paradigm october 12 pf

PARADIGMResearch

OCTOBER

2012-2013

PUBLIC

FORUM

POSITION

PAPER

PUBLIC

FORUM

POSITION

PAPER

DEVELOPED COUNTRIES HAVE A

MORAL OBLIGATION TO MITIGATE

THE EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE.

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The Paradigm NFL Public Forum Position Paper October 2012 by Dr. David Cram Helwich Copyright © 2012 by Paradigm Research, Inc. All rights reserved. First Edition Printed In The United States Of America For information on Paradigm Debate Products: PARADIGM RESEARCH P.O. Box 2095 Denton, Texas 76202 Toll-Free 800-837-9973 Fax 940-380-1129 Web /www.oneparadigm.com/ E-mail [email protected] All rights are reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced by any means - graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems - without the written permission of the publisher. Making copies of this book, or any portion, is a violation of United States and international copyright laws.

Paradigm Research 2012-13 October Public Forum—Climate Ethics

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Climate Ethics: Table of Contents Climate Ethics: Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 4

CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION JUSTIFIED Mitigation Justified: Topshelf .................................................................................................................... 9 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real--Topshelf .............................................................................. 11 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real--Consensus ........................................................................... 14 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real--CO2 Causes ........................................................................ 16 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real--Feedbacks ........................................................................... 17 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real--Humans Are to Blame ........................................................ 18 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real--Indicators ............................................................................ 20 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real--IPCC ................................................................................... 21 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real--Solar Variability ................................................................. 22 Mitigatoin Justified: Climate Change Real--Source Indicts ..................................................................... 23 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real--Temperatures ...................................................................... 24 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real--Answers to "Uncertainty" ................................................... 25 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Agriculture .......................................................................... 26 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Biodiversity ......................................................................... 28 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Coral .................................................................................... 30 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Drought ............................................................................... 31 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Economy ............................................................................. 32 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Environment ........................................................................ 34 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Equity (General) .................................................................. 36 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Equity (Agriculture) ............................................................ 39 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Equity (Children) ................................................................. 41 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Equity (Domestic Communities of Color) ........................... 42 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Equity (Global South) ......................................................... 44 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Equity (War) ........................................................................ 46 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Extreme Weather ................................................................. 47 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Future Generations .............................................................. 48 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Health (General) .................................................................. 50 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Health (Malaria) .................................................................. 51 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Health (Vector-Borne Disease) ........................................... 52 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Human Rights ...................................................................... 53 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Mass Death .......................................................................... 55 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Migration ............................................................................. 56 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Moral Considerations .......................................................... 58 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Multiwarrant ........................................................................ 59 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Ocean Acidification ............................................................. 61 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Plankton ............................................................................... 62 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Runaway Greenhouse .......................................................... 63 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change--Sea Level Rise ............................................................................ 65 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Terrorism ............................................................................. 66 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--War (General) ...................................................................... 67 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--War (Africa) ........................................................................ 69 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--War (Failed States) .............................................................. 70 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Water ................................................................................... 72 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Water ................................................................................... 73 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Answers to "Adaptation" ..................................................... 74 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Answers to "CO2 Fertilization" ........................................... 75 Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Answers to "Ice Age" .......................................................... 77 Mitigation Justified: Succeeds--Carbon Tax ............................................................................................ 78 Mitigation Justified: Succeeds--Economy ................................................................................................ 79 Mitigation Justified: Succeeds--Fossil Fuel Transition ............................................................................ 80 Mitigation Justified: Succeeds--Must Act Now ....................................................................................... 81 Mitigatoin Justified: Succeeds--Survival Ethics Justifies ......................................................................... 83 Mitigation Justified: Succeeds--450ppm Target ....................................................................................... 84 Mitigation Justified: Succeeds--Answers to "Coercion Objections" ........................................................ 87 Mitigation Justified: Succeeds--Answers to "Transition Costs" ............................................................... 88 Mitigation Justified: Succeeds--Answers to "We Are Not Responsible / Sunstein" ................................ 89


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CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION NOT JUSTIFIED Mitigation Not Justified: Topshelf ........................................................................................................... 90 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change False--Consensus Answers .................................................... 92 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change False--CO2 Not to Blame ...................................................... 93 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change False--Feedbacks ................................................................... 94 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change False--Funding Bias............................................................... 95 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change False--Indicators .................................................................... 96 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change False--IPCC Answers ............................................................ 97 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change False--Models ........................................................................ 99 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change False--Natural ...................................................................... 100 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change False--Peer Review Answers ............................................... 101 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change False--Temperatures ............................................................ 103 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Agriculture .......................................................... 105 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Biodiversity ......................................................... 107 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Coral ................................................................... 109 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Equity .................................................................. 110 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Extreme Weather ................................................ 111 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Forests ................................................................. 112 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--General ................................................................ 113 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Health (General) .................................................. 115 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Health (Malaria) .................................................. 117 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Health (Vector-Borne Disease) ........................... 118 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Hurricanes ........................................................... 119 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Ocean Acidification ............................................ 120 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Precautionary Principle ....................................... 121 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Sea Level Rise..................................................... 122 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Water / War ......................................................... 123 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Good--CO2 Fertilization (Top) ............................................ 124 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Good--CO2 Fertilization (General Ext) ............................... 125 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Good--CO2 Fertilization (Plant Growth) ............................. 127 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Good--Greening ................................................................... 129 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Good--Ice Age (Top) ........................................................... 130 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Good--Ice Age (Coming Now) ............................................ 131 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Good--Ice Age (Warming Prevents) .................................... 132 Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Good--Ice Age (Ice Age Bad).............................................. 133 Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Adaptation Superior .............................................................................. 134 Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Collective Responsibility Problems ...................................................... 136 Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Domestic Poor Poeple ........................................................................... 137 Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Economy ............................................................................................... 138 Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Economy (Answers to "Green Jobs") .................................................... 139 Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Geoengineering Superior ...................................................................... 141 Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Growth / Innovation (General) .............................................................. 142 Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Growth / Innovation (Poor Nations) ...................................................... 144 Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Growth Strategy Superior ..................................................................... 145 Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Mitigation is a Poor Strategy ................................................................. 147 Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Reparations Superior ............................................................................. 148 Mitigation Not Justified: Fails--Developing Country Emissions ........................................................... 151 Mitigation Not Justified: Fails--International Agreements ..................................................................... 153 Mitigation Not Justified: Fails--Momentum / Inevitable ........................................................................ 154 Mitigation Not Justified: Fails--Offsets (Forestry) ................................................................................. 156 Mitigation Not Justified: Fails--Rebound Effect .................................................................................... 157


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Climate Ethics: Introduction Resolved: Developed countries have a moral obligation to mitigate the effects of climate change. The October 2012 Public Forum topic addresses what is perhaps the most important environmental issue of our time, climate change. Whether the planet is warming because of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions remains one of the most hotly contested questions in American politics. The U.S. Congress has repeatedly failed in efforts to pass legislation to address the problem, with warming skeptics able to block a variety of proposals designed to cut the country’s emission of greenhouse gases. Similarly, the world’s nations remain deadlocked over a new international accord to replace the lackluster Kyoto Protocol, with most analysts claiming that the prospects for a global emissions accord are rather dim. This situation is potentially quite dangerous, since many prominent scientists argue that climate change threatens to unravel the fabric of vital ecosystems and irrevocably alter critical geophysical processes upon which modern human society depends. On the other hand, there are a number of warming skeptics who contest whether warming is real, whether any changes in temperatures are human caused, and whether the benefits of cutting carbon dioxide emissions outweigh the costs. This is an issue that is truly ripe for debate. This introduction will devote the bulk of its space to discussing the varied interpretations of the science and implications of climate change, and wrap up with some observations about the resolution. This is an example of a topic where having a firm grasp of the subject material can be an enormous advantage, so we strongly suggest that you carefully review the evidence contained in this book and work diligently on your own research. IS THE EARTH WARMING? Humans have recognized for many decades that carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases are responsible for a warming of the Earth’s surface. Carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, and other trace gases in the atmosphere absorb and emit infrared radiation from sunlight, which in turn warms the Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere. Without this natural “greenhouse effect,” the temperatures on the planet’s surface would be far lower, perhaps so cold that most of the planet would be unable to support life. We also know from geological evidence, including ancient ice cores taken from ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland that carbon dioxide levels have varied substantially throughout the planet’s history. Concern about global climate change has been a topic of scientific and public debate for over forty years. However, global warming was not the original source of apprehension. Many climatologists (scientists who study climate) were first concerned, beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, that the planet’s climate was cooling as the Earth descended into a new ice age. The issue was so controversial that it was featured in major popular press publications. This concern is certainly understandable—the entire recorded history of humanity has occurred in the relatively warm “interglacial” period that followed the last ice age, which ended approximately 10,000 years ago. However, the current warmth is only ‘temporary’ in a long-scale geological sense, and it is inevitable at some point that the extensive glaciers will return to the northern hemisphere, and the sites currently occupied by many major capitols will be covered by ice. The fear of global cooling was short-lived as many climatologists, led by Dr. James Hansen of NASA, predicted as early as 1981 that the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities were responsible for elevating the concentration of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere, and that these elevated CO2 levels were increasing the globe’s average temperature. Although these claims were originally greeted with a degree of skepticism (‘wasn’t it just cooling?’), an increasingly impressive body of scientific evidence seemed to validate what was at the time called the ‘global warming hypothesis.’ The issue drew considerable attention, and eventually led to the formation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a global body deputized to compile the available research on climate change and reach a judgment on whether human activities were affecting the climate. The IPCC has published three major sets of reports, initially in 1995, followed by updated reports in 2001 and 2007. Even the ‘summary for policymakers’ of these reports make for pretty tough reading, but even a cursory survey of the IPCCs conclusions indicate that the organization, which boasts over 1000 members from many scientific backgrounds and nations, is increasingly confident that human activity is affect climate. The most recent report includes language that indicates a 95% percent degree of certainty that the Earth is warming, and that humans are, at least in part, to blame for climate change. Given the relatively reserved writing style in most scientific disciplines, such a claim should be seen as very strong indeed. This book contains evidence arguing that temperature records, biotic and abiotic indicators, computer models, and other data show that the earth is both getting warmer and that humans are responsible. There are also strong answers to the claims of so-called “warming skeptics,” who doubt the truth of potential climate change.


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Climate Ethics: Introduction [cont’d] On the other side, skeptics argue that the Earth’s temperature is not increasing, and that there is little reason to believe that human activities will have a substantial effect on something as complex and powerful as climate. These critics offer a number of objections. First, they claim that temperature records do not support the warming hypothesis. Recent, historic, and geological records not demonstrate that the Earth has experienced any substantial warming, and even if warming may have occurred, it certainly is not caused by humans. Skeptics like to point out that historic temperature records are highly inaccurate for a variety of reasons, including measurement errors, spotty coverage, and inconsistent positioning of weather stations. Perhaps most significantly, the very best and most accurate temperature data, taken from satellite observations, may well indicate that the Earth has experienced very little warming in the last thirty years. In fact, there is very good reason to believe that temperatures have decreased slightly in the last ten years. Second, skeptics propose that a variety of natural causes are responsible for any observed temperature variability. Critics point to an array of other potential causes for a warmer earth, including a recover from a natural cooling period dubbed the ‘little ice age,’ which saw significant decreases in global temperature and welfare through the northern hemisphere from 1400 CE to approximately 1850. The most frequently cited source of natural changes in temperature is the Earth’s sun. There is some pretty strong evidence indicating that the sun’s output varies in a series of lengthening cycles, and that this variability can, at least partially, be predicted by changes in sunspot activity. This variance in the sun’s energy output directly affects the Earth’s climate, both in terms of total radiation reaching the planet’s surface and in the intensity of the solar wind and cosmic rays that bombard the planet. These factors have significant and only marginally-understood effects on important climate regulators like cloud formation and reflectivity, and may explain current temperature trends far better than greenhouse gas concentrations. Third, skeptics deny that there is any linkage between carbon dioxide, the most prominent greenhouse gas, and global temperatures. Perhaps the most persuasive piece of evidence to support this argument is the observed surface cooling of the Earth between approximately 1940 and 1970, a time of intensive industrial activity in North American and Europe, and growing industrialization (and thus carbon dioxide emissions) in the global South. Warming skeptics observe that most observed warming occurred very early in this century, well before human activity spurred a substantial increased in CO2 concentrations. These authors also point to some ice-core and other geological data that seems to indicate that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide only seem to increase after an observed increase in temperature. Fourth, critics contend that natural feedbacks will check any increase in temperatures. These feedbacks will decrease any warming-inducing effects of higher CO2 levels. For example, increased warmth increases evaporating, which in turn increases atmospheric moisture and the formation of clouds. The cloudier the earth, the more light (and thus energy) is reflected back into space. Warming also spurs the growth of ocean plankton, which released a chemical called DMS that promotes the formation of reflective clouds. Elevated CO2 levels promote plant and forest growth, and larger and more abundant plants trap carbon dioxide in their tissues. Fifth, skeptics claim that the lauded climate models of the major research institutes are nothing more than rough guesses of current climate trends. There are a number of damaging critiques of climate models, claiming that they are unable to reflect current climate, ‘backcast’ to recreate known historic climate conditions, account for important climate factors like atmospheric aerosols, ocean currents and cloud formation, and that models are thus ‘tweaked’ to adjust for these ‘known unknowns’ in ways that bias them to show warming. Finally, critics attack the notion that there is a scientific consensus that climate change is a reality. They indict the IPCC by arguing that its reports are produced in intense negotiations between sponsoring governments and these biased scientists, and that these negotiations produce conclusions that satisfy political agendas instead of reflecting sound science. Warming supporters are also victims of their own success, having become so dependent on research funding from governments and pro-warming organizations that they tend to produce results that validate further research into the ‘dangers’ of global warming. Notably, they also contend that pro-warming scientists have been doctoring the data to inflate the degree of warming, pointing to the “Climategate” scandal as evidence of bias. Skeptics also shrug off accusations of bias on the basis of their funding sources (which include some fossil fuel interests), challenging their opponents to answer their evidence instead of engaging in ‘ad homs.’


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Climate Ethics: Introduction [cont’d] CLIMATE CHANGE CONSEQUENCES Although much of the debate in the scientific and policy literatures centers on whether warming is real, there is also a bevy of work on the potential consequences of climate change. On the pro-warming side, many analysts believe that even a few degrees of warming could cause significant changes to natural ecosystems, and if this warming is large, the consequences could indeed be dire. At the very worst extreme, warming gets out of control as positive feedbacks continue to pump more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere until the Earth becomes too warm to support complex life forms. Pro-warming scientists also believe that a warmer world will, on balance, hurt agricultural output. Hotter summers will decrease the yields of most important cereal crops, and the melting of the world’s glaciers will deplete many reservoirs and undermine irrigation-dependent agricultural regions. Warming will likely increase rainfall in some areas, and decrease it in others, expanding the world’s deserts. Although the total quantity of rainfall will likely increase, these rains will occur at the wrong time of year for utilization in agriculture. Various adaptive technologies and techniques will limit some of the worst effects of warming, but there is very good evidence that warming will overwhelm the adaptive capacity of many farmers, particularly in tropical regions and nations where farmers tend to be too poor to afford high-tech seeds, equipment, and infrastructure. Negative teams are likely to argue that elevated levels of CO2 in the atmosphere will increase plant growth, more than offsetting the harmful effects of warming. However, there is very good evidence that recent trends in temperature and agricultural output prove that, on balance, the negative effects of warmer temperatures outweigh this ‘fertilization effect.’ CO2 is beneficial in the lab, but not in the field. The net result is that the number of starving people in our world will increase, and the problem will only get worse as the temperatures rise. Warming could also wreak havoc on many ecosystems. Climate change will likely damage the ocean, as warmer and more acidic waters (from absorbing CO2) kill coral, plankton, and other organisms vital to marine food webs. Warming and subsequent ice melt will also increase sea levels, flooding major coastal cities, inundating productive farmland, and creating potentially hundreds of millions of climate migrants.’ Storms are also likely to increase in both frequency and intensity, posing an enormous threat to many coastal communities. Perhaps the most deadly and ironic outcome of this warming posits that Arctic warming will melt Greenland’s ice sheet, inundating the North Atlantic with freshwater. This freshwater will sink, disrupting the ocean’s temperature and salinity gradients and significantly weakening the Gulf Stream, or North Atlantic Current (NAC). The NAC is responsible for transferring enormous quantities of energy (warmth) from the tropic to northern Europe, and is largely responsible for the relatively mild climate of Great Britain and coastal Western Europe. Some scientists fear that a disruption of the NAC risks massive glaciation in North America and Europe within a few decades, and could throw these continents into new ice ages. Warming may also pose serious threats to human societies as well. Extreme weather, declining agricultural output, and other environment-induced disruptions threaten the viability of the global economy. Poorer people are particularly vulnerable, while their wealthier counterparts can use the resources at their disposal to mitigate some of the worst effects of climate change. A warmer world thus risks exacerbating the already significant income gap. Warming will likely increase the incidence of disease as vectors spread to new regions. The end result is that the scarcity, social and economic disruption, and agricultural problems associated with climate change will spur conflict. The warming skeptics crowd also has an array of potent arguments at their disposal. First, we have included evidence answering the most common “warming bad” scenarios, including those relating to agriculture, biodiversity loss, health effects, sea-level rise, and warming-induced ice ages. These cards contain a many warrants for why warming does not pose a threat to the environment, our economy, or other social systems. We have also included two arguments about the potential benefits of warming, or at least elevated concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The first argument claims that CO2 and warmer temperatures tend to benefit agriculture. CO2 is plant food, promoting more growth and food production. CO2 also increases the water-use efficiency of plants, decreasing the need for irrigation. There is so much research evidence linking higher CO2 levels to greater agricultural output that the gas has been dubbed ‘the elixir of life.’ We are fortunate that CO2 is such a great plant food because growing human populations substantially increase demand for food in the coming decades. With more CO2 emissions, we can meet this demand through carbon dioxide fertilization. However, if we slow our CO2 emissions, agricultural output will not keep up with human population growth, and many people will starve. Second, many analysts believe that greenhouse gas emissions are necessary to avert a new ice age, which would destroy modern civilization. Decreasing solar activity means that the earth is likely to experience substantial cooling in the next few decades. Geological evidence also indicates that warm ‘interglacial’ periods between ice ages have averaged approximately 10,000 years or so, at least during the current epoch. Unfortunately, our current interglacial is in at least its 10,000th year, meaning we are due for another ice age. Therefore, CO2-induced warming might be good because it prevents ice sheets from covering major cities throughout the northern hemisphere.


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Climate Ethics: Introduction [cont’d] CLIMATE ETHICS The resolution tasks the debaters with assessing whether so-called “developed countries” have a duty to mitigate the effects of climate change. Several elements of the resolutional wording will be critical in determining the content of the debates and the division of ground between the pro and con sides. First, “developed countries” is generally used to refer to countries with relatively high average annual incomes and advanced infrastructure networks. Many international economists tend to equate “developed” with the Central Intelligence Agency’s list of “developed countries” which can be found in the CIA’s World Factbook at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/appendix/appendix-b.html#D. This cite also includes a list of developing countries. The pro team is thus required to defend that climate change action be taken by a specific group of wealthy nations. The resolution leaves open the question of whether pro cases can also defend climate action by developing nations, although the con side has some pretty strong fairness based justifications for claiming that their opponents should be limited to only those countries explicitly mentioned in the resolution. This issue reflects the broader, real world dispute between wealthy and developing nations. Rich states, such as the U.S., are reluctant to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases unless less wealthy countries, including China and India, also agree to decrease their CO2 emissions (or at least the rate of growth in such emissions), both for fear of compromising their economic competitiveness and because of the concern that any cuts in emissions by wealthy nations will be swamped by emissions increases among developing nations. The second important element of the resolution is the basis upon which the attempts to address climate change are justified. Namely, the resolution mandates that the pro team demonstrate that there is a ‘moral obligation’ to deal with the effects of climate change. However, the resolution is silent on why type of ethical framework should be used in assessing the existence of such a duty. Therefore we strongly suspect that most debates will feature considerable clash on the nature of moral duties for nations, whether those duties vary from those placed on individuals, and how such duties intersect with the likely positive and negative consequences of climate change. In the literature on climate change, two ethical concerns are most prominent. The first question is whether wealthy countries have an obligation to address the negative consequences of their greenhouse gas emissions upon the citizens of the world, especially those of poorer nations, who are less likely to be able to adapt to a warmer world and are thus more likely to suffer harm as a result of climate change. The second concern is whether current generations, who would likely experience some degree of harm from the negative economic and social effects of mitigation efforts, have any duty towards future human generations, who are most likely to experience any benefit of climate change mitigation because of the relatively long timeframe on the alleged negative consequences of climate change. Thus, students should prepare themselves to debate whether wealthy nations have an obligation to mitigate the negative repercussions their emissions have on poor nations, and whether people living today have an obligation to protect future generations from the problems associated with a warmer world decades from now. The third key part of the resolution concerns what it means to “mitigate” climate change. Based upon our research, the term is used rather broadly in the literature and often reflects a wide array of potential meanings. Standard dictionary definitions of “mitigate” include “to lessen the gravity of” or to “make less severe, serious, or painful,” or “to lessen in force or intensity.” There are a number of ways that climate change could be made “less severe” or “less painful.” The most obvious way is to limit the extent of climate change by either cutting greenhouse gas emissions or extracting such gases from the atmosphere. Several field definitions support this view. The IPCC defines “mitigation” as “technological change and substitution that reduce resource inputs and emissions per unit of output. Although several social, economic and technological policies would produce an emission reduction, with respect to climate change, mitigation means implementing policies to reduce GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions and enhance sinks.” This is in contrast with either a “do nothing” approach or an “adaptation” strategy, which the same report defines as “initiatives and measures to reduce the vulnerability of natural and human systems against actual or expected climate effects.” [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, CLIMATE CHANGE 2007, http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/glossary/ar4-wg3.pdf] This distinction is reflected in many political approaches to climate change. For example, a United Kingdom government says “climate change mitigation means limiting the extent of future climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions now and in the future. It can also mean removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, for example by planting more trees.” [http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climate/mitigating/] Pro teams thus must defend emissions cuts, while con teams have a wider array of options.


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Climate Ethics: Introduction [cont’d] Your pro case will thus have to be prepared to defend at least four arguments, any of which you can attack from the con side. First, you will need to show that global warming is real. As noted in the earlier part of the essay, there is a strong consensus among mainstream scientists that climate change is a reality, but many broadly published skeptics in the scientific and policy communities remain. Second, you must demonstrate that climate change will produce problems that merit concern. According to Dr. Hansen and others, we are on the verge of climatic ‘tipping points’ that risk triggering cascading climate change, with very serious consequences for the health of planet’s ecosystems and the stability of human societies. Con teams can argue that warming is not real, that warming is relatively benign, and even that greenhouse gas emissions are good because they increase food production and may prevent a new ice age. The key to winning these two questions lies in addressing source credibility, meaning both sides should focus on why their experts are more believable than those of their opponents. Third, the pro team must demonstrate that a moral duty exists for developed countries, presumably their governments. Generally speaking, the basis of such a duty relates back to the reality and consequences of climate change, although you must also be ready to defend against claims that there cannot, or should not, be collective responsibility for a problem as diffuse and ephemeral as climate change. Finally, you need to prove that the appropriate response is mitigation (emissions cuts), defending such action against the potential negative economic consequences of a large, short-term decrease in the use of fossil fuels. Not only must you show that such cuts are effective in discharging the moral duty of the developed countries, but you will also be pressed by con teams to show that these cuts are the best way to respond to warming, especially given the availability of adaptive strategies. There is a wealth of high-quality evidence on both sides of all of these questions, and we have included strong examples in the “topshelf” section of the pro and con sections of the book. This topic promises to spark many entertaining and informative debates.


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Mitigation Justified: Topshelf 1. Overwhelming consensus proves that warming is real, human caused, and requires immediate action— claims to the contrary are just wrong

Kevin Trenbeth, Distinguished Senior Scientist, Climate Analysis Section, National Center for Atmospheric Research et al., writing with over 30 other distinguished climate researchers, “Check with Climate Scientists for Views on Climate,” WALL STREET JOURNAL, letter to the editor, 2—1—12, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204740904577193270727472662.html, accessed 4-6-12. In science, as in any area, reputations are based on knowledge and expertise in a field and on published, peer-reviewed work. If you need surgery, you want a highly experienced expert in the field who has done a large number of the proposed operations. You published "No Need to Panic About Global Warming" (op-ed, Jan. 27) on climate change by the climate-science equivalent of dentists practicing cardiology. While accomplished in their own fields, most of these authors have no expertise in climate science. The few authors who have such expertise are known to have extreme views that are out of step with nearly every other climate expert. This happens in nearly every field of science. For example, there is a retrovirus expert who does not accept that HIV causes AIDS. And it is instructive to recall that a few scientists continued to state that smoking did not cause cancer, long after that was settled science. Climate experts know that the long-term warming trend has not abated in the past decade. In fact, it was the warmest decade on record. Observations show unequivocally that our planet is getting hotter. And computer models have recently shown that during periods when there is a smaller increase of surface temperatures, warming is occurring elsewhere in the climate system, typically in the deep ocean. Such periods are a relatively common climate phenomenon, are consistent with our physical understanding of how the climate system works, and certainly do not invalidate our understanding of human-induced warming or the models used to simulate that warming. Thus, climate experts also know what one of us, Kevin Trenberth, actually meant by the out-of-context, misrepresented quote used in the op-ed. Mr. Trenberth was lamenting the inadequacy of observing systems to fully monitor warming trends in the deep ocean and other aspects of the short-term variations that always occur, together with the long-term human-induced warming trend. The National Academy of Sciences of the U.S. (set up by President Abraham Lincoln to advise on scientific issues), as well as major national academies of science around the world and every other authoritative body of scientists active in climate research have stated that the science is clear: The world is heating up and humans are primarily responsible. Impacts are already apparent and will increase. Reducing future impacts will require significant reductions in emissions of heat-trapping gases. Research shows that more than 97% of scientists actively publishing in the field agree that climate change is real and human caused. It would be an act of recklessness for any political leader to disregard the weight of evidence and ignore the enormous risks that climate change clearly poses. In addition, there is very clear evidence that investing in the transition to a low-carbon economy will not only allow the world to avoid the worst risks of climate change, but could also drive decades of economic growth. Just what the doctor ordered.

2. Must act now on climate change—are nearing a tipping point, else risk irreversible changes and massive ecosystem damage

David Perlman, “Close to ‘Tipping Point’ of Warming,” SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 6—7—12, p. A1. The Earth is reaching a "tipping point" in climate change that will lead to increasingly rapid and irreversible destruction of the global environment unless its forces are controlled by concerted international action, an international group of scientists warns. Unchecked population growth, the disappearance of critical plant and animal species, the over-exploitation of energy resources, and the rapidly warming climate are all combining to bring mounting pressure on the Earth's environmental health, they say. Scientists from five nations, led by UC Berkeley biologist Anthony Barnosky, report their analysis Thursday in the journal Nature. They likened the potential impact of the forces to previous major changes - both gradual and abrupt - in the planet's history that triggered mass extinctions and expansions, and produced completely new worldwide environments. The most recent of those was the sporadic end of the last ice age that began 14,000 years ago and shifted rapidly from warm to cold and then back to warm again over a few thousand years. That period saw the extinction of half the world's large animal life, and then the spread of an expanding human population to every continent on the planet. Difficult to reverse A similar "critical transition" is occurring now, Barnosky's scientists maintain, and they warn that once it starts, it will be "extremely difficult or even impossible for the system to return to its previous state." "The science tells us that we are heading toward major changes in the biosphere," Barnosky said in an interview this week. "And given all the pressures we are putting on the world, if we do nothing different, I believe we are looking at a time scale of a century or even a few decades for a tipping point to arrive."


10

Mitigation Justified: Topshelf [cont’d]

3. Climate change worst affects the world’s poor, locking them into poverty and reversing development gains

Jeff Otieno, journalist, “How Rising Heat Traps Millions in Poverty,” ALLAFRICA, 12-5-07, www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/envronmt/climate/2007/1205heat.htm, accessed 9-4-12. Gains made in human development in Africa may be reversed if climate change is not checked, the UN now warns. A document published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) says the increasing global warming, threatening to average more than two degrees centigrade before the end of the century, may compromise gains made in developing countries, mainly African states. It provides a stark account of the threat posed by global warming and argues that the world is drifting towards a 'tipping point' "that could lock the world's poorest countries and their poorest citizens on a downward spiral". If this happens, the document warns, it will leave hundreds of millions facing malnutrition, water scarcity, ecological threats and a loss of livelihoods. "Ultimately, climate change is a threat to humanity as a whole. But it is the poor, a constituency with no responsibility for the current ecological debt, who face the immediate and most severe human costs," says UNDP administrator Kemal Dervis after the launch of the Human Development 2007/08 entitled: Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a Divided World.

4. We have an ethical obligation to cut emissions—warming will hurt people who are not the cause of the problem

Gary C. Bryner, Professor, Public Policy Program, Brigham Young University, “Carbon Markets: Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions Through Emissions Trading,” TULANE ENVIRONMENTAL LAW JOURNAL v. 17, Summer 2004, p. 298. For residents of the industrialized nations, climate change is an ethical issue. Those responsible for most greenhouse gases are not the same people who will suffer the consequences of climate change. Residents of industrialized nations are mostly responsible for the threat, and they have the resources to protect themselves from modest changes and disruptions. Developing countries lack the resources to protect their citizens against the effects of climate change. It is simply not tenable to argue that satisfying the continually growing demand by Americans for cheap energy must outweigh the need to contribute to global solutions for climate change.

5. We have a moral duty to protect the interests of future generations--this is an issue on par with ending slavery

Michael McCarthy, "Global Warming Issue 'On Par with Slavery'," THE INDEPENDENT, 4--7--12, http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/global-warming-issue-on-par-with-slavery-7624916.html, accessed 9-6-12. Dealing with climate change is a moral issue on a par with ending slavery, the world's most celebrated climate scientist, James Hansen, of Nasa, believes. Dr Hansen, who heads Nasa's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, will be making the slavery comparison in his acceptance speech for the Edinburgh Medal next Tuesday, when he will also be calling for a global tax on all carbon emissions. Nothing less will do, he will argue, so urgent is the challenge which climate change presents for future generations. The Edinburgh Medal is awarded each year to scientists and technological experts judged to have made a significant contribution to the understanding and well-being of humanity. Widely thought of as "the father of global warming" – his dramatic alert about climate change in US Senate hearings in July 1988 put the issue on the world agenda – Dr Hansen is now one of the most outspoken advocates of drastic climate action. He said last year he thought climate sceptics were winning the global warming argument with the public. In his acceptance speech, he will argue that an immediate worldwide carbon tax is needed to force cuts in fossil fuel use, and that current generations have an over-riding moral duty to their children and grandchildren to act now.


11

Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real--Topshelf 1. Warming is real and accelerating—temperature records, multiple indicators

DIGITAL JOURNAL, “Global Warming Heat Mets Away ‘Denialism’,” 7—10—12, npg. The critical question to ponder today is not whether humans are responsible or not for the global warming but how best can we respond to the looming threat posed by the global warming. For the naysayers, it should be enough to learn that there are tell-tale irrefutable scientific evidences that show the planet we inhabit is warming. There are thermometer records over past century and half that shows global temperature rise over this period. Keys to the past can be found and interpreted by scientists in a number of ways through diverse sources. Scientists can study hundreds or thousands of years old trees to study climatic conditions of the places they grew in. Sediments buried deep in lakes and ocean beds contain vital climatic conditions that experts can decipher. Similarly tiny bubbles trapped in polar ice sheets contain vital climatic information of our planet that scientists can study. That s how scientists have claimed the reality of global warming in recent years. Besides, computer models can reveal the past, present and the future of climatic conditions over the planet. While the average temperature of planet earth has risen more than 1 degree F since 1900, the rate of warming has gone on to increase three folds since 1970 due to global warming which according to specialists has been caused primarily by the emission of green house gases through human activities. Can we still afford to miss the telltale signs of global warming when different agencies that have undertaken independent investigations have arrived at the unanimous conclusion that global warming is real unless you choose to close your eyes to the reality? NASA s Goddard Institute for Space Academy, for instance, has estimated that the average temperature has climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree C) since 1880. What is even more dangerous is not just the increase in temperature but the increase in the rate of warming in recent years. The United Nation s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claims that the last two decades of the 20th century have been hottest in the last 400 years and possibly warmest for several millennia. According to the same study, 11 of the 12 among the dozen warmest years since 1850 have been in the last two decades of 20th century.

2. Warming is real—multiple natural indicators and observed temperatures prove

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), L Bernstein et al., CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: SYNTHESIS REPORT, 2007, p. 30. 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 (Figure 1.1). {WGI 3.2, 4.8, 5.2, 5.5, SPM} Eleven of the last twelve years (1995-2006) rank among the twelve warmest years in the instrumental record of global surface temperature (since 1850). The 100-year linear trend (1906-2005) of 0.74 [0.56 to 0.92]°C is larger than the corresponding trend of 0.6 [0.4 to 0.8]°C (1901-2000) given in the TAR (Figure 1.1). The linear warming trend over the 50 years from 1956 to 2005 (0.13 [0.10 to 0.16]°C per decade) is nearly twice that for the 100 years from 1906 to 2005. {WGI 3.2, SPM} The temperature increase is widespread over the globe and is greater at higher northern latitudes (Figure 1.2). Average Arctic temperatures have increased at almost twice the global average rate in the past 100 years. Land regions have warmed faster than the oceans (Figures 1.2 and 2.5). Observations since 1961 show that the average temperature of the global ocean has increased to depths of at least 3000m and that the ocean has been taking up over 80% of the heat being added to the climate system. New analyses of balloon-borne and satellite measurements of lower- and mid-troposphere temperature show warming rates similar to those observed in surface temperature. {WGI 3.2, 3.4, 5.2, SPM} Increases in sea level are consistent with warming (Figure 1.1). Global average sea level rose at an average rate of 1.8 [1.3 to 2.3]mm per year over 1961 to 2003 and at an average rate of about 3.1 [2.4 to 3.8]mm per year from 1993 to 2003. Whether this faster rate for 1993 to 2003 reflects decadal variation or an increase in the longer-term trend is unclear. Since 1993 thermal expansion of the oceans has contributed about 57% of the sum of the estimated individual contributions to the sea level rise, with decreases in glaciers and ice caps contributing about 28% and losses from the polar ice sheets contributing the remainder. From 1993 to 2003 the sum of these climate contributions is consistent within uncertainties with the total sea level rise that is directly observed. {WGI 4.6, 4.8, 5.5, SPM, Table SPM.1} Observed decreases in snow and ice extent are also consistent with warming (Figure 1.1). Satellite data since 1978 show that annual average Arctic sea ice extent has shrunk by 2.7 [2.1 to 3.3]% per decade, with larger decreases in summer of 7.4 [5.0 to 9.8]% per decade. Mountain glaciers and snow cover on average have declined in both hemispheres. The maximum areal extent of seasonally frozen ground has decreased by about 7% in the Northern Hemisphere since 1900, with decreases in spring of up to 15%. Temperatures at the top of the permafrost layer have generally increased since the 1980s in the Arctic by up to 3°C. {WGI 3.2, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 4.8, 5.5, SPM} At continental, regional and ocean basin scales, numerous long-term changes in other aspects of climate have also been observed. Trends from 1900 to 2005 have been observed in precipitation amount in many large regions. Over this period, precipitation increased significantly in eastern parts of North and South America, northern Europe and northern and central Asia whereas precipitation declined in the Sahel, the Mediterranean, southern Africa and parts of southern Asia. Globally, the area affected by drought has likely2 increased since the 1970s. {WGI 3.3, 3.9, SPM}


12

Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real—Topshelf [cont’d] 3. Warming is real—should move towards debating what to do about it, multiple recent studies prove

REUTERS, “A Wilted Climate Contrarian Case,” Climate Spectator, 4—11—12, npg. A clutch of recent studies reinforces evidence that people are causing climate change and suggests debate should now move on to a more precise understanding of its impact on humans. The reports, published in various journals in recent weeks, add new detail to the theory of climate change and by implication cast contrarians in a more desperate light. To be clear: there's nothing wrong with doubting climate change; but doubts based on ignorance, a political bias or fossil fuel lobbying don't help. The basics, well known, are that rising greenhouse gas emissions are almost certainly responsible for raising global average surface temperatures (by about 0.17 degrees Celsius a decade from 1980-2010), in turn leading to sea level rise (of about 2.3 millimetres a year from 2005-2010) and probably causing more frequent bouts of extreme heatwaves and possibly more erratic rainfall. Vast uncertainties remain about the risk of runaway warming, and the urgency: for example, about what level of greenhouse gas emissions will cause how much sea level rise this century. The latest studies suggest firmer evidence for a human fingerprint, for example showing that pollution is largely responsible for a slow cycle in sea surface temperatures in the last century. Recent studies also cast more light on trends, for example showing that the world has seen hotter years since 1998 (previously held by some as a record); and presenting firmer forecasts for 2050. And others show lessons from the end of the last Ice Age: for example that rises in carbon dioxide preceded (and, by implication, caused) warming; and that sea levels at one point were rising by several metres a century. None of these are individually particular clinchers - the problem was already clear - but collectively they pin down uncertainty seized on by sceptics. Climate science was under a cloud after a 'climategate' scandal of scientists' emails leaked in 2009 was used by sceptics to suggest that they had deliberately manipulated data - allegations rejected by several public enquiries. And a major UN panel report made a couple of factual errors, most notably saying that all Himalayan glaciers may melt by 2035, which seemed a typographical error meant to read 2350. In retrospect, it's incredible that these cast doubt on the scientific theory. Like any theory, climate change is based on probabilities and observations couched in error margins and difficult to prove conclusively. It's complicated by the poor understanding of runaway effects which could make the planet all but unrecognisable - in warming, desertification and sea level rise - over the next few centuries, distracting from a cool view. Observations alone of rising temperatures, seas and extreme heatwaves in the past century are enough to demonstrate the problem, coupled with the lack of a plausible, alternative explanation to rising man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. On Wednesday, scientists showed in an article published in the journal Nature that rising CO2 preceded warming at the end of the last ice age. Previously, only Antarctic temperature data had been used, which appeared to show rising CO2 following temperature rather than the other way round. Those older results had suggested a complex effect involving warming oceans, rising CO2 and melting ice which together tipped the world out of an Ice Age 20,000 years ago. Now the role of CO2 in driving the global climate change seems clearer. Separately, scientists publishing in Nature estimated sea levels were rising by about 4 metres a century at one point around 15,000 years ago. Examining the Earth's more recent history, scientists from Britain's Met Office Hadley Centre showed this week how a new understanding of the impact of pollution on cloud formation explained a slow temperature cycle previously blamed on ocean currents. They said models could now explain an Atlantic sea surface cooling in the 1970s, and subsequent warming as clean air laws took effect. Various phases of the cycle are linked with droughts in parts of Africa and the Amazon, as well as hurricane activity. Two weeks ago, publishing in the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists from several institutes estimated warming in the range of 1.4-3 degrees Celsius by 2050 (compared with 1961-1990 levels), a higher upper range than previously found using comprehensive, complex climate models. Also two weeks ago, scientists from Britain's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) published updated temperature data including observations from more than 450 additional weather stations from the Arctic - made newly available by Russia and Canada. They showed that 2005 and 2010 were the hottest years in a temperature record dating back to around 1850. Previously CRU had said 1998 was the hottest year, leading some sceptics to claim 'no global warming this century', to dismiss the urgency of the problem. On the contrary, the basics of climate change are now understood and serious doubt is left only in the minds of those who cultivate it. Climate science can now pin down the big uncertainties, about regional impacts, sea level rise and runaway effects, and help to put to work a response.

4. They are wrong—all lines of inquiry prove that warming is real, bad, and that we must act now

Dr. Peter H. Gleick, Director, Pacific Institute, “Not Going Away: America’s Energy Security, Jobs and Climate Challenges,” Testimony before the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming,” 12-1-10, www.pacinst.org/publications/testimony/gleick_testimony_climate_strategies.pdf, accessed 6-19-12. “Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver. These conclusions are based on multiple independent lines of evidence and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science. Moreover, there is strong evidence that ongoing climate change will have broad impacts on society, including the global economy and on the environment. For the United States, climate change impacts include sea level rise for coastal states, greater threats of extreme weather events, and increased risk of regional water scarcity, urban heat waves, western wildfires, and the disturbance of biological systems throughout the country. The severity of climate change impacts is expected to increase substantially in the coming decades. If we are to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change, emissions of greenhouse gases must be dramatically reduced. In addition, adaptation will be necessary to address those impacts that are already unavoidable.”


13

Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real--Topshelf [cont’d]

5. Warming is real and human-caused James Hansen, Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, “Game Over for the Climate,” NEW YORK TIMES, 5—9—12, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/opinion/game-over-for-the-climate.html, accessed 6-10-12. If this sounds apocalyptic, it is. This is why we need to reduce emissions dramatically. President Obama has the power not only to deny tar sands oil additional access to Gulf Coast refining, which Canada desires in part for export markets, but also to encourage economic incentives to leave tar sands and other dirty fuels in the ground. The global warming signal is now louder than the noise of random weather, as I predicted would happen by now in the journal Science in 1981. Extremely hot summers have increased noticeably. We can say with high confidence that the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural events — they were caused by human-induced climate change. We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life. But add too much, as we are doing now, and temperatures will inevitably rise too high. This is not the result of natural variability, as some argue. The earth is currently in the part of its long-term orbit cycle where temperatures would normally be cooling. But they are rising — and it’s because we are forcing them higher with fossil fuel emissions. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 280 parts per million to 393 p.p.m. over the last 150 years. The tar sands contain enough carbon — 240 gigatons — to add 120 p.p.m. Tar shale, a close cousin of tar sands found mainly in the United States, contains at least an additional 300 gigatons of carbon. If we turn to these dirtiest of fuels, instead of finding ways to phase out our addiction to fossil fuels, there is no hope of keeping carbon concentrations below 500 p.p.m. — a level that would, as earth’s history shows, leave our children a climate system that is out of their control.

6. The evidence for warming is overwhelming—multiple changes in natural systems prove that we are correct

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “Summary for Policymakers,” CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: IMPACTS, ADAPTATION AND VULNERABILITY. CONTRIBUTION OF WORKNG GROUP II TO THE FOURTH ASSESSMENT REPORT OF THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, ed. M.L. Parry et al., 2007, p. 8-9. Recent studies have allowed a broader and more confident assessment of the relationship between observed warming and impacts than was made in the Third Assessment. That Assessment concluded that “there is high confidence3 that recent regional changes in temperature have had discernible impacts on many physical and biological systems”. From the current Assessment we conclude the following. With regard to changes in snow, ice and frozen ground (including permafrost),4 there is high confidence that natural systems are affected. Examples are: • enlargement and increased numbers of glacial lakes [1.3]; • increasing ground instability in permafrost regions, and rock avalanches in mountain regions [1.3]; • changes in some Arctic and Antarctic ecosystems, including those in sea-ice biomes, and also predators high in the food chain [1.3, 4.4, 15.4]. Based on growing evidence, there is high confidence that the following effects on hydrological systems are occurring: • increased runoff and earlier spring peak discharge in many glacier- and snow-fed rivers [1.3]; • warming of lakes and rivers in many regions, with effects on thermal structure and water quality [1.3]. There is very high confidence, based on more evidence from a wider range of species, that recent warming is strongly affecting terrestrial biological systems, including such changes as: • earlier timing of spring events, such as leaf-unfolding, bird migration and egg-laying [1.3]; • poleward and upward shifts in ranges in plant and animal species [1.3, 8.2, 14.2]. Based on satellite observations since the early 1980s, there is high confidence that there has been a trend in many regions towards earlier ‘greening’5 of vegetation in the spring linked to longer thermal growing seasons due to recent warming [1.3, 14.2]. There is high confidence, based on substantial new evidence, that observed changes in marine and freshwater biological systems are associated with rising water temperatures, as well as related changes in ice cover, salinity, oxygen levels and circulation [1.3]. These include: • shifts in ranges and changes in algal, plankton and fish abundance in high-latitude oceans [1.3]; • increases in algal and zooplankton abundance in high-latitude and high-altitude lakes [1.3]; • range changes and earlier migrations of fish in rivers [1.3]. The uptake of anthropogenic carbon since 1750 has led to the ocean becoming more acidic, with an average decrease in pH of 0.1 units [IPCC Working Group I Fourth Assessment]. However, the effects of observed ocean acidification on the marine biosphere are as yet undocumented [1.3].


14

Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real--Consensus

1. Warming is real—every major national science academy agrees

John F. Kerry U.S. Senator, “On Eve of Rio+20, An Honest Assessment of Climate Change Challenge,” CONGRESSIONAL DOCUMENTS AND PUBLICATIONS, 6—19—12, lexis. Every major national science academy in the world has reported that global warming is real. It is nothing less than shocking when people in a position of authority can just say--without documentation, without accepted scientific research, without peer reviewed analysis--just stand up and say that there isn't enough evidence because it suits their political purposes to serve some interest that doesn't want to change the status quo. Facts that beg for an unprecedented public response are met with unsubstantiated, even totally contradicted denial. And those who deny have never, ever met their de minimus responsibility to provide some scientific answer to what, if not human behavior, is causing the increase in greenhouse gas particulates and how, if not by curbing greenhouse gases, we will address this crisis. In fact, when one measures the effect of taking action versus not taking action, the naysayers' case is even more confounding.

2. Naysayers are wrong—disproven by overwhelming evidence contained in 6000 studies

John F. Kerry U.S. Senator, “On Eve of Rio+20, An Honest Assessment of Climate Change Challenge,” CONGRESSIONAL DOCUMENTS AND PUBLICATIONS, 6—19—12, lexis. Frankly, those who look for any excuse to continue challenging the science have a fundamental responsibility that they have never fulfilled: Prove us wrong or stand down. Prove that the pollution we put in the atmosphere is not having the harmful effect we know it is. Tell us where the gases go and what they do. Pony up one single, cogent, legitimate, scholarly analysis. Prove that the ocean isn't actually rising; prove that the ice caps aren't melting, that deserts aren't expanding. And prove that human beings have nothing to do with any of it. And by the way--good luck in the effort! Because there are over 6,000 peer-reviewed articles, all of which document clearly and irrefutably the ways in which mankind is contributing to this problem. Sure we know the naysayers have their two-bit scientists who trade in doubt and misdirection about things like sun spots and clouds. But there's not a single credible scientist that will argue climate change isn't happening. In fact, even the naysayers are starting to come to their senses. Just this year, a well-known climate skeptic, Dr. Richard Mueller, released a series of reports that were funded in part by the Koch brothers. Dr. Mueller thought his results would show something different than all of the other climate studies. Think he found what the Koch brothers were looking for? Here's Dr. Mueller in his own words: "You should not be a skeptic, at least not any longer." Bottom line: his studies found what all other credible climate studies have been telling us for decades--that global warming is real. And if you just stop and look around for a moment, you'll see that its effects are everywhere: floods and droughts, pathogens and disease, species and habitat loss, and sea level rise and storm surge that threaten our cities and coastlines. No continent is escaping unscathed: Increasing ground instability in permafrost regions, increasing avalanches in mountainous zones, warmer and drier conditions in the Sahelian region of Africa leading to a shortened growing season, and coral bleaching events in the Great Barrier Reef.

3. Warming is real—98% of qualified scientists say so

Tom Mueller, “The Indisputable Truth of Man-Made Climate Change,” TELEGRAPH –JOURNAL, 2—16—12, p. A9. Climate change scepticism has been discredited and debunked, according to the world's premier scientific journal, Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences. Ninety-eight per cent of qualified experts confirm that anthropogenic, or man-made, climate change is real. The authors of this publication define "expert" as those scientists who publish in peer-reviewed professional journals. According to Proceedings, those rare dissenting sceptics, unconvinced of man-made climate change, are substantially lacking in qualifications compared to convinced researchers. Gullible journalists throwing their lot with this miniscule residue of "expert-opinion" has provided a petro-funded denial-machine with enough material to create much public confusion. Unfortunately, the American Christian right also jumped on board holus-bolus; until recently that is.

4. Warming is real—scientific consensus proves

Daniel J. Weiss, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress Action Fund, Testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Subcommittee on Energy and Power, 6—19—12, lexis. Climate change represents one of the gravest threats posed to humans and it is essential that the United States and other nations significantly reduce their industrial carbon and other pollutants responsible for it. The United States and other nations are already experiencing many of the climate change impacts scientists have warned us about, including warming temperatures, severe drought, massive rainfall and floods, and other extreme weather events. In 2010 the National Academy of Sciences determined that global warming is real, and human induced: There is a strong, credible body of evidence, based on multiple lines of research, documenting that climate is changing and that these changes are in large part caused by human activities. While much remains to be learned, the core phenomenon, scientific questions, and hypotheses have been examined thoroughly and have stood firm in the face of serious scientific debate and careful evaluation of alternative explanations. The United States Global Change Research Program, primarily written under President George W. Bush, determined that "global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced." It further states that climate related impacts are visible now and will continue to grow.


15

Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real--Consensus [cont’d]

5. Every major organization agrees that warming is real Dr. Peter H. Gleick, Director, Pacific Institute, “Not Going Away: America’s Energy Security, Jobs and Climate Challenges,” Testimony before the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming,” 12-1-10, www.pacinst.org/publications/testimony/gleick_testimony_climate_strategies.pdf, accessed 6-19-12. 3. Every major international scientific organization working in the areas of geophysics, climate, geology, biology, chemistry, physics, ecology, atmospheric sciences, and meteorology agrees that humans are changing the climate. This includes every single National Academy of Sciences, including of course, the US NAS. (See the attached list.) Conversely, no scientific body of national or international standing rejects the findings of human-induced effects on global warming. Ignoring the massive weight of this consensus is irresponsible.

6. Consensus says it’s real and human-caused Dr. Peter H. Gleick, Director, Pacific Institute, “Not Going Away: America’s Energy Security, Jobs and Climate Challenges,” Testimony before the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming,” 12-1-10, www.pacinst.org/publications/testimony/gleick_testimony_climate_strategies.pdf, accessed 6-19-12. There is broad scientific consensus that Earth's climate is warming rapidly and at an accelerating rate. Human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels, are very likely (>90% probability) to be the main cause of this warming. Climate-sensitive changes in ecosystems are already being observed, and fundamental, potentially irreversible, ecological changes may occur in the coming decades. Conservative environmental estimates of the impact of climate changes that are already in process indicate that they will result in numerous health effects to children. Anticipated direct health consequences of climate change include injury and death from extreme weather events and natural disasters, increases in climate-sensitive infectious diseases, increases in air pollution–related illness, and more heat-related, potentially fatal, illness. Within all of these categories, children have increased vulnerability compared with other groups.

7. Overwhelming scientific consensus proves that warming is true—their authors are stooges of fossil fuels industries

Mary Christina Wood, Professor, Law, University of Oregon, “Nature’s Trust: A Legal, Political and Moral Frame for Global Warming,” BOSTON COLLEGE ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS LAW REVIEW v. 34, 2007, p. 587-589. These are not the voices of Chicken Little and Henny Penny. If someone dismisses climate warming to you as "sky is falling" kind of talk, go back and read the book Chicken Little and see if you can find any intelligent comparison between mounting atmospheric heat-trapping gases and an acorn falling on a little chicken's head. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report in February 2007, stating that climate change is "unequivocal." A second report was issued in draft form in March 2007, discussing the catastrophic impacts of unchecked global warming. These United Nations (U.N.) reports compile the conclusions of more than 1200 authors and 2500 expert reviewers, reflecting scientific expertise from more than 130 countries. To be sure, there are those few global warming "contrarians" dismissing the threat, but before you place the future of your children in their hands, check out their affiliations with the fossil fuel industry. When the U.N. report came out in February ending any debate on whether global warming existed, the Exxon-funded American Enterprise Institute responded with an ad offering $ 10,000 to any scientist who could refute it. Let us think about a logical way to process these contrarian views. If several doctors diagnosed your child with life-threatening bacterial meningitis, you would likely not waste time going back to debate the germ theory of medicine with them. You would start the antibiotics and hope or pray for the best. The urgent warnings coming from all branches of science are intended to focus society on reaching a decision, now.

8. Warming is real and human-caused—scientific consensus proves

Dr. Jonathan Pershing, Director, Climate, Energy and Pollution Program, World Resources Institute, Testimony before Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, CQ CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY, 11-8-07, lexis. The Earth is warming, primarily due to human activities. The fossil fuels that have led to huge increases in human productivity and great improvements in human well- being, together with significant deforestation, have been the most important causes of global warming. The buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) is accelerating, and unless we act very soon to control emissions warming, will rise to very dangerous levels during our children's lifetimes. In February 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC - the official science process endorsed and supported by the world's governments and in which the United States was an active participant) released its most recent report. The report states that it is "unequivocal" that Earth's climate is warming, and confirms that the current atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and methane, two important GHGs, "exceeds by far the natural range over the last 650,000 years." Further, the IPCC concludes that it is now "very likely" (greater than 90% probability) that GHG emissions from human activities have caused "most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century."


16

Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real--CO2 Causes 1. CO2 causes warming—end of last ice age proves

SPACE DAILY, “Confirming Carbon’s Climate Effects,” 4—25—12, lexis. Harvard scientists are helping to paint the fullest picture yet of how a handful of factors, particularly world-wide increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, combined to end the last ice age approximately 20,000 to 10,000 years ago. As described in a paper published in Nature, researchers compiled ice and sedimentary core samples collected from dozens of locations around the world, and found evidence that while changes in Earth's orbit may have touched off a warming trend, increases in CO2 played a far more important role in pushing the planet out of the ice age. "Orbital changes are the pacemaker. They're the trigger, but they don't get you too far," lead author Jeremy Shakun, a visiting postdoctoral fellow in Earth and Planetary Science Shakun, said. "Our study shows that CO2 was a much more important factor, and was really driving worldwide warming during the last deglaciation." Though scientists have known for many years, based on studies of Antarctic ice cores, that deglaciations over the last million years and spikes in CO2 were connected, establishing a clear cause-and-effect relationship between CO2 and global warming from the geologic record has remained difficult, Shakun said.

2. CO2 closely tracks with temperatures—recent ice core data proves SPACE DAILY, “Confirming Carbon’s Climate Effects,” 4—25—12, lexis. Many climate scientists have addressed the criticism and shown that the lag between temperature and CO2 increases means that greenhouse gases were an amplifier, rather than trigger, of past climate change, but Shakun and his colleagues saw a larger problem - while CO2 measurements taken from air bubbles in the ice cores reflect levels throughout the global atmosphere, temperatures recorded in the ice only reflect local Antarctic conditions. To get a more accurate picture of the relationship between global temperature and CO2, they synthesized dozens of core samples - 80 in all - collected from around the world. "We have ice cores from Greenland, people have cored the sea floor all around the world, they've cored lakes on the continents, and they have worked out temperature histories for all these sites," Shakun said. "Putting all of these records together into a reconstruction of global temperature shows a beautiful correlation with rising CO2 at the end of the ice age. Even more interesting, while CO2 trails Antarctic warming, it actually precedes global temperature change, which is what you would expect if CO2 is causing the warming. "The previous science clearly said that CO2 had something to do with warming," Shakun added. "It has gone up and down in tandem with the ice ages, so it is clearly involved. If it was an amplifier, the question was how big of an amplifier? Does it explain a lot of climate change, or was it a small piece, and other factors were more important? I think this research really points a strong finger at the idea that CO2 was a major player." Armed with that evidence, Shakun and colleagues were able to sketch out how a series of factors aligned that eventually led to a worldwide warming trend and the end of the ice age.

3. CO2 drives climate change--post-Ice Age warming proves Miguel Llanos, "Study Aims to Settle Climate Battle Over Temperatures, CO2," MSNBC, 4--4--12, http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/04/11021276-study-aims-to-settle-climate-battle-over-temperatures-co2?lite, accessed 4-9-12. Published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, the study concluded that during the end of the last Ice Age, some 12,000 years ago, global temperatures rose after carbon dioxide levels started to rise. Earlier data using temperature records from Antarctic ice cores indicated that temperatures rose before C02 took off -- raising questions in the minds of some about how CO2 could then be blamed for warming, either then or over the last century, when emissions from manmade sources have skyrocketed. For the new study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, researchers reconstructed temperature records from ice and soil cores at 79 other sites around the world and from around the same time period. "That would end the argument," lead author Jeremy Shakun, a Harvard researcher, told msnbc.com. "It doesn't hold up." Changes in Earth's orbit are thought to have triggered the warming trend by causing ice sheets to melt, but the researchers said the new study suggests C02 played a far more important role -- with C02 previously locked up under sea ice escaping out to add to the existing level.


17

Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real--Feedbacks 1. Warming risks permafrost melt, releasing huge quantities of methane and exacerbating warming

John F. Kerry U.S. Senator, “On Eve of Rio+20, An Honest Assessment of Climate Change Challenge,” CONGRESSIONAL DOCUMENTS AND PUBLICATIONS, 6—19—12, lexis. And to make matters worse, temperatures are likely to increase exponentially in the coming years. Because the environment is a closed system, the more conditions change, the faster they change. As the ice and permafrost melts, methane plumes under the surface have begun venting into the atmosphere. During a survey last summer of the East Siberian Arctic seas, a team of scientists encountered a high density of plumes--some more than a kilometer across--emitting methane into the atmosphere at concentrations up to 100 times higher than normal. If that process continues, we're in real trouble since methane is a potent greenhouse gas: over a period of 100 years, it has a warming potential roughly 25 times greater than CO2. In part, we may become the victims of vicious feedback cycles in our climate system. Cycles associated with less cloud cover, changes in aerosols, peatlands, soils, and Arctic ice cover can all lead to accelerated climate change. One study estimated that thawing permafrost may turn the Arctic from a carbon sink--a place that stores carbon--to a carbon source by the mid-2020s, releasing 100 billion tons of carbon by 2100. What does that mean? One hundred billion tons of carbon is about equal to the amount of CO2 that would be released worldwide from ten years of burning fossil fuels. That's the future, folks--and it's bleak if we don't act.

2. Warming will be worst in the Arctic, melting the permafrost Justin Gillis, “Peril Within Melting Permafrost,” INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, 12—19—11, p. 2. But mainstream scientists, while hoping the breakdown of permafrost will indeed be slow, reject that argument. They say the climate was reasonably stable for the past 10,000 years or so, during the period when human civilization arose. Now, as people burn immense amounts of fossil fuels, the planet's temperature is rising, and the Arctic is warming twice as fast. That, scientists say, puts the remaining permafrost deposits at risk. For several decades, researchers have been monitoring permafrost temperatures in hundreds of boreholes across the north. They have occasionally decreased in some regions for as long as a decade, but the overall trend has been a relentless rise, with temperatures now increasing fastest in the most northerly areas. Thawing has been most notable at the southern margins. Across huge areas, including much of central Alaska, permafrost is hovering just below the freezing point and is expected to start thawing in earnest as soon as the 2020s. In northern Alaska and northern Siberia, where temperatures are still well below freezing, experts say it should take longer. ''Even in a greenhouse-warmed world, it will still get cold and dark in the Arctic in the winter,'' said Mark Serreze, director of the snow and ice data center in Colorado.

3. Amount of carbon in permafrost swamps the quantities already in the atmosphere Justin Gillis, “Peril Within Melting Permafrost,” INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, 12—19—11, p. 2. Scientists need better inventories of the ancient carbon. The best estimate so far was published in 2009 by a Canadian scientist, Charles Tarnocai, and some colleagues. They found about 1.7 trillion tons of carbon in soils of the northern regions, about 88 percent of it locked in permafrost. That is about two and a half times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. The leading French scientist Philippe Ciais wrote then that he was stunned by the estimate, a large upward revision from previous numbers. ''If, in a warmer world, bacteria decompose organic soil matter faster, releasing carbon dioxide,'' Dr. Ciais wrote, ''this will set up a positive feedback loop, speeding up global warming.''


18

Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real--Humans Are to Blame 1. Human behavior is responsible for climate change--emissions are accelerating, we need to act

James Hansen, Goddard Institute, NASA, with 17 co-authors, "Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature," submitted to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 2012, http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/notyet/submitted_Hansen_etal.pdf, accessed 9-7-12. Humanity is now the dominant force driving changes of Earth's atmospheric composition and thus future climate (1). The principal climate forcing is carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuel emissions, much of which will remain in the atmosphere for millennia (1, 2). The climate response to this forcing and society's response to climate change are complicated by the system's inertia, mainly due to the ocean and the ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica. This inertia causes climate to appear to respond slowly to this human-made forcing, but further long-lasting responses may be locked in. We use Earth’s measured energy imbalance and paleoclimate data, along with simple, accurate representations of the global carbon cycle and temperature, to define emission reductions needed to stabilize climate and avoid potentially disastrous impacts on young people, future generations, and nature. We find that global CO2 emissions reduction of about 6%/year is needed, along with massive reforestation. Governments have recognized the need to limit emissions to avoid dangerous humanmade climate change, as formalized in the Framework Convention on Climate Change (3), but only a few nations have made substantial progress in reducing emissions. The stark reality (4) is that global emissions are accelerating and new efforts are underway to massively expand fossil fuel extraction, by oil drilling to increasing ocean depths, into the Arctic, and onto environmentally fragile public lands; squeezing of oil from tar sands and tar shale; hydrofracking to expand extraction of natural gas; and increased mining of coal via mechanized longwall mining and mountain-top removal.

2. Humans are to blame—responsible for carbon increases, natural causes can’t explain the data,

increased temps in lower atmosphere Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), “Global Warming FAQ,” 7—14—09, http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/global-warming-faq.html, accessed 3-23-12. The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states: it is a greater than a 90 percent certainty that emissions of heat-trapping gases from human activities have caused “most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century.” We all know that warming—and cooling—has happened in the past, and long before humans were around. Many factors (called “climate drivers”) can influence Earth’s climate—such as changes in the sun’s intensity and volcanic eruptions, as well as heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. So how do scientists know that today’s warming is primarily caused by humans putting too much carbon in the atmosphere when we burn coal, oil, and gas or cut down forests? There are human fingerprints on carbon overload. When humans burn coal, oil and gas (fossil fuels) to generate electricity or drive our cars, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, where it traps heat. A carbon molecule that comes from fossil fuels and deforestation is “lighter” than the combined signal of those from other sources. As scientists measure the “weight” of carbon in the atmosphere over time they see a clear increase in the lighter molecules from fossil fuel and deforestation sources that correspond closely to the known trend in emissions. Natural changes alone can’t explain the temperature changes we’ve seen. For a computer model to accurately project the future climate, scientists must first ensure that it accurately reproduces observed temperature changes. When the models include only recorded natural climate drivers—such as the sun’s intensity—the models cannot accurately reproduce the observed warming of the past half century. When human-induced climate drivers are also included in the models, then they accurately capture recent temperature increases in the atmosphere and in the oceans. [4][5][6] When all the natural and human-induced climate drivers are compared to one another, the dramatic accumulation of carbon from human sources is by far the largest climate change driver over the past half century. Lower-level atmosphere—which contains the carbon load—is expanding. The boundary between the lower atmosphere (troposphere) and the higher atmosphere (stratosphere) has shifted upward in recent decades. See the ozone FAQ for a figure illustrating the layers of the atmosphere. [6][7][8]This boundary has likely changed because heat-trapping gases accumulate in the lower atmosphere and that atmospheric layer expands as it heats up (much like warming the air in a balloon). And because less heat is escaping into the higher atmosphere, it is likely cooling. This differential would not occur if the sun was the sole climate driver, as solar changes would warm both atmospheric layers, and certainly would not have warmed one while cooling the other.


19

Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real--Humans Are to Blame [cont’d]

3. Human activities are responsible for the spike in CO2 concentrations Pew Center on Global Climate Change, “Science and Impacts,” CLIMATE CHANGE 101, 1—11, p. 2-3. Greenhouse Gas Levels Rising. In 2009, the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) released the most up-to-date and comprehensive report currently available about the impacts of climate change in the United States.10 The report says that average global concentrations of the three main greenhouse gases—CO2, CH4, and N2O—are rising because of human activities. Since pre-industrial times, CO2 has increased by 40 percent, CH4 by 148 percent, and N2O by 18 percent. CO2 is the principal gas contributing to the enhanced greenhouse effect. Many human activities produce CO2; the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas account for about 80 percent of human-caused CO2 emissions. Most of the remaining 20 percent comes from changes in the land surface, primarily deforestation. Trees, like all living organisms, are made mostly of carbon; when forests are burned to clear land, the carbon in the trees is released as CO2. The USGCRP report says that the current trajectory of rising GHG concentrations is pushing the climate into uncharted territory. CO2 levels are much higher today than at any other time in at least 800,000 years. Through all those millennia, there has been a clear correlation between CO2 concentrations and global temperatures (see Figure 3), adding geological support for the strong connection between changes in the strength of the greenhouse effect and the earth’s surface temperature. Scientists are certain that the burning of fossil fuels is the main source of the recent spike in CO2 in the atmosphere. Multiple, independent lines of evidence clearly link human actions to increased GHG concentrations.11 Moreover, there is strong evidence that this human-induced rise in atmospheric GHGs is the main reason that the Earth has been warming in recent decades. The USGCRP report says, “The global warming of the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced increases in heat-trapping gases. Human fingerprints also have been identified in many other aspects of the climate system, including changes in ocean heat content, precipitation, atmospheric moisture, and Arctic sea ice.” The U.S. National Academy of Sciences draws the same conclusion: “Many lines of evidence support the conclusion that most of the observed warming since the start of the 20th century, and especially the last several decades, can be attributed to human activities.”


20

Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real--Indicators 1. Warming is real--indicators prove

James Hansen, Goddard Institute, NASA, with 17 co-authors, "Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature," submitted to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 2012, http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/notyet/submitted_Hansen_etal.pdf, accessed 9-7-12. The fallacy of this logic emerged in recent years as numerous impacts of global warming became apparent. Summer sea ice cover in the Arctic plummeted in 2007 and 2011 to an area 40 percent less than a few decades earlier and Arctic sea ice thickness declined a factor of four faster than simulated in IPCC climate models (4). The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets began to shed ice at a rate, now several hundred cubic kilometers per year, which is continuing to accelerate (5, 6). Mountain glaciers are receding rapidly all around the world with effects on seasonal freshwater availability of major rivers (7, 8). The hot dry subtropical climate belts have expanded as the troposphere has warmed and the stratosphere cooled (9-11), probably contributing to observed increases in the area and intensity of wildfires (12). The abundance of reef-building corals is decreasing at a rate of 0.5-2%/year, at least in part due to ocean warming and acidification caused by rising dissolved CO2 (13-15). More than half of all wild species have shown significant changes in where they live and in the timing of major life events (16, 17). Mega-heatwaves, such as those in the Moscow area in 2010 and Texas in 2011, have become more widespread with the increase demonstrably linked to global warming (18). In recognition of observed growing climate impacts while global warming is less than 1°C, reassessment of the dangerous level of warming is needed. Earth's paleoclimate history provides a valuable tool for that purpose.

2. Warming is real—recent heat waves prove

Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute, WORLD ON EDGE, 2011, p. 46. Within the United States, numerous cities on the East Coast suffered through the hottest June to August on record, including New York, Philadelphia, and Washington. After a relatively cool summer in Los Angeles, the temperature there on September 27 reached an all-time high of 113 degrees before the official thermometer broke. At a nearby site, however, the thermometer survived to register 119 degrees, a record for the region. What U.S. climate data show us is that as the earth has warmed, record highs are now twice as likely as record lows.5 The pattern of more-intense heat waves, more-powerful storms, and more-destructive flooding is consistent with what climate models project will happen as the earth’s temperature rises. The worst heat wave in Russian history and the worst flooding in Pakistan’s history are the kind of extreme events we can expect to see more of if we continue with business as usual. James Hansen, the U.S. government’s leading climate scientist, asks, “Would these events have occurred if atmospheric carbon dioxide had remained at its pre-industrial level of 280 ppm [parts per million]?” The answer, he says, is “almost certainly not.”

3. Warming is real and human-caused—multiple indicators prove Dr. Peter H. Gleick, Director, Pacific Institute, “Not Going Away: America’s Energy Security, Jobs and Climate Challenges,” Testimony before the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming,” 12-1-10, www.pacinst.org/publications/testimony/gleick_testimony_climate_strategies.pdf, accessed 6-19-12. 1. The science of climate change is clear and convincing that climate change is happening, happening rapidly, and happening because of human activities. Scientific conclusions derive from an understanding of basic laws supported by laboratory experiments, observations of nature, and mathematical and computer modeling. Based on these lines of evidence, the science of climate change is compelling and strong, and has been for over two decades. That science tells us that emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities not only will change the climate, but are already changing the climate. The evidence is now incontrovertible, even if a small minority cannot accept it. Like all human beings, scientists make mistakes, but the scientific process is designed to find and correct them. This process is inherently adversarial — scientists build reputations and gain recognition not only for supporting conventional wisdom, but even more so for demonstrating that the scientific consensus is wrong and that there is a better explanation. That’s what Galileo, Pasteur, Darwin, and Einstein did. But no one who argues against the science of climate change has ever provided an alternative scientific theory that adequately satisfies the observable evidence or conforms to our understanding of physics, chemistry, and climate dynamics. The science tells us – and has been telling us for over two decades – that: • The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. • Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. • Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth’s climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes. • Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic. And many other changes are seen to be happening. • The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, human health, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.


21

Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real--IPCC 1. Warming is real, large, and human caused—IPCC report proves

Richard C. Levin, President, Yale University, Statement before Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, CQ CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY, 4-3-08, lexis. Let me begin by noting that there is no longer any doubt that we have a problem. The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded last year that the evidence of global warming is "unequivocal." 1 The Panel, consisting of 2500 leading climate scientists from around the world, determined with "very high confidence that the net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming."2 And it concluded that "most of the observed increase in globally- averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG [greenhouse gas] concentrations."3 The Panel concluded that, in the absence of corrective measures, global temperatures are likely to rise between 1 and 6 degrees centigrade by the end of this century, with the best estimates ranging between 2 and 4 degrees. Even a 1- degree increase in temperature will limit fresh water availability and cause coastal flooding in much of the world, but, as the Panel noted, economic, social, and environmental damages and dislocation will become much more consequential if global temperatures increase by more than 2 degrees.

2. IPCC findings prove that warming is real and human caused

Robert W. Corell, The Heinz Center, “The Science of Climate Change,” GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE: NATIONAL SECURITY IMPLICATIONS, ed. C. Pumphrey, May 2008, p. 51-52. Let me finish by saying a few things about the key findings of the IPCC. These were released in February 2007. First, the Panel concluded that “Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values. The global increases in carbon dioxide concentration are due primarily to fossil fuel use and land-use change, while those of methane and nitrous oxide are primarily due to agriculture.” The documentation is solid. Over the course of a 10,000 year period, things remained pretty stable. The last 100-150 years witnessed a pretty dramatic change. Second, “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 mean sea level.” Note the use by the Panel of words like “unequivocal” which means 90 percent certain or better. Third, “Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” This also means that there is a 90 percent likelihood. The Report documented several long-term changes in climate: “The global average temperature trend over 1906–2005 is 0.74°C (1.3°F), increasing to 0.2°C (0.36°F) per decade over the last 3 decades; Global average sea level rose 0.17 meters (6.7 inches) over the 20th century; Mountain glaciers and snow cover have declined on average in both hemispheres.”


22

Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real--Solar Variability 1. Changes in solar output cannot account for observed temperature changes

Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), “Global Warming FAQ,” 7—14—09, http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/global-warming-faq.html, accessed 3-23-12. The sun is the source of most of the energy that drives the biological and physical processes in the world around us—in oceans and on land it fuels plant growth that forms the base of the food chain, and in the atmosphere it warms air which drives our weather. The rate of energy coming from the sun changes slightly day to day. Over many millennia in the Earth-Sun orbital relationship can change the geographical distribution of the sun’s energy over the Earth’s surface. It has been suggested that changes in solar output might affect our climate—both directly, by changing the rate of solar heating of the Earth and atmosphere, and indirectly, by changing cloud forming processes. Over the time-scale of millions of years the change in solar intensity is a critical factor influencing climate (e.g., ice ages). However, changes in solar heating rate over the last century cannot account for the magnitude and distribution of the rise in global mean temperature during that time period and there is no convincing evidence for significant indirect influences on our climate due to twentieth century changes in solar output.

2. Humans have five times greater impact on climate than does solar output Robin McKie, “Global Warming: The Final Verdict,” THE GUARDIAN, 1-22-07, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0122-06.htm, accessed 6-19-12. Past assessments by the IPCC have suggested such scenarios are 'likely' to occur this century. Its latest report, based on sophisticated computer models and more detailed observations of snow cover loss, sea level rises and the spread of deserts, is far more robust and confident. Now the panel writes of changes as 'extremely likely' and 'almost certain'. And in a specific rebuff to sceptics who still argue natural variation in the Sun's output is the real cause of climate change, the panel says mankind's industrial emissions have had five times more effect on the climate than any fluctuations in solar radiation. We are the masters of our own destruction, in short. There is some comfort, however. The panel believes the Gulf Stream will go on bathing Britain with its warm waters for the next 100 years. Some researchers have said it could be disrupted by cold waters pouring off Greenland's melting ice sheets, plunging western Europe into a mini Ice Age, as depicted in the disaster film The Day After Tomorrow.

3. Even if solar variability is real, observed warming is driven by greenhouse gas emissions Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change (SEG), CONFRONTING CLIMATE CHANGE: AVOIDING THE UNMANAGEABLE AND MANAGING THE UNAVOIDABLE, ed. R.M. Bierbaum, J.P. Holdren, M.C. MacCracken, R.H. Moss & P. H. Raven, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, Sigma Xi & UN Foundation, 2007, http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/envronmt/climate/2007/0227segreport.pdf, accessed 6-19-12. The recent temperature history of the Earth has resulted from a complex interaction of human warming and cooling influences with natural variability that arises from volcanic eruptions, fluctuations in the amount of energy reaching the Earth from the Sun, and “internal” climate-system oscillations associated with energy transfers among atmosphere, oceans, and ice. These complexities notwithstanding, it is increasingly clear that the dominant influence on the global-average surface temperature since 1970 has been the warming influence from rising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, most importantly CO2. Worldwide thermometer records with adequate coverage to determine an average surface temperature extend back to 1860, and they yield a mid-range estimate of about 0.75°C for the increase between 1860 and 2000.6 For the period prior to 1860, average surface temperatures must be inferred from indirect indicators derived from the study of ice cores, tree rings, sediments, and the like. A recent review of these “temperature reconstructions” by the U.S. National Academies suggests that natural variability was more important than any net effect of human influences in the period from 1750 to 1860 and that, taken together, the available reconstructions do not show any meaningful difference between the temperature of 1750 and that of 1860 (NRC, 2006). Thus, we may take 0.75°C as a reasonable estimate of the temperature increase over the whole period from 1750 to 2000.


23

Mitigatoin Justified: Climate Change Real--Source Indicts 1. Deniers are simply wrong—they do not have a credible argument,, uncertainty also cuts in our direction

Dr. Peter H. Gleick, Director, Pacific Institute, “Not Going Away: America’s Energy Security, Jobs and Climate Challenges,” Testimony before the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming,” 12-1-10, www.pacinst.org/publications/testimony/gleick_testimony_climate_strategies.pdf, accessed 6-19-12. 2. Despite continued efforts on the part of a small group of climate skeptics and deniers to mislead, misrepresent, and misuse the science, our understanding of human-caused climate change continues to strengthen and improve. Here, in a nutshell, is the best argument against global climate change: There isn't one. There is nothing remotely identified in recent efforts to discredit climate science that changes these fundamental conclusions about climate change. Every recent independent review supports the message of my first point. A recent letter from 255 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences summarizes this issue and is attached as an addendum to this testimony.1 Climate change deniers have been trying hard to confuse the public and policy makers about climate change. But their claims about climate science and what we see in the world around us are based on ideology and bad science, not reality. Those few extreme policy makers and pundits who continue to deny the realities of climate change often point to "uncertainty" in the observations, models, and climate system itself that make perfect predictions impossible. Of course, climate scientists also talk about uncertainty all of the time -- it is a characteristic of the science, not an excuse for politicians to avoid taking action. What those who deny the reality of climate change don't acknowledge, in an example of selective one-sided argumentation, is that uncertainty cuts both ways. While there is always a non-zero possibility that climate changes will fall on the less severe end of the scale, there is a comparable possibility that climate changes will be far worse than we expect, with far more serious consequences to the planet.

2. Peer-reviewed data is overwhelmingly in favor of warming—their evidence comes from misguided media efforts to ‘balance’ coverage

John Lanchester, contributing editor, “Warmer, Warmer,” LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS, 3-22—07, http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/envronmt/climate/2007/0322warmer.htm, accessed 6-19-12. This policy has been remarkably effective. While the peer-reviewed science on global warming is overwhelming – a 2004 survey in Science showed that of the 928 peer-reviewed papers on the subject, ‘none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position’ – the balance in the media has been split almost 50-50 between the scientific evidence on the one hand and ‘sceptics’ on the other. On Monbiot’s account, the BBC has recently woken up to the way in which it was ‘fooled by these people’, which is good news if it is true; but the corporation has hitherto been weak-minded about its reporting of climate change. The ideology of balance has led it to include the ‘other side’ of a debate which has, among scientists, only one side; a recent highlight was an appearance by Nigel Lawson on Newsnight, arguing, or ‘arguing’, as follows: ‘the whole science is extremely uncertain – that is well known to anybody who has studied it.’ The problem with ‘balance’ is partly a problem with the way science is reported. ‘Balance’ works, sort of, as a way of discussing politics in a two-party system. (Though it has to be said that the remorseless polarisation, whereby I say yah because you said boo, is one main reason for the decreased interest in party politics.) Since the climate debate has been polarised on left-right lines in the US, it has seemed appropriate to the media to treat it as a polarised issue, one on which there are two schools of thought, which, in respect of the science, it isn’t: there is one school of thought, and a few nutters. (Parenthetically, it’s not too hard to imagine a world in which the conservative parties were more in favour of conservation, and environmentalism in general was a cause of the right. David Cameron is clearly trying to remake this connection in the UK, in the belief that this is the main issue where he can clearly and definitively distinguish himself from New Labour. The option isn’t available to the Republicans, since they abandoned science in favour of the Christianist right and the environment in favour of Big Oil, which may be one reason why, notwithstanding the shift in the evidence, a poll of Congressional Republicans found that only 13 per cent of them thought it ‘proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the earth is warming because of man-made problems’.) The way the issue is reported reflects the fact that there are people who want to believe in global warming, and wanted to do so right from the start, before the evidence had accumulated to the point where it was no longer an issue of belief. Similarly, there are plenty of people who did not want to believe in man-made global warming, and who are continuing to refuse to believe in it even though the balance of the evidence has changed. But we can’t afford to be distracted from the factual position either by the people who want it to be true or the people who want it not to be, and there is an urgent requirement in the public arena for the issue to be considered now as one of plain fact.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real--Temperatures 1. Warming is real--recent temperature trends prove

Bill McKibben, "Global Warming's Terrifying New Math," ROLLING STONE, 7--19--12, www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719, accessed 9-6-12. If the pictures of those towering wildfires in Colorado haven't convinced you, or the size of your AC bill this summer, here are some hard numbers about climate change: June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe. Meteorologists reported that this spring was the warmest ever recorded for our nation – in fact, it crushed the old record by so much that it represented the "largest temperature departure from average of any season on record." The same week, Saudi authorities reported that it had rained in Mecca despite a temperature of 109 degrees, the hottest downpour in the planet's history.

2. Warming is proven by temperature record--will cause massive damage

William D. Nordhaus, Sterling Professor, Economics, Yale University, "World Warms Up for Real," KHALEEJ TIMES, 4--9--12, www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle08.asp?xfile=/data/opinion/2012/April/opinion_April34.xml&section=opinion, accessed 4-9-12. One of the reasons that drawing conclusions on temperature trends is tricky is that the historical temperature series is highly volatile. The presence of short-term volatility requires looking at long-term trends. A useful analogy is the stock market. Suppose an analyst says that because real stock prices have declined over the last decade, which is true, it follows that there’s no upward trend. Here again, an examination of the long-term data quickly shows this to be incorrect. The last decade of temperature and stock market data are not representative of longer-term trends. The finding that global temperatures are rising over the last century-plus is among the most robust findings of climate science and statistics. The question here is whether emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases will cause net damages, now and in the future. This question has been studied extensively. The most recent thorough survey by the leading scholar in this field, Richard Tol, finds a wide range of damages, particularly if warming is greater than two degrees Centigrade. Major areas of concern are sea-level rise, more intense hurricanes, losses of species and ecosystems, acidification of the oceans, as well as threats to the natural and cultural heritage of the planet.

3. The rate of temperature increase is accelerating Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), “Global Thermometer Still Climbing,” Climate Science Update, 1—10, http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/global-thermometer-still-climbing.html, accessed 3-23-12. It is clear that the Earth’s climate is changing, largely due to human activity. Over the last 25 years, Earth’s global average temperature has been increasing at more than twice the rate of the last century. In fact, nine of the warmest years on record have occurred in just the last 10 years.[1], [2] This warming has been accompanied by a decrease in very cold days and nights and an increase in extremely hot days and warm nights. Additionally, the oceans reached their highest recorded temperature in the summer of 2009. Oceans have absorbed much more heat from global warming than the air at the Earth’s surface because water is much better at retaining heat.

4. Warming is real-spike in record high temperatures Daniel G. Huber and Jay Gulledge, PhD, “Extreme Weather & Climate Change: Understanding the Link and Managing the Risk,” Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, 12—11, p. 4. Record daytime and nighttime high temperatures have been increasing on a global scale. In the United States today, a record high temperature is twice as likely to be broken as a record low, and nighttime temperature records show a strong upward trend (Fig. 2). By contrast, record highs and lows were about equally likely in the 1950s (Fig. 3). This trend shows that the risk of heat waves is increasing over time, consistent with the results of global climate models that are forced by rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.35 Indeed, the observed heat wave intensities in the early 21st century already exceed the worst-case projections of climate models. Moreover, the distribution of observed temperatures is wider than the temperature range produced by climate models, suggesting that models may underestimate the rising risk extreme heat as warming proceeds.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Real--Answers to "Uncertainty" 1. Benefits of action are enormous (green jobs, better environment) even if warming turns out to be false

John F. Kerry U.S. Senator, “On Eve of Rio+20, An Honest Assessment of Climate Change Challenge,” CONGRESSIONAL DOCUMENTS AND PUBLICATIONS, 6—19—12, lexis. Just think about it: If the proponents of action were somehow incorrect, contrary to all that science declares, but nevertheless we proceeded to reduce carbon and other gases released into the atmosphere, what is the worst that would happen? Well, under that scenario the "worst" will be more jobs; the opening of a whole new $6 trillion dollar energy market with a more sustainable policy; a healthier population because of cleaner air and reduced expenditure on health care because of environmentally induced disease; an improved outlook for the oceans and ecosystems affected by pollution falling to earth and sea; and surely, greater security for our country because of less dependence on foreign sources of energy and a stronger economy. That's the worst that will happen.

2. Uncertainty is a reason to act—climate change might be worse than we expect

Gary C. Bryner, Professor, Public Policy Program, Brigham Young University, “Carbon Markets: Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions Through Emissions Trading,” TULANE ENVIRONMENTAL LAW JOURNAL v. 17, Summer 2004, p. 297-298. Nevertheless, there are several reasons why the prudent position is to pursue some preventative measures now. Uncertainties can cut both ways. They can result in even greater, more devastating impacts. Climate change may not be linear, gradual, and manageable. There may be climate tipping points where the next increment of climate change produces dramatic, nonlinear, disruptive, unforeseeable, and unmanageable results. Recent studies, some of which have been commissioned by the George W. Bush administration, including the National Academy of Science's Committee on the Science of Climate Change, which issued a report in 2001 that generally endorsed the main conclusions of the UN-sponsored research on climate change, and a December 2001 National Academy of Sciences report that concluded that climate changes could occur with startling speed, provide compelling cases for precautionary action. Reducing the threat of climate change can also produce other economic, environmental, and equity benefits. Pollution prevention measures make economic sense, and investments in energy efficiency, conservation, cleaner fuels, and other actions that reduce wastes contribute to a dynamic, growing, efficient, and ecologically sustainable economy independent of climate stabilization goals.

3. Claims of uncertainty do not de-justify action—we are certain that warming is happening and acting now will help mitigate the worst impacts

Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), “Certainty vs. Uncertainty,” 6—21—10, http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/certainty-vs-uncertainty.html, accessed 3-23-12. Uncertainty is ubiquitous in our daily lives. We are uncertain about where to go to college, when and if to get married, who will play in the World Series, and so on. To most of us, uncertainty means not knowing. To scientists, however, uncertainty is how well something is known. And, therein lies an important difference, especially when trying to understand what is known about climate change. In science, there's often not absolute certainty. But, research reduces uncertainty. In many cases, theories have been tested and analyzed and examined so thoroughly that their chance of being wrong is infinitesimal. Other times, uncertainties linger despite lengthy research. In those cases, scientists make it their job to explain how well something is known. When gaps in knowledge exist, scientists qualify the evidence to ensure others don't form conclusions that go beyond what is known. Even though it may seem counterintuitive, scientists like to point out the level of uncertainty. Why? Because they want to be as transparent as possible and it shows how well certain phenomena are understood. Decision makers in our society use scientific input all the time. But they could make a critically wrong choice if the unknowns aren't taken into account. For instance, city planners could build a levee too low or not evacuate enough coastal communities along an expected landfall zone of a hurricane if uncertainty is understated. For these reasons, uncertainty plays a key role in informing public policy. Taking into account the many sources of scientific understanding, climate scientists have sought to provide decision-makers with careful language regarding uncertainty. A "very likely" outcome, for example, is one that has a greater than 90 percent chance of occurring. Climate data or model projections in which we have "very high confidence" have at least a 9 out of 10 chance of being correct. However, in this culture of transparency where climate scientists describe degrees of certainty and confidence in their findings, climate change deniers have linked less than complete certainty with not knowing anything. The truth is, scientists know a great deal about climate change. We have learned, for example, that the burning of fossil fuels and the clearing of forests release carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. There is no uncertainty about this. We have learned that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere trap heat through the greenhouse effect. Again, there is no uncertainty about this. Earth is warming because these gasses are being released faster than they can be absorbed by natural processes. It is very likely (greater than 90 percent probability) that human activities are the main reason for the world's temperature increase in the past 50 years. Scientists know with very high confidence, or even greater certainty, that: * Human-induced warming influences physical and biological systems throughout the world * Sea levels are rising * Glaciers and permafrost are shrinking * Oceans are becoming more acidic * Ranges of plants and animals are shifting Scientists are uncertain, however, about how much global warming will occur in the future (between 2.1 degrees and 11 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100). They are also uncertain how soon the summer sea ice habitat where the ringed seal lives will disappear. Curiously, much of this uncertainty has to do with—are you ready?—humans. The choices we make in the next decade, or so, to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gasses could prevent catastrophic climate change. So, what's the bottom line? Science has learned much about climate change. Science tells us what is more or less likely to be true. We know that acting now to deeply reduce heat-trapping emissions will limit the scope and severity of further impacts – and that is virtually certain.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Agriculture 1. Warming-induced decrease in food production risks civilizational collapse

Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute, WORLD ON EDGE, 2011, p. 55. Ironically, the two countries that are planning to build most of the new coal-fired power plants, China and India, are precisely the ones whose food security is most massively threatened by the carbon emitted from burning coal. It is now in their interest to try and save their mountain glaciers by quickly shifting energy investment from coal-fired power plants into energy efficiency, wind farms, solar thermal power plants, and geothermal power plants.40 We know from studying earlier civilizations that declined and collapsed that shrinking harvests often were responsible. For the Sumerians, it was rising salt concentrations in the soil that lowered wheat and barley yields and eventually brought down this remarkable early civilization. For us, it is rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere that are raising the global temperature, which ultimately could shrink grain harvests and bring down our global civilization.

2. Rising temperatures undermine food security—threaten agricultural output Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute, WORLD ON EDGE, 2011, p. 47. The effects of high temperatures on food security are scary. Agriculture as it exists today has evolved over 11,000 years of rather remarkable climate stability. As a result, world agriculture has evolved to maximize productivity within this climatic regime. With the earth’s climate changing, agriculture will increasingly be out of sync with the climate system that shaped it. When temperatures soar during the growing season, grain yields fall. Crop ecologists use a rule of thumb that for each 1-degree-Celsius rise in temperature above the optimum during the growing season, we can expect a 10- percent decline in grain yields.9 Among other things, temperature affects photosynthesis. In a study of local ecosystem sustainability, Mohan Wali and his colleagues at Ohio State University noted that as temperature rises, photosynthetic activity in plants increases until the temperature reaches 68 degrees Fahrenheit. The rate of photosynthesis then plateaus until the temperature hits 95 degrees, whereupon it begins to decline. At 104 degrees, photosynthesis ceases entirely.

3. High temps undermine food production—threaten pollination of vital crops Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute, WORLD ON EDGE, 2011, p. 47-48. The most vulnerable part of a plant’s life cycle is the pollination period. Of the world’s three food staples— rice, wheat, and corn—corn is particularly vulnerable to heat stress. In order for corn to reproduce, pollen must fall from the tassel to the strands of silk that emerge from the end of each ear of corn. Each of these silk strands is attached to a kernel site on the cob. If the kernel is to develop, a grain of pollen must fall on the silk strand and then journey to the kernel site. When temperatures are uncommonly high, the silk strands quickly dry out and turn brown, unable to play their role in the fertilization process. The effects of temperature on rice pollination have been studied in detail in the Philippines. Scientists there report that the pollination of rice falls from 100 percent at 93 degrees Fahrenheit to nearly zero at 104 degrees Fahrenheit, leading to crop failure.11

4. Warming is causing a global food crisis—must act now to solve

Office of Senator Bob Casey, “Casey Introduces Resolution Urging the Senate to Acknowledge Global Warming Contributes to Global Food Crisis,” CONGRESSIONAL DOCUMENTS AND PUBLICATIONS, 6-5-08, lexis. As the United States Senate debates the global warming bill, U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) today introduced an amendment to the bill to urge the Senate to acknowledge that reduced crop harvests and resulting food shortages are another potential impact of global warming. The shortage of crops and increased costs of staples like wheat and rice are causing food riots and civil unrest in some countries around the world. "The longer we wait to address the problem of global warming, the more severe floods and drought conditions become that can threaten crop harvests around the world," said Senator Casey. "This global food crisis has left millions hungry. We must act now to stop the effects of global warming; not only is this a humanitarian crisis, it is a threat to our national security." Senator Casey has been an early and strong supporter of the effort to address the critical problem of global warming. He has also focused on the national security implications of global warming as well as the new opportunities and jobs that can be created by new "green" technologies. Global warming is predicted to increase malnutrition as well as the number of people affected by heat waves, floods, storms, fires and droughts. The resolution urges the United States to address the serious issue of global warming in a timely manner because of the harmful impacts global warming can have on global crop harvests and resulting food security crises. In May, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released a report acknowledging the impact that global warming could have on crop disasters.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Agriculture [cont’d] 5. Warming causes a linear drop in grain production--10% for ever 1c of warming

The Military Advisory Board, NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE THREAT OF CLIMATE CHANGE, CNA Corporation, 2007, p. 15. Access to vital resources, primarily food and water, can be an additional causative factor of conflicts, a number of which are playing out today in Africa. Probably the best known is the conflict in Darfur between herders and farmers. Long periods of drought resulted in the loss of both farmland and grazing land to the desert. The failure of their grazing lands compelled the nomads to migrate southward in search of water and herding ground, and that in turn led to conflict with the farming tribes occupying those lands. Coupled with population growth, tribal, ethnic, and religious differences, the competition for land turned violent. Probably more than any other recent conflict, Darfur provides a case study of how existing marginal situations can be exacerbated beyond the tipping point by climate-related factors. It also shows how lack of essential resources threatens not only individuals and their communities but also the region and the international community at large. Worldwide food production will be affected by climate change in a variety of ways. Crop ecologists estimate that for every 1.8°F rise in temperature above historical norms, grain production will drop 10 percent. Most of the world’s growth in food demand is occurring on the Indian subcontinent and in sub-Saharan Africa, areas already facing food shortages. Over the coming decades, these areas are expected to become hotter and drier

6. Climate change will prevent us from feeding a growing population, risking environmental decay and conflict

Ian Sample, journalist, “Global Food Crisis Looms as Climate Change and Population Growth Strip Fertile Land,” GUARDIAN, 8-31-07, http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/212/45332.html, accessed 9-4-12. Climate change and an increasing population could trigger a global food crisis in the next half century as countries struggle for fertile land to grow crops and rear animals, scientists warned yesterday. To keep up with the growth in human population, more food will have to be produced worldwide over the next 50 years than has been during the past 10,000 years combined, the experts said. But in many countries a combination of poor farming practices and deforestation will be exacerbated by climate change to steadily degrade soil fertility, leaving vast areas unsuitable for crops or grazing. Competition over sparse resources may lead to conflicts and environmental destruction, the scientists fear. The warnings came as researchers from around the world convened at a UN-backed forum in Iceland on sustainable development to address the organisation's millennium development goals to halve hunger and extreme poverty by 2015. The researchers will use the meeting to call on countries to impose strict farming guidelines to ensure that soils are not degraded so badly they cannot recover. "Policy changes that result in improved conservation of soil and vegetation and restoration of degraded land are fundamental to humanity's future livelihood," said Zafar Adeel, director of the international network on water, environment and health at the UN University in Toronto and co-organiser of the meeting. "This is an urgent task as the quality of land for food production, as well as water storage, is fundamental to future peace. Securing food and reducing poverty ... can have a strong impact on efforts to curb the flow of people, environmental refugees, inside countries as well as across national borders," he added.

7. Warming empirically decreases cereal (wheat and corn) production—new research proves

Steven Connor, “World’s Most Important Crops Hit by Global Warming Effects,” THE INDEPENDENT, 3-19-07, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0319-05.htm, accessed 9-4-12. Global warming over the past quarter century has led to a fall in the yield of some of the most important food crops in the world, according to one of the first scientific studies of how climate change has affected cereal crops. Rising temperatures between 1981 and 2002 caused a loss in production of wheat, corn and barley that amounted in effect to some 40 million tons a year - equivalent to annual losses of some £2.6bn. Although these numbers are not large compared to the world-wide production of cereal crops, scientists warned that the findings demonstrated how climate change was already having an impact on the global production of staple foods. "Most people tend to think of climate change as something that will impact the future, but this study shows that warming over the past two decades has already had real effects on global food supply," said Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California. The study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, analysed yields of cereals from around the world during a period when average temperatures rose by about 0.7C between 1980 and 2002 - although the rise was even higher in certain crop-growing regions of the world. There was a clear trend, showing the cereal crops were suffering from lower yields during a time when agricultural technology, including the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, became more intensive. The study's co-author, David Lobell of America's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said that the observed fall in cereal yields could be clearly linked with increased temperatures during the period covered by the study. "Though the impacts are relatively small compared to the technological yield gains over the same period, the results demonstrate that negative impacts of climate trends on crop yields at the global scale are already occurring," Dr Lobell said. The two scientists analysed six of the most widely grown crops in the world - wheat, rice, maize, soybeans, barley and sorghum. Production of these crops accounts for more than 40 per cent of the land in the world used for crops, 55 per cent of the non-meat calories in food and more than 70 per cent of animal feed. They also analysed rainfall and average temperatures for the major growing regions and compared them against the crop yield figures of the Food and Agriculture Organisation for the period 1961 to 2002. "To do this, we assumed that farmers have not yet adapted to climate change, for example by selecting new crop varieties to deal with climate change," Dr Lobell said. "If they have been adapting, something that is very difficult to measure, then the effects of warming may have been lower," he said. The study revealed a simple relationship between temperature and crop yields, with a fall of between 3 and 5 per cent for every 0.5C increase in average temperatures, the scientists said.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Biodiversity 1. Warming is the over-riding threat to biodiversity--risks impoverishing the biosphere

James Hansen, Goddard Institute, NASA, with 17 co-authors, "Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature," submitted to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 2012, http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/notyet/submitted_Hansen_etal.pdf, accessed 9-7-12. Biodiversity is affected by many agents including overharvesting, introduction of exotic species, land use changes, nitrogen fertilization, and direct effects of increased atmospheric CO2 on plant ecophysiology (17). However, easily discernible effects on animals, plants, and insects arising from rapid global warming in the past three decades have exposed the overriding role of climate change. A sudden widespread decline of frogs, with extinction of entire mountain-restricted species attributed to global warming (81, 82), provided a dramatic awakening. There are multiple causes of the detailed processes involved in global amphibian declines and extinctions (83, 84), but there is agreement that global warming is a key contributor and portends a planetary-scale mass extinction in the making unless humanity takes prompt action to stabilize climate while also fighting biodiversity's other threats (85). Mountain-restricted and polar-restricted species are particularly vulnerable. As isotherms move up the mountainside and poleward, so does the climate zone in which a given species can survive. If global warming continues unabated, many of these species will be effectively pushed off the planet. There are already reductions in the population and health of Arctic species in the southern parts of the Arctic, Antarctic species in the northern parts of the Antarctic, and alpine species worldwide (17). A critical factor for survival of some Arctic species is retention of all-year sea ice. Continued growth of fossil fuel emissions will cause loss of all Arctic summer sea ice within several decades. In contrast, the scenario in Fig.5a, with global warming peaking just over 1°C and then declining slowly, should allow summer sea ice to survive and then gradually increase to levels representative of recent decades. The threat to species survival is not limited to mountain and polar species. Plant and animal distributions are a reflection of the regional climates to which they are adapted. Although species attempt to migrate in response to climate change, their paths may be blocked by humanconstructed obstacles or natural barriers such as coast lines. As the shift of climate zones becomes comparable to the range of some species, less mobile species can be driven to extinction. Because of extensive species interdependencies, this can lead to mass extinctions. IPCC (74) reviewed studies relevant to estimating eventual extinctions. They estimate that if global warming exceeds 1.6°C above preindustrial, 9-31 percent of species will be committed to extinction. With global warming of 2.9°C, an estimated 21-52 percent of species will be committed to extinction. Mass extinctions occurred several times in Earth's history (86), often in conjunction with rapid climate change. New species evolved over millions of years, but those time scales are almost beyond human comprehension. If we drive many species to extinction we will leave a more desolate planet for our children, grandchildren, and more generations than we can imagine.

2. Climate change crushes biodiversity

World Wildlife Fund (WWF), THE ENERGY REPORT: 100% RENEWABLE ENERGY BY 2050, 2011, p. 20. Climate change threatens to undo everything that conservation organizations like WWF have achieved over the last half-century. Polar bears may make the headlines, but in reality very few species will be unaffected by a changing climate. Many species could become extinct. Even entire ecosystems – such as coral reefs, mountain habitats, and large blocks of tropical rainforests such as the Amazon – could completely disappear. Many plants and animals that have adapted to their environment over millions of years are vulnerable to even slight changes in temperature and rainfall. Warming and acidifying seas threaten coral reefs and krill – the basis of the marine food chain in many parts of the world. Large mammals like whales and elephants may be forced to travel further in search of food, leaving the safety of the protected areas that WWF and others have fought so hard to secure. As part of the interwoven web of life, humans will not be immune to the consequences of a changing climate.

3. Rapid warming risks extinction--species loss, inability to adapt Louise Gray, "Climate Change Could Happen Must Faster than Previously Thought," THE TELEGRAPH, 1--14--11, www.countercurrents.org/gray140111.htm, accessed 6-19-12. Humans are in danger of making large parts of the Earth uninhabitable for thousands of years because of man made climate change, according to new evidence based on geological records. The US study predicted that if society continues burning fossil fuels at the current rate, atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide could rise from the current level of 390 parts per million (ppm) to 1,000 by the end of this century. The last time the world had such high levels of carbon dioxide temperatures were on average 29F(16C) above pre-industrial levels. Evidence has been found of crocodiles and palm trees at the Poles and only small mammals were able to survive. Jeffrey Kiehl, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), who carried out the study, said the Earth could return to such temperatures over hundreds or even thousands of years. But unlike last time, when it happened over millions of years, temperatures will rise too fast for species to adapt and change. In the short term he said temperatures could rise by more than 10.8F (6C) by the end of the century, which will also wipe out species. "This is happening at such a rate how will species, including humans, respond? The implications for the biosphere is of great concern."


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Biodiversity [cont’d]

4. Warming causes species loss—process has already begun

Seth Borenstein, “Pace of Global Warming Causes Alarm,” ASSOCIATED PRESS, 11-21-06, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1121-09.htm, accessed 9-4-12. Animal and plant species have begun dying off or changing sooner than predicted because of global warming, a review of hundreds of research studies contends. These fast-moving adaptations come as a surprise even to biologists and ecologists because they are occurring so rapidly. At least 70 species of frogs, mostly mountain-dwellers that had nowhere to go to escape the creeping heat, have gone extinct because of climate change, the analysis says. It also reports that between 100 and 200 other cold-dependent animal species, such as penguins and polar bears, are in deep trouble. "We are finally seeing species going extinct," said University of Texas biologist Camille Parmesan, author of the study. "Now we've got the evidence. It's here. It's real. This is not just biologists' intuition. It's what's happening." Her review of 866 scientific studies is summed up in the journal Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. Parmesan reports seeing trends of animal populations moving northward if they can, of species adapting slightly because of climate change, of plants blooming earlier, and of an increase in pests and parasites. Parmesan and others have been predicting such changes for years, but even she was surprised to find evidence that it's already happening; she expected it would be another decade away. Just five years ago biologists, though not complacent, believed the harmful biological effects of global warming were much farther down the road, said Douglas Futuyma, professor of ecology and evolution at the State University of New York in Stony Brook. "I feel as though we are staring crisis in the face," Futuyma said. "It's not just down the road somewhere. It is just hurtling toward us. Anyone who is 10 years old right now is going to be facing a very different and frightening world by the time that they are 50 or 60."

5. Warming will overwhelm ecosystem resiliency, threatening many species

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “Summary for Policymakers,” CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: IMPACTS, ADAPTATION AND VULNERABILITY. CONTRIBUTION OF WORKNG GROUP II TO THE FOURTH ASSESSMENT REPORT OF THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, ed. M.L. Parry et al., 2007, p. 11. The resilience of many ecosystems is likely to be exceeded this century by an unprecedented combination of climate change, associated disturbances (e.g., flooding, drought, wildfire, insects, ocean acidification), and other global change drivers (e.g., landuse change, pollution, over-exploitation of resources). ** N [4.1 to 4.6] Over the course of this century, net carbon uptake by terrestrial ecosystems is likely to peak before mid-century and then weaken or even reverse,11 thus amplifying climate change. ** N [4.ES, F4.2] Approximately 20-30% of plant and animal species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if increases in global average temperature exceed 1.5-2.5°C. * N [4.4, T4.1] For increases in global average temperature exceeding 1.5-2.5°C and in concomitant atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, there are projected to be major changes in ecosystem structure and function, species’ ecological interactions, and species’ geographical ranges, with predominantly negative consequences for biodiversity, and ecosystem goods and services e.g., water and food supply. ** N [4.4] The progressive acidification of oceans due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide is expected to have negative impacts on marine shell-forming organisms (e.g., corals) and their dependent species. *

6. Warming may cause extinction of half of all species

Alok Jha, journalist, “Warming Could Wipe Out Half of All Species,” GUARDIAN, 10-24-07, http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/24/4782/, accessed 9-4-12. Rising global temperatures caused by climate change could trigger a huge extinction of plants and animals, according to a study. Though humans would probably survive such an event, half of the world’s species could be wiped out. Scientists at the University of York and the University of Leeds examined the relationship between climate and biodiversity over the past 520m years - almost the entire fossil record - and uncovered an association between the two for the first time. When the Earth’s temperatures are in a “greenhouse” climate phase, they found that extinctions rates were relatively high. Conversely, during cooler “icehouse” conditions, biodiversity increased. The results, published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggest that the predictions of a rapid rise in the Earth’s temperature due to man-made climate change could have a similar effect on biodiversity. Peter Mayhew, a population ecologist at the University of York and one of the authors of the research paper, said: “Our results provide the first clear evidence that global climate may explain substantial variation in the fossil record in a simple and consistent manner. If our results hold for current warming - the magnitude of which is comparable with the long-term fluctuations in Earth climate - they suggest that extinctions will increase.”


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Coral 1. Coral is vulnerable to warming and acidification--key to biodiversity

James Hansen, Goddard Institute, NASA, with 17 co-authors, "Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature," submitted to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 2012, http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/notyet/submitted_Hansen_etal.pdf, accessed 9-7-12. Coral reefs are the most biologically diverse marine ecosystem, often described as the rainforests of the ocean. Over a million species, most not yet described (87), are estimated to populate coral reef ecosystems generating crucial ecosystem services for at least 500 million people in tropical coastal areas. These ecosystems are highly vulnerable to the combined effects of ocean acidification and warming. Acidification arises as the ocean absorbs CO2, producing carbonic acid (88). Geochemical records show that ocean pH is already outside its range of the past several million years (89, 90). Warming causes coral bleaching, as overheated coral expel symbiotic algae and become vulnerable to disease and mortality (91). Coral bleaching and slowing of coral calcification already are causing mass mortalities, increased coral disease, and reduced reef carbonate accretion, thus disrupting coral reef ecosystem health (14, 92). Local human-made stresses add to the global warming and acidification effects, all of these driving a contraction of 1-2% per year in the abundance of reef-building corals (13). Loss of the three-dimensional coral reef frameworks has consequences for the millions of species that depend on them. Loss of these frameworks also has consequences for the important roles that coral reefs play in supporting fisheries and protecting coastlines from wave stress. Consequences of lost coral reefs can be economically devastating for many nations, especially in combination with other impacts such as sea level rise and intensification of storms.

2. Warming threatens coral with extinction—recent government report proves

Allison Winter, “Corals Risk Extinction Due to Climate Change – NOAA,” GREENWIRE, 4—16—12, lexis. More than 50 coral species in U.S. waters are likely to go extinct by 2100 if policy and technology remain the same, according to a new report from federal scientists. Ocean warming, disease and ocean acidification are the most significant threats posing extinction risks, the experts conclude in a new "status review" of 82 coral species the government is considering for protection under the Endangered Species Act. The scientists put human-driven climate change squarely at the center: The experts cite anthropogenic releases of carbon dioxide as a key driver of oceans warming and absorbing more carbon dioxide, which makes waters more acidic. "The combined direct and indirect effects of rising temperature, including increased incidence of disease and ocean acidification, both resulting primarily from anthropogenic increases in atmospheric CO2, are likely to represent the greatest risks of extinction to all or most of the candidate coral species over the next century," the report from the National Marine Fisheries Service says. Seven federal scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Park Service and U.S. Geological Survey worked on the report, which also underwent independent peer review. The "status review" is part of the federal government's process to determine whether the 82 coral species merit protection under the Endangered Species Act. Federal officials expect to make a decision by the end of this year, according to NOAA. The government does not usually release such reports while considering a listing, but NOAA officials said they wanted to share it as part of the "engagement process" so the agency's decisionmaking would be more transparent and open. Of the species under review, 46 are "more likely than not" to face extinction by 2100, while 10 are "likely," the report states. But the authors also note that "the overall uncertainty was high" in their predictions, given limited science on corals and uncertainty how they might adapt. The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the government in 2009 to protect 83 coral species it considered in jeopardy. Last year, NMFS said it would consider protections for all but one of the species. It is the only large, multiple-species listing under NMFS review, and the agency describes it as "the most complex ESA listing process NOAA Fisheries has ever undertaken."

3. Warming destroys coral reefs--bleaching Dr. Peter H. Gleick, Director, Pacific Institute, “Not Going Away: America’s Energy Security, Jobs and Climate Challenges,” Testimony before the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming,” 12-1-10, www.pacinst.org/publications/testimony/gleick_testimony_climate_strategies.pdf, accessed 6-19-12. There is almost total consensus among experts that the earth’s climate is changing as a result of the build-up of greenhouse gases. The IPCC (involving over 3,000 of the world’s experts) has come out with clear conclusions as to the reality of this phenomenon. One does not have to look further than the collective academy of scientists worldwide to see the string (of) statements on this worrying change to the earth’s atmosphere. There is broad scientific consensus that coral reefs are heavily affected by the activities of man and there are significant global influences that can make reefs more vulnerable such as global warming...It is highly likely that coral bleaching has been exacerbated by global warming.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Drought 1. Warming will turn one-third of the planet into desert

Michael McCarthy, journalist, “The Century of Drought,” INDEPENDENT, 10-4-06, http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/212/45270.html, accessed 9-4-12. One third of the planet will be desert by the year 2100, say climate experts in the most dire warning yet of the effects of global warming Drought threatening the lives of millions will spread across half the land surface of the Earth in the coming century because of global warming, according to new predictions from Britain's leading climate scientists. Extreme drought, in which agriculture is in effect impossible, will affect about a third of the planet, according to the study from the Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research. It is one of the most dire forecasts so far of the potential effects of rising temperatures around the world - yet it may be an underestimation, the scientists involved said yesterday. The findings, released at the Climate Clinic at the Conservative Party conference in Bournemouth, drew astonished and dismayed reactions from aid agencies and development specialists, who fear that the poor of developing countries will be worst hit. "This is genuinely terrifying," said Andrew Pendleton of Christian Aid. "It is a death sentence for many millions of people. It will mean migration off the land at levels we have not seen before, and at levels poor countries cannot cope with."

2. Warming will make drought more severe, threatening millions of people

Michael McCarthy, journalist, “The Century of Drought,” INDEPENDENT, 10-4-06, http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/212/45270.html, accessed 9-4-12. One of Britain's leading experts on the effects of climate change on the developing countries, Andrew Simms from the New Economics Foundation, said: "There's almost no aspect of life in the developing countries that these predictions don't undermine - the ability to grow food, the ability to have a safe sanitation system, the availability of water. For hundreds of millions of people for whom getting through the day is already a struggle, this is going to push them over the precipice." The findings represent the first time that the threat of increased drought from climate change has been quantified with a supercomputer climate model such as the one operated by the Hadley Centre. Their impact is likely to even greater because the findings may be an underestimate. The study did not include potential effects on drought from global-warming-induced changes to the Earth's carbon cycle. In one unpublished Met Office study, when the carbon cycle effects are included, future drought is even worse. The results are regarded as most valid at the global level, but the clear implication is that the parts of the world already stricken by drought, such as Africa, will be the places where the projected increase will have the most severe effects. The study, by Eleanor Burke and two Hadley Centre colleagues, models how a measure of drought known as the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) is likely to increase globally during the coming century with predicted changes in rainfall and heat around the world because of climate change. It shows the PDSI figure for moderate drought, currently at 25 per cent of the Earth's surface, rising to 50 per cent by 2100, the figure for severe drought, currently at about 8 per cent, rising to 40 cent, and the figure for extreme drought, currently 3 per cent, rising to 30 per cent.

3. Models prove that warming will increase frequency and intensity of droughts

German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), WORLD IN TRANSITION—CLIMATE CHANGE AS A SECURITY RISK, Earthscan, London, 1--08, p. 59. With regard to precipitation, it is not just annual or seasonal amounts that are of concern, but also extreme weather events such as periods of drought and unusually intense rainfall. Both the data and the model calculations reveal a trend where an increasing share of annual rainfall is concentrated in such intense precipitation events (in other words occurring over a few days), accompanied by a simultaneous increase in the duration of periods without rainfall. This tendency increases both the risk of floods and the frequency of periods of drought. Based on one model scenario, Figure 5.1-5 shows the regions where a major increase in the risk of drought due to longer periods of dry weather is likely. Again, the regions most implicated in this are the Mediterranean area, southern Africa and Brazil, where drought also extends into the Amazon region. Another aspect of the drought is revealed (based on another model) by the projected dynamics of the climatic water balance (Fig. 5.1-6.). In most continental regions, even in areas where precipitation increases in absolute terms, the climatic water balance declines. There is thus less water available for human use, because the increase in evaporation exceeds the increase in precipitation.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Economy 1. Warming risks devastating the economy—multiple studies prove

John F. Kerry U.S. Senator, “On Eve of Rio+20, An Honest Assessment of Climate Change Challenge,” CONGRESSIONAL DOCUMENTS AND PUBLICATIONS, 6—19—12, lexis. The fact is, unmitigated climate change is wreaking havoc on economies--and it will only get worse unless we act. Just ask Professor Frank Ackerman, a prominent economist at Tufts University. He found that inaction in the face of climate change could cost the American economy more than 3.6 percent of GDP--or $3.8 trillion annually--by the end of the century. And he's not alone. Harvard economist Joseph Aldy estimates that if temperatures push past the 2 degrees Celsius benchmark to 2.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the annual damages could amount to one to two percent of world GDP by 2100--and as high as two to four percent of world GDP if we push above four degrees Celsius. Developing countries will face similar costs. According to a major international initiative on "The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity," developing countries will spend an estimated $70 to $100 billion a year from 2010 to 2050 just to adapt to a two degrees Celsius change in global temperatures, with the majority spent on protecting infrastructure and coastal zones, managing the water supply and protecting against the effects of floods. The "grow now, clean later" approach is no longer viable--if it ever was. Before you know it, one quarter of the world's land surface will bear the marks of soil erosion, salinization, nutrient depletion and desertification. Imagine what this will do to agricultural productivity and water supplies. Another way of looking at this is to consider not the costs, but the economic benefits of keeping our ecosystems intact. Back in 2005, the World Bank estimated the total value of the world's natural assets to be $44 trillion. The countries that manage their forests, agricultural lands, energy and minerals and other natural assets well will be economic leaders in the 21st century. They'll be able to reap the benefits of ecosystem services like coral reefs, which provide

2. Warming undermines global economic development—destruction of capital, loss of workers, risking economic crisis

German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), WORLD IN TRANSITION—CLIMATE CHANGE AS A SECURITY RISK, Earthscan, London, 1--08, p. 170-171. Climate change alters the conditions for regional production processes and supply infrastructures, e.g. by causing regional water scarcity or variability in water availability (Section 6.2), drought and declining soil productivity (Section 6.3), or storms and flooding of coastal locations and infrastructures (Section 6.4). These climate impacts force companies to relocate, either spontaneously or at best on a planned basis, and lead to the closure of production sites. People abandon their home regions in coastal or arid regions because under the changed climatic conditions, they no longer have adequate employment and income generation opportunities, or perhaps even because their previous living and working environment has become hostile to life (Section 6.5). Climate change thus leads to the destruction and devaluation of economic capital as well as the loss of skilled and productive workers through environmentally induced migration and an increase in climate- induced diseases and malnutrition. Furthermore, economic resources which would normally be channeled directly into the production process instead have to be spent on adaptation measures, e.g. preparing for extreme events, or on reconstruction or the delivery of additional health services. The impairment of international trade routes as a result of changed climatic conditions may also mean that the benefits and growth stimuli resulting from the ongoing international division of labour are capitalized on to a lesser extent. The impacts outlined above contribute – each according to their form and intensity – to a slowing of economic growth processes and/or the stagnation of or even a drop in the affected countries’ gross domestic product (GDP). These negative economic impacts may initially be offset in some regions by the limited economic benefits of changed climatic conditions, such as more moderate temperatures and increased precipitation, which could prove advantageous for some sectors of agriculture, for example. Technological innovations could also reduce the economic pressure of adaptation and stimulate growth. From a global perspective, however, these regionally limited effects will not compensate for the overall negative trend. Rather, the drops in growth and prosperity are likely to be very substantial if climate change continues unabated and causes greatly intensified climate impacts. In terms of the range of economic impacts, which may even include global economic crisis (Stern, 2006), a key factor is the importance of the worst affected regions in global economic relations. It is notable that the developing countries would bear the main burden of the impacts of climate change, yet play a relatively insignificant role in the global economy. However, the major newly industrializing countries such as China and India will become ever more important economic players in the coming decades, also as trade partners for the export-oriented industrialized countries (Section 4.3.2; Goldman Sachs, 2003) – and these countries are highly exposed to the threat of major climate impacts (Chapter 5 and Sections 7.4, 7.6, 7.7 and 7.10). Significant impairment of the global economy is therefore a distinct possibility. Another factor of relevance in terms of avoiding global economic crisis is the level at which stabilization of the concentration of greenhouse gases can be achieved – and therefore which climate impacts are likely to be felt in the global economy. According to Stern (2006), inaction in climate policy and the consequent unabated climate change would put global GDP on a far lower development pathway, costing between 5 per cent and 20 per cent of annual global GDP now and into the future, compared with a hypothetical development pathway without climate impacts (Kemfert and Schumacher, 2005; Stern, 2006). Even though comparisons with the world economic crisis of the 1920s and 1930s (Stern, 2006) appear overstated, it is nonetheless the case that any inaction or delay in pursuing resolute and ambitious climate protection policies will jeopardize the growth prospects of the newly industrializing/developing countries and the industrialized countries alike. This in turn will steadily reduce the economic scope for action at both national and international level on urgent challenges such as poverty reduction, demographic change, control of major diseases, growing energy and resource scarcity, and environmental protection.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Economy [cont’d] 3. Even modest warming will substantially cut global GDP

German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), WORLD IN TRANSITION—CLIMATE CHANGE AS A SECURITY RISK, Earthscan, London, 1--08, p. 71. Estimations of the overall economic costs of climate change vary considerably depending on the assumptions regarding the future and the methodological parameters used (e.g. climate sensitivity, discount rate and regional aggregation). Most models nevertheless come to the conclusion that an increase of just a few degrees Celsius could result in a global loss of welfare in the order of several per cent of global GDP (IPCC, 2007b).

4. Climate change will decreases global economic growth—multiple mechanisms

German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), WORLD IN TRANSITION—CLIMATE CHANGE AS A SECURITY RISK, Earthscan, London, 1--08, p. 5. Risks for global economic development: Climate change will alter the conditions for regional production processes and supply infrastructures. Regional water scarcity will impede the development of irrigated agriculture and other water-intensive sectors. Drought and soil degradation will result in a drop in agricultural yields. More frequent extreme events such as storms and flooding put industrial sites and the transport, supply and production infrastructures in coastal regions at risk, forcing companies to relocate or close production sites. Depending on the type and intensity of the climate impacts, this could have a significant and adverse effect on the global economy. Unabated climate change is likely to result in substantially reduced rates of growth. This will increasingly limit the economic scope, at national and international level, to address the urgent challenges associated with the Millennium Development Goals.

5. Failure to act on warming will destroy our economy

BOSTON GLOBE, staff editorial, “Getting Warmer on Emissions,” 6-2-08, p. A14. Republican Senator John Warner of Virginia, former chairman of the Armed Services Committee, lent his name to the bill because he sees the threat to national security posed by the failure to address global warming. Others value the support the bill would provide to restore and protect natural resources threatened by climate change. That is the strength of this bill and Markey's - both take a broad-based approach to the challenge that climate change presents to this country and the world. "If you don't take action on climate change," former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker has said, "you can be sure that our economies will go down the drain in the next 30 years." Three years ago, the Senate rejected a weaker global warming bill on the grounds, in part, that it might cause gasoline and utility prices to climb. Since then, the costs of both have skyrocketed, and the country is no closer to making a substantial shift away from fossil fuels. Passage of this bill with a filibuster-proof majority would start that historic change.

6. Failure to act on warming risks enormous economic losses

Bob Keefe, journalist, “Heated Debate Likely Over Bill to Cut Carbon,” ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, 6-1-08, p. 5F. Proponents say that if the United States doesn't quickly curb greenhouse gas emissions, the economic impact could be even worse. "We still have the opportunity to avoid damage [from global warming], but our window of opportunity is running out," said Dan Lashof, global warming specialist at the environmental group National Resources Defense Council. "What we need is a comprehensive national [strategy]." In its own study, the NRDC predicts real estate losses, higher energy and water costs and other global warming-related problems could result in $3.8 trillion in economic losses by the end of the century if the Lieberman-Warner legislation isn't passed.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Environment 1. Warming risks massive ecosystem damage—evidence from previous die-offs proves

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES NEWS, “The Relationship between Extreme Global Warming and Earth's Past Mass Extinction Events,” 11—22—11, lexis. Climate scientists study the underlying causes behind previous mass extinction events to gain a better understanding of what may happen due to existing amounts of greenhouse gas emissions and rising global temperatures. It's been speculated that if all fossil fuels are burned up until the 22nd century, global temperatures will rise by as much as 10 degree Celsius. If that happens, it would be similar to what occurred during the Paleocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) event in the Cenozoic era. During the PETM event, Earth's surface temperature rose by around 6 to 8 degree Celsius. The rise in temperature led to permanent, irreparable changes in the world's ecosystems. For example, the PETM event caused the mass extinction of sea-based protozoa known as benthic foraminifera. Although certain land-based mammal species were also wiped out, in their place new mammal species appeared (like primates and horses). There are several possibilities being studied as to what caused the PETM event. These include volcanic eruptions on a massive global scale, a forced increase in temperature due to Earth's orbit, an abrupt release of methane gas into the atmosphere and deep ocean heat circulation. Another extreme global warming event that occurred during the Cambrian period has been coined "hyperwarming" by Dr. Ed Landing, a state paleontologist and paleontology curator at the New York State Museum. Evidence points to an explosion that occurred in the Cambrian period, which led to a rapid rate of evolution and mass extinction of several species. "By process of elimination, primary causes of mass extinctions are linked in various ways to the carbon cycle in general and ocean chemistry in particular with clear association with atmospheric carbon dioxide levels," revealed a study entitled "Mass extinctions and ocean acidification: biological constraints on geological dilemmas" by J. E. N. Veron. On a similar note, "... the higher the level, the greater the risk that a vicious circle of global warming could be unleashed, inflicting potentially irreversible damage to Earth's climate system," reported Breitbart.

2. Warming risks massive ecosystem disruptions—multiple mechanisms WEEKLY BLITZ, “Global Warming—New Challenges before the World,” 8—18—11, lexis. Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface, air and oceans and its projected continuation. Global surface temperature increased 0.74 0.18 degree C during the last century. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that increasing greenhouse gas concentrations resulting from human activity such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation are responsible for most of the observed temperature increase since the middle of the twentieth century. IPCC report indicates that global surface temperature will probably rise a further 1.1 to 6.4 degree C during the 21st century. Increasing global temperature will cause sea levels to rise and will change the amount and pattern of precipitation, probably including expansion of subtropical deserts. The continuing retreat of glaciers, permafrost and sea ice is expected, with the Arctic region being particularly affected. Other likely effects include shrinkage of the Amazon rainforest and Boreal forests, increases in the intensity of extreme weather events, species extinctions and changes in agricultural yields.

3. Climate change is so damaging to the environment that it threatens extinction—U.N. report proves Martin Hodgson, journalist, “Environmental Failures ‘Put Humanity at Risk’,” GUARDIAN, 10-26-07, www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/envronmt/climate/2007/1026risk.htm, accessed 6-19-12. The future of humanity has been put at risk by a failure to address environmental problems including climate change, species extinction and a growing human population, according to a new UN report. In a sweeping audit of the world's environmental wellbeing, the study by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) warns that governments are still failing to recognise the seriousness of major environmental issues. The study, involving more than 1,400 scientists, found that human consumption had far outstripped available resources. Each person on Earth now requires a third more land to supply his or her needs than the planet can supply, it finds. Meanwhile, biodiversity is seriously threatened by the impact of human activities: 30% of amphibians, 23% of mammals and 12% of birds are under threat of extinction, while one in 10 of the world's large rivers runs dry every year before it reaches the sea. The report - entitled Global Environment Outlook: Environment for Development - reviews progress made since a similar study in 1987 which laid the groundwork for studying environmental issues affecting the planet. Since the 1987 study, Our Common Future, the global response "has in some cases been courageous and inspiring," said the environment programme's executive director Achim Steiner. The international community has cut ozone-damaging chemicals, negotiated the Kyoto protocol and other international environmental treaties and supported a rise in protected areas which cover 12% of the world. "But all too often [the response] has been slow and at a pace and scale that fails to respond to or recognise the magnitude of the challenges facing the people and the environment of the planet," Mr. Steiner said. "The systematic destruction of the Earth's natural and nature-based resources has reached a point where the economic viability of economies is being challenged - and where the bill we hand to our children may prove impossible to pay," he said. Cli


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Environment [cont’d] 4. Climate change is the greatest environmental threat we face

Stephanie Meeks, Acting President & CEO, The Nature Conservancy, Testimony Before House Select Committee on Energy Dependence and Global Warming, CQ CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY, 2-14-08, lexis. Climate change is the greatest environmental challenge that our society faces today. Every acre of land and mile of coast protected by The Nature Conservancy will be affected by climate change. Climate change is already stressing human and natural systems in a way that menaces natural economies, human economies, people and biodiversity. Prompt action to address this threat is essential to minimize future harm to nature and to the social and economic fabric of our communities. Aware of this urgency, The Nature Conservancy has undertaken projects around the world to demonstrate effective solutions to climate change. Our on-the-ground conservation work includes five large-scale REDD projects in Belize, Bolivia and Brazil that have reduced and continue to reduce emissions from deforestation while protecting almost 1.8 million acres of species-rich forest land while bringing benefits to local communities.

5. Warming increases the risk of deadly, abrupt, and irreversible changes in climate and ecosystems

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), L Bernstein et al., CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: SYNTHESIS REPORT, 2007, p. 53-54. Anthropogenic warming could lead to some impacts that are abrupt or irreversible, depending upon the rate and magnitude of the climate change. {WGII 12.6, 19.3, 19.4, SPM} Abrupt climate change on decadal time scales is normally thought of as involving ocean circulation changes. In addition on longer time scales, ice sheet and ecosystem changes may also play a role. If a large-scale abrupt climate change were to occur, its impact could be quite high (see Topic 5.2). {WGI 8.7, 10.3, 10.7; WGII 4.4, 19.3} Partial loss of ice sheets on polar land and/or the thermal expansion of seawater over very long time scales could imply metres of sea level rise, major changes in coastlines and inundation of low-lying areas, with greatest effects in river deltas and low-lying islands. Current models project that such changes would occur over very long time scales (millennial) if a global temperature increase of 1.9 to 4.6°C (relative to pre-industrial) were to be sustained. Rapid sea level rise on century time scales cannot be excluded. {SYR 3.2.3; WGI 6.4, 10.7; WGII 19.3, SPM} Climate change is likely to lead to some irreversible impacts. There is medium confidence that approximately 20 to 30% of species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if increases in global average warming exceed 1.5 to 2.5°C (relative to 1980-1999). As global average temperature increase exceeds about 3.5°C, model projections suggest significant extinctions (40 to 70% of species assessed) around the globe. {WGII 4.4, Figure SPM.2} Based on current model simulations, it is very likely that the meridional overturning circulation (MOC) of the Atlantic Ocean will slow down during the 21st century; nevertheless temperatures in the region are projected to increase. It is very unlikely that the MOC will undergo a large abrupt transition during the 21stcentury. Longer-term changes in the MOC cannot be assessed with confidence. {WGI 10.3, 10.7; WGII Figure, Table TS.5, SPM.2} Impacts of large-scale and persistent changes in the MOC are likely to include changes in marine ecosystem productivity, fisheries, ocean CO2 uptake, oceanic oxygen concentrations and terrestrial vegetation. Changes in terrestrial and ocean CO2 uptake may feed back on the climate system. {WGII 12.6, 19.3, Figure SPM.2}


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Equity (General) 1. Action to address climate change is necessary--the most vulnerable are most at risk

Rev. Paul Mayer, co-founder, Climate Crisis Coalition, "Climate Control: A Moral Issue," THE HILL, 2--29--12, http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-a-environment/213395-rev-paul-mayer-co-founder-climate-crisis-coalition-, accessed 9-7-12. The motivating principles of our campaign are simple and are embedded in the collective consciousness of the faithful worldwide. First, nearly every religion agrees it is morally wrong for one group or individual to cause others unjustifiable suffering and death. As such, we are duty bound to minimize the harm that unmitigated climate change will bring to those directly affected by the breakdown of the social, economic, and ecological systems. In addition, we must honor our moral obligation for equity and justice. Now and in the future, low-income people, communities of color, indigenous peoples, women and children and others who have contributed little to climate change will bear a disproportionate burden of its negative impacts. Shifting to a sustainable and renewable energy-driven economy will both protect these vulnerable populations and create millions of jobs. Finally, we all share a responsibility to protect the Earth, the source of all life. Nearly all the world’s religions and spiritual traditions proclaim that humans must be the Earth’s stewards. Continuing to disrupt the climate that is the cornerstone of all life, and to squander the extraordinary abundance of life, diversity and beauty of the planet, is a moral failure of the first order.

2. Climate change threatens all of us--particularly our most vulnerable communities

Maxine Burkett, Associate Professor, Law, University of Colorado, “Just Solutions to Climate change: A Climate Justice Proposal for a Domestic Clean Development Mechanism,” BUFFALO LAW REVIEW v. 56, April 2008, p. 173-174. The unparalleled scale of impact the climate crisis has had, and will continue to have, on the globe has been forecasted for almost a century. Most recently, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that the warming of the climate system is "unequivocal." With this warming comes the threat of more extreme weather, including more intense and longer droughts than have already been observed, heavy precipitation including increased intensity of tropical cyclones, and hot extremes and heat waves. While these changes sound merely inconvenient and perhaps costly, they have been described by the IPCC Chairman, without hyperbole, as dangers that risk "the ability of the human race to survive." In the short term, these extremes will risk the survival of communities that are ill-equipped to adapt to warming as they struggle to moderate and cope with its consequences.

3. Warming is a moral issue--disproportionately hurts Africa

Joe DeCapua, "Putting Planet First in Climate Change Talks," VOICE OF AMERICA NEWS, 12--6--11, npg. At the U.N. climate change conference in Durban, South Africa, there's a call to view the issue as a moral imperative. The man who's called South Africa's green bishop says caring for the earth should take priority. "Climate change is a moral issue and it must be met by the moral principles of justice, equity, compassion, love. And that we've got to really realize, that we've got to put the wellbeing of the planet and people before our financial considerations," said retired Anglican Bishop Geoff Davies, coordinator of the Southern African Faith Communities Environment Institute. Worse on the continent The United Nations reports no other continent will be struck by climate change as severely as Africa. The global forecast calls for a two degree Celsius rise in temperatures in the coming years. But the U.N. says they could rise higher in Africa -- possibly three degrees Celsius or more by 2050. Dryer subtropical regions could warm more than wetter areas. "We in Africa are particularly concerned because the scientists are now saying that African average temperatures will increase twice as much as the global average. Already our temperatures have gone up 0.8 and we know the huge disruption of climate change already," said Davies. Cut emissions now. He said if African temperatures do increase by twice the global average the effects will be "catastrophic." He called on the world's major polluters to take strong measures now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. "For the United States to say, well, we'll start reducing emissions in a few years' time -- that's millions of tons of carbon that will still be poured into the atmosphere for the next 100 years. We can't bring that carbon back here. But we equally challenge the new polluting countries -- China, India, ourselves, South Africa," he said.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Equity (General) [cont’d] 4. Addressing warming is as great a moral imperative as ending slavery

Michael McCarthy, "Global Warming Issue 'on Par with Slavery'," INDEPENDENT, 4--7--12, http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/global-warming-issue-on-par-with-slavery-7624916.html, accessed 4-9-12. Dealing with climate change is a moral issue on a par with ending slavery, the world's most celebrated climate scientist, James Hansen, of Nasa, believes. Dr Hansen, who heads Nasa's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, will be making the slavery comparison in his acceptance speech for the Edinburgh Medal next Tuesday, when he will also be calling for a global tax on all carbon emissions. Nothing less will do, he will argue, so urgent is the challenge which climate change presents for future generations. The Edinburgh Medal is awarded each year to scientists and technological experts judged to have made a significant contribution to the understanding and well-being of humanity. Widely thought of as "the father of global warming" – his dramatic alert about climate change in US Senate hearings in July 1988 put the issue on the world agenda – Dr Hansen is now one of the most outspoken advocates of drastic climate action. He said last year he thought climate sceptics were winning the global warming argument with the public. In his acceptance speech, he will argue that an immediate worldwide carbon tax is needed to force cuts in fossil fuel use, and that current generations have an over-riding moral duty to their children and grandchildren to act now.

5. Climate change worst affects the world’s poor, locking them into poverty and reversing development gains

Jeff Otieno, journalist, “How Rising Heat Traps Millions in Poverty,” ALLAFRICA, 12-5-07, http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/212/45353.html, accessed 9-4-12. Gains made in human development in Africa may be reversed if climate change is not checked, the UN now warns. A document published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) says the increasing global warming, threatening to average more than two degrees centigrade before the end of the century, may compromise gains made in developing countries, mainly African states. It provides a stark account of the threat posed by global warming and argues that the world is drifting towards a 'tipping point' "that could lock the world's poorest countries and their poorest citizens on a downward spiral". If this happens, the document warns, it will leave hundreds of millions facing malnutrition, water scarcity, ecological threats and a loss of livelihoods. "Ultimately, climate change is a threat to humanity as a whole. But it is the poor, a constituency with no responsibility for the current ecological debt, who face the immediate and most severe human costs," says UNDP administrator Kemal Dervis after the launch of the Human Development 2007/08 entitled: Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a Divided World.

6. Impact of warming is understated, is a one-way ticket to poverty

Jeff Otieno, journalist, “How Rising Heat Traps Millions in Poverty,” ALLAFRICA, 12-5-07, http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/212/45353.html, accessed 9-4-12. Up to 332 million people in coastal and low lying areas also face displacement through flooding and tropical storm activity. In fact, more than 70 million Bangladeshis, 22 million Vietnamese, and six million Egyptians could be affected by global warming-related flooding, considering the typography of the areas. Despite the evidence showing that all is not well, the authors of the report argue that the human costs of climate change have been understated. The researchers involved in the publishing of the document say that climate shocks, such as droughts, floods and storms, which will become more frequent and intense with climate change, are already among the most powerful drivers of poverty and inequality-and global warming will strengthen the impacts. "For millions of people, these are events that offer a one-way ticket to poverty and long-run cycles of disadvantage," say the researchers.

7. Warming is an act of aggression by the rich against the poor

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), staff, STRATEGIC SURVEY v. 107 n. 1, September 2007, pp. 33-84 Arguments about taking responsibility for remedial action have by themselves the potential to cause considerable international tension. At the African Union summit in January 2007, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni called global warming 'an act of aggression by the rich against the poor'. Because rapidly growing China and India are already huge producers of greenhouse gases, there will be tremendous pressure from the West on them to take expensive counter-measures - but they are likely to respond that the West created the problem, and that they have the right to the same economic benefits that Western countries obtained while doing so. Such views may complicate efforts to negotiate, implement and enforce a mitigation regime.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Equity (General) [cont’d] 8. Climate change hurts poor people the most, confounds efforts to eliminate global poverty

Jim Lyons, Vice President, Policy and Communication, Oxfam America, Testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Committee, CQ CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY, 1-24-08, lexis. We have come to see climate change as one of the greatest challenges to our efforts to promote sustainable development and reduce global poverty. In our operations spanning Africa, Latin America, East Asia and the United States itself, our staff and partners are already responding to the serious impacts of climate change, from increasingly severe weather events to water scarcity. Ninety-seven percent of all natural disaster-related deaths already take place in developing countries, and the estimates of climate change's contribution to worsening conditions are disturbing. By mid-century, more than a billion people will face water shortages and hunger, including 600 million in Africa alone. Weather extremes, food and water scarcity, and climate- related public health threats are projected to displace between 150 million and one billion people as climate change unfolds. As the science indicates, poor and vulnerable communities around the world will increasingly bear the brunt of the consequences of global warming, threatening the lives of millions of people and potentially undermining global stability and security. Oxfam is committed to addressing both the causes of climate change and the consequences for those least able to adapt to its impacts. These impacts, and the resulting increases in global poverty, will undermine global stability and security.

9. Climate change undermines our ability to meet development objectives

Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change (SEG), CONFRONTING CLIMATE CHANGE: AVOIDING THE UNMANAGEABLE AND MANAGING THE UNAVOIDABLE, ed. R.M. Bierbaum, J.P. Holdren, M.C. MacCracken, R.H. Moss & P. H. Raven, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, Sigma Xi & UN Foundation, 2007, http://www.unfoundation.org/files/pdf/2007/SEG_Report.pdf, accessed 9-4-12. Challenging as the objective of the UNFCCC is, it is becoming more and more clear that the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which are the world community’s blueprint for moving towards a sustainable, just world during this decade and beyond, are becoming more difficult to achieve as a result of human-induced climate change; the situation, if not addressed, is likely to worsen over coming decades. The MDGs are intended, among other aims, to: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; reduce child mortality; combat human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), malaria, and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; and develop a global partnership for development. People who are poor, hungry, deprived of water, and living a life that is uncertain from one day to the next can improve their lot only in conditions of environmental sustainability and against a background of social justice. As the climate changes, the higher latitudes will warm more than lower latitudes, some regions will experience more frequent and intense storms, and low-lying coastal communities worldwide will be flooded as sea level rises. Some regions will become drier as evaporation speeds up, others wetter as total precipitation increases. Climate change is expected to have a widespread negative effect on water resources, natural ecosystems, coastal communities and infrastructure, air and water quality, biodiversity, coastal fisheries, parks and preserves, forestry, human health, agriculture and food production, and other factors that support economic performance and human well-being around the world. The impacts on society are expected to differ greatly depending on regional and local cultural practices, engineering infrastructure, farming customs, governments, natural resources, population, public health conditions, financial resources, scientific and technological capability, and socioeconomic systems. Nonetheless, such significant climate disruptions are thus likely to curtail opportunities to meet the MDGs for generations to come. Only by mitigating the effects of climate change and finding new, achievable ways to adapt to them can the world find stability and prosperity.

10. Warming will hurt poor people the most, undermine development goals

Elizabeth Burleson, LLM, London School of Economics, “Multilateral Climate change Mitigation,” UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO LW REVIEW v. 41, Winter 2007, p. 373-374. THE EARTH'S CLIMATE is a public good. A single country does not benefit from investing in climate protection unless doing so becomes a collective effort. Society's inability to reach consensus on climate change mitigation has resulted in the tragedy of the commons. Humanity was able to overcome a similar crisis through an international cooperative effort to reduce the ozone hole. International chlorofluorocarbon protocols addressed the over-exploitation of the global commons. As Tom Tietenberg notes, "the atmosphere is but one of many commons and climate change is but one example of over-exploitation of the commons." The World Bank predicts warmer temperatures, more variable precipitation, and an increased incidence of extreme climatic events. When coupled with sea level rise, this will adversely impact agriculture, water resources, human settlements, human health, and ecological systems and will undermine economic development and the ability to achieve many of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The World Bank goes on to point out that the poorest individuals in the most vulnerable countries face the greatest danger with the least ability to adapt.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Equity (Agriculture) 1. Even small warming will devastate agricultural production in the south—India can lose nearly 20% of its harvest

ASSOCIATED PRESS, staff, “Extreme Weather: A Global Problem,” 8-7-07, http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/212/45328.html, accessed 9-4-12. Even a small increase in temperatures, said Jacques Diouf, head of the Food and Agricultural Organization, could push down crop yields in the world's southern regions, even as agricultural productivity goes up in the north. A greater frequency of droughts and floods, one of the hallmarks of climate change, the agency added, could be particularly bad for agriculture. "Rain-fed agriculture in marginal areas in semi-arid and sub-humid regions is mostly at risk," Diouf said. "India could lose 125 million tons of its rain-fed cereal production - equivalent to 18 percent of its total production." That is a sign of the steep human and economic impact of extreme weather in India.

2. Warming will devastate agriculture in many southern nations, including those that already have food problems

Wolfgang Sachs, “Climate Change and Human Rights,” WDEV SPECIAL REPORT 1, 2007, www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/envronmt/climate/2007/07climatehumanrights.pdf, accessed 5-20-08. Furthermore, climate change will leave its imprint on the conditions for food production across the globe. In temperate zones, small increases in temperature might boost yields for some cereals, while larger changes are likely to decrease yields. In most tropical and subtropical regions, potential yields are projected to diminish with most increases in temperature. For instance, damage to the world's major crops begins when daytime temperatures climb above 30°C during flowering. For rice, wheat, and maize, grain yields are likely to decline by 10% for every one degree C increase over 30°C (Halweil, 2005). If, in addition, there is also a large decrease in rainfall in subtropical and tropical dryland/rainfed systems, crop yields would be even more adversely affected. In tropical agricultural areas, yields of some crops are expected to decrease even with minimal increases in temperature (IPCC, 200l). In sum, 20-40 poor and food-insecure countries, with a projected population in 2080 in the range of 1-3 billion, may lose on average 10-20% of their production potential in cereals due to climate change (Fischer et al., 2002). Moreover, it is expected that the income of poor farmers will decline with a warming of 1.5-2°C above preindustrial levels. (Hare, 2003). In fragile rural areas, such a change will aggravate the fate of people that derive their livelihood from direct access to forest, grasslands, and water courses. In developed countries crop production, in contrast, is likely to benefit from climate change at least initially, compensating for the declines projected for developing countries. Thus while global production appears stable, regional differences in crop production are likely to grow stronger through time, leading to a significant polarization of effects, with substantial increases in the risk of hunger amongst the poorer nations, especially under scenarios of greater inequality (Parry et al., 2004). Declines in food production will most likely hit regions where many people are already undernourished, notably Africa.

3. Warming destroys agriculture in the lower latitudes, increasing famine risks

German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), WORLD IN TRANSITION—CLIMATE CHANGE AS A SECURITY RISK, Earthscan, London, 1--08, p. 94=95. The repercussions of climate change on food production will vary enormously from region to region. According to the SRES scenarios (IPCC, 2000), warming of around 1.5–2.5 °C compared with preindustrial levels can be expected by the middle of the century in the event that climate policy measures do not work. By the end of the century – depending on human actions – warming of over 6 °C (compared with 1990) is possible (IPCC, 2007a), adding another 0.5 °C to express the figure in comparison with preindustrial temperatures. Generally it is in lower latitudes that food production is most severely threatened by global warming, particularly through loss of cereal harvests and insufficient adaptive capacities (IPCC, 2007b). In lower latitudes, even warming of 2 °C (compared with the pre-industrial level) can be expected to increase food insecurity (Hare, 2006). Under these conditions, there is likely to be a significant increase in the numbers of people threatened by famines in some developing regions of the world (Pilardeaux, 2004). In contrast, many but not all regions in middle and higher latitudes can initially expect an increase in agricultural production to result from warming of between 1 and 3 °C (henceforth always in relation to 1990). Once the mean global temperature warms by 2–4 °C, agricultural productivity is likely to decline worldwide. Finally, a temperature rise of 4 °C or more can be expected to have major negative impacts on global agriculture (IPCC, 2007b).


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Equity (Agriculture) [cont’d] 4. Warming will cause a massive decrease in cereal production throughout the developing world

German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), WORLD IN TRANSITION—CLIMATE CHANGE AS A SECURITY RISK, Earthscan, London, 1--08, p. 95. According to a study by IIASA (quoted in FAO, 2005c), climate change in developing countries will result in an increase in drylands and areas under water stress by 2080. In Africa, 1.1 thousand million hectares of arable land under cultivation only afford crops a relatively short growth phase of less than 120 days per year. As a result of climate change, this area could expand by 5–8 per cent which would equate to another 50–90 million hectares of arable land in Africa. The IIASA study assumes a simultaneous 11 per cent decline in the area of rain-fed farming regions, with a consequent drop in cereal production. The study concludes that as a result of climate change, 65 developing countries which accounted for more than half of the world population in 1995 would lose a cereal production potential of some 280 million tonnes. In India, for example, the IIASA model suggests that 125 million tonnes of cereal production potential would be wiped out. This is equivalent to 18 per cent of India’s current rain-fed cereal production. China, in contrast, would have the potential to increase rain-fed cereal production by 15 per cent (24 million tonnes) compared with its current level (FAO, 2005c). The majority of sources agree that other ‘winner’ regions will be North America, northern Europe, the Russian Federation and East Asia (FAO, 2005c) but not all authors share this optimistic appraisal (Long et al., 2006; Stern, 2006).

5. Warming hurts southern agriculture—rainfall shifts

Andrew C. Revkin, journalist, “Poor nations to Bear Brunt as World Warms,” NEW YORK TIMES, 4-1-07, http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/212/45310.html, accessed 9-5-12. Scientists say it has become increasingly clear that worldwide precipitation is shifting away from the equator and toward the poles. That will nourish crops in warming regions like Canada and Siberia while parching countries — like Malawi in sub-Saharan Africa — which are already prone to drought. While rich countries are hardly immune from drought and flooding, their wealth will largely insulate them from harm, at least for the next generation or two, many experts say. Cities in Texas, California and Australia are already building or planning desalination plants, for example. And federal studies have shown that desalination can work far from the sea, purifying water from brackish aquifers deep in the ground in places like New Mexico.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Equity (Children) 1. Warming causes serious health problems, children are particularly vulnerable--malnutrition, heath deaths, ozone-related morbidity

James Hansen, Goddard Institute, NASA, with 17 co-authors, "Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature," submitted to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 2012, http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/notyet/submitted_Hansen_etal.pdf, accessed 9-7-12. Human Health. Climate change causes a variety of human health impacts, with children especially vulnerable. These include food shortages, polluted air, and contaminated or scarce supplies of water, along with an expanding area of vectors causing infectious diseases and more intensely allergenic plants. World health experts have concluded with "very high confidence" that climate change already contributes to the global burden of disease and premature death (74). IPCC (74) projects the following trends, if CO2 emissions and global warming continue to increase, where only trends assigned very high confidence or high confidence are included: (i) increased malnutrition and consequent disorders, including those related to child growth and development, (ii) increased death, disease and injuries from heat waves, floods, storms, fires and droughts, (iii) increased cardio-respiratory morbidity and mortality associated with ground-level ozone. While IPCC also projects fewer deaths from cold, this positive effect is far outweighed by the negative ones. With the growing awareness of the consequences of human-caused climate change, adults and children especially are susceptible to a range of anxiety and depressive disorders. Children cannot avoid hearing that the window of opportunity to act in time to avoid dramatic climate impacts is closing, and that their future and that of other species is at stake. While the psychological health of our children needs to be protected, denial of the truth exposes them to even greater risk.

2. Climate change will kill up to 250,000 children every year

German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), WORLD IN TRANSITION—CLIMATE CHANGE AS A SECURITY RISK, Earthscan, London, 1--08, p. 72. This is also particularly clear with regard to the impact of climate change on human health. Already in the year 2000, climate change was estimated to be responsible for 0.3 per cent of deaths (150,000 people) worldwide (IPCC, 2007b). In 2100, some 165,000–250,000 more children may die than would be the case in a world without climate change (Stern, 2006). At global level, moreover, it is projected that, as temperatures rise, so too will detrimental impacts on health resulting from undernourishment, disease and injury. Causes for this include heat waves, floods, storms, fires and drought. Higher atmospheric concentrations of ozone and allergens, for example, could give rise to cardiovascular diseases (IPCC, 2007b). In addition, climate change will bring about an expansion of malaria into previously uninfected areas. It is possible that the incidence of malaria will increase overall. Scientists are still discussing the quantitative evidence in this regard, because the spread of malaria also depends on a large number of factors unrelated to climate (IPCC, 2007b).


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Equity (Domestic Communities of Color) 1. Climate change is particularly dangerous for vulnerable communities--abrupt changes

Maxine Burkett, Associate Professor, Law, University of Colorado, “Just Solutions to Climate change: A Climate Justice Proposal for a Domestic Clean Development Mechanism,” BUFFALO LAW REVIEW v. 56, April 2008, p. 176. Particularly frightening to those communities least able to adapt to climate change, is the great possibility that continued greenhouse gas emissions will trigger an abrupt climate surprise. The evidence supporting the urgency of climate change, generally, is based on fairly linear data points and does not - in fact, cannot - take into account an abrupt shift in climate patterns due to feedback loops that are difficult to model. The result of such a shift could be significant regional cooling or warming, widespread droughts, shifts in hurricane frequency, or flood regimes that could occur in as little as a decade, yielding very rapid, large-scale impacts on ecosystems and human health and welfare. Regional changes in climate are particularly dangerous because of the challenges and risks they pose in a modern world marked by increasing population and limited resources.

2. Communities of color are disproporationately affected by the impacts of climate change—economic downturns, unemployment, natural disasters, etc

Maxine Burkett, Associate Professor, Law, University of Colorado, “Just Solutions to Climate change: A Climate Justice Proposal for a Domestic Clean Development Mechanism,” BUFFALO LAW REVIEW v. 56, April 2008, p. 179-181. The EJ communities will also, of course, be subject to the more general and commonly cited negative effects of climate change; and, further aggravating these outcomes, the dire economic forecasts for the globe will be felt acutely by EJ communities. The environmental risks these communities disproportionately suffer, mentioned just above, acquire a more dangerous hue when income is taken into account. A report by noted economist Sir Nicholas Stern warns that unless urgent action is taken, the planet faces an economic calamity on the scale of the Great Depression and the world wars. Using formal economic models, Stern suggests that climate change will produce "market failure on the greatest scale the world has seen," which should lead the world to grave concern. This is particularly relevant to EJ communities, as the first and most severe effects of economic downturn are borne by the poor. Less obvious climate change risks include increases in the costs of energy and food, employment restructuring within and across industries, and impacts on the uninsured. With respect to costs of basic goods, increases will come with clear, attendant disadvantages, as these costs already represent a large proportion of the budgets for the poor and of-color. Employment restructuring, including layoffs and hiring freezes, with the "last hired, first fired" phenomenon, will certainly worsen the economic damage of global warming caused to individuals, families, and communities. Finally, warming will hit the uninsured hardest. At present, of the tens of millions of Americans who are without health insurance, for example, the rate for people of color is twice that for whites. Natural disasters in EJ communities are particularly fierce, as many of the communities' residents are often renters, without renter's insurance, and lack savings to recover from disasters. Additionally, low-income earners typically are without the resources to compensate for the lack of insurance. These factors, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will be critically important as education, health care, prevention initiatives, and infrastructure and economic development directly shape the health of populations. Existing conditions suggest troubling, substantial impacts on domestic populations.

3. Climate change will disproportionately hurt communities of color in North America

Maxine Burkett, Associate Professor, Law, University of Colorado, “Just Solutions to Climate change: A Climate Justice Proposal for a Domestic Clean Development Mechanism,” BUFFALO LAW REVIEW v. 56, April 2008, p. 176-177. As Rajendra Pachauri stated at the release of the April 2007 IPCC report on impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability, "the poorest of the poor in the world - and this includes poor people in prosperous societies - are going to be the worst hit." North America is set to experience more severe storms, hurricanes, floods, droughts, heat waves, and wildfires. The coasts, similar to those worldwide, will be inundated by rising sea levels. There are, consequently, many serious public health and welfare implications for environmental justice (EJ) communities due to global warming.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Equity (Domestic Communities of Color) [cont’d]

4. Climate change will significantly increase the number of heat-related deaths among people of color in urban areas

Maxine Burkett, Associate Professor, Law, University of Colorado, “Just Solutions to Climate change: A Climate Justice Proposal for a Domestic Clean Development Mechanism,” BUFFALO LAW REVIEW v. 56, April 2008, p. 177-178. While all risks will affect the low-income earners more acutely, risks that will undoubtedly yield disproportionate adverse impact are the consequences of heat extremes. Increased temperatures with the attendant extreme weather events are widely accepted consequences of global warming. Heat stress has already been a public health nightmare for the poor and of-color. As an example, older black males living alone with poor health status suffered a disproportionate share of excess fatalities after the 1996 heat wave in Chicago. Such a result is not exclusive to Chicago's black males. A study of the fifteen largest U.S. cities found that "climate change would lead to more heat-related deaths in the inner city. Due to demographics and social factors, people of color would be more likely to die in a heat wave and to suffer more from heat-related stress and illness." A study of heat-related deaths in St. Louis, as an example, showed that non-whites were twice as likely as whites to die as a result of heat waves.

5. Climate change will exacerbate asthma problems among communities of color

Maxine Burkett, Associate Professor, Law, University of Colorado, “Just Solutions to Climate change: A Climate Justice Proposal for a Domestic Clean Development Mechanism,” BUFFALO LAW REVIEW v. 56, April 2008, p. 178-179. Mortality rates due to pollution-related respiratory illnesses will also unevenly affect EJ communities. Asthma prevalence, hospitalization, and mortality, for example, are three times higher among minorities than among whites. And these disparities exist even after controlling for income. Climate scientists have already found that smog, and associated health risks like asthma, are "very likely to increase with temperature, especially in the North-eastern United States, where many areas currently experience ozone levels that exceed [Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)] Clean Air Act standards on hot summer days."

6. Katrina proves that communities of color are far more negatively affected by climate change-induced natural disasters

Maxine Burkett, Associate Professor, Law, University of Colorado, “Just Solutions to Climate change: A Climate Justice Proposal for a Domestic Clean Development Mechanism,” BUFFALO LAW REVIEW v. 56, April 2008, p. 186-187. Here is where the capacity to adapt to climate change becomes central and a uniquely engaging point for climate justice. Katrina laid bare the truism that some are more equal than others. Low-income and of-color Americans are more likely to be underserved by government and private relief agencies before, during, and after environmental disasters. A disaster is more devastating to the poor, and the aftermath of that event constitutes a "second disaster," in which failures of social infrastructure vis-a-vis the underprivileged are blatant and equally, if not more, devastating. In addition to the great tangible losses, including greater problems with homelessness, the poor and people of color experience unique psychological impacts. In particular, elderly African-Americans experience slower "psychosocial recovery" as compared to their white counterparts, partly due to economic restraints. A well-established consequence of climate change is that the gulf and east coast states will continue to experience the bulk of the impact. An ability to adapt to the inevitable risks of climate change, as a lesson from Katrina and the second disaster phenomenon, will be a crucial determinant of the depth of that risk.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Equity (Global South) 1. The effects of people disproportionately hurt people from low-income countries

Jane Lampman, "Ethical Questions Add New Twist to Climate-Change Debate," CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 11--9--06, p. 14. Recent news on global warming is not encouraging: * Concentrations of human-caused carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached the highest levels ever recorded last year, says a World Meteorological Organization report issued Nov. 3. * Another greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide, also posted a record in 2005. * Not only summer but also winter sea ice in the Arctic has retreated in a pronounced way, says a recent NASA study. * A global recession is a probable outcome if rapid action on climate change is not pursued, says a major report released last week by the British government. As delegates meet in Africa this week for a United Nations conference on climate change, they aim to set targets for dramatic cuts in fossil-fuel emissions beyond those set by the Kyoto protocol for 2012, and grapple with how to allocate those cuts. Yet the big economies of the United States, China, and India are not part of the Kyoto treaty. These efforts call not only for the best scientific data and economic analyses, but also for explicit consideration of the ethical issues involved, says a multinational group of climate change, development, and ethical research organizations. To make its case to delegates and policymakers, the group released a white paper on the ethical issues in Nairobi on Nov 8. "Climate change not only raises ethical questions, but the most profound ones - literally matters of life and death, who's going to survive, the fate of nation states, obligations of one nation to another, of the rich and the poor," and who is to be involved in the decisions, says Donald Brown, coordinator of the Collaborative Program on the Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change (EDCC). It is widely recognized that damage from climate change is affecting the poorer countries - those least able to manage it - the hardest. Rising sea levels, for example, may devastate large portions of Bangladesh, the Nile delta, the southeastern coast of Asia, and many Pacific islands.

2. Climate change already kills 160,000 people in a year in the global south

INDEPENDENT, "A Modest Proposal to Save the Planet," 5--27--04, p. 2+. The World Health Organisation blames climate change for at least 160,000 Third World deaths last year. Tony Blair admitted that climate change was "probably the most important issue that we face as a global community". The message is clear. Doubting the imminence of significant global warming may once have been an intellectually defensible position. It isn't now. Decisions must be taken as a matter of urgency. We cannot rely on optimism. We need to think beyond energy efficiency and renewable energy, towards ideas of social and institutional reform and personal changes that require much lower energy use. Yet government action is only scratching the surface, and current policies on transport and growth can only make things worse. We are on the road to ecological Armageddon, with little apparent thought for the effects on the current population, let alone those who follow.

3. Consensus says that global warming will be devastating for the world’s poor people

Arthur Max, journalist, “Climate Report: Poor Will Suffer Most,” ASSOCIATED PRESS, 4-6-07, http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/212/45315.html, accessed 9-5-12. The world faces increased hunger and water shortages in the poorest countries, massive floods and avalanches in Asia, and species extinction unless nations adapt to climate change and halt its progress, according to a report approved Friday by an international conference on global warming. Agreement came after an all-night session during which key sections were deleted from the draft and scientists angrily confronted government negotiators who they feared were watering down their findings. "It has been a complex exercise," said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Several scientists objected to the editing of the final draft by government negotiators but, in the end, agreed to compromises. However, some scientists vowed never to take part in the process again. Five days of negotiations reached a climax when the delegates removed parts of a key chart highlighting devastating effects of climate change that kick in with every rise of 1.8 degrees, and in a tussle over the level of scientific reliability attached to key statements. There was little doubt about the science, which was based on 29,000 sets of data, much of it collected in the last five years. "For the first time we are not just arm-waving with models," Martin Perry, who conducted the grueling negotiations, told reporters. The United States, China and Saudi Arabia raised many of the objections to the phrasing, often seeking to tone down the certainty of some of the more dire projections. The final IPCC report is the clearest and most comprehensive scientific statement to date on the impact of global warming mainly caused by man-induced carbon dioxide pollution. "The poorest of the poor in the world — and this includes poor people in prosperous societies — are going to be the worst hit," Pachauri said. "People who are poor are least able to adapt to climate change." The report said up to 30 percent of species face an increased risk of vanishing if global temperatures rise 3.6 degrees above the average in the 1980s and 1990s. Areas in drought will become even more dry, adding to the risks of hunger and disease, it said. The world will face heightened threats of flooding, severe storms and the erosion of coastlines. "This is a glimpse into an apocalyptic future," the Greenpeace environmental group said of the final report. Without action to curb carbon emissions, man's livable habitat will shrink starkly, said Stephen Schneider, a Stanford scientist who was one of the authors. "Don't be poor in a hot country, don't live in hurricane alley, watch out about being on the coasts or in the Arctic, and it's a bad idea to be on high mountains with glaciers melting."


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Equity (Global South) [cont’d] 4. Warming will have an enormously disparate impact, particularly threatens people in the global south

Wolfgang Sachs, “Climate Change and Human Rights,” WDEV SPECIAL REPORT 1, 2007, www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/envronmt/climate/2007/07climatehumanrights.pdf, accessed 5-20-08. The bitter consequences resulting from climate change - in particular several decades from now - will spread across the globe, albeit in varying degrees. Even rich countries in temperate zones are not able to shield themselves against adverse impacts, as the 25,000 deaths caused by heat waves in Europe in the summer of 2003 have dramatically shown. Yet researchers converge on the general assumption that developing countries are most at risk of climate change, with damage at even low levels of warming and increasing rapidly with rising temperature (IPCC, 2001). Countries - and regions within countries - are disproportionately affected for basically two reasons: higher impacts and higher vulnerability. As indicated above, adverse impacts of climate change are likely to be more concentrated in areas of Africa, South America, and Asia. Impact profiles differ according to kind of impact and geography, but water stress and flooding, declining agricultural productivity and weakening ecosystem services, crop pests and human diseases are more likely to occur in subtropical and tropical countries, in coastal areas, and in arid and semi-arid agricultural areas. Higher vulnerability, however, derives from the fact that in many places at risk a great number of people already live under fragile conditions, economically and health wise. The ability to prepare for and to cope with threats varies widely according to income and living conditions. The impact of a hurricane in Orissa, for example, may be much more severe than the impact of a similar hurricane in Florida. Likewise, in 1999 there were two to three times more disaster events reported in the US than in India or Bangladesh, but there were 14 times and 34 times more deaths in India and in Bangladesh than in the US (UNEP, 2002). Wealth, technology, and infrastructure facilitate adaptation and the ability to cope. The poor generally tend to have much lower coping capacities; they are more exposed to disasters, drought, desertification, and slow economic decline.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Equity (War) 1. Warming exacerbates the rich/poor gap—increases the risk of conflict

Alister Doyle, “Global Warming Could Spur 21st Century Conflicts,” REUTERS, 4-16-07, http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/16/552/, accessed 9-4-12. Even so, a report to be released on Monday by a group of 11 retired U.S. generals and admirals will look at how “changing global climate may present serious threats to U.S. national security and to American armed forces at home and abroad.” A study by the world’s top climate scientists on April 6 warned that climate change could cause water shortages and hunger for millions of people, mainly in Africa and Asia. In turn, that could bring migrations and spread disease. “Environmental problems should be included as part of an expanded concept of security,” said Paal Prestrud, head of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo. Bogardi said global warming could worsen the divide between rich and poor. The April 6 U.N. report said nations such as Canada, Russia and many in Europe might get some benefits from moderate climate change, such as higher crop yields. “Countries such as India and China, and Africa are likely to be the losers. This creates a further imbalance of resources and standards of living that could trigger conflict,” he said. And ‘climate refugees’ may be unable to go home, for instance if deserts expand in sub-Saharan Africa. People living on island states such as Tuvalu in the Pacific risk seeing their homes disappear below the waves if seas rise. Political refugees, by contrast, can return if a dictator is toppled. And environmental damage could also be a source of terrorism. Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden accused the United States in 2002 of destroying “nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history.”

2. Resentment over disparate impact/cause of warming will undermine international cooperation, multilateralism

German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), WORLD IN TRANSITION—CLIMATE CHANGE AS A SECURITY RISK, Earthscan, London, 1--08, p. 171-173. Beside today’s industrialized countries, the major ascendant economies whose emissions have also increasing substantially since the end of the 20th century, notably China but also India, Brazil and Indonesia, could also be called to account by the majority of developing countries in future (Box 8.3-1), even though their per capita emissions are still well below those of the industrialized countries (Table 8.3-2). Distributional conflicts over compensation payments are likely to play an increasingly important role in relations between these groups of countries as well. Against this background, it is clear that a key line of conflict in global politics in the 21st century would therefore divide the main drivers of climate change and the poor countries most affected by it, and that this line of conflict will not only divide North and South but will also have a South-South dimension. Based on a detailed analysis of the various greenhouse gas emissions, a more differentiated separation into ‘main drivers’ and ‘affected’ countries may be appropriate among the industrialized countries too. However, in view of the development of North-South relations in the past and the ongoing prosperity gap, such considerations will be of secondary importance for the conflicts that can be anticipated. There are many signs that the most powerful nations within the international system will come under very strong pressure to justify their actions in the face of accelerating climate change. Instead of safeguarding stability, security, a balance of interests and multilateralism based on justice, the global and regional leading powers would be perceived as being the main drivers of climate change and therefore as drivers of international instability and global distributional conflicts. The opportunities to establish a functioning global governance architecture therefore decrease with rising global temperatures, bringing a global problem to light: While climate change can only be curbed effectively through international cooperation, the bases for constructive multilateralism will themselves be eroded as the world gets progressively hotter.

3. Unchecked climate change risks conflict—disputes between ‘victims’ and polluters

German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), WORLD IN TRANSITION—CLIMATE CHANGE AS A SECURITY RISK, Earthscan, London, 1--08, p. 5. Risks of growing international distributional conflicts between the main drivers of climate change and those most affected: Climate change is mainly caused by the industrialized and newly industrializing countries. The major differences in the per capita emissions of industrialized and developing/ newly industrializing countries are increasingly regarded as an “equity gap”, especially as the rising costs of climate change are mainly being borne by the developing countries. The greater the damage and the burden of adaptation in the South, the more intensive the distributional conflicts between the main drivers of climate change and those most affected will become. The worst affected countries are likely to invoke the “polluter pays” principle, so international controversy over a global compensation regime for climate change will probably intensify. Beside today’s industrialized countries, the major ascendant economies whose emissions are increasing substantially, notably China but also India and Brazil, for example, will also be called to account by the developing countries in future. A key line of conflict in global politics in the 21st century would therefore divide not only the industrialized and the developing countries, but also the rapidly growing newly industrializing countries and the poorer developing countries. The international community is ill-prepared at present for this type of distributional conflict.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Extreme Weather 1. Warming increases extreme weather of all forms--is already being observed

James Hansen, Goddard Institute, NASA, with 17 co-authors, "Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature," submitted to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 2012, http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/notyet/submitted_Hansen_etal.pdf, accessed 9-7-12. Climate Extremes. Extremes of the hydrologic cycle are expected to intensify in a warmer world. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, so heavy rains become more intense, bringing more frequent and intense flooding. Higher temperatures, on the other hand, increase evaporation and intensify droughts, as does expansion of the subtropics with global warming. Heat waves lasting for weeks have a devastating impact on human health: the European heat wave of summer 2003 caused over 70,000 excess deaths (93). This heat record for Europe was surpassed already in 2010 (94). The number of extreme heat waves has increased several-fold due to global warming (18, 95) and will be multiplied further if temperatures continue to rise. IPCC reports (2, 74) confirm that precipitation has generally increased over land poleward of the subtropics and decreased at lower latitudes. Unusually heavy precipitation events have increased in Europe, North America, Southeast Asia and Australia. Droughts are more common, especially in the tropics and subtropics. Glaciers are in near-global retreat (74). Loss of glaciers can degrade the supply of fresh water to millions of people (7). Increased winter snowfall with a warmer moister atmosphere will tend to increase spring flooding but leave rivers drier during the driest months.

2. Warming drives extreme weather events

Daniel G. Huber and Jay Gulledge, PhD, “Extreme Weather & Climate Change: Understanding the Link and Managing the Risk,” Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, 12—11, p. 4. When averaged together, changing climate extremes can be traced to rising global temperatures, increases in the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, and changes in atmospheric circulation. Warmer temperatures directly influence heat waves and increase the moisture available in the atmosphere to supply extreme precipitation events. Expanding sub-tropical deserts swelling out from the equator are creating larger areas of sinking, dry air, thus expanding the area of land that is subject to drought.37 The expansion of this sub-tropical circulation pattern also is increasing heat transport from the tropics to the Arctic and pushing mid-latitude storm tracks, along with their rainfall, to higher latitudes.

3. Warming increases extreme weather, magnifying the negative effects of warming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), L Bernstein et al., CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: SYNTHESIS REPORT, 2007, p. 65. Risks of extreme weather events. Responses to some recent extreme climate events reveal higher levels of vulnerability in both developing and developed countries than was assessed in the TAR. There is now higher confidence in the projected increases in droughts, heat waves and floods, as well as their adverse impacts. As summarised in Table 3.2, increases in drought, heat waves and floods are projected in many regions and would have mostly adverse impacts, including increased water stress and wild fire frequency, adverse effects on food production, adverse health effects, increased flood risk and extreme high sea level, and damage to infrastructure. {SYR 3.2, 3.3, Table 3.2; WGI 10.3, Table SPM.2; WGII 1.3, 5.4, 7.1, 7.5, 8.2, 12.6, 19.3, Table 19.1, Table SPM.1}

4. Even though weather is variable, warming will still increase the incidence of extreme weather events The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), staff, STRATEGIC SURVEY v. 107 n. 1, September 2007, pp. 33-84 It is never possible directly to attribute to global warming a particular weather event like Hurricane Katrina, which hit Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005, or the 2003 heatwave in Europe which cost more than 30,000 lives and over $13�bn. Weather is constantly subject - regardless of global warming - to variation, whether random or based on cycles lasting years or decades. Natural fluctuations in global circulation patterns such as El Nino produce cycles and extremes in regional weather and climate. However, as the mean global temperature rises, theory and models predict an increase in both the frequency and severity of extreme weather events - heatwaves, cold snaps, hurricanes, heavy rains, floods and droughts. Researchers at the UK government's Hadley Centre for Climate Change and Oxford University estimate that global warming has already doubled the chance of a heatwave in Europe like the one in 2003. By 2050, the 2003 European heatwave could be a normal summer, with more severe heatwaves also occurring with greater frequency.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Future Generations 1. Warming is real and human caused--need to act to protect future generations

James Hansen, Goddard Institute, NASA, with 17 co-authors, "Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature," submitted to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 2012, http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/notyet/submitted_Hansen_etal.pdf, accessed 9-7-12. Global warming due to human-made gases, mainly CO2, is already 0.8°C and deleterious climate impacts are growing worldwide. More warming is "in the pipeline" because Earth is out of energy balance, with absorbed solar energy exceeding planetary heat radiation. Maintaining a climate that resembles the Holocene, the world of relatively stable climate and shorelines in which civilization developed, requires rapidly reducing fossil fuel CO2 emissions. Such a scenario is economically manageable and has multiple benefits for humanity and other species. Yet fossil fuel extraction is expanding, including highly carbon-intensive sources that can push the climate system beyond tipping points such that amplifying feedbacks drive further climate change beyond humanity's control. This situation raises profound moral issues in that young people, future generations, and nature, with no possibility of protecting their future well-being, will bear the principal consequences of actions and inactions of today's adults.

2. We have an ethical obligation to act--impact on future generations

Severin Carrell, "Nasa Scientist: Climate Change Is a Moral Issue on a Par with Slavery," GUARDIAN, 4--6--12, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/06/nasa-scientist-climate-change, accessed 9-7-12. Averting the worst consequences of human-induced climate change is a "great moral issue" on a par with slavery, according to the leading Nasa climate scientist Prof Jim Hansen. He argues that storing up expensive and destructive consequences for society in future is an "injustice of one generation to others". Hansen, who will next Tuesday be awarded the prestigious Edinburgh Medal for his contribution to science, will also in his acceptance speech call for a worldwide tax on all carbon emissions. In his lecture, Hansen will argue that the challenge facing future generations from climate change is so urgent that a flat-rate global tax is needed to force immediate cuts in fossil fuel use. Ahead of receiving the award – which has previously been given to Sir David Attenborough, the ecologist James Lovelock, and the economist Amartya Sen – Hansen told the Guardian that the latest climate models had shown the planet was on the brink of an emergency. He said humanity faces repeated natural disasters from extreme weather events which would affect large areas of the planet. "The situation we're creating for young people and future generations is that we're handing them a climate system which is potentially out of their control," he said. "We're in an emergency: you can see what's on the horizon over the next few decades with the effects it will have on ecosystems, sea level and species extinction."

3. We have an overwhelming obligation to future generations, must act

Federico Mayor, “The Rights of Future Generations,” UNESCO COURIER, May 1996, p. 36. For the first time in the history of humanity, awareness of the global impact of our actions - starting with the effects our population numbers have on the environment - compels us to do all we can to avoid causing irreparable environmental damage and preventing future generations from exercising all or some of their rights. Because of this risk we must act before it is too late and correct trends which might otherwise lead to incalculable problems. We must observe, anticipate, and prevent. Prevention is not just an option. It is an unavoidable obligation, an ethical imperative. We must act in good time. We must look ahead and try to see the shape of our common destiny. We must never lapse into fatalism. UNESCO's Constitution has entrusted us with a unique task: to be the conscience of humanity. This task includes consideration for those who will follow in our footsteps, those who have yet to be born.

4. Our actions must respect the rights of future generations

Federico Mayor, “The Rights of Future Generations,” UNESCO COURIER, May 1996, p. 36. But we must go further. We must recognize and guarantee the rights of future generations. Probably the most striking example of a possible threat to those rights is that of pollution and its attendant hazards, especially in relation to choices concerning nuclear energy - an issue which is rarely as simple and cut-and-dried as it is presented to the general public. The political, economic or financial interests that favour particular solutions must never be allowed to overshadow the interests of future generations. In cases where the foreseeable consequences of investment will extend far beyond the present, it is worth considering whether an impact study should not be made of the consequences of the various options on offer over a fifty-year period, the span of two generations. In fact there is little doubt that several of the rights of future generations are affected: the right to life and to the conservation of the human genome, the right to development and to individual and collective fulfillment, and the right to an ecologically balanced environment. These are indeed human rights, that is, universal and universally recognized values which are a legitimate cause of concern for the international community as a whole. This is a far cry from rights regarded merely as legally protected vested interests.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Future Generations [cont’d] 5. We have an obligation to leave a habitable planet for future generations

Federico Mayor, “The Rights of Future Generations,” UNESCO COURIER, May 1996, p. 36. Which rights of future generations should be recognized? It has often been correctly pointed out that all the rights set forth in the thirty articles of the Universal Declaration can be condensed into a single one: the right to live in dignity, which is indeed the sum of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. The same synthesis could probably be applied to the rights of future generations, with the added dimension of the continuity of human life, i.e., guaranteeing the right to live in dignity on an earth that is habitable. This brings us back to the preoccupation with the environment which will probably, with hindsight, be seen as the major qualitative change that has occurred in the twentieth century. However, it is preferable, if only for educational and legal reasons, to consider the rights of future generations on an individual basis. First of all, the exemption of persons belonging to future generations from all individual responsibility for the crimes of earlier generations should be regarded as a human right. I have long believed, to put it bluntly, that history kills and that accordingly we are in duty bound to "disarm history", since it is axiomatic that future generations cannot continue to shoulder the burden of the crimes, actual or alleged, of their forebears. Make no mistake: this has nothing to do with the moral responsibility which each person, each community and each nation must assume in complete freedom, but concerns legal responsibility, with its attendant criminal and civil consequences.

6. Warming threatens intergenerational equity—undermines lives of future generations

Wolfgang Sachs, “Climate Change and Human Rights,” WDEV SPECIAL REPORT 1, 2007, www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/envronmt/climate/2007/07climatehumanrights.pdf, accessed 5-20-08. At the time of the Rio Conference, it had already become clear that climate change is far from being just an ecological issue; it is also an issue of equity. In particular, climate change was identified as an issue of intergenerational equity. It became ominously clear to observers that global warming, since it modifies important parameters of the ecology of the planet, such as sea levels or weather patterns, will affect the relations between present and future generations. Today's generation, by filling up the absorptive capacity of the atmosphere, lives at the expense of tomorrow's generation.

7. Warming threatens intragenerational equity and human rights

Wolfgang Sachs, “Climate Change and Human Rights,” WDEV SPECIAL REPORT 1, 2007, www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/envronmt/climate/2007/07climatehumanrights.pdf, accessed 5-20-08. At the same time, it came to the fore that the use of fossil fuels not only affects inter-generational equity, but also intragenerational equity, i.e., the relations between nations and social groups within a generation. Who will be allowed to reap the benefits from fossil fuel combustion? Who will have to carry the burden of emission abatement? Equity within a generation has at least two dimensions (Wuppertal Institut, 2005). First, it implies the fair distribution of burdens and benefits of fossil fuel use among nations. Secondly, however, it also implies the universal protection of human dignity by securing the fundamental rights of every human person to water, food, housing, and health. The present article will focus on the latter dimension; it will explore the links between human rights and climate change, without, however, losing sight of the broader framework of equity in climate politics.

8. Unchecked global warming risks rendering the earth uninhabitable

INDEPENDENT, "A Modest Proposal to Save the Planet," 5--27--04, p. 2+. Climate change is the most serious environmental threat the human race has ever faced; perhaps the most serious threat of any kind. The dangers can hardly be exaggerated. Within 100 years, temperatures could rise by 6C worldwide. Much of the earth's surface could become uninhabitable, and most species could be wiped out. In the UK, over the next 50 years, we will experience hotter, drier summers, warmer, wetter winters and rising sea-levels. In most of our lifetimes, millions of British people will be at high risk from flooding; there will be thousands of deaths from excessive summer temperatures; diseases from warmer regions will become established; and patterns of agriculture and business will have to change for ever. This is not the view of alarmists, but the considered opinion of the overwhelming majority of international climate scientists. It is acknowledged by most governments and their advisers. Last month, government-funded scientists at the University of Washington in Seattle made the key admission that the troposphere is indeed warming at 0.2C per decade - precisely as predicted by the main global-warming models. The UK Government's chief scientist warned the same month that if global warming continues unchecked, by the end of this century Antarctica is likely to be the only habitable continent.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Health (General) 1. Warming will seriously degrade public health—multiple reasons

Jason Koebler, “Expert: Climate Change Will Increasingly Become Global Health Issue,” USNEWS, 6—5—12, lexis. Previously just the worry of climate scientists, environmentalists, doomsday prognosticators, and gas-price watchers, climate change is starting to worry some others-- public health specialists, who say that global warming could affect large swaths of the population. In a paper published in the journal PLoS Medicine Tuesday, a group of European public health experts write that climate change could alter "patterns of physical activity and food availability, and in some cases [bring] direct physical harm." Slight temperature increases could also change disease distribution in colder regions and make hotter regions less hospitable to humans. "Certain subgroups are at more risk--mainly the young, the old, and the poor," says Peter Byass, director of the Umea Centre for Global Health Research in Sweden. "The middle age and wealthy will be better off. It's a crude way of looking at it, but it's not so far off the mark." That means more prevalence of diseases that affect the poor, such as malaria and dengue fever, and heat stroke in drought-afflicted areas. For years, scientists have warned about more extreme hurricanes and weather patterns, but until recently, not much emphasis was put on less noticeable changes. "I don't think there's a big gang of global health experts saying [climate change] is unimportant," he says. "But I don't think people have been making the connections that need to be made between public health and climate change." Byass' paper isn't the first time health officials have pondered the human toll of climate change. In March, a group of doctors suggested that the incidence of asthma and other lung respiratory illnesses could increase, due to longer pollen seasons and increasing ranges of disease-causing molds and mosquitoes. "At this point, we might not be able to stop climate change, but we can be a bit prepared as to what the consequences might be," he says. It's something people in his field are increasingly worried about. At last year's "Durban Climate Meeting," a United Nations convention to discuss climate change, people focused on health issues had their say. The unpredictability of climate change--there are many models of what might happen over the next century--makes Byass' and his colleagues' jobs much harder, he says. "I think it's pretty clear that things won't stay the same, so we can talk about the what-ifs of different climate change [theories], but it's hard to say for sure what will happen," he says.

2. Warming will harm the health of millions of people—multiple triggers

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), L Bernstein et al., CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: SYNTHESIS REPORT, 2007, p. 48. Health: The health status of millions of people is projected to be affected through, for example, increases in malnutrition; increased deaths, diseases and injury due to extreme weather events; increased burden of diarrhoeal diseases; increased frequency of cardio-respiratory diseases due to higher concentrations of ground-level ozone in urban areas related to climate change; and the altered spatial distribution of some infectious diseases. {WGI 7.4, Box 7.4; WGII 8.ES, 8.2, 8.4, SPM} � Climate change is projected to bring some benefits in temperate areas, such as fewer deaths from cold exposure, and some mixed effects such as changes in range and transmission potential of malaria in Africa. Overall it is expected that benefits will be outweighed by the negative health effects of rising temperatures, especially in developing countries. {WGII 8.4, 8.7, 8ES, SPM} � Critically important will be factors that directly shape the health of populations such as education, health care, public health initiatives, and infrastructure and economic development. {WGII 8.3, SPM

3. Warming threatens human health—water-borne disease, malnutrition, vector diseases

Wolfgang Sachs, “Climate Change and Human Rights,” WDEV SPECIAL REPORT 1, 2007, www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/envronmt/climate/2007/07climatehumanrights.pdf, accessed 5-20-08. Finally, as public health depends to a large extent on safe drinking water, sufficient food and secure shelter, climate change is bound to have a range of health effects (McMichael et al., 2003). On the first level, a shortage of freshwater caused by climate change will increase risks of water-borne disease, just as shortage of food will increase the risk of malnutrition. On the second level, climate change, via both a shift in background climate conditions and changes in regional climatic variability, will affect the spatial and seasonal patterns of the potential transmission of various vector-borne infectious diseases. With global warming, it is expected that there will be an increase in the geographic range of potential transmission of malaria and dengue - two vector borne infections, each of which currently affects 40- 50% of the world population. A rise in temperatures, for example, would result in an increased prevalence of malaria in higher altitudes and latitudes. Within their present ranges, these and many other infectious diseases would tend to increase in incidence and seasonality, although decreases would occur for some infectious diseases in some areas. The human-induced warming that the world is now experiencing is already causing 150,000 deaths and 5 million incidents of disease each year from additional malaria and diarrhoea, mostly in the poorest nations (Patz et al., 2005).


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Health (Malaria) 1. Warming will spread malaria throughout Africa

The Military Advisory Board, NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE THREAT OF CLIMATE CHANGE, CNA Corporation, 2007, p. 22. Severe and widespread continental health issues complicate an already extremely volatile environment. Climate change will have both direct and indirect impacts on many diseases endemic to Africa such as malaria and dengue fever. Increases in temperature can expand the latitude and altitude ranges for malaria, and flooding from sea level rise or severe weather events can increase the population of malaria vectors. For example, a temperature rise of 2°F can bring a malaria epidemic to Kenya. Excessive flooding is also conducive to the spread of cholera.

2. Warming will spread malaria and dengue throughout Asia

The Military Advisory Board, NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE THREAT OF CLIMATE CHANGE, CNA Corporation, 2007, p. 27. Climate change is expected to increase the geographic range of infectious diseases such as malaria, dengue fever, and schistosomiasis and increase the risk of water-borne disease. Climate projections indicate the Asia/Pacific region as a whole is likely to become warmer and wetter in the coming decades, creating conditions more conducive to disease vectors such as mosquitoes. With the exception of east central China and the highlands of west China, much of the Asia/Pacific region is exposed to malaria and dengue or has conditions suitable for their spread. This region will continue to be a hot spot for these diseases in the decades ahead, with certain regions becoming more prone to epidemics.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Health (Vector-Borne Disease) 1. Warming increases the risk of diseases transferring from animals to humans, and a massive epidemic

Richard A. Matthew, UC-Irvine, “A Threat Assessment,” GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE: NATIONAL SECURITY IMPLICATIONS, ed. C. Pumphrey, May 2008, p. 64. But overall, the expected downside massively outweighs any predicted upside. The menu of likely threats includes severe weather events, changes in the food supply, massive flooding, and dramatic changes in microbial activity that will lead to the spread of infectious disease. Indeed, many analysts believe that we are very close to a global pandemic. They anticipate a transfer of disease from the animal kingdom to the human kingdom that will be highly virulent. A lot of these transfers have taken place in the past 3 decades because environmental conditions are changing and because people are being forced into marginal environments where they come into close contact with pathogens with which they have not had any contact in the past.

2. Warming accelerates the spread of disease vectors

Beth Daley, journalist, “Disease Threat Cited in Global Warming,” COMMONDREAMS.ORG, 6-21-02, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0621-03.htm, accessed 9-4-12. The report notes that many regions, including New England, could be losing one of their best defenses against disease: cold weather. Every fall, mosquitoes that may be carrying the deadly West Nile virus, for example, are killed off before they multiply and spread the disease too widely. But as global warming heats up the Earth, even by minute degrees, disease-carrying organisms may regenerate faster or go into new areas where populations may have little or no natural resistance. ''It's possible that the time that it takes for [a disease-carrying organism] population to double might be halved with a single degree or half degree of warming,'' said Rick Ostfeld, an animal ecologist at the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y., one of authors. ''What we found were striking patterns of climate warming and spread of disease, and greater incidence of disease.'' The report notes that with increased temperature, mosquitoes that carry the dengue virus bite more often. Slime mold grows faster on eelgrass. Parasites that attach to butterflies gather in greater density.

3. Warming significantly exacerbates disease spread-redistribution of bacteria, exposure to new populations

Jia-Rui Chong, “Global Warming: Enough to Make You Sick,” LOS ANGELES TIMES, 2-25-07, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0225-05.htm, accessed 9-4-12. As scientists later determined, the culprit was not just the bacterium, but the warming that allowed it to proliferate. "This was probably the best example to date of how global climate change is changing the importation of infectious diseases," said Dr. Joe McLaughlin, acting chief of epidemiology at the Alaska Division of Public Health, who published a study on the outbreak. The spread of human disease has become one of the most worrisome subplots in the story of global warming. Incremental temperature changes have begun to redraw the distribution of bacteria, insects and plants, exposing new populations to diseases that they have never seen before. A report from the World Health Organization estimated that in 2000 about 154,000 deaths around the world could be attributed to disease outbreaks and other conditions sparked by climate change. The temperature change has been small, about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 150 years, but it has been enough to alter disease patterns across the globe. In Sweden, fewer winter days below 10 degrees and more summer days above 50 degrees have encouraged the northward movement of ticks, which has coincided with an increase in cases of tick-borne encephalitis since the 1980s. Researchers have found that poison ivy has grown more potent and lush because of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In Africa, mosquitoes have been slowly inching up the slopes around Mt. Kenya, bringing malaria to high villages that had never been exposed before. "It's going to get very warm," said Andrew Githeko, a vector biologist who heads the Climate and Human Health Research Unit at the Kenya Medical Research Institute in Kisumu. "That's going to mean a huge difference to malaria."


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Human Rights 1. Warming threatens fundamental human rights

Wolfgang Sachs, “Climate Change and Human Rights,” WDEV SPECIAL REPORT 1, 2007, www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/envronmt/climate/2007/07climatehumanrights.pdf, accessed 5-20-08. Climate perturbations are likely to be superimposed on economic insecurity. As a consequence, climate impacts are at times likely to aggravate the living conditions of people up to a point where their basic rights are in jeopardy. It is for this reason that climate impacts may turn into a matter of human rights. As people already living at the edge see themselves pushed over into disaster, climate effects may trigger an infringement upon economic and social human rights. This is not to say that climate related threats (hurricanes or heat waves, for instance) to human physical integrity under conditions of greater affluence may not constitute a human rights violation as well, but they are going to be more occasional and less structural in terms of their occurrence, just as they are going to be more accidental and less predictable in terms of their location. Impacts in poorer regions, in contrast, often add to an already structurally precarious livelihood situation; it is the compounded effect of economic insecurity and climate stress for large numbers of people that centres around the question of how much climate change should be allowed into a human rights issue.

2. Warming’s negative effects will threaten the human rights of millions of people

Laura MacInnis, “Climate Change Threatens Human Rights of Millions: UN,” REUTERS, 2-20-08, http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/20/7176/, accessed 9-4-12. GENEVA - Climate change threatens the human rights of millions of people who are at risk of losing access to housing, food and clean water unless governments intervene early to counter its effects, experts said on Tuesday. At a conference on climate change and migration, United Nations officials said rising sea levels and intense storms, droughts and floods could force scores of people from their homes and off their lands — some permanently. “Global warming and extreme weather conditions may have calamitous consequences for the human rights of millions of people,” said Kyung-wha Kang, the U.N. deputy high commissioner for human rights. “Ultimately climate change may affect the very right to life of various individuals,” she said, pointing to threats of hunger, malnutrition, exposure to disease and lost livelihoods, particularly in poor rural areas dependent on fertile soil. Kang, a South Korean, said countries had an obligation “to prevent and address some of the direst consequences that climate change may reap on human rights.”

3. Climate change undermines human rights, undermine legitimacy of states that are key to the regime

German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), WORLD IN TRANSITION—CLIMATE CHANGE AS A SECURITY RISK, Earthscan, London, 1--08, p. 5. The risk to human rights and the industrialized countries’ legitimacy as global governance actors: Unabated climate change could threaten livelihoods, erode human security and thus contribute to the violation of human rights. Against the backdrop of rising temperatures, growing awareness of social climate impacts and inadequate climate change mitigation efforts, the CO2-emitting industrialized countries and, in future, buoyant economies such as China could increasingly be accused of knowingly causing human rights violations, or at least doing so in de facto terms. The international human rights discourse in the United Nations is therefore also likely to focus in future on the threat that climate impacts pose to human rights. Unabated climate change could thus plunge the industrialized countries in particular into crises of legitimacy and limit their international scope for action.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Human Rights [cont’d] 4. Warming undermines human security—will drive an increase in human rights violations

German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), WORLD IN TRANSITION—CLIMATE CHANGE AS A SECURITY RISK, Earthscan, London, 1--08, p. 173-174. The divisions in global politics, outlined above, are likely to be amplified by a further combination of factors. The conflict constellations described in Chapter 6, which could be initiated and reinforced by climate change, ultimately undermine fundamental human rights: Food security and access to drinking water could be challenged by the impacts of climate change in affected countries and regions, destruction caused by rising sea levels and extreme weather conditions could put people’s livelihoods at risk, and all this could trigger strong environmentally induced migration. Unabated climate change could threaten natural life-support systems, erode human security and thus contribute to the violation of human rights. The main drivers of climate change are the CO2- emitting industrialized countries, but increasingly the major newly industrializing countries as well (Section 8.3.3). Against the backdrop of rising global temperatures, growing awareness of the direct impacts of climate change on societies and inadequate mitigation efforts, these countries could increasingly be accused of knowingly causing human rights violations, or at least doing so in de facto terms. This could lead to a permanent shift in focus in the international human rights discourse. Whereas today, the democratic industrialized countries castigate the violation of human rights by unjust regimes, these countries themselves could – with good reason – find themselves in the dock in future, put there by the developing countries that are acutely affected by climate change and by international human rights organizations. Future human rights debates in the United Nations are likely to focus not only on the classic disputes about the violation of human dignity by authoritarian governments, but also on the threat to human rights resulting from climate impacts, especially as it is now recognised that human rights guarantees also entail certain active obligations. This includes, for example, the ‘ responsibility to protect’, which makes it incumbent on states to take appropriate protective measures in the event of a threat to human rights. Unabated climate change could thus plunge the industrialized countries in particular into crises of legitimacy and limit their international scope for action. It is very possible that these crises of legitimacy vis-à-vis the rest of the world could also trigger internal crises of legitimacy in the democratic industrial societies themselves. The correlations outlined above would also shift the parameters in international development policy and research. Over the last two decades, the view which has prevailed in development research is that the success and failure of development processes in developing countries have been influenced primarily by endogenous factors and actors. In the context of advancing climate change, however, this view may need to be reappraised. One factor which must be considered in this context is that the drivers of climate change are permanently impairing many developing countries’ development prospects. The political responsibility for the development crises in the South would then no longer be mainly attributable to ‘bad governance’ in the poor countries. With rising temperatures, those countries which were once regarded as models for democracy, human rights protection and economic development would instead be regarded as being jointly responsible for global instability, insecurity and the destruction of economic potential. The G7 countries, which, as a value-based community of the world’s leading democracies, claim to be controlling the fortunes of the world not only in their own but also in the global interest, would jeopardize their own credibility – the important basis of their international capacity to act.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Mass Death 1. Unchecked warming risks destruction of the planet

Steve Connor, journalist, “Hawking Warns: We Must Recognize the Catastrophic Dangers of Climate Change,” INDEPENDNET, 1-18-07, http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/212/45293.html, accessed 9-4-12. Climate change stands alongside the use of nuclear weapons as one of the greatest threats posed to the future of the world, the Cambridge cosmologist Stephen Hawking has said. Professor Hawking said that we stand on the precipice of a second nuclear age and a period of exceptional climate change, both of which could destroy the planet as we know it. He was speaking at the Royal Society in London yesterday at a conference organised by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists which has decided to move the minute hand of its "Doomsday Clock" forward to five minutes to midnight to reflect the increased dangers faced by the world. Scientists devised the clock in 1947 as a way of expressing to the public the risk of nuclear conflagration following the use of the atomic weapons that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the Second World War. "As we stand at the brink of a second nuclear age and a period of unprecedented climate change, scientists have a special responsibility, once again, to inform the public and to advise leaders about the perils that humanity faces," Professor Hawking said. "As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth. "As citizens of the world, we have a duty to share that knowledge. We have a duty, as well, to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day, and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change.

2. Warming risks massive species loss (fifty percent) and huge rises in sea level—renders earth uninhabitable

Mary Christina Wood, Professor, Law, University of Oregon, “Nature’s Trust: A Legal, Political and Moral Frame for Global Warming,” BOSTON COLLEGE ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS LAW REVIEW v. 34, 2007, p. 583-584. If we do nothing to curb carbon emissions, we will commit ourselves to a future that most Americans cannot even imagine. Jim Hansen, the leading climate scientist for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), presents the ten degree Fahrenheit scenario: it will send fifty percent or more species into extinction. That is equivalent to the mass extinction that occurred fifty-five million years ago. In his words, "Life will survive, but it will do so on a transformed planet." A mere five-degree Fahrenheit temperature increase may cause an eighty foot rise in sea level. Hansen points out: "In that case, the United States would lose most East Coast cities: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and Miami; indeed, practically the entire state of Florida would be under water. Fifty million people in the U.S. live below that sea level." I could go on detailing on how climate crisis will affect the lives of every human on Earth. What I have mentioned is just the tip of the iceberg--a phrase on its way out. British commentator Mark Lynas, author of High Tide, summarizes the Earth's situation this way: "Let me put it simply: if we go on emitting greenhouse gases at anything like the current rate, most of the surface of the globe will be rendered uninhabitable within the lifetimes of most readers of this article."


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Migration 1. Warming risks displacing millions of people

Kristina Stefanova, "Rising Sea Levles in Pacific Create Wave of Migrants," WASHINGTON TIMES, 4--19--09, p. A1. Rising sea levels blamed on climate change are taking a toll on island nations in the South Pacific, with the world's first climate refugees beginning a migration that is likely to continue for decades to come. Inhabitants of parts of New Guinea and Tuvalu have already been forced to move from low-lying areas. New Zealand has agreed to accept migrants from Tuvalu, which experts think will be completely submerged by the middle of the century. Canada is funding the relocation of residents from parts of Vanuatu affected by global warming. Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization warned in a recent report that the Pacific region is particularly vulnerable. It warned of coastal communities already being inundated by rising seas, the loss of wetlands and coral bleaching, as well as an increase in disease and heat-related mortality resulting from climate change. "Communities all over the Pacific are alarmed at coastal erosion and the advancing sea levels," said Diane McFadzien, the South Pacific's regional climate change coordinator with the World Wildlife Fund. "We are already seeing signs of whole villages having to relocate ... or important cultural sites such as burial grounds in Fiji being eroded" The Pacific islands comprise 22 nations with 7 million residents The rising sea and eroding beaches caused the recent forced displacement of the people of the Carteret Islands, about 70 miles northeast of Papua New Guinea. The islands' 2,500 residents are moving to one of Papua New Guinea's larger towns, Bougainville. Extreme weather has increased in frequency and ferocity in recent years in Papua New Guinea. A flood in Oro Province in November 2007 killed 70 people and destroyed nearly all roads and bridges. In the Indian Ocean, the Maldives, a chain of 1,200 islands and coral atolls that sits about 6 feet above sea level, has long been a favorite honeymoon destination. Estimates released at the Copenhagen International Climate Congress in February say the sea could swallow most or all of the islands by the year 2100. The world's first climate refugees are thought to be the 500,000 inhabitants of Bhola Island in Bangladesh, who were left homeless after half of the island became permanently flooded in 2005. Inhabitants of another island in the Bay of Bengal, Kutubdia, are now homeless after the island lost almost 4 square miles of land, shrinking it from its original size of almost 10 square miles, according to the Equity and Justice Working Group, an environmental organization. The group recently said that some 30 million people in 19 of 64 districts along the southern coastline of Bangladesh have already been exposed to extreme weather, rising sea levels and river erosion. Equity's estimates are more dire than the U.N.-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which estimates that 22 million people in Bangladesh will be forced from their homes by 2050 because of climate change. A migration of such magnitude can have real-life implications for national budgets, international law and immigration policies.

2. Warming will result in large numbers of climate migrants

Michael Werz, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress and Laura Conley, graduate student, International Relations, University of Chicago, CLIMATE CHANGE, MIGRATION, AND CONFLICT: ADDRESSING COMPLEX CRISIS SCENARIOS IN THE 21ST CENTURY, 1—12, p. 3-4. Migration adds another layer of complexity to the scenario. In the 21st century the world could see substantial numbers of climate migrants—people displaced by either the slow or sudden onset of the effects of climate change. The United Nations’ recent Human Development Report stated that, worldwide, there are already an estimated 700 million internal migrants—those leaving their homes within their own countries—a number that includes people whose migration is related to climate change and environmental factors. Overall migration across national borders is already at approximately 214 million people worldwide,6 with estimates of up to 20 million displaced in 2008 alone because of a rising sea level, desertification, and flooding.7 One expert, Oli Brown of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, predicts a tenfold increase in the current number of internally displaced persons and international refugees by 2050.8 It is important to acknowledge that there is no consensus on this estimate. In fact there is major disagreement among experts about how to identify climate as a causal factor in internal and international migration. But even though the root causes of human mobility are not always easy to decipher, the policy challenges posed by that movement are real. A 2009 report by the International Organization for Migration produced in cooperation with the United Nations University and the Climate Change, Environment and Migration Alliance cites numbers that range from “200 million to 1 billion migrants from climate change alone, by 2050,” arguing that “environmental drivers of migration are often coupled with economic, social and developmental factors that can accelerate and to a certain extent mask the impact of climate change.” The report also notes that “migration can result from different environmental factors, among them gradual environmental degradation (including desertification, soil and coastal erosion) and natural disasters (such as earthquakes, floods or tropical storms).” (See box on page 15 for a more detailed definition of climate migrants.) Clearly, then, climate change is expected to aggravate many existing migratory pressures around the world. Indeed associated extreme weather events resulting in drought, floods, and disease are projected to increase the number of sudden humanitarian crises and disasters in areas least able to cope, such as those already mired in poverty or prone to conflict.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Migration [cont’d]

3. Warming will exacerbate existing migration problems, substantially increasing the risk of conflict

German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), WORLD IN TRANSITION—CLIMATE CHANGE AS A SECURITY RISK, Earthscan, London, 1--08, p. 174. Migration is already a major and largely unresolved international policy challenge. Refugee flows in Africa are both the cause and the effect of spiralling violent conflicts. The European Union’s impotence in dealing with African refugees and its failure to develop effective instruments to prevent migration are obvious. The US, meanwhile, is massively reinforcing its fortifications along its border with Mexico in order to limit the influx of illegal economic migrants. Migration and refugees from poor countries are politically sensitive and controversial issues in the industrialized countries, as the heated debates in Germany in the early 1990s, which led to the tightening up of asylum law, and the rise of xenophobic movements and parties in Europe illustrate very clearly. There are many signs that the problem of migration will intensify worldwide as a result of climate change and its social impacts. Growing numbers of people will be affected, and the number of migration hotspots around the world will also increase. The associated conflict potential is considerable: ‘Environmental migrants’ are currently not provided for in international law, so people displaced as a result of climate change impacts have no formal rights. Conflicts can be expected between the countries which cause climate change and those affected by it, with key issues being the extent to which refugee and migration flows are genuinely triggered by rising global temperatures or by other environmental damage resulting from actions at national level. Disputes over compensation payments and the financing of systems to manage refugee crises will increase – and in line with the ‘polluter pays’ principle, the industrialized countries will have to face up to their responsibilities. The controversy over the development of international regimes to clarify which countries must admit climate refugees in future is likely to worsen political tensions. If global temperatures continue to rise unabated, migration could become one of the major fields of conflict in international politics in future.

4. Warming causes mass migrations--creates tensions that could spur conflict

The Military Advisory Board, NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE THREAT OF CLIMATE CHANGE, CNA Corporation, 2007, p. 16-18. The reasons for mass migrations are very complex. However, when water or food supplies shift or when conditions otherwise deteriorate (as from sea level rise, for example), people will likely move to find more favorable conditions. Although climate change may force migrations of workers due to economic conditions, the greatest concern will be movement of asylum seekers and refugees who due to ecological devastation become settlers: • By 2025, 40 percent of the world’s population will be living in countries experiencing significant water shortages. • Over the course of this century, sea level rise could potentially cause the displacement of tens of millions of people from low-lying areas such as Bangladesh. Migrations in themselves do not necessarily have negative effects, although taken in the context of global climate change a net benefit is highly unlikely. Three types of migration patterns occur. Some migrations take place within countries, adding to a nation’s political stress, causing economic upheaval—positive and negative—and distracting from other issues. As a developed nation, the U.S. was able to absorb the displacement of people from the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina without suffering economic or political collapse, but not without considerable turmoil. Some migrations cross international borders. Environmental degradation can fuel migrations in less developed countries, and these migrations can lead to international political conflict. For example, the large migration from Bangladesh to India in the second half of the last century was due largely to loss of arable land, among other environmental factors. This affected the economy and political situation in the regions of India that absorbed most of this population shift and resulted in violence between natives and migrants. A third form of migration involves not only crossing international borders but moving across vast regions while doing so. Since the 1960s, Europe has experienced this kind of “south to north” migration, with an influx of immigrants from Africa and Asia. The shift in demographics has created racial and religious tensions in many European countries, as evidenced in the 2005 civil unrest in France.

5. Climate change spurs migration from Africa to Europe

The Military Advisory Board, NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE THREAT OF CLIMATE CHANGE, CNA Corporation, 2007, p. 22. More than 30 percent of the world’s refugees and displaced persons are African. Within the last decade, severe food shortages affected twenty-five African countries and placed as many as 200 million people “on the verge of calamity”. Expected future climate change will exacerbate this problem. The Sahara desert is spreading, and the sub-Saharan region is expected to suffer reduced precipitation. As climate changes and agricultural patterns are disrupted, the geopolitics of the future will increasingly be the politics of scarcity. Potential rainfall decreases in North Africa would likely exacerbate the problem of migration to Europe. Reduced rainfall and increasing desertification of the sub-Saharan region will likely also result in migrations to Europe, as well as migrations within the African continent.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Moral Considerations 1. We must act--is the moral equivalent of ending slavery

Severin Carrell, "Nasa Scientist: Climate Change Is a Moral Issue on a Par with Slavery," GUARDIAN, 4--6--12, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/06/nasa-scientist-climate-change, accessed 9-7-12. Now 70, Hansen is regarded as one of the most influential figures in climate science; the creator of one of the first global climate models, his pioneering role in warning about global warming is frequently cited by climate campaigners such as former US vice president Al Gore and in earlier science prizes, including the $1m Dan David prize. He has been arrested more than once for his role in protests against coal energy. Hansen will argue in his lecture that current generations have an over-riding moral duty to their children and grandchildren to take immediate action. Describing this as an issue of inter-generational justice on a par with ending slavery, Hansen said: "Our parents didn't know that they were causing a problem for future generations but we can only pretend we don't know because the science is now crystal clear. "We understand the carbon cycle: the CO2 we put in the air will stay in surface reservoirs and won't go back into the solid earth for millennia. What the Earth's history tells us is that there's a limit on how much we can put in the air without guaranteeing disastrous consequences for future generations. We cannot pretend that we did not know."

2. Climate change is the moral issue of the 21st century--we must act

Dr. James Hansen, NASA, "Obama's Second Change on the Predominant Moral Issue of this Century," HUFFINGTON POST, 4--5--10, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-james-hansen/obamas-second-chance-on-c_b_525567.html, accessed 9-7-12. President Obama, finally, took a get-involved get-tough approach to negotiations on health care legislation and the arms control treaty with Russia -- with success. Could this be the turn-around for what might still be a great presidency? The predominant moral issue of the 21st century, almost surely, will be climate change, comparable to Nazism faced by Churchill in the 20th century and slavery faced by Lincoln in the 19th century. Our fossil fuel addiction, if unabated, threatens our children and grandchildren, and most species on the planet. Yet the president, addressing climate in the State of the Union, was at his good-guy worst, leading with "I know that there are those who disagree..." with the scientific evidence. This weak entrée, almost legitimizing denialists, was predictably greeted by cheers and hoots from well-oiled coal-fired Congressmen. The president was embarrassed and his supporters cringed. This is not the 17th century, when "beliefs" trumped science, forcing Galileo to recant his understanding of the solar system. The president should unequivocally support the climate science community, which is under politically orchestrated assault on the legitimacy of its scientific assessments. If he needs reassurance or cover, the president can ask for a prompt report from the National Academy of Sciences, established by Abraham Lincoln for advice on technical issues. Why face the difficult truth presented by the climate science? Why not use the president's tack: just talk about the need for clean energy and energy independence? Because that approach leads to wrong policies, ineffectual legislation larded with giveaways to special interests, such as the Waxman-Markey bill in the House and the bills being considered now in the Senate. The fundamental requirement for solving our fossil fuel addiction and moving to a clean energy future is a rising price on carbon emissions. Otherwise, if we refuse to make fossil fuels pay for their damage to human health, the environment, and our children's future, fossil fuels will remain the cheapest energy and we will squeeze every drop from tar sands, oil shale, pristine lands, and offshore areas.

3. Religious groups are united in arguing that we need to act on climate change

Dr. James Hansen, NASA, "Obama's Second Change on the Predominant Moral Issue of this Century," HUFFINGTON POST, 4--5--10, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-james-hansen/obamas-second-chance-on-c_b_525567.html, accessed 9-7-12. Religions across the spectrum -- Catholics, Jews, Mainline Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and Evangelicals -- are united in seeing climate change as a moral and ethical challenge. The Religious Coalition on Creation Care is working with the Citizen's Climate Lobby, the Price Carbon Campaign, and economists at the Carbon Tax Center to help promote this honest and effective energy and climate policy. The public, if well-informed, can be expected to support this policy. But so far Congress has been steamrolled by special interests. Congressional leaders add giveaways in their bills to attract industry support and specific votes. The best of the lot, the Cantwell-Collins bill, returns 75 percent of the revenue to the public. But it is still a cap-and-trade scheme, and its low carbon price and offset-type projects create little incentive for clean energy and would have only small impact on carbon emissions.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Multiwarrant 1. Warming threatens biodiversity, economy

World Wildlife Fund (WWF), THE ENERGY REPORT: 100% RENEWABLE ENERGY BY 2050, 2011, p. 16. Global warming threatens the fragile balance of our planet’s ecosystems, and could consign a quarter of all species to extinction. The loss of ecological services from forests, coral reefs and other ecosystems will also have huge economic implications.The costs of adapting to climate change will be colossal: a recent report suggests that by 2030, the world may need to spend more than €200 billion a year on measures such as building flood defences, transporting water for agriculture and rebuilding infrastructure affected by climate change.To avoid devastating consequences, we must keep eventual global warming below 1.5°C compared to pre-Industrial temperatures. To have a chance of doing that, global greenhouse gas emissions need to start falling within the next five years, and we need to cut them by at least 80 per cent globally by 2050 (from 1990 levels) – and even further beyond that date.

2. Warming causes sea level rise, disease spread, mass extinctions WEEKLY BLITZ, “Global Warming—New Challenges before the World,” 8—18—11, lexis. Additional anticipated effects include sea level rise of 0.18 to 0.59 meters in 2090-2100 relative to 1980-1999, repercussions to agriculture, reductions in the ozone layer, increasingly intense hurricanes and extreme weather events, lowering of ocean pH, oxygen depletion in the oceans, and the spread of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, as well as Lyme disease, hantavirus infections, bubonic plague, and cholera. One study predicts 18% to 35% of a sample of 1,103 animal and plant species would be extinct by 2050, based on future climate projections. However, few mechanistic studies have documented extinctions due to recent climate change and one study suggests that projected rates of extinction are uncertain.

3. The world is warming and will grow worse—will cause a huge number of potential problems

Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change (SEG), CONFRONTING CLIMATE CHANGE: AVOIDING THE UNMANAGEABLE AND MANAGING THE UNAVOIDABLE, ed. R.M. Bierbaum, J.P. Holdren, M.C. MacCracken, R.H. Moss & P. H. Raven, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, Sigma Xi & UN Foundation, 2007, http://www.unfoundation.org/files/pdf/2007/SEG_Report.pdf, accessed 9-4-12. The world is warming, and the climate is changing. Temperatures are rising in all seasons and over land and in the ocean. Heavy rainfall is occurring more frequently, exacerbating flooding, while the higher temperatures are amplifying evaporation, depressing soil moisture, and intensifying droughts. Sea ice is retreating from shorelines around the Arctic, and glaciers are melting rapidly in the Alps, Alaska, and Greenland, as well as in low-latitude mountain ranges around the world. Sea level is rising, and the rate of rise is apparently increasing. Projections indicate that much greater climate change lies ahead. The impacts of the changing climate on the environment and society will be pervasive and complex. Already, the ranges of animal and plant species are shifting poleward and to higher elevations. Increasing populations and development in coastal cities and communities are increasing the vulnerability of society to sea level rise and intense storms, and global warming appears to be increasing storm intensity. Greater climate change will significantly disrupt the distribution of natural and managed ecosystems on which society relies. Agricultural zones and food production will shift, with the potential for more food production being dependent on the ability to control increasingly favorable conditions for weeds and pests. The magnitude and seasonal availability of water resources will change in many regions in ways that exacerbate shortages. Sea-level rise will continue to erode coastlines and threaten low-lying islands. More frequent, longer-lasting, and more intense heat waves will cause many more deaths unless actions are taken to reduce vulnerability. In many locations, conditions more favorable for mosquitoes and other disease vectors will intensify and spread the threat of infectious diseases, requiring greater protection and eradication efforts. The close coupling of indigenous cultures and traditions to the timing and pattern of nature’s exquisite web of life will be disrupted as changes occur in the timing of migrations, the life cycles of plants and animals, and the populations of sensitive species.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Multiwarrant [cont’d] 4. Warming will cause a laundry list of problems

German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), WORLD IN TRANSITION—CLIMATE CHANGE AS A SECURITY RISK, Earthscan, London, 1--08, p. 15. Climate change is advancing rapidly. Without resolute counteraction, a global increase in temperature of 2–7 °C relative to pre-industrial levels can be expected to occur by 2100. This will cause more frequent and more severe extreme weather events such as heavy rains, drought, heat waves and storms. There is also a danger of tropical cyclones not only becoming stronger but also occurring with greater frequency in extratropical regions. At the same time, sea levels are continuing to rise. These direct impacts of climate change will have far-reaching effects upon societies and the lives of people around the world. If climate change continues unabated, agricultural yields will decline significantly in many regions of the world, especially Africa and South Asia, and poverty will grow accordingly; drought will make it difficult for many millions of people worldwide to gain access to clean drinking water; extreme weather events will continue to gain destructive force and may confront governments and societies with major issues of adaptation, for instance in Central America, but also on the east coasts of China and India. Many states that are already weak and fragile will be faced with additional ‘environmental stress’. Comprehensive changes in biogeophysical conditions will jeopardize the livelihood bases of people in the particularly affected regions of the world and will trigger migration. The present report examines whether the emerging trends may contribute in the future to a destabilization of societies, regions or even the whole international system.

5. Climate change risks war, terrorism, and slavery, while threatening democracy

Richard Haas, President, Council on Foreign Relations, Testimony before House Select committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, CQ CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY, 4-18-07, lexis. Should climate change be treated as a national security matter? The short and clear answer is "yes." Countries are unlikely to go to war over levels of greenhouse gas emissions, but they may well go to war over the results of climate change, including water shortages and large-scale human migration. Climate change, by contributing to disease, extreme weather, challenges from insects that attack both food production and people, water shortages, and the loss of arable land, will also contribute to state failure, which in turn provides opportunities for activities such as terrorism, illegal drugs, and slavery that exploit "sovereignty deficits." Development, democracy, and life itself will not thrive amidst such conditions.

6. Global warming threatens our society—multiple mechanisms

Gary C. Bryner, Professor, Public Policy Program, Brigham Young University, “Carbon Markets: Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions Through Emissions Trading,” TULANE ENVIRONMENTAL LAW JOURNAL v. 17, Summer 2004, p. 267-268. The widespread agreement among scientists that the buildup of carbon and other emissions from human activity will result in disruptive and perhaps even catastrophic changes to the earth's climate has led to international environmental agreements that promise to begin to reduce the threat. These agreements are aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions that accumulate in the atmosphere and cause warming beyond the natural greenhouse effect that is essential for life on earth. The threat of global warming is not the gradual increase in temperatures in and of itself. In fact, global warming may produce some benefits in northern regions, such as longer growing seasons and milder weather. Rather, the greater fear is that changes in climate will wreak havoc in some regions by increasing the intensity of heat waves, droughts, and storms; produce warming trends that harm agriculture and biodiversity; stimulate the spread of disease; cause the melting of glaciers and rise of sea level in coastal areas; and result in a host of other problems.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Ocean Acidification 1. Oceans are acidifying rapidly, killing off coral and fish

Deborah Zabarenko, “Oceans’ Acidic Shift May Be Fastest in 300 mln Years,” CLIMATE SPECTATOR, 3—2—12, lexis. The world's oceans are turning acidic at what could be the fastest pace of any time in the past 300 million years, even more rapidly than during a monster emission of planet-warming carbon 56 million years ago, scientists said on Thursday. Looking back at that bygone warm period in Earth's history could offer help in forecasting the impact of human-spurred climate change, researchers said of a review of hundreds of studies of ancient climate records published in the journal Science. Quickly acidifying seawater eats away at coral reefs, which provide habitat for other animals and plants, and makes it harder for mussels and oysters to form protective shells. It can also interfere with small organisms that feed commercial fish like salmon. The phenomenon has been a top concern of Jane Lubchenco, the head of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who has conducted demonstrations about acidification during hearings in the U.S. Congress. Oceans get more acidic when more carbon gets into the atmosphere. In pre-industrial times, that occurred periodically in natural pulses of carbon that also pushed up global temperatures, the scientists wrote. Human activities, including the burning of fossil fuels, have increased the level of atmospheric carbon to 392 parts per million from about 280 parts per million at the start of the industrial revolution. Carbon dioxide is one of several heat-trapping gases that contribute to global warming.

2. CO2 causes acidification, risks mass oceanic destruction WEEKLY BLITZ, “Global Warming—New Challenges before the World,” 8—18—11, lexis. Increased atmospheric CO2 increases the amount of CO2 dissolved in the oceans. CO2 dissolved in the ocean reacts with water to form carbonic acid, resulting in ocean acidification. Ocean surface pH is estimated to have decreased from 8.25 near the beginning of the industrial era to 8.14 by 2004, and is projected to decrease by a further 0.14 to 0.5 units by 2100 as the ocean absorbs more CO2. Since organisms and ecosystems are adapted to a narrow range of pH, this raises extinction concerns, directly driven by increased atmospheric CO2, that could disrupt food webs and impact human societies that depend on marine ecosystem services.

3. Acidification causes massive die-offs—historic record proves Deborah Zabarenko, “Oceans’ Acidic Shift May Be Fastest in 300 mln Years,” CLIMATE SPECTATOR, 3—2—12, lexis. To figure out what ocean acidification might have done in the prehistoric past, 21 researchers from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain reviewed studies of the geological record going back 300 million years, looking for signs of climate disruption. Those indications of climate change included mass extinction events, where substantial percentages of living things on Earth died off, such as the giant asteroid strike thought to have killed the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago. The events that seemed similar to what is happening now included mass extinctions about 252 million and 201 million years ago, as well as the warming period 56 million years in the past. The researchers reckoned the 5,000-year hot spell 56 million years ago, likely due to factors like massive volcanism, was the closest parallel to current conditions at any time in the 300 million years. To detect that, they looked at a layer of brown mud buried under the Southern Ocean off Antarctica. Sandwiched between layers of white plankton fossils, the brown mud indicated an ocean so acidic that the plankton fossils from that particular 5,000-year period dissolved into muck. During that span, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere doubled and average temperatures rose by 10.8 degrees F (6 degrees C), the researchers said. The oceans became more acidic by about 0.4 unit on the 14-point pH scale over that 5,000-year period, the researchers said.

4. CO2 emissions acidify the oceans—threaten many species Earth Institute, Columbia University, “Ocean Acidification Rate May Be Unprecedented,” 3—1—12, http://www.countercurrents.org/cuei020312.htm, accessed 3-23-12. The world’s oceans may be turning acidic faster today from human carbon emissions than they did during four major extinctions in the last 300 million years, when natural pulses of carbon sent global temperatures soaring, says a new study in Science. The study is the first of its kind to survey the geologic record for evidence of ocean acidification over this vast time period. “What we’re doing today really stands out,” said lead author Bärbel Hönisch, a paleoceanographer at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “We know that life during past ocean acidification events was not wiped out—new species evolved to replace those that died off. But if industrial carbon emissions continue at the current pace, we may lose organisms we care about—coral reefs, oysters, salmon.” The oceans act like a sponge to draw down excess carbon dioxide from the air; the gas reacts with seawater to form carbonic acid, which over time is neutralized by fossil carbonate shells on the seafloor. But if CO2 goes into the oceans too quickly, it can deplete the carbonate ions that corals, mollusks and some plankton need for reef and shell-building.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Plankton 1. Warming kills plankton, risking a runaway greenhouse effect—disrupts vital nutrient mixing

Steve Connor, “Warmer Seas Will Wipe Out Plankton, Source of Ocean Life,” THE INDEPENDENT, 1-19-06, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0119-01.htm, accessed 9-4-12. The microscopic plants that underpin all life in the oceans are likely to be destroyed by global warming, a study has found. Scientists have discovered a way that the vital plankton of the oceans can be starved of nutrients as a result of the seas getting warmer. They believe the findings have catastrophic implications for the entire marine habitat, which ultimately relies on plankton at the base of the food chain. The study is also potentially devastating because it has thrown up a new "positive feedback" mechanism that could result in more carbon dioxide ending up in the atmosphere to cause a runaway greenhouse effect. Scientists led by Jef Huisman of the University of Amsterdam have calculated that global warming, which is causing the temperature of the sea surface to rise, will also interfere with the vital upward movement of nutrients from the deep sea. These nutrients, containing nitrogen, phosphorus and iron, are vital food for phytoplankton. If the supply is interrupted the plants die off, which prevents them from absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. "Global warming of the surface layers of the oceans reduces the upward transport of nutrients into the surface layers. This generates chaos among the plankton," the professor said. The sea is one of nature's "carbon sinks", which removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and deposits the carbon in a long-term store - dissolved in the ocean or deposited as organic waste on the seabed. The vast quantities of phytoplankton in the oceans absorb huge amounts of carbon dioxide. When the organisms die they fall to the seabed, carrying their store of carbon with them, where it stays for many thousands of years - thereby helping to counter global warming. "Plankton... forms the basis of the marine food web. Moreover, phytoplankton consumes the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide during photosynthesis," Professor Huisman said. "Uptake of carbon dioxide by phytoplankton across the vast expanses of the oceans reduces the rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere." Warmer surface water caused by global warming causes greater temperature stratification, with warm surface layers sitting on deeper, colder layers, to prevent mixing of nutrients. Professor Huisman shows in a study published in Nature that warmer sea surfaces will deliver a potentially devastating blow to the supply of deep-sea nutrients for phytoplankton.

2. Loss of plankton exacerbates warming—removes oceans as a carbon sink

Steve Connor, “Warmer Seas Will Wipe Out Plankton, Source of Ocean Life,” THE INDEPENDENT, 1-19-06, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0119-01.htm, accessed 9-4-12. His computer model of the impact was tested on real measurements made in the Pacific Ocean, where sea surface temperatures tend to be higher than in other parts of the world. He found that his computer predictions of how nutrient movement would be interrupted were accurate. "A larger temperature difference between two water layers implies less mixing of chemicals between these water layers," he said. "Global warming of the surface layers of the oceans, owing to climate change, strengthens the stratification and thereby reduces the upward mixing of nutrients." Scientists had believed phytoplankton, which survives best at depths of about 100 metres, is largely stable and immune from the impact of global warming. "This model prediction was rather unexpected," Professor Huisman said. "Reduced stability of the plankton, caused by global warming of the oceans, may result in a decline of oceanic production and reduced sequestration of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the oceans."

3. Loss of plankton destroys all marine life, seriously exacerbates warming

Steve Connor, “Warmer Seas Will Wipe Out Plankton, Source of Ocean Life,” THE INDEPENDENT, 1-19-06, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0119-01.htm, accessed 9-4-12. Microscopic plankton comes in animal and plant forms. The plants are known as phytoplankton. They lie at the base of the marine food chain because they convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into organic carbon - food for everything else. Smaller animals such as shrimp-like krill feed on plankton and are themselves eaten by larger organisms, from small fish to the biggest whales. Without phytoplankton, the oceans would soon because marine deserts. Phytoplankton are also important because of the role they play in the carbon cycle, which determines how much carbon dioxide - the most important greenhouse gas - ends up in the atmosphere to cause global warming. Huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which dissolves in the oceans, are absorbed by phytoplankton and converted to organic carbon. When the phytoplankton die, their shells and bodies sink to the seabed, carrying this carbon with them. Phytoplankton therefore acts as a carbon "sink" which takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and deposits the carbon in long-term stores that can remain undisturbed for thousands of years. If the growth of phytoplankton is interrupted by global warming, this ability to act as a buffer against global warming is also affected - leading to a much-feared positive feedback.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Runaway Greenhouse 1. Failure to act now risks runaway warming

Bill McKibben, Scholar in Residence, Middlebury College, “Civilization’s Last Chance,” LOS ANGELES TIMES, 5-11-08, www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-mckibben11-2008may11,0,4443965.story, accessed 9-4-12. All of a sudden it isn't morning in America, it's dusk on planet Earth. There's a number -- a new number -- that makes this point most powerfully. It may now be the most important number on Earth: 350. As in parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. A few weeks ago, NASA's chief climatologist, James Hansen, submitted a paper to Science magazine with several coauthors. The abstract attached to it argued -- and I have never read stronger language in a scientific paper -- that "if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm." Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points -- massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns, among them -- that we'll pass if we don't get back down to 350 soon; and the first of them, judging by last summer's insane melt of Arctic ice, may already be behind us. So it's a tough diagnosis. It's like the doctor telling you that your cholesterol is way too high and, if you don't bring it down right away, you're going to have a stroke. So you take the pill, you swear off the cheese, and, if you're lucky, you get back into the safety zone before the coronary. It's like watching the tachometer edge into the red zone and knowing that you need to take your foot off the gas before you hear that clunk up front. In this case, though, it's worse than that because we're not taking the pill and we are stomping on the gas -- hard. Instead of slowing down, we're pouring on the coal, quite literally. Two weeks ago came the news that atmospheric carbon dioxide had jumped 2.4 parts per million last year -- two decades ago, it was going up barely half that fast. And suddenly the news arrives that the amount of methane, another potent greenhouse gas accumulating in the atmosphere, has unexpectedly begun to soar as well. It appears that we've managed to warm the far north enough to start melting huge patches of permafrost, and massive quantities of methane trapped beneath it have begun to bubble forth. And don't forget: China is building more power plants; India is pioneering the $2,500 car; and Americans are buying TVs the size of windshields, which suck juice ever faster. Here's the thing. Hansen didn't just say that if we didn't act, there was trouble coming. He didn't just say that if we didn't yet know what was best for us, we'd certainly be better off below 350 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. His phrase was: "if we wish to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed." A planet with billions of people living near those oh-so-floodable coastlines. A planet with ever-more vulnerable forests. (A beetle, encouraged by warmer temperatures, has already managed to kill 10 times more trees than in any previous infestation across the northern reaches of Canada this year. This means far more carbon heading for the atmosphere and apparently dooms Canada's efforts to comply with the Kyoto protocol, which was already in doubt because of its decision to start producing oil for the U.S. from Alberta's tar sands.) We're the ones who kicked the warming off; now the planet is starting to take over the job. Melt all that Arctic ice, for instance, and suddenly the nice white shield that reflected 80% of incoming solar radiation back into space has turned to blue water that absorbs 80% of the sun's heat. Such feedbacks are beyond history, though not in the sense that Francis Fukuyama had in mind. And we have, at best, a few years to short-circuit them -- to reverse course. Here's the Indian scientist and economist Rajendra Pachauri, who accepted the Nobel Prize on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year (and, by the way, got his job when the Bush administration, at the behest of Exxon Mobil, forced out his predecessor): "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment." In the next two or three years, the nations of the world are supposed to be negotiating a successor treaty to the Kyoto accord (which, for the record, has never been approved by the United States -- the only industrial nation that has failed to do so). When December 2009 rolls around, heads of state are supposed to converge on Copenhagen to sign a treaty -- a treaty that would go into effect at the last plausible moment to heed the most basic and crucial of limits on atmospheric CO2. If we did everything right, Hansen says, we could see carbon emissions start to fall fairly rapidly and the oceans begin to pull some of that CO2 out of the atmosphere. Before the century was out, we might even be on track back to 350. We might stop just short of some of those tipping points, like the Road Runner screeching to a halt at the very edge of the cliff.

3. Arctic melt risks a massive methane release

Steve Connor, “Retreat of Arctic Sea Ice Releases Plumes of Methane: Climate Feedback catastrophe?” THE INDEPENDENT, 12—14—11, http://www.countercurrents.org/connor141211.htm, accessed 3-23-12. Scientists estimate that there are hundreds of millions of tonnes of methane gas locked away beneath the Arctic permafrost, which extends from the mainland into the seabed of the relatively shallow sea of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. One of the greatest fears is that with the disappearance of the Arctic sea-ice in summer, and rapidly rising temperatures across the entire region, which are already melting the Siberian permafrost, the trapped methane could be suddenly released into the atmosphere leading to rapid and severe climate change. Dr Semiletov's team published a study in 2010 estimating that the methane emissions from this region were about eight million tonnes a year, but the latest expedition suggests this is a significant underestimate of the phenomenon.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Runaway Greenhouse [cont’d]

3. Permafrost melt risks warming runaway—massive CO2 and methane releases Justin Gillis, “Peril Within Melting Permafrost,” INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, 12—19—11, p. 2. Experts have long known that northern lands were a storehouse of frozen carbon, locked up in the form of leaves, roots and other organic matter trapped in icy soil - a mix that, when thawed, can produce methane, which is far more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the planet. But they have been stunned in recent years to realize just how much organic debris is there. A recent estimate suggests that the perennially frozen ground known as permafrost, which underlies nearly a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere, contains twice as much carbon as the entire atmosphere. Temperatures are warming across much of that region, primarily, scientists believe, because of the rapid human release of greenhouse gases, which trap more of the sun's heat. Permafrost is warming, too. Some has already thawed, and other signs are emerging that the frozen carbon may be destabilizing. ''It's like broccoli in your freezer,'' said Kevin Schaefer, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. ''As long as the broccoli stays in the freezer, it's going to be O.K. But once you take it out of the freezer and put it in the fridge, it will thaw out and eventually decay.'' If a substantial amount of the carbon should enter the atmosphere, it would intensify the warming of the planet. An especially worrisome possibility is that a significant proportion will emerge not as carbon dioxide, the gas that usually forms when organic material breaks down, but as methane, produced when the breakdown occurs in lakes or wetlands. The potential for large new methane emissions in the Arctic is one of the biggest wild cards in climate science. Scientists have declared permafrost research to be an urgent priority. The U.S. Department of Energy and the European Union recently committed to new projects aimed at understanding the situation, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is considering doing so. But researchers say the money and people devoted to the problem are still minimal compared with the risk.

4. Warming risks permafrost methane release and a deadly positive feedback loop

Seth Borenstein, “Scientists Find New Global Warming ‘Time Bomb’,” ASSOCIATED PRESS, 9-7-06, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0907-07.htm, accessed 9-4-12. Global warming gases trapped in the soil are bubbling out of the thawing permafrost in amounts far higher than previously thought and may trigger what researchers warn is a climate time bomb. Methane - a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide - is being released from the permafrost at a rate five times faster than thought, according to a study being published today in the journal Nature. The findings are based on new, more accurate measuring techniques. ‘‘The effects can be huge,’’ said lead author Katey Walter of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks said. ‘‘It’s coming out a lot and there’s a lot more to come out.’’ Scientists worry about a global warming vicious cycle that was not part of their already gloomy climate forecast: Warming already under way thaws permafrost, soil that has been continuously frozen for thousands of years. Thawed permafrost releases methane and carbon dioxide. Those gases reach the atmosphere and help trap heat on Earth in the greenhouse effect. The trapped heat thaws more permafrost and so on. ‘‘The higher the temperature gets, the more permafrost we melt, the more tendency it is to become a more vicious cycle,’’ said Chris Field, director of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who was not part of the study. ‘‘That’s the thing that is scary about this whole thing. There are lots of mechanisms that tend to be self-perpetuating and relatively few that tend to shut it off.’’

5. Permafrost methane release has yet to start, but we are on the brink

Seth Borenstein, “Scientists Find New Global Warming ‘Time Bomb’,” ASSOCIATED PRESS, 9-7-06, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0907-07.htm, accessed 9-4-12. The permafrost issue has caused a quiet buzz of concern among climate scientists and geologists. Specialists in Arctic climate are coming up with research plans to study the permafrost effect, which is not well understood or observed, said Robert Corell, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, a study group of 300 scientists. ‘‘It’s kind of like a slow-motion time bomb,’’ said Ted Schuur, a professor of ecosystem ecology at the University of Florida and co-author of the study in Science. Most of the yedoma is in little-studied areas of northern and eastern Siberia. What makes that permafrost special is that much of it lies under lakes; the carbon below gets released as methane. Carbon beneath dry permafrost is released as carbon dioxide. Using special underwater bubble traps, Walter and her colleagues found giant hot spots of bubbling methane that were never measured before because they were hard to reach. ‘‘I don’t think it can be easily stopped; we’d really have to have major cooling for it to stop,’’ Walter said. Scientists aren’t quite sure whether methane or carbon dioxide is worse. Methane is far more powerful in trapping heat, but only lasts about a decade before it dissipates into carbon dioxide and other chemicals. Carbon dioxide traps heat for about a century. ‘‘The bottom line is it’s better if it stays frozen in the ground,’’ Schuur said. ‘‘But we’re getting to the point where it’s going more and more into the atmosphere.’’ Vladimir Romanovsky, geophysics professor at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, said he thinks the big methane or carbon dioxide release hasn’t started yet, but it’s coming. In Alaska and Canada - which have far less permafrost than Siberia - it’s closer to happening, he said. Already, the Alaskan permafrost is reaching the thawing point in many areas.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change--Sea Level Rise 1. Warming will increase sea levels--only uncertainty is about the timing

James Hansen, Goddard Institute, NASA, with 17 co-authors, "Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature," submitted to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 2012, http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/notyet/submitted_Hansen_etal.pdf, accessed 9-7-12. Expected human-caused sea level rise is controversial because predictions focus on sea level rise at a specific time, 2100. Prediction of sea level on a given date is inherently difficult, because it depends on how rapidly non-linear ice sheet disintegration begins. Focus on a single date also encourages people to take the estimated result as an indication of what humanity faces, thus failing to emphasize that the likely rate of sea level rise immediately after 2100 will be far larger than within the 21st century, if CO2 emissions continue to increase. Most recent estimates of sea level rise by 2100 have been of the order of 1m, notably higher than estimates in earlier assessments (74), and it also has been argued (74, 75) that continued business-as-usual CO2 emissions could cause multi-meter sea level rise this century. In Supplementary Material we discuss and provide references for estimated sea level rise and for observational evidence about changing ice sheet conditions. The important point is that the uncertainty is not about whether continued rapid CO2 emissions would cause large sea level rise – it is about how soon the large changes would begin. If all or most fossil fuels are burned, the carbon will remain in the climate system for many centuries, in which case multi-meter sea level rise is practically certain. Such a sea level rise would create hundreds of millions of global warming refugees from highly-populated low-lying areas, thus likely causing major international conflicts.

2. Warming risks significant sea level rise

John F. Kerry U.S. Senator, “On Eve of Rio+20, An Honest Assessment of Climate Change Challenge,” CONGRESSIONAL DOCUMENTS AND PUBLICATIONS, 6—19—12, lexis. Rising Sea Levels: An "Invisible Tsunami" Here's another "postcard from the edge": rising sea levels. You'll recall that some senators in the state legislature in North Carolina don't think it's much of a problem. Well, let's take a look at the evidence. Our best studies predict a higher sea level rise than previously projected. With the melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet alone, global sea levels could rise by as much as 3.26 meters in the coming years. And the Pacific and Atlantic coasts may be in for a 25 percent increase above average levels by century's end. In all, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet has the potential to raise global sea level by about seven meters, and the ice sheets of Antarctica have the potential to contribute to 60 meters of sea level rise. Think about what this means. As the New York Times reported in March, some 3.7 million Americans living within a few feet of high tide are at risk from the rising sea. So all you state senators out there, listen up: The effects of climate change will spare no one--from Tampa to Asheville, from Sausalito to Staten Island, all coastal communities are vulnerable. Benjamin Strauss, co-author of a smart new study on topographic vulnerability, said it best: "Sea level rise is like an invisible tsunami, building force while we do almost nothing...We have a closing window of time to prevent the worst by preparing for higher seas." I think that's exactly right--and it's why, in cities like Boston, officials are actively planning for how to manage 100-year floods that are now arriving every twenty years in the face of a global sea level rise of three to six feet by 2100. So, we can pass legislation at the state level to ban planning for sea level rise. It might be easy politics, but it's not smart politics in terms of protecting our country. Just ask those living in Tuvalu and the low-lying nation of Kiribati. Think they could use some advance planning to deal with the "King" tides that may soon drown out life on their shores? You bet. But instead of learning from them, we've succumbed to the siren call of short-term interests. One resident of Tuvalu poignantly asked: "What will happen to us in 10 years' time?" I wish I could allay her fears. I wish I could tell her that the climate challenge would only be limited to occasional sea level rise, and that--naturally, surely--the King tides would recede. Raging Floods and Water Scarcity But the truth is much more harrowing. From Veracruz to Songkhla Province in Thailand, floods are devastating crops and stealing away opportunities for millions. On my travels, I've seen children orphaned by raging floodwaters, families deprived of basic necessities like food, clean drinking water and medicine. I've also seen the ways in which climatic changes interact with conflict, food insecurity and water scarcity. Think of Darfur and tensions over arable land. Think of drought in Syria and its impact on farmers in southern Dara'a. Think of water scarcity in Yemen--and the list goes on. These are the "invisible tsunamis" that Benjamin Strauss spoke of. They develop slowly, quietly, determinately. And they devastate communities just as surely as they renew our sense of urgency about the costs of inaction.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Terrorism 1. Warming increases disease, migration, terror risks

The Military Advisory Board, NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE THREAT OF CLIMATE CHANGE, CNA Corporation, 2007, p. 44. Projected climate change poses a serious threat to America’s national security. Potential threats to the nation’s security require careful study and prudent planning— to counter and mitigate potential detrimental outcomes. Based on the evidence presented, the Military Advisory Board concluded that it is appropriate to focus on the serious consequences to our national security that are likely from unmitigated climate change. In already-weakened states, extreme weather events, drought, flooding, sea level rise, retreating glaciers, and the rapid spread of life-threatening diseases will themselves have likely effects: increased migrations, further weakened and failed states, expanded ungoverned spaces, exacerbated underlying conditions that terrorist groups seek to exploit, and increased internal conflicts. In developed countries, these conditions threaten to disrupt economic trade and introduce new security challenges, such as increased spread of infectious disease and increased immigration. Overall, climate change has the potential to disrupt our way of life and force changes in how we keep ourselves safe and secure by adding a new hostile and stressing factor into the national and international security environment.

2. Warming causes terrorism--social stresses

The Military Advisory Board, NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE THREAT OF CLIMATE CHANGE, CNA Corporation, 2007, p. 16. Many developing countries do not have the government and social infrastructures in place to cope with the types of stressors that could be brought on by global climate change. When a government can no longer deliver services to its people, ensure domestic order, and protect the nation’s borders from invasion, conditions are ripe for turmoil, extremism and terrorism to fill the vacuum. Lebanon’s experience with the terrorist group Hezbollah and the Brazilian government’s attempts to reign in the slum gang First Capital Command are both examples of how the central governments’ inability to provide basic services has led to strengthening of these extra-governmental entities.

3. Warming undermines the war on terror—lack of action fuels anti-U.S. sentiment, fosters conditions that increase terror support

Kent Hughes Butt, U.S. Army War College, “Climate Change: Complicating the Struggle Against Extremist Ideology,” GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE: NATIONAL SECURITY IMPLICATIONS, ed. C. Pumphrey, May 2008, p. 134-135. Climate change is affecting the efforts of the United States to combat the global insurgency and its underlying extremist ideologies in two ways: First, it provides a strategic communication windfall for the insurgency, allowing extremists and critics of the United States to claim that the United States does not care about the welfare of other countries. These countries, they say, must struggle with the rising energy costs and global warming that directly result from the high U.S. per capita consumption of energy resources. Second, climate change is complicating the ability of countries to meet the needs of their people, thus enhancing the appeal of extremist ideology by creating underlying conditions terrorists may exploit.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--War (General) 1. Warming increases war risks--multiple triggers

Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director, Natural Resources Defense Council, Testimony before the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, 3--30--11, www.nrdc.org/energy/files/dlovaas_transportation_20110330.pdf, accessed 4-9-12. Apart from economic impacts, our oil dependence poses a national security concern for strategic military and defense reasons. Oil consumption by the transportation sector is a major source of heat-trapping pollution, accounting for approximately one-third of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to the numerous environmental impacts, climate change carries worrisome security implications. An increasing number of security experts at CNA Corporation, the Center for Strategic and International Studies as well as the Defense Department have identified climate change as a challenge to the nation. CNA describes a “threat multiplier” effect due to climate change whereby regions of the world that are already stressed due to poor social, economic and/or political conditions risk degenerating into disaster and/or civil war zones with additional stress due to the unpredictable impacts of climate change. Asian, African and Middle Eastern countries are particularly susceptible to such a scenario. As CNA sums up: “Economic and environmental conditions in already fragile areas will further erode as food production declines, diseases increase, clean water becomes increasingly scarce, and large populations move in search of resources. Weakened and failing governments, with an already thin margin for survival, foster the conditions for internal conflicts, extremism, and movement toward increased authoritarianism and radical ideologies.”

2. Warming increases war risks—resource fights Pew Center on Global Climate Change “National Security Implications of Global Climate Change,” 8—09, p. 1. America faces a shifting strategic landscape in which rising demand for natural resources (e.g., fossil energy, water, food) increasingly drives national priorities and shapes international relationships.3 Since climate change affects the distribution and availability of critical natural resources, it can act as a “threat multiplier” by causing mass migrations and exacerbating conditions that can lead to social unrest and armed conflict. Today, drought, thirst, and hunger are exacerbating the conflicts and humanitarian disasters in Darfur and Somalia, and climate change portends more situations like these.4 The United States is the leading international peace broker and provider of development assistance and humanitarian relief. Climate change is likely to generate many more natural disasters, forcing the U.S. military and its civilian leadership to make ever more difficult strategic decisions about where, for what purposes, and with what tradeoffs U.S. military assets will be deployed.5 As is the case today, America will not be able to help everyone. Those most adversely affected could come to resent the imposition of climate change. As the world’s largest historical emitter of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, the United States is likely to be the chief target of resentment.6 For example, al-Qaeda leaders have cited global warming repeatedly in propaganda intended to foment anti-American sentiment.

3. Warming threatens national security—multiple conflict triggers Michael Werz, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress and Laura Conley, graduate student, International Relations, University of Chicago, CLIMATE CHANGE, MIGRATION, AND CONFLICT: ADDRESSING COMPLEX CRISIS SCENARIOS IN THE 21ST CENTURY, 1—12, p. 1. As these ill effects progress they will have serious implications for U.S. national security interests as well as global stability—extending from the sustainability of coastal military installations to the stability of nations that lack the resources, good governance, and resiliency needed to respond to the many adverse consequences of climate change. And as these effects accelerate, the stress will impact human migration and conflict around the world. It is difficult to fully understand the detailed causes of migration and economic and political instability, but the growing evidence of links between climate change, migration, and conflict raise plenty of reasons for concern. This is why it’s time to start thinking about new and comprehensive answers to multifaceted crisis scenarios brought on or worsened by global climate change. As Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, argues, “The question we must continuously ask ourselves in the face of scientific complexity and uncertainty, but also growing evidence of climate change, is at what point precaution, common sense or prudent risk management demands action.”2 In the coming decades climate change will increasingly threaten humanity’s shared interests and collective security in many parts of the world, disproportionately affecting the globe’s least developed countries.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--War (General) [cont’d] 4. Climate change will spur conflict—multiple triggers

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), staff, STRATEGIC SURVEY v. 107 n. 1, September 2007, pp. 33-84 The impact of climate change has to be taken into account in almost every field of policy, on both the national and international level. Discussion of the threat it poses has tended to be from an environmental and human-security perspective. But the security dimension will come increasingly to the forefront as countries begin to see falls in available resources and economic vitality, increased stress on their armed forces, greater instability in regions of strategic import, increases in ethnic rivalries, and a widening gap between rich and poor. Climate change is at the heart of both national and collective security. In the next few decades, unavoidable warming due to past greenhouse-gas emissions and the necessary lead time for mitigation will lead to a world where current security concerns are multiplied and intensified under the influence of the changing climate. Fundamental environmental issues of food, water and energy security ultimately lie behind many present security concerns, and climate change will magnify all three. Action taken by individual nations and by the international community in the next few years will determine whether the second half of the century will see catastrophic climate change, increasing rivalry, instability, human tragedy and war; or an easing of and adjustment to climate change, with an international order increasingly rooted in cooperation and convergence.

5. Climate change amplifies conflict triggers: (1) political instability; (2) weak governance; (3) economy; (4) demographics; (5) regional spillover

German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), WORLD IN TRANSITION—CLIMATE CHANGE AS A SECURITY RISK, Earthscan, London, 1--08, p. 2. Climate change amplifies mechanisms which lead to insecurity and violence Political instability and conflicts Societies in transition from authoritarian to democratic systems are especially vulnerable to crises and conflicts. Climate change will affect many of these countries, putting them under additional pressure to adapt their societies during such phases of transition. This linkage could be significant for many African countries, for example, as well as for China. Weak governance structures and conflicts Violent conflicts are a very frequent feature of weak and fragile states, of which there are currently about 30, and which are characterized by the permanent weakening or even the dissolution of their state structures. The impacts of climate change will particularly affect those regions of the world in which states with weak steering and problem-solving capacities already predominate. Climate change could thus lead to the further proliferation of weak and fragile statehood and increase the probability of violent conflicts occurring. Economic performance and tendency to violence Empirical studies show that poor countries are far more prone to conflict than affluent societies. Climate change will result in tangible economic costs for developing countries in particular: a drop in agricultural yields, extreme weather events and migratory movements can all impede economic development. Climate change can thus reinforce obstacles to development and heighten poverty, thereby increasing the risk of conflicts occurring in these societies. Demographics and conflict Wherever high population growth and density, resource scarcity (farmland, water) and a low level of economic development occur in tandem, there is an increased risk of conflict. In many countries and regions which are already affected by high population growth and density as well as poverty, climate change will exacerbate resource scarcity and thus heighten the risk of conflict. Spillover risk in conflict regions Conflicts which are initially limited to local or national level often destabilize neighbour countries, e.g. through refugee flows, arms trafficking or combatant withdrawal. Conflicts thus have a spillover effect. The social impacts of climate change can transcend borders, thereby swiftly expanding the geographical extent of crisis and conflict regions.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--War (Africa) 1. Warming destabilizes Africa--resulting instability strains the U.S. Military

The Military Advisory Board, NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE THREAT OF CLIMATE CHANGE, CNA Corporation, 2007, p. 20. Reductions in soil moisture and further loss of arable land may be the most significant of the projected impacts of climate change in Africa. At the same time, extreme weather events are likely to increase. These expected changes portend reduced supplies of potable water and food production in key areas. Such changes will add significantly to existing tensions and can facilitate weakened governance, economic collapses, massive human migrations, and potential conflicts. In Somalia, for example, alternating droughts and floods led to migrations of varying size and speed and prolonged the instability on which warlords capitalized. AFRICA Increased political instability in Africa potentially adds additional security requirements for the U.S. in a number of ways. Stability operations, ranging from humanitarian direct delivery of goods and the protection of relief workers, to the establishment of a stable and reconstructed state, can place heavy demands on the U.S. military. While the nature of future stability operations is a matter of speculation, historically some stability operations have involved significant military operations and casualties. Political instability also makes access to African trade and resources, on which the U.S. is reliant for both military and civilian uses, a riskier proposition.

2. Africa stability key to oil supply, fighting terrorism

The Military Advisory Board, NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE THREAT OF CLIMATE CHANGE, CNA Corporation, 2007, p. 20. Africa’s importance to U.S. national security can no longer be ignored. Indeed, with the recent establishment of a U.S. African Command, the U.S. has underscored Africa’s strategic importance. Its weak governments and the rising presence of terrorist groups make Africa important to the fight against terrorism. Moreover, Africa is also of strategic value to the U.S. as a supplier of energy; by 2015, it will supply 25 to 40 percent of our oil, and it will also be a supplier of strategic minerals such as chrome, platinum, and manganese.

3. Africa instability risks genocide and terrorism

The Military Advisory Board, NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE THREAT OF CLIMATE CHANGE, CNA Corporation, 2007, p. 20-22. Africa is increasingly crucial in the ongoing battle against civil strife, genocide, and terrorism. Numerous African countries and regions already suffer from varying degrees of famine and civil strife. Darfur, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Angola, Nigeria, Cameroon, Western Sahara—all have been hit hard by tensions that can be traced in part to environmental causes. Struggles that appear to be tribal, sectarian, or nationalist in nature are often triggered by reduced water supplies or reductions in agricultural productivity. The challenges Africa will face as a result of climate change may be massive, and could present serious threats to even the most stable of governments. Many African nations can best be described as failed states, and many African regions are largely ungoverned by civil institutions. When the conditions for failed states increase—as they most likely will over the coming decades—the chaos that results can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide, and the growth of terrorism.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--War (Failed States) 1. Warming is a national security threat—failed and fragile states

Francesco Femia and Caitlin E. Werrell, “Climate Change and Security 101: Why the U.S. National Security Establishment Takes Climate Change Seriously,” Center for Climate and Security, 4—25—12, http://climateandsecurity.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/climate-and-security-101_why-the-u-s-national-security-establishment-takes-climate-change-seriously1.pdf, accessed 4-29-12. Lastly, climate change can exacerbate the social, economic and environmental stresses that plague fragile states, thus heightening the probability of populations fleeing to other countries, or turning to terrorism and piracy. For example, Somalia and the broader Horn of Africa is in the grip of an extended drought that is likely attributable to climate change. This drought, coupled with other factors such as poor or nonexistent governance, has in the past led to widespread famine. As populations become more and more destitute, the probability that they flee en masse to other countries (if they have the means), or join terrorist enterprises like the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Shabab, increases. In short, climate change threatens to make fragile states even more fragile, which can lead to the potential for violence directed either at the United States, or its partners and allies in these key regions. This concern is so acute that the U.S. Department of Defense, through its Minerva Initiative, is investing considerable resources to map the security implications of climate change in Africa.

2. Warming undermines national security—threat of failed states Michael Werz, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress and Laura Conley, graduate student, International Relations, University of Chicago, CLIMATE CHANGE, MIGRATION, AND CONFLICT: ADDRESSING COMPLEX CRISIS SCENARIOS IN THE 21ST CENTURY, 1—12, p. 2. Climate change also poses distinct challenges to U.S. national security. Recent intelligence reports and war games, including some conducted by the U.S. Department of Defense, conclude that over the next two or three decades, vulnerable regions (particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia) will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises, and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change. These developments could demand U.S., European, and international humanitarian relief or military responses, often the delivery vehicle for aid in crisis situations.

3. Unchecked climate change will expand the number of failed/fragile states, increasing conflict risks and spiralling instability

German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), WORLD IN TRANSITION—CLIMATE CHANGE AS A SECURITY RISK, Earthscan, London, 1--08, p. 5. In light of current knowledge about the social impacts of climate change, WBGU identifies the following six key threats to international security and stability which will arise if climate change mitigation fails: 1. Possible increase in the number of weak and fragile states as a result of climate change: Weak and fragile states have inadequate capacities to guarantee the core functions of the state, notably the state’s monopoly on the use of force, and therefore already pose a major challenge for the international community. So far, however, the international community has failed to summon the political will or provide the necessary financial resources to support the long-term stabilization of these countries. Moreover, the impacts of unabated climate change would hit these countries especially hard, further limiting and eventually overstretching their problem-solving capacities. Conflict constellations may also be mutually reinforcing, e.g. if they extend beyond the directly affected region through environmental migration and thus destabilize other neighbouring states. This could ultimately lead to the emergence of “failing subregions” consisting of several simultaneously overstretched states, creating “black holes” in world politics that are characterized by the collapse of law and public order, i.e. the pillars of security and stability. It is uncertain at present whether, against the backdrop of more intensive climate impacts, the international community would be able to curb this erosion process effectively.

4. Warming causes refugees, increasing state failure and corresponding ethnic war and terrorism risks

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), staff, STRATEGIC SURVEY v. 107 n. 1, September 2007, pp. 33-84 Competition for resources and loss of livelihoods could cause large increases in numbers of migrants, refugees and internally displaced persons, creating humanitarian crises. In countries already at risk from conflict or from political, environmental and economic stress, there will be an increased danger of conflict and state failure. Conflict and state failure caused in part by climate change will itself make adaptation to and mitigation of climate change more difficult, as state institutions are likely to be unable to implement measures, and international non- governmental organisations may not be able to operate in such conditions. State failures will also increase internal ethnic rivalries and create breeding grounds and safe havens for terrorist networks.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--War (Failed States) [cont’d] 5. Warming will exacerbate the problems of weak states—overwhelms national problem-solving capacities

German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), WORLD IN TRANSITION—CLIMATE CHANGE AS A SECURITY RISK, Earthscan, London, 1--08, p. 169-170. Weak and failing states already pose a major challenge to international security policy (Section 4.2). This view is endorsed by the European Security Strategy, which highlights the links between state failure, cross-border civil wars, transnational terrorism and trafficking in humans and weapons (EU, 2003). So far, however, the international community has failed to summon the political will or the necessary financial resources to safeguard lasting stability in the world’s 30 or so fragile states. What’s more, the mechanisms available through development cooperation and military policy to deal with the problem of weak states are contentious in both conceptual and political terms, although the concern about the threat that state failure poses to regional and global stability is widely shared. The impacts of climate change, such as the threat of food crises, water scarcity, extreme weather events and ensuing migration, will expose many of the already weak states, especially in southern Africa, to additional pressure to adapt (Fig. 8.1-2b). However, climate change could overstretch countries’ problem solving capacities in other regions of the world too: • Hurricanes gaining in destructive force as a result of rising global temperatures could overwhelm the economic capacities of states and societies, especially in Central America (Section 7.8). • Protracted droughts or even a collapse of the Amazon rainforest (Sections 5.3.4 and 7.10) would present northern Brazil and neighbouring regions in Latin America with unprecedented challenges and heighten the distributional conflicts between the poor Amazon regions and relatively affluent southern Brazil. • From the mid 21st century onwards, sea-level rise could confront the farming regions of the Ganges Delta – home to as many as 200 million people – with grave socio-economic problems. • The melting of the glaciers in the Andean and Himalayan regions would jeopardize water supply and trigger agricultural crises. The risk that economic capacities, political systems and societies will be overstretched by climate change therefore increases as the climate problem intensifies. As the effects of climate change do not stop at national borders, ‘failing subregions’ could emerge, consisting of several simultaneously overstretched states. The international community should thus be prepared for a situation in which the global problem of weak and overstretched states will become even more pressing in future if climate change is not stopped in time. A proliferation of fragile states is unlikely to trigger major military conflicts; rather, it will cause the diffuse erosion of international stability and security and the spread of failing regions. The unstable peripheries of the international system could expand, with a widening of the ‘black holes’ in world politics that are characterized by the collapse of law and public order, i.e. the pillars of security and stability. There is no sign, at present, that the international community would have the capacity to halt this process of erosion effectively if climate impacts intensify. Climate change therefore triggers and amplifies international insecurity and widening instabilities by overstretching the capacities of states. This overstretch is relevant to global climate change mitigation in economic terms as well: Relatively low mitigation costs presuppose that cost-effective mitigation options can be implemented in developing and newly industrializing countries as well. However, with the proliferation of state fragility, some countries are facing the loss of the institutional structures that would enable them to carry out mitigation measures efficiently and effectively in the global interest.

6. Warming has multiple effects that undermine social stability, increasing the risk of war

German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), WORLD IN TRANSITION—CLIMATE CHANGE AS A SECURITY RISK, Earthscan, London, 1--08, p. 189. Types of conflict constellation The second finding of WBGU’s analysis is that global climate change could lead to food crises, freshwater shortages, extreme weather events with massive destructive force, and increased migration in the various regions of the world (Chapter 6). The conflict constellations analysed by WBGU show that unabated climate change will increase human vulnerability, worsen poverty and thus heighten societies’ susceptibility to crises and conflicts. The specific threats will depend on the dynamics of climate change, local environmental conditions and the affected societies’ and actors’ crisis management capacities. The present report identifies examples of regions that will be especially hard hit (Chapter 7) and outlines appropriate responses to the various conflict constellations.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Water 1. Warming increases water shortages—glacial melt, shift in rainfall

Pew Center on Global Climate Change, “Science and Impacts,” CLIMATE CHANGE 101, 1—11, p. 5-6. Altered Availability and Quality. Warmer temperatures threaten the water supplies of hundreds of millions of people who depend on water from the seasonal melting of mountain ice and snow in several ways: by increasing the amount of seasonal melt from glaciers and snowpack, by increasing the amount of precipitation that falls as rain instead of snow, and by altering the timing of snowmelt. In the near term, the melting of mountain ice and snow may cause flooding; in the long term, the loss of these frozen water reserves will significantly reduce the water available for humans, agriculture, and energy production. Earlier snowmelt brings other impacts. Western states have experienced a six-fold increase in the amount of land burned by wildfires over the past three decades because snowmelt has occurred earlier and summers are longer and drier.23 Climate change will affect the quality of drinking water and impact public health. As sea level rises, saltwater will infiltrate coastal freshwater resources. Flooding and heavy rainfall may overwhelm local water infrastructure and increase the level of sediment and contaminants in the water supply.24 Increased rainfall could also wash more agricultural fertilizer and municipal sewage into coastal waters, creating more low-oxygen “dead zones” in the Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.25

2. Warming increases number and intensity of both droughts and floods Pew Center on Global Climate Change, “Science and Impacts,” CLIMATE CHANGE 101, 1—11, p. 5. Climate change will alter the quantity and quality of available fresh water and increase the frequency and duration of floods, droughts, and heavy precipitation events. Although climate change will affect different regions in different ways, it is generally expected that dry regions of the world will get drier and wet regions will get wetter. More Floods and Droughts. A number of factors are expected to contribute to more frequent floods. More frequent heavy rain events will result in more flooding. Coastal regions will also be at risk from sea level rise and increased storm intensity. While some regions will suffer from having too much water, others will suffer from having too little. Diminished water resources are expected in semi-arid regions, like the western United States, where water shortages often already pose challenges. Areas affected by drought are also expected to increase. As the atmosphere becomes warmer, it can hold more water, increasing the length of time between rain events and the amount of rainfall in an individual event. As a result, areas where the average annual rainfall increases may also experience more frequent and longer droughts.

3. Warming contributes to global water crises, risking war

Thalif Deen, journalist, “Climate Change Depending World Water Crisis,” INTER PRESS SERVICE, 3-19-08, www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/envronmt/climate/2008/0319deepwater.htm, accessed 9-4-12. When U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last January, his primary focus was not on the impending global economic recession but on the world's growing water crisis. "A shortage of water resources could spell increased conflicts in the future," he told the annual gathering of business tycoons, academics and leaders from governments, intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations. "Population growth will make the problem worse. So will climate change. As the global economy grows, so will its thirst. Many more conflicts lie just over the horizon," he warned. Anders Berntell, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute, says the lack of safe drinking water for over 1.0 billion people worldwide, and the lack of safe sanitation for over 2.5 billion, "is an acute and devastating humanitarian crisis." "But this is a crisis of management, not a water crisis per se, because it is caused by a chronic lack of funding and inadequate understanding of the need for sanitation and good hygiene at the local level," Berntell told IPS.

4. Warming risks Mideast water wars

The Military Advisory Board, NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE THREAT OF CLIMATE CHANGE, CNA Corporation, 2007, p. 30. Climate change has the potential to exacerbate tensions over water as precipitation patterns change, declining by as much as 60 percent in some areas. In addition, the region already suffers from fragile governments and infrastructures, and as a result is susceptible to natural disasters. Overlaying this is a long history of animosity among countries and religious groups. With most of the world’s oil being in the Middle East and the industrialized and industrializing nations competing for this resource, the potential for escalating tensions, economic disruption, and armed conflict is great.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Water 5. Warming risks massive water shortages

The Military Advisory Board, NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE THREAT OF CLIMATE CHANGE, CNA Corporation, 2007, p. 14-15. Adequate supplies of fresh water for drinking, irrigation, and sanitation are the most basic prerequisite for human habitation. Changes in rainfall, snowfall, snowmelt, and glacial melt have significant effects on fresh water supplies, and climate change is likely to affect all of those things. In some areas of the Middle East, tensions over water already exist. Mountain glaciers are an especially threatened source of fresh water. A modest rise in temperature of about 2° to 4°F in mountainous regions can dramatically alter the precipitation mix by increasing the share falling as rain while decreasing the share falling as snow. The result is more flooding during the rainy season, a shrinking snow/ice mass, and less snowmelt to feed rivers during the dry season. Forty percent of the world’s population derives at least half of its drinking water from the summer melt of mountain glaciers, but these glaciers are shrinking and some could disappear within decades. Several of Asia’s major rivers—the Indus, Ganges, Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow—originate in the Himalayas. If the massive snow/ice sheet in the Himalayas—the third-largest ice sheet in the world, after those in Antarctic and Greenland—continues to melt, it will dramatically reduce the water supply of much of Asia. Most countries in the Middle East and northern Africa are already considered water scarce, and the International Water Resource Management Institute projects that by 2025, Pakistan, South Africa, and large parts of India and China will also be water scarce. To put this in perspective: the U.S. would have to suffer a decrease in water supply that produces an 80 percent decrease in per capita water consumption to reach the United Nations definition of “water scarce.” These projections do not factor in climate change, which is expected to exacerbate water problems in many areas.

6. Warming will cause water shortages throughout Asia--glacier losses

The Military Advisory Board, NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE THREAT OF CLIMATE CHANGE, CNA Corporation, 2007, p. 24-27. By 2050, regions dependent on glacial melting for water may face serious consequences. Asia, where hundreds of millions of people rely on waters from vanishing glaciers on the Tibetan plateau, could be among the hardest hit regions. Climate change has the potential to exacerbate water resource stresses in most regions of Asia. Most countries in Asia will experience substantial declines in agricultural productivity because of higher temperatures and more variable rainfall patterns. Net cereal production in South Asia, for example, is projected to decline by 4 to 10 percent by the end of this century under the most conservative climate change projections. But the problem isn’t just water scarcity— too much water can also be a problem. By 2050, snow melting in the high Himalayas and increased precipitation across northern India are likely to produce flooding, especially in catchments on the western side of the Himalayas, in northern India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.

7. Warming will exacerbate water shortages throughout the middle east

The Military Advisory Board, NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE THREAT OF CLIMATE CHANGE, CNA Corporation, 2007, p. 30. In this region, water resources are a critical issue; throughout history, cultures here have flourished around particular water sources. With the population explosion underway, water will become even more critical. Of the countries in the Middle East, only Egypt, Iran, and Turkey have abundant fresh water resources. Roughly two-thirds of the Arab world depends on sources outside their borders for water. The most direct effect of climate change to be felt in the Middle East will be a reduction in precipitation. But the change will not be uniform across the region. The flows of the Jordan and Yarmuk rivers are likely to be reduced, leading to significant water stress in Israel and Jordan, where water demand already exceeds supply. Exacerbation of water shortages in those two countries and in Oman, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq are likely to threaten conventional crop production, and salinization of coastal aquifers could further threaten agriculture in those regions.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Answers to "Adaptation" 1. Poor countries lack the resources to effectively adapt

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), staff, STRATEGIC SURVEY v. 107 n. 1, September 2007, pp. 33-84 The developed world is better able than developing countries to adapt to the consequences of climate change. Poorer nations tend to be more closely dependent on climate-sensitive resources and less able to afford or implement adaptation measures. In developing countries, poor farmers will see their income drop on average, both in real terms and relative to wealthier sectors, in the next few decades - though some will see an improvement relative to urban populations as food prices increase.

2. We are close to many negative impacts, adaptation is limited because its costs will increase

Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change (SEG), CONFRONTING CLIMATE CHANGE: AVOIDING THE UNMANAGEABLE AND MANAGING THE UNAVOIDABLE, ed. R.M. Bierbaum, J.P. Holdren, M.C. MacCracken, R.H. Moss & P. H. Raven, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, Sigma Xi & UN Foundation, 2007, http://www.unfoundation.org/files/pdf/2007/SEG_Report.pdf, accessed 9-4-12. The environmental and societal impacts of climate change will be of many types, affecting many of society’s most vital interests. The terrestrial and marine ecosystems that comprise the Earth’s environment and provide innumerable ecological services to society will be dramatically altered as the atmospheric CO2 concentration rises and the climate shifts. The availability of water will change, affecting both natural and human systems. Coastal communities will be under increasing threat from rising sea level and intensification of storms and higher storm surges. Human health will increasingly be affected by increased incidence of heat waves, intensified air pollution, more powerful storms, higher flood levels, and the spread of warmer, wetter conditions conducive to disease vectors and pathogens. With many impacts already evident from the limited amount of global warming to date, significantly increased human impacts seem inevitable as the climatic disruption grows. Adaptation will be increasingly important, as discussed in Chapter 3 of this report, but the inescapable reality is that the costs of adaptation will grow and its effectiveness will diminish as the magnitude of the climatic disruption increases.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Answers to "CO2 Fertilization" 1. Field findings show that any CO2-induced yield increases are much lower than predicted, is cancelled out by climate change

German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), WORLD IN TRANSITION—CLIMATE CHANGE AS A SECURITY RISK, Earthscan, London, January 2008, p. 66-67, As plants require CO2 for photosynthesis, it was initially assumed that, physiologically, an increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration would have a major, direct positive effect on carbon fixation (the CO2 fertilization effect; see e.g. Cure and Acock, 1986; Stockle et al., 1992). While numerous greenhouse-based experiments in the 1980s confirmed the fertilizing effect of increased CO2 concentrations on crop growth (Cure and Acock, 1986), in the open field, plants adapt to the higher CO2 concentrations. The opening of leaf stomata, plants’ mechanism for gas exchange of CO2 and water with the atmosphere, is restricted to reduce water loss. Production increases thus tend to be lower, generally below 30 per cent (Kroner, 2006). Experimental application of CO2 gas to crops in open-field production has shown, for example, that grain yields increase by a mere 11 per cent on average instead of the expected 23–25 per cent (Long et al., 2006). The fertilizer effect appears to be much weaker than hitherto assumed in the case of rice, wheat and soybeans, and there is little or no effect on millet and maize. These findings are borne out in the case of woodlands too (Norby et al., 2005; Asshoff et al., 2006). Consequently, in global terms, the CO2 fertilizer effect will compensate to a much lesser extent than previously assumed for the declines in crop yields that are expected as a result of rising temperatures (and concomitant increase in transpiration losses) and decreasing soil moisture (Parry et al., 2004). The fertilizer effect, moreover, may be completely absent in the event of major climate change.

2. Even with full fertilization effects, cereal production will decline significantly The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), staff, STRATEGIC SURVEY v. 107 n. 1, September 2007, pp. 33-84 The impact of global warming will vary significantly among and within regions of the globe and its precise likely effect can only be properly considered through analysis of the different regional impacts. Projections of regional impacts are less robust than the global perspective due to limitations of the models, but important trends can be discerned. In the broadest terms, the carrying capacity - the population that can be supported by available resources and infrastructure - of tropical and sub-tropical regions will drop, while higher latitudes will see smaller declines in carrying capacity and, at least initially, even some potential benefits. The precise impacts are hard to predict. For example, higher levels of CO2 can actually increase yields of wheat and rice (but not maize) if there are small temperature rises, other things being equal - a phenomenon called 'CO2 fertilisation'. This effect, which is not fully understood, is an important variable in assessing climate change impacts. Recent findings indicate the effect may be lower in the field than in the laboratory, and any increase in yield may be offset by a decline in the food value of the crops, increases in pests and disease, declines in pollinating insects, and extreme weather events and pollution. Regardless of this effect, global rises in temperature will still produce a net decline in the world's cereal production, and will affect low-latitude, developing countries more than high-latitude, developed countries. Even taking CO2 fertilisation into account, 65 countries are likely to lose over 15% of their agricultural output by 2100, and the gap between developed and developing countries will be greater. Efforts to adapt to changing climate, such as shifting planting dates and changing crop varieties, are also more effective at higher latitudes.

3. CO2 fertilization increases wildfire risk—additional growth of vulnerable brush Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change (SEG), CONFRONTING CLIMATE CHANGE: AVOIDING THE UNMANAGEABLE AND MANAGING THE UNAVOIDABLE, ed. R.M. Bierbaum, J.P. Holdren, M.C. MacCracken, R.H. Moss & P. H. Raven, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, Sigma Xi & UN Foundation, 2007, http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/envronmt/climate/2007/0227segreport.pdf, accessed 6-19-12. In addition to significantly affecting the natural environment and the provision of ecological goods and services on which society depends, climate change will have direct consequences for society and its built systems. The altered timing, flow rates, and temperatures of rivers will require adjustments in the management and location of water-supply systems to meet future demand, especially because higher temperatures are very likely to increase the demand for water during lengthened warm seasons. An additional impact of the higher CO2 concentration will be to enhance growth of vegetation in regions that dry out in the summer, leading to more rapid accumulation of the types and amounts of biomass that are susceptible to wildfire (e.g., chaparral).


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Answers to "CO2 Fertilization" [cont’d] 4. Warming will overwhelm the short-term benefits of fertilization—high temperatures, precipitation shifts

Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change (SEG), CONFRONTING CLIMATE CHANGE: AVOIDING THE UNMANAGEABLE AND MANAGING THE UNAVOIDABLE, ed. R.M. Bierbaum, J.P. Holdren, M.C. MacCracken, R.H. Moss & P. H. Raven, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, Sigma Xi & UN Foundation, 2007, http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/envronmt/climate/2007/0227segreport.pdf, accessed 6-19-12. Soil Moisture: The higher CO2 concentration will generally improve the efficiency of water use by many types of plants, especially important crops (and, unfortunately, weeds). This is likely to increase agricultural productivity in some regions over the next few decades, quite probably benefiting those in the most fertile areas by extending their productivity advantage as compared to farmers now dealing with marginal soil and climatic conditions. However, as climate continues to change, the beneficial effects of warming are likely to be overwhelmed by hotter and drier conditions. In some areas, the potentially adverse effects on agriculture of higher summer temperatures and more intermittent precipitation can likely be offset by shifting planting dates and increasing reliance on irrigation, even though this may be made more difficult by changes in the amounts and timing of river flows. Farmers who now grow niche products (e.g., cool-summer crops or crops tied to nighttime minimum temperatures), however, will increasingly be forced to try to compete with the much larger farms producing warm-summer crops on better land, and their failures are likely to devastate the present fragile economies of their rural regions.

5. Warming will turn one-third of the planet into desert Michael McCarthy, journalist, “The Century of Drought,” INDEPENDENT, 10-4-06, www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/envronmt/2006/1004droughtcentury.htm, accessed 6-19-12. One third of the planet will be desert by the year 2100, say climate experts in the most dire warning yet of the effects of global warming Drought threatening the lives of millions will spread across half the land surface of the Earth in the coming century because of global warming, according to new predictions from Britain's leading climate scientists. Extreme drought, in which agriculture is in effect impossible, will affect about a third of the planet, according to the study from the Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research. It is one of the most dire forecasts so far of the potential effects of rising temperatures around the world - yet it may be an underestimation, the scientists involved said yesterday. The findings, released at the Climate Clinic at the Conservative Party conference in Bournemouth, drew astonished and dismayed reactions from aid agencies and development specialists, who fear that the poor of developing countries will be worst hit. "This is genuinely terrifying," said Andrew Pendleton of Christian Aid. "It is a death sentence for many millions of people. It will mean migration off the land at levels we have not seen before, and at levels poor countries cannot cope with."

6. Warming exacerbates erosion, decreasing ag production German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), WORLD IN TRANSITION—CLIMATE CHANGE AS A SECURITY RISK, Earthscan, London, January 1--08, p. 69. Erosion by wind and water is already a major problem, and one that will be aggravated by rising temperatures and a resulting increase in aridity. Where land use has eliminated the dense vegetation cover, thus exposing the soil directly to the effects of the weather, e.g. following forest clearing or overgrazing, desiccation facilitates rapid erosion of the surface layer of soil. With loss of the fertile topsoil, including as a result of landslides that occur due to lack of vegetation cover, nutrients vital for plant growth are lost, and this in turn leads to reduced agricultural productivity. Often, this process of erosion also entails compaction and encrustation of the soil surface. This further reduces the water-carrying capacity of the soil and accelerates soil degradation even more (Schlesinger et al., 1990; Oldeman et al., 1991; Oldeman, 1992). For this reason, erosion is given particular attention as a factor when considering climate change. Wind erosion is already a typical phenomenon in semi-arid and arid zones. It occurs on the fringes of most deserts, where the sparse plant cover is highly sensitive to overgrazing and arable soils are particularly prone to desiccation (e.g. the Sahel region). But the west coast of South America, the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, India and north-eastern China are also affected by wind erosion (USDA, 1998). It can therefore be assumed that susceptibility to soil degradation due to erosion will increase further in future in tandem with higher air temperatures worldwide.


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Mitigation Justified: Climate Change Bad--Answers to "Ice Age" 1. Ice age concerns don’t justify future emissions—risks runaway warming from permafrost melt

PERISCOPE POST, “Human Carbon Emissions Have Averted Ice Age, Say Scientists, But Global Warming Dangers Remain,” 1—9—12, npg. No cause for celebration. Anyone who uses the research to suggest there's nothing wrong with rising carbon emissions is missing the point, Dr Luke Skinner, one of the lead researchers, told the BBC: "Where we're going is not maintaining our currently warm climate but heating it much further, and adding CO2 to a warm climate is very different from adding it to a cold climate. The rate of change with CO2 is basically unprecedented, and there are huge consequences if we can't cope with that." Permafrost woes. The research comes not long after scientists expressed concern over the potential effect of melting permafrost, which contains carbon, on the level of greenhouse gases in the environment: "As the frost melts, that carbon will enter the atmosphere, most of it as carbon dioxide, but some of it transformed by bacteria into methane, an even more powerful heat-trapping greenhouse gas. That, in turn, will warm the planet further," wrote Brad Plumer for The Washington Post. Plumer pointed out that scientists are unsure as to the consequences of melting permafrost, but that the overall message is gloomy: "The state of permafrost research offers one piece of evidence that current climate-change predictions seem to be overly optimistic."

2. Ice age claims are ridiculous—warming creates immediate short-term problems, would not have to worry about an ice age for 1500 years

Norbert Cunningham, “It’s Getting hotter, the Ice Age Will Have to Wait,” TIMES & TRANSCRIPT, 1—11—12, p. D6. Now here's something perverse: those who deny global warming is a problem sometimes cite a 1999 essay by Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe - top rate astronomers, not climate change scientists - in which they argued that an ice age would be much more disastrous for humanity and food supplies than a warmer Earth, hence we should be working on ways to increase greenhouse gases. That's perverse! Did they not notice we are having no problem getting the carbon dioxide up there now? And they're proposing a solution to a problem that won't exist for, at minimum 1,500 years while ignoring today's crisis (which also includes massive disruption of food production). The reality I've no idea what motivated Mr. Hoyle and Mr. Wickramasinghe, but it's a rather odd approach at best. It's likely true an ice age would be worse, but so what? It's not our problem, warming is our problem. Nor does the pair seem to distinguish between a planet with good growing conditions and the super hot planet that sees prime farmland turn to sand dunes. Sand or ice -- neither prospect is appealing or particularly good for humanity as we know it today. Meanwhile, zip up before venturing out today. The last word Here is James Lovelock: "Geological change usually takes thousands of years to happen but we are seeing the climate changing not just in our lifetimes but also year by year."

3. Warming induced ice age would kills billions, destroy civilization within a few years Thom Hartmann, author, “How Global Warming May Cause the Next Ice Age,” COMMON DREAMS, 1-30-04, http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views04/0130-11.htm, accessed 5-2-08. If the Great Conveyor Belt, which includes the Gulf Stream, were to stop flowing today, the result would be sudden and dramatic. Winter would set in for the eastern half of North America and all of Europe and Siberia, and never go away. Within three years, those regions would become uninhabitable and nearly two billion humans would starve, freeze to death, or have to relocate. Civilization as we know it probably couldn't withstand the impact of such a crushing blow. And, incredibly, the Great Conveyor Belt has hesitated a few times in the past decade. As William H. Calvin points out in one of the best books available on this topic ("A Brain For All Seasons: human evolution & abrupt climate change"): ".the abrupt cooling in the last warm period shows that a flip can occur in situations much like the present one. What could possibly halt the salt-conveyor belt that brings tropical heat so much farther north and limits the formation of ice sheets? Oceanographers are busy studying present-day failures of annual flushing, which give some perspective on the catastrophic failures of the past. "In the Labrador Sea, flushing failed during the 1970s, was strong again by 1990, and is now declining. In the Greenland Sea over the 1980s salt sinking declined by 80 percent. Obviously, local failures can occur without catastrophe - it's a question of how often and how widespread the failures are - but the present state of decline is not very reassuring." Most scientists involved in research on this topic agree that the culprit is global warming, melting the icebergs on Greenland and the Arctic icepack and thus flushing cold, fresh water down into the Greenland Sea from the north. When a critical threshold is reached, the climate will suddenly switch to an ice age that could last minimally 700 or so years, and maximally over 100,000 years. And when might that threshold be reached? Nobody knows - the action of the Great Conveyor Belt in defining ice ages was discovered only in the last decade. Preliminary computer models and scientists willing to speculate suggest the switch could flip as early as next year, or it may be generations from now. It may be wobbling right now, producing the extremes of weather we've seen in the past few years. What's almost certain is that if nothing is done about global warming, it will happen sooner rather than later.


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Mitigation Justified: Succeeds--Carbon Tax 1. The only way to solve is to internalize the costs of carbon

James Hansen, Goddard Institute, NASA, with 17 co-authors, "Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature," submitted to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 2012, http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/notyet/submitted_Hansen_etal.pdf, accessed 9-7-12. Most proposed schemes to artificially restore Earth's energy balance aim to reduce solar heating, e.g., by maintaining a haze of stratospheric particles that reflect sunlight to space. Such attempts to mask one pollutant with another pollutant almost inevitably would have unintended consequences. Moreover, schemes that do not remove CO2 would not avert ocean acidification. The implication is that the world must move expeditiously to carbon-free energies and energy efficiency, leaving most remaining fossil fuels in the ground. Yet transition to a postfossil fuel world of clean energies will not occur as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy. Fossil fuels are cheap only because they are subsidized and do not pay their costs to society. Air and water pollution from fossil fuel extraction and use have high costs in human health, food production, and natural ecosystems, costs borne by the public. Huge costs of climate change and ocean acidification also are borne by the public, especially young people and future generations. Thus the essential underlying policy, albeit not sufficient, is for emissions of CO2 to come with a price that allows these costs to be internalized within the economics of energy use. The price should rise over decades to enable people and businesses to efficiently adjust their lifestyles and investments to minimize costs. The right price for carbon and the best mechanism for carbon pricing are more matters of practicality than of economic theory. Economic analyses indicate that a carbon price fully incorporating environmental and climate damage would be high (96). The cost of climate change is uncertain to a factor of 10 or more and could be as high as ~$1000/tCO2 (97). While the imposition of such a high price on carbon emissions is outside the realm of short-term political feasibility, a price of that magnitude is not required to engender a large change in emissions trajectory.

2. A progressive global carbon tax is the best way to address warming

Severin Carrell, "Nasa Scientist: Climate Change Is a Moral Issue on a Par with Slavery," GUARDIAN, 4--6--12, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/06/nasa-scientist-climate-change, accessed 9-7-12. Hansen said his proposal for a global carbon tax was based on the latest analysis of CO2 levels in the atmosphere and their impact on global temperatures and weather patterns. He has co-authored a scientific paper with 17 other experts, including climate scientists, biologists and economists, which calls for an immediate 6% annual cut in CO2 emissions, and a substantial growth in global forest cover, to avoid catastrophic climate change by the end of the century. The paper, which has passed peer review and is in the final stages of publication by the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, argues that a global levy on fossil fuels is the strongest tool for forcing energy firms and consumers to switch quickly to zero carbon and green energy sources. In larger countries, that would include nuclear power. Under this proposal, the carbon levy would increase year on year, with the tax income paid directly back to the public as a dividend, shared equally, rather than put into government coffers. Because the tax would greatly increase the cost of fossil fuel energy, consumers relying on green or low carbon sources of power would benefit the most as this dividend would come on top of cheaper fuel bills. It would promote a dramatic increase in the investment and development of low-carbon energy sources and technologies.


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Mitigation Justified: Succeeds--Economy 1. Failure to address climate change/energy means even bigger financial crises will hit us

Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn, USN (ret.), Member Military Advisory Board, CNA, Testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, 7-30-09, http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=1909f092-e750-4b29-b526-378ee5db1423, accessed 5-2-10. This Board has produced two reports, the first in April, 2007 and the latest in May of this year, focused on the very topic of this hearing. The first examined the national security threats of climate change, and the most recent analyzed the national security threats of America’s current and future energy posture. Before I get to the details of these reports, I have to acknowledge the elephant in the room. We are in the midst of the most serious global financial crisis of our lifetimes. After a year of examining our nation’s energy use, it is clear to all members of our military board that our economic, energy, climate change and national security challenges are intertwined and co-dependent. Our past pattern of energy use is responsible, in no small measure, for our economic situation today. If we do not adequately address our nation’s growing energy demand and climate change now, in wise and visionary ways, future financial crises will most certainly dwarf this one.

2. Green shift will be the biggest economic driver--will spur jobs across the economy

Fred Krupp, President, Environmental Defense Fund, Testimony before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, 8-6-09, http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=05e60846-bf0e-4972-a23e-7b2d61455e57, accessed 9-5-12. 3. We can create jobs – while we achieve the emissions targets. Building a low-carbon economy can be a major – perhaps the major – economic driver for the U.S. economy over the next few decades. That’s because behind every low-carbon solution is a long supply chain brimming with American jobs. A pioneering set of studies by researchers at Duke University has laid this out in detail. As the Duke studies show, low-carbon solutions – from energy-efficient windows to carbon capture and storage – will spawn new jobs in mining, component manufacturing, final product manufacturing, design, engineering, construction, marketing, and sales.


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Mitigation Justified: Succeeds--Fossil Fuel Transition 1. We must start a transition away from fossil fuels now

James Hansen, Goddard Institute, NASA, with 17 co-authors, "Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature," submitted to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 2012, http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/notyet/submitted_Hansen_etal.pdf, accessed 9-7-12. We conclude that initiation of phase-out of fossil fuel emissions is urgent. For example, if emission reductions begin this year the required rate of decline is 6%/year to restore Earth's energy balance, and thus approximately stabilize climate, by the end of this century. If emissions reductions had begun in 2005, the required rate was 3%/year. If reductions are delayed until 2020, the required reductions are 15%/year. And these scenarios all assume a massive 100 GtC reforestation program, essentially restoring biospheric carbon content to its natural level. The implication is that we must transition rapidly to a post-fossil fuel world of clean energies. This transition will not occur as long as fossil fuels remain the cheapest energy in a system that does not incorporate the full cost of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are cheap only because they are subsidized, and because they do not pay their costs to society. The high costs to human health, food production, and natural ecosystems of air and water pollution caused by fossil fuel extraction and use are borne by the public. Similarly, costs of climate change and ocean acidification will be borne by the public, especially by young people and future generations. Thus the essential underlying policy is for emissions of CO2 to come with a price that allows these costs to be internalized within the economics of energy use. The price should rise over decades to enable people and businesses to efficiently adjust their lifestyles and investments to minimize costs.

2. We need to phase out fossil fuels--devastating climate change is inevitable otherwise

James Hansen, Goddard Institute, NASA, with 17 co-authors, "Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature," submitted to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 2012, http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/notyet/submitted_Hansen_etal.pdf, accessed 9-7-12. Fossil fuel emissions to date are a small fraction of potential emissions from known reserves and potentially recoverable resources (Fig. P1). Although there are uncertainties in reserves and resources, ongoing fossil fuel subsidies and continuing technological advances ensure that more and more of these fuels will be economically recoverable. Burning all fossil fuels would create a very different planet than the one that humanity knows. The paleoclimate record and ongoing climate change make it clear that the climate system would be pushed beyond tipping points, setting in motion irreversible changes, including ice sheet disintegration with a continually adjusting shoreline, extermination of a substantial fraction of species on the planet, and increasingly devastating regional climate extremes. Initiation of phase-out of fossil fuel emissions is urgent. CO2 from fossil fuel use stays in the surface climate system for millennia. Thus continued high emissions would leave young people and future generations with an enormous clean-up job. The task of extracting CO2 from the air is so great that success is uncertain at best, raising the likelihood of a spiral into climate catastrophes and efforts to "geo-engineer" restoration of planetary energy balance.

3. No need to defend fossil fuel interests--they are systematically undermining the planet's health

Sharon Abercrombie, "Climate Change Articles See Crisis as Moral Issue," NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER, 8--2--12, http://ncronline.org/blogs/eco-catholic/climate-change-articles-see-crisis-moral-issue, accessed 9-7-12. Two recent thought-provoking articles regarding climate change are well worth reading and pondering, so I am posting them here. Both see the crisis as being fundamentally a moral issue. The first is by Bill McKibben, a longtime environmental writer and founder of 350.org, the activist group working to stop the Keystone XL Pipeline. He examines "the terrifying new math around global warming" in the latest issue of Rolling Stone in a 6,000-word article that looks at the greed and crookedness of fossil-fuel corporations and how their stranglehold on the economy continues to rule despite environmental activists' efforts. "Climate change operates on a geological scale and time frame, but it is not an impersonal force of nature: the more carefully you do the math, the more thoroughly you realize that this is, at bottom a moral issue; we have met the enemy and they is Shell," he writes. "If enough people come to understand the cold, mathematical truth -- that the fossil-fuel industry is systematically undermining the planet's physical systems -- it might weaken it enough to matter politically."


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Mitigation Justified: Succeeds--Must Act Now 1. We need to act now before we reach the point of no return

John F. Kerry U.S. Senator, “On Eve of Rio+20, An Honest Assessment of Climate Change Challenge,” CONGRESSIONAL DOCUMENTS AND PUBLICATIONS, 6—19—12, lexis. Anyone who worries whether this is the right moment to tackle climate change should understand: We can't afford not to act now. It is now that the most critical trends and facts all point in the wrong direction. The CO2 emissions that cause climate change grew at a rate four times faster in the first decade of this new century than they did in the 1990s. Several years ago, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a series of projections for global emissions, based on likely energy and land use patterns. Today, our emissions have actually moved beyond the worst case scenarios predicted by all of the models of the IPCC! Meanwhile, our oceans and forests, which act as natural repositories, are losing their ability to absorb carbon dioxide. This means that the effects of climate change are being felt stronger than expected, faster than expected. The plain fact is that there isn't a nation on the planet that has escaped the steady onslaught of climate change. When the desert is creeping into East Africa, and ever more scarce resources push farmers and herders into deadly conflict, then that is a matter of shared security for all of us. When the people of the Maldives are forced to abandon a place they've called home for hundreds of years--it's a stain on our collective conscience, and a moral challenge to each of us. When our own grandchildren risk growing up a world we can't recognize and don't want to, in the long shadow of a global failure to cooperate, then--clearly, urgently, profoundly--we all need to do better.

2. Delay only makes things worse

Dr. Peter H. Gleick, Director, Pacific Institute, “Not Going Away: America’s Energy Security, Jobs and Climate Challenges,” Testimony before the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming,” 12-1-10, www.pacinst.org/publications/testimony/gleick_testimony_climate_strategies.pdf, accessed 12-2-11. 4. The nation now faces only three options -- mitigation, adaptation, and suffering. That is to say we can only (1) work to reduce the severity of future climate change through efforts to cut or mitigate emissions of greenhouse pollutants; (2) work to adapt to unavoidable climatic change already locked into the system; and (3) suffer the consequences of changing climate. The only question is how much of each option we do. We are now faced with unavoidable climate changes because we (the world) have delayed too long to implement policies to reduce greenhouse gas emission. The impacts of unavoidable climate change are going to be significant and will grow in extent and severity the longer we continue to delay efforts to reduce greenhouse gases. In fact, it appears that many of our estimates of the rate of climate change have been too low, not too high, and climate changes are happening faster than expected. As a result, in twenty more years, the Earth will be even hotter, sea levels will be higher and rising faster, water and food resources will be increasingly stressed, extinction rates will accelerate, and our forced expenditures for climate adaptation will be far, far greater than they would otherwise have been if efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions had been implemented earlier.

3. Warming is real and happening now—must act immediately if we are to avert catastrophe

Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change (SEG), CONFRONTING CLIMATE CHANGE: AVOIDING THE UNMANAGEABLE AND MANAGING THE UNAVOIDABLE, ed. R.M. Bierbaum, J.P. Holdren, M.C. MacCracken, R.H. Moss & P. H. Raven, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, Sigma Xi & UN Foundation, 2007, http://www.unfoundation.org/files/pdf/2007/SEG_Report.pdf, accessed 9-4-12. Global climate change, driven largely by the combustion of fossil fuels and by deforestation, is a growing threat to human well-being in developing and industrialized nations alike. Significant harm from climate change is already occurring, and further damages are a certainty. The challenge now is to keep climate change from becoming a catastrophe. There is still a good chance of succeeding in this, and of doing so by means that create economic opportunities that are greater than the costs and that advance rather than impede other societal goals. But seizing this chance requires an immediate and major acceleration of efforts on two fronts: mitigation measures (such as reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases and black soot) to prevent the degree of climate change from becoming unmanageable; and adaptation measures (such as building dikes and adjusting agricultural practices) to reduce the harm from climate change that proves unavoidable.


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Mitigation Justified: Succeeds--Must Act Now [cont’d] 4. Must drastically cut emissions within next 10 years to avoid critical climate tipping points

Mary Christina Wood, Professor, Law, University of Oregon, “Nature’s Trust: A Legal, Political and Moral Frame for Global giving us so little time. It is because we have already pumped so much carbon into it that we are likely nearing a "tipping point" that will trigger irreversible dynamics. After that tipping point, our subsequent carbon reductions, no matter how impressive, will not thwart long-term catastrophe. Let me be clear. I do not mean to imply that all climate catastrophes will visit us on January 1 of Year Eleven from now. The tipping point concept means this: if we continue business as usual, then at some point within this coming decade, and probably sooner rather than later, we will effectively place a lock on the door of our heating greenhouse and throw out the key. Our children and future generations are trapped in that greenhouse with rising temperatures, and they will have no way to get out. This ten-year action window we are now looking through means that, if we pour resources into the wrong strategy, we will not have time to go back and chart another course before this tipping point has come and gone.

5. Delay means a crash finish—will have to cut emissions at twice the rate as if we acted now

Frances Beinecke, President, Natural Resources Defense Council, Testimony before Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Subcommittee on Private Sector and Consumer Solutions to Global Warming and Wildlife Protection, CQ CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY, 10-24-07, lexis. This goal is ambitious, but achievable. It can be done through an annual rate of emissions reductions that ramps up to about a 4% reduction per year. (See Figure 2.) But if we delay and emissions continue to grow at or near the business-as-usual trajectory for another 10 years, the job will become much harder. In such a case, the annual emission reduction rate needed to stay on the 450 ppm path would double to 8% per year. In short, a slow start means a crash finish, with steeper and more disruptive cuts in emissions required for each year of delay.

6. Must act now: (1) harder to act in future; (2) most certain way to avoid the negative effects

Frances Beinecke, President, Natural Resources Defense Council, Testimony before Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Subcommittee on Private Sector and Consumer Solutions to Global Warming and Wildlife Protection, CQ CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY, 10-24-07, lexis. Climate scientists warn us that we must act now to begin making serious emission reductions if we are to avoid truly dangerous global warming pollution concentrations. Because carbon dioxide and some other global warming pollutants can remain in the atmosphere for many decades, centuries, or even longer, the climate change impacts from pollution released today will continue throughout the 21st century and beyond. Failure to pursue significant reductions in global warming pollution now will make the job much harder in the future both the job of stabilizing atmospheric pollution concentrations and the job of avoiding the worst impacts of a climate gone haywire.


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Mitigatoin Justified: Succeeds--Survival Ethics Justifies 1. The only ethical approach is to limit resource consumption to sustainable levels--the alternative is the ultimate moral evil

Herschel Elliott, Associate Professor Emeritus, Philosophy, University of Florida and Richard D. Lamm, Professor, University of Denver, “A Moral Code for a Finite World,” THE SOCIAL CONTRACT v. 14 n. 3, Spring 2004, www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc1403/article_1223.shtml, accessed 9-6-12. Most important, the ethics of the commons must prevent a downward spiral to scarcity. One of its first principles is that the human population much reach and maintain a stable state a state in which population growth does not slowly but inexorably diminish the quality of, and even the prospect for, human life. Another principle is that human exploitation of natural resources must remain safely below the maximum levels that a healthy and resilient ecosystem can sustain. A third is the provision of a margin of safety that prevents natural disasters like storms, floods, droughts, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions from causing unsupportable scarcity. Not to limit human behavior in accordance with those principles would be not only myopic, but also ultimately a moral failure. To let excess human fertility or excess demand for material goods and services cause a shortage of natural resources is as immoral as theft and murder, and for the same reasons. They deprive others of their property, the fruits of their labors, their quality of life, or even their lives. The ethics of the commons is a pragmatic ethics. It denies the illusion that human moral behavior occurs in a never-never land, where human rights and duties remain unchanging, and scarcity can never cancel moral duties. It does not allow a priori moral arguments to dictate behavior that must inevitably become extinct. It accepts the necessity of constraints on both production and reproduction. As we learn how best to protect the current and future health of the earth's ecosystems, the ethics of the commons can steadily make human life more worth living. As populations increase and environments deteriorate, the moral laws that humans have relied on for so long can no longer solve the most pressing problems of the modern world. Human rights are an inadequate and inappropriate basis on which to distribute scarce resources, and we must propose and debate new ethical principles.

2. Moral codes and human rights make no sense in the face of our doom--scarcity and its implications for our collective survival come first

Herschel Elliott, Associate Professor Emeritus, Philosophy, University of Florida and Richard D. Lamm, Professor, University of Denver, “A Moral Code for a Finite World,” THE SOCIAL CONTRACT v. 14 n. 3, Spring 2004, www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc1403/article_1223.shtml, accessed 9-6-12. We have described not a world that we want to see, but one that we fear might come to be. Humans cannot have a moral duty to deliver the impossible, or to supply something if the act of supplying it harms the ecosystem to the point where life on earth becomes unsustainable. Moral codes, no matter how logical and well reasoned, and human rights, no matter how compassionate, must make sense within the limitations of the ecosystem; we cannot disregard the factual consequences of our ethics. If acting morally compromises the ecosystem, then moral behavior must be rethought. Ethics cannot demand a level of resource use that the ecosystem cannot tolerate. The consequences of human behavior change as the population grows. Most human activities have a point of moral reversal, before which they may cause great benefit and little harm, but after which they may cause so much harm as to overwhelm their benefits. Here are a few representative examples, the first of which is often cited when considering Garrett Hardin's work: * In a nearly empty lifeboat, rescuing a drowning shipwreck victim causes benefit -- It saves the life of the victim, and it adds another person to help manage the boat. But in a lifeboat loaded to the gunwales, rescuing another victim makes the boat sink and causes only harm -- Everyone drowns. * When the number of cars on a road is small, travel by private car is a great convenience to all. But as the cars multiply, a point of reversal occurs -- The road now contains so many cars that such travel is inconvenient. The number of private cars may increase to the point where everyone comes to a halt. Thus, in some conditions, car travel benefits all. In other conditions, car travel makes it impossible for anyone to move. It can also pump so much carbon monoxide into the atmosphere that it alters the world's climate. * Economic growth can be beneficial when land, fuel, water, and other needed resources are abundant. But it becomes harmful when those resources become scarce, or even when exploitation causes ecological collapse. Every finite environment has a turning point, at which further economic growth would produce so much trash and pollution that it would change from producing benefit to causing harm. After that point is reached, additional growth only increases scarcity and decreases overall productivity. In conditions of scarcity, economic growth has a negative impact. * Every environment is finite. Technology can extend but not eliminate limits. An acre of land can support only a few mature sugar maples; only so many radishes can grow in a five-foot row of dirt. Similar constraints operate in human affairs. When the population in any environment is small and natural resources plentiful, every additional person increases the welfare of all. As more and more people are added, they need increasingly to exploit the finite resources of the environment. At a certain point, the members of an increasing population become so crowded that they stop benefiting each other; by damaging the environment that supports everyone, by limiting the space available to each person, and by increasing the amount of waste and pollution, their activity begins to cause harm. That is, population growth changes from good to bad. And if the population continues to expand, its material demands may so severely damage the environment as to cause a tragedy of the commons - the collapse of both environment and society. Those cases illustrate the fact that many activities are right - morally justified - when only a limited number of people do them. The same activities become wrong immoral when populations increase, and more and more resources are exploited.


84

Mitigation Justified: Succeeds--450ppm Target

1. Even a 2 degree temperature increase would be a disaster

Bill McKibben, "Global Warming's Terrifying New Math," ROLLING STONE, 7--19--12, www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719, accessed 9-6-12. The accord did contain one important number, however. In Paragraph 1, it formally recognized "the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below two degrees Celsius." And in the very next paragraph, it declared that "we agree that deep cuts in global emissions are required... so as to hold the increase in global temperature below two degrees Celsius." By insisting on two degrees – about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit – the accord ratified positions taken earlier in 2009 by the G8, and the so-called Major Economies Forum. It was as conventional as conventional wisdom gets. The number first gained prominence, in fact, at a 1995 climate conference chaired by Angela Merkel, then the German minister of the environment and now the center-right chancellor of the nation. Some context: So far, we've raised the average temperature of the planet just under 0.8 degrees Celsius, and that has caused far more damage than most scientists expected. (A third of summer sea ice in the Arctic is gone, the oceans are 30 percent more acidic, and since warm air holds more water vapor than cold, the atmosphere over the oceans is a shocking five percent wetter, loading the dice for devastating floods.) Given those impacts, in fact, many scientists have come to think that two degrees is far too lenient a target. "Any number much above one degree involves a gamble," writes Kerry Emanuel of MIT, a leading authority on hurricanes, "and the odds become less and less favorable as the temperature goes up." Thomas Lovejoy, once the World Bank's chief biodiversity adviser, puts it like this: "If we're seeing what we're seeing today at 0.8 degrees Celsius, two degrees is simply too much." NASA scientist James Hansen, the planet's most prominent climatologist, is even blunter: "The target that has been talked about in international negotiations for two degrees of warming is actually a prescription for long-term disaster." At the Copenhagen summit, a spokesman for small island nations warned that many would not survive a two-degree rise: "Some countries will flat-out disappear." When delegates from developing nations were warned that two degrees would represent a "suicide pact" for drought-stricken Africa, many of them started chanting, "One degree, one Africa."

2. Failure to act now guarantees devastating climate change

Dr. James Hansen, NASA, "Why We Can't Wait," THE NATION, 5--7--07, p. 13. The Energy Department says that we’re going to continue to put more and more CO2 in the atmosphere each year—not just additional CO2 but more than we put in the year before. If we do follow that path, even for another ten years , it guarantees that we will have dramatic climate changes that produce what I would call a different planet—one without sea ice in the Arctic; with worldwide, repeated coastal tragedies associated with storms and a continuously rising sea level; and with regional disruptions due to freshwater shortages and shifting climatic zones.

3. We must cut emissions else we risk crossing dangerous tipping points

James Hansen, Goddard Institute, NASA, with 17 co-authors, "Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature," submitted to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 2012, http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/notyet/submitted_Hansen_etal.pdf, accessed 9-7-12. Tipping points help define the dangerous level of global warming, even though their nonlinear nature inhibits accurate predictability of temporal details of collapse. Assessment of tipping point threats is aided by the combination of paleoclimate records defining a quasi-equilibrium response to climate change and observations of ongoing dynamical responses to current global warming. Ice sheets and sea level are a prime example. Paleoclimate data indicate that 1°C global warming above preindustrial levels (to the Eemian level) is likely to cause eventual sea level rise of several meters and 2°C (early Pliocene level) could cause eventual sea level rise as great as 15-25 m (29-32). Satellite measurements of Earth's gravity field reveal that Greenland and Antarctica are losing mass and the rate of loss has accelerated since measurements began in 2002 (5, 6), even though global temperature has barely risen above the Holocene temperature range in which the ice sheets have been stable for millennia. Methane hydrates have been implicated by paleoclimate data as a likely principal mechanism in several rapid global warmings (68, 69). This appears to have occurred as a powerful feedback amplifying a natural warming trend (68-70), (see Supporting Information). Global warming of 2°C, amplified at high latitudes, would commit large areas of permafrost to thawing and might destabilize methane hydrates in ocean sediments. Global warming to date is at most a few tenths of a degree above the prior Holocene range. Impacts on ice sheets and permafrost carbon are small so far, suggesting that these feedbacks may not be a major factor if global warming, now about 0.8°C, reaches a maximum of only ~1°C and then recedes, as in the scenario of Figs. 4A and 5A. In contrast, the scenarios that reach 2°C or even 1.5°C global warming via only fast feedbacks appear to be exceedingly dangerous. These scenarios run a high risk of the slow feedbacks coming into play in major ways. However, we lack knowledge of how fast the slow feedbacks would occur, and thus which generations would suffer the greatest consequences. The available information suggests that humanity faces a dichotomy of possible futures. Either we achieve a scenario with declining emissions, preserving a planetary climate resembling the Holocene, or the climate is likely to pass tipping points with amplifying feedbacks that assure transition to a very different planet with both foreseeable and unforeseen consequences.


85

Mitigation Justified: Succeeds--450ppm Target [cont’d]

4. We are near the tipping point--need to act

James Hansen, Director, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, "Tipping Point: Perspective of a Climatologist," 2008-2009 STATE OF THE WILD, 2008, p. 7-8. Our home planet is dangerously near a tipping point at which human-made greenhouse gases reach a level where major climate changes can proceed mostly under their own momentum. Warming will shift climatic zones by intensifying the hydrologic cycle, affecting freshwater availability and human health. We will see repeated coastal tragedies associated with storms and continuously rising sea levels. The implications are profound, and the only resolution is for humans to move to a fundamentally different energy pathway within a decade. Otherwise, it will be too late for one-third of the world’s animal and plant species and millions of the most vulnerable members of our own species. We may be able to preserve the remarkable planet on which civilization developed, but it will not be easy: special interests are resistant to change and have inordinate power in our governments, especially in the United States. Understanding the nature and causes of climate change is essential to crafting solutions to our current crisis.

5. We must act now--are near the point of no return on dangerous positive feedbacks

James Hansen, Director, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, "Tipping Point: Perspective of a Climatologist," 2008-2009 STATE OF THE WILD, 2008, p. 9 . he warming that has already occurred, the positive feedbacks that have been set in motion, and the additional warming in the pipeline together have brought us to the precipice of a planetary tipping point. We are at the tipping point because the climate state includes large, ready positive feedbacks provided by the Arctic sea ice, the West Antarctic ice sheet, and much of Greenland’s ice. Little additional forcing is needed to trigger these feedbacks and magnify global warming. If we go over the edge, we will transition to an environment far outside the range that has been experienced by humanity, and there will be no return within any foreseeable future generation. Casualties would include more than the loss of indigenous ways of life in the Arctic and swamping of coastal cities. An intensified hydrologic cycle will produce both greater floods and greater droughts. In the US, the semiarid states from central Texas through Oklahoma and both Dakotas would become more drought-prone and ill suited for agriculture, people, and current wildlife. Africa would see a great expansion of dry areas, particularly southern Africa. Large populations in Asia and South America would lose their primary dry season freshwater source as glaciers disappear. A major casualty in all this will be wildlife.

6. Need to check CO2 levels at 450ppm—risk massive impacts otherwise

John F. Kerry U.S. Senator, “On Eve of Rio+20, An Honest Assessment of Climate Change Challenge,” CONGRESSIONAL DOCUMENTS AND PUBLICATIONS, 6—19—12, lexis. Scientists have warned that anything above 450ppm--a warming of two degrees Celsius--could lead to severe, widespread and irreversible harm to human life on this planet. When concentrations of other greenhouse gases, like methane and black carbon, are factored into the equation, the analysis suggests that stabilizing concentrations around 400ppm of "equivalent carbon dioxide" would give us about an 80 percent chance of avoiding a two degree Fahrenheit increase above present average global temperature. Considering what a two degree Fahrenheit increase could mean, scientists prefer not to take their chances. James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has done the math. His analysis shows that we need to be shooting for a stabilization level of 350ppm to increase our chances of avoiding a two degree Fahrenheit increase. That's a target we've obviously already exceeded. If we don't slam on the breaks now, we could be headed for a global temperature increase of two to four degrees Celsius by century's end, and greater warming after that.

7. Need to keep atmospheric carbon below 450ppm to avoid the worst impacts Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), ELECTRIFICATION OF THE TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM, MIT Energy Initiative Symposium, 4—8—10, p. 21-22. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that an increase in atmospheric CO2 to 550 parts per million (ppm) would result in a three-degree Celsius increase in average global temperatures.28 The impacts of this warming, while debated, would likely include sea level rises; loss of habitat; the potential extinction of many species; volatile and extreme weather; increased drought, related fires, and hurricanes; the loss of agricultural output; human displacement; and the concurrent global security risks. Limiting emissions to 550 ppm would require emissions to peak before 2030.29 The IPCC recommends that the international community acts to keep GHG emissions below the 450 ppm carbon equivalent. Two-thirds of this reduction would need to occur in non-OECD countries. Meeting this emissions level would require major changes in the transportation sector, including more efficient cars and low-carbon fuels.


86

Mitigation Justified: Succeeds--450ppm Target [cont’d]

8. Must act now for effective abatement, to avoid worst impacts of climate change—need immediate action to hit 450ppm target, failure to act now risks crash emissions cuts in the future

David Hawkins, Director, Climate Center, Natural Resources Defense Council, Testimony before Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, CQ CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY, 11-13-07, lexis. On October 24th NRDC President Frances Beinecke testified before the Subcommittee on Public and Consumer Solutions to Global Warming and Wildlife Protection on America's Climate Security Act (ACSA). In her testimony she stated that the time for action on global warming is now. Climate scientists warn us that we must act now to begin making serious emission reductions if we are to avoid truly dangerous global warming pollution concentrations. Failure to pursue significant reductions in global warming pollution very soon will make the job much harder in the future both the job of stabilizing atmospheric pollution concentrations and the job of avoiding the worst impacts of climate chaos. A growing body of scientific research indicates that we face extreme dangers to human health, economic well-being, and the ecosystems on which we depend if global average temperatures are allowed to increase by more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit from today's levels. We have good prospects of staying below this temperature increase if atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and other global warming gases are kept from exceeding 450 ppm CO2- equivalent and then rapidly reduced. To make this possible requires immediate steps to reduce global emissions over the next several decades, including action to halt U.S. emissions growth within the next few years and then cut emissions by approximately 80% by mid-Century. This goal is ambitious, but achievable. It can be done through an annual rate of emissions reductions that ramps up to about a 4% reduction per year. But if we delay and emissions continue to grow at or near the business-as-usual trajectory for another 10 years, the job will become much harder. In such a case, the annual emission reduction rate needed to stay on the 450 ppm path would double to 8% per year. In short, a slow start means a crash finish, with steeper and more disruptive cuts in emissions required for each year of delay, or if insufficient action is taken a seriously disrupted climate.

9. Need to stabilize co2 concentrations at 450ppm to avoid irreversible species loss and other environmental impacts

Glen Prickett, Senior Vice President, Business and U.S. Government Relations, Conservation International, Testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Committee, CQ CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY, 1-24-08, lexis. Human-induced global climate change1--upsetting the balance of nature - is the greatest threat to our long-term health and security. The IPCC's fourth assessment report documents impacts that are already occurring and will worsen in coming decades. Sea level rise and warming of the oceans subject coastal areas to flooding and more intense storms. Changes in climate, particularly rainfall patterns, threaten food security in some of the world's poorest regions. Expanded ranges for infectious diseases worsen public health crises. As these incidents escalate, they will tax global humanitarian efforts and scarce funding sources, as well as threaten global security and diplomatic relations. A large and expanding body of scientific evidence indicates that biological and ecological systems may be among the most sensitive to climate change. CI believes that stabilizing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at or below 450 ppmv2 is crucial in order to restrict temperature increases to less than 2oC above pre-industrial levels. Limiting climate change to this degree will help avoid significant risk of intolerable environmental disruptions and irreversible species loss. Every day we postpone reductions in CO2 emissions and maintain current trends, we increase the need for more costly and restrictive emissions reductions.

10. 450ppm target is most likely to avoid negative effects on poor nations

Jim Lyons, Vice President, Policy and Communication, Oxfam America, Testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Committee, CQ CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY, 1-24-08, lexis. Oxfam agrees with the many countries that advocated at Bali for emissions levels that would be consistent with keeping total warming as far as possible below 2 degrees C/3.6 degrees F above pre-industrial levels and that total emissions levels should reflect that global warming threshold. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports indicate that the impacts of climate change, and the needs of developing countries to adapt to climate impacts, are likely to be much more severe beyond that threshold. Unfortunately, the United States said repeatedly, to the consternation of many other countries, that it did not want to "prejudge" the outcome of a post-2012 agreement. by including total emissions objectives.


87

Mitigation Justified: Succeeds--Answers to "Coercion Objections" 1. No right is a priori--our claims about scarcity must come first because they attack the foundation of their ethics

Herschel Elliott, Professor Emeritus, Philosophy, University of Florida, “A General Statement on the Tragedy of the Commons,” 2--26--97. Available from the World Wide Web at: http://dieoff.org/page121.htm, accessed 9-6-12. The second is a corollary of the first. Most people in the Western world hold a serious moral misconception which must be discarded. Having been brought up or educated under the formative influence of a monotheistic religion, they commonly believe, without question, examination, or discussion, that the ideals and principles of moral behavior can be justified non-empirically, that is by reason or a priori thought. As a result, moral claims are treated as if they were like the conclusion of geometric proof whose truth is a matter of a logical necessity that empirical data cannot refute. However, the tragedy of the commons shows the absurdity of this claim. Because most human rights, laws, and freedoms are contingent on the ability of the Earth's ecosystems to support them, most cannot be universal, necessary, and unconditional. And no a priori arguments -- no appeals to reason, to conscience, to God's Word, or to the logic of moral language -- can make them so. Indeed none of the human-centered obligations of a priori ethical theories can curb the inbuilt, positive feedback mechanisms which are now causing the ever greater impoverishment of the world's ecosystems. And none can be adjusted to meet the holistic needs of the Earth's evolving biosystem. These are the inherent defects which prove the belief must be abandoned that a priori reasoning can determine, for all time, the ideals and principles of ethics as well as the nature of justice itself.

2. Coercive restraint and responsibility to the environment must be the foundation of our new ethics

Herschel Elliott, Professor Emeritus, Philosophy, University of Florida, “A General Statement on the Tragedy of the Commons,” 2--26--97. Available from the World Wide Web at: http://dieoff.org/page121.htm, accessed 9-6-12. Specifically, the tragedy of the commons demonstrates that all behavior which is either morally permissible or morally required is system-sensitive whenever it involves the use of land or the transfer of matter or energy. That is, it is conditional on the size of the human population and the availability of material resources. The more general statement of Hardin's tragedy of the commons which follows is divided into five sections. In the first, the theoretic nature of Hardin's argument is emphasized. In the second, several of Hardin's original assumptions are shown to be restrictive and unnecessary. The third offers four general premises which seem empirically certain. The fourth gives a general statement of the human causes of the breakdown of the commons. It demonstrates the same inbuilt contradiction between what benefits the individual or the human species and what is necessary to the welfare of the whole. The fifth part concerns ethical theory. It shows that the first necessary condition for acceptable moral behavior is to avoid the tragedy of the commons. Inevitably, meeting this goal requires holistic or coerced restraint in order to assure that people never fail to live within the narrow limits of the land and resource use which the Earth's biosystem can sustain. Thus people's first moral duty is to live as responsible and sustaining members of the world's community of living things.

3. Failure to accept limits on human behavior is itself unethical

Herschel Elliott, Professor Emeritus, Philosophy, University of Florida, “A General Statement on the Tragedy of the Commons,” 2--26--97. Available from the World Wide Web at: http://dieoff.org/page121.htm, accessed 9-6-12. The author conducts a simple-seeming thought experiment in which he proves that any ethics is mistaken if it allows a growing population steadily to increase its exploitation of the ecosystem which supports it. Such an ethics is incoherent because it leads to the destruction of the biological resources on which survival depends; it lets people act in ways that make all further ethical behavior impossible. The essay in which this fundamental flaw in modern Western moral thinking is demonstrated is Garrett Hardin's "The Tragedy of the Commons" (1968). Activists in environmental causes as well as professionals in ethics have long applauded Hardin's essay. But then they go on to ignore its central thesis. They accept the environmental goals and then, acting as if the essay had never been written, recommend behavior which will cause the environmental commons to collapse. Consequently Hardin's refutation of traditional moral thinking still seems to be not understood. And the need remains to give the tragedy of the commons a more general statement -- one which can clarify its revolutionary character, one which can convince a wide public of the correctness of its method and principles.


88

Mitigation Justified: Succeeds--Answers to "Transition Costs" 1. Costs of meeting emissions targets will be minimal--most exhaustive study proves

Fred Krupp, President, Environmental Defense Fund, Testimony before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, 8-6-09, http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=05e60846-bf0e-4972-a23e-7b2d61455e57, accessed 9-5-12. 2. We can achieve these emissions targets at low cost. The most authoritative study of the House legislation, by the EPA, shows that – even ignoring the costs of doing nothing, which are very large – the bill’s annual cost to the average household will be just $80 to $111 (in present value). That’s just 22 to 30 cents a day for the average American family – less than the cost of a postage stamp. To put it another way, it’s about a dime a day per person. And because of special protections for low-income families, the lowest quintile of households will actually see a small net benefit from the bill. Perhaps even more notably, the EPA analysis projects that under H.R. 2454, consumers will actually save money on their utility bills in the short run (through the year 2020), compared to business as usual. That’s because even as the bill will keep household energy prices low, it contains other provisions to help boost energy efficiency and reduce energy consumption.

2. Is a ton of "low hanging fruit" that can be used to cheaply meet emissions targets

Fred Krupp, President, Environmental Defense Fund, Testimony before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, 8-6-09, http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=05e60846-bf0e-4972-a23e-7b2d61455e57, accessed 9-5-12. And study after study shows there are readily available tools to achieve emissions reductions at modest cost. One of the most powerful is energy efficiency. McKinsey & Company’s latest analysis, for example, focuses solely on energy efficiency measures – and finds that we could achieve the required reductions by 2020 solely through energy efficiency measures, at low or even no net cost. Part of the low cost is because good program design lets you get the biggest bang for the buck. A new Duke University policy brief released this week found that just 1.3% of all U.S. manufacturers emit enough GHGs to be included under the threshold of 25,000 tons specified in ACES. Yet that 1.3% –

3. Overwhelming evidence shows that we can meet proposed emissions cuts

Fred Krupp, President, Environmental Defense Fund, Testimony before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, 8-6-09, http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=05e60846-bf0e-4972-a23e-7b2d61455e57, accessed 9-5-12. 1. Overwhelming evidence shows that we can meet 2020 emissions targets. The bill recently passed by the House, H.R. 2454, and similar bills in the Senate, have been analyzed by many different sets of economists and engineers. Using different models and different assumptions, these studies all reach the same conclusion: we can reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 17%, 20%, or more by 2020, as compared to 2005 emissions. One of the most powerful tools for reducing emissions is also the most familiar: energy efficiency.


89

Mitigation Justified: Succeeds--Answers to "We Are Not Responsible / Sunstein" 1. Our current generation actually is largely responsible for the emissions

Daniel A. Farber, Professor, Law, University of Calilfornia, Berkeley, "The Case for Climate Compensation: Justice for Climate Change Victims in a Complex World," UTAH LAW REVIEW, 2008, p. 396. Thus, to think of harmful CO<2> emissions as only a historical phenomenon, unconnected with the lives of current-day Americans, is clearly mistaken. Roughly one-quarter of Americans were alive during the entire post-1950 period in which three-quarters of the emissions took place. Because of age, they are also likely to have higher assets and income than younger Americans, and hence would probably bear an even larger share of the tax burden. Eighty percent of Americans were alive during the more recent (post-1990) period in which the dangers of global warming were already acknowledged, when roughly a quarter of the emissions took place. Certainly, in many contexts, holding the present generation accountable for past wrongs is problematic: While injustice has a long life, remedy has a short one; and the general case for complete repair, through monetized reparations, diminishes quickly over time and across generations, especially when the injurers have departed the scene, and given that reparations are in competition with the other claimants on scarce social resources. But this attrition problem does not seem severe in the context of climate change, given the relatively recent vintage of most emissions and the relatively small scale of the compensatory payments relative to U.S. wealth.

2. As individuals, we should be held responsible for the bad actions of our government

Daniel A. Farber, Professor, Law, University of Calilfornia, Berkeley, "The Case for Climate Compensation: Justice for Climate Change Victims in a Complex World," UTAH LAW REVIEW, 2008, p. 398. The short-run benefits received by many Americans of ignoring climate change are clear. As consumers, millions of Americans have had the benefit of cheap gasoline and low mileage standards, allowing them to drive SUVs, pick-up trucks, and other vehicles that produce unduly high greenhouse emissions. They obtain electrical power from cheap coal rather than more expensive renewable sources. In the meantime, major American corporations have profited - American automobile companies from low mileage standards, as well as American coal companies and oil companies from high sales. Americans who own stock in these corporations, or whose pension plans own stock, have correspondingly benefited. As we have already seen, these benefits were derived from actions that a reasonable person knew or should have known were harmful to others (at least since 1990). Short-term personal advantages, understandably enough, outweighed harms to others that were actually larger but were harder to perceive because they were longer term and diffuse. This does not seem to be a difficult case in which to apply the concept of unjust enrichment. It is also relevant that Americans had the capacity to limit these harms, not only as consumers but also as citizens. The United States government has stood virtually alone among industrialized countries in opposing serious action on climate change. In a democracy, voters must bear some of the responsibility for the actions of their governments. It is true that any individual voter has little power considered in isolation, but that "little" is not zero (otherwise the cumulative power of all voters would also be zero, since a hundred million times zero is still zero). Moreover, as citizens, they were engaged in a collective activity of governance from which they hoped to benefit and on average did receive substantial benefits such as protection from foreign threats. Holding citizens responsible for their pro rata share is not unreasonable.

3. We can shape the tax so that it does not overburden less-culpable members of wealthy societies— differentiated responsibility does not derail the need to act

Daniel A. Farber, Professor, Law, University of Calilfornia, Berkeley, "The Case for Climate Compensation: Justice for Climate Change Victims in a Complex World," UTAH LAW REVIEW, 2008, p. 399. In an ideal world, we could fashion a remedy that was responsive to differences in individual responsibility. We could imagine assessing retroactive taxes for past owners of gas guzzlers or high penalties for past oil executives. Alternatively, we might impose even higher taxes for inhabitants of states or congressional districts whose representatives resisted emissions regulation or for states with histories of high per capita energy consumption. We could have citizens fill out elaborate questionnaires about their past connections with energy companies, their use of home insulation, what cars they drove and how many miles, whether they supported environmental groups or pro-environmental candidates or the reverse. Thus, if imprecision is the problem, we can imagine mechanisms to target responsibility more precisely. Notably, climate justice skeptics do not champion these mechanisms, and for good reason: the mechanisms are probably outside the range of political possibility, and they might well have transaction costs that exceed their value anyway. In the real world, we have to be content with a degree of mismatch. In assessing the seriousness of the mismatch, we have to consider the magnitude of the burden that climate compensation would place on individual Americans. Properly tailored measures of liability would place a significant burden on Americans, clearly less than the cost of the Iraq war. A practical system of compensation is not likely to be nearly so comprehensive, and is likely to translate into a more modest per capita expenditure. It does not seem fatal to a compensatory scheme that some burden is placed on a minority that ideally would be left alone. Moreover, if we take the simplest route and provide compensation through the normal taxation and budgeting process, the tax system itself provides some degree of tailoring. Because more affluent taxpayers pay larger income taxes, the burden falls most heavily on individuals who are most likely to have had high levels of energy consumption or to have benefited from owning stock in corporations that were themselves responsible for high energy use. The costs of improving on this degree of tailoring do not seem worth the added expense.


90

Mitigation Not Justified: Topshelf 1. Energy poverty means emissions cuts will hurt the world’s poor

James Inhofe, U.S. Senator, HOT & COLD MEDIA SPIN CYCLE: A CHALLENGE TO JOURNALISTS WHO COVER GLOBAL WARMING, 9-25-06, http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=56dd129d-e40a-4bad-abd9-68c808e8809e, accessed 9-4-12. Once again, symbolism does not solve a climate crisis. But this symbolism may be hiding a dark side. While greenhouse gas limiting proposals may cost the industrialized West trillions of dollars, it is the effect on the developing world’s poor that is being lost in this debate. The Kyoto Protocol’s post 2012 agenda which mandates that the developing world be subjected to restrictions on greenhouse gases could have the potential to severely restrict development in regions of the world like Africa, Asia and South America -- where some of the Earth’s most energy-deprived people currently reside. Expanding basic necessities like running water and electricity in the developing world are seen by many in the green movement as a threat to the planet’s health that must be avoided. Energy poverty equals a life of back-breaking poverty and premature death. If we allow scientifically unfounded fears of global warming to influence policy makers to restrict future energy production and the creation of basic infrastructure in the developing world -- billions of people will continue to suffer. Last week my committee heard testimony from Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, who was once a committed left-wing environmentalist until he realized that so much of what that movement preached was based on bad science. Lomborg wrote a book called “The Skeptical Environmentalist” and has organized some of the world’s top Nobel Laureates to form the 2004 “Copenhagen Consensus” which ranked the world’s most pressing problems.

2. Economic growth will allow us to solve the problems caused by warming

Indur Goklany, PhD., “Misled on Climate change: How the UN IPCC (and others) Exaggerate the Impacts of Global Warming,” POLICY STUDY n. 399, Reason Foundation, 12—11, 12. the world of 2100 is as rich—and warm—as the more extreme scenarios suppose, the problems of poverty that warming would exacerbate (i.e. low agricultural productivity, hunger, malnutrition, malaria and other vector-borne diseases) ought to be reduced, if not eliminated, by 2100. Research shows that deaths from malaria and other vector-borne diseases is “cut down to insignificant numbers” when a society’s annual per capita income reaches about $3,100.23 Therefore, even under the poorest scenario (A2), developing countries should be free of malaria well before 2100, even assuming no technological change in the interim. Similarly, if the average net GDP per capita in 2100 for developing countries is between $10,000 and $62,000, and technologies become more cost-effective as they have been doing over the past several centuries, then their farmers would be able to afford technologies that are unaffordable today (e.g., precision agriculture) as well as new technologies that should come on line by then (e.g., drought-resistant seeds).24 But, since impact assessments generally fail to fully account for increases in economic development and technological change, they substantially overestimate future net damages from global warming. It may be argued that the high levels of economic development depicted in Figure 6 are unlikely. But if that’s the case, then economic growth used to drive the IPCC’s scenarios are equally unlikely, which necessarily means that the estimates of emissions, temperature increases, and impacts and damages of GW projected by the IPCC are also overestimates.

3. Growth is key to innovation—any policy that hurts the economy will undermine emergence of new energy technologies

Kevin Book, Senior Vice President, Energy Policy, Oil and Alternative Energy, FBR Capital Markets Corp., Testimony before Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, CQ CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY, 11-15-07, lexis. Inventions born of necessity may be ingenious, but they are likely to be undercapitalized. By contrast, innovation and profligacy often live in the same zip code, if not necessarily under the same roof. New technologies to address global climate change are going to require more investment dollars, not less. Stable economies encourage wealthy enterprises to invest in research and development towards new transformational technologies, as well as evolutionary improvements to existing processes. This may explain past U.S. leadership in energy and environmental technologies: not just because laws established new pollution controls, but also because, once rules were in place, the nation's rare, if not unique, combination of efficient markets, open society and economic prowess enabled new pollution control technologies to emerge from corporate laboratories and basement inventors alike. It is possible that plain old Yankee ingenuity might really be a lucky accident, but I believe it comes from a synergy among related and supporting industries that form what Harvard business scholar Michael Porter would call our "national advantage". This means that policies that raise the operating costs of industrial innovators enough to cause a recession could deprive the U.S. and the world of emissions control technologies made possible, ironically, by the same wealth and stability that inure energy end-users to the price signals that encourage conservation.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Topshelf [cont’d] 4. Technology is the best way to address the issue, thrives in a pro-growth economy

Margo Thorning, PhD, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, American Council for Capital Formation, Testimony before Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, CQ CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY, 11-8-07, lexis. Technology development and deployment offers the most efficient and effective way to reduce GHG emissions and a strong economy tends to pull through capital investment faster. There are only two ways to reduce CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use - use less fossil fuel or develop technologies to use energy more efficiently to capture emissions or to substitute for fossil energy. There is an abundance of economic literature demonstrating the relationship between energy use and economic growth, as well as the negative impacts of curtailing energy use. Over the long-term, new technologies offer the most promise for affecting GHG emission rates and atmospheric concentration levels.

5. People should not be held accountable for the failures of their governments

Eric A. Posner, Professor, Law, University of Chicago and Cass R. Sunstein, Professor, Political Science, University of Chicago, "Climate Change Justice," GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL v. 96, 6--08, p. 1601. Even if one could conclude that the U.S. government behaved negligently, it may not follow that the American people should be held responsible for their government's failures. The government itself does not have its own money to pay the remedy; it can only tax Americans. To justify such a tax, one would need to conclude that Americans behaved culpably by electing or tolerating a government that failed to take actions that might have conferred benefits on the rest of the world of greater value than their costs. There is a strong impulse to blame members of the public for the failures of their political system. In some cases, the impulse is warranted, but in others, the impulse should be resisted. The last example of such a policy was the war guilt clause, of the Versailles Treaty, which held Germany formally responsible for World War I and required Germany to pay massive reparations to France and other countries. Germans resented this clause, and conventional wisdom holds that their resentment fed the rise of Nazism. After World War II, the strategy shifted; rather than holding "Germany" responsible for World War II, the allies sought to hold the individuals responsible for German policy responsible--these individuals were tried at Nuremberg and elsewhere, where defendants were given a chance to defend themselves. The shift from collective to individual responsibility was a major legacy of World War II, reflected today in the proliferation of international criminal tribunals that try individuals, not nations. To be sure, no one is accusing the American government or its citizens of committing crimes. But the question remains whether Americans should be blamed, in corrective justice terms, for allowing their government to do so little about greenhouse gas emissions. It is one thing to blame individual Americans for excessive greenhouse gas emissions; it is quite another to blame Americans for the failure of their government to adopt strict greenhouse gas reduction policies. It is certainly plausible to think that voting for politicians who adopt bad policies, or failing to vote for politicians who adopt good policies, is not morally wrong except in extreme or unusual cases. Recall in this connection that even if Americans had demanded that their government act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, the effect of unilateral reductions on climate change would be very small.

6. Emissions reductions are a sub-optimal way to help poor people--other avenues are superior

Eric A. Posner, Professor, Law, University of Chicago and Cass R. Sunstein, Professor, Political Science, University of Chicago, "Climate Change Justice," GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL v. 96, 6--08, p. 1571. We shall raise serious questions about both accounts here. Rejecting international Paretianism, we agree that in many domains, resources should be redistributed from rich nations and rich people to poor nations and poor people. Such redistribution might well increase aggregate social welfare, since a dollar is worth more to a poor person than to a wealthy one; prominent nonwelfarist arguments also favor such redistribution. But significant greenhouse gas reductions are a crude and somewhat puzzling way of attempting to achieve redistributive goals. The arc of human history suggests that in the future, people are likely to be much wealthier than people are now. Why should wealthy countries give money to future poor people, rather than to current poor people? In any case, nations are not people; they are collections of people. Redistribution from wealthy countries to poor countries is hardly the same as redistribution from wealthy people to poor people. For one thing, many poor people in some countries will benefit from global warming, to the extent that agricultural productivity will increase and to the extent that they will suffer less from extremes of cold. For another thing, poor people in wealthy countries may well pay a large part of the bill for emissions reductions; a stiff tax on carbon emissions would come down especially hard on the poor. The upshot is that if wealthy people in wealthy nations want to help poor people in poor nations, emissions reductions are unlikely to be the best means by which they might to do so. Our puzzle, then, is why distributive justice is taken to require wealthy nations to help poor ones in the context of climate change, when wealthy nations are not being asked to help poor ones in areas in which the argument for help is significantly stronger.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change False--Consensus Answers 1. Consensus claims are overblown—growing number of prominent skeptics deny warming theories

Claude Allegre Jr., former director, Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris, along with over a dozen other scientists, “Climate Change ‘Heretics’ Refute Carbon Dangers,” THE AUSTRALIAN, 2—1—12 p. 14+. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed. In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of Barack Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society with a letter that begins: ``I did not renew (my membership) because I cannot live with the (APS policy) statement: `The evidence is incontrovertible: global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?'' In spite of a multi-decade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the ``pollutant'' carbon dioxide will destroy civilisation, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share Giaever's opinions. And the number of scientific ``heretics'' is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

2. Funding availability means there is a pro-warming bias in the literature John McLean, “Fallacies About Global Warming,” Science & Public Policy Institute, 9--07, http://mclean.ch/climate/SPPI_AGW_fallacies.pdf, accessed 9-5-12. This fallacy is closely related to the previous discussion of consensus, but here the impact is an indirect consequence of a dominant opinion. Funding for scientific research has moved towards being determined by consensus, because where public monies are concerned the issue ultimately comes back to an opinion as to whether the research is likely to be fruitful. Prior to the last 20 or 30 years, research was driven principally by scientific curiosity. That science research funding has now become results-oriented has had a dramatic, negative impact on the usefulness of many scientific results. For, ironically, pursuing science that is thought by politician to be “important” or “in the public interest” often results in science accomplishments that are conformist and fashionable rather than independent and truly useful. Targeting of “useful” research strongly constricts the range of scientific papers that are produced. A general perception may arise that few scientists disagree with the dominant opinion, whereas the reality may be that papers that reject the popular opinion are difficult to find simply because of the weight of funding, and hence the research effort, that is tailored towards the conventional wisdom. Science generally progresses by advancing on the work that has gone before, and the usual practice is to cite several existing papers to establish the basis for one's work. Again the dominance of papers that adhere to a conventional wisdom can put major obstacles in the way of the emergence of any counter-paradigm.

3. Publicity, funding needs make scientists biased towards ‘warming bad’ camp

Patrick J. Michaels, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute, “Is Global Warming Always Bad,” APPLE DAILY, November 11--3--04, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/is-global-warming-always-bad, accessed 9-5-12. Perhaps because there's little incentive for scientists to do anything but emphasize the negative and the destructive. Alarming news often leads to government funding, funding generates research, and research is the key to scientists' professional advancement. Good news threatens that arrangement. This is the reality that all scientists confront: every issue, be it global warming, cancer or AIDS, competes with other issues for a limited amount of government research funding. And, here in Washington, no one ever received a major research grant by stating that his or her particular issue might not be such a problem after all.


93

Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change False--CO2 Not to Blame 1. There is no evidence to show that CO2 causes climate change

Bryan Leland, electrical engineer and founder, New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, “Temperature Records Say Warming Not Happening,” DOMINION POST, 6—16—12, p. 11. Studies of sunspot cycles strongly support imminent global cooling. They show that a long sunspot cycle is always followed by cooling. The last cycle lasted 12.5 years and the previous one, 9.5 years. This tells us that about 1 degree of cooling is to be expected during the current cycle. Dr Jim Renwick and Dr David Wratt, of Niwa, who are lead authors for the IPCC, have corresponded with me and appear to accept that the world has not warmed for about 10 years. It appears they do not know why the world is failing to warm in line with the model predictions. Yet they still tell the Government that man-made global warming is real and dangerous. Instead of publicly admitting that the world has not warmed as predicted, they divert the discussion to other effects that, they claim, demonstrate warming. But the temperature records say it isn't happening. The only rational conclusion is that there is no convincing evidence supporting the hypothesis that man-made carbon dioxide causes dangerous global warming. CO2 is a harmless gas that promotes plant growth and reduces desertification.

2. Temperature drives CO2 levels, not the reverse Ian Plimer, Professor, Mining Geology, University of Adelaide, “The Climate Change Myth,” BUSINESS WORLD, 12—5—11, lexis. For more than 80 per cent of time, the planet has been warmer than now. Life did not fry and die. It thrived. Ice is a rare rock on planet Earth. During the Earth's history, there have been six great ice ages and each of these ice ages started when the atmospheric CO2 content was higher than now, showing that CO2 in the past has not driven global warming. Why should it drive global warming now when the atmospheric CO2 content is relatively low? During ice ages, there are alternating glaciations and interglacials. We are currently in an ice age that started 34 million years ago. The last few interglacials have been warmer than the current interglacial. Ice cores show that temperature increases some 800 years before CO2 increases, hence temperature drives the release of CO2 from the oceans into the atmosphere. This is the inverse of the current populist view that CO2 drives global warming.

3. New models show that higher CO2 levels will have far fewer effects than the IPCC has predicted INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES NEWS, “Climate Change Not so Extreme, Based on New Model,” 11—25—11, lexis. Climate change has always been the topic of heated debate with scientists and experts, even skeptics, persuading the other side of facts and data of what the future will be. But arguably, more often than not, climate change believes win the debate that the threat is here and can affect the future of the world. However, some scientists who believe in climate change found that the threat might not that be great. According to Andreas Schmittner, an Oregon State University researcher and lead author of the study, global warming from the increased atmospheric carbon dioxide may be less than the most dire estimates of some studies, citing the research done by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in 2007. Schmittner noted that many previous climate sensitivity studies have looked at the past only from 1850 to present. But when reconstructing sea and land surface temperatures from the peak of the last Ice Age, 21,000 years ago, and compare it with climate model simulations of that period, there is a difference in result. With this in mind and using it in their models, researchers said that the results implied less probability of extreme climatic change than previously thought.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change False--Feedbacks 1. Feedbacks are negative, prevent warming

NIPCC, Nongovernment International Panel on Climate Change, CLIMATE CHANGE RECONSIDERED, Craig Idso, S. Fred Singer, Warren Anderson, J.Scott Armstrong, Dennis Avery, Franco Battaglia, Robert Carter, Piers Corbyn, Richard Courtney, Joseph d’Aleo, Don Easterbrook, Fred Goldberg, Vicent Gray, Williams Gray, Kesten Green, Kenneth Haapala, David Hagen, Richard Alan Keen, Adhav Khandekar, William Kininmonth, Hans Labohm, Anthony Lupo, Howard Maccabee, M.Michael MOgil, Christopher Monckton, Lubos Motl, Stephen Murgatroyd, Nicola Scafetta, Harrison Schmitt, Tom Segalstad, George Taylor, Dick Thoenes, Anton Uriarte Gerd Weber, 2009, p. 3. Chapter 2. Feedback Factors and Radiative Forcing • Scientific research suggests the model-derived temperature sensitivity of the earth accepted by the IPCC is too large. Corrected feedbacks in the climate system could reduce climate sensitivity to values that are an order of magnitude smaller. • Scientists may have discovered a connection between cloud creation and sea surface temperature in the tropics that creates a “thermostat-like control” that automatically vents excess heat into space. If confirmed, this could totally compensate for the warming influence of all anthropogenic CO2 emissions experienced to date, as well as all those that are anticipated to occur in the future. • The IPCC dramatically underestimates the total cooling effect of aerosols. Studies have found their radiative effect is comparable to or larger than the temperature forcing caused by all the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations recorded since pre-industrial times. • Higher temperatures are known to increase emissions of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) from the world’s oceans, which increases the albedo of marine stratus clouds, which has a cooling effect. • Iodocompounds—created by marine algae— function as cloud condensation nuclei, which help create new clouds that reflect more incoming solar radiation back to space and thereby cool the planet. • As the air’s CO2 content—and possibly its temperature—continues to rise, plants emit greater amounts of carbonyl sulfide gas, which eventually makes its way into the stratosphere, where it is transformed into solar-radiation-reflecting sulfate aerosol particles, which have a cooling effect. • As CO2 enrichment enhances biological growth, atmospheric levels of biosols rise, many of which function as cloud condensation nuclei. Increased cloudiness diffuses light, which stimulates plant growth and transfers more fixed carbon into plant and soil storage reservoirs. • Since agriculture accounts for almost half of nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions in some countries, there is concern that enhanced plant growth due to CO2 enrichment might increase the amount and warming effect of this greenhouse gas. But field research shows that N2O emissions fall as CO2 concentrations and temperatures rise, indicating this is actually another negative climate feedback. • Methane (CH4) is a potent greenhouse gas. An enhanced CO2 environment has been shown to have “neither positive nor negative consequences” on atmospheric methane concentrations. Higher temperatures have been shown to result in reduced methane release from peatbeds. Methane emissions from cattle have been reduced considerably by altering diet, immunization, and genetic selection.

2. New satellite research indicates that clouds are a net-negative feedback John R. Christy, Professor of Atmospheric Science & Nobel Prize Winner, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Testimony before Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, 11-14-07, http://commerce.senate.gov/public/_files/ChristyJR_CST_071114_written.pdf, accessed 6-19-12. In another example, I was a co-author on a publication led by my UA-Huntsville colleague Dr. Roy Spencer in which he used some terrific satellite data to discover that the greenhouse effect of clouds evidently behaves in a way that naturally mitigates warming rather than reinforcing it. We found that as the tropical atmosphere warms through heating related to rainfall, that the types of clouds that trap heat in the atmosphere shrink in coverage, allowing more heat to escape to space and cooling to ensue. This is an apparently strong negative feedback in the climate and has powerful implications because it indicates the climate might react differently to increasing greenhouse gases than current theory predicts.


95

Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change False--Funding Bias 1. Pro-warming evidence is tainted by money—looking for research grants

Claude Allegre Jr., former director, Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris, along with over a dozen other scientists, “Climate Change ‘Heretics’ Refute Carbon Dangers,” THE AUSTRALIAN, 2—1—12 p. 14+. Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexed that the American Physical Society, from which Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word ``incontrovertible'' from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question ``cui bono?'' Or the modern update, ``Follow the money''. Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.

2. Money corrupts the pro-warming research base Dr. William Happer, “The Truth About Greenhouse Gases,” George C. Marshall Institute, 5—23—11, www.marshall.org/article.php?id=953, accessed 6-19-12. Funding for climate studies is second only to funding for biological sciences. Large academic empires, prizes, elections to honorary societies, fellowships, and other perquisites go to those researchers whose results may help “save the planet.” Every day we read about some real or contrived environmental or ecological effect “proven” to arise from global warming. The total of such claimed effects now runs in the hundreds, all the alleged result of an unexceptional century-long warming of less than 1 degree Celsius. Government subsidies, loan guarantees, and captive customers go to green companies. Carbon-tax revenues flow to governments. As the great Russian poet Pushkin said in his novella Dubrovsky, “If there happens to be a trough, there will be pigs.” Any doubt about apocalyptic climate scenarios could remove many troughs.

3. Pro-warming science is tainted—government money, editorial bias in major journals Bob Carter, palaeoclimatolgist, James Cook University, “Money Corrupts the Peer Review Process,” NATIONAL POST, 6—15—12, p. FP13. Scientific knowledge, then, is always in a state of flux. Much though bureaucrats and politicians may dislike the thought, there is simply no such thing as "settled science," peer-reviewed or otherwise. During the latter part of the 20th century, Western governments started channeling large amounts of research money into favoured scientific fields, prime among them global-warming research. This money has a corrupting influence, not least on the peer-review process. Many scientific journals, including prestigious internationally acclaimed ones, have now become captured by insider groups of leading researchers in particular fields. Researchers who act as editors of journals then select referees from within a closed circle of scientists who work in the same field and share similar views. The Climategate email leak in 2009 revealed for all to see that this cancerous process is at an advanced stage of development in climate science. A worldwide network of leading climate researchers were revealed to be actively influencing editors and referees to approve for publication only research that supported the IPCC's alarmist view of global warming, and to prevent the publication of alternative or opposing views.

4. Pro-warming science is tainted—funding, internal pressure Kenny Hodgart, “Chop and Change,” SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST, 5—13—12, p. 28+. May is no longer its president but the 352-year-old society - which acts as an adviser to the British government - continues to castigate sceptical viewpoints and pressure media not to give them coverage. Climatologists who are sceptical of the AGW orthodoxy say they find it difficult to attract funding for research. The late atmospheric scientist Reid Bryson put it like this: "There is a lot of money to be made in this ... If you want to be an eminent scientist you have to have a lot of grad students and a lot of grants. You can't get grants unless you say, 'Oh, global warming, yes, yes carbon dioxide.'" Worse, there have been reports of intimidation. Ian Plimer, an Australian geologist and author of the sceptical book Heaven and Earth, has had to endure demonstrations outside his home, while others say colleagues who have doubts remain silent because they fear reprisals or for the security of their jobs.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change False--Indicators 1. Best indicators prove that there is no warming

NIPCC, Nongovernment International Panel on Climate Change, CLIMATE CHANGE RECONSIDERED, Craig Idso, S. Fred Singer, Warren Anderson, J.Scott Armstrong, Dennis Avery, Franco Battaglia, Robert Carter, Piers Corbyn, Richard Courtney, Joseph d’Aleo, Don Easterbrook, Fred Goldberg, Vicent Gray, Williams Gray, Kesten Green, Kenneth Haapala, David Hagen, Richard Alan Keen, adhav Khandekar, William Kininmonth, Hans Labohm, Anthony Lupo, Howard Maccabee, M.Michael MOgil, Christopher Monckton, Lubos Motl, Stephen Murgatroyd, Nicola Scafetta, Harrison Schmitt, Tom Segalstad, George Taylor, Dick Thoenes, Anton Uriarte Gerd Weber, 2009, p. 4. Chapter 4. Observations: Glaciers, Sea Ice, Precipitation, and Sea Level • Glaciers around the world are continuously advancing and retreating, with a general pattern of retreat since the end of the Little Ice Age. There is no evidence of a increased rate of melting overall since CO2 levels rose above their pre-industrial levels, suggesting CO2 is not responsible for glaciers melting. • Sea ice area and extent have continued to increase around Antarctica over the past few decades. Evidence shows that much of the reported thinning of Arctic sea ice that occurred in the 1990s was a natural consequence of changes in ice dynamics caused by an atmospheric regime shift, of which there have been several in decades past and will likely be several in the decades to come, totally irrespective of past or future changes in the air’s CO2 content. The Arctic appears to have recovered from its 2007 decline. • Global studies of precipitation trends show no net increase and no consistent trend with CO2, contradicting climate model predictions that warming should cause increased precipitation. Research on Africa, the Arctic, Asia, Europe, and North and South America all find no evidence of a significant impact on precipitation that could be attributed to anthropogenic global warming. • The cumulative discharge of the world’s rivers remained statistically unchanged between 1951 and 2000, a finding that contradicts computer forecasts that a warmer world would cause large changes in global streamflow characteristics. Droughts and floods have been found to be less frequent and severe during the Current Warm Period than during past periods when temperatures were even higher than they are today. • The results of several research studies argue strongly against claims that CO2-induced global warming would cause catastrophic disintegration of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets. In fact, in the case of Antarctica, they suggest just the opposite—i.e., that CO2-induced global warming would tend to buffer the world against such an outcome. • The mean rate of global sea level rise has not accelerated over the recent past. The determinants of sea level are poorly understood due to considerable uncertainty associated with a number of basic parameters that are related to the water balance of the world’s oceans and the meltwater contribution of Greenland and Antarctica. Until these uncertainties are satisfactorily resolved, we cannot be confident that short-lived changes in global temperature produce corresponding changes in sea level.

2. Multiple indicators show that there has been no recent warming S. Fred Singer, Professor Emeritus, Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, “Why I Remain a Global-Warming Skeptic,” WALL STREET JOURNAL, 11—4—11, http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=3189, accessed 5-17-12. Moreover, independent data using temperature proxies—various non-thermometer sources such as tree rings, ocean and lake sediments, ice cores, stalagmites, and so on—also support an absence of warming between 1978 and 1997. Coral data also show no pronounced warming trend of the sea surface, and there are good reasons to believe that reported sea-surface warming is an artifact of thermometer measurements. The IPCC’s 2007 Summary for Policy makers claims that “Most of the observed increase in global average [surface] temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely [90-99% sure] due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” While Mr. Muller now seems to agree that there has been such global average warming since the mid-20th century, he nonetheless ended his op-ed by disclaiming that he knows the cause of any temperature increase. Moreover, the Berkeley team’s research paper comments: “The human component of global warming may be somewhat overestimated.” I commend Mr. Muller and his team for their honesty and skepticism.

3. Indicators like ice levels and sea levels do not show warming Kenny Hodgart, “Chop and Change,” SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST, 5—13—12, p. 28+. Others point to evidence that while some glaciers may be in retreat, others are not: there has been melting on the West Antarctic ice sheet, for example, but some studies show icepacks on the rest of the continent - the other 90 per cent of it - are growing. As for sea levels, they have been oscillating close to their current level for the past three centuries, claims Nils-Axel Morner, a former head of the International Union for Quaternary Research. "Sea level has been rising for thousands of years and continues at about one inch per decade," is Christy's assessment. "Since during the last warm interglacial period, 130,000 years ago, the sea level reached about five metres higher than [it is] today, you should expect present sea levels to continue to rise until the next ice age."


97

Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change False--IPCC Answers 1. IPCC is not credible—biased, outlandish predictions prove

S. Fred Singer, Professor Emeritus, Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, “The End of the IPCC,” AMERICAN THINKER, 2—10—10, http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2994, accessed 5-17-12. The most recent IPCC report of 2007 predicted the disappearance of the Himalayan glaciers within 25 years; the imminent death of nearly half the Amazon rain forest; and major damage from stronger hurricanes—all in contradiction to expert opinions offered by its appointed reviewers, but ignored by IPCC editors for mostly ideological reasons. More scandalous even, the IPCC based their lurid predictions on anecdotal, non-peer-reviewed sources—not at all in accord with its solemnly announced principles and scientific standards. These events showed not only a general sloppiness of IPCC procedures but also an extreme bias—quite inappropriate to a supposedly impartial scientific survey. By themselves, they do not invalidate the basic IPCC conclusion—that a warming in the latter half of the 20th century was human-caused, presumably by the rise of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. Yet all of these missteps pale in comparison to ClimateGate, which calls into question the very temperature data used by the IPCC's main policy result. As the leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia (UK) reveal, this IPCC conclusion—that Global Warming is anthropogenic—is based on manipulated data and therefore flawed—as are demands for the control of CO2 emissions, like the Kyoto Protocol and the Copenhagen Accord. In my opinion, ClimateGate is a much more serious issue than simply sloppiness and ideological distortion; ClimateGate suggests conspiracy to commit fraud.

2. IPCC and others exaggerate the impact—ignore adaptation Indur Goklany, PhD., “Misled on Climate change: How the UN IPCC (and others) Exaggerate the Impacts of Global Warming,” POLICY STUDY n. 399, Reason Foundation, 12—11, ES. It is frequently asserted that climate change could have devastating consequences for poor countries. Indeed, this assertion is used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other organizations as one of the primary justifications for imposing restrictions on human emissions of greenhouse gases. But there is an internal contradiction in the IPCC’s own claims. Indeed, the same highly influential report from the IPCC claims both that poor countries will fare terribly and that they will be much better off than they are today. So, which is it? The apparent contradiction arises because of inconsistencies in the way the IPCC assesses impacts. The process begins with various scenarios of future emissions. These scenarios are themselves predicated on certain assumptions about the rate of economic growth and related technological change. Under the IPCC’s highest growth scenario, by 2100 GDP per capita in poor countries will be double the U.S.’s 2006 level, even taking into account any negative impact of climate change. (By 2200, it will be triple.) Yet that very same scenario is also the one that leads to the greatest rise in temperature—and is the one that has been used to justify all sorts of scare stories about the impact of climate change on the poor. Under this highest growth scenario (known as A1FI), the poor will logically have adopted, adapted and innovated all manner of new technologies, making them far better able to adapt to the future climate. But these improvements in adaptive capacity are virtually ignored by most global warming impact assessments. Consequently, the IPCC’s “impacts” assessments systematically overestimate the negative impact of global warming, while underestimating the positive impact.

3. IPCC is just engaged in fear-mongering—members have a vested interest in making us fearful Kenny Hodgart, “Chop and Change,” SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST, 5—13—12, p. 28+. Professor John Christy, whose doctorate Trenberth supervised, is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society best known for his development, along with a colleague, of the first successful satellite temperature-recording system. Far from denying that human activity has had an impact on climate, he is nevertheless a critic of those who make catastrophic predictions. "Basically, and I'm generalising here, the IPCC is not a collection of neutral scientific observers," he says from his office at the University of Alabama, in the US. "It is rather a cast of self-selected players whose views can be counted on to generate a product acceptable to governments which seek more control over energy policy and thus human opportunity. Many, not all, of those who write the IPCC [reports] have a direct, vested interest in assuring a catastrophe is upon us to solidify their various positions of authority and income, positions largely funded by the governments for whom they work." The world, he adds, "always has catastrophes being promoted by various entities, and human-caused climate change is now fading because of lack of evidence, and something else will take its place - world-wide economic destruction, Middle East turmoil, repressive regimes."


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change False--IPCC Answers [cont’d]

4. IPCC unreliable—seeks grants, isn’t made up of climatologists

Alexander Cockburn, journalist, “Who Are the Merchants of Fear?” COUNTERPUNCH, May 12-13, 2007, http://www.counterpunch.org/2007/05/12/who-are-the-merchants-of-fear/, accessed 9-5-12. The footsoldiers in this alliance have been the grant-guzzling climate modelers and their Internationale, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose collective scientific expertise is reverently invoked by all devotees of the Greenhouse fearmongers' catechism. Aside from the fact that the graveyard of intellectual error is stuffed with the myriad tombstones of "overwhelming scientific consensus", the IPCC has the usual army of functionaries and grant farmers, and the merest sprinkling of actual scientists with the prime qualification of being climatologists or atmospheric physicists. To identify either the government-funded climate modelers or their political shock troops, the IPCC's panelists, with scientific rigor and objectivity is as unrealistic as detecting the same attributes in a craniologist financed by Lombroso studying a murderer's head in a nineteenth-century prison for the criminally insane. The craniologist' fingers and calipers were programmed by the usual incentives of stipends, grants and professional ego to find in the skull of that murderer ridges, bumps and depressions, each meticulously equated with an ungovernable passion, an ethnic deficit or a mental derangement. The murderer's individual head became a universal model, the particular promoted to an unassailable theory.

5. Can’t trust the modelers—are careerists, looking to line their own pockets

Alexander Cockburn, journalist, “Who Are the Merchants of Fear?” COUNTERPUNCH, May 12-13, 2007, http://www.counterpunch.org/2007/05/12/who-are-the-merchants-of-fear/, accessed 9-5-12. Man-made global warming theory is fed by pseudo quantitative predictions from climate-careerists working primarily off the big, mega-computer General Circulation Models which include the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the Department of Commerce's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab, a private GCM which used to be at Oregon State before the University of Illinois lured the team away. There's another one at Livermore and one in England, at Hadley. These are multi-billion dollar computer model programming bureaucracies as intent on self-preservation and budgetary enhancement as cognate nuclear bureaucracies at Oakridge and Los Alamos. They are as unlikely to develop models confuting the hypothesis of human-induced global warming as is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to say the weather is possibly getting a little bit warmer but that there's no great cause for alarm and indeed some reason for rejoicing, since this warming (whose natural causes I discussed in that recent column) gives us a longer growing season and increased CO2, a potent plant fertiliser. Welcome global greening.

6. Many pro-warming scientists are looking to benefit themselves—highly biased

The Marshall Institute, staff, CLIMATE ISSUES & QUESTIONS, 2--08, www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/577.pdf, accessed 9-4-12. Concerns about either the potential impacts of climate change or the economic impact of ill-conceived policies result in some scientists entering the policy debate. Others, unfortunately, have entered the debate to advance political or economic agendas, gain funding for research, or enhance their personal reputations. To the extent that the debate is carried out in the public policy arena or media, the rigors of the scientific process are short-circuited. This state of affairs creates misunderstandings and confusion over what we know about the climate system, past climate changes and their causes, human impacts on the climate system and how human activities may affect future climate. Policy needs are better served by clarity and accuracy.


99

Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change False--Models 1. Models are not credible—multiple reasons

NIPCC, Nongovernment International Panel on Climate Change, CLIMATE CHANGE RECONSIDERED, Craig Idso, S. Fred Singer, Warren Anderson, J.Scott Armstrong, Dennis Avery, Franco Battaglia, Robert Carter, Piers Corbyn, Richard Courtney, Joseph d’Aleo, Don Easterbrook, Fred Goldberg, Vicent Gray, Williams Gray, Kesten Green, Kenneth Haapala, David Hagen, Richard Alan Keen, adhav Khandekar, William Kininmonth, Hans Labohm, Anthony Lupo, Howard Maccabee, M.Michael MOgil, Christopher Monckton, Lubos Motl, Stephen Murgatroyd, Nicola Scafetta, Harrison Schmitt, Tom Segalstad, George Taylor, Dick Thoenes, Anton Uriarte Gerd Weber, 2009, p. 2-3. Chapter 1. Global Climate Models and Their Limitations • The IPCC places great confidence in the ability of general circulation models (GCMs) to simulate future climate and attribute observed climate change to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. • The forecasts in the Fourth Assessment Report were not the outcome of validated scientific procedures. In effect, they are the opinions of scientists transformed by mathematics and obscured by complex writing. The IPCC’s claim that it is making “projections” rather than “forecasts” is not a plausible defense. • Today’s state-of-the-art climate models fail to accurately simulate the physics of earth’s radiative energy balance, resulting in uncertainties “as large as, or larger than, the doubled CO2 forcing.” • A long list of major model imperfections prevents models from properly modeling cloud formation and cloud-radiation interactions, resulting in large differences between model predictions and observations. • Computer models have failed to simulate even the correct sign of observed precipitation anomalies, such as the summer monsoon rainfall over the Indian region. Yet it is understood that precipitation plays a major role in climate change.

2. Don’t believe extreme weather claims—models lack resolution to make any valid predictions Craig D. Idso PhD and Sherwood B. Idso, PhD, CARBON DIOXIDE AND EARTH’S FUTURE: PURSUING THE PRUDENT PATH, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, 2—2—11, p. 16. With respect to current climate model deficiencies, we note that correctly simulating future extreme weather phenomena such as floods and droughts has proved an extremely difficult task. One reason for the lack of success in this area is inadequate model resolution on both vertical and horizontal spatial scales, which forces climate modelers to parameterize the large-scale effects of processes that occur on smaller scales than their models are capable of handling. This is particularly true of physical processes such as cloud formation and cloud-radiation interactions. A good perspective on the cloud-climate conundrum was provided by Randall et al. (2003), who stated at the outset of their review of the subject that “the representation of cloud processes in global atmospheric models has been recognized for decades as the source of much of the uncertainty surrounding predictions of climate variability.” However, and despite what they called the "best efforts" of the climate modeling community, they had to acknowledge that "the problem remains largely unsolved.” What is more, they suggested that “at the current rate of progress, cloud parameterization deficiencies will continue to plague us for many more decades into the future,” which has important implications for correctly predicting precipitation-related floods and drought.

3. IPCC is adjusting the model data to match its conclusions S. Fred Singer, Professor Emeritus, Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, “Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name,” AMERICAN THINKER, 2—29—12, http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=3263, accessed 5-17-12. There are three things wrong with the IPCC argument. It depends very much on detailed and somewhat arbitrary choices of model inputs—e.g., the properties and effects of atmospheric aerosols, and their temporal and geographic distribution. It also makes arbitrary assumptions about clouds and water vapor, which produce the most important greenhouse forcings. One might therefore say that the IPCC’s evidence is nothing more than an exercise in curve-fitting. According to physicist Freeman Dyson, the famous mathematician John von Neumann stated: “Give me four adjustable parameters and I can fit an elephant. Give me one more, and I can make his trunk wiggle.” The second question: can the IPCC fit other climate records of importance besides the reported global surface record? For example, can they fit northern and southern hemisphere temperatures using the same assumptions in their models about aerosols, clouds, and water vapor? Can they fit the atmospheric temperature record as obtained from satellites, and also from radiosondes carried in weather balloons? The IPCC report does not show such results, and one therefore suspects that their curve-fitting exercise may not work, except with the global surface record.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change False--Natural 1. Current temperature increases are only the result of recovery from the Little Ice Age

WESTERN MAIL, “Rising Tempers Not Rising Temperatures—That’s What’s Threatening Our Wellbeing,” 9—26—11, p. 15. Most accept this. The problem comes with the next part of the theory which is that the global temperature increase is the fault of man, and unless we take drastic steps immediately then we will face floods, droughts, disease, rising seas, and all other manner of Biblical catastrophes. Those who question this idea are pilloried and even compared to Holocaust deniers. But, in light of the vast increases in energy bills which we face as a result of an energy policy based on fears about global warming, we do have a right to raise some questions. Firstly the rise in temperature which has taken place over the past 200 years is about 0.8°C. Actually, even this is questionable, but for now let us accept it. Throughout its 4.5 billion year history the Earth's average temperatures have always gone up and down. Over the past 2,000 years we saw a warm period during the time of the Roman Empire, followed by a cold period, then another warm period during the medieval era, then the so-called "little ice age" during the 1600s which we started to come out of at about the time we began to industrialise. It is therefore reasonable to assume that some of the 0.8°C rise is due to the warming that would have taken place anyway as a result of the Earth coming out of a cool period. I think we should be told how much, but nobody - not even the environmental experts in the House of Commons research library - seems to know.

2. Climate is naturally variable, is driven by factors far more powerful than humans Ian Plimer, Professor, Mining Geology, University of Adelaide, “The Climate Change Myth,” BUSINESS WORLD, 12—5—11, lexis. Climate has always changed, nothing we measure today is unusual. There are numerous climate cycles. In every 143 million years, our solar system has a bad address. We get bombarded by cosmic radiation, low-level clouds form and the Earth cools. Every 100,000, 41,000 and 23,000 years the Earth's orbit changes such that we are closer to or further from the Sun, which pumps out variable amounts of energy on 1,500-, 210-, 87- and 22-year cycles. It may come as a surprise to some that the great ball of heat and light in the sky has driven climate change for the past 4,500 million years. This cannot be changed by humans. The main greenhouse gas is water vapour, CO2 has a minor effect, yet, it helps keep Earth habitable. Evaporation and precipitation transfer atmospheric energy and, with solar energy, have kept the planet habitable for thousands of millions of years. The oceans hold far more heat than the atmosphere, and slight changes in ocean currents and temperature change climate and can be the driver of drought or rain. Such cyclical ocean changes have been found recently in the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic oceans. A lunar nodal tide every 18.6 years can also push ocean water around and warm high latitude areas. The 1,500 terrestrial explosive volcanoes have slightly cooled the Earth just after eruptions of aerosols and millions of submarine volcanoes add heat and CO2 to ocean waters. At times, a large submarine bulge of molten rock can heat the oceans, release CO2 and methane and change ocean currents. At other times, continents can be at different latitudes. For example, nearly 260 million years ago, India was attached to a great southern polar continent.

3. Solar variability explains temperature and climate change NIPCC, Nongovernment International Panel on Climate Change, CLIMATE CHANGE RECONSIDERED, Craig Idso, S. Fred Singer, Warren Anderson, J.Scott Armstrong, Dennis Avery, Franco Battaglia, Robert Carter, Piers Corbyn, Richard Courtney, Joseph d’Aleo, Don Easterbrook, Fred Goldberg, Vicent Gray, Williams Gray, Kesten Green, Kenneth Haapala, David Hagen, Richard Alan Keen, adhav Khandekar, William Kininmonth, Hans Labohm, Anthony Lupo, Howard Maccabee, M.Michael MOgil, Christopher Monckton, Lubos Motl, Stephen Murgatroyd, Nicola Scafetta, Harrison Schmitt, Tom Segalstad, George Taylor, Dick Thoenes, Anton Uriarte Gerd Weber, 2009, p. 5. Chapter 5. Solar Variability and Climate Cycles • The IPCC claims the radiative forcing due to changes in the solar output since 1750 is +0.12 Wm-2, an order of magnitude smaller than its estimated net anthropogenic forcing of +1.66 Wm-2. A large body of research suggests that the IPCC has got it backwards, that it is the sun’s influence that is responsible for the lion’s share of climate change during the past century and beyond. • The total energy output of the sun changes by only 0.1 percent during the course of the solar cycle, although larger changes may be possible over periods of centuries. On the other hand, the ultraviolet radiation from the sun can change by several percent over the solar cycle – as indeed noted by observing changes in stratospheric ozone. The largest changes, however, occur in the intensity of the solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field. • Reconstructions of ancient climates reveal a close correlation between solar magnetic activity and solar irradiance (or brightness), on the one hand, and temperatures on earth, on the other. Those correlations are much closer than the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature. • Cosmic rays could provide the mechanism by which changes in solar activity affect climate. During periods of greater solar magnetic activity, greater shielding of the earth occurs, resulting in less cosmic rays penetrating to the lower atmosphere, resulting in fewer cloud condensation nuclei being produced, resulting in fewer and less reflective low-level clouds occurring, which leads to more solar radiation being absorbed by the surface of the earth, resulting (finally) in increasing near-surface air temperatures and global warming. • Strong correlations between solar variability and precipitation, droughts, floods, and monsoons have all been documented in locations around the world. Once again, these correlations are much stronger than any relationship between these weather phenomena and CO2. • The role of solar activity in causing climate change is so complex that most theories of solar forcing must be considered to be as yet unproven. But it would also be appropriate for climate scientists to admit the same about the role of rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations in driving recent global warming.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change False--Peer Review Answers 1. Peer review does nothing to prove whether the claims made in a scientific paper are accurate

Bob Carter, palaeoclimatolgist, James Cook University, “Money Corrupts the Peer Review Process,” NATIONAL POST, 6—15—12, p. FP13. The head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has referred to its work as the gold standard, based on its oft-made claim that it only surveys work published in peer-reviewed professional research papers. Interestingly, Albert Einstein's famous 1905 paper on relativity was not peer-reviewed. It is therefore quite clear that peer review is not a precondition for excellent, indeed epoch-making, scientific research. So what is a peer-reviewed (also termed refereed) research paper? Peer-review is a technique of quality control for scientific papers that emerged slowly through the 20th century, only achieving a dominant influence in science after the Second World War. The process works like this. A potential scientific author conducts research, writes a paper on his or her results and submits the paper to a professional journal that represents the specialist field of science in question. The editor of the journal then scan-reads the paper. Based upon his knowledge of the contents of the paper, and of the activities of other scientists in the same research field, the editor selects (usually) two persons, termed referees, to whom he sends the draft manuscript of the paper for review. Referees, who are unpaid, differ in the amount of time and effort that they devote to their task of review. At one extreme a referee will criticize and correct the writing of a paper in detail, including making comments on the scientific content; at the other extreme, a referee may merely skim-read a paper, ignoring obvious mistakes in writing style or grammar, and make some general comments to the editor about the scientific accuracy, or otherwise, of the draft paper. Neither type of referee, nor those who lie between, pretend to check either the original data or the detailed statistical calculations (or, today, complex computer modelling) that often form the kernel of a piece of modern scientific research. Each referee makes a recommendation to the editor as to whether the paper should be published (usually with corrections) or rejected, the editor making the final decision regarding publication based on this advice. In essence, then, peer-review is a technique of editorial quality control. That a scientific paper has been peer-reviewed is absolutely no guarantee that the science it portrays is correct. Indeed, it is the very nature of scientific research that nearly all scientific papers require later emendation, or reinterpretation, in the light of new discoveries or understanding.

2. Peer review proves nothing—can still back up bad data Bob Carter, palaeoclimatolgist, James Cook University, “Money Corrupts the Peer Review Process,” NATIONAL POST, 6—15—12, p. FP13. Backed by this malfeasant system, leading researchers who support the IPCC's red-hot view of climate change endlessly promulgate their alarmist recommendations as "based only upon peer-reviewed research papers," as if this were some guarantee of quality or accuracy. Peer-review, of course, guarantees neither. What matters is not whether a scientific idea or article has been peer-reviewed but whether the science described is right, i.e. accords with empirical evidence. So what about the much-trumpeted, claimed "gold standard" of strict use of peer review papers by the IPCC? Well, this has been completely exposed by Canadian investigative journalist Donna Laframboise, who showed that an amazing 30% of the articles cited in the definitive Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC were from non-peer-reviewed sources, including such writings as student theses and environmental lobbyist reports. Therefore, the repetition of the "we only-use-peer-reviewed-information" mantra that is so favoured by lobbying and government-captive scientific organizations signals not just scientific immaturity but also a lack of confidence, or ability, to assess the scientific arguments about global warming on their own merits and against the empirical evidence.

3. Consensus and peer review claims don’t justify belief in warming—actually exclude critical thinking, global warming theory is bunk

Ian Plimer, Professor, Mining Geology, University of Adelaide, “The Climate Change Myth,” BUSINESS WORLD, 12—5—11, lexis. Science is married to evidence. this evidence is from measurement, observation and experiment. Predictions from a computer are not evidence, especially as computers can be programmed to give a desired answer. A conclusion is reached on the basis of transparent and repeatable evidence. This can be tested with new independent evidence and needs to be in accord with previous validated evidence. If a scientific conclusion is not in accord with evidence, it must be rejected. The theory that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) drive global warming can be tested and is shown to be contrary to validated geology, ice core data and history. The theory should have been rejected decades ago, but there is too much money involved. To be a scientist, one has to be sceptical, bow to no authority and be an independent thinker. The history of science shows that consensus thinking has never made a great scientific discovery and only those that challenge popular paradigms have made discoveries. Consensus is a tool of politics, not science. As a scientist for over 40 years, I have seen how the peer review system supports fads and fashions and excludes contrary thinking.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change False--Peer Review Answers [cont’d] 4. Peer review does not prove truth—reviewers have biases

John McLean, “Fallacies About Global Warming,” Science & Public Policy Institute, 9--07, http://mclean.ch/climate/SPPI_AGW_fallacies.pdf, accessed 9-5-12. The peer-review process was established for the benefit of editors who did not have good knowledge across all the fields that their journals addressed. It provided a "sanity check" to avoid the risk of publishing papers which were so outlandish that the journal would be ridiculed and lose its reputation. In principle this notion seems entirely reasonable, but it neglects certain aspects of human nature, especially the tendency for reviewers to defend their own (earlier) papers, and indirectly their reputations, against challengers. Peer review also ignores the strong tendency for papers that disagree with a popular hypothesis, one the reviewer understands and perhaps supports, to receive a closer and often hostile scrutiny. Reviewers are selected from practitioners in the field, but many scientific fields are so small that the reviewers will know the authors. The reviewers may even have worked with the authors in the past or wish to work with them in future, so the objectivity of any review is likely to be tainted by this association. Some journals now request that authors suggest appropriate reviewers but this is a sure way to identify reviewers who will be favourable to certain propositions. It also follows that if the editor of a journal wishes to reject a paper, then it will be sent to a reviewer who is likely to reject it, whereas a paper that the editor favours to be published will be sent to a reviewer who is expected to be sympathetic. In 2002 the editor-in-chief of the journal "Science" announced that there was no longer any doubt that human activity was changing climate, so what are the realistic chances of this journal publishing a paper that suggests otherwise?

5. Peer review is not a check in a field as broad and complex as climate studies

John McLean, “Fallacies About Global Warming,” Science & Public Policy Institute, 9--07, http://mclean.ch/climate/SPPI_AGW_fallacies.pdf, accessed 9-5-12. The popular notion is that reviewers should be skilled in the relevant field, but a scientific field like climate change is so broad, and encompasses so many sub disciplines, that it really requires the use of expert reviewers from many different fields. That this is seldom undertaken explains why so many initially influential climate papers have later been found to be fundamentally flawed. In theory, reviewers should be able to understand and replicate the processing used by the author(s). In practice, climate science has numerous examples where authors of highly influential papers have refused to reveal their complete set of data or the processing methods that they used. Even worse, the journals in question not only allowed this to happen, but have subsequently defended the lack of disclosure when other researchers attempted to replicate the work.


103

Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change False--Temperatures 1. Lack of temperature increases in last 10 years disproves warming—invalidates the modes, shows temperature variability is natural

Bryan Leland, electrical engineer and founder, New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, “Temperature Records Say Warming Not Happening,” DOMINION POST, 6—16—12, p. 11. Three is a widespread belief that the increase in carbon dioxide concentrations has caused the world to warm steadily. We are constantly told that this warming will continue and it will be disastrous. Before we accept these statements we should analyse the recent temperature records and the history of past climatic changes. "Climate change" - more properly referred to as "man- made global warming" - is based on an unproven hypothesis that man-made carbon dioxide causes global warming. The evidence is that CO2 levels have increased steadily but there has been no significant warming of the world for the last 10 to 15 years. This proves that carbon dioxide does not cause dangerous warming. All the climate models supported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted a steady rise in temperature of 2 degrees to 6 degrees per century caused by increasing concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. They were wrong: all five leading temperature records - both surface and satellite - show that temperatures over the last 10 to 15 years have been essentially constant. The figure shows the temperature record from the Hadley Centre in Britain. It shows there has been no warming over the past 10 years and an insignificant amount of warming over the past 15 years. CO2-driven warming happens immediately and there is no mechanism that could delay the effect. It is claimed that lack of warming is due to "natural effects", yet none of the IPCC scientists can explain exactly what these large natural causes are. If the models were any good, their predictions would be accurate. According to the IPCC, ". . . the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible". Doesn't that pretty much say it all? The alternative - and much simpler - explanation is that the climate has natural cycles and that we are just over the peak of a cycle and, probably, at the beginning of a decline. Nicola Scafetta, a research scientist at Duke University in the US, has analysed past climatic cycles and made a model that without any tuning has accurately replicated temperature changes over the last 100 years. It also predicts that cooling is imminent. Don Easterbrook, at Western Washington University in the US, and other scientists have carried out similar analyses with similar results. Most of these studies have been ignored or dismissed by the scientists associated with the IPCC.

2. Have only seen very moderate warming—disproves warming claims James M. Taylor, J.D. and Managing Editor, Environment & Climate News, “Temperatures Flat Despite Record Rise in Emissions,” CLIMATE CHANGE WEEKLY, 11—11—11, http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2011/11/11/climate-change-weekly-temperatures-flat-despite-record-rise-emissions, accessed 5-17-12. Rising carbon dioxide emissions might very well be a cause for strong concern if carbon dioxide emissions were the sole or primary cause of global temperature changes and if the Earth were on the brink of a global warming crisis. The real-world disconnect between carbon dioxide emissions and global temperatures is one of the factors that argues strongly against such a scenario, however. Temperatures have risen merely 0.2 to 0.3 degrees Celsius during the past third of a century and have not risen at all during the past decade. Giving global warming activists the benefit of the doubt and assuming the recent pause in global warming is merely a temporary condition, the Earth is still on a pace for less than 1 degree of warming during the twenty-first century.

3. Any warming has been very modest-far below what has been predicted by models Kenny Hodgart, “Chop and Change,” SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST, 5—13—12, p. 28+. Few disagree that there has been an overall warming - in the region of one degree at most since 1850 - but, according to Christy, there is no universal agreement as to the quantitative magnitude of AGW relative to other factors. "There are many studies which show that the climate system is not very sensitive to CO2," he says. "Mine, for example, have shown far less warming than predicted by the models, a pattern of warming that is inconsistent with model projection and regional trends that are not outside the range of natural variability. "In terms of global temperature trends, we now have a third of a century of bulk atmospheric temperatures showing a modest 0.13 degrees per decade rate of rise - less than half that predicted by climate models. In the past 15 years, the trend has been close to zero - the period in which warming was expected to have its fastest rate due to the enhanced greenhouse effect."


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change False--Temperatures [cont’d]

4. No warming—satellite data proves S. Fred Singer, Professor Emeritus, Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, “Why I Remain a Global-Warming Skeptic,” WALL STREET JOURNAL, 11—4—11, http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=3189, accessed 5-17-12. But the main reason that I am skeptical about the IPCC, and now the Berkeley, findings, is that they disagree with most every other data source I can find. I confine this critique to the period between 1978 and 1997, thereby avoiding the Super El Niño of 1998 that had nothing to do with greenhouse gases or other human influences. Contrary to both global-warming theory and climate models, data from weather satellites show no atmospheric temperature increase over this period, and neither do the entirely independent radiosondes carried in weather balloons. The Berkeley study confined its findings to land temperatures as recorded by weather stations. Yet oceans cover 71% of the earth’s surface, and the marine atmosphere shows no warming trend. The absence of warming is in accord with the theory that climate is heavily impacted by solar variability, and agrees with the solar data presented in a 2007 paper by Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

5. Temperature is difficult to measure, amalgamate Algird Leiga, PhD, Physical Chemistry, New York University, “Case Is Not Closed on Man-Made Global Warming,” INLAND VALLEY DAILY BULLETIN, 6—14—12, lexis. In any discussion of man-made global warming it is essential to recognize there are two distinct considerations. First, is to find out if the Earth is warming or cooling and by how much. The other is to correlate the data to a particular variable. To express the temperature of the Earth by a single number is a challenge. On any given day the temperature varies by the hour, the season and location. The ocean and land surface temperatures will differ from the atmosphere, and the temperature varies with altitude. Nevertheless to simplify discussions a single yearly number defines whether the Earth is warming or cooling. Over the last 20 years data show the temperature has varied by as much as a half-degree Celsius or as little as a tenth of a degree. Given all the variables inherent in calculating Earth's yearly temperature, confidence limits for each date point would be helpful to decide if the small observed changes are noise or a valid trend.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Agriculture 1. Infrastructure investment can offset the alleged negative effects of climate change

Douglas Southgate, Professor, Ohio State University, “Weathering Global Warming in Agriculture,” POLICY STUDY n. 395, Reason Foundation, 11—11, p. 5. In principle, it would be possible to compensate for productivity losses in agriculture, which are indicated by declining net revenues. For example, it has been estimated that increased spending of $3 billion per year on rural roads and other infrastructure would allow Sub-Saharan Africa to deal with the agricultural impacts of climate change. Likewise, declines in average calorie availability and per-capita grain production in Asia could be avoided by increasing annual investment in irrigation systems and other public works by $2.5 billion. The effects of climate change are expected to be milder in Latin America and the Caribbean, so a little more than $1 billion spent each year on agricultural research, irrigation efficiency and rural infrastructure should allow the region to cope.

2. R&D will solve any agriculture-related impacts of climate change Dr. Indur Goklany, environment and development analyst, “What to Do About Climate Change,” POLICY ANALYSIS n. 609, Cato Institute, 2—5—08, p. 18. An additional $5 billion annual investment in agricultural R&D—approximately 15 percent of global funding of agricultural research and development during the 1990s—should raise productivity sufficiently to more than compensate for the estimated 0.02 percent annual shortfall in productivity caused by climate change.74 As Table 2 shows, that should reduce the total population at risk for hunger in the future significantly more than the largest estimated increase under any scenario for the population at risk for hunger as a consequence of climate change—particularly if the additional investment is targeted toward solving developing countries’ current food and agricultural problems that might be exacerbated by warming.

3. Better crop varieties will protect yields Dr. Indur Goklany, environment and development analyst, “What to Do About Climate Change,” POLICY ANALYSIS n. 609, Cato Institute, 2—5—08, p. 18. Current agricultural problems that could be exacerbated by warming and should be the focus of vulnerability-reduction measures include growing crops in poor climatic or soil conditions (e.g., low-soil moisture in some areas, too much water in others, or soils with high salinity, alkalinity, or acidity). Because of warming, such conditions could become more prevalent and agriculture might have to expand into areas with poorer soils, or both. Actions focused on increasing agricultural productivity under current marginal conditions would alleviate hunger in the future whether or not the climate changes. Similarly, because both CO2 and temperatures will increase, crop varieties should be developed to take advantage of such conditions. Progress on these approaches does not depend on improving our skill in forecasting location-specific details of climate change impacts analyses. These focused adaptation measures should be complemented by development of higher-yield, lower-impact crop varieties and improved agronomic practices so that more food is produced per unit acre. That would help reduce hunger while providing numerous ancillary benefits for biodiversity and sustainable development

4. Technology is likely to solve any ag-related negative effects of warming Indur Goklany, PhD., “Misled on Climate change: How the UN IPCC (and others) Exaggerate the Impacts of Global Warming,” POLICY STUDY n. 399, Reason Foundation, 12—11, 13. The study of agricultural productivity and hunger allows for increases in crop yield with economic growth due to greater usage of fertilizer and irrigation in richer countries, and decreases in hunger due to economic growth, some secular (time-dependent) increase in agricultural productivity, as well as some farm-level adaptations to deal with climate change. But these adaptations are based on 1990s technologies, rather than technologies that would be available at the time for which impacts are estimated (i.e., 2025, 2055 and 2085 in the FTA). Nor does the study account for any technologies developed to specifically cope with the negative impacts of global warming or take advantage of any positive outcomes. But the potential for future technologies to cope with climate change is large, especially if one considers bioengineered crops and precision agriculture.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Agriculture [cont’d]

5. Successful adaptation will prevent any major increases in food prices

Douglas Southgate and Brent Sohngen, Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics, Ohio State University “Weathering Global Warming in Agriculture and Forestry,” CIVIL SOCIETY REPORT ON CLIMATE CHANGE, 2007, p. 61. In general, the costs of environmental change hinge on how people choose to adapt. In the agricultural and forestry sectors, successful accommodation of global warming will not require central planning by governments. To the contrary, adaptation is best accomplished by relying on the sort of decision-making that happens routinely in competitive and unregulated markets – decision-making that is decentralized and individualistic, yet coordinated because everyone faces the same prices for scarce resources. Thanks largely to the adaptations that producers and consumers will make in the marketplace, global prices of farm products will not be greatly affected if average temperatures rise by 1.0°C to 4.0°C during the 21st Century, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is currently forecasting. With prices staying about the same, the main economic consequence of global warming in the farm economy will be to raise or lower the values of agricultural land. Since the 1990s, economists have investigated this consequence in the United States. Some of this research suggests that the aggregate impact of global warming on land values will be negative. However, the expected magnitude is not all that great.

6. Farmers will have powerful incentives to adapt to climate change

Douglas Southgate and Brent Sohngen, Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics, Ohio State University “Weathering Global Warming in Agriculture and Forestry,” CIVIL SOCIETY REPORT ON CLIMATE CHANGE, 2007, p. 63. International trade would dampen the price adjustments resulting from these changes in agricultural land use. For example, a larger wheat harvest, which on its own would drive down domestic prices of that commodity, would be accompanied in Russia by increased wheat exports, which would push the domestic market value of that commodity back up. Russia would also import more maize, which would restrain any increases in that product’s price. Actions taken on the demand side of the market would also prevent relative prices from changing much. If for example maize became much more expensive while the market value of wheat remained the same, then livestock producers would change the rations fed to cattle and other domestic animals. As they did this, demand for maize would decline, hence bringing down its price, and demand for wheat would increase, thereby putting upward pressure on its market value. Note that, even in the absence of a large swing in relative prices, farmers face a strong incentive to adapt efficiently to climate change. Consider an individual who has been growing wheat in Iowa. With per-hectare production falling and the ratio of maize prices to wheat prices not changing much, switching to the other crop is attractive. Meanwhile, additional land is being sown to wheat at higher latitudes, in Russia. In each case, market forces are promoting exactly the right response to a warmer environment.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Biodiversity 1. Species will just migrate or adapt—no large extinction risk

Sherwood Idso, Keith Idso and Craig Idso, “Plant Responses to Significant and Rapid Global Warming,” CO2 SCIENCE MAGAZINE v. 15 n. 24, 6—13—12, http://co2science.org/articles/V15/N24/EDIT.php, accessed 7-12-12. In an impressive and enlightening review of the subject, Willis and MacDonald (2011) begin by noting that key research efforts have focused on extinction scenarios derived from "a suite of predictive species distribution models (e.g., Guisan and Thuiller, 2005)" - which are most often referred to as bioclimatic envelope models - that "predict current and future range shifts and estimate the distances and rates of movement required for species to track the changes in climate and move into suitable new climate space." And they write that one of the most-cited studies of this type - that of Thomas et al. (2004) - "predicts that, on the basis of mid-range climatic warming scenarios for 2050, up to 37% of plant species globally will be committed to extinction owing to lack of suitable climate space." In contrast, the two researchers say that "biotic adaptation to climate change has been considered much less frequently." This phenomenon - which is sometimes referred to as evolutionary resilience - they describe as "the ability of populations to persist in their current location and to undergo evolutionary adaptation in response to changing environmental conditions (Sgro et al., 2010)." And they note that this approach to the subject "recognizes that ongoing change is the norm in nature and one of the dynamic processes that generates and maintains biodiversity patterns and processes," citing MacDonald et al. (2008) and Willis et al. (2009). The aim of Willis and MacDonald's review, therefore, was to examine the effects of significant and rapid warming on earth's plants during several previous intervals of the planet's climatic history that were as warm as, or even warmer than, what climate alarmists typically predict for the next century. These intervals included the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, the Eocene climatic optimum, the mid-Pliocene warm interval, the Eemian interglacial, and the Holocene. And it is important to note that this approach, in contrast to the approach typically used by climate alarmists, relies on empirical (as opposed to theoretical) data-based (as opposed to model-based), reconstructions (as opposed to projections) of the past (as opposed to the future). And what were the primary findings of the two researchers? As they describe them, in their own words, "persistence and range shifts (migrations) seem to have been the predominant terrestrial biotic response (mainly of plants) to warmer intervals in Earth's history," while "the same responses also appear to have occurred during intervals of rapid climate change." In addition, they make a strong point of noting that "evidence for global extinctions or extinctions resulting from reduction of population sizes on the scale predicted for the next century owing to loss of suitable climate space (Thomas et al., 2004) is not apparent." In fact, they state that sometimes an actual increase in local biodiversity is observed, the case for which we lay out in Section II (Physiological Reasons for Rejecting the CO2-Induced Global Warming Extinction Hypothesis) of our Major Report The Specter of Species Extinction: Will Global Warming Decimate Earth's Biosphere? Read it and rejoice!

2. Warming does not pose a threat to species—multiple reasons NIPCC, Nongovernment International Panel on Climate Change, CLIMATE CHANGE RECONSIDERED, Craig Idso, S. Fred Singer, Warren Anderson, J.Scott Armstrong, Dennis Avery, Franco Battaglia, Robert Carter, Piers Corbyn, Richard Courtney, Joseph d’Aleo, Don Easterbrook, Fred Goldberg, Vicent Gray, Williams Gray, Kesten Green, Kenneth Haapala, David Hagen, Richard Alan Keen, adhav Khandekar, William Kininmonth, Hans Labohm, Anthony Lupo, Howard Maccabee, M.Michael MOgil, Christopher Monckton, Lubos Motl, Stephen Murgatroyd, Nicola Scafetta, Harrison Schmitt, Tom Segalstad, George Taylor, Dick Thoenes, Anton Uriarte Gerd Weber, 2009, p. 7. Chapter 8. Species Extinction • The IPCC claims “new evidence suggests that climate-driven extinctions and range retractions are already widespread” and the “projected impacts on biodiversity are significant and of key relevance, since global losses in biodiversity are irreversible (very high confidence).” These claims are not supported by scientific research. • The world’s species have proven to be remarkably resilient to climate change. Most wild species are at least one million years old, which means they have all been through hundreds of climate cycles involving temperature changes on par with or greater than those experienced in the twentieth century. • The four known causes of extinctions are huge asteroids striking the planet, human hunting, human agriculture, and the introduction of alien species (e.g., lamprey eels in the Great Lakes and pigs in Hawaii). None of these causes are connected with either global temperatures or atmospheric CO2 concentrations. • Real-world data collected by the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) show the rate of extinctions at the end of the twentieth century was the lowest since the sixteenth century—despite 150 years of rising world temperatures, growing populations, and industrialization. Many, and probably most, of the world’s species benefited from rising temperatures in the twentieth century. • As long as the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration rises in tandem with its temperature, most plants will not need to migrate toward cooler conditions, as their physiology will change in ways that make them better adapted to warmer conditions. Plants will likely spread pole-ward in latitude and upward in elevation at the cold-limited boundaries of their ranges, thanks to longer growing seasons and less frost, while their heat-limited boundaries will probably remain pretty much as they are now or shift only slightly. • Land animals also tend to migrate poleward and upward, to areas where cold temperatures prevented them from going in the past. They follow earth’s plants, while the heat-limited boundaries of their ranges are often little affected, allowing them to also expand their ranges.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Biodiversity [cont’d]

3. Mass extinction claims are empirically invalid—temperature rise will cause very few extinctions

The Marshall Institute, staff, CLIMATE ISSUES & QUESTIONS, 2--08, www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/577.pdf, accessed 9-4-12. Another “abrupt” climate change scenario involves massive species extinctions as a result of climate change. For example, a paper by Thomas, et al. studied 1,100 species with limited geographic range and concluded that a temperature rise of 0.8-1.7°C by 2050 would commit 18 percent of them to extinction. However, Thomas and his co-authors also report that climate change was implicated in the extinction of only one species during the 20th century, when according to the IPCC, global average temperature rose by 0.6°C. Is it reasonable to assume that if a 0.6°C temperature rise caused the extinction of only one species, that a 0.8- 1.7°C temperature rise will cause the extinction of 18 percent of the millions of species on Earth?126 We think not.

4. Is no hard evidence that warming threatens biodiversity of ecosystems

Sherwood B. and Craig D. Idso, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change “Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: Separating Scientific Fact from Personal Opinion,” 6--6--07, http://co2science.org/education/reports/hansen/hansencritique.php, accessed 9-5-12. Hansen writes that "continued business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions threaten many ecosystems," contending - even more ominously - that "very little additional [climate] forcing is needed ... to cause the extermination of a large fraction of plant and animal species." But where is the evidence for these claims? Hansen says that "animals and plants migrate as climate changes," and so they do, both upward in altitude and poleward in latitude; and he states that in response to global warming, "polar species can be pushed off the planet [i.e., driven to extinction], as they have no place else to go," and that "life in alpine regions ... is similarly in danger of being pushed off the planet." But again, where is the evidence to support these contentions? In searching Hansen's testimony and his "accepted for publication" manuscript on the subject, we could find no real-world support for this aspect of his climate-alarmist thesis. What we did find was typically of the same nature as Hansen's own writings: claims, contentions and opinions, but no hard evidence. Such is also the case with many peer-reviewed science journal articles that promote the same philosophy, such as those of Root et al. (2003) and Parmesan and Yohe (2003). However, as we have indicated in a major study of the topic that is archived on our website (Idso et al., 2003), even these studies have failed to provide any hard data in support of their egregious extrapolations.

5. Warming won’t cause plant shift—elevated co2 levels increase temperature tolerance

Sherwood B. and Craig D. Idso, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change “Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: Separating Scientific Fact from Personal Opinion,” 6--6--07, http://co2science.org/education/reports/hansen/hansencritique.php, accessed 9-5-12. These observations, which are similar to what has been observed in many other plants, suggest that when the atmosphere's temperature and CO2 concentration rise together (Cowling, 1999), the vast majority of earth's plants would likely not feel a need (or only very little need) to migrate towards cooler regions of the globe. Any warming would obviously provide them an opportunity to move into places that were previously too cold for them, but it would not force them to move, even at the hottest extremes of their ranges; for as the planet warmed, the rising atmospheric CO2 concentration would work its biological wonders, significantly increasing the temperatures at which most of earth's C3 plants - which comprise about 95% of the planet's vegetation - function best, creating a situation where earth's plant life would actually "prefer" warmer conditions.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Coral 1. CO2 increases calcification

Craig D. Idso, PhD, CO2, GLOBAL WARMING, AND CORAL REEFS: PROSPECTS FOR THE FUTURE, Center for Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, 1—12—09, p. 37. There are several reasons for expecting a positive coral calcification response to CO2-enhanced symbiont photosynthesis. One of the first mechanisms to come to mind is the opposite of the phenomenon that has been proffered as a cause of future declines in coral calcification rates. This reverse phenomenon is the decrease in extracellular CO2 partial pressure in coral tissues that is driven by the drawdown of aqueous CO2 caused by the photosynthetic process. With CO2 being removed from the water in intimate contact with the coral host via its fixation by photosynthesis (which CO2 drawdown is of far greater significance to the coral than the increase in the CO2 content of the surrounding bulk water that is affected by the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content), the pH and calcium carbonate saturation state of the water immediately surrounding the coral host should rise (Goreau, 1959), enhancing the coral’s calcification rate (Gattuso et al., 1999). And if hydrospheric CO2 enrichment stimulates zooxanthellae photosynthesis to the same degree that atmospheric CO2 enrichment stimulates photosynthesis in terrestrial plants, i.e., by 30 to 50% for a 300 ppm increase in CO2 concentration (Kimball, 1983; Idso 1992, Idso and Idso, 1994), this phenomenon alone would more than compensate for the drop in the calcium carbonate saturation state of the bulk-water of the world’s oceans produced by the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content, which Gattuso et al. (1999) have calculated could lead to a 15% reduction in coral calcification rate for a doubling of the pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 concentration.

2. CO2 increases coral photosynthesis Craig D. Idso, PhD, CO2, GLOBAL WARMING, AND CORAL REEFS: PROSPECTS FOR THE FUTURE, Center for Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, 1—12—09, p. 40. Many are the people who have predicted that rates of coral calcification, as well as the photosynthetic rates of their symbiotic algae, will dramatically decline in response to what they typically refer to as an acidification of the world's oceans, as the atmosphere's CO2 concentration continues to rise in the years, decades and centuries to come. As ever more pertinent evidence accumulates, however, the true story appears to be just the opposite of what these acidification alarmists continue to tell us. We begin with the recent study of Herfort et al. (2008), who note that an increase in atmospheric CO2 will cause an increase in the abundance of HCO3- (bicarbonate) ions and dissolved CO2, and who report that several studies on marine plants have observed "increased photosynthesis with higher than ambient DIC [dissolved inorganic carbon] concentrations," citing the works of Gao et al. (1993b), Weis (1993), Beer and Rehnberg (1997), Marubini and Thake (1998), Mercado et al. (2001, 2003), Herfort et al. (2002) and Zou et al. (2003). To further explore this subject, and to see what it might imply for coral calcification, the three researchers employed a wide range of bicarbonate concentrations "to monitor the kinetics of bicarbonate use in both photosynthesis and calcification in two reef-building corals, Porites porites and Acropora sp." This work revealed that additions of HCO3- to synthetic seawater continued to increase the calcification rate of Porites porites until the bicarbonate concentration exceeded three times that of seawater, while photosynthetic rates of the coral's symbiotic algae were stimulated by HCO3- addition until they became saturated at twice the normal HCO3- concentration of seawater. Similar experiments conducted on Indo-Pacific Acropora sp. showed that calcification and photosynthetic rates in these corals were enhanced to an even greater extent, with calcification continuing to increase above a quadrupling of the HCO3- concentration and photosynthesis saturating at triple the concentration of seawater. In addition, they monitored calcification rates of the Acropora sp. in the dark, and, in their words, "although these were lower than in the light for a given HCO3- concentration, they still increased dramatically with HCO3- addition, showing that calcification in this coral is light stimulated but not light dependent."

3. Coral will adapt to higher temperatures—studies prove Craig D. Idso PhD and Sherwood B. Idso, PhD, CARBON DIOXIDE AND EARTH’S FUTURE: PURSUING THE PRUDENT PATH, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, 2—2—11, p. 92. With respect to corals adapting to greater warmth, Adjeroud et al. (2005) documented -- in a study of 13 islands in four of the five archipelagoes of French Polynesia -- the effects of natural perturbations on various coral assemblages over the period 1992-2002, during which time the reefs were subjected to three major coral bleaching events (1994, 1998, 2002). Finding that the impacts of the bleaching events were variable among the different study locations, and that “an interannual survey of reef communities at Tiahura, Moorea, showed that the mortality of coral colonies following a bleaching event was decreasing with successive events, even if the latter have the same intensity (Adjeroud et al., 2002),” they concluded that the “spatial and temporal variability of the impacts observed at several scales during the present and previous surveys may reflect an acclimation and/or adaptation of local populations,” such that “coral colonies and/or their endosymbiotic zooxanthellae may be phenotypically (acclimation) and possibly genotypically (adaptation) resistant to bleaching events,” citing the work of Rowan et al. (1997), Hoegh-Guldberg (1999), Kinzie et al. (2001) and Coles and Brown (2003) in support of this conclusion.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Equity 1. Warming won’t disproportionately hurt people in poor countries—future adaptive capacity will increase

Indur Goklany, PhD., “Misled on Climate change: How the UN IPCC (and others) Exaggerate the Impacts of Global Warming,” POLICY STUDY n. 399, Reason Foundation, 12—11, 19-20. It is often argued that unless greenhouse gases are reduced forthwith, the resulting GW could have severe, if not catastrophic, consequences for people in poor countries because they lack the economic and human resources to cope with GW’s consequences. But there are two major problems with this argument. First, although poor countries’ adaptive capacity is low today, it does not follow that their ability to cope will be low forever. In fact, under the IPCC’s warmest scenario, which would increase globally averaged temperature by 4°C relative to 1990, net GDP per capita in poor countries (that is, after accounting for losses due to climate change per the Stern Review’s exaggerated estimates) will be double the U.S.’s 2006 level in 2100, and triple that in 2200. Thus developing countries should in the future be able to cope with climate change substantially better than the U.S. does today. But these advances in adaptive capacity, which are virtually ignored by most assessments of the impacts and damages from global warming, are the inevitable consequence of the assumptions built into the IPCC’s emissions scenarios. Hence the notion that countries that are currently poor will be unable to cope with GW does not square with the basic assumptions that underpin the magnitude of emissions, global warming and its projected impacts under the IPCC scenarios. Second, GW would for the most part not create new problems; rather, it would exacerbate some existing problems in some locations (i.e. hunger, disease and extreme weather events). But it would also likely reduce other problems (i.e. water shortages in some places).

2. Warming will help poor countries in some ways, better to let them grow economically Indur Goklany, PhD., “Misled on Climate change: How the UN IPCC (and others) Exaggerate the Impacts of Global Warming,” POLICY STUDY n. 399, Reason Foundation, 12—11, 18. Thus, at least through 2085–2100, GW may relieve some of the problems that some poor countries face currently (e.g., water shortage and habitat loss), while in other instances, the contribution of GW to the overall problem (e.g., cumulative mortality from malaria, hunger and coastal flooding) would be substantially smaller than that of non-GW related factors. Notably, economic development, one of the fundamental drivers of GW, would reduce mortality problems regardless of whether they are due to GW or non-GW related factors (see Figure 4). Hence, lack of economic development would be a greater problem than global warming, at least through 2085–2100. This reaffirms the story told by Figure 6, which shows that notwithstanding global warming and despite egregiously overestimating the negative consequences of global warming while underestimating its positive impacts, future net GDP per capita will be much higher than it is today under each scenario through at least 2200.

3. There is no evidence that warming is hurting people in poor countries Indur Goklany, PhD., “Misled on Climate change: How the UN IPCC (and others) Exaggerate the Impacts of Global Warming,” POLICY STUDY n. 399, Reason Foundation, 12—11, 19. Despite claims that GW will reduce human well-being in poor countries, there is no evidence that this is actually happening. Empirical trends show that by any objective climate-sensitive measure, human well-being in such countries has improved remarkably over the last several decades. Specifically, agricultural productivity has increased; the proportion of people suffering from chronic hunger has declined; the rate of extreme poverty has been more than halved; rates of death and disease from malaria, other vector-borne diseases and extreme weather events have declined. Together, these improvements correspond with life expectancy in poor countries more than doubling since 1900.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Extreme Weather 1. Observed data show no threat from increased extreme weather

Craig D. Idso PhD and Sherwood B. Idso, PhD, CARBON DIOXIDE AND EARTH’S FUTURE: PURSUING THE PRUDENT PATH, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, 2—2—11, p. 57. Most recently, Barredo (2010) published a paper entitled No upward trend in normalized windstorm losses in Europe: 1970-2008, which is probably all we need to say about it, while Sorell et al. (2010) documented the depositional history of the inner Bay of Vilaine in south Brittany along the French Atlantic coast. Their work, with sediment cores, indicated that “during ca. 880-1050 AD ... the influence of winter storminess was minimal,” in accordance with the findings of Proctor et al. (2000) and Meeker and Mayewski (2002). Thereafter, however, noting that the Medieval Warm Period “is recognized as the warmest period of the last two millennia (Mayewski et al., 2004; Moberg et al., 2005),” they report that the upper successions of the sediment cores “mark the return to more energetic conditions in the Bay of Vilaine, with coarse sands and shelly sediments sealing the medieval clay intervals,” and they state that “this shift most probably documents the transition from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age,” which led to the “increased storminess both in the marine and continental ecosystems (Lamb, 1979; Clarke and Rendell, 2009)” that was associated with “the formation of dune systems over a great variety of coastal environments in northern Europe: Denmark (Aagaard et al., 2007; Clemmensen et al., 2007, 2009; Matthews and Briffa, 2005), France (Meurisse et al., 2005), Netherlands (Jelgersma et al., 1995) and Scotland (Dawson et al., 2004a).” In considering all of the above findings, what does the future look like with respect to nearly all types of storms? Clearly, the evidentiary scale tips far, far away from climate-alarmist scenes of "weather gone wild," as there are almost no historical data that suggest that a warmer world experiences any more severe or more frequent storms than a colder world does. In fact, real-world data seem generally to suggest just the opposite.

2. There is no scientifically demonstrable link between warming and natural disasters

Ben Lieberman, Senior Policy Analyst, Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, Heritage Foundation, “Frequently Asked Questions About Global Warming,” WEBMEMO n. 1403, 3-21-07, www.heritage.org/research/reports/2007/03/frequently-asked-questions-about-global-warming, accessed 9-5-12. Q: Didn't global warming cause Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters? No. Natural disasters are just that, and occur with or without global warming. Many activists have tried to link each natural disaster as it occurs—hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, floods, wildfires, crop failures, disease outbreaks, and even snowstorms—to global warming. Although the theoretical link between warming and some natural disasters is plausible, the scientific evidence points away from anything more than a small connection. There is no consistent long-term pattern in the frequency of these events. For example, while Hurricane Katrina was part of a worse-than-average 2005 hurricane season, the 2006 hurricane season was an unusually weak one.

3. Deaths from extreme weather are actually in decline—claims to contrary are media hype

Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change, staff, CIVIL SOCIETY REPORT ON CLIMATE CHANGE, 2007, p. 5. Indeed, it has become commonplace for climate alarmists to use individual weather events – cyclones, hurricanes, floods, storms, droughts, and other phenomena – as definitive ‘evidence’ of present global warming. They warn that future planetary warming will cause such events to become more frequent, more fierce, and thus cause more devastation and loss of life. In this report, Indur Goklany analyses available US and global data regarding mortality and mortality rates from extreme weather events, for a time period covering approximately the past century, up to 2007. His analysis indicates that: Aggregate mortality and mortality rates due to extreme weather events are generally lower today than they used to be. Globally, mortality and mortality rates have declined by 95 percent or more since the 1920s. (page 47) In the context of global deaths from all causes, Goklany shows that while extreme weather-related events “garnish plenty of attention worldwide because of their episodic and telegenic nature”, their contribution to the global mortality burden is only 0.03–0.06 percent. In summary, the data show that: The average annual death toll for 2000–2006 due to all weather-related extreme events was 19,900. By contrast, the World Health Organization estimates that in 2002, a total of 57.0 million people died worldwide from all causes, including 5.2 million from other kinds of accidents. Out of these, road traffic was responsible for 1.2 million deaths, violence (other than war) for 0.6 million, and war for 0.2 million. (page 50). Thus, as a relative proportion of all deaths, the death toll from weather-related extreme events is small. Goklany says: Based on current contributions [of extreme weather events] to the global mortality burden, other public health issues outrank climate change.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Forests Adaptation will address any forestry impacts—need to avoid any protectionism for it to work

Douglas Southgate and Brent Sohngen, Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics, Ohio State University “Weathering Global Warming in Agriculture and Forestry,” CIVIL SOCIETY REPORT ON CLIMATE CHANGE, 2007, p. 61. On the whole, higher temperatures will promote tree growth, certainly in places which continue to receive adequate precipitation. Risks of fire will increase as well, although probably not enough to affect timber supplies. Moreover, expected trends in the forestry sector contradict a widely-held belief about the impacts of global warming, which is that developing regions close to the equator will suffer more than affluent settings in temperate latitudes. To be specific, higher temperatures are apt to accelerate a geographic shift that is already underway. As ever larger portions of the global timber supply are obtained from sub-tropical plantations, where trees are grown and harvested in cycles lasting just 10 to 20 years, the share of timber harvested from temperate and boreal forests will decrease. In the forestry sector no less than in agriculture, efficient adaptation to global warming requires that protectionism be avoided. With or without global warming, the sector’s development depends on strong property rights, in developing countries as well as in affluent nations.

2. Warming won’t collapse forests—actually promotes tree growth

Douglas Southgate and Brent Sohngen, Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics, Ohio State University “Weathering Global Warming in Agriculture and Forestry,” CIVIL SOCIETY REPORT ON CLIMATE CHANGE, 2007, p. 66-67. Significantly, the impacts of global warming on timber production are unlikely to be catastrophic, even in the absence of human adaptation. At present, estimated impacts range from small and negative to large and positive. One reason why a collapse is unlikely is that warmer conditions should promote tree growth, particularly in regions where there is enough precipitation to offset the drying caused by higher temperatures. Also, higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere can fertilize trees, provided that other nutrients and water are available. It is hardly surprising, then, that a recent survey of available studies points to a recent acceleration of tree growth globally, in spite of forest decline in some regions (Boisvenue and Running, 2006). If global warming causes trees to grow faster, even without management, then supplies of timber will increase. Consumers will benefit, as prices for wood products fall. Costs will mainly be localized – confined to regions that experience diminished tree growth but where producers will actually suffer more because of price declines. These conclusions have been arrived at by a number of investigators (Joyce et al., 1995; Perez- Garcia, 1997; Sohngen and Mendelsohn, 1998; Sohngen et al., 2001; Joyce et al., 2001; and Alig, Adams, and McCarl, 2001).

3. Any increases in forest fires are offset by current forest expansion

Douglas Southgate and Brent Sohngen, Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics, Ohio State University “Weathering Global Warming in Agriculture and Forestry,” CIVIL SOCIETY REPORT ON CLIMATE CHANGE, 2007, p. 67. Even if a linkage exists between global warming and forest fires, the effects on markets for wood products, while negative, are not expected to be substantial. Inventories of standing timber around the world are huge. Also, extraction rates in temperate latitudes, which are the main source of supply, are lower than growth rates, which means that timber stocks are accumulating. As an example, standing timber in the United States, which currently amounts to 26 billion m3, is accumulating at an annual rate of 672 million m3, or 2.6 percent. Since the 1950s, per-hectare volumes have increased by 0.6 percent per annum, from 56 m3 to around 79 m3, both because growth has exceeded extraction and because mortality has remained fairly low. Currently, annual harvests and mortality are 448 million m3 and 168 million m3, respectively, which added together are less than yearly accumulation, 672 million m3 (statistics on US forests from Smith et al., 2002). It is hard to argue that timber harvesting in the United States is unsustainable. Indeed, the area burned every year might well have increased because there is now more to burn – for example, because of substantial growth in standing timber per hectare during recent decades.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--General 1. Other issues are far greater threats to the environment than is climate change

Dr. Indur Goklany, environment and development analyst, “What to Do About Climate Change,” POLICY ANALYSIS n. 609, Cato Institute, 2—5—08, p. 22-23. Climate change is not now—nor is it likely to be for the foreseeable future—the most important environmental problem facing the globe, unless present-day problems such as hunger, water-related diseases, lack of access to safe water and sanitation, and indoor air pollution are reduced drastically. Otherwise, with respect to human well-being, it will continue to be outranked by these other problems and, with respect to environmental well-being, by habitat loss and other threats to biodiversity.

2. Cost of warming exaggerated—tech will allow us to adapt Indur Goklany, PhD., “Misled on Climate change: How the UN IPCC (and others) Exaggerate the Impacts of Global Warming,” POLICY STUDY n. 399, Reason Foundation, 12—11, 12. The second major reason why future adaptive capacity has been underestimated (and the impacts of global warming systematically overestimated) is that few impact studies consider secular technological change.25 Most assume that no new technologies will come on line, although some do assume greater adoption of existing technologies with higher GDP per capita and, much less frequently, a modest generic improvement in productivity. Such an assumption may have been appropriate during the Medieval Warm Period, when the pace of technological change was slow, but nowadays technological change is fast (as indicated in Figures 1 through 5) and, arguably, accelerating. It is unlikely that we will see a halt to technological change unless so-called precautionary policies are instituted that count the costs of technology but ignore its benefits, as some governments have already done for genetically modified crops and various pesticides.

3. Economic growth will solve the disease/health problems associated with warming Indur Goklany, PhD., “Misled on Climate change: How the UN IPCC (and others) Exaggerate the Impacts of Global Warming,” POLICY STUDY n. 399, Reason Foundation, 12—11, 16. More recently, another study analyzed the sensitivity of deaths from malaria, diarrhea, schistosomiasis and dengue fever to warming, economic development and other determinants of adaptive capacity through the year 2100. The results indicate, unsurprisingly, that economic development alone could reduce mortality substantially. For malaria, for instance, deaths would be eliminated before 2100 in a number of the more affluent sub-Saharan countries. This is a much more realistic assessment of the impact of GW on malaria in a wealthier and more technologically advanced world than is the corresponding FTA study, despite the latter being considered state-of-the-art during the preparation of the latest IPCC report. It is also more consistent with long-term trends regarding the extent of malaria, which indicate that the P. falciparum malaria–the most deadly kind–declined from 58% of the world’s land surface around 1900 to 30% by 2007.

4. Numerous studies show that there will be no catastrophic impacts from warming Dr. Craig D. Idso, ESTIMATES OF GLOBAL FOOD PRODUCTION IN THE YEAR 2050: WILL WE PRODUCE ENOUGH TO ADEQUATELY FEED THE WORLD, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, 6—15—11, p. 4. 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!


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--General [cont’d]

5. Humans and ecosystems are highly resilient in face of temperature changes—little risk of warming- induced catastrophe

Ben Lieberman, Senior Policy Analyst, Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, Heritage Foundation, “Frequently Asked Questions About Global Warming,” WEBMEMO n. 1403, 3-21-07, www.heritage.org/research/reports/2007/03/frequently-asked-questions-about-global-warming, accessed 9-5-12. Q: Is global warming catastrophic? Far from it. Given that the current upward trend in temperatures is not unprecedented, it stands to reason that minor warming will not lead to unprecedented catastrophes, and scientific evidence confirms this. According to recent research, the planet and its inhabitants are much more resilient to temperature variability than had been previously assumed, and the warming over the last few decades has not been particularly harmful to humans or the environment. Virtually all of the alarming rhetoric surrounding global warming is speculative and lies outside the scientific consensus. In fact, several respected economists believe that any likely future warming would have benefits (such as increased crop yields) that outweigh the modest adverse impacts in the U.S.

6. Dire predictions are based on models, which are themselves unreliable John R. Christy, Professor of Atmospheric Science & Nobel Prize Winner, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Testimony before Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, 11--14--07, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-110shrg73849/html/CHRG-110shrg73849.htm, accessed 9-4-12. The foundation of a climate science program must be a commitment to continuous and accurate observations. We must know WHAT the climate is doing before we can understand WHY it does what it does. However, we now face the loss of satellite and other observations critical to understanding the climate. The NRC Decadal Survey goals for satellite systems should be pursued vigorously as well as support for other systems. The climate science program now has a large climate-modeling component. However, based on limited studies, too much confidence in my view is placed in model projections. These projections cannot reliably predict the climate on regional scales where we live and grow our food. The potential of billion-dollar economic impacts of proposals designed to mitigate “global warming” are based on these models and some common misunderstandings. Thus it is imperative that a “Red Team” approach be taken with climate model evaluation. Such teams, independent from those with vested interests in the modeling industry, would evaluate models with a hard-nosed methodology to inform Policymakers about model confidence from a different and scientifically defensible point of view.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Health (General) 1. Multiple alternate causes overwhelm warming’s effect on disease

Craig D. Idso PhD and Sherwood B. Idso, PhD, CARBON DIOXIDE AND EARTH’S FUTURE: PURSUING THE PRUDENT PATH, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, 2—2—11, p. 65. So what are some of the non-climatic factors that impact the spread of vector-borne diseases of humans? Gage et al. list “many other global changes concurrently transforming the world, including increased economic globalization, the high speed of international travel and transport of commercial goods, increased population growth, urbanization, civil unrest, displaced refugee populations, water availability and management, and deforestation and other land-use changes,” as well, we would add, as the many different ways in which these phenomena are dealt with by different societies. Unfortunately, there is almost no way to correctly incorporate such factors into models to correctly forecast disease incidence in the future. Therefore, in light of the many complex phenomena that concurrently impact the spread of vector-borne diseases, it is clearly unjustified to claim that any future warming of the globe will necessarily lead to a net increase in their global incidence, for just the opposite could well be true, depending on the type and degree of a number of current and potential societal impacts on the world of nature, as well as the diverse natures of the evolving states of the planet’s multiple human societies.

2. Public health will solve better than trying to limit CO2 emissions Craig D. Idso PhD and Sherwood B. Idso, PhD, CARBON DIOXIDE AND EARTH’S FUTURE: PURSUING THE PRUDENT PATH, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, 2—2—11, p. 71. As a consequence of the above observations, Dunn et al. conclude that “even where disease richness is high, we might still control prevalence, particularly if we spend money in those regions where current spending is low, prevalence is high and populations are large.” And let’s be realistic about it: this approach is infinitely more likely to succeed in its worthy objectives than is the nebulous idea (i.e., the wishful thinking) of changing the planet’s climate. And with all of the unanticipated consequences of such an effort -- many of which may be assumed to be negative and are almost assured to occur with the undertaking of such a huge and complex campaign -- we could well be better off to do nothing than to gamble all that the human family has achieved over the millennia, fighting a war against something so ethereal as CO2-induced global warming.

3. Current warming has been accompanied by the greatest increase in human living standards ever

James Inhofe, U.S. Senator, HOT & COLD MEDIA SPIN CYCLE: A CHALLENGE TO JOURNALISTS WHO COVER GLOBAL WARMING, 9-25-06, http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=56dd129d-e40a-4bad-abd9-68c808e8809e, accessed 9-4-12. The media have missed the big pieces of the puzzle when it comes to the Earth’s temperatures and mankind’s carbon dioxide (C02) emissions. It is very simplistic to feign horror and say the one degree Fahrenheit temperature increase during the 20th century means we are all doomed. First of all, the one degree Fahrenheit rise coincided with the greatest advancement of living standards, life expectancy, food production and human health in the history of our planet. So it is hard to argue that the global warming we experienced in the 20th century was somehow negative or part of a catastrophic trend.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Health (General) [cont’d] 4. Adaptation solves any heat death problems—history proves

Patrick J. Michaels, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute, “Urban Heat and Urban Legends,” WASHINGTON TIMES, August 20, 2006, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/urban-heat-urban-legends, accessed 9-5-12. According to news reports, the recent heat wave in California resulted in about 150 deaths. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that global warming will exacerbate the problem dramatically, doubling or tripling the number of heat-related fatalities in North American cities in the next decade. The UN is dead wrong, because it assumes what climate researchers call the "Stupid People Hypothesis": that people will simply sit around and fry to death without doing anything to beat the heat. Global warming or not, our cities are warming, and will continue to do so. Sprawling masonry and blacktop retain heat, and the density of urban construction prevents wind from cooling it off. (Here in DC, there's an additional warming effect: waste heat from all the money changing hands.) But heat and heat-related deaths are not synonymous. In fact, in several refereed papers published in recent years, my Virginia colleague Robert Davis and I demonstrated that heat-related deaths have, in aggregate, declined significantly as our cities have warmed. In fact, in a statistical sense, we have completely engineered heat-related mortality out of several of our urban cores, particularly in eastern cities like Philadelphia. Considering every decade of mortality data at once is misleading; examining it decade-by-decade is more informative. When looked at sequentially, the data reveals a remarkable adaptation: as cities have warmed, the "threshold" temperatures at which mortality begins to increase have also risen—more than the temperatures of the cities. For example, in Philadelphia in the 1960s, mortality began to increase once the high temperature exceeded 83°. In the 1970s, the mortality threshold rose to the low 90s. In the last decade, there has been little evidence for any threshold at which mortality increases. In other words, people have adapted to their changing climate. How? Instead of simmering, people buy air conditioning. Every level of government warns of the danger of excessive exposure to heat, and people seek out cooler places. Social adaptation can take place very quickly. In mid-July 1995, over 500 people died from an intense weekend heat wave in Chicago. Research by University of Illinois climatologist Michael Palecki, published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society in 2001, shows that a 1999 Chicago heat wave of comparable intensity resulted in only 15% as many deaths.

5. People learn to adapt as heat waves become more common

Patrick J. Michaels, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute, “Urban Heat and Urban Legends,” WASHINGTON TIMES, August 20, 2006, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/urban-heat-urban-legends, accessed 9-5-12. Clearly, people have adapted to the heat. The evidence shows that, the warmer the city, the more quickly its residents adapt. Heat-related deaths are increasing in only one major American city: chilly Seattle. San Francisco and Los Angeles, two other cities that are relatively cool in the summer compared to those to their east, show no change in mortality. As the UN's climatologists should recognize, heat waves are dangerous when they are rare and unexpected, because people are unfamiliar with them and slow to take appropriate actions to minimize their exposure. As heat waves become more common, we will simply be better prepared for them and incorporate them into our daily lives and routines—just as the people of Phoenix and Dallas and Houston and New Orleans do, every summer day. Because they're not stupid.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Health (Malaria) 1. Can cheaply adapt our way out of any malaria problems

Dr. Indur Goklany, environment and development analyst, “What to Do About Climate Change,” POLICY ANALYSIS n. 609, Cato Institute, 2—5—08, p. 18. The UN Millennium project reports that the global death toll from malaria could be reduced by 75 percent at a cost of $3 billion per year.72 Adaptations focused on reducing current vulnerabilities to malaria include measures targeted specifically at malaria as well as measures that would generally enhance the capacity to respond to public health problems and deliver public health services more effectively and efficiently. Malaria-specific measures include indoor residual (home) spraying with insecticides, insecticide-treated bed nets, improved case management, more comprehensive antenatal care, and development of safe, effective, and cheap vaccines and therapies. 73 Moreover, if these measures are even partly successful, they could further reduce the likelihood of outbreaks because the risk of exposure would be lower. The posited expenditures may have to be increased by the year 2085 to keep pace with the projected increase in the global population at risk from malaria in the absence of climate change (see Table 7). I will assume— based on the ratio of estimated deaths in 2085 to that in 1990 under the A2 scenario (the worst scenario for malaria) and rounding up to the nearest whole number—that expenditures should be tripled, regardless of the emission scenario, in order to reduce malaria deaths by 75 percent.

2. Malaria is a disease of poverty, not climate—multiple other factors explain any increases

Roger Bate, Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute and Paul Reiter, Director, Insects and Infectious Diseases Unit, Institut Pasteur, “More Global Warming Nonsense,” WALL STREET JOURNAL, 4-10-08, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120778860618203531.html, accessed 9-5-12. The concept of malaria as a "tropical" infection is nonsense. It is a disease of the poor. Alarmists in the richest countries peddle the notion that the increase in malaria in poor countries is due to global warming and that this will eventually cause malaria to spread to areas that were "previously malaria free." That's a misrepresentation of the facts and disingenuous when packaged with opposition to the cheapest and best insecticide to combat malaria--DDT. It is true that malaria has been increasing at an alarming rate in parts of Africa and elsewhere in the world. Scientists ascribe this increase to many factors, including population growth, deforestation, rice cultivation in previously uncultivated upland marshes, clustering of populations around these marshes, and large numbers of people who have fled their homes because of civil strife. The evolution of drug-resistant parasites and insecticide-resistant mosquitoes, and the cessation of mosquito-control operations are also factors. Of course, temperature is a factor in the transmission of mosquito-borne diseases, and future incidence may be affected if the world's climate continues to warm. But throughout history the most critical factors in the spread or eradication of disease has been human behavior (shifting population centers, changing farming methods and the like) and living standards. Poverty has been and remains the world's greatest killer. Serious scientists rarely engage in public quarrels. Alarmists are therefore often unopposed in offering simplicity in place of complexity, ideology in place of scientific dialogue, and emotion in place of dry perspective. The alarmists will likely steal the show on Capitol Hill today. But anyone truly worried about malaria in impoverished countries would do well to focus on improving human living conditions, not the weather.

3. Malaria was once common in Europe and North America—was eradicated with changes in land use, DDT

Paul Reiter, Director, Insects and Infectious diseases Unit, Institut Pasteur and Roger Bate, Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, Testimony before Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, 4-10-08 http://www.aei.org/files/2008/04/10/20080410_Bate_testimony.pdf, accessed 9-5-12. The globalization of vectors and pathogens is indeed a serious problem, and one that will not go away. It is not new. The yellow fever mosquito, and the yellow fever virus, were imported into North America from Africa during the slave trade. The dengue virus is distributed throughout the tropics, and regularly jumps continents when infected passengers travel by air. West Nile virus undoubtedly arrived in the New World in shipments of wild birds. Historically quarantines have prevented the transmission of disease by passengers, but quarantine regulations do not give us any protection from mosquitoes. It may come as a surprise that malaria was once common in most of Europe and North America. In parts of England, mortality from “the ague” was comparable to that in sub-Saharan Africa today. Indeed, William Shakespeare, born at the start of the especially cold period that climatologists call the “Little Ice Age,” was aware of the disease, as he mentions in eight of his plays. Malaria disappeared from much of western Europe during the second half of the 19th century, mainly because of changes in agriculture, living conditions, and a drop in the price of quinine, a cure for malaria still used today. However, in some regions it persisted until the era of the insecticide DDT. Indeed, temperate Holland was not certified malaria-free by the WHO until 1970.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Health (Vector-Borne Disease) 1. There is little evidence that warming is increasing the spread of disease

Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change, staff, CIVIL SOCIETY REPORT ON CLIMATE CHANGE, 2007, p. 2. Alarmists claim that a rise in global temperatures will result in a dramatic increase in all sorts of diseases. The World Health Organization even claims that human induced global warming is already killing at least 150,000 people per year, including 77,000 due to protein malnutrition, 47,000 due to diarrhoeal disease, and 27,000 due to malaria (explained in more detail by Indur Goklany in this report, page 51). While it is true that many millions of people currently suffer from communicable diseases, there is little if any substance to the claim that people are dying from these diseases as a result of climate change. Paul Reiter observes: Two factors are key to the transmission of infectious diseases of humans: human ecology and human behavior. When the cycle of transmission includes mosquitoes, ticks, rodents or other intermediaries, their ecology and behavior are also critical. When multiple species are involved, the levels of complexity are even greater. Lastly, the virulence of the pathogen, the susceptibility of its hosts and the immunity of the host populations can be critical at all levels. Climate and weather are often invoked as the dominant parameters in transmission, but their true significance can only be assessed in the perspective of this daunting complexity. (page 22)

2. Vector-borne diseases are attributable to poverty, not warming

Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change, staff, CIVIL SOCIETY REPORT ON CLIMATE CHANGE, 2007, p. 3. With regard to enteric diseases, Reiter concludes that Human health is determined by a constellation of events and circumstances. In the developing world, the main defects are in the social matrix: a scarcity of basic needs: shelter, food, clothing, electricity, clean water, a safe living environment, education and access to healthcare. In wealthier countries, new and challenging problems have arisen as a direct result of economic success. In both cases, straightforward strategies are available to correct the problems, given suitable economic circumstances. (page 26) Vector-borne diseases such as malaria are essentially diseases of poverty. Many of today’s affluent countries once experienced levels of vector-borne diseases similar to those now experienced by poor countries. In the fourteenth century, one-third of Europe’s population died from the Black Death, which was spread by fleas that thrived on rats living in the sewers of medieval towns. Wealthy countries have largely eliminated such diseases through a combination of environmental interventions (such as the use of pesticides and mechanized agriculture), improved water and sewerage systems, improved human living conditions, and the development of vaccines and medicines.

3. Warming will not cause disease deaths—would be driven by southern growth that actually solves disease

Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change, staff, CIVIL SOCIETY REPORT ON CLIMATE CHANGE, 2007, p. 4. There is an inconsistency in the forecasts of disease incidence produced by the IPCC. The scenarios in which the highest rates of increase of disease are experienced are the same scenarios in which the world is assumed to warm the most – as a result of rapid increases in emissions of carbon dioxide. These increases in emissions result from rapid increases in economic activity – especially in poorer countries. Yet there is a very strong and robust relationship between average GDP per capita and life expectancy at birth (Pritchett and Summers, 1996). This is especially true of GDP per capita at lower levels (see Figure 1), where a small increase results in a comparatively large increase in life expectancy. The reason is that such increases in output coincide with people accessing clean water, sanitation and other services that reduce the incidence of communicable diseases. If economic growth did occur at the rates envisaged in the more extreme IPCC scenarios, it seems most unlikely that there will be a substantial increase in mortality from communicable diseases; it is far more likely that the opposite would happen. Given the strong relationship between GDP per capita and the prevention of communicable diseases, the main policy implication is that societies – and especially poorer societies – should be structured in such a way as to increase rates of GDP per capita.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Hurricanes 1. Storm projections should be held to a high degree of skepticism—based on models that do not understand key tropical climates

The Marshall Institute, staff, CLIMATE ISSUES & QUESTIONS, 2--08, www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/577.pdf, accessed 9-4-12. Another “abrupt” climate change scenario involves massive species extinctions as a result of climate change. For 27. Will the number of tropical cyclones (hurricanes, typhoons) increase and will they become more intense? It is well established that tropical cyclones will not form unless the sea surface temperature in 26°C (79°F) or higher. However, tropical cyclone formation depends on a parameter known as Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE), which is a function of both sea surface temperature and atmospheric circulation. The atmosphere can either collect the energy available from the warm ocean, leading to cyclone formation, or dissipate it, in which case a cyclone will not form. Since sea surface temperatures are often above 26°C, but tropical cyclones are relatively rare events, dissipative conditions predominate. The same parameter controls tropical cyclone intensity. Projections that tropical cyclone intensity will increase in the future are based on regional climate models embedded in global climate models. This technique creates general problems, based on the mathematical approach it uses. It application to prediction of future tropical cyclones is even more problematic because the global climate models that provide the boundary conditions for the regional models do a poor job of simulating tropical climate (see Question 18).

2. Ocean oscillations explain any recent spikes in hurricanes

The Marshall Institute, staff, CLIMATE ISSUES & QUESTIONS, 2--08, www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/577.pdf, accessed 9-4-12. Another “abrupt” climate change scenario involves massive species extinctions as a result of climate change. For The large number of hurricanes and weaker tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic during the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons has been attributed by some to an effect of human-induced climate change, but those claims are now known to have overstated the linkage (or something similar). The atmospheric conditions that lead to cyclone formation are controlled by the cyclic conditions in the various ocean basins. The positive phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which began in 1995, leads to more hurricane formation (See Question 9 for more detail on the NAO and other cyclic climate phenomena). El Niño also has an impact, suppressing hurricane formation in the North Atlantic. Compared with the 1970 – 1995 period, which was the negative phase of the NAO, all years between 1995 and 2005 have had above average Atlantic hurricane activity except for 1997 and 2002, which were years with strong El Niños. Interestingly, there is a strong negative correlation between hurricane activity in the North Atlantic and typhoon activity in the North Pacific; years with high hurricane activity tend to be years with low typhoon activity, and globally the number of tropical cyclones tends to be fairly constant. This, too, argues that atmospheric circulation is a far more important factor in tropical cyclone formation that sea surface temperature. The year 1997, which had strong El Niño activity and weak hurricane activity in the North Atlantic, saw the highest ever recorded number of typhoons in the North Pacific. While this was “the highest ever recorded number of typhoons,” care must be taken in interpreting this and other statistics for tropical cyclones. Prior to the satellite era, observation of these storms was incomplete. They were reported only if they hit land or a ship encountered them and reported their occurrence.

3. Best models prove that hurricane activity will decrease in the long-term

The Marshall Institute, staff, CLIMATE ISSUES & QUESTIONS, 2--08, www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/577.pdf, accessed 9-4-12. Another “abrupt” climate change scenario involves massive species extinctions as a result of climate change. For William M. Gray, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, is widely recognized for having developed the best predictive model for hurricane formation in the North Atlantic. Sea surface temperature is a factor in Gray’s model, but not the controlling factor. Gray compares two fifty-year periods: 1900-1949 and 1956-2005. Global average surface temperature rose 0.4°C (0.7°F) between these two periods, an amount similar to the temperature rise since the 1970s, but there were fewer named storms, hurricanes, or intense hurricanes making landfall on the U.S. during the 1956-2005 period than during the earlier period. The explanation for this apparent contradiction lies in the complex way that heat is distributed in the North Atlantic Ocean. Based in his analysis of the climate system, Gray predicts that the warming of the last thirty years will come to an end in the next five to ten years and that global average surface temperatures will be lower twenty years from now than they are today. There is also evidence of an approximately sixty-year cycle in the frequency of hurricanes in the North Atlantic, thirty years of above average storm frequency followed by thirty years of below average storm frequency. On average, the 1930s to 1960s had more hurricanes per year than the 1960s to early 1990s. Indications are that North Atlantic hurricane frequency increased starting in 1995. If projections of the cycle are correct, we can expect another ten to fifteen years of higher than average numbers of hurricanes in the North Atlantic. This potential cycle raises further questions about WG I’s conclusion, since what appears to be a change in hurricane intensity could simply be part of a naturally occurring cycle.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Ocean Acidification 1. Marine life will adapt to ocean acidification—recent data proves

Sherwood Idso, Keith Idso, and Craig Idso, “The Potential for Adaptive Evolution to Enable the World's Most Important Calcifying Organism to Cope with Ocean Acidification,” CO2 SCIENCE MAGAZINE v. 15 n. 28, 7—11—12, http://co2science.org/articles/V15/N28/EDIT.php, accessed 7-12-12. In an important paper published in the May 2012 issue of Nature Geoscience, Lohbeck et al. write that "our present understanding of the sensitivity of marine life to ocean acidification is based primarily on short-term experiments," which often depict negative effects. However, they go on to say that phytoplanktonic species with short generation times "may be able to respond to environmental alterations through adaptive evolution." And with this tantalizing possibility in mind, they studied, as they describe it, "the ability of the world's single most important calcifying organism, the coccolithophore Emiliania huxleyi, to evolve in response to ocean acidification in two 500-generation selection experiments." Working with freshly isolated genotypes from Bergen, Norway, the three German researchers grew them in batch cultures over some 500 asexual generations at three different atmospheric CO2 concentrations - ambient (400 ppm), medium (1100 ppm) and high (2200 ppm) - where the medium CO2 treatment was chosen to represent the atmospheric CO2 level projected for the *-+beginning of the next century. This they did in a multi-clone experiment designed to provide existing genetic variation that they said "would be readily available to genotypic selection," as well as in a single-clone experiment that was initiated with one "haphazardly chosen genotype," where evolutionary adaptation would obviously require new mutations. So what did they learn? Compared with populations kept at ambient CO2 partial pressure, Lohbeck et al. found that those selected at increased CO2 levels "exhibited higher growth rates, in both the single- and multi-clone experiment, when tested under ocean acidification conditions." Calcification rates, on the other hand, were somewhat lower under CO2-enriched conditions in all cultures; but the research team reports that they were "up to 50% higher in adapted [medium and high CO2] compared with non-adapted cultures." And when all was said and done, they concluded that "contemporary evolution could help to maintain the functionality of microbial processes at the base of marine food webs in the face of global change [our italics]." In other ruminations on their findings, the marine biologists indicate that what they call the swift adaptation processes they observed may "have the potential to affect food-web dynamics and biogeochemical cycles on timescales of a few years, thus surpassing predicted rates of ongoing global change including ocean acidification." And they also note, in this regard, that "a recent study reports surprisingly high coccolith mass in an E. huxleyi population off Chile in high-CO2 waters (Beaufort et al., 2011)," which observation is said by them to be indicative of "across-population variation in calcification, in line with findings of rapid microevolution identified here."

2. Ocean acidification overblown—multiple studies prove Craig D. Idso PhD and Sherwood B. Idso, PhD, CARBON DIOXIDE AND EARTH’S FUTURE: PURSUING THE PRUDENT PATH, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, 2—2—11, p. 105-106. The chemistry aspect of the ocean acidification hypothesis is rather straightforward, but it is not as solid as many make it out to be; and a number of respected researchers have published papers demonstrating that the drop in oceanic pH will not be nearly as great as the IPCC and others predict it will be, nor that it will be as harmful as they claim it will be. Consider, for example, the figure below, which shows historical and projected fossil fuel CO2 emissions and atmospheric CO2 concentrations out to the year 2500, as calculated by NOAA’s Pieter Tans (2009). As can be seen there, his analysis indicates that the air’s CO2 concentration will peak well before 2100, and at only 500 ppm compared to the 800 ppm value predicted in one of the IPCC’s scenarios. And it is also worth noting that by the time the year 2500 rolls around, the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration actually drops back down to about what it is today. When these emissions estimates are transformed into reductions of oceanic pH, it can readily be seen in the following figure that Tans’ projected pH change at 2100 is far less than that of the IPCC. And Tans’ analysis indicates a pH recovery to values near those of today by the year 2500, clearly suggesting that things are not the way the world’s climate alarmists make them out to be, especially when it comes to anthropogenic CO2 emissions and their effects on the air’s CO2 content and oceanic pH values.

3. Their studies assume unrealistic conditions Craig D. Idso PhD and Sherwood B. Idso, PhD, CARBON DIOXIDE AND EARTH’S FUTURE: PURSUING THE PRUDENT PATH, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, 2—2—11, p. 107. In considering the experimental results that are archived there, the mean response suggests that ocean acidification may indeed harm some organisms. However, it is critical to note that the vast majority of these experiments were performed under highly unrealistic oceanic pH conditions that will never occur, rendering their findings meaningless in terms of what might possibly happen in the real world. And as one examines the results over the more-likely-to-occur pH decline range, a vastly different picture begins to appear.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Precautionary Principle 1. Precautionary principle is terminally flawed—can never prove the non-existence of risk

Henry I. Miller, Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, and Gregory Conko, Director of Food Safety Policy, Competitive Enterprise Institute, THE FRANKENFOOD MYTH: HOW PROTEST AND POLITICS THREATEN THE BIOTECH REVOLUTION, 2004, p. 82. These kinds of actions by government officials illustrate a fundamental flaw of the precautionary principle—science can never prove the complete absence of a risk. There is always the possibility that we just haven't yet gotten to the nth hypothetical risk or to the nth dose or nth year of exposure, when the risk will finally be demonstrated. It is logically impossible to prove a negative, and all activities pose some nonzero risk of adverse effects. 'Thus, precautionary rules that require innovators to demonstrate the absence of some hypothesized cause-and-effect relationship create a standard that is impossible to meet. The scientific method can only prove that things are dangerous, not that they are perfectly safe. Taken to its "logical" extreme, the precautionary principle would mean that no action could ever be taken, because no assurance of absolute safety can ever be given. When pressed, advocates of the precautionary principle acknowledge that a zero-risk standard cannot be met, and they insist that they are not demanding one.36 Nevertheless, giving government institutions the sole and unchallengeable authority to judge when this vague burden of proof is met creates a highly subjective standard of safety and allows biases and hidden agendas (such as political ambition and trade protectionism) to creep into the decision-making process. Due to the ambiguous nature of risk—especially in very low-risk situations—questions about the safety of new products are often difficult to resolve quantitatively.

2. Precautionary principle fails—we tend to overestimate risk, and ignore benefits

Henry I. Miller, Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, and Gregory Conko, Director of Food Safety Policy, Competitive Enterprise Institute, “The Perils of Precaution,” POLICY REVIEW, June/July 2001, www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3476776.html, accessed 9-7-12. Several subjective factors can cloud thinking about risks and influence how nonexperts view them. Studies of risk perception have shown that people tend to overestimate risks that are unfamiliar, hard to understand, invisible, involuntary, and/or potentially catastrophic — and vice versa. Thus, they overestimate invisible “threats” such as electromagnetic radiation and trace amounts of pesticides in foods, which inspire uncertainty and fear sometimes verging on superstition. Conversely, they tend to underestimate risks the nature of which they consider to be clear and comprehensible, such as using a chain saw or riding a motorcycle.

3. Precautionary principle fails in practice—fails to properly balance risks

Henry I. Miller, Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, and Gregory Conko, Director of Food Safety Policy, Competitive Enterprise Institute, “The Perils of Precaution,” POLICY REVIEW, June/July 2001, www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3476776.html, accessed 9-7-12. The FDA is not unique in this regard, of course. All regulatory agencies are subject to the same sorts of social and political History offers compelling reasons to be cautious about societal risks, to be sure. These include the risk of incorrectly assuming the absence of danger (false negatives), overlooking low probability but high impact events in risk assessments, the danger of long latency periods before problems become apparent, and the lack of remediation methods in the event of an adverse event. Conversely, there are compelling reasons to be wary of excessive precaution, including the risk of too eagerly detecting a nonexistent danger (false positives), the financial cost of testing for or remediating low-risk problems, the opportunity costs of forgoing net-beneficial activities, and the availability of a contingency regime in case of an adverse event. The challenge for regulators is to balance these competing risk scenarios in a way that reduces overall harm to public health. This kind of risk balancing is often conspicuously absent from precautionary regulation.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Sea Level Rise 1. Sea levels change for lots of reasons that are not related to CO2

Ian Plimer, Professor, Mining Geology, University of Adelaide, “The Climate Change Myth,” BUSINESS WORLD, 12—5—11, lexis. Sea level has risen and fallen by up to 1,500 metres. In the current interglacial-glaciation cycles, sea level changes by 130 metres. Between 12,000 and 6,000 years ago, sea level rose 130 metres and maximum interglacial temperature and sea level was 6,000 years ago. In many parts of the world, sea level has actually fallen. Further, not only does sea level rise and fall rapidly, but the land level rises and falls. So to only focus on sea level changes from climate change is invalid. In areas where there is sediment compaction (say, deltas), extraction of water, gas and oil from sediments and sedimentary rocks, sediment loading by ice and rifting, the land level is falling. In areas that have been unloaded of ice (Scandinavia, for example), undergoing intense weathering and erosion, continental and rift margins, areas undergoing compression (Maldives, volcanic island chains) or areas of active coral atoll growth, the land level is rising. Sea level can change due to gravity, meteorological effects, ice melting, water expansion and sea floor level changes. It is a very long bow to draw that human additions of CO2 warm the planet such that ice melts thereby raising sea level. Slight warming of ice at -40C will not cause melting. Further, ice in both the Greenland and Antarctic basins flows uphill before it flows to the coast as a glacier. If we really want to worry about the melting of ice sheets and sea level rise, we need to be concerned about the large volcanoes that sleep restlessly underneath the Antarctic ice.

2. Infrastructure investments can protect against sea level rise Dr. Indur Goklany, environment and development analyst, “What to Do About Climate Change,” POLICY ANALYSIS n. 609, Cato Institute, 2—5—08, p. 18-19. According to estimates in the latest IPCC (2007) report, the annual cost of protecting against a sea level rise of about 0.66 meters in 2100—equivalent to about 0.52 meters in 2085 compared with 0.34 meters under the warmest (A1FI) scenario—would vary from $2.6 to $10 billion during the 21st century.7 I will assume $10 billion for the purposes of this paper. Governments could, moreover, discourage maladaptation by refusing to subsidize insurance and/or protective measures that allow individuals to offload private risks to the broader public.

3. Even the IPCC concedes that any sea-level rise will be small

Ben Lieberman, Senior Policy Analyst, Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, Heritage Foundation, “Frequently Asked Questions About Global Warming,” WEBMEMO n. 1403, 3-21-07, www.heritage.org/research/reports/2007/03/frequently-asked-questions-about-global-warming, accessed 9-5-12. Q: Are we facing 20-foot sea level rise because of global warming? This is highly unlikely and not part of any scientific consensus. In his book and documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore chose to focus on the catastrophic impacts of an 18 to 20 foot sea level rise, including numerous highly populated coastal areas falling into the sea. The recently released summary of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, however, estimates a sea level rise of only 7 to 23 inches over the next century, and there are reasons to believe that even that may be overstating things.

4. Is no real sea level rise—is an artifact of starting measurement during an unusual low point

Sherwood B. and Craig D. Idso, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change “Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: Separating Scientific Fact from Personal Opinion,” 6-6-07, http://co2science.org/education/reports/hansen/hansencritique.php, accessed 9-5-12. Lombard et al. (2005) studied temperature-induced (thermosteric) sea-level change over the last 50 years using the global ocean temperature data of Levitus et al. (2000) and Ishii et al. (2003). In doing so, they found thermosteric sea level variations are dominated by decadal oscillations of earth's major ocean-atmosphere climatic perturbations (El Niño-Southern Oscillation, Pacific Decadal Oscillation and North Atlantic Oscillation), and that thermosteric trends computed over 10-year windows exhibit 20-year oscillations with positive values of 1 to 1.5 mm/year and negative values of -1 to -1.5 mm/year. Hence, over the 50 years for which global ocean temperature data exist, there has indeed been a rise in sea level due to the thermal expansion of sea water, but only because the record begins at the bottom of a trough and ends at the top of a peak. Between these two points, there are both higher and lower values, obscuring what might be implied if earlier data were available or what may be suggested as more data are acquired. Noting further that sea level trends derived from Topex/Poseidon altimetry from 1993 to 2003 are "mainly caused by thermal expansion" and are "very likely a non-permanent feature," Lombard et al. conclude that "we simply cannot extrapolate sea level into the past or the future using satellite altimetry alone." Thus, it is to long-term coastal tide gauge records that we must turn for an evaluation of Hansen's claim that the rate of sea level rise is accelerating.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Answers--Water / War 1. Climate change does not cause wars--driven by people's behavior, will be slow

James Jay Carafano, PhD and analyst, Heritage Foundation, "National Security Not a Good Argument for Global Warming Legislation," WEBMEMO, 8—3—09, www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2009/08/National-Security-Not-a-Good-Argument-for-Global-Warming-Legislation, accessed 6-3-11 Additionally, viewing climate change as a national security crisis makes little sense. The global climate has always been changing. Adapting to these changes and human efforts to manage their surrounding environment is a permanent feature of human competition. The environment does not cause wars--it is how humans respond to their environment that causes conflicts. Thus, climate change does not necessarily ensure that there will be more or less conflict. For example, as the Arctic ice melts and the environment becomes more benign, Arctic waters will become more available for fishing, mineral and energy exploitation, and maritime transport. Nations will compete over these resources, but it is how they choose to compete--not the change in the weather--that will determine whether war breaks out. Furthermore, any changes in the climate, for better or for worse, will occur gradually over decades. Thus, there will be ample time to adjust national security and humanitarian assistance instruments to accommodate future demands.

2. A wide variety of adaptation measures solve any water impacts Dr. Indur Goklany, environment and development analyst, “What to Do About Climate Change,” POLICY ANALYSIS n. 609, Cato Institute, 2—5—08, p. 19. Although, as Table 3 shows, climate change could relieve water stress, there are many measures that would help societies cope with present and future water stress regardless of their cause. Among them are institutional reforms to treat water as an economic commodity by allowing market pricing and transferable property rights to water. Such reforms should stimulate widespread adoption of existing but underused conservation technologies and lead to more private-sector investment in R&D, which would reduce the demand for water by all sectors. For example, new or improved crops and techniques for more efficient use of water in agriculture could enhance agricultural productivity. That would provide numerous ancillary benefits, including reductions in the risk of hunger and pressures on freshwater biodiversity while also enhancing the opportunity for other in-stream uses (e.g., recreation). Notably, diversion of water to agricultural uses might be the largest current threat to freshwater biodiversity. Improvements in water conservation following such reforms are likely to be most pronounced for the agricultural sector, which is responsible for 85 percent of global water consumption. A reduction of 18 percent in agricultural water consumption would, on average, double the amount of water available for all other uses.

3. IPCC’s water claims ignore adaptation, technology Indur Goklany, PhD., “Misled on Climate change: How the UN IPCC (and others) Exaggerate the Impacts of Global Warming,” POLICY STUDY n. 399, Reason Foundation, 12—11, 13. Professor Martin Parry, was the co-chair of IPCC Working Group 2 during its latest (2007) assessment. Similarly, the authors of the FTA’s water resources and coastal flooding studies were also lead authors of corresponding chapters in the same IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. A dissection of the FTA methodologies shows that: * The water resources study31 totally ignores adaptation, despite the fact that many adaptations to water-related problems, e.g., building dams, reservoirs and canals, are among mankind’s oldest adaptations, and do not depend on the development of any new technologies.

4. FTA study shows that warming will decrease water shortages Indur Goklany, PhD., “Misled on Climate change: How the UN IPCC (and others) Exaggerate the Impacts of Global Warming,” POLICY STUDY n. 399, Reason Foundation, 12—11, 17-18. FTA results also indicate that by 2085, global warming would reduce the global population at risk of water shortages, although some areas would see increases. This finding is contrary to the erroneous impression conveyed by the IPCC’s AR4’s Working Group II Summary for Policy Makers because that summary emphasizes the number of people that may experience an increase in water shortage but neglects to provide corresponding estimates for the number that would see a reduction in water shortage. However, the finding that the net population experiencing water shortage would be reduced is consistent with other studies of the global impact of global warming on water resources. Remarkably, this result is obtained despite the fact that the author of the study does not allow for any adaptation and, consequently, nor does it account for advances in adaptive capacity that should logically occur under the IPCC scenarios. Had adaptation been considered, the net population at risk of water shortage due to global warming would have decreased even more substantially than the author indicates.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Good--CO2 Fertilization (Top) 1. CO2 will address the food crisis, prevent the starvation of hundreds of millions of people—emissions cuts trigger a massive food crisis

Dr. Craig D. Idso, ESTIMATES OF GLOBAL FOOD PRODUCTION IN THE YEAR 2050: WILL WE PRODUCE ENOUGH TO ADEQUATELY FEED THE WORLD, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, 6—15—11, p. 30-31. As indicated in the material above, a very real and devastating food crisis is looming on the horizon, and continuing advancements in agricultural technology and expertise will most likely not be able to bridge the gap between global food supply and global food demand just a few short years from now. However, the positive impact of Earth’s rising atmospheric CO2 concentration on crop yields will considerably lessen the severity of the coming food shortage. In some regions and countries it will mean the difference between being food secure or food insecure; and it will aid in lifting untold hundreds of millions out of a state of hunger and malnutrition, preventing starvation and premature death. For those regions of the globe where neither enhancements in the techno-intel effect nor the rise in CO2 are projected to foster food security, an Apollo moon-mission-like commitment is needed by governments and researchers to further increase crop yields per unit of land area planted, nutrients applied, and water used. And about the only truly viable option for doing so (without taking enormous amounts of land and water from nature and driving untold numbers of plant and animal species to extinction) is to have researchers and governments invest the time, effort and capital needed to identify and to prepare for production the plant genotypes that are most capable of maximizing CO2 benefits for important food crops. Rice, for example, is the third most important global food crop, accounting for 9.4% of global food production. Based upon data presented in the CO2 Science Plant Growth Database, the average growth response of rice to a 300-ppm increase in the air’s CO2 concentration is 35.7%. However, data obtained from De Costa et al. (2007), who studied the growth responses of 16 different rice genotypes, revealed CO2-induced productivity increases ranging from -7% to +263%. Therefore, if countries learned to identify which genotypes provided the largest yield increases per unit of CO2 rise, and then grew those genotypes, it is quite possible that the world could collectively produce enough food to supply the needs of all of its inhabitants. But since rising CO2 concentrations are considered by many people to be the primary cause of global warming, we are faced with a dilemma of major proportions. If proposed regulations restricting anthropogenic CO2 emissions (which are designed to remedy the potential global warming problem) are enacted, they will greatly exacerbate future food problems by reducing the CO2-induced yield enhancements that are needed to supplement increases provided by advances in agricultural technology and expertise. And as a result of such CO2 emissions regulations, hundreds of millions of the world’s population will be subjected to hunger and malnutrition. Even more troubling is the fact that thousands would die daily as a result of health problems they likely would have survived had they received adequate food and nutrition. About the only option for avoiding the food crisis, and its negative ramifications for humanity and nature alike, is to allow the atmospheric CO2 concentration to continue to rise as predicted (no CO2 emission restrictions), and then to learn to maximize those benefits through the growing of CO2-loving cultivars.

2. This food crisis is worse than the effects of climate change Dr. Craig D. Idso, ESTIMATES OF GLOBAL FOOD PRODUCTION IN THE YEAR 2050: WILL WE PRODUCE ENOUGH TO ADEQUATELY FEED THE WORLD, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, 6—15—11, p. 31-32. In light of the host of real-world research findings discussed in the body of this report, it should be evident to all that the looming food shortage facing humanity mere years to decades from now is far more significant than the theoretical and largely unproven catastrophic climate- and weather-related projections of the world’s climate alarmists. And it should also be clear that the factor that figures most prominently in both scenarios is the air’s CO2 content. The theorists proclaim that we must drastically reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions by whatever means possible, including drastic government interventions in free-market enterprise systems. The realists suggest that letting economic progress take its natural unimpeded course is the only way to enable the air’s CO2 content to reach a level that will provide the aerial fertilization effect of atmospheric CO2 enrichment that will be needed to provide the extra food production that will be required to forestall massive human starvation and all the social unrest and warfare that will unavoidably accompany it, as well as humanity’s decimation of what little yet remains of pristine nature, which will include the driving to extinction of untold numbers of both plant and animal species. Climate alarmists totally misuse the precautionary principle when they ignore the reality of the approaching lack-of-food-induced crisis that would decimate the entire biosphere, and when they claim instead that the catastrophic projections of their climate models are so horrendous that anthropogenic CO2 emissions must be reduced at all costs. Such actions should not even be contemplated without first acknowledging the fact that none of the catastrophic consequences of rising global temperatures have yet been conclusively documented, as well as the much greater likelihood of the horrendous global food crisis that would follow such actions. The two potential futures must be weighed in the balance, and very carefully, before any such actions are taken.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Good--CO2 Fertilization (General Ext) 1. CO2 fuels plant growth—emissions cuts massive food shortage

Philip V. Brennan, journalist, “Inconvenient Facts About Climate Change,” NEWSMAX, 6-10-08, http://www.newsmax.com/brennan/climate-change/2008/06/10/id/324056, accessed 9-5-12. Having swallowed that absurdity, the global warming juggernaut rolls on towards the goal of legislating a reduction of CO2 levels to prevent future global warming at the very moment when the world is rapidly entering a period of sustained cooling. Nobody bothers to consider the consequences of this absurdity. Should their plans succeed and CO2 levels be drastically reduced, a genuine global disaster would inevitably follow because we need healthy levels of that essential gas to just to survive. It feeds to plant life that feeds us. As Lawrence Solomon, onetime global warming enthusiast and author of "The Deniers" wrote in his June 7 Financial Post article, "In Praise of CO2," scientists Steven Running of the University of Montana and Ramakrishna Nemani of NASA, found that "over a period of almost two decades, the Earth as a whole became more bountiful by a whopping 6.2%. About 25% of the Earth's vegetated landmass — almost 110 million square kilometres — enjoyed significant increases and only 7% showed significant declines. When the satellite data zooms in, it finds that each square metre of land, on average, now produces almost 500 grams of greenery per year." That study Solomon notes, shows how CO2 is nature's fertilizer, bathing the biota with its life-giving nutrients. Plants, he wrote, use the carbon from CO2 to "bulk themselves up," explaining that carbon is the building block of life. Moreover, they release oxygen, which along with the plants, then sustain animal life. "As summarized in a report last month, released along with a petition signed by 32,000 U. S. scientists who vouched for the benefits of CO2: 'Higher CO2 enables plants to grow faster and larger and to live in drier climates. Plants provide food for animals, which are thereby also enhanced. The extent and diversity of plant and animal life have both increased substantially during the past half-century,'" he wrote. All that is in jeopardy thanks to the foolhardiness of the global warming fanatics who want to defy the laws of nature by robbing mankind of the benefits of CO2, a gas essential to our civilization.

2. CO2 emissions massively benefit plants, prevent a bevy problems

NIPCC, Nongovernment International Panel on Climate Change, CLIMATE CHANGE RECONSIDERED, Craig Idso, S. Fred Singer, Warren Anderson, J.Scott Armstrong, Dennis Avery, Franco Battaglia, Robert Carter, Piers Corbyn, Richard Courtney, Joseph d’Aleo, Don Easterbrook, Fred Goldberg, Vicent Gray, Williams Gray, Kesten Green, Kenneth Haapala, David Hagen, Richard Alan Keen, adhav Khandekar, William Kininmonth, Hans Labohm, Anthony Lupo, Howard Maccabee, M.Michael MOgil, Christopher Monckton, Lubos Motl, Stephen Murgatroyd, Nicola Scafetta, Harrison Schmitt, Tom Segalstad, George Taylor, Dick Thoenes, Anton Uriarte Gerd Weber, 2009, p. 6-7. Chapter 7. Biological Effects of Carbon Dioxide Enhancement • A 300-ppm increase in the air’s CO2 content typically raises the productivity of most herbaceous plants by about one-third; and this positive response occurs in plants that utilize all three of the major biochemical pathways (C3, C4, CAM) of photosynthesis. For woody plants, the response is even greater. The productivity benefits of CO2 enrichment are also experienced by aquatic plants, including freshwater algae and macrophytes, and marine microalgae and macroalgae. • The amount of carbon plants gain per unit of water lost—or water-use efficiency—typically rises as the CO2 content of the air rises, greatly increasing their ability to withstand drought. In addition, the CO2-induced percentage increase in plant biomass production is often greater under water-stressed conditions than it is when plants are well watered. • Atmospheric CO2 enrichment helps ameliorate the detrimental effects of several environmental stresses on plant growth and development, including high soil salinity, high air temperature, low light intensity and low levels of soil fertility. Elevated levels of CO2 have additionally been demonstrated to reduce the severity of low temperature stress, oxidative stress, and the stress of herbivory. In fact, the percentage growth enhancement produced by an increase in the air’s CO2 concentration is often even greater under stressful and resource-limited conditions than it is when growing conditions are ideal. • As the air’s CO2 content continues to rise, plants will likely exhibit enhanced rates of photosynthesis and biomass production that will not be diminished by any global warming that might occur concurrently. In fact, if the ambient air temperature rises, the growth-promoting effects of atmospheric CO2 enrichment will likely also rise, becoming more and more robust. • The ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content likely will not favor the growth of weedy species over that of crops and native plants. • The growth of plants is generally not only enhanced by CO2-induced increases in net photosynthesis during the light period of the day, it is also enhanced by CO2-induced decreases in respiration during the dark period. • The ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content, as well as any degree of warming that might possibly accompany it, will not materially alter the rate of decomposition of the world’s soil organic matter and will probably enhance biological carbon sequestration. Continued increases in the air’s CO2 concentration and temperature will not result in massive losses of carbon from earth’s peatlands. To the contrary, these environmental changes—if they persist—would likely work together to enhance carbon capture. • Other biological effects of CO2 enhancement include enhanced plant nitrogen-use efficiency, longer residence time of carbon in the soil, and increased populations of earthworms and soil nematodes. • The aerial fertilization effect of the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 concentration (which greatly enhances vegetative productivity) and its anti-transpiration effect (which enhances plant water-use efficiency and enables plants to grow in areas that were once too dry for them) are stimulating plant growth across the globe in places that previously were too dry or otherwise unfavorable for plant growth, leading to a significant greening of the Earth. • Elevated CO2 reduces, and nearly always overrides, the negative effects of ozone pollution on plant photosynthesis, growth and yield. It also reduces atmospheric concentrations of isoprene, a highly reactive non-methane hydrocarbon that is emitted in copious quantities by vegetation and is responsible for the production of vast amounts of tropospheric ozone.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Good--CO2 Fertilization (General Ext) [cont’d]

3. CO2 address ALL of the triggers for a future increase in ag production—yields, nutrient efficiency, water efficiency

Dr. Craig D. Idso, ESTIMATES OF GLOBAL FOOD PRODUCTION IN THE YEAR 2050: WILL WE PRODUCE ENOUGH TO ADEQUATELY FEED THE WORLD, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, 6—15—11, p. 24-25. In our efforts to meet the three tasks set forth by Tilman et al. (2002) to (1) increase crop yield per unit of land area, (2) increase crop yield per unit of nutrients applied, and (3) increase crop yield per unit of water used, humanity is fortunate to have a powerful ally in the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content. Since atmospheric CO2 is the basic “food” of nearly all plants, the more of it there is in the air, the better they function and the more productive they become. For a 300-ppm increase in the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration above the planet’s current base level of slightly less than 400 ppm, for example, the productivity of Earth’s herbaceous plants rises by something on the order of 30 to 50% (Kimball, 1983; Idso and Idso, 1994), while the productivity of its woody plants rises by something on the order of 50 to 80% (Saxe et al., 1998; Idso and Kimball, 2001). Thus, as the air’s CO2 content continues to rise, so too will the productive capacity or land-use efficiency of the planet continue to rise, as the aerial fertilization effect of the upward-trending atmospheric CO2 concentration boosts the growth rates and biomass production of nearly all plants in nearly all places. In addition, elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations typically increase plant nutrient-use efficiency in general – and nitrogen-use efficiency in particular – as well as plant water-use efficiency. Consequently, with respect to fostering all three of the plant physiological phenomena Tilman et al. (2002) contend are needed to prevent the catastrophic consequences they foresee for the planet just a few short decades from now, a continuation of the current upward trend in the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration as projected by the IPCC would appear to be essential.

4. CO2 will boost food production by fifty percent over the next 40 years

Dr. Craig D. Idso, ESTIMATES OF GLOBAL FOOD PRODUCTION IN THE YEAR 2050: WILL WE PRODUCE ENOUGH TO ADEQUATELY FEED THE WORLD, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, 6—15—11, p. 15-17. The results of the world food supply calculations are contained in Table 3. Column one lists the forty-five crops that provided 95% of the total food production of all the planet’s agricultural enterprises over the period 1995-2009, the individual percentage contributions of which (listed in column 2) are assumed will remain constant to the year 2050. The third column lists the linear regression-based modeled production values of these crops in 2009. The fourth column lists the production values of the crops projected for the year 2050 on the basis of techno-intel-induced enhancements of the agricultural enterprise, as calculated in the previous section of this paper; while the fifth column lists the techno-intel production values plus enhancements due to the increase in the air’s CO2 content expected to occur between 2009 and 2050. Summing the food production contributions reported in columns three, four and five, it can be seen that for the world as a whole, total food production is estimated to increase by 34.5% between 2009 and 2050 due to the techno-intel effect alone, but that it will increase by 51.5% due to the combined consequences of the techno-intel effect and the CO2 aerial fertilization effect. Both of these percentage increases, however, fall far short of the estimated 70 to 100 percent increase in agricultural production needed to feed the planet’s growing population by the year 2050, as per the calculations of Bruinsma (2009), Parry and Hawkesford (2010) and Zhu et al. (2010).

5. Future emissions will continue to boost yields—helps address food problems Dr. Craig D. Idso, ESTIMATES OF GLOBAL FOOD PRODUCTION IN THE YEAR 2050: WILL WE PRODUCE ENOUGH TO ADEQUATELY FEED THE WORLD, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, 6—15—11, p. 9. Because thousands of laboratory and field experiments have demonstrated that atmospheric CO2 enrichment significantly enhances plant growth and water use efficiency, and because those benefits have positively impacted crop yields in the past, there is ample reason to believe that future increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration will produce increases in crop yields in addition to those expected to result from future advancements in agricultural technology and expertise. And since the ever-present dynamic of supply and demand for food is of critical importance to the human inhabitants of the globe, it seems only prudent to explore the role that the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 concentration may play in sustaining humanity throughout the 21st century, via the balance that must be struck between the production and consumption of food. Hence, it is to this important task that we now turn our attention.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Good--CO2 Fertilization (Plant Growth) 1. Emissions cuts risk massive famine

Philip V. Brennan, journalist, “Inconvenient Facts About Climate Change,” NEWSMAX, 6-10-08, http://www.newsmax.com/brennan/climate-change/2008/06/10/id/324056, accessed 9-5-12. What makes this even more hilarious is the fact that the period of global warming earth has experienced since the end of the little ice age is coming to a sudden halt. Solomon says, "The oceans, which have been releasing their vast store of carbon dioxide as the planet has warmed — CO2 is released from oceans as they warm and dissolves in them when they cool — will start to take the carbon dioxide back. With less heat and less carbon dioxide, the planet could become less hospitable and less green . . . "Doubling the jeopardy for Earth is man. Unlike the many scientists who welcome CO2 for its benefits, many other scientists and most governments believe carbon dioxide to be a dangerous pollutant that must be removed from the atmosphere at all costs. Governments around the world are now enacting massive programs in an effort to remove as much as 80% of the carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere." That's not going green. It the browning of the earth and with it the specter of mass famine.

2. New plant types are being developed to take advantage of a CO2-rich atmosphere

Dr. Craig D. Idso, ESTIMATES OF GLOBAL FOOD PRODUCTION IN THE YEAR 2050: WILL WE PRODUCE ENOUGH TO ADEQUATELY FEED THE WORLD, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, 6—15—11, p. 25. Recognizing these benefits, some researchers have begun to explore ways in which to maximize the influence of atmospheric CO2 on crop yields even more. Much of these efforts are devoted to identifying “super” hybrid cultivars that can “further break the yield ceiling” presently observed in many crops (Yang et al., 2009). De Costa et al. (2007), for example, grew 16 genotypes of rice (Oryza sativa L.) under standard lowland paddy culture with adequate water and nutrients within open-top chambers maintained at either the ambient atmospheric CO2 concentration (370 ppm) or at an elevated CO2 concentration (570 ppm). Results indicated that the CO2-induced enhancement of the light-saturated net photosynthetic rates of the 16 different genotypes during the grain-filling period of growth ranged from +2% to +185% in the yala season (May to August) and from +22% to +320% in the maha season (November to March). Likewise, they found that the CO2-induced enhancement of the grain yields of the 16 different genotypes ranged from +4% to +175% in the yala season and from -5% to +64% in the maha season.

3. Plants are naturally adapted to much higher CO2 levels Dr. William Happer, “The Truth About Greenhouse Gases,” George C. Marshall Institute, 5—23—11, www.marshall.org/article.php?id=953, accessed 6-19-12. As far as green plants are concerned, CO2 is not a pollutant, but part of their daily bread—like water, sunlight, nitrogen, and other essential elements. Most green plants evolved at CO2 levels of several thousand ppm, many times higher than now. Plants grow better and have better flowers and fruit at higher levels. Commercial greenhouse operators recognize this when they artificially increase the concentrations inside their greenhouses to over 1000 ppm.

4. Plants prefer higher temperatures in CO2-rich environments Sherwood Idso, Keith Idso and Craig Idso, “Plants of Today (And Even More So of Tomorrow): Free at Last!” CO2 SCIENCE MAGAZINE v. 15 n. 23, 6—6—12, http://co2science.org/articles/V15/N23/EDIT.php, accessed 7-12-12. On the other hand, earth's vegetation is not in "plant heaven" yet, for as Tissue and Lewis continue, "studies suggest that as CO2 rises from glacial to future levels, the limitation imposed by CO2 on growth and physiology becomes secondary to other environmental factors, such as temperature and drought." And so it does; but with more CO2 in the air, plants have been proven to be better able to deal with these stresses than they were over the prior 350 million years. In the case of rising temperatures, for example, there is abundant experimental evidence that at higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations plants actually prefer higher temperatures (see the many pertinent items we have archived under Growth Response to CO2 with Other Variables: Temperature in our Subject Index). And with respect to the stress of drought, plants are much better equipped to deal with it now-a-days in light of the increased water use efficiency that they typically exhibit in CO2-enriched air (see Growth Response to CO2 with Other Variables: Water Stress in our Subject Index). Yes, earth's plants are gradually being freed from the environmental fetters that have for so long held them back and prevented them from exhibiting their true productivity potential, thanks to the life-giving carbon dioxide that has been emitted to the atmosphere by mankind's historic and ongoing burning of fossil fuels. Long may the trend continue!


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Good--CO2 Fertilization (Plant Growth) [cont’d]

5. Higher temperatures do not hinder photosynthesis

Craig D. Idso PhD and Sherwood B. Idso, PhD, CARBON DIOXIDE AND EARTH’S FUTURE: PURSUING THE PRUDENT PATH, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, 2—2—11, p. 87. With respect to rising temperatures and their effect on photosynthesis, Kirschbaum states that “all plants appear to be capable of a degree of adaptation to growth conditions,” noting that “photosynthesis in some species can function adequately up to 50°C.” In fact, he says that “photosynthesis can acclimate considerably to actual growth conditions,” noting that “optimum temperatures for photosynthesis acclimate by about 0.5°C per 1.0°C change in effective growth temperature (Berry and Bjorkman, 1980; Battaglia et al., 1996).” This response, wherein plants adjust the workings of their photosynthetic apparatus to perform better at higher temperatures as temperatures rise, would appear to be especially beneficial in a warming world.

6. Higher CO2 levels boost plant productivity—multiple mechanisms Dr. Craig D. Idso, ESTIMATES OF GLOBAL FOOD PRODUCTION IN THE YEAR 2050: WILL WE PRODUCE ENOUGH TO ADEQUATELY FEED THE WORLD, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, 6—15—11, p. 7. The idea that an increase in the air’s CO2 content may be of benefit to the biosphere can be traced back in time over 200 years. As early as 1804, for example, de Saussure showed that peas exposed to high CO2 concentrations grew better than control plants in ambient air; and work conducted in the early 1900s significantly increased the number of species in which this growth-enhancing effect of atmospheric CO2 enrichment was observed to occur (Demoussy, 1902-1904; Cummings and Jones, 1918). In fact, by the time a group of scientists convened at Duke University in 1977 for a workshop on Anticipated Plant Responses to Global Carbon Dioxide Enrichment, an annotated bibliography of 590 scientific studies dealing with CO2 effects on vegetation had been prepared (Strain, 1978). This body of research demonstrated that increased levels of atmospheric CO2 generally produce increases in plant photosynthesis, decreases in plant water loss by transpiration, increases in leaf area, and increases in plant branch and fruit numbers, to name but a few of the most commonly reported benefits. And five years later, at the International Conference on Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Plant Productivity, it was concluded that a doubling of the air’s CO2 concentration would likely lead to a 50% increase in photosynthesis in C3 plants, a doubling of water use efficiency in both C3 and C4 plants, significant increases in biological nitrogen fixation in almost all biological systems, and an increase in the ability of plants to adapt to a variety of environmental stresses (Lemon, 1983).

7. CO2 is plant food—aids their growth, are adapted to higher concentrations

Claude Allegre Jr., former director, Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris, along with over a dozen other scientists, “Climate Change ‘Heretics’ Refute Carbon Dangers,” THE AUSTRALIAN, 2—1—12 p. 14+. The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colourless and odourless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilisers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

8. CO2 addresses water shortages—increases plant water use efficiency Dr. Craig D. Idso, ESTIMATES OF GLOBAL FOOD PRODUCTION IN THE YEAR 2050: WILL WE PRODUCE ENOUGH TO ADEQUATELY FEED THE WORLD, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, 6—15—11, p. 27-28. Lastly, in the case of drought, we again have the nearly universal bettering of plant water use efficiency that is induced by atmospheric CO2 enrichment. Fleisher et al. (2008), for example, grew potato plants (Solanum tuberosum cv. Kennebec) from “seed tubers” in soil-plant-atmosphere research chambers maintained at daytime atmospheric CO2 concentrations of either 370 or 740 ppm under well-watered and progressively water-stressed conditions. And in doing so, they found that “total biomass, yield and water use efficiency increased under elevated CO2, with the largest percent increases occurring at irrigations that induced the most water stress.” In addition, they report that “water use efficiency was nearly doubled under enriched CO2 when expressed on a tuber fresh weight basis.” These results indicate, in the words of the three researchers, that “increases in potato gas exchange, dry matter production and yield with elevated CO2 are consistent at various levels of water stress as compared with ambient CO2,” providing what we so desperately need in today’s world, and what we will need even more as the world’s population continues to grow: significantly enhanced food production per unit of water used. And there are many other studies that have produced similar results (De Luis et al., 1999; Kyei-Boahen et al., 2003; Kim et al., 2006).


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Good--Greening 1. The more the merrier—increases in co2 levels will prevent us from decimating the biosphere

Sherwood B. and Craig D. Idso, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change “Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: Separating Scientific Fact from Personal Opinion,” 6--6--07, http://co2science.org/education/reports/hansen/hansencritique.php, accessed 9-5-12. Since atmospheric CO2 is the basic "food" of nearly all plants, the more of it there is in the air, the better they function and the more productive they become. For a 300-ppm increase in the atmosphere's CO2 concentration above the planet's current base level of slightly less than 400 ppm, for example, the productivity of earth's herbaceous plants rises by something on the order of 30% (Kimball, 1983; Idso and Idso, 1994), while the productivity of its woody plants rises by something on the order of 50% (Saxe et al., 1998; Idso and Kimball, 2001). Thus, as the air's CO2 content continues to rise, so too will the productive capacity or land-use efficiency of the planet continue to rise, as the aerial fertilization effect of the upward-trending atmospheric CO2 concentration boosts the growth rates and biomass production of nearly all plants in nearly all places. In addition, elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations typically increase plant nutrient-use efficiency in general - and nitrogen-use efficiency in particular - as well as plant water-use efficiency, as may be verified by perusing the many reviews of scientific journal articles we have produced on these topics and archived in the Subject Index of our website (www.co2science.org). Consequently, with respect to fostering all three of the plant physiological phenomena that Tilman et al. (2002) contend are needed to prevent the catastrophic consequences they foresee for the planet just a few short decades from now, a continuation of the current upward trend in the atmosphere's CO2 concentration would appear to be essential. In the case we are considering here, for example, the degree of crop yield enhancement likely to be provided by the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration expected to occur between 2000 and 2050 has been calculated by Idso and Idso (2000) to be sufficient - but only by the slightest of margins - to compensate for the huge differential that is expected to otherwise prevail between the supply and demand for food earmarked for human consumption just 43 years from now. Consequently, letting the evolution of technology take its natural course, with respect to anthropogenic CO2 emissions, would appear to be the only way we will ever be able to produce sufficient agricultural commodities to support ourselves in the year 2050 without the taking of unconscionable amounts of land and freshwater resources from nature and decimating the biosphere in the process.

2. Many studies prove that warming will actually increase biodiversity

Sherwood B. and Craig D. Idso, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change “Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: Separating Scientific Fact from Personal Opinion,” 6--6--07, http://co2science.org/education/reports/hansen/hansencritique.php, accessed 9-5-12. Hansen also foresees a warming-induced "extermination of a large fraction of plant and animal species," with many at high latitudes and altitudes being "pushed off the planet." However, as demonstrated by the scientific studies we cite, warming - especially when accompanied by an increase in the atmosphere's CO2 concentration - typically results in an expansion of the ranges of terrestrial plants and animals, leading to increases in biodiversity almost everywhere on the planet. Likewise, where Hansen sees nothing but "destruction of coral reefs and other ocean life" in response to a predicted CO2-induced acidification of the world's oceans, real-world observations suggest just the opposite.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Good--Ice Age (Top) 1. Human CO2 emissions are vital to preventing the next ice age

PERISCOPE POST, “Human Carbon Emissions Have Averted Ice Age, Say Scientists, But Global Warming Dangers Remain,” 1—9—12, npg. Scientists have published research suggesting human carbon emissions will prevent the next ice age. The news is likely to infuriate environmentalists while enthusing groups who oppose limiting carbon emissions. The advent of the next ice age is already behind schedule, reported The Telegraph: "Typically there is a period of about 11,000 years between ice ages, and with the last one ending 11,600 years ago the arrival of the next already appears overdue." Researchers suggested that this delay is due to the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. So if global warming is keeping us from freezing over, does that mean it's actually a good thing? Nothing new. Andrew C. Revkin reported for The New York Times Dot Earth blog that there is already a large body of scientific literature on the subject of whether greenhouse gases are preventing a big freeze. Revkin spoke to several researchers in the field on the matter, most of whom concluded that what's new about the latest study is the way in which those involved have calculated the "interglacials", which are the warmer periods between ice ages.

2. The next ice age could occur quickly, in less than 20 years, and threatens civilizaiton

Phil Chapman, geophysicist, “Sorry to Ruin the Fun, But an Ice Age Cometh,” THE AUSTRALIAN, 4-23-08, www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23583376-7583,00.html, accessed 9-5-12. It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850. There is no doubt that the next little ice age would be much worse than the previous one and much more harmful than anything warming may do. There are many more people now and we have become dependent on a few temperate agricultural areas, especially in the US and Canada. Global warming would increase agricultural output, but global cooling will decrease it. Millions will starve if we do nothing to prepare for it (such as planning changes in agriculture to compensate), and millions more will die from cold-related diseases. There is also another possibility, remote but much more serious. The Greenland and Antarctic ice cores and other evidence show that for the past several million years, severe glaciation has almost always afflicted our planet. The bleak truth is that, under normal conditions, most of North America and Europe are buried under about 1.5km of ice. This bitterly frigid climate is interrupted occasionally by brief warm interglacials, typically lasting less than 10,000 years. The interglacial we have enjoyed throughout recorded human history, called the Holocene, began 11,000 years ago, so the ice is overdue. We also know that glaciation can occur quickly: the required decline in global temperature is about 12C and it can happen in 20 years. The next descent into an ice age is inevitable but may not happen for another 1000 years. On the other hand, it must be noted that the cooling in 2007 was even faster than in typical glacial transitions. If it continued for 20 years, the temperature would be 14C cooler in 2027. By then, most of the advanced nations would have ceased to exist, vanishing under the ice, and the rest of the world would be faced with a catastrophe beyond imagining.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Good--Ice Age (Coming Now) 1. Temps have not increased in 15 years—may actually be on the brink of a new ice age

Dana Rohrabacher, U.S. Representative, “Forget Global Warming – It’s Cycle 25 We Need to Worry About,” STATES NEWS SERVICE, 2—1—12, lexis. The supposed "consensus' on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years. The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century. Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997. Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a "grand minimum' in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food. Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak. We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call "Cycle 24' - which is why last week's solar storm resulted in sightings of the aurora borealis further south than usual. But sunspot numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle peaks in the 20th Century. Analysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona - derived from magnetic-field measurements 120,000 miles beneath the sun's surface - suggest that Cycle 25, whose peak is due in 2022, will be a great deal weaker still. According to a paper issued last week by the Met Office, there is a 92 per cent chance that both Cycle 25 and those taking place in the following decades will be as weak as, or weaker than, the "Dalton minimum' of 1790 to 1830. In this period, named after the meteorologist John Dalton, average temperatures in parts of Europe fell by 2C. However, it is also possible that the new solar energy slump could be as deep as the "Maunder minimum' (after astronomer Edward Maunder), between 1645 and 1715 in the coldest part of the "Little Ice Age' when, as well as the Thames frost fairs, the canals of Holland froze solid.

2. Temperatures are dropping again—may be headed towards a new ice age Randy Mann, “World Headed Toward Mini Ice Age?” SPOKESMAN REVIEW, 2—23—12, p. S6. A report released at the end of January by British climate scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit showed that the Earth's average temperatures have dropped to the same levels seen back in 1997 before the so-called "big warmup." The average global temperature in 2011 was 0.68 degrees above normal. In the previous decade, the average temperature on this planet was 0.81 degrees above normal. The British scientists agree with many Russian and Japanese climate scientists that the world could be headed toward a mini ice age sometime in the near future. The new climate study suggests that the next significant cycle of cooling may rival the 70-year period in the mid-1600s that saw "frost fairs" held each winter season in London on the Thames River, which froze solid in January and February.

3. We are already experiencing global cooling—recent weather events prove

Phil Brennan, journalist, “Some Unpleasant Facts About Climate Change,” NEWSMAX, 6-17-08, http://www.newsmax.com/brennan/climate-change/2008/06/17/id/324152, accessed 9-5-12. In case you haven't noticed, loveable old Mother Nature has been on a rampage lately, tearing up the global landscape with a frightening host of catastrophes that make poor old Al Gore's predictions of a French-fried earth look like invitations to a garden tea party. Earthquakes of substantial magnitude, floods inundating usually peacefully bucolic Midwestern areas, tornadoes of unprecedented ferocity, disasters that are leaving not only property losses of massive proportions in their wake, but claiming not inconsiderable numbers of human lives as well. For example, hundreds of thousands died in the Indonesian earthquake-induced tsunami and the recent Chinese earthquake alone. Something very unpleasant is going on, and before you jump to algorean conclusions, all of these catastrophes haven't got a damned thing to do with global warming. We are watching climate change develop, but its not the sort the global warming alarmists would have us believe is underway. It's global cooling on a massive scale. Let's start with the rash of tornadoes that have been tearing up large parts of the Midwest and Southeastern U.S. Torrents of rainfall have produced the tragic flooding we are now witnessing in places like Iowa, which is not, as you might speculate, being punished for giving Barack Obama a major primary victory but instead, it is in the wrong geographic location at this particular point in time. Ask any knowledgeable meteorologists what created the rash of tornadoes and floods and they'll tell you flat out that it is cold fronts coming south from the frozen North and running into warm tropical air from the South headed northward that set off tornadoes and torrential rainfall. The colder the front heading south and the warmer the front moving north, the worse the storms will be. That's right, cold fronts in late May and early to mid-June coming from Arctic and sub-Arctic regions that Mr. Gore assures us are well on the way towards becoming the new balmy global winter resorts.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Good--Ice Age (Warming Prevents) 1. CO2 emissions are effectively preventing the next ice age

UPI, “Human Emissions ‘Deferring’ Next Ice Age?”, 1—9—12, npg. Human emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, will delay the Earth's next Ice age, European, Canadian and U.S. scientists say. An international team of researchers says data on historical warm interglacial periods most like the current one suggest the Earth would be due for another Ice Age in 1,500 years, but human emissions have been so high it could be pushed farther into the future. If CO2 concentrations were at "natural" levels the glaciation cycle would hold, they say, but as things stand it will not. "I don't think it's realistic to think that we'll see the next glaciation on the [natural] timescale," Lawrence Mysak at McGill University in Montreal told BBC News.

2. Global warming will delay the next ice age—won’t come for 780K years Norbert Cunningham, “It’s Getting hotter, the Ice Age Will Have to Wait,” TIMES & TRANSCRIPT, 1—11—12, p. D6. The good news for those of us who don't particularly like those bone-chilling temperatures is that scientists studying ice ages on Earth have reported in the journal Nature Geoscience that the next one will almost certainly be delayed quite a while thanks to our present global warming trend and problem. So, assuming the global warming doesn't get us all, in about 1,500 year's time our descendants will be thanking us for giving them a considerable breathing period in which to figure out what to do about a pending new ice age! Mind you, there is much uncertainty about exact timing, but that's the best estimate for now. The scientists arrived at it by studying the periods between ice ages -- interglacials, they call them -- and comparing our present one with past ones, finding the best match way back about 780,000 years ago.

3. We are overdue for an ice age, CO2 emissions will avert it TELEGRAPH, “Carbon Emissions to Block Next Ice Age,” 1—9—12, lexis. Researchers from Cambridge University who examined variations in the Earth's orbit and global climate patterns calculated that the next ice age should begin within the next 1,500 years. But the impact of carbon dioxide emissions on the environment means that the global freeze which should be on its way will not be able to take hold, they said. The period between the end of an ice age and the beginning of the next is typically about 11,000 years due to a natural cycle related to the Earth's orbit. The temperate stretch in between global freezes can be longer or shorter depending on a number of factors, but with the last ice age having ended 11,600 years ago the arrival of another already appears overdue. The onset of an ice age is triggered by small changes in the Earth's orbit including the rotation of its axis and the extent to which it is inclined, which change gradually according to a cycle lasting tens of thousands of years.

4. Continued increases in CO2 emissions necessary to avoid an extinction-level ice age Drs. Keith & Craig Idso, “Global Climate Change: According to Hoyle... and Wickramasinghe Too!” CO2 SCIENCE MAGAZINE v. 4 n. 14, April 2001, http://www.co2science.org/articles/V4/N14/EDIT.php, accessed 5-3-08. But first we must consider what type of perturbation could send the planet reeling into the next scheduled ice age. High on Hoyle and Wickrainasinghe's list of potential triggering mechanisms is the creation of ice crystals in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, such as those that form over Antarctica during Southern Hemispheric winter. Such particles have a tremendous cooling power over the planet, as they are highly reflective of incoming solar radiation; and it would take only a small amount of them to dramatically raise the planet's albedo, sending us hurtling towards a rendezvous with cold so extreme that most of the biosphere would perish in the process. What keeps us from this fate? Hoyle and Wickramasinghe's analysis shows it is the latent heat supplied by the condensation of water vapor, carried upward by convection currents that provides the warmth needed to keep the dreaded ice crystals at bay; and they calculate that to be successful in this regard, enough moisture must be wafted upward to provide for an annual average precipitation total over the world of approximately 50 cm. Currently, mean global precipitation is about 80 cm, so we are safe; but, as the scientists say, "not by a wide margin” What is their prescription for a better safety margin? "We must look to a sustained greenhouse effect to maintain the present advantageous world climate," they say, for "the renewal of ice-age conditions would render a large fraction of the world's major food-growing areas inoperable, and so would inevitably lead to the extinction of most of the present human population." Indeed, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe indicate that "without some artificial means of giving positive feedback to the climate, ...an eventual drift into ice-age conditions appears inevitable."The policy implications of Hoyle and Wickrainasinghe's analysis are clear, crystal-clear, in fact; and they state them without equivocation. "Manifestly, we need all the greenhouse we can get," they say, noting that "those who have engaged in uncritical scaremongering over an enhanced greenhouse effect raising the Earth's temperature by a degree or two should be seen as both misguided and dangerous." for the problem of the present "is of a drift back into an ice-age. not away from an ice-age."


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Mitigation Not Justified: Climate Change Good--Ice Age (Ice Age Bad) 1. A new ice age risks widespread destruction

David Fisher, FIRE AND ICE: THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT, OZONE DEPLETION, AND NUCLEAR WINTER, 1990, p. 32. If we survived that ice age as savages, could we not survive the next one as a sophisticated civilization? Probably not. As savages we were free and nomadic; as a civilization of nations we are constrained and immobile. When the great ice sheets began their inexorable sweep southward twenty-some thousand years ago, the human tribe as well as the lower orders of animals moved ahead of them, felling the encroaching ice. Following their food supplies, they managed to survive and even flourish, and when the ice retreated, they followed it into North America. The whole world, after all, was never entirely crushed beneath the ice, nor were temperatures everywhere below freezing. But what would happen today if Russia became uninhabitable? Where would the Russians go if Germany were covered with ice, would the Germans be welcomed into Italy? if all of Canada and half of the United States lay beneath miles of ice, would Nicaragua open its arms to receive the refugees? Not according to our past. Global war would surely ensure and with nuclear weapons at our fingertips could extinction be far behind? Even without the threat of our self destruction, a new ice age would surely be a calamity dwarfing any in recorded history.

2. Onset of an ice age causes massive disasters Phil Brennan, journalist, “Some Unpleasant Facts About Climate Change,” NEWSMAX, 6-17-08, www.newsmax.com/brennan/climate_change/2008/06/17/105234.html, accessed 6-18-08. History has shown that the 20-year period that precedes the onset of glaciation, is one of increasing violence on a scale unheard of over the past 10,000 years. Earthquakes of incredible size and violence, rashes of incredibly destructive tornadoes, hurricanes and other violent storms, and natural disasters of a frequency and magnitude beyond anything our limited imaginations can conjure, await us in the immediate future. Every winter gets longer; every summer gets shorter; spring and fall disappear. Soon there are only winters — very frigid winters. And the ice man cometh.

3. A new ice age threatens to destroy humanity—driven by decreased solar output Zbigniew Jaworoski, Chair, Scientific Council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protections, Warsaw, “The Ice Age is Coming!” 21st CENTURY SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Winter 2003-2004, pp. 52-65. The current sunspot cycle is weaker than the preceding cycles, and the next two cycles will be even weaker. Bashkirtsev and Mishnich expect that the minimum of the secular cycle of solar activity will occur between 2021 and 2026, which will result in the minimum global temperature of the surface air. The shift from warm to cool climate might have already started. The average annual air temperature in Irkutsk, which correlates well with the average annual global temperature of the surface air, reached its maximum of +2.3°C in 1997, and then began to drop to +1.2°C in 1998, to +0.7°C in 1999, and to +0.4°C in 2000. This prediction is in agreement with major changes observed currently in biota of Pacific Ocean, associated with an oscillating climate cycle of about 50 years’ periodicity. The approaching new Ice Age poses a real challenge for mankind, much greater than all the other challenges in history. Before it comes—let’s enjoy the warming, this benign gift from nature, and let’s vigorously investigate the physics of clouds. F. Hoyle and C. Wickramasinghe58 stated recently that “without some artificial means of giving positive feedback to the climate . . . an eventual drift into Ice Age conditions appears inevitable.” These conditions “would render a large fraction of the world’s major food-growing areas inoperable, and so would inevitably lead to the extinction of most of the present human population.” According to Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, “those who have engaged in uncritical scaremongering over an enhanced greenhouse effect raising the Earth’s temperature by a degree or two should be seen as both misguided and dangerous,” for the problem of the present “is of a drift back into an Ice Age, not away from an Ice Age.”


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Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Adaptation Superior 1. Warming only modestly increases environmental problems—adaptation is a better option

Dr. Indur Goklany, environment and development analyst, “What to Do About Climate Change,” POLICY ANALYSIS n. 609, Cato Institute, 2—5—08, p. 2. This study examines whether climate change is in fact the world’s most pressing environmental and human health problem and considers the merits of mitigation (that is, policies that would restrict emissions or concentrations of greenhouse gases) versus adaptation (policies that would reduce or take advantage of the impact of the climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions) to address whatever problems are created or exacerbated. In short, careful analysis reveals that through the foreseeable future, climate change exacerbates existing environmental and human health problems, but only to a modest degree relative to contributions from other factors not related to climate change. Hence, the threats posed by climate change are more robustly and cost-effectively addressed, at least in the short- to medium-term, by policies that address the underlying causes of the environmental and human health problems that are exacerbated by climate change.

2. Climate action should be focused on mitigation efforts Dr. Indur Goklany, environment and development analyst, “What to Do About Climate Change,” POLICY ANALYSIS n. 609, Cato Institute, 2—5—08, p. 22. Third, policymakers should implement no-regret mitigation measures now, while expanding the range and diversity of future no-regret options. The latter could be advanced by research and development to improve existing— and develop new—technologies that would reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations more cost-effectively than currently possible. Should new information indicate that more aggressive mitigation action is necessary, future emission reductions might then be cheaper, even if they have to be deeper to compensate for a delay in a more aggressive response in the short term.

3. Adaptation, not cuts, will produce the highest level of future welfare Dr. Indur Goklany, environment and development analyst, “What to Do About Climate Change,” POLICY ANALYSIS n. 609, Cato Institute, 2—5—08, p. 22. Through 2085, human well-being is likely to be highest under the richest-but-warmest (A1FI) scenario and lowest for the poorest (A2) scenario. Matters may be best in the A1FI world for some critical environmental indicators through 2100, but not necessarily for others. Either focused adaptation or broad pursuit of sustainable development would provide far greater benefits than even the deepest mitigation—and at no greater cost than that of the barely effective Kyoto Protocol. For the foreseeable future, people will be wealthier—and their well-being higher—than is the case for present generations both in the developed and developing worlds and with or without climate change. The well-being of future inhabitants in today’s developing world would exceed that of the inhabitants of today’s developed world under all but the poorest scenario. Future generations should, moreover, have greater access to human capital and technology to address whatever problems they might face, including climate change. Hence the argument that we should shift resources from dealing with the real and urgent problems confronting present generations to solving potential problems of tomorrow’s wealthier and better positioned generations is unpersuasive at best and verging on immoral at worst.

4. Adaptation is better—currently ‘poor’ countries will have far more resources to do so in the future Indur Goklany, PhD., “Misled on Climate change: How the UN IPCC (and others) Exaggerate the Impacts of Global Warming,” POLICY STUDY n. 399, Reason Foundation, 12—11, 11-12. Figure 6 shows that despite the various assumptions that have been designed to overstate losses from GW and understate the unadjusted GDP per capita in the absence of any warming: * For populations living in countries currently classified as “developing,” net GDP per capita (after accounting for global warming) will be 11–65 times higher in 2100 than it was in the base year. It will be even higher (18–95 times) in 2200. * Net GDP per capita in today’s developing countries will be higher in 2200 than it was in industrialized countries in the base year (1990) under all scenarios, despite any global warming. That is, regardless of any global warming, populations living in today’s developing countries will be better off in the future than people currently inhabiting today’s industrialized countries. This is also true for 2100 for all but the “poorest” (A2) scenario. * Under the warmest scenario (A1FI), the scenario that prompts much of the apocalyptic warnings about global warming, net GDP per capita of inhabitants of developing countries in 2100 ($61,500) will be double that of the U.S. in 2006 ($30,100), and almost triple in 2200 ($86,200 versus $30,100). [All dollar estimates are in 1990 U.S. dollars.] In other words, the countries that are today poorer will be extremely wealthy (by today’s standards) and their adaptive capacity should be correspondingly higher. Indeed, their adaptive capacity should on average far exceed the U.S.’s today. So, although claims that poorer countries will be unable to cope with future climate change may have been true for the world of 1990 (the base year), they are simply inconsistent with the assumptions built into the IPCC scenarios and the Stern Review’s own (exaggerated) analysis.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Adaptation Superior [cont’d] 5. Investing in growth and adaptation is a much better way to deal with the problems of climate change

Robert W. Hahn, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute and Peter Passell, Senior Fellow, Milken Institute, “Time to Change U.S. Climate Policy,” ECONOMIST’S VOICE, October 2007, http://www.aei.org/article/energy-and-the-environment/time-to-change-us-climate-policy/, accessed 9-5-12. Reducing global emissions fast enough to stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide at an acceptable level, we are now told, could prove far more costly than the take-a-polar-bear-to-lunch bunch assumes. Dependence on electricity from coal, the premier source of carbon emissions, will be hard to break. Nuclear power is expensive, and bitterly opposed by many environmentalists, while alternative energy sources are equally expensive and--as the ethanol-from-corn boondoggle suggests--an invitation to economic dislocation and colossal waste. Anyway, these skeptics say, even if rich nations do grasp the nettle, China and India can't be jawboned into joining the effort. Indeed, as the Nobel Prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling has pointed out, poor countries have little incentive to divert money to reducing carbon emissions when the cheaper way to save lives and property is to invest in economic growth. After all, the reason so many die when the monsoons flood West Bengal is that they have neither the roads nor the vehicles to get out of harm's way.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Collective Responsibility Problems 1. Nationalizing responsibility does not make sense--nature of the harm and its cause do not allow for a ready assessment of guilt

Eric A. Posner, Professor, Law, University of Chicago and Cass R. Sunstein, Professor, Political Science, University of Chicago, "Climate Change Justice," GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL v. 96, 6--08, p. 1602. However appealing, corrective justice intuitions turn out to be a poor fit with the climate change problem--where the dispute is between nations, and where an extremely long period of time must elapse before the activity in question generates a harm. This is not to deny that a corrective justice argument can be cobbled together and presented as the basis of a kind of rough justice in an imperfect world. Perhaps the argument, while crude, is good enough to provide a factor in allocating the burdens of emissions reductions. Unfortunately, even that conclusion would rely on notions of collective responsibility that are not easy to defend. Most of the attractiveness of the corrective justice argument derives, we suspect, from suppressed redistributive and welfarist assumptions, or from collectivist habits of thinking that do not survive scrutiny. It is sometimes argued that because people take pride in the accomplishments of their nation, they should also take responsibility for its failures. Americans who take pride in their country's contributions to prosperity and freedom should also take responsibility for its contributions to global warming. This argument, however, is especially weak. Many people are proud that they are attractive or intelligent, or can trace their ancestry to the Mayflower, or live in a city with a winning baseball team, but nothing about these psychological facts implies moral obligations of any sort. A person who is proud to be American, and in this way derives welfare from her association with other Americans who have accomplished great things, perhaps should be (and is) less proud than she would be if she were not also associated with Americans who have done bad things. She does not have any moral obligation, deriving from her patriotic pride, to set aright what other Americans have done wrong. Here too, the argument has general implications. It is often tempting to invoke principles of corrective justice to ask one nation to compensate another. But especially when long periods of time have passed since the initial wrongdoing, the corrective justice argument runs into serious problems, and it is probably better to think in terms of redistribution or welfare.

2. Blaming wealthy nations does not make much sense--many of the emissions came from people who are already dead

Eric A. Posner, Professor, Law, University of Chicago and Cass R. Sunstein, Professor, Political Science, University of Chicago, "Climate Change Justice," GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL v. 96, 6--08, p. 1593. The current stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is a result of the behavior of people living in the past. Much of it is due to the behavior of people who are dead. The basic problem for corrective justice is that dead wrongdoers cannot be punished or held responsible for their behavior, or forced to compensate those they have harmed. At first glance, holding Americans today responsible for the activities of their ancestors is not fair or reasonable on corrective justice grounds, because current Americans are not the relevant wrongdoers; they are not responsible for the harm. Indeed, many Americans today do not support the current American energy policy and already make some sacrifices to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that result from their behavior. They avoid driving, they turn down the heat in their homes, and they support electoral candidates who advocate greener policies. Holding these people responsible for the wrongful activities of people who lived in the past seems perverse. An approach that emphasized corrective justice would attempt to be more finely tuned, focusing on particular actors, rather than Americans as a class, which would appear to violate deeply held moral objections to collective responsibility. The task would be to distinguish between the contributions of those who are living and those who are dead.

3. Many Americans did not even benefit from prior emissions

Eric A. Posner, Professor, Law, University of Chicago and Cass R. Sunstein, Professor, Political Science, University of Chicago, "Climate Change Justice," GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL v. 96, 6--08, p. 1593-1594. In the context of climate however, this argument runs into serious problems. The most obvious difficulty is empirical. It is true that many Americans benefit from past greenhouse-gas-emissions, but how many benefit, and how much do they benefit? Many Americans today are, of course, immigrants or children of immigrants, and so not the descendants of greenhouse-gas-emitting Americans of the past. Such people may nonetheless gain from past emissions, because they enjoy the kind of technological advance and material wealth that those emissions made possible. But have they actually benefited, and to what degree? Further, not all Americans inherit the wealth of their ancestors, and even those who do would not necessarily have inherited less if their ancestors' generations had not engaged in the greenhouse-gas-emitting activities. The idea of corrective justice, building on the tort analogy, does not seem to fit the climate change situation.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Domestic Poor Poeple 1. Not everyone in the U.S. has an equal burden to act--the domestic poor are not to blame

Maxine Burkett, Associate Professor, Law, University of Colorado, “Just Solutions to Climate change: A Climate Justice Proposal for a Domestic Clean Development Mechanism,” BUFFALO LAW REVIEW v. 56, April 2008, p. 197-198. One might argue in response that the resulting liability must apply to all Americans, even the poor, and the distributive justice argument is more appropriate when assessing relative distributions between nations. It is true that the discrepancies between nations is quite astonishing, with the entire continent of Africa contributing only three percent of total greenhouse gas emissions since 1900 as compared to two-thirds of total emissions generated by the United States and Western Europe. As Paul Baer convincingly argues, however, the "same distributional principles that apply between nations should apply within nations, with increased liability for those who are more responsible." Liability is, as Baer argues, unequally divided between classes in both the North and the South. While acknowledging the scarcity of information on intra-national distribution of emissions, he maintains that "there is a strong correlation between income and emissions, and between present income and past income." With that correlation established, Baer uses current income distributions as a proxy for historical emissions and attempts to calculate what is owed from the U.S. wealthy to the U.S. poor.

2. Disproportionate impact is the very definition of environmental injustice—those who bear the burden are not responsible for the problem, the impact is a legacy of social racism

Maxine Burkett, Associate Professor, Law, University of Colorado, “Just Solutions to Climate change: A Climate Justice Proposal for a Domestic Clean Development Mechanism,” BUFFALO LAW REVIEW v. 56, April 2008, p. 187-188. The profound injustices that inhere in climate change's disproportionate effects are obvious, yet two of them bear explication. One is that the unequal burden that is occurring, and is predicted, falls on those who have not been primarily responsible for climate change, domestically as well as internationally. African Americans, for example, are "less responsible for climate change than other Americans; ... at present, African Americans emit 20 percent less greenhouse gases per household," and on a per capita basis. It is also true that the less wealthy half of America, regardless of race, is far less responsible for carbon dioxide emissions as well. Further, historically these percentage disparities were even higher. The second, and perhaps most compelling, injustice is the compounding effect of the environmental risk on the underlying societal inequities - inequality that resulted in the uneven patterns of development and access to resources and opportunity in America. In other words, the legacy of slavery, segregation, the placement of reservations for indigenous populations, and the more elusive systemic discrimination that has followed, for example, is now locking in differentiated experiences of a warming planet. The reach of that racial discrimination has deep implications for the structuring of sound and just climate policy.

3. Basic morality requires that our abatement strategies account for their effects on the poor and communities of color

Maxine Burkett, Associate Professor, Law, University of Colorado, “Just Solutions to Climate change: A Climate Justice Proposal for a Domestic Clean Development Mechanism,” BUFFALO LAW REVIEW v. 56, April 2008, p. 192-194. The emerging field of "climate justice" is concerned with the intersection of race, poverty, and climate change. It takes, as a basic premise, that the disadvantaged in the United States stand to suffer the risks of warming more severely than others, as do their counterparts in the global South. Climate justice also recognizes the direct kinship between social inequality and environmental degradation, which is not isolated to the global south. The most obvious example is the relatively ubiquitous siting of industrial power plants in environmental justice communities, negatively affecting the public health and welfare of those who live in proximity while greatly contributing to global warming. As an ethical matter, an aggressive mitigation approach is virtually mandatory in light of the existing and predicted effects of climate change. Extensive greenhouse gas emissions are a result of industrialization, and the byproduct of this lifestyle is great social, economic, and ecological destruction, unevenly distributed. The response of the industrialized world, however, suggests blindness to the moral imperative at base. That it is wrong to harm others, or risk harming others, for one's own gain is a universal ethical principle. Paul Baer argues that the immorality of such action is justified by many moral frameworks, "from divine revelation to deontological ethics to social contract theory," if not common(sense) morality. Further, the tenets of distributive justice make similar demands regarding immediate and aggressive mitigation. Donald Brown argues, because distributive justice demands that the burdens of reducing a problem either be shared equally or based upon merit or deservedness, there is no conceivable equitably based formula that would allow the United States to continue to emit at existing levels once it is understood that steep reductions are called for. There is no plausible argument that merit and deservedness should favor the United States. Instead, the historical impacts of the lifestyle of the wealthy on the less well-off militate in favor of distribution bending steeply in favor of the poor. U.S. patterns of consumption historically, and certainly today, introduce a particularly strong obligation for aggressively confronting climate change domestically. The utterly unsustainable nature of American consumption cannot be overstated. Presidents to oilmen have straight-forwardly articulated the excesses of American lifestyle. In 1997, President Clinton noted that the United States had less than five percent of the world's population, while having twenty-two percent of the world's wealth and emitting more than twenty-five percent of the world's greenhouse gases. In 2006, Shell Oil Company President John Hofmeister stated that the "United States has 4.5 percent of the world's population but uses 25 percent of the world's oil and gas, and there needs to be a cultural or "behavioral change' toward the use of energy." That this is a result of lifestyle excesses, relative to our global counterparts, is undeniable.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Economy 1. Emissions cuts would devastate our economy

Ben Lieberman, Senior Policy Analyst, Heritage Foundation, "What Americans Need to Know About the Copenhagen Global Warming Conference," SPECIAL REPORT, 11-17-09, www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2009/11/What-Americans-Need-to-Know-About-the-Copenhagen-Global-Warming-Conference, accessed 5-2-10. What Are the Economic Concerns? The goal of the Kyoto Protocol, the building block for Copenhagen, is similar to the purpose of the Waxman-Markey global warming bill, which narrowly passed the U.S. House of Representatives in June, and of the Kerry-Boxer bill being considered in the U.S. Senate. All three would set limits on emissions from fossil fuels -- the coal, oil, and natural gas that provide America with 85 percent of its energy. Such limits would act as a large energy tax, driving up the energy costs of individuals and consumers, forcing them to use less energy. More stringent emissions targets would require even larger increases in fossil energy prices to further discourage their use. A Heritage Foundation analysis of Waxman-Markey found that this energy tax would have serious implications throughout the economy. For a household of four, energy costs (electric, natural gas, gasoline expenses) would rise by $436 in 2012 and by $1,241 by 2035, averaging $829 over that period. Higher energy costs would increase the cost of many other products and services. Overall, Waxman-Markey would reduce gross domestic product by $393 billion annually and by a total of $9.4 trillion by 2035. An initial analysis of the Senate bill finds comparable costs. Beyond the increased costs imposed on individuals and households, the Waxman-Markey bill would reduce employment, especially in the manufacturing sector. The Heritage analysis estimates that net job losses would exceed 1 million on average annually through 2035, even after accounting for the overhyped green jobs. Analyses from the Brookings Institution, National Black Chamber of Commerce, and other institutions found roughly comparable effects. Assuming proponents of a Copenhagen treaty want targets at least as stringent as those in the Waxman-Markey bill -- a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 baseline levels in 2020 up to an 83 percent reduction by 2050 -- U.S. compliance costs would be similarly high.

2. Emissions cuts will cause enormous economic losses

James Jay Carafano, PhD and analyst, Heritage Foundation, "National Security Not a Good Argument for Global Warming Legislation," WEBMEMO, 8-3-09, www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2009/08/National-Security-Not-a-Good-Argument-for-Global-Warming-Legislation The premise behind Waxman-Markey is that the United States must create a government-run program to reduce the emission of "greenhouse gases," including carbon dioxide (CO2). The bill would establish a complex energy tax scheme to penalize businesses and industries that emit these gases. Despite passage in the House, the bill has become increasingly controversial as the economic consequences of the legislation have become more apparent. For example, a study by The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis finds that the law would make the United States about $9.4 trillion poorer by 2035. Much of this decline would be from reduced economic productivity and job loss. In particular, under Waxman-Markey there would be 1.15 million fewer jobs on average than without a cap-and-trade bill.

3. Emissions cuts could cost over a million jobs, result in enormous losses

Ben Lieberman, Senior Policy Analyst, Heritage Foundation, "U.N. Global Warming Treaty Process Still Off-Track in Bonn--and for Good Reason," WEBMEMO, 4-23-10, www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/04/UN-Global-Warming-Treaty-Process-Still-Off-Track-in-Bonn-and-for-Good-Reason, accessed 5-2-10. At the same time treaty negotiators continue to try to sell the world on a costly new agreement in the midst of an ongoing global recession, the very reason for it—global warming—is proving to be less and less of a threat. Although U.N. bureaucrats in Bonn ignored growing doubts about the scientific justification for their actions—just as they did in Copenhagen—waning public support is reaching a level where it cannot be ignored. In the U.S., recent surveys show concern over global warming dropping—one poll showed it finishing 20th out of 20 issues in terms of importance, while another had it finishing eighth out of eight environmental issues. Those same surveys show the economy and jobs to be the top priorities, which is precisely what a new global warming agreement would jeopardize. A Heritage Foundation analysis of the Waxman–Markey cap-and-trade bill, which passed the House last June, found gross domestic product losses of over $9.4 trillion by 2035, over a million net job losses, and household energy cost increases exceeding $1,000 per year. A global treaty with similarly stringent provisions would impose comparable burdens.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Economy (Answers to "Green Jobs") 1. Green job claims are false--the regulations just shift labor from another part of the economy, kill growth by raising energy costs

Ben Lieberman, Senior Policy Analyst, Heritage Foundation, "Green Jobs: Environmental Red Tape Cancels Out Job Creation," WEBMEMO, 2-4-10, www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/02/Green-Jobs-Environmental-Red-Tape-Cancels-Out-Job-Creation Can Green Jobs Reduce Unemployment? Not when they require significant government assistance. When the President and Congress talk about green jobs, they are talking about ones created via federal tax breaks, subsidies, or outright mandates. For example, wind- and solar-generated electricity already enjoys subsidies nearly 50 times higher per unit of energy output than ordinary coal and 100 times higher than natural gas. Green-job subsidies siphon resources and jobs away from other parts of the economy. A study of alternative energy in Spain estimates that the cost of such subsidies for wind and solar prevents 2.2 such private-sector jobs for each green job created. Mandates (such as those in place requiring the use of ethanol in gasoline and proposed ones to set federal renewable electricity standards) kill jobs by raising energy costs. The only reason these alternative energy sources need to be mandated in the first place is that they are too expensive to compete otherwise. Thus, in addition to forcibly supplanting traditional energy jobs, renewable energy mandates raise energy costs and thus destroy jobs, especially in energy-intensive manufacturing. President Obama has done many media events at wind turbine factories, boasting about the green jobs at each. However, for every federally created green job seen, there are unseen jobs that are destroyed.

2. Serious co2 reductions would cripple the economy

Douglas Southgate and Brent Sohngen, Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics, Ohio State University “Weathering Global Warming in Agriculture and Forestry,” CIVIL SOCIETY REPORT ON CLIMATE CHANGE, 2007, p. 62. Meanwhile, atmospheric concentrations of CO2, which is an important greenhouse gas, have risen from approximately 280 parts per million (ppm) before the Industrial Revolution to 380 ppm today (Marland et al., 2007). The current rate of increase is roughly 1.5 ppm per annum (Houghton, 2005) and the concentration at the end of the 21st Century might be as high as 970 ppm (IPCC, 2001).2 In the absence of profound technological change, curtailing growth in CO2 emissions would require severe economic contraction, entailing the decommissioning of most of the world’s existing industrial capacity and abandoning the internal combustion engine.

3. Green jobs are not enough--employment/economic figures are still negative

David Kreutzer, Senior Policy Analyst, Heritage Foundation, Testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, 4-22-09, www.heritage.org/Research/Testimony/The-Economic-Impact-of-Cap-and-Trade, accessed 5-2-10. Production drops even though firms will have adopted more energy efficient technologies and processes. To reiterate, the trillions of dollars of lost GDP and the hundreds of thousands of lost jobs occur even after homes and businesses have made the switch to greener methods. The hoped-for green-job gain is a mirage. Attached is a copy of a page from a 1945 issue of Mechanix Illustrated. It shows a cyclist pedaling a jerry-built generator to power hair dryers in a Parisian beauty salon. Though not the sort of green job that is currently talked about, this human-powered generator illustrates why costly energy policies are not a stimulus. A person on a bicycle generator would do very well to average 150 watts of output during a day. At this level, a modern-day cyclist/generator could produce electricity worth 10-15 cents per day at retail prices. With sufficient subsidies, people could be induced to power such generators and the proponents could then point to the "green " jobs that have been "created." What is not seen is the value of the cyclists' forgone output elsewhere. Even at minimum wage, the value of the labor is $52.40 per day. So each human-powered generator would shrink the economy by over $50 per day. This is not an economic stimulus. Alternative energy schemes that require subsidies or that require protection from competing with conventional sources of power cannot be economic stimuli--their output is worth less than their inputs. An industry whose inputs cost more than its output is making the economy smaller and will necessarily reduce overall income.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Economy (Answers to "Green Jobs") [cont’d] 4. Net effect of emissions cuts is lower employment, despite green jobs claims

William Beach et al., Director, Center for Data Analysis, "The Economic Consequences of Waxman-Markey: An Analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009," CENTER FOR DATA ANALYSIS REPORT, 8-6-09, www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/08/the-economic-consequences-of-waxman-markey-an-analysis-of-the-american-clean-energy-and-security-act-of-2009, accessed 5-2-10. This CDA analysis extends only to 2035, as this is the forecasting horizon for the macroeconomic model used to prepare these estimates. But it should be noted that the emissions reductions continue to tighten through 2050 and that model-based analysis by other groups whose models extend beyond 2035 shows increasing harm to the U.S. economy. In addition to burdening households, the high energy prices weaken the production side of the economy. Contrary to the claims of an economic boost from "green" investment as firms undertake the changes to reduce emissions and increased employment as so-called green jobs are created to do this work, Waxman-Markey would be a significant net drain on GDP and employment.

5. Regulation only increases red tape, confounding green jobs claims

Ben Lieberman, Senior Policy Analyst, Heritage Foundation, "Green Jobs: Environmental Red Tape Cancels Out Job Creation," WEBMEMO, 2-4-10, www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/02/Green-Jobs-Environmental-Red-Tape-Cancels-Out-Job-Creation In the midst of a recession, costly environmental legislation is not an easy sell. For that reason, the Obama Administration and congressional proponents of an aggressive environmental agenda have tried to recast their policies as a boost to--rather than a drain on--the economy. From the stimulus package to pending global warming legislation to the Senate's upcoming jobs bill, the latest mantra is green jobs--employment to be created by imposing various environmental measures. But the reality is that these efforts increase federal spending and exert new government control over the private sector. They are thus more likely to harm the economy and reduce the prospects for net job growth. Genuine job creation can be achieved not through more environmental red tape but less--in particular by allowing more domestic energy production.

6. Green jobs claims are wrong--empirical evidence from Europe and California proves

Ben Lieberman, Senior Policy Analyst, Heritage Foundation, "Green Jobs: Environmental Red Tape Cancels Out Job Creation," WEBMEMO, 2-4-10, www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/02/Green-Jobs-Environmental-Red-Tape-Cancels-Out-Job-Creation What Has the Experience with Green Jobs Shown? Before the U.S. expands its green jobs agenda, a look at the experiences of those nations that have already gone further down that road would be instructive. As mentioned, Spain has likely destroyed more jobs than it has created with its extensive subsidies for wind and solar. Its unemployment rate, nearly 19 percent, is double that of the U.S. and does not suggest that green jobs can create prosperity. In Denmark, each wind energy job has cost $90,000 to $140,000 in subsidies, which is more than the jobs pay. In Germany, the figure is as high as $240,000. And the experience in Spain, Denmark, and Germany is that most of the green jobs created are temporary ones. The global experience--that market interventions increase green employment but hurt the overall economy--may also apply in California. California stands out among the states as moving more aggressively in imposing a green economy. It also has unemployment considerably higher than the national average. Although several factors play a part in California's economic problems, its environmental and energy policy--global warming measures, alternative energy mandates, other regulations that raise conventional energy prices--are likely part of the reason for the state's overall economic malaise. To a large extent, the green jobs agenda represents the Europeanization and the Californiazation of the American Economy. That is bad news for job growth.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Geoengineering Superior 1. Adaptation, geoengineering are far less expensive than emissions cuts

Kenny Hodgart, “Chop and Change,” SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST, 5—13—12, p. 28+. Research is already being carried out on the viability of geoengineering - a catch-all term for technologies that sequester CO2 or other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere or cool the planet through solar radiation management - while more resources can and, for reasons quite apart from rising sea levels, probably should be invested in sea and flood defences around the world. After all, the Dutch mastered this aspect of hydraulics in the 16th century. Former British chancellor Nigel Lawson, who chairs the London-based sceptic think tank The Global Warming Policy Foundation, has written that, "adaptation will enable us, if and when it is necessary, greatly to reduce the adverse consequences of global warming, at far less cost than mitigation [emissions reduction], to the point where for the world as a whole, these are unlikely greatly to outweigh (if indeed they outweigh at all) the customarily overlooked benefits of global warming".

2. Geoengineering will solve climate change—Cloud seeding Edwin Cartlidge, “Cloud-Seeding Ships Could Combat Climate Change,” PHYSICS WORLD, 9—4—08, http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/35693, accessed 6-19-12. It should be possible to counteract the global warming associated with a doubling of carbon dioxide levels by enhancing the reflectivity of low-lying clouds above the oceans, according to researchers in the US and UK. John Latham of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, US, and colleagues say that this can be done using a worldwide fleet of autonomous ships spraying salt water into the air. Clouds are a key component of the Earth’s climate system. They can both heat the planet by trapping the longer-wavelength radiation given off from the Earth’s surface and cool it by reflecting incoming shorter wavelength radiation back into space. The greater weight of the second mechanism means that, on balance, clouds have a cooling effect. Latham’s proposal, previously put forward by himself and a number of other scientists, involves increasing the reflectivity, or “albedo”, of clouds lying about 1 km above the ocean’s surface. The idea relies on the “Twomey effect”, which says that increasing the concentration of water droplets within a cloud raises the overall surface area of the droplets and thereby enhances the cloud’s albedo. By spraying fine droplets of sea water into the air, the small particles of salt within each droplet act as new centres of condensation when they reach the clouds above, leading to a greater concentration of water droplets within each cloud.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Growth / Innovation (General) 1. Growth is key to innovation—any policy that hurts the economy will undermine emergence of new energy technologies

Kevin Book, Senior Vice President, Energy Policy, Oil and Alternative Energy, FBR Capital Markets Corp., Testimony before Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, CQ CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY, 11-15-07, lexis. Inventions born of necessity may be ingenious, but they are likely to be undercapitalized. By contrast, innovation and profligacy often live in the same zip code, if not necessarily under the same roof. New technologies to address global climate change are going to require more investment dollars, not less. Stable economies encourage wealthy enterprises to invest in research and development towards new transformational technologies, as well as evolutionary improvements to existing processes. This may explain past U.S. leadership in energy and environmental technologies: not just because laws established new pollution controls, but also because, once rules were in place, the nation's rare, if not unique, combination of efficient markets, open society and economic prowess enabled new pollution control technologies to emerge from corporate laboratories and basement inventors alike. It is possible that plain old Yankee ingenuity might really be a lucky accident, but I believe it comes from a synergy among related and supporting industries that form what Harvard business scholar Michael Porter would call our "national advantage". This means that policies that raise the operating costs of industrial innovators enough to cause a recession could deprive the U.S. and the world of emissions control technologies made possible, ironically, by the same wealth and stability that inure energy end-users to the price signals that encourage conservation.

2. Tech is the best way to solve, thrives in a pro-growth economy Margo Thorning, PhD, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, American Council for Capital Formation, Testimony before Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, CQ CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY, 11-8-07, lexis. Technology development and deployment offers the most efficient and effective way to reduce GHG emissions and a strong economy tends to pull through capital investment faster. There are only two ways to reduce CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use - use less fossil fuel or develop technologies to use energy more efficiently to capture emissions or to substitute for fossil energy. There is an abundance of economic literature demonstrating the relationship between energy use and economic growth, as well as the negative impacts of curtailing energy use. Over the long-term, new technologies offer the most promise for affecting GHG emission rates and atmospheric concentration levels.

3. Growth decreases emissions—empirically cuts energy intensity, U.S. experience proves Margo Thorning, PhD, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, American Council for Capital Formation, Testimony before Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, CQ CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY, 11-8-07, lexis. Many policymakers overlook the positive impact that economic growth can have on GHG emission reductions. For example, in 2006, while the U.S. economy grew at 3.3 percent, CO2 emissions fell to 5,877 MMTCO2, down from 5,955 MMTCO2 in 2005, a 1.3 percent decrease. Overall energy use only declined by 0.9 percent, indicating the U.S economy is becoming less carbon intensive even without mandatory emission caps or carbon taxes. Internationally, the U.S. compares well in terms of reducing its energy intensity (the amount of energy used to produce a dollar of output). The U.S., with its voluntary approach to emission reductions, has cut its energy intensity by 20 percent over the 1992-2004 period compared to only 11.5 percent in the EU with its mandatory approach (see Figure 6). Strong U.S. economic growth, which averaged over 3 percent per year from 1992 to 2005 compared to about 1 percent in the EU, is responsible for the U.S.'s more rapid reduction in energy intensity in recent years.

4. Emissions cuts divert resources from more effective storm-abatement techniques

Ben Lieberman, Senior Policy Analyst, Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, Heritage Foundation, “Frequently Asked Questions About Global Warming,” WEBMEMO n. 1403, 3-21-07, www.heritage.org/research/reports/2007/03/frequently-asked-questions-about-global-warming, accessed 9-5-12. Q: Could the Kyoto Protocol or other measures to fight warming do more harm than good? Yes. For example, consider hurricanes. Vast amounts could be spent trying to mitigate global warming as an indirect means of reducing future hurricane damage—even though there is no consensus about a global warming–hurricane link. The resources used in this effort would not be available for improvements in warning systems, flood control, building codes, evacuation plans, relief efforts, or anything else that could have actually made a difference with Hurricane Katrina. Also consider the one big success story in Katrina—the million or more people who got into the family car and drove out of harm's way in the days before the storm hit. If Kyoto-style energy restrictions had made automobiles and gasoline prohibitively expensive for some (as is very likely), more people would have been stranded in New Orleans and other coastal cities.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Growth / Innovation (General) [cont’d] 5. Emissions cuts make us poorer, decrease our ability to adapt

Ben Lieberman, Senior Policy Analyst, Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, Heritage Foundation, “Frequently Asked Questions About Global Warming,” WEBMEMO n. 1403, 3-21-07, www.heritage.org/research/reports/2007/03/frequently-asked-questions-about-global-warming, accessed 9-5-12. Q: Shouldn't we "play it safe" and take tough preventive measures against global warming? Not necessarily. There are risks to global warming, but there are also risks to global warming policies. Fossil fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—provide the world with most of its energy. It will be costly to ratchet down emissions from fossil fuels enough to make even a modest dent in the earth's future temperature. The Kyoto Protocol, the multilateral treaty that places a cap on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, will actually accomplish very little. If fully implemented, its energy rationing provisions could cost hundreds of billions of dollars annually but would, according to its proponents, avert only 0.07 degrees Celsius of warming by 2050. The costs of capping carbon dioxide are large and immediate, but the benefits are small and remote. And a poorer world, which Kyoto would give us, would have less ability to deal with whatever challenges the future brings.

6. Development solves better than abatement—emissions cuts will only make the problem worse

Ben Lieberman, Senior Policy Analyst, Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, Heritage Foundation, “Frequently Asked Questions About Global Warming,” WEBMEMO n. 1403, 3-21-07, www.heritage.org/research/reports/2007/03/frequently-asked-questions-about-global-warming, accessed 9-5-12. Q: Don't we owe it to the people in developing nations to save them from global warming? First and foremost, the developing world needs to develop, not to adopt costly first-world environmental measures that would halt economic progress. The consequences of severe poverty are no less fearful than even the most far-fetched global warming doomsday scenarios. Energy rationing to combat warming would perpetuate poverty by raising energy prices for those who can least afford it. The last thing the 2 billion who currently lack access to electricity or safe drinking water and sanitation need are global warming policies that would place these and other necessities further out of reach.

7. Taxes or cap-and-trade will increase energy prices, hurting poor people and driving businesses overseas

John R. Christy, Professor of Atmospheric Science & Nobel Prize Winner, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Testimony before Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, 11--14--07, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-110shrg73849/html/CHRG-110shrg73849.htm, accessed 9-4-12. Making energy more expensive by direct taxes or cap-and-trade schemes (around which business may cleverly skirt) is troublesome. First, these are regressive taxes since the poor disproportionately spend more on energy. Secondly, as a manufacturer, who employs hundreds in my state, told me last week, “If my energy costs go up according to these proposals, I’m closing down and moving offshore.” Irony and tragedy are here. The irony is that higher energy costs will lead to an increase in greenhouse emissions as offshore plants have less stringent rules. The tragedy is that this will lead to further economic suffering in a part of my state where no more suffering is needed.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Growth / Innovation (Poor Nations) 1. Growth strategy is superior for people in poor countries, especially given future uncertainty

Indur Goklany, PhD., “Misled on Climate change: How the UN IPCC (and others) Exaggerate the Impacts of Global Warming,” POLICY STUDY n. 399, Reason Foundation, 12—11, 20. Yet another approach would be to address the root cause of why poor countries are deemed to be most at risk, namely, poverty. But the only way to reduce poverty is to have sustained economic growth. This would not only address the climate-sensitive problems of poverty but all problems of poverty, and not just that portion caused by GW. It would, moreover, reduce these problems faster and more cost-effectively. No less important, it is far more certain that sustained economic growth would provide real benefits than would emission reductions because although there is no doubt that poverty leads to death, disease and other problems, there is substantial doubt regarding the reality and magnitude of the negative impacts of GW, especially since they ignore, for the most part, improvements in adaptive capacity. Of the three approaches outlined above, human well-being in poor countries is most likely to be advanced furthest by sustained economic development and to be advanced least by emission reductions. In addition, because of the inertia of the climate system, economic development is likely to bear fruit faster than any emission reductions.

2. Economic development will help insulate poorer nations against the effects of climate change Dr. Indur Goklany, environment and development analyst, “What to Do About Climate Change,” POLICY ANALYSIS n. 609, Cato Institute, 2—5—08, p. 19. However, developing countries are most at risk of climate change not because they will experience greater climate change, but because they lack adaptive capacity to cope with its impacts. Hence, another approach to addressing climate change would be to enhance the adaptive capacity of developing countries by promoting broad development, i.e., economic development and human capital formation, which, of course, is the point of sustainable economic development.81 Moreover, since the determinants of adaptive and mitigative capacity are largely the same, enhancing the former should also boost the latter.82 Perhaps more important, advancing economic development and human capital formation would also advance society’s ability to cope with all manner of threats, whether climate related or otherwise.

3. Best way to address the impacts of climate change is to focus on capacity development in poorer countries

Dr. Indur Goklany, environment and development analyst, “What to Do About Climate Change,” POLICY ANALYSIS n. 609, Cato Institute, 2—5—08, p. 22. First, policymakers should work toward increasing adaptive capacity, particularly in developing countries, by promoting efforts to reduce vulnerability to today’s urgent climate-sensitive problems—malaria, hunger, water stress, flooding, and other extreme events—that might be exacerbated by climate change.89 The technologies, human capital, and institutions that will need to be strengthened or developed to accomplish this will also be critical in addressing these very problems in the future if and when they are aggravated by climate change. Increasing adaptive capacity might also increase the level at which GHG concentration would need to be stabilized to “prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system,” which is the stated “ultimate objective” of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.90 Alternatively, increasing adaptive capacity could postpone the deadline for stabilization. In either case, it could reduce the costs of meeting the ultimate objective.

4. Focused adaptation helps poor people more than does emissions cuts Indur Goklany, PhD., “Misled on Climate change: How the UN IPCC (and others) Exaggerate the Impacts of Global Warming,” POLICY STUDY n. 399, Reason Foundation, 12—11, 20. An alternate approach to reducing the GW impacts would be to reduce the climate-sensitive problems of poverty through “focused adaptation.”76 This might involve, for example, major investments in things such as early warning systems, the development of new crop varieties, and public health interventions. Focused adaptation would allow society to capture the benefits of GW while allowing it to reduce the totality of climate-sensitive problems that GW might worsen. Focused adaptation could in principle address 100% of the problems resulting from hunger, malaria and extreme weather events, whereas emission reductions would at most deal with only about 13%. Focused adaptation, moreover, would likely be much less expensive than emission reductions.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Growth Strategy Superior 1. Pursuing growth is a far better way to deal with climate change than are emissions cuts

Indur Goklany, PhD., “Misled on Climate change: How the UN IPCC (and others) Exaggerate the Impacts of Global Warming,” POLICY STUDY n. 399, Reason Foundation, 12—11, ES. A third approach would be to fix the root cause of why developing countries are deemed to be most at-risk, namely, poverty. Sustained economic growth would, as is evident from the experience of developed countries, address virtually all problems of poverty, not just that portion exacerbated by global warming. It is far more certain that sustainable economic growth will provide greater benefits than emission reductions: while there is no doubt that poverty leads to disease and death, there is substantial doubt regarding the reality and magnitude of the negative impact of global warming. This is especially true as assessments often ignore improvements in adaptive capacity. Of these three approaches, human well-being in poorer countries is likely to be advanced most effectively by sustained economic development and least by emission reductions. In addition, because of the inertia of the climate system, economic development is likely to bear fruit faster than any emission reductions.

2. Best response to warming is to do nothing—allow continued growth Claude Allegre Jr., former director, Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris, along with over a dozen other scientists, “Climate Change ‘Heretics’ Refute Carbon Dangers,” THE AUSTRALIAN, 2—1—12 p. 14+. Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: there is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ``de-carbonise'' the world's economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse gas control policies are not justified economically. A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio was achieved for a policy that allowed 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material wellbeing, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.

3. Better off growing and adapting to climate—wealth will make it easier Dr. Indur Goklany, environment and development analyst, “What to Do About Climate Change,” POLICY ANALYSIS n. 609, Cato Institute, 2—5—08, p. 1. Analysis using both the Stern Review and the fast-track assessment reveals that notwithstanding climate change, for the foreseeable future, human and environmental well-being will be highest under the “richest-but-warmest” scenario and lower for the poorer (lower-carbon) scenarios. The developing world’s future wellbeing should exceed present levels by several-fold under each scenario, even exceeding present wellbeing in today’s developed world under all but the poorest scenario. Accordingly, equity-based arguments, which hold that present generations should divert scarce resources from today’s urgent problems to solve potential problems of tomorrow’s wealthier generations, are unpersuasive.

4. Emissions cuts, lost growth are far worse than the effects of climate change

Dr. Indur Goklany, environment and development analyst, “What to Do About Climate Change,” POLICY ANALYSIS n. 609, Cato Institute, 2—5—08, p. 1. Halting climate change would reduce cumulative mortality from various climate-sensitive threats, namely, hunger, malaria, and coastal flooding, by 4–10 percent in 2085, while increasing populations at risk from water stress and possibly worsening matters for biodiversity. But according to cost information from the UN Millennium Program and the IPCC, measures focused specifically on reducing vulnerability to these threats would reduce cumulative mortality from these risks by 50–75 percent at a fraction of the cost of reducing greenhouse gases (GHGs). Simultaneously, such measures would reduce major hurdles to the developing world’s sustainable economic development, the lack of which is why it is most vulnerable to climate change. The world can best combat climate change and advance well-being, particularly of the world’s most vulnerable populations, by reducing present-day vulnerabilities to climate-sensitive problems that could be exacerbated by climate change rather than through overly aggressive GHG reductions.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Growth Strategy Superior [cont’d]

6. Better off pursuing growth—will allow us to adapt to climate change Dr. Indur Goklany, environment and development analyst, “What to Do About Climate Change,” POLICY ANALYSIS n. 609, Cato Institute, 2—5—08, p. 5. Although climate change can lead to a deterioration of many human health and environmental metrics, that does not tell us what we really want to know. What we want to know is this: Will human health and environmental quality be better under richer but warmer scenarios than under poorer but cooler scenarios? That’s primarily because wealth creation, human capital, and new or improved technologies often reduce the extent of the human health and environmental “bads” associated with climate change more than temperature increases exacerbate them. The data in Table 1 suggests that, on one hand, the impacts of climate change should decrease as one goes from scenario A1FI on the left to B1 on the right (in accordance with the pattern of declining climate change, ceteris paribus). On the other hand, economic and technological development—both critical determinants of adaptive capacity—ought to attenuate the impacts of climate change.19 Considering future levels of economic and technological development, that attenuation should be greatest for the A1FI scenario, followed by the B1, B2 and A2 scenarios, in that order. Thus, even though the A1FI scenario has the greatest amount of warming and thus, the largest amount of climate change, it would not necessarily have the worst outcomes. That’s because it should also have the highest degree of adaptive capacity. Economic growth broadly increases human well-being by increasing wealth, technological development, and human capital. These factors enable society to address virtually any kind of adversity, whether it is related to climate or not, while specifically increasing society’s capacity to reduce climate change damages through either adaptation or mitigation.20Many determinants of human well-being—hunger, malnutrition, mortality rates, life expectancy, the level of education, and spending on health care and on research and development—improve along with the level of economic development, as measured by GDP per capita.

7. Future harm does not justify action--emissions cuts could also hurt future people by decreasing growth

Eric A. Posner, Professor, Law, University of Chicago and Cass R. Sunstein, Professor, Political Science, University of Chicago, "Climate Change Justice," GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL v. 96, 6--08, p. 1596-1597. The argument that we owe duties to the future, on welfarist or other grounds, seems right, but as a basis for current abatement efforts, it runs into a complication. Suppose that activities in the United States that produce greenhouse gases (a) do harm people in the future by contributing to climate change, but also (b) benefit people in the future by amassing capital on which they can draw to reduce poverty and illness and to protect against a range of social ills. Supposing, as we agree, that present generations are obliged not to render future generations miserable, it is necessary to ask whether current activities create benefits that are equivalent to, or higher than, costs for those generations. As our discussion of distributive justice suggests, it is possible that greenhouse gas abatement programs--as opposed to, say, research and development or promoting economic growth in poor countries--are not the best way to ensure that the appropriate level of intergenerational equity is achieved. This point is simply the intertemporal version of the argument against redistribution by greenhouse gas abatement that we made above. Of course, it remains empirically possible that abatement programs would produce significant benefits for future generations without imposing equally significant burdens--in which case they would be justified on welfarist grounds. And we have agreed that, on those grounds, some kind of greenhouse gas abatement program, including all the leading contributors, would be justified. But this is not a point about corrective or distributive justice.

8. Wealth is strongly correlated with improved environmental quality—strongly mitigates the impacts of climate change

Dr. Indur Goklany, environment and development analyst, “What to Do About Climate Change,” POLICY ANALYSIS n. 609, Cato Institute, 2—5—08, p. 5. Increasing wealth also improves some, though not necessarily all, indicators of environmental well-being. Wealthier nations have higher cereal yield (an important determinant of cropland, which is inversely related to habitat conversion) and greater access to safe water and sanitation. They also have lower birth rates.22Notably, access to safe water and access to sanitation double as indicators of both human and environmental well-being, as does crop yield, since higher yield not only means more food and lower hunger, it also lowers pressure on habitat.23 Cross country data also indicate that for a fixed level of economic development, these indicators of human and environmental wellbeing (e.g., malnutrition, mortality rates, life expectancy, access to safe water, crop yields, and so forth) improve with time (because technology almost inevitably improves with time).24 Similarly one should expect, all else being equal, that society’s ability to cope with any adversity, including climate change, should also increase with the passage of time. Thus, over time, the combination of economic and technological development should increase society’s adaptive capacity which, barring inadvertent maladaptation, ought to reduce the future impacts of climate change.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Mitigation is a Poor Strategy 1. There is no justification for cutting emissions--cash payments make more sense

Eric A. Posner, Professor, Law, University of Chicago and Cass R. Sunstein, Professor, Political Science, University of Chicago, "Climate Change Justice," GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL v. 96, 6--08, p. 1566. Reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would cost some nations much more than others and benefit some nations far less than others. Significant reductions would likely impose especially large costs on the United States, and recent projections suggest that the United States is not among the nations most at risk from climate change. In these circumstances, what does justice require the United States to do? Many people believe that the United States is required to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions beyond the point that is justified by its own self-interest, simply because the United States is wealthy, and because the nations most at risk from climate change are poor. This argument from distributive justice is complemented by an argument from corrective justice: The existing "stock" of greenhouse gas emissions owes a great deal to the past actions of the United States, and many people think that the United States should do a great deal to reduce a problem for which it is disproportionately responsible. But there are serious difficulties with both of these arguments. On reasonable assumptions, redistribution from the United States to poor people in poor nations would be highly desirable, but expenditures on greenhouse gas reductions are a crude means of producing that redistribution: It would be much better to give cash payments directly to people who are now poor. The argument from corrective justice runs into the standard problems that arise when collectivities, such as nations, are treated as moral agents: Many people who have not acted wrongfully end up being forced to provide a remedy to many people who have not been victimized Without reaching specific conclusions about the proper response of any particular nation, and while emphasizing that welfarist arguments strongly support some kind of international agreement to protect against climate change, we contend that standard arguments from distributive and corrective justice fail to provide strong justifications for imposing special obligations for greenhouse gas reductions on the United States.

2. Emissions cuts are a poor way to help those who are hurt by climate change

Eric A. Posner, Professor, Law, University of Chicago and Cass R. Sunstein, Professor, Political Science, University of Chicago, "Climate Change Justice," GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL v. 96, 6--08, p. 1572. We also accept, for purposes of argument, the view that when people in one nation wrongfully harm people in another nation, the wrongdoers have a moral obligation to provide a remedy to the victims. It might seem to follow that the largest emitters, and above all the United States, have a special obligation to remedy the harms they have helped cause and certainly should not be given side-payments. But the application of standard principles of corrective justice to problems of climate change runs into serious objections. As we shall show, corrective justice arguments in the domain of climate change raise many of the same problems that beset such arguments in the context of reparations more generally. Nations are not individuals: they do not have mental states and cannot, except metaphorically, act. Blame must ordinarily be apportioned to individuals, and it is hard to blame all greenhouse gas-emitters for wrongful behavior, especially those from the past who are partly responsible for the current stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Our principal submissions are that the distributive justice argument must be separated from the corrective justice argument, and that once the two arguments are separated, both of them face serious difficulties. If the United States wants to assist poor nations, reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are unlikely to be the best way for it to accomplish that goal. It is true that many people in poor nations are at risk because of the actions of many people in the United States, but the idea of corrective justice does not easily justify any kind of transfer from contemporary Americans to people now or eventually living in (for example) India and Africa.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Reparations Superior 1. Failure to spur a renewables transition via climate reparations risks massive conflicts, resentment

Naomi Klein, journalist, "Climate Rage," ROLLING STONE, 11--11--09, www.naomiklein.org/articles/2009/11/climate-rage, accessed 9-6-12. But shunning the high price of climate change carries a cost of its own. U.S. military and intelligence agencies now consider global warming a leading threat to national security. As sea levels rise and droughts spread, competition for food and water will only increase in many of the world's poorest nations. These regions will become "breeding grounds for instability, for insurgencies, for warlords," according to a 2007 study for the Center for Naval Analyses led by Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former Centcom commander. To keep out millions of climate refugees fleeing hunger and conflict, a report commissioned by the Pentagon in 2003 predicted that the U.S. and other rich nations would likely decide to "build defensive fortresses around their countries." Setting aside the morality of building high-tech fortresses to protect ourselves from a crisis we inflicted on the world, those enclaves and resource wars won't come cheap. And unless we pay our climate debt, and quickly, we may well find ourselves living in a world of climate rage. "Privately, we already hear the simmering resentment of diplomats whose countries bear the costs of our emissions," Sen. John Kerry observed recently. "I can tell you from my own experience: It is real, and it is prevalent. It's not hard to see how this could crystallize into a virulent, dangerous, public anti-Americanism. That's a threat too. Remember: The very places least responsible for climate change—and least equipped to deal with its impacts—will be among the very worst affected." That, in a nutshell, is the argument for climate debt. The developing world has always had plenty of reasons to be pissed off with their northern neighbors, with our tendency to overthrow their governments, invade their countries and pillage their natural resources. But never before has there been an issue so politically inflammatory as the refusal of people living in the rich world to make even small sacrifices to avert a potential climate catastrophe. In Bangladesh, the Maldives, Bolivia, the Arctic, our climate pollution is directly responsible for destroying entire ways of life—yet we keep doing it. From outside our borders, the climate crisis doesn't look anything like the meteors or space invaders that Todd Stern imagined hurtling toward Earth. It looks, instead, like a long and silent war waged by the rich against the poor. And for that, regardless of what happens in Copenhagen, the poor will continue to demand their rightful reparations. "This is about the rich world taking responsibility for the damage done," says Ilana Solomon, policy analyst for ActionAid USA, one of the groups recently converted to the cause. "This money belongs to poor communities affected by climate change. It is their compensation."

2. Climate debt is the best response to the disparate impact of climate change--wealthy nations should pay reparations to the poorer nations

Naomi Klein, journalist, "Climate Rage," ROLLING STONE, 11--11--09, www.naomiklein.org/articles/2009/11/climate-rage, accessed 9-6-12. Among the smartest and most promising—not to mention controversial—proposals is "climate debt," the idea that rich countries should pay reparations to poor countries for the climate crisis. In the world of climate-change activism, this marks a dramatic shift in both tone and content. American environmentalism tends to treat global warming as a force that transcends difference: We all share this fragile blue planet, so we all need to work together to save it. But the coalition of Latin American and African governments making the case for climate debt actually stresses difference, zeroing in on the cruel contrast between those who caused the climate crisis (the developed world) and those who are suffering its worst effects (the developing world). Justin Lin, chief economist at the World Bank, puts the equation bluntly: "About 75 to 80 percent" of the damages caused by global warming "will be suffered by developing countries, although they only contribute about one-third of greenhouse gases." Climate debt is about who will pick up the bill. The grass-roots movement behind the proposal argues that all the costs associated with adapting to a more hostile ecology—everything from building stronger sea walls to switching to cleaner, more expensive technologies—are the responsibility of the countries that created the crisis. "What we need is not something we should be begging for but something that is owed to us, because we are dealing with a crisis not of our making," says Lidy Nacpil, one of the coordinators of Jubilee South, an international organization that has staged demonstrations to promote climate reparations. "Climate debt is not a matter of charity." Sharon Looremeta, an advocate for Maasai tribespeople in Kenya who have lost at least 5 million cattle to drought in recent years, puts it in even sharper terms. "The Maasai community does not drive 4x4s or fly off on holidays in airplanes," she says. "We have not caused climate change, yet we are the ones suffering. This is an injustice and should be stopped right now."


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Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Reparations Superior [cont’d]

3. Wealthy countries should pay reparations--they are responsible for hte problem

Naomi Klein, journalist, "Climate Rage," ROLLING STONE, 11--11--09, www.naomiklein.org/articles/2009/11/climate-rage, accessed 9-6-12. The case for climate debt begins like most discussions of climate change: with the science. Before the Industrial Revolution, the density of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—the key cause of global warming—was about 280 parts per million. Today, it has reached 387 ppm—far above safe limits—and it's still rising. Developed countries, which represent less than 20 percent of the world's population, have emitted almost 75 percent of all greenhouse-gas pollution that is now destabilizing the climate. (The U.S. alone, which comprises barely five percent of the global population, contributes 25 percent of all carbon emissions.) And while developing countries like China and India have also begun to spew large amounts of carbon dioxide, the reasoning goes, they are not equally responsible for the cost of the cleanup, because they have contributed only a small fraction of the 200 years of cumulative pollution that has caused the crisis. In Latin America, left-wing economists have long argued that Western powers owe a vaguely defined "ecological debt" to the continent for centuries of colonial land-grabs and resource extraction. But the emerging argument for climate debt is far more concrete, thanks to a relatively new body of research putting precise figures on who emitted what and when. "What is exciting," says Antonio Hill, senior climate adviser at Oxfam, "is you can really put numbers on it. We can measure it in tons of CO2 and come up with a cost." Equally important, the idea is supported by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—ratified by 192 countries, including the United States. The framework not only asserts that "the largest share of historical and current global emissions of greenhouse gases has originated in developed countries," it clearly states that actions taken to fix the problem should be made "on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities."

4. We need climate reparations--poor nations will be disproportionately hurt by climate change, cannot afford to switch to renewables without them

Naomi Klein, journalist, "Climate Rage," ROLLING STONE, 11--11--09, www.naomiklein.org/articles/2009/11/climate-rage, accessed 9-6-12. The reparations movement has brought together a diverse coalition of big international organizations, from Friends of the Earth to the World Council of Churches, that have joined up with climate scientists and political economists, many of them linked to the influential Third World Network, which has been leading the call. Until recently, however, there was no government pushing for climate debt to be included in the Copenhagen agreement. That changed in June, when Angelica Navarro, the chief climate negotiator for Bolivia, took the podium at a U.N. climate negotiation in Bonn, Germany. Only 36 and dressed casually in a black sweater, Navarro looked more like the hippies outside than the bureaucrats and civil servants inside the session. Mixing the latest emissions science with accounts of how melting glaciers were threatening the water supply in two major Bolivian cities, Navarro made the case for why developing countries are owed massive compensation for the climate crisis. "Millions of people—in small islands, least-developed countries, landlocked countries as well as vulnerable communities in Brazil, India and China, and all around the world—are suffering from the effects of a problem to which they did not contribute," Navarro told the packed room. In addition to facing an increasingly hostile climate, she added, countries like Bolivia cannot fuel economic growth with cheap and dirty energy, as the rich countries did, since that would only add to the climate crisis—yet they cannot afford the heavy upfront costs of switching to renewable energies like wind and solar. The solution, Navarro argued, is three-fold. Rich countries need to pay the costs associated with adapting to a changing climate, make deep cuts to their own emission levels "to make atmospheric space available" for the developing world, and pay Third World countries to leapfrog over fossil fuels and go straight to cleaner alternatives. "We cannot and will not give up our rightful claim to a fair share of atmospheric space on the promise that, at some future stage, technology will be provided to us," she said.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Bad--Reparations Superior [cont’d] 5. Climate reparations could address energy problems throughout the developing world

Naomi Klein, journalist, "Climate Rage," ROLLING STONE, 11--11--09, www.naomiklein.org/articles/2009/11/climate-rage, accessed 9-6-12. Largely because of the beauty of the Yasuní, the plan has generated widespread international support. Germany has already offered $70 million a year for 13 years, and several other European governments have expressed interest in participating. If Yasuní is saved, it will demonstrate that climate debt isn't just a disguised ploy for more aid—it's a far more credible solution to the climate crisis than the ones we have now. "This initiative needs to succeed," says Atossa Soltani, executive director of Amazon Watch. "I think we can set a model for other countries." Activists point to a huge range of other green initiatives that would become possible if wealthy countries paid their climate debts. In India, mini power plants that run on biomass and solar power could bring low-carbon electricity to many of the 400 million Indians currently living without a light bulb. In cities from Cairo to Manila, financial support could be given to the armies of impoverished "trash pickers" who save as much as 80 percent of municipal waste in some areas from winding up in garbage dumps and trash incinerators that release planet-warming pollution. And on a much larger scale, coal-fired power plants across the developing world could be converted into more efficient facilities using existing technology, cutting their emissions by more than a third.

6. Reparations are key to getting an international deal to address climate change

Naomi Klein, journalist, "Climate Rage," ROLLING STONE, 11--11--09, www.naomiklein.org/articles/2009/11/climate-rage, accessed 9-6-12. Without such guarantees, reparations will be meaningless—and without reparations, the climate talks in Copenhagen will likely collapse. As it stands, the U.S. and other Western nations are engaged in a lose-lose game of chicken with developing nations like India and China: We refuse to lower our emissions unless they cut theirs and submit to international monitoring, and they refuse to budge unless wealthy nations cut first and cough up serious funding to help them adapt to climate change and switch to clean energy. "No money, no deal," is how one of South Africa's top environmental officials put it. "If need be," says Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, speaking on behalf of the African Union, "we are prepared to walk out." In the past, President Obama has recognized the principle on which climate debt rests. "Yes, the developed nations that caused much of the damage to our climate over the last century still have a responsibility to lead," he acknowledged in his September speech at the United Nations. "We have a responsibility to provide the financial and technical assistance needed to help these [developing] nations adapt to the impacts of climate change and pursue low-carbon development."


151

Mitigation Not Justified: Fails--Developing Country Emissions 1. Emissions from China, India are swamping cuts elsewhere

International Energy Agency (IEA), “Global Carbon-Dioxide Emissions Increase by 1.0 Gt in 2011 to Record High,” 5—25—12, http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/news/2012/may/name,27216,en.html, accessed 7-5-12. In 2011, a 6.1% increase in CO2 emissions in countries outside the OECD was only partly offset by a 0.6% reduction in emissions inside the OECD. China made the largest contribution to the global increase, with its emissions rising by 720 million tonnes (Mt), or 9.3%, primarily due to higher coal consumption. “What China has done over such a short period of time to improve energy efficiency and deploy clean energy is already paying major dividends to the global environment”, said Dr. Birol. China’s carbon intensity — the amount of CO2 emitted per unit of GDP — fell by 15% between 2005 and 2011. Had these gains not been made, China’s CO2 emissions in 2011 would have been higher by 1.5 Gt. India’s emissions rose by 140 Mt, or 8.7%, moving it ahead of Russia to become the fourth largest emitter behind China, the United States, and the European Union. Despite these increases, per-capita CO2 emissions in China and India still remain just 63% and 15% of the OECD average respectively.

2. China already emits almost as much CO2 as the U.S. Richard Heinberg, senior fellow, "China Coal Update," Post Carbon Institute, 3--8--12, http://www.postcarbon.org/blog-post/747521-china-coal-update, accessed 4-9-12. Chinese greenhouse gas emissions totaled 8.24 billion metric tonnes of CO2 equivalents in 2010; the 2011 figure will likely clock in at over 8.8 billion tonnes. The US racked up 5.5 billion metric tonnes of emissions in 2010, out of a world total of 33.5 billion tonnes. The US still ranks first in terms of per capita emissions among the big economies, with 18 metric tonnes emitted per person; China emits under 6 tonnes per person, while the world average stands at 4.49 tonnes per person.

3. U.S. cuts meaningless--swamped by China Richard Heinberg, senior fellow, "China Coal Update," Post Carbon Institute, 3--8--12, http://www.postcarbon.org/blog-post/747521-china-coal-update, accessed 4-9-12. Second, can the world save itself from a climate apocalypse unless China leads the way? Talk of “climate justice” (which emphasizes the higher per-capita emissions of wealthy nations) is all well and good, but the harsh reality is that even drastic emissions cuts by the US will mean relatively little unless China also cuts soon and fast. So far, indications are that Beijing is keeping the carbon pedal to the metal, despite concurrent efforts to become a world leader in renewable energy. Barring a dramatic global emissions policy breakthrough, resource limits and economic contraction seem to offer the main hope for keeping climate change to merely “catastrophic” levels.

4. Warming threat exaggerated, other nations will swamp any U.S. emissions reductions CHATTANOOGA TIMES FREE PRESS, staff, “Think Gas is Cheap? Washington Seems to Believe It Is,” 6-1-08, p. G1. Some might argue that if this bill prevents global warming-induced catastrophes, then it will be worth it. But there is growing evidence that the warming threat has been exaggerated. Indeed, 2008 is shaping up to be a cooler year than 2007, and some scientists are predicting that this countertrend will last for a while. But even assuming the worst-case scenarios of runaway warming, this bill would make little difference. Many other nations, including fast-growing China and India, are doing nothing to reduce their energy use. Thus, any efforts to force Americans to use less energy would be offset by big increases elsewhere. According to Margo Thorning, senior vice president and chief economist of the American Council for Capital Formation, Lieberman-Warner would cut global concentrations of carbon dioxide by only 4 percent below where they would otherwise be by the end of the century. Thus, at most, this bill would reduce the earth's future temperature by a small fraction of a degree -- too little even to verify that it happened. In other words, America's Climate Security Act promises lots of economic pain for almost no environmental gain.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Fails--Developing Country Emissions [cont’d] 5. Growth from other sectors will swamp any U.S. emissions cuts

William Beach et al., Director, Center for Data Analysis, "The Economic Consequences of Waxman-Markey: An Analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009," CENTER FOR DATA ANALYSIS REPORT, 8-6-09, www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/08/the-economic-consequences-of-waxman-markey-an-analysis-of-the-american-clean-energy-and-security-act-of-2009, accessed 9-4-12 Because of market-driven increases in energy efficiency, CO2 emissions have grown more slowly than has national income for decades in the United States. Contrasted with the moderating growth of American CO2 emissions, those of the developing world, especially China and India, have been accelerating. China is now the world's largest emitter of CO2. Because the developing world is so populous and because large segments are finally experiencing the rapid economic growth that perverse economic policies had previously stifled, the growth in CO2 emissions will swamp the cuts proposed in the U.S. by Waxman-Markey. Climatologists estimate that Waxman-Markey's impact on world temperature will be too small to even measure in the first several decades. The theoretical moderation of world temperature would be 0.05 degree centigrade by 2050. If CO2-emission levels meet the Waxman-Markey target of 17 percent of 2005 emissions by the year 2050, and if they are frozen at that level for the rest of the century, Waxman-Markey would still reduce the world temperature by only 0.2 degree Celsius by 2100.

6. Warming threat exaggerated, other nations will swamp any U.S. Emissions reductions

CHATTANOOGA TIMES FREE PRESS, staff, “Think Gas is Cheap? Washington Seems to Believe It Is,” 6-1-08, p. G1. Some might argue that if this bill prevents global warming-induced catastrophes, then it will be worth it. But there is growing evidence that the warming threat has been exaggerated. Indeed, 2008 is shaping up to be a cooler year than 2007, and some scientists are predicting that this countertrend will last for a while. But even assuming the worst-case scenarios of runaway warming, this bill would make little difference. Many other nations, including fast-growing China and India, are doing nothing to reduce their energy use. Thus, any efforts to force Americans to use less energy would be offset by big increases elsewhere. According to Margo Thorning, senior vice president and chief economist of the American Council for Capital Formation, Lieberman-Warner would cut global concentrations of carbon dioxide by only 4 percent below where they would otherwise be by the end of the century. Thus, at most, this bill would reduce the earth's future temperature by a small fraction of a degree -- too little even to verify that it happened. In other words, America's Climate Security Act promises lots of economic pain for almost no environmental gain.

7. China now emits more co2 than does the U.S.

John Vidal and David Adam, journalists, “China Overtakes US as World’s Biggest CO2 Emitter,” GUARDIAN, 6-19-07, http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/212/45324.html, accessed 9-5-12. China has overtaken the United States as the world's biggest producer of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, figures released today show. The surprising announcement will increase anxiety about China's growing role in driving man-made global warming and will pile pressure onto world politicians to agree a new global agreement on climate change that includes the booming Chinese economy. China's emissions had not been expected to overtake those from the US, formerly the world's biggest polluter, for several years, although some reports predicted it could happen as early as next year. But according to the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, soaring demand for coal to generate electricity and a surge in cement production have helped to push China's recorded emissions for 2006 beyond those from the US already. It says China produced 6,200m tonnes of CO2 last year, compared with 5,800m tonnes from the US. Britain produced about 600m tonnes. Jos Olivier, a senior scientist at the government agency who compiled the figures, said: "There will still be some uncertainty about the exact numbers, but this is the best and most up to date estimate available. China relies very heavily on coal and all of the recent trends show their emissions going up very quickly." China's emissions were 2% below those of the US in 2005. Per head of population, China's pollution remains relatively low - about a quarter of that in the US and half that of the UK.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Fails--International Agreements 1. Kyoto proves that countries won't comply with cuts agreements--compliance costs are too high

Ben Lieberman, Senior Policy Analyst, Heritage Foundation, "What Americans Need to Know About the Copenhagen Global Warming Conference," SPECIAL REPORT, 11-17-09, www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2009/11/What-Americans-Need-to-Know-About-the-Copenhagen-Global-Warming-Conference, accessed 9-4-12. Is the Kyoto Protocol Worth Extending? No. Even aside from the growing doubts about the seriousness of the global warming threat -- the Kyoto Protocol or any other putative global warming solution is only a solution to the extent that a genuine problem exists in the first place -- the Kyoto Protocol has failed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Emissions are increasing in several signatory nations. In several more countries, emissions are declining more slowly than emissions in the U.S., which ironically is not a party to Kyoto. For example, according to U.N. data, the U.S. reduced emissions by 3 percent from 2000 to 2006, while the 27 European signatories increased their emissions by 0.1 percent. Germany's emissions declined by only 1.7 percent, while Canada's emissions rose 21.3 percent. European Environmental Agency data show that emissions increased in Austria, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain in the decade after the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. One key reason for compliance difficulties in Europe has been the tremendous cost of reducing emissions, estimated at $67.75 billion to $170.84 billion through 2008. Despite these high costs for their inadequate efforts to reduce emissions, these European nations claim to want to enact much tougher targets in Copenhagen. Further, Kyoto's exemption for developing nations has proven a far greater oversight than originally believed because these emissions, especially from China, have increased far faster than had been anticipated in 1997. For example, the Senate Byrd-Hagel Resolution warned that developing-nation emissions would exceed those of the developed world "as early as 2015." According to the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration, it happened in 2005.

2. Proposed treaty cuts are too small to make a dent in any warming

Ben Lieberman, Senior Policy Analyst, Heritage Foundation, "What Americans Need to Know About the Copenhagen Global Warming Conference," SPECIAL REPORT, 11-17-09, www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2009/11/What-Americans-Need-to-Know-About-the-Copenhagen-Global-Warming-Conference, accessed 9-4-12. Would the Environmental Benefits Be Worth It? No. First, there are growing doubts about whether global warming really is the crisis it was claimed to be heading into the 1997 Kyoto negotiations. For example, global temperatures have leveled off since then. However, putting the scientific doubts aside for a moment, the Kyoto approach seems unlikely to slow global warming effectively. One scientific study estimated that, even if the treaty reached its targeted emissions reductions, it would reduce the earth's future temperature by about 0.07 degree Celsius by 2050 -- an amount too small to make any difference and impossible to verify because natural variability is far greater. Obviously, more stringent targets at Copenhagen would reduce the temperature more, but not by much, especially if developing nations were still exempt from emissions reductions.

3. Developing nations refuse to accept emissions cuts--dooms the treaty

Ben Lieberman, Senior Policy Analyst, Heritage Foundation, "U.N. Global Warming Treaty Process Still Off-Track in Bonn--and for Good Reason," WEBMEMO, 4-23-10, www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/04/UN-Global-Warming-Treaty-Process-Still-Off-Track-in-Bonn-and-for-Good-Reason, accessed 9-4-12. Developing nations blame the West—and particularly the United States—for emitting most of the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases currently in the atmosphere. For that reason, representatives of these nations have demanded that they remain exempt from any obligations to reduce emissions. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol required 5 percent emissions reductions from developed nation signatories based on 1990 baseline emissions. But the treaty left developing nations off the hook. Kyoto’s provisions expire in 2012, and perhaps the single biggest controversy as the U.N. attempts to fashion a post-Kyoto treaty is the treatment of the developing world. China, India, and other developing countries insist that they should maintain their exemptions in any post-2012 deal. In addition, many have demanded substantial foreign aid packages to deal with the consequences of warming. The developing world is correct that the West was the first to industrialize and is historically responsible for most of the emissions, but this point is not relevant from a policy perspective. The reality looking forward is that quickly developing nations—chiefly China—will be responsible for the lion’s share of future emissions. In fact, developing-world emissions surpassed those of the developed world in 2005 and are projected to rise at a rate seven times faster in the decades ahead. China alone out-emits the U.S., and its emissions are projected to increase nine times faster through 2030. Thus, any new treaty to replace the existing Kyoto Protocol and provide post-2012 targets and timetables must either include developing nations or be wholly ineffective in achieving the goal of emissions reductions. To its credit, the U.S. delegation has been clear that a new agreement must have meaningful involvement from China and other high-emitting developing nations. What emerged from Copenhagen, and is still true in Bonn, is that developing nations refuse to budge on accepting targets and timetables for reducing emissions. In addition, many of these nations expect increased foreign aid from the developed world and reacted angrily to suggestions from the U.S. delegation in Bonn that such aid be tied to accepting obligations to reduce emissions. This impasse is unlikely to be narrowed in time for Cancun, if ever.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Fails--Momentum / Inevitable 1. Uncertainty means we are better off investing in research, as opposed to making large, expensive cuts

Algird Leiga, PhD, Physical Chemistry, New York University, “Case Is Not Closed on Man-Made Global Warming,” INLAND VALLEY DAILY BULLETIN, 6—14—12, lexis. It may be time to reconsider alternate variables, such as natural phenomena that could provide a better fit between theory and fact. If the connection between carbon dioxide and global warming is in question, then it seems premature to save the Earth by changing energy sources and massively restructuring our economy. In 1974 Time Magazine carried an extensive article titled "Another Ice Age?" It seems odd that in the span of 40 years the predictions of global cooling and the onset of another ice age have changed to a global warming catastrophe. Today we are thankful the world did not panic and take drastic action to restructure our economy. Over the last 70 years well-meaning scientists told us that we are on the verge of the next ice age or we will burn up from a warmer planet. Any overreaction to these dire predictions could create significant damage to our economy. Climate change is a slow process measured in decades, so there is time to gather more data before deciding to cut out conventional oil, coal and natural gas fuels. A premature massive financial investment replacing current energy sources with poorly understood economics and technology of alternative energy sources will lead to a loss of competitive advantage for businesses and higher expenses for everyone. Today a better approach is investment in research and development to create a knowledge base for future economical and clean energy sources.

2. Energy suppression would impose enormous costs, provide little benefit—shows that the precautionary principle should not be applied to climate change

Kenny Hodgart, “Chop and Change,” SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST, 5—13—12, p. 28+. When applied to climate change, the precautionary principle - that we should assume the worst-case scenario is a possibility and act accordingly - has the ring of logic to it. But what if, as seems likely, the world simply finds it impossible to reduce its overall dependence on CO2-emitting fuels within the time frame being urged? "Numerous calculations show that the impacts of these severe energy-suppression measures [the EU talks of reducing emissions by up to 90 per cent of 1990 levels by 2050] would be too small to measure on the climate, but easy to measure in economic harm," Christy says. "Thus in a simple cost-to-benefit study, we find large costs but no benefits for CO2 reductions. "The precautionary principle is a false perspective ... This higher cost reduces the standard of living, thus reducing the health, prosperity and opportunity for [most] people - unless you are fortunate to be in a specific subsidised industry that government decides with taxpayer money to support." Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish environmental economist and author of the book The Sceptical Environmentalist, has said that the brunt of the costs of reducing global carbon emissions would be borne by developing countries, mainly in terms of having their dreams of development thwarted. As he puts it: "Africans ask, 'How can you have a steel industry or a rail network based on solar [energy]?'" Economists forecast a vastly more developed world 100 years hence - one in which poverty has all but been eliminated.

3. Increase to 500ppm is already baked in the cake Norbert Cunningham, “It’s Getting hotter, the Ice Age Will Have to Wait,” TIMES & TRANSCRIPT, 1—11—12, p. D6. Today's carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere is 390 ppm and it's expected to hit 400 ppm within 10 years - a level not seen since the Miocene era 14 to 20 million years ago, a time when there were no ice-caps and sea levels were 25-20 metres (80-130 feet) higher than they are today. That pretty much explains all the concern about melting Arctic ice and Greenland and Antarctic icecaps. Their ice essentially makes up the difference. Global warming clearly means more water. And that's not the worst of it: some estimates based on current trends suggest we'll see carbon dioxide levels hit as high as 500 ppm before efforts to stop global warming begin showing up (there's a delay because the gas accumulates faster than it dissipates) and it drops to about 450 ppm, hopefully less

4. The IPCC concedes that any action will still leave us warming for decades--momentum The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), staff, STRATEGIC SURVEY v. 107 n. 1, September 2007, pp. 33-84 The IPCC's Summary for Policymakers on the scientific basis for climate change, released in February 2007, concluded that global surface temperature increased by 0.57-0.96°C from the second half of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first, with the rate accelerating to 0.10-0.16°C per decade over the last 50 years. Eleven of the last 12 years rank among the 12 warmest years since 1850. According to the IPCC report, warming will inevitably continue and raised temperatures will persist for centuries, even with the best possible efforts at mitigation, since there is a lag between emissions and warming and since important greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere for decades to centuries.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Fails--Momentum / Inevitable [cont’d] 5. Cuts now will only have a marginal effect on temperatures

James Jay Carafano, PhD and analyst, Heritage Foundation, "National Security Not a Good Argument for Global Warming Legislation," WEBMEMO, 8-3-09, www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2009/08/National-Security-Not-a-Good-Argument-for-Global-Warming-Legislation, accessed 9-4-12. Arguing that the law will make the world safer is deeply flawed. First, there are significant doubts that the cap-and-trade system described in the 1,500-plus-page bill will even have a significant and positive impact on global climate trends. According to climatologist Chip Knappenberger, Waxman-Markey would moderate temperatures by only hundredths of a degree after being in effect for the next 40 years and no more than two-tenths of a degree at the end of the century. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson concurred, recently saying, "U.S. action alone will not impact world CO2 levels." Additionally, the impact of "managing" greenhouse gases on the environment also remains a subject of great controversy. For example, as Senator Inhofe noted in a floor speech, S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Virginia, who served as the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service and more recently as a member and vice chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere, said that "no one knows what constitutes a 'dangerous' concentration. There exists, as yet, no scientific basis for defining such a concentration, or even of knowing whether it is more or less than current levels of carbon dioxide."

6. Warming is inevitable, even if we cut emissions

Bill McKibben, Scholar in Residence, Middlebury College, “Warning on Warming,” NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, 3-15-07, www.tomdispatch.com/post/167460/mckibben_the_real_news_about_global_warming, accessed 9-5-12. The IPCC has always avoided taking political positions -- it doesn't recommend specific policies -- and it continues this tradition with its new report. In its discussions of the momentum of climate change, however, it does introduce one particularly disturbing statistic. Because of the time lag between carbon emissions and their effect on air temperature, even if we halted the increase in coal, oil, and gas burning right now, temperatures would continue to rise about two tenths of a degree Celsius per decade. But, the report writes, "if all radiative forcing agents [i.e., greenhouse gases] are held constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming trend would occur in the next two decades at a rate of about 0.1ºC per decade." Translated into English, this means, to put it simply, that if world leaders had heeded the early warnings of the first IPCC report, and by 2000 had done the very hard work to keep greenhouse gas emissions from growing any higher, the expected temperature increase would be half as much as is expected now. In the words of the experts at realclimate.org, where the most useful analyses of the new assessment can be found, climate change is a problem with a very high "procrastination penalty": a penalty that just grows and grows with each passing year of inaction.

7. Decades of warming is inevitable despite any emissions cuts

Andrew C. Revkin, journalist, “Poor nations to Bear Brunt as World Warms,” NEW YORK TIMES, 4-1-07, http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/212/45310.html, accessed 9-5-12. “The inequity of this whole situation is really enormous if you look at who’s responsible and who’s suffering as a result,” said Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations climate panel. In its most recent report, in February, the panel said that decades of warming and rising seas were inevitable with the existing greenhouse-gas buildup, no matter what was done about cutting future greenhouse gas emissions.

8. Emissions cuts now will be inadequate to address climate change

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, staff editorial, “Serious for a Change,” 6-2-08, p. B2. The U.S. Senate is scheduled to begin debating a bill to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Known as the Climate Security Act, it is a serious response to global warming that is long overdue. The Senate debate comes on the heels of two official U.S. government reports released over the past week. Both paint grim pictures of what lies in store as a result of human-caused climate change. One predicts significant disruptions to agriculture, water supplies and U.S. ecosystems over the next 25 to 50 years. That relatively short time frame is significant. Even if emission reductions are put in place, the report's authors say, they are unlikely to have a significant impact in such a short time. The report was prepared by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.


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Mitigation Not Justified: Fails--Offsets (Forestry) 1. Non-tropical forest plantings trap more heat than their positive benefits on co2 levels, increasing warming

Alok Jha, “How Trees Might Not Be Green in Carbon Offsetting Debate,” THE GUARDIAN, 4-10-07, http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/10/443, accessed 9-5-12. It may have become the penance of choice for the environmentally conscious individual, but planting trees to offset carbon emissions could contribute to global warming if they are planted outside the tropics, scientists believe. They argue that most forests do not have any overall effect on global temperature but, by the end of the century, forests in the mid and high latitudes could make their parts of the world more than 3C warmer than would have occurred if the trees did not exist. Govindasamy Bala, an atmospheric scientist at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in the US, has shown that only tropical rainforests are beneficial in helping slow global warming. The problem is that while the carbon dioxide forests use for photosynthesis indirectly helps cool the Earth by reducing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, forests also trap heat from the sunlight they absorb. Dr Bala and his colleague, Ken Caldeira of the department of global ecology at the Carneige Institute in Standford, used a computer model to show that, outside a thin band around the equator, forests end up trapping more heat than they help to get rid of through a cut in carbon dioxide. Planting trees above 50 degrees latitude - the equivalent of Scandinavia or Siberia in the northern hemisphere - can also cover up tundra normally blanketed in heat-reflecting snow. The scientists said that the results, published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists, are explained by the way in which the sun’s rays are absorbed or reflected by different parts of the world. Forest canopies, being relatively dark, absorb most of the sun’s heating rays that fall on them, warming the surface of the Earth all around. In contrast, grassland or snowfields reflect a lot more of the sun’s rays back into space, keeping temperatures in open areas lower.

2. Forest offsets/plantings are a poor way to address climate change—too transient

Alok Jha, “How Trees Might Not Be Green in Carbon Offsetting Debate,” THE GUARDIAN, 4-10-07, http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/10/443, accessed 9-5-12. The results follow increasing criticism from climate scientists of the benefits of forestry schemes to offset carbon emissions. Kevin Anderson, a scientist with the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, warned recently that offsetting was a dangerous delaying technique that helped people “sleep well at night when we shouldn’t sleep well at night”. Environmental groups have also been debating the issue. When Dr Bala’s preliminary findings were discussed at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in San Francisco, a spokesman for Greenpeace USA said that the charity had always encouraged limiting the number of trees which countries and firms use to mitigate climate change. “What we see here is another reason to limit this,” he said. He added that forestry projects were difficult to manage. “There are a lot of reasons why buying credits can be very fleeting, from a consumer point of view. You don’t know what’s going to happen to your forest in 10 years. All that effort you made to store that carbon can disappear in a heartbeat.”


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Mitigation Not Justified: Fails--Rebound Effect 1. Efficiency increases energy consumption because it lowers the implicit price—history proves

Robert Bryce, energy analyst, “Energy Efficiency May Be a Good Thing, But It Won’t Cut Energy Use,” COUNTERPUNCH, 2--29--08, www.counterpunch.org/bryce02292008.html, accessed 9-5-12. Those two sentences contain what may be the most important yet least understood concept in the energy business: energy efficiency increases energy consumption. It's counterintuitive, and precious few energy analysts have bothered to investigate it. That's why a new book, The Jevons Paradox and the Myth of Resource Efficiency Improvements, by John M. Polimeni, Kozo Mayumi, Mario Giampetro, and Blake Alcott, should be welcomed and given wide attention. The authors waste little time in explaining their thesis. On page 3 they state, "We aim to show that increased energy efficiency leads to increased demand and consumption of energy." The book is one of several analyses that have been published in recent years that confirm Jevons's findings. Horace Herring of Britain's Open University is among the world's leading experts on the paradox. In 1998 he concluded that energy efficiency measures will, "by lowering the implicit price, result in increased, not decreased, energy use." In 2003, Vaclav Smil, a polymath, author and distinguished professor of geography at the University of Manitoba, corroborated Jevons's work in his book, Energy at the Crossroads. Smil wrote that history is "replete with examples demonstrating that substantial gains in conversion (or material use) efficiencies stimulated increases of fuel and electricity (or additional material) use that were far higher than the savings brought by these innovations."

2. Most comprehensive study proves the rebound effect

Robert Bryce, energy analyst, “Energy Efficiency May Be a Good Thing, But It Won’t Cut Energy Use,” COUNTERPUNCH, 2--29--08, www.counterpunch.org/bryce02292008.html, accessed 9-5-12. In 2005, Peter Huber and Mark Mills, in their provocative book, The Bottomless Well, declared that "Efficiency fails to curb demand because it lets more people do more, and do it faster - and more/more/faster invariably swamps all the efficiency gains." Last October, the U.K. Energy Research Centre published what it claims is one of the most comprehensive analyses of the paradox. After a review of over 500 studies, the London-based outfit confirmed the existence of the Jevons Paradox (which it calls the "rebound effect") and concluded that the "potential contribution of energy efficiency policies needs to be reappraised."

3. U.S. experience proves that efficiency only increases energy demand

Robert Bryce, energy analyst, “Energy Efficiency May Be a Good Thing, But It Won’t Cut Energy Use,” COUNTERPUNCH, 2--29--08, www.counterpunch.org/bryce02292008.html, accessed 9-5-12. Polimeni looked at data from developed and underdeveloped countries. He notes that between 1960 and 2004, U.S. energy intensity decreased by 113 percent, but overall energy consumption increased by 100 percent. His conclusion: "Energy-efficient technology improvements are counterproductive, promoting energy consumption. Yet, energy efficiency improvements continue to be promoted as a panacea." So what is to be done? First, we must accept the fact that efficiency won't reduce consumption, but it can help reduce the rate of consumption growth. And for that reason alone, it should be pursued.

paradigm october 12 pf

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