenic. The big European insurers have been politically proactive.
In the early rounds of the climate talks, they aligned themselves with a coalition calling for the largest initial cuts (20 percent below
1990 levels)--the Alliance of Small Island States, from Jamaica to the Philippines, countries whose stability is threatened by rising
sea levels and increasingly intense storm surges. The European insurers have also spent large amounts on public education,
newspaper advertising, and political capital on the climate threat.
By contrast, most U.S. insurers have been economically defensive and politically invisible. Insurers in this country have withdrawn
coverage further and further inland from coastlines. They are refusing to insure known storm corridors and selling the risk off to the
public. They are keeping silent politically.
The concern of the European insurers is reflected in their estimates of coming economic losses. The United Nations Environmental
Programme (UNEP) has projected that climate damages will amount to $150 billion a year within this decade. The world's largest
insurer-Munich Reinsurance-has said that within several decades, those losses will amount to $300 billion a year. And two years ago,
Britain's biggest insurer projected that, unchecked, climate change could bankrupt the global economy by 2065--from property
damage due to sea level rise and increasingly severe storms and floods; destruction of energy, health, and communications
infrastructures; crop failures; losses in the travel and tourism industries; and public health costs.

Economic downturn causes global nuclear war


Mead 92 (Walter Russell, President’s Fellow @ World Policy Institute @ New School, New Perspectives Quarterly, “Outer Limits to
America’s Turn Inward”, 9:3, Summer, p. 30)

If so, this new failure—the failure to develop an international system to hedge against the possibility of worldwide depression—will
open their eyes to their folly. Hundreds of millions—billions—of people around the world have pinned their hopes on the
international market economy. They and their leaders have embraced market principles—and drawn closer to the west—because
they believe that our system can work for them. But what if it can’t? What if the global economy stagnates—or even shrinks? In
that case, we will face a new period of international conflict: South against North, rich against poor. Russia, China, India—these
countries with their billions of people and their nuclear weapons will pose a much greater danger to world order than Germany and
Japan did in the ‘30s.
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Warming Bad—Water Wars


Warming causes massive droughts ---- puts millions at risk and leads to water wars
Washington Post 7 (Doug Struck, “Warming Will Exacerbate Global Water Conflicts”, 8-20,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/19/AR2007081900967.html)

As global warming heats the planet, there will be more desperate measures. The climate will be wetter in some places, drier in others. Changing weather patterns will leave
millions of people without dependable supplies of water for drinking, irrigation and power, a growing stack of studies conclude. At
Stanford University, 170 miles away, Stephen Schneider, editor of the journal Climatic Change and a lead author for the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), pours himself a cup of tea and
says the future is clear. "As the air gets warmer, there will be more water in the atmosphere. That's settled science," he said. But where, and when, it comes down is the big
global warming will mean long, dry periods.
uncertainty. "You are going to intensify the hydrologic cycle. Where the atmosphere is configured to have high pressure and droughts, Where
the atmosphere is configured to be wet, you will get more rain, more gully washers. "Global warming will intensify drought," he says. "And it will intensify floods." According to the IPCC, that means a drying out of
areas such as southern Europe, the Mideast, North Africa, South Australia, Patagonia and the U.S. Southwest. These will not be small droughts. Richard Seager, a senior researcher at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
of Columbia University, looked at 19 computer models of the future under current global warming trends. He found remarkable consistency: Sometime before 2050, the models predicted, the Southwest will be gripped in a
dry spell akin to the Great Dust Bowl drought that lasted through most of the 1930s. The spacing of tree rings suggests there have been numerous periods of drought going back to A.D. 800, he said. But, "mechanistically,
this is different. These projections clearly come from a warming forced by rising greenhouse gases." Farmers in the Central Valley, where a quilt of lush, green orchards on brown hills displays the alchemy of irrigation,
want to believe this is a passing dry spell. They thought a wet 2006 ended a seven-year drought, but this year is one of the driest on record. For the first time, state water authorities shut off irrigation pumps to large parts of
the valley, forcing farmers to dig wells. Farther south and east, the once-mighty Colorado River is looking sickly, siphoned by seven states before dribbling into Mexico. Its reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are
drying, leaving accusatory rings on the shorelines and imperiling river-rafting companies. Seager predicts that drought will prompt dislocations similar to those of the Dust Bowl. "It will certainly cause movements of
people. For example, as Mexico dries out, there will be migration from rural areas to cities and then the U.S.," he said. "There is an emerging situation of climate refugees." Global warming threatens water supplies in
other ways. Much of the world's fresh water is in glaciers atop mountains. They act as mammoth storehouses . In wet or cold seasons, the glaciers grow with
snow. In dry and hot seasons, the edges slowly melt, gently feeding streams and rivers. Farms below are dependent on that meltwater; huge cities have grown up on the belief the mountains will always give them drinking

water; hydroelectric dams rely on the flow to generate power. But the atmosphere's temperature is rising fastest at high altitudes. The glaciers are melting, initially increasing the runoff, but gradually
getting smaller and smaller. Soon, many will disappear . At the edge of the Quelccaya Glacier, the largest ice cap in the Peruvian Andes, Ohio State University researcher Lonnie Thompson sat in a cold
tent at a rarified 17,000 feet. He has spent more time in the oxygen-thin "death zone" atop mountains than any other scientist, drilling ice cores and measuring glaciers. He has watched the Quelccaya Glacier shrink by 30
percent in 33 years. Down the mountain, a multitude of rivulets seep from the edge of Quelccaya to irrigate crops of maize, the water flowing through irrigation canals built by the Incas. Even farther downstream, the

"What do you think is going to happen when this stops?" Thompson mused of the water. "Do you
runoff helps feed the giant capital, Lima, another city built in a desert.

think all the people below will just sit there? No. It's crazy to think they won't go anywhere. And what do you think will happen when they go to places
where people already live?" The potential for conflict is more than theoretical. Turkey, Syria and Iraq bristle over the Euphrates
and Tigris rivers. Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt trade threats over the Nile. The United Nations has said water scarcity is behind the
bloody wars in Sudan's Darfur region. In Somalia, drought has spawned warlords and armies. Already, the World Health Organization says, 1 billion people lack access to potable water. In
northern China, retreating glaciers and shrinking wetlands that feed the Yangtze River prompted researchers to warn that water supplies for hundreds of millions of people may be at risk.

Water wars go nuclear


Weiner in ’90 (Jonathan, Pulitzer Prize winning author, “The Next One Hundred Years”, p. 270)
If we do not destroy ourselves with the A-bomb and the H-bomb, then we may destroy ourselves with the C-bomb, the Change
Bomb. And in a world as interlinked as ours, one explosion may lead to the other. Already in the Middle East, from North Africa to
the Persian Gulf and from the Nile to the Euphrates, tensions over dwindling water supplies and rising populations are reaching what
many experts describe as a flashpoint. A climate shift in that single battle-scarred nexus might trigger international tensions that will
unleash some of the 60,000 nuclear warheads the world has stockpiled since Trinity.
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Ext. Warming Causes Water Scarcity


Climate change increases global water scarcity.
Daley 7/14/2009 (Beth, Boston Globe, "Global warming's timing problem",
http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/green/greenblog/2009/07/global_warmings_timing_problem.html, WEA)

Evidence is growing that climate change is exacerbating water scarcity problems around the world.
But now, a study shows that parts of even drenched New England may be facing water shortages as the world warms and demand
increases.
New U.S. Geological Survey research shows that increased demand for water and a warmer climate will likely decrease the amount
of water available in the streams and aquifers of southeast New Hampshire’s Seacoast region. Similar worries are on the minds of
Massachusetts and other New England water scientists.
USGS hydrologist Thomas Mack estimates that summer stream flows, which helps feed groundwater aquifers, in the Seacoast region
could be ten percent less by 2025 than they are today. Meanwhile, warmer temperatures could increase evaporation and lengthen the
growing season where water is sucked up by plants.
A lot of the problem has to do with timing. About half of the water that recharges the region’s aquifer is from spring snowmelt, said
Mack, allowing it to be plentiful to residents for summer lawn watering and other uses.
But global warming is causing the snow to melt earlier by around two to four weeks. At the same time, more rain, instead of snow, is
expected to fall in the winter. That means the aquifer is filling up earlier in the spring.
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Warming Bad—Forests

Climate change kills global forests through bark beetle spread.


Gelbspan 2004 - longtime editor and reporter for the Philadelphia Bulletin Washington Post and Boston Globe, covered the
Stockholm UN Conference on the Environment in 1973 and addressed the Davos World Economic forum in 1998 ("Boiling point",
http://www.wattpad.com/28668-Boiling-Point-by-Ross-Gelbspan-Excerpt, WEA)

The risk, of course, is not confined to humans. In Canada, an explosion in the population of tree-killing bark beetles is spreading
rapidly through the forests. As of late 2002, the deadly bark beetles had spread throughout an area of British Columbia nearly three-
fourths the size of Sweden--about 9 million acres. Officials attributed the spread of the insects to unusually warm winters.
The massive wildfires that devastated southern California in the summer of 2003 were also made more intense by a rapid increase in
the population of bark beetles that had killed large numbers of trees, turning them into tinder for the fires that blanketed the area
around Los Angeles.
But the impact of the warming-driven population boom of insects on humans is likely to be at least--if not more--severe than the
impact on the world's forests.

Forests prevent extinction


Pew Charitable Trusts 7 (Press Release, “Boreal Forest is World’s Carbon Vault”, 8-12,
http://www.pewtrusts.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=32032)

“The Boreal Forest is to carbon what Fort Knox is to gold,” said Jeff Wells, the Senior Scientist at the International Boreal
Conservation Campaign (IBCC), an initiative of the Pew Environment Group. “It’s an internationally important repository for
carbon, built up over thousands of years. The maps released today document where and how these vital carbon reserves are
distributed across Canada. We should do everything we can to ensure that the carbon in this storehouse is conserved.” With 50
percent of the world's remaining original forests stretching across Canada, Alaska, Russia and Scandinavia just below the Arctic, the
Boreal is the largest land reservoir of carbon on Earth. Globally, the Boreal Forest houses 22 percent of the total carbon stored on the
world’s land surface. This is largely because in boreal climates, the colder temperatures reduce decomposition rates, resulting in
deep organic soils that are thousands of years old. Scott Goetz, a Senior Scientist at Woods Hole Research Center, noted, “The
mapping analysis released today provides vital information to inform modeling of the role of boreal and arctic ecosystems and their
feedbacks to the global climate system.” Canada’s Boreal Forest stores an estimated 186 billion tons of carbon in its widespread
forest and peatland ecosystems—the equivalent of 27 years’ worth of global carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.
Global Forest Watch Canada compiled the detailed analysis for the International Boreal Conservation Campaign (IBCC) after
reviewing extensive government and scientific data of the region. This globally significant carbon storehouse is due to three key
factors: Canada’s Boreal Forest Includes the World’s Largest Peatlands. Peatlands are recognized worldwide as highly important for
carbon storage, storing at least six times as much carbon per hectare as forested mineral soils. Canada has the largest area of
peatlands in the world, encompassing 12 percent of the nation’s land area. The map released today illustrates the vast Boreal
peatlands that stretch from Quebec and Labrador westward to the Mackenzie Valley, with significant concentrations in northern
Ontario and Manitoba. Vast Permafrost Areas are Key to Carbon Storage Permafrost, or permanently frozen ground, occupies about
25 percent of the world’s and 50 percent of Canada’s total land area. The permafrost map released today shows that the northern
portions of Canada’s Boreal Forest—particularly the western Boreal region—are occupied by vast areas of carbon-rich permafrost.
“The carbon frozen into Canada’s permafrost, including roughly a third of the Boreal region, is one of North America’s largest stores
of carbon,” said Dr. David Schindler, a Professor of Biology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. “It’s similar to a bank vault
containing one of the world’s most valuable and most influential resources for impacting climate change.” Boreal Soils Rich in
Carbon The third map of the analysis depicts the carbon stored in Canadian Boreal soils. The map shows several carbon hotspots
distributed across Canada. Nearly 90 percent of the organic carbon found in Canadian soils occurs in Boreal and Tundra ecosystems.
Canada’s Boreal Region is Life-Support for Planet “Clearly, Canada’s Boreal region is a life-support system for the planet because
of its key role in carbon storage,” said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Canada
Program. “The world recognizes that tackling global warming involves both reducing emissions and stopping deforestation and
forest degradation. Obviously, the growing tar sands destruction and associated carbon emissions in Alberta will seriously hamper
Canada’s ability to meet its commitment under Kyoto. It is our hope that the Canadian government will reduce emissions from tar
sands development, continue taking steps to protect the Boreal and recognize its tremendous value as a global carbon storehouse.”
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PICS Legit
FIRST, OUR OFFENSE –
a. Increases In Depth Research- the PIC forces the debate around a specific section of the aff’s plan. The debate is not over a
trivial portion of the plan if we have evidence and an impact.

b. Better Plan Writing- PICs require Affs to write better plans – a world without PICs does not force Aff accountability on
plan writing, which is key to negative ground.

c. Key To Negative Ground- defending the status quo is not a strategic option. Most disadvantages can’t outweigh the Aff. A
DA to test the bad portion of plan will never outweigh the Aff.

d. Best Policy Option- The point in debate is to find the best policy option to solve the problem at hand. PICs are real world
– they parallel the amendment process in Congress as lawmakers seek to find the best policy option.

AND, OUR DEFENSE -


a. All CP’s Are PICS- It is impossible to have a counter plan by definition, without a word, action, or actor that is part of the
Affirmative’s policy.

b. The Aff should defend all parts of the Plan- We are only asking the affirmative to defend their plan. It’s not unreasonable or
unpredictable.

c. Err Neg On Theory- Negative has negation theory, side bias- infinite prep time, first and last speech for affirmative, and aff
plan choice.
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Saiki Auto CP and DA

AT: Unpredictable

1. Answer the Net Benefit: Just answer the net benefit which answers even the least predictable
PICs.
2. PICs are the only predictable counter-plans, they are both the most common counter-plans, and
rooter on the plan, which the affirmative knows and should be able to defend.
3. Limited number of PICs: very few potential PICs could sustain a net benefit.
4. Fairness: Affirmative team knows the plan better than the negative and should be able to prove
the reasons to prefer the plan over the counter-plan
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Saiki Auto CP and DA
AT: Kills Ground

1. Affirmative steals negative ground: they use the status quo mechanisms like funding and
enforcement for plan implementation
2. No reason why plan is exclusive affirmative ground: no warrant why part of the plan isn’t our
ground
3. Kills all counter-plans: negative often has to use plan enforcement, funding, and adoption, all
legitimate under their interpretation
4. Affirmative burden to defend entire plan: counter-plans check flaws in affirmative advocacy
5. Competition checks: most effective and least arbitrary way to determine affirmative ground
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Saiki Auto CP and DA
AT: PICs Warrant the Plan

1. False: net benefits warrant counter-plan text


2. Affirmative should defend all of the plan: they have infinite prep on their own plan, if they lose
to this counter-plan, they’ll do more research.
3. No impact: maybe the plan is good, but the counter-plan is still better
4. No voter: risk of net benefits discredits voting for the plan.
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Saiki Auto CP and DA
AT: PICs Redundant

1. So is Taylor Swift: lots of generic arguments are run, not an impact and doesn’t make them
illegit, affirmative should just be prepared
2. PIC isn’t generic: specific net ben evidence proves the counter-plan is tailored.
3. Turn: PICs reduce generic debate by focusing on less examined portions of the plan
4. Competition prevents it from being generic: no counter-plan competes with all cases.
5. No impact: don’t vote for the plan because the reasons not to do it might be generic.
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AT: Encourages Vague-Plan writing

1. PICs encourage specific plan texts: makes the affirmative responsible for all things in the text,
less likely to be competitive if the plan is worded well
2. Cross-X clarifies: whatever the vagueness is can be worked out in cross-x.
3. Other things mandate affirmative specificity: solvency advocates, agent-specific arguments, and
vagueness mandate that affirmatives write specific plans.
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Saiki Auto CP and DA
AT: Infinitely Regressive

1. No specific abuse: we aren’t running a ridiculous exclusion, our evidence warrants the
distinction so don’t vote us down
2. Potential abuse isn’t a voting issue: in round abuse arguments always check abuse, when teams
run minus a penny, they lose and the problem is solved.
3. Reciprocal: perms trim down PICs so abuse is on both sides and not a voter.
4. Reasonable expectation: affirmative should be able to defend plan implementation, funding, and
all other key levels.
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Saiki Auto CP and DA
AT: Kills Clash

1. Just an excuse: not our fault they aren’t prepared


2. Competition ensures clash: counter-plan provides reasons to reject the plan, some would call
it the net benefit
3. Ground equity is more important: the affirmative has unlimited prep time and frames this
round, we need our PICs
4. No impact: making us debate theory is worse than any PIC debate
5. It’s not our fault they read generic theory instead of clashing on the policy level.
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Saiki Auto CP and DA
AT: Makes 1AC Irrelevant

1. Makes the negative strategy good: the point of our argument is to make the 1AC irrelevant, not a
reason to vote affirmative.
2. Their fault: they chose to word the plan this way, could have made the 1AC relevant.
3. Perm checks: they could make the PIC irrelevant.
4. Competition proves relevance: proves why the 1AC can be defended against the counter-plan.
5. Lots of good arguments make the 1AC irrelevant: T, K’s, disadvantages, and inherency all make
the 1AC irrelevant because the judge won’t vote for it.
6. Not irrelevant: we agree that it’s just part of the policy comparison
7. Makes the 1AC relevant by making them defend the entire plan.
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AT: Severs Extra Competitive Planks

1. Still competitive by net benefits: even if there’s overlap, making the two not mutually exclusive,
it’s competitive because excluding a part means that it’s better to do a part of the plan alone.
2. Kills counter-plans: funding and enforcement and federal option become uncompetitive, making
every counter-plan unable to solve.
3. Confuses jurisdictional and policy issues: severance is legitimate on topicality.
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Saiki Auto CP and DA

AT: Justifies Severance

1. False: affirmative can still read disads to the counter-plan based off plan action that’s not in the
PIC
2. Equivalent to affirmative conditionality which is bad:
a. Plan focus: key to predictable debate because it frames the entirety of the debate.
b. Negation theory: negative just has to disprove affirmative’s advocacy, shifting affirmative
advocacy creates a moving target in which the negative team is constantly trying to
disprove.
c. Voter for competitive equity
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Saiki Auto CP and DA
3.

Intrinsicness Good Frontline

1. Intrisicness tests competition: proves competition of plan and counter-plan is possible, rendering
the counter-plan noncompetitive
2. Increases negative ground: they can run disads that link to the new portion, justifies new offense
in the block
3. Proves plan is a good idea: perms in addition to the 1AC plan test which means that the plan is
still true
4. No advocacy shift: just clarifying 1AC intent, not changing our stance in round.

5. Reciprocity: no different than counter-plans, test the germaneness of the link to the plan. If neg

6. Not a voter: at best just reject the argument not the team.
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Saiki Auto CP and DA
AT: Kills Negative Ground

1. Reciprocity: negative can read advantage counter-plans to test the link to our advantages,
affirmative can test disadvantage links.
2. They can read a disadvantage to the test of intrinsicness, solves the offense.

3. No right to that ground: intrinsicness weeds out bad arguments, we shouldn’t be discussing
arguments that aren’t germane to the plan and kills real world education and policy making
skills.

4. They have plenty of ground: they can read inflation, immigration, military, and other disads.
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Saiki Auto CP and DA

AT: Moving Target

1. Not a moving target: it’s a no link argument, not an advocacy.

2. No different than a counter-plan: has a text and they can read disads to it.
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Saiki Auto CP and DA

Topical CP legit
1. The negative’s job is to refute the plan, not the resolution; it doesn’t matter if the counterplan is
topical.
2. Most real world- Bill congress are improved by adding/removing something but keeping the
same framework
3. This isn’t LD kids- The policy implication mean the Aff should have to defend all the action of
the plan
4. Education- We learn how the plan can be improved from its original proposal
5. Double edged sword- The aff can defend against millions of PICs or a handful of T CPs
6. Win the net benefit and the CP goes away
7. It’s a reason to reject the argument not the team
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Saiki Auto CP and DA

A2: Perm
1. Perm links to the net benefit- Doing both would be the same as doing the plan

2. The plan and the CP are completely different the CP defends 11 cars while the Aff
defends “almost all”

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