Global Warming Real

1AC Quality CardsJust a note to folks in these sections. The blocks written in this file are assumptive of the affirmative defending the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study which was published in 2012. You are encouraged to defend other studies, but the blocks below will make reference to these cards as a vehicle for the blocks below.

The Berkeley Earth Project’s report indicates that anthropogenic CO2 is the driving force of global warming since the 1800s. Even skeptics can’t disprove their findingsDrum, 2012 (Kevin, “Berkeley Earth Project Says Carbon Dioxide is Causing Global Warming,” Mother Jones, July 30, 2012)

I promised to link to Richard Muller's latest climate change paper from the Berkeley BEST group when it was posted on Monday, and it's now

Monday. So here it is. Previous BEST papers have confirmed dramatic global warming over the past century, and

the new paper is mostly an attempt to figure out what caused the warming. The answer, unsurprisngly to

most of us, is human activity:

Many of the changes in land-surface temperature follow a simple linear combination of volcanic forcing (based on estimates of stratospheric sulfate injection) and an anthropogenic term represented here by the logarithm of the CO2 concentration....When we included solar forcing we found that the solar variability record assumed by the IPCC did not contribute significantly to the fit of historic temperature.

....After accounting for volcanic and anthropogenic effects, the residual variability in land-surface temperature is observed to closely mirror and for slower changes slightly lead variations in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation Index. This is consistent with both the land and North Atlantic responding [to] the same unknown process....Though non-trivial, this number is small compared to the anthropogenic changes that appear to have occurred during the last century.

In English, this means that (a) volcanoes cause short-term spikes in the climate record, (b) changes in solar activity have virtually no effect, and (c) periodic oscillation in North Atlantic sea temperatures accounts for some of the variability we see in the temperature record. However, the primary cause of warming since 1800 is anthropogenic. That is to say: humans did it. Carbon dioxide has produced virtually all of the warming that we see around us today, at the rate of about 3.1 degrees C for every doubling of atmospheric CO2 . The chart below shows the close match between CO2 levels, volcanic activity, and surface temperature.

This is pretty much the same result produced by the IPCC and the consensus of every climate scientist working today. The skeptics dived into the data, crunched it in an entirely different way, and came up with the same result: Global warming is real and human activity causes it.

Earth’s energy imbalance key test – no models needed, can calculate precisely the impact CO2 has on warming. Hansen et. Al, 2012 (James, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute, and Pushker Kharechaa, Makiko Satoa, Frank Ackermanb, Paul J. Heartyc, Ove Hoegh-Guldbergd, Shi-Ling Hsue, Fred Kruegerf, Camille Parmesang, Stefan Rahmstorfh, Johan Rockstromi, Eelco J. Rohlingj, Jeffrey Sachsk, Pete Smithl, Konrad Steffenm, Lise Van Susterenn, Karina von Schuckmanno, James C. Zachosp; “Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, March 23, 2012, http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1365v3)

At a time of climate stability, Earth radiates as much energy to space as it absorbs from sunlight. Today Earth is out of balance because increasing atmospheric gases such as CO2 reduce Earth's heat radiation to space, causing an energy imbalance, more energy coming in than going out. This imbalance causes Earth to warm and move back toward energy balance, but warming and restoration of energy balance are slowed by Earth's thermal inertia, due mainly to the ocean. The immediate planetary energy imbalance caused by a CO2 increase can be calculated precisely . The

radiation physics is rigorously understood and does not require a climate model. But the ongoing energy imbalance is reduced by the fact that Earth has already warmed 0.8°C, thus increasing heat radiation to space. The imbalance is also affected by other factors that alter climate, such as changes of solar irradiance, the reflectivity of Earth's surface, and aerosols. Determination of the state of Earth's climate therefore requires measuring the energy imbalance. This is a challenge, because the imbalance is expected to be only about 1 W/m2 or less, so accuracy approaching 0.1 W/m2 is needed. The most promising approach is to measure the rate of changing heat content of the ocean, atmosphere, land, and ice (33).

Observed Energy Imbalance. Nations of the world have launched a cooperative program to measure changing ocean heat content, distributing more than 3000 Argo floats around the world ocean, with each float repeatedly lowering an instrument package to a depth of 2 km and back (34). Ocean coverage by floats reached 90% by 2005 (34) , with the gaps mainly in sea ice regions, yielding the potential for an accurate energy balance assessment, provided that several systematic measurement biases exposed in the past decade are minimized (35, 36). Analysis of the Argo data yields a heat gain in the ocean's upper 2000 m of 0.41 W/m2 averaged over Earth's surface during 2005-2010 (37). Smaller contributions to planetary energy imbalance are from heat gain by the deeper ocean (+0.10 W/m2), energy used in net melting of ice (+0.05 W/m2), and energy taken up by warming continents (+0.02 W/m2). Data sources for these estimates and uncertainties are

provided elsewhere (33). The resulting net planetary energy imbalance for the six years 2005-2010 is +0.58 ±0.15 W/m2.

This positive energy imbalance in 2005-2010 demonstrates that the effect of solar variability on climate is much less than the effect of human-made greenhouse gases. If the sun were the dominant forcing, the planet would have a negative energy balance in 2005-2010, when solar irradiance was at its lowest level in the period of accurate data, i.e., since the 1970s (38). Even though much of the greenhouse gas forcing has been expended in causing observed 0.8°C global warming, the residual positive forcing overwhelms the negative solar forcing, yielding a net planetary energy imbalance +0.58 ±0.15 W/m2. Earth's energy imbalance averaged over the 11-year cycle of solar variability should be larger than the measured +0.58 W/m2 at solar minimum. The mean imbalance averaged over the solar cycle is estimated to be +0.75 ±0.25 W/m2 (33).

It’s not too late – even if emissions peak after 2014 it’s possible to stabilize the climate longtermHuntingford et al, 2012 (Chris, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Benson Lane, and Jason A Lowe 2 , Laila K Gohar 2 , Niel H A Bowerman 3 , Myles R Allen 3,4 , Sarah C B Raper 5 and Stephen M Smith 6 “The link between a global 2C warming threshold and emissions in years 2020, 2050 and beyond,” Environmental Research Letters, March 26, 2012)

We relate year 2020 and 2050 emissions to attributes of potential future emissions trajectories and associated probabilities of exceeding the 2C threshold of global warming since pre-industrial times. For prescribed long-term future floor and contemporary baseline emissions, supplying values for 2020 and 2050 emissions determines the year of peak emissions, subsequent decarbonization rate and probability of staying below two degrees of warming out to year 2500.

To remain below 2C in global warming, emissions must peak and soon, followed by significant rates of decarbonization. Our analysis has encapsulated uncertainty in aspects of the Earth system, thereby generating probabilistic estimates. Across all simulations, we find the slowest rate of decarbonization consistent with a 50% chance of exceeding 2C to be slightly below 3% per annum, where this corresponds to the specific case of emissions peaking by year 2014 (so in fact deviation from business-as-usual would have to have already started) and a zero emissions floor. For later peaking, a non-zero

emissions floor, a higher certainty of remaining below the 2C threshold, or any combination of these, then higher reduction rates are required. The difficulty of implementing higher decarbonization rates cannot be underestimated. Le Quere et al (2009) and others note the continuing strong correlation between global domestic product (GDP) and emissions.

Warming is a force multiplier - makes all political problems worseScheffran et al, May 2012 (Jurgen, Research Group Climate Change and Security, Institute of Geography and KlimaCampus, University of Hamburg; and Michael Brzoska, Jasmin Kominek, P. Michael Link, Janpeter Schilling; “Climate Change and Violent Conflict,” Science, May 2012)

Since the 1990s, there has been an extensive scientific debate on how the scarcity of natural resources affects violence and armed conflict (29,

30). More recently, conflict studies pay attention to the vulnerability of natural and social systems to climate impacts (31). Vulnerability can be broken down into three factors: (i) exposure to climate change, (ii) sensitivity

to climate change, and (iii) adaptive capacity (32). The last two can be affected by conflict. Many of the world’s poorest people are exposed to various risks to life, health, and well-being . If climate change adds to these

risks, it can increase humanitarian crises and aggravate existing conflicts without directly causing them.

The question is whether human development, resilience, and adaptive capacity can compensate for increasing exposure

and sensitivity to climate change. In previous decades, humanitarian aid, development assistance, and wealth per capita have increased

(33), which has contributed to a reduction of global poverty as a possible driver of conflict. International efforts to prevent and manage conflicts have also been strengthened, and the number of armed conflicts has declined since the end of the Cold War (34). In recent

years, however, this trend slowed down or is being reversed. While the number of democratic states has grown over the past half-century, the number of fragile states with weak institutions has also increased (35).

If the debate on the securitization of climate change provokes military responses and other extraordinary measures, this could reinforce the likelihood of violent conflict. Main aspects of security concern include interventions in fragile states, the securing of borders (e.g., against disaster refugees), and access to resources (e.g., in the Mediterranean or Arctic region)

[see (36)]. Other responses to climate change may also become causes of conflict, including bioenergy (as

producers compete for land and food-related resources), nuclear power (which can lead to nuclear weapons proliferation), or geoengineering (through disagreements between states). Thus, there is a need for conflict-sensitive mitigation and adaptation strategies that contain conflict and contribute to cooperation via effective institutional frameworks, conflict management, and governance mechanisms.

Research Challenges

The balance between political and social factors and climate change could shift when the global temperature reaches levels that have been unprecedented in human history. There is reason to believe that such a change might overwhelm adaptive capacities and response mechanisms of both social and natural systems and

thus lead to “tipping points” toward societal instability and an increased likelihood of violent conflict (37).

The Rate Debate

CO2 IncreasingCO2 Concentrations continue to increase – over 400ppm globally for the first time in 4 million years.Kahn 2016 (Brian, sr. science writer at Climate Central, previously worked at the International Research Institute for Climate and society, “Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM For First Time in 4 Million Years,” Climate Central, June 15, 2016 http://www.climatecentral.org/news/antarctica-co2-400-ppm-million-years-20451)

Carbon dioxide has been steadily rising since the start of the Industrial Revolution, setting a new high year after year.

There's a notable new entry to the record books. The last station on Earth without a 400 parts per million (ppm) reading has reached it.

A little 400 ppm history. Three years ago, the world's gold standard carbon dioxide observatory passed the symbolic threshold of 400 ppm. Other observing stations have steadily reached that threshold as carbon dioxide spreads across the planet's atmosphere at various points since then. Collectively, the world passed the threshold for a month last year.

In the remote reaches of Antarctica, the South Pole Observatory carbon dioxide observing station cleared 400 ppm on May 23, according to an announcement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Wednesday. That’s the first time it's passed that level in 4 million years (no, that’s not a typo).

There's a lag in how carbon dioxide moves around the atmosphere. Most carbon pollution originates in the northern hemisphere because that's where most of the world's population lives. That’s in part why carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit the 400 ppm milestone earlier in the northern reaches of the world.

But the most remote continent on earth has caught up with its more populated counterparts.

"The increase of carbon dioxide is everywhere, even as far away as you can get from civilization ," Pieter Tans, a carbon-monitoring scientist at the Environmental Science Research Laboratory, said. "If you emit carbon dioxide in New York, some fraction of it will be in the South Pole next year."

Tans said it's "practically impossible" for the South Pole Observatory to see readings dip below 400 ppm because the Antarctic lacks a strong

carbon dioxide up and down seasonal cycle compared to locations in the mid-latitudes. Even factoring in that seasonal cycle, new

research published earlier this week shows that the planet as a whole has likely crossed the 400 ppm threshold permanently (at least in our lifetimes).

AT: No Tipping Point

1. Rapidly approaching tipping point. It’s not just tied to global temperature – cyclical weather patterns are the best indicators.

Guterl, 12 (Fred, executive editor of Scientific American, “The climate change tipping point,” New York Times, August 4, 2012)

So far 2012 is on pace to be the hottest year on record. But does this mean that we've reached a

threshold a tipping point that signals a climate disaster?

For those warning of global warming, it would be tempting to say so. The problem is, no one knows if there is a point at which a climate system shifts abruptly. But some scientists are now bringing mathematical rigor to the tipping-point argument. Their findings give us fresh cause to worry that sudden changes are in our future.

One of them is Marten Scheffer, a biologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, who grew up swimming in clear lowland ponds. In the 1980s, many of these ponds turned turbid. The plants would die, algae would cover the surface, and only bottom-feeding fish remained. The cause fertilizer runoff from nearby farms was well known, but even after you stopped the runoff, replanted the lilies and restocked the trout, the ponds would stay dark and scummy.

Scheffer solved this problem with a key insight: the ponds behaved according to a branch of mathematics called “dynamical systems,” which deals with sudden changes. Once you reach a tipping point, it's very difficult to return things to how they used to be. It's easy to roll a boulder off a cliff, for instance, but much harder to roll it back. Once the ponds turned turbid, it wasn't enough to just replant and restock. You had to get them back to their original, clear state.

Science is a graveyard of grand principles that fail in the end to explain the real world. So it is all the more surprising that Scheffer's idea worked.

By applying the principles of dynamical systems, Scheffer was able to figure out that to fix the ponds, he had to remove the fish that thrive in the turbid water. They stir up sediment, which blocks sunlight from plants, and eat the zooplankton that keep the water clear. His program of fixing the Netherlands' ponds and lakes is legendary in ecology.

Scheffer and other scientists are now trying to identify the early-warning signals for climate that precede

abrupt transitions. Tim Lenton, a climate scientist at the University of Exeter in England, has identified a handful of climate systems that

could reach tipping points in the not-too-distant future. These are not so much related to global average temperatures the main metric for climate-change arguments as they are to patterns of climate that repeat themselves each year. El Nino is one such pattern a gigantic blob of warm water that sloshes around in the Pacific Ocean, causing weather changes across

wide swaths of the globe. Another is the West African monsoon, which brings rain to the west coast of the continent. Each is subject to behaving like dynamical systems which means they are prone to “flip” from one state to another, like one of Scheffer's ponds, over

time periods that vary from a year to a few hundred. The most frightening prospect that Lenton has found is the vulnerability of the Indian monsoon. More than a billion people depend on this weather pattern each year for the rain it brings to crops. The monsoon, though, is being affected by two conflicting forces: the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is adding energy to the monsoons, making them more powerful. On the other hand, soot from fires and coal plants acts to block the sun's energy, weakening the monsoons. This opposition creates potential instability and the possibility that the atmospheric dynamics that bring the monsoons could change

suddenly. Lenton's analysis shows this could occur in a remarkably short time. The monsoons could be here one year, then gone the next year. Other possible tipping points are the melting of the North Pole's sea ice, Greenland's glaciers and the Antarctic ice sheets, and the destruction of the Amazon rain forest and Canada's boreal forests. We know that the dynamical-systems idea worked

for Scheffer's ponds because he achieved real-world results. But why should we believe that the principle explains things like El Nino and the Indian monsoon? The acid test will be whether the real world behaves the way Lenton says it will. If the Indian monsoon disappears, we'll know he is right. What then? The real worst-case scenario would have one such event triggering others, until you have a cascade of weather flips

from one end of the planet to another. It wouldn't be quite as dramatic as Hollywood might want to depict, perhaps, but it would be dramatic enough to rewrite the predictions for sea level and temperature rises that are part of the current consensus. This worst case is

highly speculative, but sudden shifts in climate patterns may already be happening.

2. There is a tipping point – around a 2C increase above preindustrial levels causes positive feedbacks to kick in. That’s the 1AC Hansen 12 evidence. The impact of this is runaway warming.

3. Even if there is no absolute tipping point, we should still strive to avoid warming. There is a direct correlation between the intensity of conflicts and warming. That’s Scheffran et al in 12.

AT: Too Late to Solve

1. It’s not too late – even if emissions peak in 2014 it’s easy to stabilize the climate longterm. That’s the 1AC Huntinford evidence.

2. We’re the only ones with numbers on this question. If we wait to reduce until 2020 a 15% annual reduction in CO2 means we stabilize the climate at 350ppm. That’s enough to solve, from our Hansen 12 evidence.

3. We can still slow warming – not too late

Patriot News, 2012 (Editorial Board, “Global warming,” 4-22-2012, http://www.pennlive.com/editorials/index.ssf/2012/04/global_warming_its_real_its_no.html MG)

At this point, it seems impossible — diplomatically, if not scientifically — for mankind to halt the manmade warming of the earth. There are too many competing geopolitical interests at work. But global warming is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Anything that slows the pace of global warming can have a real impact. For example, the U.S. is part of a new (and relatively low-cost) effort to help developing countries reduce soot from diesel exhausts and the burning of wood and agricultural waste. By one estimate, these pollutants cause as many as two million premature deaths a year. The continued development of cleaner energy sources — nonrenewable ones such as the natural gas from Marcellus Shale and renewable ones such as wind power — will decrease our reliance on foreign oil. That reliance is damaging to our economy and risky politically. The federal government has given the oil industry billions in subsidies over the decades. With oil companies making record profits, it only makes sense to shift those dollars to the research and development of renewable energy sources that will strengthen our long-term security. Since the first Earth Day a generation ago, thinking “green” has become an everyday part of life — especially for those under 30. We face huge challenges. Yet there is at least some hope today that, as slowly but inexorably as the world turns, we are embracing the need to defend the health of our air, our water and our planet.

4. Energy imbalance shows reduction of CO2 to <350ppm restores stability. Reducing other forcings is comparatively better than letting reflective aerosols remain in place.

Hansen et. Al, 2012 (James, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute, and Pushker Kharechaa, Makiko Satoa, Frank Ackermanb, Paul J. Heartyc, Ove Hoegh-Guldbergd, Shi-Ling Hsue, Fred Kruegerf, Camille Parmesang, Stefan Rahmstorfh, Johan Rockstromi, Eelco J. Rohlingj, Jeffrey Sachsk, Pete Smithl, Konrad Steffenm, Lise Van Susterenn, Karina von Schuckmanno, James C. Zachosp; “Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, March 23, 2012, http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1365v3 MG)

Implications for CO2 Target. Earth's energy imbalance is the single most vital number characterizing the state of Earth's climate. It informs us about the global temperature change "in the pipeline" without further change of climate forcings. It also defines how much we must reduce greenhouse gases to restore energy balance and stabilize climate, if other forcings remain unchanged. The measured energy imbalance accounts for all natural and human-made climate forcings, including changes of Earth's surface and atmospheric aerosols.

If Earth's mean energy imbalance is +0.5 W/m2, CO2 must be reduced from the current level of 390 ppm to about 360 ppm to increase Earth's heat radiation to space by 0.5 W/m2 and restore energy balance. If Earth's energy imbalance is 0.75 W/m2, CO2 must be reduced to about 345 ppm to restore energy balance (33, 39).

The measured energy imbalance affirms that a good initial CO2 target to stabilize climate near current temperatures is "<350 ppm" (20). Specification of a more precise CO2 target now is difficult and unnecessary, because of uncertain future changes of other forcings including other gases, ground albedo, and aerosols. More precise knowledge of the best target will become available during the time that it takes to turn around CO2 growth and approach the initial 350 ppm target.

Ironically, future reductions of particulate air pollution may exacerbate global warming by reducing the cooling effect of reflective aerosols. However, a concerted effort to reduce non-CO2 forcings by methane, tropospheric ozone, other trace gases and black soot might counteract the warming from a decline in reflective aerosols (39). Our calculations below of future global temperature assume that compensation. If that goal is not achieved, future warming could exceed calculated values.

AT: Warming Slow1. The rate of climate change is accelerating three times more rapidly than predicted – must act now to stop warming.Lean, 2007 (Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor for The Independent “Global warming 'is three times faster than worst predictions'”, The Independent, June 3 2007, http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/global-warming-is-three-times-faster-than-worst-predictions-451529.html MG)

Global warming is accelerating three times more quickly than feared, a series of startling, authoritative studies has revealed. They have found that emissions of carbon dioxide have been rising at thrice the rate in the 1990s. The Arctic ice cap is melting three times as fast - and the seas are rising twice as rapidly - as had been predicted. News of the studies - which are bound to lead to calls for even tougher anti-pollution measures than have yet been contemplated - comes as the leaders of the world's most powerful nations prepare for the most crucial meeting yet on tackling climate change.The issue will be top of the agenda of the G8 summit which opens in the German Baltic resort of Heiligendamm on Wednesday, placing unprecedented pressure on President George Bush finally to agree to international measures. Tony Blair flies to Berlin today to prepare for the summit with its host, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. They will discuss how to tackle President Bush, who last week called for action to deal with climate change, which his critics suggested was instead a way of delaying international agreements. Yesterday, there were violent clashes in the city harbour of Rostock between police and demonstrators, during a largely peaceful march of tens of thousands of people protesting against the summit. The study, published by the US N ational Academy of Sciences, shows that carbon dioxide emissions have been increasing by about 3 per cent a year during this decade, compared with 1.1 per cent a year in the 1990s. The significance is that this is much faster than even the highest scenario outlined in this year's massive reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - and suggests that their dire forecasts of devastating harvests, dwindling water supplies, melting ice and loss of species are likely to be understating the threat facing the world. The study found that nearly three-quarters of the growth in emissions came from developing countries, with a particularly rapid rise in China. The country, however, will resist being blamed for the problem, pointing out that its people on average still contribute only about a sixth of the carbon dioxide emitted by each American. And, the study shows, developed countries, with less than a sixth of the world's people, still contribute more than two-thirds of total emissions of the greenhouse gas. On the ground, a study by the University of California's National Snow and Ice Data Center shows that Arctic ice has declined by 7.8 per cent a decade over the past 50 years, compared with an average estimate by IPCC computer models of 2.5 per cent.

2. It’s only going to get faster. Our Hansen 12 and Tickell evidence explain how positive feedbacks drive the rate ever faster. Even if they win that it is at a manageable rate, after 2C warmer than preindustrial levels methane hydrates accelerate warming.3. Appearance of slowing is because the oceans are acting as a massive CO2 sync – rapid warming will begin against soonPainting, 2012 (Rob, contributor to Skeptical Science, “NASA: More Rapid Global Warming in Near Future,” Planetsave.com, January 28, 2012, http://planetsave.com/2012/01/28/nasa-more-rapid-global-warming-in-near-future/ MG)

As a recent SkS post by Dana Nuccitelli has pointed out global warming hasn’t stopped, despite a recent lull in global surface temperatures. The oceans, which are the main heat sink for global warming, have scarcely skipped a beat in soaking up heat. The hiatus in global surface temperatures appears to simply be a reflection of natural variability, principally the exchange of heat between the ocean surface and the atmosphere. But we shouldn’t expect this to last much longer. Eventually that ocean heat buried in deeper layers will come back to the surface, and we’ll experience the warm phase of this natural cool/warm (La Niña /El Niño -based) cycle.

As if to reinforce this very point, a group of scientists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA GISS), have released an analysis of global temperatures in 2011, and near-future prospects . They find that 2011 was the 9th-hottest year on record (9 out of the 10 hottest years on record since 1880, have occurred in the 21st century), and that this cool-ish year (by 21st century standards, but hot by 20th century standards) was largely due to the cooling influence of a quiet phase of the 11 year-long solar cycle (small changes in the intensity of sunlight reaching Earth), and La Niña which has been dominant over the last 3 years (See figure 1). They conclude that the lull is an illusion, and that rapid warming of global surface temperatures is likely to resume in the next few years.

4. Earlier IPCC reports were too modest – impacts of global warming kick in under 1-degree CHansen et. Al, 2012 (James, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute, and Pushker Kharechaa, Makiko Satoa, Frank Ackermanb, Paul J. Heartyc, Ove Hoegh-Guldbergd, Shi-Ling Hsue, Fred Kruegerf, Camille Parmesang, Stefan Rahmstorfh, Johan Rockstromi, Eelco J. Rohlingj, Jeffrey Sachsk, Pete Smithl, Konrad Steffenm, Lise Van Susterenn, Karina von Schuckmanno, James C. Zachosp; “Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, March 23, 2012, http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1365v3 MG)

The basic physics underlying this global warming, the greenhouse effect, is simple. An increase of gases such as CO2 has little effect on incoming sunlight but makes the atmosphere more opaque at infrared wavelengths that radiate heat to space. The resulting Earth energy imbalance, absorbed solar energy exceeding heat emitted to space, causes the planet to warm.

Efforts to assess dangerous climate change have focused on estimating a permissible level of global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (1, 2) summarized broad-based assessments with a "burning embers" diagram, which indicated that major problems begin with global warming of 2-3°C. A probabilistic analysis (3), still partly subjective, found a median "dangerous" threshold of 2.8°C, with 95% confidence that the dangerous threshold was 1.5°C or higher.

These assessments were relative to global temperature in 2000; add 0.7°C to obtain warming relative to 1880-1920. The conclusion that humanity could tolerate global warming up to a few degrees Celsius meshed with common sense. After all, people readily tolerate much larger regional and seasonal climate variations.

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.

5. Skeptics “pause” in warming is false – 2015 was the hottest year on record by 0.1C.Hansen et al, 2016 (James, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute, and Makiko Satoa, Reto Ruedy, Gavin A. Schmidt, and Ken Lo, “Global Temperature in 2015,” January 15, 2016, http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2016/20160120_Temperature2015.pdf)

Update of the GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) global temperature analysis (GISTEMP)1,2 (Fig. 1a), finds 2015 to be the warmest year in the instrumental record. (More detail is available at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ and http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/; figures in

this summary are available from Makiko Sato on the latter web site.) Unlike the prior three record years, 2014, 2010 and 2005,

each of which exceeded the preceding record by only a few hundredths of a degree, 2015 smashed the prior record by more than 0.1°C. The only prior record-raising jump of annual global temperature as large, probably slightly larger, was in 1998. The 1998 temperature was boosted by the strong 1997-98 “El Niño of the century.”

The 2015 temperature was boosted by an El Niño of comparable magnitude. The high 2015 global temperature should practically terminate discussion of a hypothesized “global warming hiatus”, as the past two warm years remove the impression that warming has plateaued (Fig. 1).

AT: AdaptationWarming happens at a rate faster than we can adaptMcCauley, 2016 (Lauren, staff writer at Common Dreams, “James Hansen's Climate Bombshell: Dangerous Sea Level Rise Will Occur in Decades, Not Centuries,” Common Dreams, March 22, 2016 http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/03/22/james-hansens-climate-bombshell-dangerous-sea-level-rise-will-occur-decades-not)

Dr. James Hansen, the former NASA scientist who is widely credited with being one of the first to raise concerns about human-caused global

warming, is a co-author of a new report predicting that the world will undergo devastating sea level rise within mere decades—not centuries, as previously thought.

The report, published Tuesday in the open-access journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, paints an even bleaker picture of the planet's

future, positing that continued high fossil fuel emissions will "increase powerful storms" and drive sea-level rise of "several meters over a timescale of 50 to 150 years."

Hansen, who now serves as the director of the Climate Science Awareness and Solutions program at Columbia University Earth Institute, published the findings along with an international team of 18 researchers and academics.

As the abstract states, the predictions "differ fundamentally from existing climate change assessments." For example, the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2013 predicted three feet of sea level rise by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated.

A draft version of Hansen's paper released last year provoked wide debate among climate scientists.

Nonetheless, Michael Mann, a renowned climate scientist with the University of Pennsylvania, who is among those questioning some of the report's "extraordinary" claims, told the New York Times, "I think we ignore James Hansen at our peril."

The peer-edited report examines growing ice melt from Antarctica and Greenland and studies how that melting has historically

amplified "feedbacks that increase subsurface ocean warming and ice shelf melting ." Taking into consideration

"rapid, large, human-made climate forcing," the study predicts a much more accelerated rate of sea level rise of several meters, beyond that which humanity is capable of adapting to.

AT: No Warming Now1. Warming is real and happening now – Our Drum 12 evidence shows the conservative Koch funded study concludes not only that warming is happening, but it is happening at a faster rate than earlier IPCC reports predicted.

2. This study is the BEST! Shows a .08 degree C increase in global temperature since 1950, and shows other forces are secondary to the impact of anthropogenic CO2.Rohde, Muller, et. Al, 2012 (Robert and Richard, both of the Berkeley Earth Land Temperature Project, Novim Group, University of California, and Robert Jacobsen2,3, Elizabeth Muller1, Saul Perlmutter2,3, Arthur Rosenfeld2,3, Jonathan Wurtele2,3,Donald Groom3, Charlotte Wickham4, “A New Estimate of the Average Earth Surface Land Temperature Spanning 1753 to 2011,” Third Santa Fe Conference on Global and Regional Climate Change, July 8, 2012 http://berkeleyearth.org/pdf/results-paper-july-8.pdf MG)

We report an estimate of the Earth’s average land surface temperature for the period 1753 to 2011. To address issues of potential station selection bias, we used larger sampling of stations than had prior studies. For the period post 1880, our estimate is similar to those previously reported by other groups, although we report smaller error uncertainties. The land temperature rise from the 1950s decade to the 2000s decade is 0.87 ± 0.05 ºC (95% confidence). Both maximum and minimum daily temperatures have increased during the last century. Diurnal variations decreased from 1900 to 1987, and then increased; this increase is significant but not understood. The period of 1753 to 1850 is marked by sudden drops in land surface temperature that are coincident with known volcanism; the response function is approximately 1.5 ± 0.5 ºC per 100 Tg of atmospheric sulfate. This volcanism, combined with a simple proxy for anthropogenic effects (logarithm of the CO2 concentration), can account for much of the variation in the land surface temperature record; the fit is not improved by the addition of a solar forcing term. Thus, for this very simple model, solar forcing does not appear to contribute to the observed global warming of the past 250 years; the entire change can be accounted for by a sum of volcanism and anthropogenic proxies. The residual variations include interannual and multi-decadal variability very similar to that of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO).

3. We don’t need to win models – observation of Earth’s energy imbalance proves CO2 is forcing warmingHansen et. Al, 2012 (James, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute, and Pushker Kharechaa, Makiko Satoa, Frank Ackermanb, Paul J. Heartyc, Ove Hoegh-Guldbergd, Shi-Ling Hsue, Fred Kruegerf, Camille Parmesang, Stefan Rahmstorfh, Johan Rockstromi, Eelco J. Rohlingj, Jeffrey Sachsk, Pete Smithl, Konrad Steffenm, Lise Van Susterenn, Karina von Schuckmanno, James C. Zachosp; “Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, March 23, 2012, http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1365v3 MG)

At a time of climate stability, Earth radiates as much energy to space as it absorbs from sunlight. Today Earth is out of balance because increasing atmospheric gases such as CO2 reduce Earth's heat radiation to space, causing an energy imbalance, more energy coming in than going out. This imbalance causes Earth to warm and move back toward energy balance, but warming and restoration of energy balance are slowed by Earth's thermal inertia, due mainly to the ocean.

The immediate planetary energy imbalance caused by a CO2 increase can be calculated precisely. The radiation physics is rigorously understood and does not require a climate model. But the ongoing energy imbalance is reduced by the fact that Earth has already warmed 0.8°C, thus increasing heat radiation to space. The imbalance is also affected by other factors that alter climate, such as changes of solar irradiance, the reflectivity of Earth's surface, and aerosols.

Determination of the state of Earth's climate therefore requires measuring the energy imbalance. This is a challenge, because the imbalance is expected to be only about 1 W/m2 or less, so accuracy approaching 0.1 W/m2 is needed. The most promising approach is to measure the rate of changing heat content of the ocean, atmosphere, land, and ice (33).

Observed Energy Imbalance. Nations of the world have launched a cooperative program to measure changing ocean heat content, distributing more than 3000 Argo floats around the world ocean, with each float repeatedly lowering an instrument package to a depth of 2 km and back (34). Ocean coverage by floats reached 90% by 2005 (34) , with the gaps mainly in sea ice regions, yielding the potential for an accurate energy balance assessment, provided that several systematic measurement biases exposed in the past decade are minimized (35, 36).

Analysis of the Argo data yields a heat gain in the ocean's upper 2000 m of 0.41 W/m2 averaged over Earth's surface during 2005-2010 (37). Smaller contributions to planetary energy imbalance are from heat gain by the deeper ocean (+0.10 W/m2), energy used in net melting of ice (+0.05 W/m2), and energy taken up by warming continents (+0.02 W/m2). Data sources for these estimates and uncertainties are provided elsewhere (33). The resulting net planetary energy imbalance for the six years 2005-2010 is +0.58 ±0.15 W/m2.

This positive energy imbalance in 2005-2010 demonstrates that the effect of solar variability on climate is much less than the effect of human-made greenhouse gases. If the sun were the dominant forcing, the planet would have a negative energy balance in 2005-2010, when solar irradiance was at its lowest level in the period of accurate data, i.e., since the 1970s (38). Even though much of the greenhouse gas forcing has been expended in causing observed 0.8°C global warming, the residual positive forcing overwhelms the negative solar forcing, yielding a net planetary energy imbalance +0.58 ±0.15 W/m2. Earth's energy imbalance averaged over the 11-year cycle of solar variability

should be larger than the measured +0.58 W/m2 at solar minimum. The mean imbalance averaged over the solar cycle is estimated to be +0.75 ±0.25 W/m2 (33).

4. Anecdotal evidence proves warming

Science, August 12 (“A Picture of Disappearing Ice,” Science 3, August 2012 MG)

Global warming is accelerating the loss of ice sheet mass by melting, sublimation, and erosion of their margins. In order to provide a better context for understanding contemporary losses, a longer record of the recent past is

needed. Kjær et al. (p. 569) extend the record of thinning along the northwest margin of the Greenland Ice Sheet back to the mid-1980s, by using archived aerial photographs in conjunction with a digital elevation model and comparing their results to more recent data. Northwestern Greenland has experienced two dynamic ice loss events in the past three decades. Local ice loss appears to be caused by a combination of predictable surface processes that operate over decadal time scales and ones that involve the rapid movement of ice over periods of 3 to 5 years that exhibit strong regional differences.

1AR: Ice SheetsSea ice loss 50% worse than anticipated – causes positive feedbacks, losing albedoThe Guardian, August 11th (Robin McKie, “Rate of Arctic summer sea ice loss is 50% higher than predicted,” The Guardian, August 11th, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/aug/11/arctic-sea-ice-vanishing?newsfeed=true MG)

Sea ice in the Arctic is disappearing at a far greater rate than previously expected, according to data from the first purpose-built satellite launched to study the thickness of the Earth's polar caps.

Preliminary results from the European Space Agency's CryoSat-2 probe indicate that 900 cubic kilometres of summer sea ice has disappeared from the Arctic ocean over the past year.

This rate of loss is 50% higher than most scenarios outlined by polar scientists and suggests that global warming, triggered by rising greenhouse gas emissions, is beginning to have a major impact on the region. In a few years the Arctic ocean could be free of ice in summer, triggering a rush to exploit its fish stocks, oil, minerals and sea routes.

Using instruments on earlier satellites, scientists could see that the area covered by summer sea ice in the Arctic has been dwindling rapidly.

But the new measurements indicate that this ice has been thinning dramatically at the same time. For example, in regions north of Canada and Greenland, where ice thickness regularly stayed at around five to six metres in summer a decade ago, levels have dropped to one to three metres.

"Preliminary analysis of our data indicates that the rate of loss of sea ice volume in summer in the Arctic may be far larger than we had previously suspected," said Dr Seymour Laxon, of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at University College London (UCL), where CryoSat-2 data is being analysed. "Very soon we may experience the iconic moment when, one day in the summer, we look at satellite images and see no sea ice coverage in the Arctic, just open water."

The consequences of losing the Arctic's ice coverage, even for only part of the year, could be profound. Without the cap's white brilliance to reflect sunlight back into space, the region will heat up even more than at present. As a

result, ocean temperatures will rise and methane deposits on the ocean floor could melt, evaporate and bubble

into the atmosphere. Scientists have recently reported evidence that methane plumes are now appearing in many areas.

Methane is a particularly powerful greenhouse gas and rising levels of it in the atmosphere are only likely to accelerate global warming. And with the disappearance of sea ice around the shores of Greenland, its glaciers could melt faster and raise sea levels even more rapidly than at present.

AT: Cooling Now1. The world has been getting warmer over the past 50 years because of GHG emissions. That’s the Drum 12 evidence in the 1AC

2. Our Estrada et al 2012 evidence is the best evidence on this question. The appearance of cooling during the 90’s can be traced back to the Montreal Protocol limiting the output of CFC emissions and agricultural changes throughout Asia which reduced . Both of these also prove that humans can affect global temperatures.3. Claims of a decrease in temperature are based on El Nino/La Nina cycleHansen et al, 2012 (James, Reto Ruedy, Makiko Sato, and Ken Lo,” Global Temperature in 2011, Trends, and Prospects,” January 28, 2012 http://www.gci.org.uk/Documents/Hansen_20120119_Temperature.pdf MG)

Figure 7 helps us examine the issue of whether global warming has "stopped" in the past decade or at least

slowed down from the rate of the prior two decades. Global temperature in 2011 was lower than in 1998. However, global temperature has a strong interannual variability tied to the Southern Oscillation (El Nino-La Nina cycle), as is apparent in Figure 7.

Hansen et al. (2010) showed that the correlation of 12-month running-mean global temperature and Nino 3.4 index is maximum with global

temperature lagging the Nino index by 4 months. Thus the 1997-1998 "El Nino of the century" had a timing that

maximized 1998 global temperature. In contrast, the 2011 global temperature was dragged down by a strong La Nina. Indeed, the strength of the current double-bottomed La Nina, being based on ocean surface temperature relative to base period 1951-1980, is under-emphasized by the long-term trend toward higher temperature.

Thus, although the current global warming graphs (Figures 2, 3 and the upper part of Figure 7) are suggestive of a slowdown in global warming, this apparent slowdown may largely disappear as a few more years of data are added. In particular we need to see how high global temperature rises in response to the next El Nino, and we also need to consider the effect of the 10-12 year cycle of solar irradiance. This raises the question of when the next El Nino will occur and the status of the solar cycle.

El Nino Cycle

Hansen et al. (2010) argued, in anticipation of the inevitable shift from the then beginning La Nina to the next El Nino, that "The 12-month running mean global temperature in 2010 has reached a new record level for the period of instrumental data. It is likely that the 12-month mean will begin to decline in the second half of 2010. The subsequent minimum in the 12month running mean is likely to be in 2011-2012 and not as

deep as the 2008 minimum. The next maximum, likely to be in 2012-2014, will probably bring a new record global temperature, because of the underlying warming trend."The heat content of the upper 300 m of the equatorial Pacific Ocean (Figure 8) is useful data for anticipating the next El Nino, because it precedes the Nino index by two months, which in turn precedes global temperature by four months. The data in Figure 8, and data for the entire past century, also indicate that the El Nino cycle, although notoriously variable, seldom goes straight from a deep La Nina into a strong El Nino. More commonly there is a build up over a few years. Thus, although the ocean heat content increased in the first half of 2011, reaching a positive anomaly level in mid-2011, it then fell back into La Nina conditions. This current La Nina is not as deep as the one a year earlier and upper ocean heat content as of January 2012 has begun increasing again.

4. And Hansen turned out to be correct – Summer 2012 was the hottest on recordThe Energy Collective, 2012 (“Dust Bowl 2012: Hottest July on Record in U.S.” August 10, 2012, http://theenergycollective.com/globalwarmingisreal/101856/dust-bowl-2012-hottest-july-record-us MG)

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that last month was, on average, the hottest July on record for the contiguous United States , beating the previous record set in the dust bowl of 1936. The past 12 months have been the hottest ever recorded in the US, with more than 27,000 heat records broken so far this year , more than the 26,674 for all of 2011, even with the Texas-sized drought that sizzled throughout the state last summer. Last year also saw Oklahoma setting the record for the all-time hottest average summer temperature for any state ever recorded. But that was last year.

This year, drought has extended through 63 percent of the Lower 48, according to the US Drought Monitor , with a peak (so far) on July 24 when nearly 64 percent of the contiguous states were under drought conditions, the highest ever in the Drought Monitor’s 13-year history. The areas of the country suffering “extreme to exceptional” drought conditions more than doubled, rising from 10 percent in June to 22 percent in July.

According to NOAA, the average July temperature in the contiguous United States stood at 77.6 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.3 degrees above the 20th century average and the warmest July since record keeping began in 1895. The previous hottest July was in 1936 when the average temperature was 77.4 degrees F.

AT: Sats say Cooling1. Our evidence is better – the overall energy imbalance of the Earth is evidence we’re absorbing more heat than we’re releasing into the atmosphere. This is the only measure that takes all forces into account – That’s 1AC Hansen evidence.

2. The BEST study shows that the Earth is 0.8C warmer since 1950. Most conclusive study to date, plus it incorporated satellite data into their study so our evidence assumes yours.

3. If warming is happening, Sats should detect cooling. Warming causes upper-atmospheric cooling to occur. See Venus.Masters, 2012 (Jeffrey, Ph.D. in Meterology from U of Michigan, “Global Warming Causes Stratospheric Cooling,” The Weather Underground, http://www.wunderground.com/resources/climate/strato_cooling.asp MG)

However, this recovery of the ozone layer is being delayed. A significant portion of the observed stratospheric cooling is also due to human-emitted greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane. Climate

models predict that if greenhouse gases are to blame for heating at the surface, compensating cooling must occur in the upper atmosphere. We need only look as far as our sister planet, Venus, to see the

truth of this theory. Venus's atmosphere is 96.5% carbon dioxide, which has triggered a run-away

greenhouse effect of truly hellish proportions. The average surface temperature on Venus is a very toasty 894 °F! However, Venus's upper atmosphere is a startling 4-5 times colder than Earth's upper atmosphere. The explanation of this greenhouse gas-caused surface heating and upper air cooling is not simple, but good discussions can be found at Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and realclimate.org for those unafraid of radiative transfer theory. One way to think about the problem is that the amount of infrared heat energy radiated out to space by a planet is roughly equal to the amount of solar energy it receives from the sun. If the surface atmosphere warms, there must be compensating cooling elsewhere in the atmosphere in order to keep the amount of heat given off by the planet the same. As emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise, their cooling effect on the stratosphere will increase. This will make recovery of the stratospheric ozone layer much slower.

Greenhouse gases cause cooling higher up, too

Greenhouse gases have also led to the cooling of the atmosphere at levels higher than the stratosphere. Over the past 30 years, the Earth's surface temperature has increased 0.2-0.4 °C, while the temperature in the mesosphere, about 50-80 km above ground, has cooled 5-10 °C (Beig et al., 2006 ). There is no

appreciable cooling due to ozone destruction at these altitudes, so nearly all of this dramatic cooling is due to the addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Even greater cooling of 17 °C per decade has been observed high in the ionosphere, at 350 km altitude. This has affected the orbits of orbiting satellites, due to decreased drag, since the upper atmosphere has shrunk and moved closer to the surface (Lastovicka et al., 2006 ). The density of the air has declined 2-3% per decade the past 30 years at 350 km altitude. So, in a sense, the sky IS falling!

AT: Media Hype1. It’s not just hype – we can observe warming happening. That’s Hansen and Estrada. 2. Hype goes the opposite direction. Any time there is any evidence that global warming might not be real it becomes a huge deal – see Climategate.3. Indicts of the IPCC and climate science are nothing more than hype-driven media non-senseRealclimate, 2010 (RealClimate.com, a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists, “IPCC Errors: Facts and Spin,” http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/02/ipcc-errors-facts-and-spin MG)

Do the above issues suggest “politicized science”, deliberate deceptions or a tendency towards alarmism on the part of IPCC? We do not think there is any factual basis for such allegations. To the contrary,

large groups of (inherently cautious) scientists attempting to reach a consensus in a societally important

collaborative document is a prescription for reaching generally “conservative” conclusions. And indeed, before

the recent media flash broke out, the real discussion amongst experts was about the AR4 having underestimated, not exaggerated, certain aspects of climate change. These include such important topics as sea level rise and sea ice decline (see the sea ice and sea level chapters of the Copenhagen Diagnosis), where the data show that things are changing faster

than the IPCC expected. Overall then, the IPCC assessment reports reflect the state of scientific knowledge very well. There have been a few isolated errors, and these have been acknowledged and corrected. What is seriously amiss is something else: the public perception of the IPCC, and of climate science in general, has been massively distorted by the recent media storm. All of these various “gates” – Climategate, Amazongate,

Seagate, Africagate, etc., do not represent scandals of the IPCC or of climate science. Rather, they are the embarrassing battle-cries of a media scandal, in which a few journalists have misled the public with grossly overblown

or entirely fabricated pseudogates, and many others have naively and willingly followed along without seeing through the scam. It is not up to us as climate scientists to clear up this mess – it is up to the media world itself to put this right again, e.g. by publishing proper analysis pieces like the one of Tim Holmes and by issuing formal corrections of their mistaken reporting. We will follow with great interest whether the media world has the professional and moral integrity to correct its own errors.

AT: Warming Impossible/Miskolczi1. Your scientists are hacks. Warming lets life exist on the Earth at all. It’s just a question of whether there are dangers to too much warming. 2. The internal link to your argument is that solar forcing controls the whole system and that CO2 is irrelevant. This is non-responsive to our energy imbalance arguments in the 1AC.3. Prefer our evidence – Hansen’s is the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and his research team study the observed stimuli of how much energy is absorbed by the Earth from the sun, and how much is emitted, to conclude that CO2 actually does have a significant impact. Miskolczi was a NASA scientist who invented new rules of physics to show a doubling in CO2 somehow doesn’t affect temperature.4. This is nonresponsive to our Estrada 12 evidence which argues the cooling trend in the 90’s was caused by people being more responsible about GHG emissions. This proves that human activity can have an impact on the environment.

1AR: Warming ImpossibleExtend our Hansen 12 evidence. Total energy imbalance of the earth is the only evidence we need to show Miskolczi’s arguments are flawed.

Our Estrada 12 evidence shows cooling happened because we decreased GHG’s. If the climate isn’t sensitive to emissions, this shouldn’t have happened.Miskolczi’s argument is wrong – 3 reasons. (Only read if they’re actually making a big deal out of it)Levenson, 2008 (Barton Paul, “Why Ferenc M. Miskolczi is Wrong,” http://bartonpaullevenson.com/Miskolczi.html MG)

Miskolczi [2007] proposes that feedbacks constrain the gray infrared optical depth of Earth's atmosphere to a value close to 1.841. If true this would imply a very low value for climate sensitivity to a doubling of carbon dioxide, contrary to most findings (see e.g. Boer and Yu 2003; Boer et al. 2000; Dai et al. 2001; Delworth et al. 1999; Goosse et al. 2006; Hegerl et al. 2006; Roeckner et al. 1999; Sumi 2005; Washington et al.

2000; Wetherald et al. 2001). However, this conclusion depends on some doubtful assumptions.

1. "According to the Kirchhoff law, two systems in thermal equilibrium exchange energy by absorption and emission in equal amounts..." [Miskolczi 2007]. In fact, Kirchhoff's Law states that for a body in local

thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE), emissivity and absorptivity must be equal at a given wavelength. Miskolczi confuses emission with emissivity. This can lead to large numerical errors, since emissivity is of course constrained to the range 0 - 1 by definition, but emission can have any nonnegative value, and is typically in the hundreds of watts per square meter for low levels of atmosphere.

2. Miskolczi proposes that when greenhouse gases increase, water vapor decreases. This would seem to violate the Clausius-Clapeyron law, but of course the complexity of atmospheric processes might, in theory, lead to some net feedback of the type described. As an empirical matter, however, “[t]he global trend in precipitable water vapor is found to be 0.9 ± 0.06 mm/decade” [Brown et al. 2007]. With temperature rising [NASA GISS 2008], and water vapor rising as well, and at a rate consistent with the Clausius-Clapeyron law and a fixed relation of relative humidity to altitude [Manabe and Wetherald 1967; Inamdar and Ramanathan 1998; Held and Soden 2000], the proposed feedback seems unlikely to exist.

The consequences of this observation alone mitigate strongly against the Miskolczi paper's conclusions. Note, too, that if those conclusions held, it is difficult to see how Earth could have undergone ice ages, or why Venus is as hot as it is.Miskolczi proposes that the gray infrared optical thickness of Earth's atmosphere is constrained to stay near τ = 1.841. This is noticeably lower than most other estimates; e.g. Hart [1978] estimates this value as τ = 2.49. Taking Earth's radiative equilibrium temperature as 254 K, its surface temperature as 288 K, and assuming the known surface heat loss mechanisms enumerated by Kiehl and Trenberth [1997] (atmospheric absorption 67 watts per square meter, sensible heat 24 W/m2, latent heat 78 W/m2, window radiation 40 W/m2) hold, τ = 2.07 is implied. This is a minor point, but once again points out that Miskolczi's findings are outside the usual consensus.

3. Miskolczi states: "The atmosphere is a gravitationally bounded system and constrained by the virial theorem: the total kinetic energy of the system must be half of the total gravitational potential energy. The surface air temperature tA is linked to the total gravitational potential energy through the surface pressure and air density. The temperature, pressure, and air density obey the gas law, therefore, in terms of radiative flux 4 SA = σ tA4 represents also the total gravitational potential energy."

This would be correct if the Earth's atmosphere were in orbit around the Earth. But the atmosphere rotates with the Earth.A simple check of this proposition would be to find the gravitational potential and kinetic energies (U and K, respectively) of the Earths atmosphere and determine if the ratio between them is actually 2:1.

AT: Not Anthropogenic1. Warming is anthropogenic – release of GHG’s have warmed the Earth 0.8C since 1950. That’s the 1AC Hansen Evidence. 2. All warming isn’t anthropogenic, but the main driving force since 1800 has been human activities. That’s the 1AC Drum Evidence. 3. Our Hansen evidence on Earth’s energy imbalance has the best answer to this question. When we measure the total energy input and output of the Earth as a total system we measure more heat absorbed than emitted. The only cause for this can be human activity.4. Other forces of CO2 can’t be the cause. New radiological tests measure the ratio of radioactive isotopes of CO2 to non-radioactive ones. The half-life has expired on all carbon in fossil fuels, and the tests show a dilution of carbon-14. Means human activity is the cause of GHGsScience, July 2012 (Michael Balter, “Using Radiocarbon to Go Beyond Good Faith in Measuring CO2 Emissions,” Science July 27, 2012)PARIS—Many parts of the world have seen a long, hot summer—it’s been the hottest year to date in the United States—and it isn’t over yet. Climate experts are cautious about attributing short-term weather fluctuations to long-term global warming, but the heat helps highlight the scientific consensus that Earth’s atmosphere is warming, and that human activity has a lot to do with it. While politicians worldwide debate how

—and even whether—to control greenhouse gas emissions, researchers are asking a seemingly more basic question: How can they best measure such emissions, most importantly of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels? That’s

crucial for verifying any targets for reducing emissions. At a meeting of radiocarbon experts held here earlier this

month, * attendees heard the latest results from an approach many scientists think has the most promise: measuring the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere that contains the radioactive isotope carbon-14 ( 14CO2 ). About one in a trillion CO2 molecules naturally contain radiocarbon, but the carbon locked up in fossil fuels such as coal and oil has none—it lost all of its radioactivity millions of years

ago, because the half-life of 14C is only 5730 years. So as the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from fossil fuels rises, the relative amount of 14CO2 is depleted in a measurable way.

Other ways to produce carbon emissions numbers exist, but they are based on estimates of how much CO2 is generated by certain activities, such as automobile exhausts or fossil fuel–burning power plants. Those “bottomup” numbers are provided by individual nations and amount to good-faith estimates that are subject to all kinds of errors, both intentional and unintentional. What’s needed, researchers say, are “top-down” determinations based on actual scientific measurements of what’s in the atmosphere. Relying solely on bottom-up figures is, a pair of

researchers recently commented, “like dieting without weighing oneself ” (Science, 4 June 2010, p. 1241). Radiocarbon is the “most promising method … for validating bottom-up estimates,” says geochemist Heather Graven of the University of California, San Diego.

Radiocarbon meetings are usually devoted mostly to the more accurate dating of ancient human events. But the meeting here added an entire session on top-down emission measurements in Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa. Researchers are using aircraft, tall towers, and other means to sample 14CO2 in the atmosphere under varying conditions and applying new mathematical models to extrapolate those measurements to estimates of fossil-fuel emissions. The models are also helping to correct for confounding factors, such as exchanges of CO2 between the atmosphere and the oceans, and emissions from nuclear power plants, which generate 14C atoms.

“Over the past few years, we have made major progress in the number of sites where high-precision measurements are made,” says chemist John Miller of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado. As a result, says Soenke Szidat, a

biochemist at the University of Bern in Switzerland, “we are getting close to reliable and credible [CO2

emission] estimates, which do not depend on political willingness but on scientific measurements.”

The shrinking proportion of 14CO2 in the atmosphere due to fossil fuel burning was first discovered in the 1950s by Austrian physicist Hans Suess and is called the “Suess effect” (Science, 2 September 1955, p. 415). Using it to monitor CO2 emissions was first proposed in 2003 by physicist Ingeborg Levin and her colleagues at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Since then, that group has monitored atmospheric 14CO2 in Germany and other sites around the world.

In Paris, Levin presented important results from monitoring stations in the Swiss Alps and in Antarctica, indicating that the ratio of 14CO2 to nonradioactive CO2 is now about 0.5% lower in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern Hemisphere—a difference almost entirely due, she and her co-workers conclude, to a “steep increase” of fossil-fuel emissions in the more highly industrialized north. That’s a reversal since preindustrial days, Graven says, when tree ring records show that the Southern Hemisphere had less 14CO2 because upwelling of deep waters in the southern oceans brought radiocarbon-depleted CO2 to the surface

Alt Causes

AT: Climate Cycles1. Yes, there are cycles, but this is different. 1AC Hansen evidence indicates we are on a path to the Holocene extinction-type event, which is out of sync for where the cycle should be.

2. Just because there are cycles doesn’t mean we should not act. Our Martin evidence in solvency shows that transitioning away from fossil fuels can solve warming.

3. Paleoclimate records prove this warming is different – CO2 is forcing change rather than feedback – expect it to be faster and raise sea levels over 15-25 metersHansen et. Al, 2012 (James, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute, and Pushker Kharechaa, Makiko Satoa, Frank Ackermanb, Paul J. Heartyc, Ove Hoegh-Guldbergd, Shi-Ling Hsue, Fred Kruegerf, Camille Parmesang, Stefan Rahmstorfh, Johan Rockstromi, Eelco J. Rohlingj, Jeffrey Sachsk, Pete Smithl, Konrad Steffenm, Lise Van Susterenn, Karina von Schuckmanno, James C. Zachosp; “Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, March 23, 2012, http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1365v3)

Climate oscillations evident in Fig. 2 were instigated by small perturbations of Earth's orbit and the

tilt of its spin axis relative to the orbital plane that alter the seasonal and geographical distribution of sunlight on the planet (19). These forcings change very slowly, with periods between 20,000 and 400,000 years, and thus the climate is able to stay in quasi-equilibrium with the forcings. The slow insolation changes instigated the climate oscillations in Fig. 2, but the mechanisms that caused the climate changes to be so large were two powerful amplifying feedbacks: the planet's surface albedo (its reflectivity, literally its whiteness) and the atmospheric CO2 amount. As the planet warms, ice and snow melt, causing the surface to be darker, absorb more sunlight and warm further. As the ocean and soil become warmer they release CO2 and other greenhouse gases, causing further warming. These amplifying feedbacks were responsible for almost the entire glacial-to-interglacial temperature change (22-24).

Albedo and CO2 feedbacks acted as slaves to weak orbital forcings in the natural climate variations in Fig.

2, changing slowly over millennia. Today, however, CO2 is under the control of humanity as fossil fuel emissions overwhelm natural changes. Atmospheric CO2 has increased rapidly to a level not seen for at least 3 million

years (25). Global warming induced by increasing CO2 will cause ice to melt and sea level to rise as the global volume of ice moves toward the quasi-equilibrium amount that exists for a given global temperature. As the ice melts and its area decreases the albedo feedback will amplify global warming.

Paleoclimate data yield an estimate of eventual ice melt and sea level rise for a given global warming. The Eemian and Hosteinian interglacial periods (Fig. 2B), also known as marine isotope stages 5e and 11, respectively about 130,000 and 400,000 years ago, were about 1°C warmer than the 1880-1920 mean (Fig. 2B), where paleo temperature relative to the modern era is based on our conclusion above that peak global Holocene temperature exceeded the 1880-1920 mean by 0.5 ± 0.25°C. These prior two interglacials were warm enough for sea level to reach

levels at least 4-6 meters higher than today (26-28). Ominously, global mean temperature 2°C higher than the 1880-1920 mean has not existed since at least the early to mid Pliocene (Fig. 2A). Inference of Pliocene sea level change from shoreline features is complicated by local tectonics, local sediment loading, convective flow in Earth's mantle,

and regional vertical movement of the crust due to ice sheet loading or unloading (29), but the data suggest that sea level reached heights as much as 15-25 meters greater than today (29-32).

AT: China O/W1. Just because China is bad doesn’t mean we shouldn’t reduce our emissions. Hansen 12 argues a 6% year over year reduction is enough to solve. Doing the plan can solve a significant portion of this.

2. China is already taking measures to reduce its GHG output. 1AC Estrada 12 evidence shows that the cooling trend in the 90’s was because China took seriously reducing its emissions. 3. More evidence - China is making huge strides in the sqo – 19.1% reduction in energy intensityHart, 2011 (Melanie, Policy Analyst on China Energy and Climate Policy at the Center for American Progress, “China Arrives in Durban Greener than Ever,” 11/30/2011, http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/11/china_durban.html)

Chinese leaders are still unwilling to make a binding international climate commitment. But they are absolutely dedicated to improving the country’s energy efficiency and reducing emissions. The Chinese Communist Party promised their citizens to keep the economy growing at around 7 percent per year until the country reaches high-income status, which the World Bank defines as above $12,276 gross national income per capita. (China is currently upper-middle income with $4,260 GNI per capita.) Maintaining that growth rate will require a huge amount of energy. Chinese energy demand grew 144 percent over the past decade, and it will likely grow another 75 percent between 2008 and 2035. The Chinese depend on imported fossil fuels, particularly coal, for their energy needs. But coal cannot fuel China’s forecasted growth. Even if China can import enough coal to meet growing demand, escalating Chinese need may strain the global coal market and increase prices beyond what the Chinese could pay. Chinese citizens are also demanding cleaner air—

sometimes via mass protests that terrify Beijing—and burning more fossil fuels would add to their already severe pollution problems. So from the Chinese leadership perspective, greening the economy is the only way forward. Chinese

leaders set their national policy priorities in five-year plans, and for the past five years (the 11th Five-Year Plan period) they focused on two goals: making the economy run more efficiently and developing new forms of renewable energy. Chinese leaders issued the country’s first legally binding energy-efficiency target in 2006: achieving a 20 percent energy intensity reduction (energy consumed per unit of gross domestic product) by 2010. To meet the target Chinese leaders assigned efficiency quotas to their regional governments, and the regional governments used subsidies and other policy incentives to close down small and inefficient power plants in their jurisdictions and to encourage local enterprises to make energy-saving technology upgrades, retrofit buildings (or build new buildings to higher

efficiency standards), and switch to more efficient transportation. Between 2006 and 2010 the central government doled out 85.1 billion RMB (around $13 billion in U.S. dollars) on energy-saving financial incentives.[1] Local

governments spent another 41 billion RMB.[2] By 2010 China achieved a 19.1 percent overall energy-intensity

reduction. That’s just shy of the 20 percent target, but it’s close enough to call the program a success. Between 2006 and 2010 Chinese leaders also rolled out a host of renewable energy development policies—China’s first renewable energy law, renewable energy financial subsidies, market-share targets, and grid-purchase requirements—for hydropower, wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, and other renewables. Those policies sent a strong market signal that kickstarted China’s renewable energy market, particularly in solar and wind, which were basically nonexistent before 2006.

AT: Methane O/W1. Just because one gas is worse than another isn’t a reason to not cut either. Our evidence indicates that if we reduce CO2 levels we’re able to stabilize the climate. The is inclusive of methane2. Even if methane is more important, not slowing the rate of warming now means methane hydrates will begin thawing. That’s the Hansen 12 evidence.3. Lots of methane gets released in the burning of fossil fuels like natural gas. Gas will be a main transitional fuel so the impact of methane should increase. Our plan would solve that anyway4. Impact of methane from fossil fuels larger than originally thought. Continuing SQ policies transition to natural gas which is emits most methane.Howarth et al, 2011 (Robert W., Renee Santoro, and Anthond Ingraffea, “Methane and the greenhouse-gas footprint of natural gas from shale formations,” Climatic Change, April 2011)

Many view natural gas as a transitional fuel, allowing continued dependence on fossil fuels yet reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to oil or coal over coming decades (Pacala and Socolow 2004). Development of “unconventional” gas dispersed in shale is part of this vision, as the potential resource may be large, and in many regions conventional reserves are becoming depleted (Wood et al. 2011). Domestic production in the U.S. was predominantly from conventional reservoirs through the 1990s, but by 2009 U.S. unconventional production exceeded that of conventional gas. The Department of Energy predicts that by 2035 total domestic production will grow by 20%, with

unconventional gas providing 75% of the total (EIA 2010a). The greatest growth is predicted for shale gas, increasing from 16% of total production in 2009 to an expected 45% in 2035.

Although natural gas is promoted as a bridge fuel over the coming few decades, in part because of its presumed benefit for

global warming compared to other fossil fuels, very little is known about the GHG footprint of unconventional gas. Here, we define the GHG footprint as the total GHG emissions from developing and using the gas, expressed as equivalents of carbon dioxide,

per unit of energy obtained during combustion. The GHG footprint of shale gas has received little study or scrutiny, although many have voiced concern. The National Research Council (2009) noted emissions from shale-gas extraction may be greater than from conventional gas. The Council of Scientific Society Presidents (2010) wrote to President Obama, warning that some potential energy bridges such as shale gas

have received insufficient analysis and may aggravate rather than mitigate global warming. And in late 2010, the U.S. Environmental

Protection Agency issued a report concluding that fugitive emissions of methane from unconventional gas may be far greater than for conventional gas (EPA 2010).

Fugitive emissions of methane are of particular concern. Methane is the major component of natural gas and a powerful greenhouse gas. As such, small leakages are important. Recent modeling indicates methane has an even greater global warming potential than previously believed, when the indirect effects of methane on atmospheric aerosols are considered (Shindell

et al. 2009). The global methane budget is poorly constrained, with multiple sources and sinks all having large uncertainties. The radiocarbon content of atmospheric methane suggests fossil fuels may be a far larger source of atmospheric methane than generally thought (Lassey et al. 2007).

AT: Ozone O/W1. Anthropogenic CO2 is the biggest force on global warming. Other issues like ozone depletion might be important, but CO2 is still bigger. That’s Hansen.2. The Montreal Protocol did an awesome job reducing CFCs. When the Earth cooled in the 90’s it was because the ozone layer improved. That’s Estrada. That means the ozone layer has improved enough that it’s no longer a significant cause. 3. It’s the other way around. We need to reduce greenhouse gases to fix the ozone layerMatthews, 2012 (Richard, “climate change erodes the ozone layer,” http://www.thegreenmarketoracle.com/2012/08/climate-change-erodes-ozone-layer.html)According to recent research climate change may damage the protective ozone layer, which protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation that causes skin cancer, cataracts, suppresses the human immune system, and damages crops and ecosystems.

The new research published by Harvard University found that extreme weather like climate-driven summer thunderstorms might introduce more water into the stratosphere, which can erode the protective ozone layer over the US and elsewhere.

This study draws attention to the urgency of our efforts to reduce short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) including black carbon, methane, tropospheric ozone and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). Reducing SLCPs could cut the rate of global warming by at least half for the next several decades, prevent up to 4.7 million premature deaths each year and prevent billions of dollars in crop losses.

“The possibility of significant ozone depletion over North America is only the newest in a litany of accelerating impacts of climate change,” stated Durwood Zaelke, President of IGSD. “We cannot afford to wait to take fast-action.”

There are many unanticipated harmful consequences of global warming, which makes the point that we had better take precautions rather than wait to deal with the potentially irreversible side effects.

AT: Solar Forcing1. Anthropogenic warming is the biggest factor controlling climate change. That’s the 1AC Drum evidence. 2. Our energy-imbalance argument assumes solar forcing. Even when the sun is factored in, the world is absorbing more heat than it is emitting. That’s 1AC Hansen.3. Obviously solar forcing is real – but it’s a much smaller force than anthropogenic sourcesHansen et al, 2012 (James, Reto Ruedy, Makiko Sato, and Ken Lo,” Global Temperature in 2011, Trends, and Prospects,” January 28, 2012 http://www.gci.org.uk/Documents/Hansen_20120119_Temperature.pdf)

Figure 9 reveals that solar irradiance is beginning to emerge from a protracted minimum, at least two

years longer than prior minima of the satellite era, making the sun a significant source for cooling during the past several years. The magnitude of the solar forcing, which varies about 0.25 W/m2 from solar

minimum to solar maximum, is much smaller than the forcing by humanmade greenhouse gases. However, the most relevant comparison of the solar forcing is with Earth's energy imbalance, 0.58 ± 0.15 W/m2 (Hansen et al., 2011), because the combined effect of all forcings is less than that of greenhouse gases alone, and much of the greenhouse gas forcing has been "used up" in causing the warming of the past century. It is apparent that the solar forcing is not negligible in comparison with the net climate forcing.

4. Models which show solar forcing can’t account for when a climate cycle breaks down. Only anthropogenic models explain this.Estrada et al, 2012 (Francisco, Centro de Ciencias de la Atmósfera, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and Pierre Perron and Benjamín Martínez, both of Department of Economics, Boston University; “Statistical evidence about human influence on the climate system,” Working Papers Series number WP2012-012, January 2012)

Two main statistical approaches are used for investigating the attribution of climate change: the optimal fingerprinting method 1 which consists in searching for spatial and/or temporal patterns consistent with the anthropogenic forcing signal that are common in both observed and externally forced simulations of climate variables, and the cointegration framework that permits testing for the attribution of climate change directly from observed temperature and radiative forcing data 2 . As we shall

show, none of the temperature series nor those of the radiative forcing are integrated processes once breaks in the trend are accounted for, rendering the latter approach inappropriate 3,4. We therefore

follow an approach based on recently developed methods for analyzing the properties of trending series 5,6,7,8,9 . In particular, we focus on establishing evidence for the presence of breaks in the trend function that are common to observed temperatures

and anthropogenic forcing, thereby establishing direct evidence for the effect of human factors in altering the long-run path of global and hemispheric temperatures. Once these breaks are accounted for, we show that all

remaining variations in temperature are stationary with different durations that can be accounted for by non-human factors

such as internal climate variability and natural external forcings. Our results are robust to different choices for the

temperature and mixtures of anthropogenic and natural forcing series. The results provide clear evidence for the attribution of global warming to human activities, showing that they are indispensable for understanding the evolution of observed temperatures.

1AR: Breaks Model BestOur methods are sound. Statistical analysis of temperature trends indicates human induced factors are the greatest force in warming.Estrada et al, 2012 (Francisco, Centro de Ciencias de la Atmósfera, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and Pierre Perron and Benjamín Martínez, both of Department of Economics, Boston University; “Statistical evidence about human influence on the climate system,” Working Papers Series number WP2012-012, January 2012)

To statistically document the presence of a break in the trend of temperature series, we use the Perron-Yabu 7 testing procedure, valid with integrated or stationary noise, circumventing the problem of pre-testing for unit

roots. The null hypothesis of no-break is rejected in all cases at the 1% significance level. Minimizing the sum of the squared residuals in Y1 = μ + β1 + β2DT1+ ỹ1 where DT1 = t -Tb if t > Tb and Tb is the time of the break, the break dates for G, NH and SH from the HadCRUT3 dataset are estimated to occur in 1955, 1959 and 1955, respectively. The NASA dataset leads to similar

estimates for G and NH (1956 and 1968) but for SH there is evidence of two breaks, in 1923 and 1955. Hence, in all cases, there is clear evidence of a break associated with a large increase in the growth rate of temperature near 1955.

The data generating processes can be investigated using unit root tests that allow for a one-time break in the trend function. The Kim-Perron test 6,5 provides strong evidence that all temperature series are trend stationary processes accounting for the documented break, in accordance with results reported for both observed and simulated temperatures 3,14 , except that once the AMO is filtered the estimates of the break dates are not statistically different 15 , irrespective of the series used.

All series show a slight warming until the mid-20th century: for the HadCRUT3 data, the increase is 0.21,

0.32, and 0.11 per century for G, NH and SH, respectively; for the NASA data the corresponding figures are 0.31, 0.39, and 0.27. At the estimated break dates, the warming rates at least doubled, with increases of 1.03, 1.07 and 1.1 per century for HadCRUT3 G, NH and SH, and corresponding increases of 0.94, 1.16, and 0.93 for the NASA series. The estimates of the post-break warming

rates are roughly 1ºC per century for G, NH, and SH for both dataset, suggesting that since the break date the warming has been uniform across hemispheres, as should be expected from of an increase in radiative forcing of well-mixed greenhouse gases 16 . The differences with the estimates of the break dates and warming rates reported using the unfiltered series are caused by the low-frequency natural variability associated with AMO 3,13,14.

We provide statistical evidence that the same features are present in the forcing variables, depicted in Fig 2. They also clearly show a

nonstationary behavior with varying growth rates though, as expected, with much less short term variability 17 . Applying the same methodologies, the statistical evidence indicates that all series are trend stationary processes with (at least) one highly significant break in growth rate estimated to occur in 1960 for RFGHG, TRF* and TRF. This date is not

statistically different from those of the temperature series (see Supplementary Table 5 for the confidence intervals). Hence, the temperature and forcing series have stationary noise components around trend functions with nearly common significant breaks in trend slope, indicating the presence of a secular co-movement.

A simple testing procedure for additional evidence of a common long-run path between the temperature and forcing series is described in Supplementary Methods. If a linear combination of two nonstationary time series produces stationary residuals then the trend, breaks and other non-stationary features present in their trend functions cancel because they are common to both. Hence, the presence of remaining non-common 5 nonstationarities can be evaluated via unit root tests on the residuals 18,19,20 . Fig 1 shows the fitted temperature series obtained from OLS regressions with RFGHG as the explanatory variable with the filtered G and NH, and the unfiltered SH as the dependent variables, along with the

corresponding residuals. The concordance between the forcing and temperature trends is apparent; in all cases the fitted values appear the product of a low-pass filter on temperatures. Visual inspection of the residuals in Fig 1 strongly suggests that in all cases all secular movements have cancelled, leaving only stationary variations

around zero. The results of the unit root test applied to the residuals indicate that the null hypothesis of non-common nonstationarities is strongly

rejected. Furthermore, the Perron-Yabu 7 tests applied to the residuals show no evidence of remaining breaks (except for SH from the NASA dataset for which a break at the beginning of the 20th century is present). The origin

of this common trend can be established using the same testing procedure applied to the radiative forcing variables. The results show that the main secular movement of TRF* and TRF is imparted by RFGHG, indicating that human-induced factors are the main drivers behind the observed warming. This fact is strongly confirmed by the results of a nonlinear nonparametric co-trending test 9 , which show that temperatures and radiative forcing variables share a common nonlinear secular movement driven by RFGHG.

The Science

AT: Climate Models Bad1. You might as well just say ‘evidence bad’ or ‘war bad’. They need to do the work to indict our particular climate model as being problematic.2. We defend the BEST model. It’s the most recent large scale project, and incorporated every temperature record they could get their hands on. It was funded by the Koch brothers and performed by climate skeptics. You should prefer our evidence over theirs, because the GOAL of the BEST study was to disprove the IPCC report and went on to find warming was WORSE than the IPCC thought and anthropogenic. 3. Peer-review isn’t a prerequisite for credibility. New dynamics of information-sharing permit qualified evidence to be shared publicly.Ravetz, 2012 (Jerome, Institute for Science, Innovation and Society at the University of Oxford, “Sociology of science: Keep standards high,” Nature 481, January 5, 2012)

It would be ironic but welcome if the technology sector, traditionally managed through the private-property system of patents, were to lead the

way in open science. Within a more informal system, the current excessively quantitative systems of quality-assessment —

the numbers of papers and citations — could be relaxed and made more personal and communal. Quality assurance could be achieved by a societal consensus and professional gatekeepers.

For this to happen, barriers to sharing scientific information with the public, such as journal paywalls, should come down. And better online discussion forums must be developed. The presentation and archiving of blogs and other forms of internet communications should be improved, so that ideas can be debated and added to over time.

As more people become involved in online debates, quality need not fall by the wayside. It is

encouraging to see that well-conducted discussions of points of contention between the scientific mainstream and critics are emerging, as the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study demonstrates (see Nature 478, 428; 2011).

Ultimately, effective quality assurance depends on trust. And science relies on trust more than most institutions. As Steven Shapin, a historian of science at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, showed in his 1994 book A Social History of Truth,

trust is achieved and maintained only by mutual respect and civility of discourse. In a digital age, civility should be extended to, and reciprocated by, the extended peer community.

4. BEST is the best. Most credible source.Horowitz, 2012 (Rob, prof of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island, “Time to Take Action on Climate Change,” GoLocalProv, August 7, 2012, http://www.golocalprov.com/news/rob-horowitz-time-to-take-action-on-climate-change/)

A comprehensive study now being released by the Berkley Earth Surface Temperature Project should go along way to persuading people who continue to doubt the science that underlies climate change that it is sound.. The project is

headed by Richard Muller, a former so-called climate skeptic prominently quoted for years by opponents of action on climate change. It concludes that the earth’s temperature has increased 21/.2 degrees over the past 250 years, with 60% of that increase occurring over the past 50 years, and that “essentially” all the increase is caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

In n recent opinion piece published in the New York Times, Muller a Professor of Physics at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote “I hope that the Berkley Earth Study will help settle the scientific debate regarding global warming and its human causes” Given that Muller was one of the few credible scientists still expressing skepticism and that these findings, which can be read at www.BerkeleyEarth.org, are so definite, this may well completely settle the issue in the scientific community. For example, Muller’s study examines the issue of the variation of the sun’s light as a result of sunspots as a potential cause of the temperature changes, an alternative theory often cited by skeptics, and demonstrates that the data does not support it.

This groundbreaking new study from an unimpeachable source has important political implications. The Oil Companies and others who oppose any action on climate change have been effective in raising doubts about the science of climate change. Today, a majority of Republicans either don’t believe climate change is

happening or believe that it is occurring, but is not caused by human activity. Advocates of action on climate change can use the new findings to move the debate from ‘whether there is a problem’ to 'what do we do about it'.

AT: Adaptation Best1. Can’t adapt – Runaway warming means that we all go extinct. That’s the opposite of adaptation. That’s 1AC impact evidence.2. Even if humans can adapt, other species can’t. 52% of species will die-off if world temperature increases to 3C over preindustrial levels. That’s 1AC Hansen.

3. People might be better off than most animals, but border disputes ensure conflictHansen et. Al, 2012 (James, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute, and Pushker Kharechaa, Makiko Satoa, Frank Ackermanb, Paul J. Heartyc, Ove Hoegh-Guldbergd, Shi-Ling Hsue, Fred Kruegerf, Camille Parmesang, Stefan Rahmstorfh, Johan Rockstromi, Eelco J. Rohlingj, Jeffrey Sachsk, Pete Smithl, Konrad Steffenm, Lise Van Susterenn, Karina von Schuckmanno, James C. Zachosp; “Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, March 23, 2012, http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1365v3)

Shifting Climate Zones. Theory and climate models indicate that the tropical overturning (Hadley)

atmospheric circulation expands poleward with global warming (9). There is evidence in satellite and radiosonde data and in reanalyses output for poleward expansion of the tropical circulation by as much as a few degrees of latitude since the 1970s (10, 11), which likely contributes to expansion of subtropical conditions and increased aridity in the southern United States (7, 76), the Mediterranean region, and southern Australia. Increased aridity and temperature contribute to increased forest fires that burn hotter and are more destructive (12).

Despite large year-to-year variability of temperature, decadal averages reveal isotherms

(lines of a given average temperature) moving poleward at a typical rate of the order of 100 km/decade in

the past three decades (77), although the range shifts for specific species follow more complex patterns (78). This rapid shifting of climatic zones far exceeds natural rates of change. Movement has been in the same direction (poleward, and upward

in elevation) since about 1975. Wild species have responded to climate change, with at least 52 percent of species having shifted their ranges poleward as much as 600 km [and upward as much as 400 m (79)] in terrestrial systems and 1000 km in marine systems (16, 80).

Humans may adapt to shifting climate zones better than many species. However, political borders can interfere with human migration, and indigenous ways of life already have been adversely affected (74). Impacts are apparent in the Arctic, with melting tundra, reduced sea ice, and increased shoreline erosion.

Effects of shifting climate zones also may be important for indigenous Americans who possess specific designated land areas, as well as other cultures with long-standing traditions in South America, Africa, Asia and Australia.

4. Cross-apply Scheffran 2012 evidence from 1AC – political problems like border disputes get increasingly more dangerous with warming. 5. Prefer our evidence – New studies show plants are more sensitive to warming than tests indicateScience, 2012 (“Plants More Sensitive to Global Warming than Tests Suggest,” Science 04, May 2012, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/336/6081/527)

Ecologists trying to anticipate the effects of climate change often set up “warming” experiments in which they artificially heat up an environment and monitor plants’ reactions. But those results are falling short of reality, says Elizabeth Wolkovich, an ecologist at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

The timing of plants leafing out or blooming—part of a field called phenology—is a sensitive indicator of how ecosystems respond to climate change. Aside from using warming experiments, ecologists track phenology through long-term

monitoring of plant populations. Wolkovich and her colleagues compared phenology data on 1643 different species in 36 warming studies and in 14 long-term data sets. The team determined how much sooner each species flowered or leafed out per degree of temperature rise. Plants in the longterm studies leafed out four times sooner and flowered eight times sooner than the warming experiments predicted, Wolkovich and her colleagues reported this week in Nature.

That discrepancy could present problems to scientists who use warming experiment data in modeling studies. “If the warming experiments are not providing an accurate prediction, then you can’t predict how ecosystem services will respond,” says Johanna Schmitt, a plant ecologist at Brown University, who was not involved with the work

AT: Geoengineering Best1. Can’t solve soon enough – Pushing off reductions until 2020 means you have to reduce year over year by 15%, that’s 1AC Hansen.

2. Geoengineering too expensive – over $50 trillion to drop 50ppm, and drops to only 15ppm over 100 yearsHansen et. Al, 2012 (James, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute, and Pushker Kharechaa, Makiko Satoa, Frank Ackermanb, Paul J. Heartyc, Ove Hoegh-Guldbergd, Shi-Ling Hsue, Fred Kruegerf, Camille Parmesang, Stefan Rahmstorfh, Johan Rockstromi, Eelco J. Rohlingj, Jeffrey Sachsk, Pete Smithl, Konrad Steffenm, Lise Van Susterenn, Karina von Schuckmanno, James C. Zachosp; “Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, March 23, 2012, http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1365v3)

Geo-Engineering Atmospheric CO2. Perceived political difficulties of phasing out fossil fuel emissions have caused a surge of interest in possible "geo-engineering" designed to minimize

human-made climate change (59). Such efforts must remove atmospheric CO2, if they are to address direct CO2 effects such as ocean acidification as well as climate change.

At present there are no technologies capable of large-scale air capture of CO2. Keith et al. (60) suggest that, with strong research and development support and industrial scale pilot projects sustained over decades, costs as low as ~$500/tC may be achievable. An assessment by the American Physical Society (61) argues that the lowest currently achievable cost, using existing approaches, is much greater ($600/tCO2 or $2200/tC

The cost of removing 50 ppm of CO2, at $500/tC, is ~$50 trillion (1 ppm CO2 is ~2.12 GtC), but more than $200 trillion for the price estimate of the American Physical Society study. Moreover, the resulting

atmospheric CO2 reduction is only ~15 ppm after 100 years, because the extraction induces counteracting changes in

the other surface carbon reservoirs – mainly CO2 outgassing from the ocean (Fig. 3A). The estimated cost of maintaining a 50 ppm reduction on the century time scale is thus ~$150-600 trillion. The cost of air capture and storage of CO2 may decline, but the practicality of carrying out such a program in response to a climate emergency is dubious, and today's young people and future generations would inherit a huge burden.

3. Law of entropy means upper limit on the potential effectiveness of IACSchellnhuber, 2011 (Hans Joachim, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, “Geoengineering: The good, the MAD, and the sensible,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, December 20, 2011)

After the collapse of international climate policy in Copenhagen in December 2009, the tale of geoengineering, promising end-of-the-

chimney fixes for anthropogenic global warming, has become increasingly popular (1). This is essentially a tale of two fairies (2): the rather wicked one conjures up solar radiation management (SRM), and the tolerably good one delivers CO2 removal through schemes

like industrial “air capture” (IAC). Unfortunately, a study by House et al. (3) pours lots of cold water on the hot

IAC stuff. Most notably, the authors maintain that the total systems costs of IAC (factoring in all pertinent processes, materials,

and structures) might well be on the order of $1,000 (US$) per ton CO2 extracted from the atmosphere. This is tantamount to

forecasting a financial tsunami: for making a tangible contribution to global warming [and ocean acidification (4)] reduction, several Gt CO2 should be “scrubbed” every year in the last third of the 21st century (see below), thus generating a multitrillion-dollar IAC bill.

House et al. arrive at their important cost estimate by blending existing bits of scientific and technical information into a convincing common-

sense analysis. The take-home message is that the energetic and economic challenges of IAC systems design

and implementation have probably been underestimated by previous studies promoting that climate-fix option (5–7). The House et al. argument rests on five cognitive pillars, namely (i) an evaluation of the pertinent Sherwood-plot approach to dilute streams (8); (ii) a realistic thermodynamic efficiency assessment of the processes involved in IAC; (iii) a rough quantification of the power costs for IAC, which can achieve significant carbon negativity only by tapping nonfossil energy sources; (iv) an analogy assessment of the work required for chemical removal of trace gases from mixed streams, exploiting rich empirical data available for SO2 and NOx handling; and (v) a careful discussion of the design options for large-scale IAC installations, reconciling competing physical and chemical constraints.

The last aspect is related to the gigantic volumes of air that need to be processed swiftly through the scrubber

plants, where the ambient CO2 contacts appropriate solvents or sorbents. This, in turn, confirms an intuitive skepticism about

IAC schemes prevalent among experts with formal training in statistical physics: you need to work hard to beat entropy growth within a given subspace of the universe. So it seems rather odd to first burn fossil fuels (where the ambient carbon was captured, reduced, and concentrated by biogeochemical processes over hundred millions of years),

then let the oxidized carbon mix and migrate across the entire atmosphere, and finally distill the CO2 again molecule by molecule using sophisticated technology. There is no free energy lunch…

4. Geoengineering affects different countries in different ways and becomes a new reason for states to go to war with one another. That’s the 1AC Scheffran evidence.

AT: Geoengineering CP1. Can’t solve soon enough – Pushing off reductions until 2020 means you have to reduce year over year by 15%, that’s 1AC Hansen. 2. Perm – Do plan and the counterplan.3. Perm – Do the plan then the counterplan.4. Perm solves best – need to reduce emissions before geomodification makes senseSchellnhuber, 2011 (Hans Joachim, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, “Geoengineering: The good, the MAD, and the sensible,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, December 20, 2011 MG)

Although a committee recently convened by the Bipartisan Policy Center Panel in Washington, DC seems prepared to relativize some negative

aspects of SRM and to call for a substantial research and development program (24), the dilemma of geoengineering does not evaporate: the (moderately) good schemes involving ambient CO2 capture are not affordable (according to

the House et al. assessment summarized above), and the (moderately) affordable schemes involving radiation manipulation

are no good, so what are we going to do? The answer seems obvious and utterly sensible, namely intentionally aborting unintended geoengineering as resulting from careless fossil fuel use. Following are five arguments in favor of climate mitigation by industrial transformation (25).

First, you need to approach zero before you can go negative. So the decisive phase of the Thrust Reversal scenario of Fig. 1 consists of a resolute phasing-out of CO2 in the next 5 or so decades. In a consecutive phase, net carbon extraction from the atmosphere should happen. Fortunately, CO2 capture from concentrated biomass flue gas (26) may do this job more cost-efficiently ($150–400 per ton) than the IAC schemes proposed so far. A precondition for this, however, is the development of appropriate carbon capture and storage (CCS) schemes, which may be needed anyway as a climate-protection bridge between fossil and sustainable energy.

AT: Geoengineering TacticsIndustrial Air Capture not technically feasible, costs multi-trillion dollars to implement, and can’t overcome the law of entropySchellnhuber, 2011 (Hans Joachim, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, “Geoengineering: The good, the MAD, and the sensible,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, December 20, 2011)

After the collapse of international climate policy in Copenhagen in December 2009, the tale of geoengineering, promising end-of-the-

chimney fixes for anthropogenic global warming, has become increasingly popular (1). This is essentially a tale of two fairies (2): the rather wicked one conjures up solar radiation management (SRM), and the tolerably good one delivers CO2 removal through schemes

like industrial “air capture” (IAC). Unfortunately, a study by House et al. (3) pours lots of cold water on the hot

IAC stuff. Most notably, the authors maintain that the total systems costs of IAC (factoring in all pertinent processes, materials,

and structures) might well be on the order of $1,000 (US$) per ton CO2 extracted from the atmosphere. This is tantamount to

forecasting a financial tsunami: for making a tangible contribution to global warming [and ocean acidification (4)] reduction, several Gt CO2 should be “scrubbed” every year in the last third of the 21st century (see below), thus generating a multitrillion-dollar IAC bill.

House et al. arrive at their important cost estimate by blending existing bits of scientific and technical information into a convincing common-

sense analysis. The take-home message is that the energetic and economic challenges of IAC systems design

and implementation have probably been underestimated by previous studies promoting that climate-fix option (5–7). The House et al. argument rests on five cognitive pillars, namely (i) an evaluation of the pertinent Sherwood-plot approach to dilute streams (8); (ii) a realistic thermodynamic efficiency assessment of the processes involved in IAC; (iii) a rough quantification of the power costs for IAC, which can achieve significant carbon negativity only by tapping nonfossil energy sources; (iv) an analogy assessment of the work required for chemical removal of trace gases from mixed streams, exploiting rich empirical data available for SO2 and NOx handling; and (v) a careful discussion of the design options for large-scale IAC installations, reconciling competing physical and chemical constraints.

The last aspect is related to the gigantic volumes of air that need to be processed swiftly through the scrubber

plants, where the ambient CO2 contacts appropriate solvents or sorbents. This, in turn, confirms an intuitive skepticism about

IAC schemes prevalent among experts with formal training in statistical physics: you need to work hard to beat entropy growth within a given subspace of the universe. So it seems rather odd to first burn fossil fuels (where the ambient carbon was captured, reduced, and concentrated by biogeochemical processes over hundred millions of years),

then let the oxidized carbon mix and migrate across the entire atmosphere, and finally distill the CO2 again molecule by molecule using sophisticated technology. There is no free energy lunch…

Solar Radiation Management is MAD all over again, causes interstate conflicts. Schellnhuber, 2011 (Hans Joachim, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, “Geoengineering: The good, the MAD, and the sensible,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, December 20, 2011)

Very few people who accept the insights of state-of-the-art climate science find the Reacceleration scenario and its dire consequences acceptable.

However, it is not unlikely that the myopic market forces will drive the extraction process further and further. Therefore, the last best hope may reside in an environmental fix engineered independently of energy systems transformations, namely radiation management that cools down the planet (or, at least, large parts of it). An ample literature on SRM is already available

(see especially refs. 14 and 15), in which numerous schemes of varying sophistication (such as placing mirrors in outer space, deploying reflecting aerosols or metal flakes in the atmosphere, manipulating cloud cover, enhancing land albedo, or simply painting roofs white) are explored.

Some of those ideas actually originated in the scientific circles surrounding John von Neumann and Edward Teller in the 1950s (16). These two masterminds openly advocated weather-manipulation ways of winning the Cold War against the Soviet Union. A contemporary giant of science,

the Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, has rekindled the SRM debate in 2006 through an essay on stratospheric sulfur

injection (17). However, he has consistently argued then and ever since that such a climate-engineering scheme would be implemented out of despair only, that is, if the establishment of any “conventional” climate-protection measure (like a worldwide cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions) failed. Crutzen, Carlo Rubbia (a Nobel laureate in physics and an eminent energy expert), the climate scientist Alan Robock, and I were members of a recent Pontifical Academy of Sciences panel (18) that also discussed the portfolio of potential SRM schemes. Convincing arguments were raised that radiation manipulation may be a rather bad political idea (see, e.g., ref. 19), whereas research in this field might generate important scientific insights transcending the elusive climate-fix realm (see, e.g., refs. 20 and 21).

On closer inspection, SRM exhibits MAD traits. The latter acronym stands for “mutual assured destruction,” that is,

the ominous doctrine of the arms race frenzy. If the climate can be influenced rather inexpensively by sending aerosol rockets to the stratosphere, then who decides when and where the buttons are pushed? Certain countries like Russia might actually welcome some warming of their territories. So would they shoot down, say, Indian or Chinese geoengineering missiles launched for stabilizing the Asian monsoon

pattern or other tipping elements in the Earth system (22)? One step further up the escalation ladder, the supposed beneficiaries of climate change might deliberately increase their greenhouse gas emissions for overcompensating SRM, and so on. Additionally, the crucial point that temporal failure of artificial insolation reduction would most probably wreak havoc has been made repeatedly (23).

AT: Can’t Reduce Enough1. Yes we can – even if we delay reductions until 2020 and cut emissions by 15% year-over-year we can avert the worst impacts of warming. That’s 1AC Hansen. 2. Even if total emissions peak in 2014 we’ll be able to stabilize the climate long term. That’s 1AC Huntingford evidence. 3. It’s a question of opportunity cost. Not reducing everything shouldn’t be a reason to not reduce anything. That’s the 1AC ____________________________ evidence that argues political questions always get in the way of solving long timeframe climate issues.

AT: Need Int’l Cooperation1. Their evidence ignores the reality of the Paris Climate talks – there is already international cooperation, we just need to bring the US into compliance. 2. This is nonresponsive to our modeling claims. Countries will follow our lead on climate issues, so even if we need cooperation the plan solves this. The plan brings the Chinese on board directly. That’s all we need.3. Multilateral integration not key—unilateral approach to climate change solvesGreen, 2012 (Kenneth, Environmental scientist and policy analyst, AEI Ideas “Non-Kyoyo-ratifying U.S. leads globe in lowering greenhouse gas emissions” June 6, 2012, http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/06/non-kyoto-ratifying-u-s-leads-globe-in-lowering-greenhouse-gas-emissions/ MG)

Last month, the International Energy Agency released its latest estimates of global trends in greenhouse gas emissions, to remarkably little fanfare from the mainstream media. Perhaps that’s because it runs counter to the narrative

that the US is an evil, uncontrolled emitter of greenhouse gases that refuses to sign on to international agreements. The IEA reports that: Global carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil-fuel combustion reached a record high of 31.6

gigatonnes (Gt) in 2011, according to preliminary estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA). This represents an increase of 1.0 Gt on 2010, or 3.2%. Coal accounted for 45% of total energy-related CO2 emissions in 2011, followed by oil (35%)

and natural gas (20%) But lo, what’s this (emph. mine)? CO2 emissions in the United States in 2011 fell by 92 Mt, or 1.7%, primarily due to ongoing switching from coal to natural gas in power generation and an exceptionally mild winter, which reduced the demand for space heating. US emissions have now fallen by 430 Mt (7.7%) since 2006, the largest reduction of all countries or regions. This development has arisen from lower oil use in the transport sector (linked to efficiency improvements, higher oil prices and the economic

downturn which has cut vehicle miles travelled) and a substantial shift from coal to gas in the power sector. Yes, you read that right, the U.S. has seen faster declines in greenhouse gas emissions over the last 6 years than all of the countries that signed onto the Kyoto Protocol, and implemented national greenhouse-gas control strategies.

AT: Mars/Solar System Warming1. The Earth is still absorbing more heat than the sun is outputting. Even if warming is happening on Mars, it is happening on Earth at a more dangerous and faster rate. That’s Hansen 12. 2. Warming not happening on Mars – climate driven by dust and not solar variationsCook, 10 (John, Climate Communication Fellow for the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, Ph.D in Physics from U. Queenland, “Global warming on Mars, ice caps melting,” SkepticalScience.com, August 20, 2010, http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-on-mars-intermediate.htm)

To put these results in proper perspective, an understanding of what drives Martian climate is required. Global dust storms increase the surface albedo by settling brighter dust on dark surfaces.

Within a year after a dust storm, various wind systems remove the dust and Mars returns to a normal, lower albedo.

The 1977 snapshot was taken after a global dust storm had deposited dust over the southern latitudes,

lightening the planet surface. Before the storm, the planet had albedo comparable to recent measurements (Szwast 2006).

Fenton drew conclusions about long term climate by comparing two end points. This led to the classic error of mistaking weather for climate (similar to the recent global cooling argument). When you look at the broader data, there is no discernable long term trend in albedo:

The apparent long-term warming between the 1970's and 1990's is largely a consequence of the timing of the two snapshots used. The "brighter" 1977 snapshot was immediately after a global dust storm when the planet was temporarily lighter. The "darker" 1999 snapshot was of the planet in it's usual state. There is little evidence that Mars is undergoing decadal-scale, long term global warming. In fact, following the 2001 global dust storm, the southern hemisphere was brighter than in 1977 (Szwast 2006).

Conclusion

The empirical evidence isn't conclusive on whether global warming is happening on Mars. However, to answer the question on whether the sun is causing Earth's global warming, there is plentiful data on solar activity and Earth's climate. Many papers have examined this data, concluding the correlation between sun and climate ended in the 70's when the modern global warming trend began.

So the argument that Martian warming disproves anthropogenic global warming fails on two points - there is little empirical evidence that Mars is warming and Mars' climate is primarily driven by dust and albedo, not solar variations.

The Creds Debate

AT: Climate Skeptics (General)1. We’ve already converted the skeptics – Mueller was a firm believer before conducting the BEST study.

2. Conservative-funded studies agree – warming is happening

The Examiner, July 29 (Robert Bowen, “Koch-funded study finds ‘global warming is real and ‘humans are the cause,” http://www.examiner.com/article/koch-funded-study-finds-global-warming-is-real-and-humans-are-the-cause MG)

Things were going well for the Koch Brothers and their global warming disinformation campaign until now. The scientist they funded to do a study to disprove the existence of global warming concluded that it is real and caused by humans. OMG! It’s hard to get good help these days.

Richard A. Mueller, a University of California Professor, wrote in an Op-Ed Saturday in the New York Times:

“Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.” (Emphasis added.)

Mueller is the founder and Scientific Director of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study (BEST). He was one of the scientists that previously doubted global warming and did not believe man had any role. He received a $150,000 grant from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation for his research.

BEST was a group of 12 scientists led by Mueller, a global warming skeptic, his daughter Elizabeth, and one climatologist, Judith Curry, who was not a believer in climate change. They studied all the temperatures they could get their hands on. “My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis,” Mueller wrote.

The Op-ED summarized their findings:

“Our results showed that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.

These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming.

Although the I.P.C.C. allowed for the possibility that variations in sunlight could have ended the “Little Ice Age,” a period of cooling from the 14th century to about 1850, our data argues strongly that the temperature rise of the past 250 years cannot be attributed to solar changes... This conclusion is,

in retrospect, not too surprising; we’ve learned from satellite measurements that solar activity changes the brightness of the sun very little.

3. Global warming real – your scientists are paid by the API to discredit climate change

Clynes, 2012 (Tom, Popsci “The Battle Over Climate Science”, June 21, 2012 http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-06/battle-over-climate-change?single-page-view=true,)

In 1998, following the negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, the American Petroleum Institute convened a task force to spend more than $5.9 million to discredit climate science and quash growing public support of curbing emissions. The group borrowed many of the methods and people, including Milloy, that had been used to mislead Congress and the public about the connection between smoking and cancer and heart disease. In a leaked memo titled the “Global Climate Science Communications Plan,” the task force laid out a strategy to “build a case against precipitous action on climate change based on the scientific uncertainty.” The memo details a plan to recruit, train and pay willing scientists to sow doubt about climate science among the media and the public. “Victory will be achieved,” the memo states, when “recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom’ ” and when “those promoting the Kyoto treaty on the basis of the extant science appear to be out of touch with reality.”

4. No consensus among skeptics – many disagree with the declaration that it’s not happening

Black, 2012 (Richard, Environment correspondent, BBC News “Climate consensus cracking open – or not February 6 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16906738)

In interpreting the various letters that have claimed to see signs of the crack, it's also important to be very clear about what the people signing them are and aren't saying. In 2007, for example, I wrote a series of articles loosely based on the letter to the Financial Post, and found that among its signatories there were widely divergent views about which aspects of the "consensus" they disagreed with. One, Gordon Swaters from the University of Alberta, went as far as to retract his signature saying he had thought he was signing something asking for more research on climate change, rather than denying its existence. "Clearly the agony of having stupidly signed that damn first letter will not abate," he told me at the time. "I am not a climate skeptic... anthropogenic climate change is clearly occurring (and) it is likely the case that most of the observed warming over that 50 years or so is the result of human activities.”

5. Berkeley Methodology – 95% confidence in findings of the studyRohde and Muller, 2015 (Robert and Richard, “The Average Temperature of 2014 Results from Berkeley Earth,” Berkeley Earth, 1/14/2015 http://static.berkeleyearth.org/memos/Global-Warming-2014-Berkeley-Earth-Newsletter.pdf)

Details

The “margin of uncertainty” represents the 95% confidence limit, obtained principally by comparison of results from

subdividing the data into independent sets. The global temperature estimate is compiled as combination of a land-only temperature estimate constructed by Berkeley Earth directly, and an ocean temperature estimate produced by the Hadley Centre in the UK and modified by Berkeley Earth. The preliminary Berkeley Earth estimate for land surface temperatures in 2014 has been constructed from 10,685 weather stations that provide comprehensive global coverage and have already reported data through December 2014. For the ocean component of the global temperature analysis, Berkeley Earth relies on a

modified version of the HadSST3 data product produced by the Hadley Centre in the 8 UK. Two primary modifications are made. First, local interpolation via Kriging is applied to infill missing grid cells (this reduces the uncertainty associated with missing

data). Secondly, for global reconstructions we use the HadISST ice field (also produced by the Hadley Centre) to mask out ocean regions covered by sea ice. Temperature patterns in sea ice regions are then estimated from air temperatures rather than from sea surface temperatures. Air temperatures more effectively capture the surface temperature variability in sea ice covered regions where the differences in temperature between the air above sea ice and the water below it can be very large. For the preliminary 2014 temperature

estimate, the HadISST sea ice mask for December 2014 was not available, so the December 2013 mask was used instead. The current temperature analysis over land relies on more than 10,000 stations that were available to us early in 2015. Following delays in reporting and data integration, we expect an additional ~9000 stations with 2014 data will gradually be added to future analyses. Such additional data will ultimately refine the land and global temperature estimates and their associated spatial patterns. Based on previous experience, adding additional stations to the already comprehensive network is unlikely to change the estimated global average more than 0.01 C, or cause large changes in most spatial patterns.

AT: Climategate1. Aren’t we past this? BEST did not use the skewed data and came to the same conclusion.

2. Climategate was debunked and your authors are paid off by the fossil fuel industry

Markley, 12 (Stephen, reporter for RedEye News “ Heartland, Climate Denial, and Memos that Surprise No One,” RedEye News, 2/16/12, http://blogs.redeyechicago.com/off-the-markley/2012/02/16/heartland-climate-denial-and-memos-that-surprise-no-one/ MG)

In 2009, on the eve of climate talks in Copenhagen, a scandal broke known as “Climategate.” It managed to capture the media and public’s attention, and while perhaps not torpedoing those talks, certainly lowered the chances of success. Climategate was debunked almost immediately. What essentially happened was hackers managed to find a few mildly inappropriate lines amidst thousands and thousands of e-mails sent over the course of a decade, none of which actually called into question any of the science behind climate change. Who wants to bet the media will give anything resembling equal weight to the recently leaked memos from the libertarian climate denialist organization the Heartland Institute? Any takers? Heartland, which is right here in Chicago, and which I’ve previously rained shit over, specializes in taking shady money from unknown sources (i.e. fossil fuel interests) and distributing it among climate denial organizations and blogs to influence the public’s opinion on this frightening and rapidly unfolding disaster. Here are some of the highlights of the recently leaked memos from DeSmogBlog: • “Proposing to spend $100,000 to hire David Wojick, a senior consultant to the Energy Department’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information, to work on alternative classroom materials on climate science for kindergartners through 12th graders.” • Plans to spend “about $388,000 on the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, a team of writers paid ‘to undermine’ the latest scientific reports from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” • Payments to several “high-profile” climate skeptics “‘who regularly and publicly counter the alarmist [anthropogenic global warming] message’ including $11,600 per month to Craig Idso, $5,000 per month plus expenses to Fred Singer and $1,667 per month to Robert Carter.” • Plans to counter high-profile climate writers on blogs like Forbes, while cultivating “neutral voices” such as The New York Times Andy Revkin (it was Revkin who confirmed the authenticity of the memos). Now, follow me on this: the reason this is such a scandal is because it will be viewed as such a non-scandal. Got it? On one side of the climate “debate” you have 98% of the scientists working in the field, screaming at the top of their lungs for the public and policy-makers to pay attention to what’s going on and how dire the situation is becoming. On the other side, you have propaganda machines like Heartland that are not engaged in anything even resembling science, but rather that serve as conduits for money from fossil fuel and corporate interests like the Koch Foundation, R.J. Reynolds, and General Motors to activists willing to say what they are being paid to say. That’s all Heartland is, and that’s the entire intellectual foundation for the “global warming is a myth” faction that also happens to be winning one of the most important public discussions in human history. However, the reason this will not be a scandal is because it’s so typical. The media has fallen into a left-right paradigm where there are two sides to every debate, thus giving the denialsphere ample room to maneuver and a positively preposterous

megaphone. When the Wall Street Journal publishes an absurd editorial rife with factual errors that wouldn’t pass muster in the third grade classroom in which Heritage is trying to buy a science curriculum, that should be a scandal. When a Republican congressman bullies EPA head Lisa Jackson over the science of climate change, that should be a scandal. When a “think-tank” takes millions of dollars from anonymous donors and distributes it in a campaign of disinformation, that should be a scandal. Oh, but the stimulus made a loan to a solar company that failed! Yeah, you’re right, let’s talk about that while the world burns.

AT: Offense Scenarios

Ice Age

2AC Ice Age1. The world is slowly warming and future warming is locked in. That’s the Hansen evidence. Hansen also says climate trends are locked in about 10 years ahead of time. If their 2015 timeframe on ice age is true, then we’re doomed.2. This means there is an opportunity cost between trying to prevent an ice age and warming. If their argument is true, it’s impossible to pump enough GHG into the atmosphere to solve. If our argument is true, scaled reductions will stabilize the climate long term. We’re the only ones with a unique impact.3. IT’S THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW– Global warming is the cause of ice ages through the shutdown of the Thermohaline cycle. Historically proven.Hartmann 2004 (Thom, Radio/TV host, political commentator, author, former psychotherapist, former entrepreneu, How Global Warming May Cause the Next Ice Age…, Common Dreams, http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0130-11.htm, 1/30/2004)

What brought on this sudden "disappearance of summer" period was that the warm-water currents of the Great Conveyor Belt had shut down. Once the Gulf Stream was no longer flowing, it only took a year or three for the last of the residual heat held in the North Atlantic Ocean to dissipate into the air over Europe, and then there was no more warmth to moderate the northern latitudes. When the summer stopped in the north, the rains

stopped around the equator: At the same time Europe was plunged into an Ice Age, the Middle East and Africa were ravaged

by drought and wind-driven firestorms. . 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.

4. Global warming causing an ice age is almost guaranteedMasters, 2012 (Jeffrey, Ph.D. in air pollution meteorology from University of Michigan, co-founder of The Weather Underground, Inc. “The Science of Abrupt Climate Change: Should we be worried?” April 2012, http://www.wunderground.com/climate/abruptclimate.asp)

Global warming will increase precipitation, river run-off, melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and melting of polar sea ice, all of which

will increase the amount of fresh water flowing into the critical deep-water formation areas by Greenland. In the 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report Summary for Policymakers (PDF File) it states

that, based on current model simulations, it is very likely (90-99% confidence) that the meridional overturning circulation (MOC) of the Atlantic Ocean will slow down during the 21st century. It also confirms the scientific consensus that is very unlikely the MOC will undergo a large abrupt transition during this century. Today's science is such that any long-term assessments of the MOC cannot be made with confidence. A 2012 paper in Proceedings of the

National Academy of Sciences used computer modeling to show that abrupt climate events in the past occurred as a result of a change in ocean currents due to the Bering Strait closing off because of low sea levels. The Bering Strait is the 50-mile-wide gap that separates Siberia from Alaska. "As long as the Bering Strait remains open," said lead author Aixue Hu, a climate modeler at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), in a telephone interview posted at Climate Central, "we will not see an abrupt climate event." With global sea levels rising due to melting icecaps, closure of the Bering Strait is not likely in the forseeable future.

AT: Cooling Now/Ice Age Coming1. This is preempted by the 1AC. Cooling trends detected in the late 90’s were because of the Montreal Protocol and changes in ag policies in Asia. This trend has been reversed and the world is continuing to warm. That’s Estrada2. Their evidence ignores the complexity of global climate. Our Hansen uses the total energy balance of Earth to show warming is occurring, piecemeal observations will never be a better indicator than ours.3. Warming Now - Appearance of slowing is because the oceans are acting as a massive CO2 sync – rapid warming will begin against soonPainting, 2012 (Rob, contributor to Skeptical Science, “NASA: More Rapid Global Warming in Near Future,” Planetsave.com, January 28, 2012, http://planetsave.com/2012/01/28/nasa-more-rapid-global-warming-in-near-future/)

As a recent SkS post by Dana Nuccitelli has pointed out global warming hasn’t stopped, despite a recent lull in

global surface temperatures. The oceans, which are the main heat sink for global warming, have scarcely skipped a beat in soaking up heat. The hiatus in global surface temperatures appears to simply be a reflection of natural variability, principally

the exchange of heat between the ocean surface and the atmosphere. But we shouldn’t expect this to last much longer.

Eventually that ocean heat buried in deeper layers will come back to the surface, and we’ll experience the warm phase of this natural cool/warm (La Niña /El Niño -based) cycle.

As if to reinforce this very point, a group of scientists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA GISS), have released an analysis of global temperatures in 2011, and near-future prospects . They find that 2011 was the 9th-hottest year on record (9 out of the 10 hottest years on record since 1880, have occurred in the 21st century), and that this cool-ish year (by 21st century standards, but hot by 20th century standards) was largely due to the cooling influence of a quiet phase of the 11 year-long solar cycle (small changes in the intensity of

sunlight reaching Earth), and La Niña which has been dominant over the last 3 years (See figure 1). They conclude that the lull is an illusion, and that rapid warming of global surface temperatures is likely to resume in the next few years.

AT: Emissions Solve

1. Science bomb – climate skeptics say we need CO2 to stop an ice age. Even if we concede this argument is true, they say we can’t drop below a 280ppm if we want to stop an ice age. Those are lower than pre-industrial levels. Here’s a pretty common ice age link card that does the math for us.

Tzedakis et al 12 (Chronis – Professor of Physical Geography at University College London, BA in Geology, James Channell – Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Florida, David Hodell – Professor at the Department of Earth Sciences at the Universit of Cambridge, Luke Skinner – Department of Earth Science and the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, H.F. KLeiven, UNI Research, “Determining the natural length of the current interglacial,” 1/9/12, Nature Geoscience, http://www.nature.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/ngeo/journal/v5/n2/pdf/ngeo1358.pdf)

No glacial inception is projected to occur at the current atmospheric CO2 concentrations of 390 ppmv (ref. 1). Indeed, model experiments suggest that in the current orbital configuration—which is characterized by a

weak minimum in summer insolation—glacial inception would require CO2 concentrations below preindustrial levels of 280 ppmv (refs 2–4). However, the precise CO2 threshold 4–6 as well as the timing of the hypothetical

next glaciation 7 remain unclear. Past interglacials can be used to draw analogies with the present, provided their duration is known. Here we

propose that the minimum age of a glacial inception is constrained by the onset of bipolar-seesaw climate variability, which requires ice-sheets large enough to produce iceberg discharges that disrupt the ocean circulation. We identify the bipolar seesaw in ice-core and North Atlantic marine records by the appearance of a distinct phasing of interhemispheric climate and hydrographic changes and ice-rafted debris. The glacial inception during Marine Isotope sub-Stage 19c, a close analogue for the present interglacial, occurred near the summer insolation minimum, suggesting that the interglacial was not prolonged by subdued radiative forcing 7 . Assuming that ice growth mainly responds to insolation and CO2 forcing, this analogy suggests that the end of the current interglacial would occur within the next 1500 years, if atmospheric CO2 concentrations did not exceed 240.5 ppmv. radi The notion that the Holocene (or Marine Isotope Stage 1, MIS1), already 11.6 thousand years (kyr) old, may be drawing to a close has been based on the observation that the duration of recent interglacials was approximately half a precession cycle (11 kyr; ref. 8). However, uncertainty over an imminent hypothetical glaciation arises from the current subdued amplitude of insolation variations as a result of low orbital eccentricity (Fig. 1). It has thus been proposed that at times of weak eccentricityprecession forcing, obliquity is the dominant astronomical parameter driving ice-volume changes, leading to extended interglacial duration of approximately half an obliquity cycle (21 kyr; ref. 9). In this view, the next glacial inception would occur near the obliquity minimum 10 kyr from now 7 . Climate modelling studies show that a reduction in boreal summer insolation is the primary trigger for glacial inception, with CO2 playing a secondary role 3,5 . Lowering CO2 shifts the inception threshold to higher insolation values 1 , but

modelling experiments indicate that preindustrial concentrations of 280 ppmv would not be sufficiently low to lead to new ice growth given the subdued insolation minimum24 . However, the extent to which preindustrial CO2 levels were `natural' has been challenged 10,11 by the suggestion that anthropogenic interference since the mid Holocene led to increased greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations, which countered the natural cooling trend and prevented a glacial inception. The overdue glaciation hypothesis has been tested by climate simulations using lower preindustrial GHG concentrations, with contrasting results, ranging from no ice growth 5 to a linear increase in ice volume 4 to large increases in perennial ice cover 6.

2. Our entire aff is predicated on stabilizing the climate around 350 ppm of CO2. That’s far more than enough to keep the ice at bay. That’s the 1AC Hansen evidence.

AT: Timeframe1. This loses them the debate. Either warming is going to happen pretty soon and temperature trends are already locked in, or it’s going to be a long time and this isn’t a comparative benefit over our impact.2. Positive feedbacks mean that once we break the 2C temperature threshold methane hydrates cause rapid warming. We don’t give dates, but it’ll exponentially increase the rate of warming. 3. No ice age for another 130,000 yearsBrock 11 (Chris Brock, TIMES STAFF WRITER, SATURDAY, MARCH 19, 2011, http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20110319/CURR04/303199998/?loc=interstitialskip)

PAUL SMITHS — Chalk one up for the humans: we staved off an ice age. That's one conclusion ecologist and paleoclimatalogist Curt Stager makes in his book "Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth," released Tuesday by St. Martin's Press. And we have it in our power to prevent another ice age, which, compared to global warming, would be much worse for humans. "An ice age is to global warming as thermonuclear war is to a bar brawl," Mr. Stager writes in "Deep Future." Most of the scholarly studies about humans

and global warming deal with the issue within the next century or so. But Mr. Stager looks ahead dozens of centuries. Mr. Stager takes a deep look at climate and its long-term patterns. "I try to make the point that we have a whole lot of power as to what the future holds," said Mr. Stager, a professor at Paul Smith's College and a research associate at the University of Maine's Climate Change Institute. In "Deep Future," he looks at the bright and dark sides of what is at stake on Earth thousands of years from now. The book has received a starred review in the journal Kirkus Reviews, which called it "essential reading." One of the bottom lines in "Deep Future" is that each generation should realize what we're doing to Earth and pay attention to the cumulative effect. "Along with power comes responsibility," Mr. Stager said in a phone interview from Paul Smith's campus, located near Saranac Lake. "Without sounding like a preacher and 'Thou shalt do this,' I think it's important for people to realize the consequences of our actions are going to last a lot longer than folks had anticipated." He writes in "Deep Future": "Our very existence at this pivotal moment in history gives us the amazing ability — some might say the honor — to set the

world's thermostat for hundreds of thousands of years." Mr. Stager writes that most climate models predict another ice age at the year 50,000. Humans, he said, have stopped that "in its tracks" because of carbon dioxide emissions. The next ice age will arrive around the year 130,000. But not if "we burn through all our remaining coal reserves during the next century or so," Mr. Stager writes. If we do that, he said,

the next ice age won't hit for the next half million years.

2AC CO2 AG

1. Our 1AC preempts this argument. Both the Futurist and the Schefferan evidence argue a world of warming ruins our agricultural capacities.

2. Warming also increases dryer conditions and decreases length of growing seasons throughout Africa..

3. Short-term increases on production quickly transition to deterioration. Long term warming promotes unproductive plant species and ruins the nitrogen cycle.

Science Daily 12 (4/9/12, “Climate Change Helps, Then Quickly Stunts Plant Growth, Decade-Long Study Shows” Science Daily, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120409103253.htm)

Global warming may initially make the grass greener, but not for long, according to new research conducted at Northern Arizona University. The

study, published this week in Nature Climate Change, shows that plants may thrive in the early stages of a warming environment but begin to deteriorate quickly. n"We were really surprised by the pattern, where the initial boost in growth just went

away," said Zhuoting Wu, NAU doctoral graduate in biology. "As the ecosystems adjust, the responses changed." Researchers subjected four grassland ecosystems to simulated climate change during the decade-long study. Plants grew more the first year in the global warming treatment, but this effect progressively diminished over the next nine years, and finally disappeared. The research reports the long-term effects of global warming on plant growth, the plant species that make up the community, and the changes in how plants use or retain essential resources like

nitrogen. The team transplanted four grassland ecosystems from higher to lower elevation to simulate a

future warmer environment, and coupled the warming with the range of predicted changes in precipitation -- more, the same, or less. The grasslands studied were typical of those found in northern Arizona along elevation gradients

from the San Francisco Peaks down to the great basin desert. The researchers found that long-term warming resulted in loss of native species and encroachment of species typical of warmer environments, pushing the plant community toward less productive species. The warmed grasslands also cycled nitrogen more rapidly, an

effect that should make more nitrogen available to plants, helping them grow more. But instead much of the nitrogen was lost, converted to nitrogen gases lost to the atmosphere or leached out with rainfall washing through the soil. Bruce Hungate, senior author of the study and NAU Biological Sciences professor, said the research findings challenge the expectation that warming will increase nitrogen availability and cause a sustained increase in plant productivity. "Faster nitrogen turnover stimulated nitrogen losses, likely reducing the effect of warming on plant growth," Hungate said. "More generally, changes in species, changes in element cycles -- these really make a difference. It's classic systems ecology: the initial responses elicit knock-on effects which here came back to

bite the plants. These ecosystem feedbacks are critical. You just can't figure this out with plants grown in a greenhouse. " The findings caution against extrapolating from short-term experiments, or experiments in a greenhouse, where experimenters cannot measure the feedbacks from changes in the plant community and from nutrient cycles. The research will continue at least five more years with current funding from the National Science Foundation and, Hungate said, hopefully for another five years after that. "The long-term perspective is key. We were surprised, and I'm guessing there are more surprises in store." Additional coauthors include George Koch, NAU professor of Biological Sciences, and Paul Dijkstra, assistant research professor of Biological Sciences.

4. Disrupting the nitrogen cycle causes extinction.Armour-Garb, 1995 (Allison Rees Armour-Garb, M.P.A., 1994, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University; J.D., 1995, New York University School of Law, New York University Environmental Law Journal, 1995

http://www.law.nyu.eduljournals/envtllaw/issues/vol4/2/4nyuelj339.html)

Fossil fuel combustion causes the third largest disruption of the nitrogen cycle. Bio-unavailable nitrogen is mobilized from two sources: atmospheric nitrogen (N) and fuel-bound nitrogen (stored in hydrocarbons). Fossil fuel combustion injects this nitrogen into the air as nitrogen oxides (NO).

Because fixed nitrogen is a crucial nutrient -- indeed, 'all life ultimately depends on nitrogen fixation' -- one might expect an increase in the rate of nitrogen fixation and the concomitant 'global

fertilization' to be desirable. Terms such as 'global fertilization' in the nitrogen case and 'global warming' in the carbon case are misleading, however. Warmth and fertility have positive connotations: 'climate change' and 'ecosystem disruption' are phrases that more

accurately convey the nature of the disturbances. Increasing nitrogen fixation is disrupting ecosystems in two important

ways: by altering nutrient balances and by causing a net increase in global acidity.

First, a change in the availability of nitrogen can lead to differential growth of some species relative to others. This differential growth may occur because nitrogen is a 'limiting' nutrient in many ecosystems; in other words, the amount of nitrogen

available to certain species limits their growth. An increase in the level of fixed nitrogen in the water or soil stimulates the growth of previously 'limited' species, which in turn crowd out other species. The result is ecosystem disruption and a potential loss of biodiversity.

4. Pests increase with warming – more range, warmer winters, and increased generations.Quarles, 2007 (William, “Global Warming Means More Pests,” The IPM Practitioner Sept/Oct 2007, http://www.birc.org/SepOct2007.pdf)

Some crops may grow more vigorously in an enriched CO2 atmosphere, but there is a tradeoff. Seed production drops as temperatures increase (Prasad et al. 2005). Floods and droughts associated with warming will likely

cancel some of the increased growth. Also, global warming will encourage pest insects, diseases and weeds

(Patterson 1995). Crop pests are showing increased geographical range, increased numbers of generations, and higher densities (Parmesan 2007).

Though the range of the pink bollworm, Pectinophora gossypiella, is now restricted to frost free areas of Arizona and Southern California, an increase of 1.5-2.5°C (2.7-4.5°F) in average global temperature will extend its range into the Central Valley of California. This change could cause considerable crop damage (Gutierrez et al. 2006).

Diversity of herbivorous insects and their impacts on plants generally increase with temperature (Wilf and Labandeira 1999). The pine aphid Schizolachnus pineti shows increased feeding, fecundity, and rate of population increase at 26°C (78.8°F) versus 20°C (68°F). Optimum fecundity is at 24-26°C (75.2°F-78.8°F), 4-6°C (7.2-10.8°F) higher than current mean daytime temperatures (Holopainen and Kaninulainen 2004). Though increased problems are generally expected, some pests may not increase. Increased densities of the aphid, Obtusicauda coweni, on sagebrush were not seen under field conditions in the Rocky Mountains (Adler et al. 2007).

As nighttime temperatures increase, growth rates of caterpillars such as imported cabbageworm, Pieris rapae, increase (Whitney-Johnson et al.

2005). Warmer winters have already lead to increased overwintering populations of some crop pests (Matsumara et al. 2005). These conditions will also increase damage from pest nematodes (Griffith et al. 1997).

Some pests will be able to have additional generations each year, leading to increased crop damage. For instance, diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella, is expected to complete two additional generations each year in Japan (Morimoto et al. 1998). This insect is already able to overwinter in cold areas such as Canadian Alberta (Dosdall 1994). Northward shifts of more than 1000 km (600 mi) are expected in Europe for the corn borer, Ostrinia nubilalis (Porter et al. 1991). The mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae, in the Rocky Mountains now produces one generation per year instead of one every two years (Parmesan 2007). Range and damage is expected to increase in Canadian pine forests (Logan and Powell 2004).

5. That means more fertilizers and pesticidesDiffenbaugh et al, 2008 (Noah S., Purdude Climate Change Research Center and Department of Earth and Atmospheric Science; and Christine H. Krupke, Michael A. White, and Corinne E. Alexander; “Global warming presents new challenges for maize pest management,” Environmental Research Letters 3, November 2008)

We find that elevated greenhouse gas concentrations could lead to an expansion in the ranges of four

major pests of maize, the dominant crop in the United States. In our analyses, the corn earworm experiences the largest expansion, with temperature suitability growing north and west in the central and eastern United States, and in prime agricultural areas

of the western United States. It is significant that the corn earworm shows the largest expansion, as it is a migratory pest that both infests a broad suite of agricultural commodities and has demonstrated

resistance to a wide range of insecticides. We also find that temperature suitability expands for the three maize-specific taxa that we analyze, particularly in the upper Great Plains. Warming could increase pest pressures in these areas both by increasing cold-season

survival and by increasing the number of pest generations in a single warm season. Because managing significant additional pressure from this suite of established pests would require additional pest management inputs (including possible costs of monitoring/scouting, applying pesticides and/or use of transgenic hybrids), the projected decreases in cold limitation and increases in heat accumulation have the potential to significantly alter the pest management landscape for North

American maize production. Further, these range expansions could have substantial economic impacts through increased seed and insecticide costs, decreased yields, and the downstream effects of changes in crop yield variability.

6. Rampant pesticide use causes extinctionTogawa, 1999 (Tatsuo, Institute of Biomaterials and Bioengineering, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, “Considering the long-term survival of the human race,” Technology in Society, p. 236)

Advanced technology provides a comfortable life for many people, but it also produces strong destructive forces that can cause extinction of the human race if used accidentally or intentionally. As stated in the Russell-Einstein Manifesto of

1955, hydrogen bombs might possibly put an end to the human race. 1 Nuclear weapons are not the only risks that arise

from modem technologies. In 1962, Rachel Carson wrote in her book, Silent Spring [2, p. 30], that the amount of the pesticide parathion used on California farms alone at that time could provide a lethal dose for five to ten times the whole world’s population. Destruction of the ozone layer, the greenhouse effect, and chemical pollution by endocrine-destructive chemicals began to appear as the result of advanced technology, and they are now considered to be potential causes of extinction of the human race unless they are effectively controlled.

AT: Warming Increases Ag1. Warming means more famine. Even if it increases growing seasons in some areas, it will lose out in the worst places. Africa will be too hot and drier, diminishing their productive capacities. 2. This means their Ag arguments are an opportunity cost question – is it better for the developed North to be able to produce more food or for people in Africa to produce what they can now. We’re pretty sure that my saying it’s be better for us to produce more food at the expense of Africans is pretty racist. That’s an independent reason to reject their argument. 3. Even if CO2 increases the length of growing seasons, it decreases the productivity of the crops – cuts yields by 37-44%Sinclair 12 (Peter Sinclair, climate advocate, “Studies: Climate Change will threaten Global Wheat Harvest,” January 31, 2012, http://climatecrocks.com/2012/01/31/studies-climate-change-will-threaten-wheat-harvest/)

A tired and recycled shibboleth dear to the hearts of aging climate deniers, as clueless about agriculture as they are about climate - “CO2 is good for plants…” - covered in the video above. The real world continues to provide tangible evidence of how wrong headed this is…. The

Economic Times: PARIS: More intense heat waves due to global warming could diminish wheat crop yields around the world through premature ageing, according to a study published Sunday in Nature Climate Change. Nature Asia-Pacific: Extreme heat can accelerate wheat aging — an effect that reduces crop yields and is currently underestimated in most crop models — according to a study published online this week in Nature Climate Change. These findings imply that climate

warming presents even greater challenges to wheat production than current models predict. An important source of uncertainty in anticipating the effects of climate change on agriculture is limited understanding of crop responses to

extremely high temperatures. David Lobell and co-workers used satellite measurements of wheat growth in northern India to monitor the rates of wheat aging — known as senescence — following exposure to temperatures greater than 34 °C (93.2° F) New Scientist: In India’s breadbasket, the Ganges plain, winter wheat is planted in November and

harvested as temperatures rise in spring. David Lobell of Stanford University in California used nine years of images from the

MODIS Earth-observation satellite to track when wheat in this region turned from green to brown, a sign that the

grain is no longer growing. He found that the wheat turned brown earlier when average temperatures were higher, with spells over 34 ºC having a particularly strong effect. [...] Lobell’s work suggests losses could be sooner and greater. “This is an early indication that a situation that was already bad could be even worse,” says Andy Challinor of the University of Leeds, UK. Meanwhile, the New York Times is reporting on a separate Indian study with similar implications. NYTimes:

China and India, which constitute about 37 percent of the world’s population, face a future of sharply lower crop yields as a consequence of climate change, leading scientists in both nations warned recently. Yields from rain-irrigated wheat could drop by 44 percent by 2050 under warmer conditions forecasted by climate models, the Indian farm scientist M.S. Swaminathan told reporters during the 97th Indian Science Congress last week. Mr. Swaminathan is considered the architect of India’s “Green Revolution” for his work in the 1960s developing high-yield grain varieties that ended decades of severe famine. India continues to suffer from high inflation in food prices and widespread chronic hunger. Such problems will be vastly worse if global temperatures continue to rise, Mr. Swaminathan said. “For every one degree Celsius rise in mean temperature, the wheat loss is estimated to be of the order of six million tons per year,” he said, according to The Hindu newspaper. India’s total wheat production was about 75 million metric

tons in 2009. China could face a similar climate-induced grain crisis, Zheng Guoguang, director of the China Meteorological Administration, the official weather forecasting agency in China, warned in a December essay in an influential Communist party journal.

Yields of rice, wheat and corn could fall as much as 37 percent by 2050 due to increased drought conditions and other climate impacts, Mr. Zheng estimated. Citing Mr. Zheng’s essay, a statement by the Chinese Meteorological Association urged the country’s leaders to focus on adapting to, rather than mitigating, climate change. “Since climate change is

an objective fact, it is more realistic and urgent for China, a big developing country, to adapt to than mitigate climate change,” the statement’s author concluded. “So China should put adaptation as top strategy of addressing climate change and put enhancing grain production and ensuring food security as first task.”

AT: Crisis coming1. The crisis is inevitable in the SQ – rising temperatures mean decreases in crop yields, more draught, and less predictable precipitation patters. 2. For this argument to be offensive they need to prove CO2 levels are DECREASING in the SQ. If we win that the world is increasing temperature and CO2 levels, it takes out the link to their argument. We should be solving the food crisis now.3. We can already observe increased temperatures hurting crop production 2012 heatwave directly tied to warmingHertsgaard, 2012 (Mark, Fellow of the New America Foundation, environment correspondent for The Nation, “Making the 2012 heat wave matter,” Al-jazeera, August 10, 2012, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/20128892345164806.html)

There have been two, maybe three, landmark heat waves in the history of man-made global warming. The first was in 1988 and it put the concept

of global warming on the map. Then as now, the eastern two-thirds of the United States broiled beneath ferociously high temperatures, while relentless drought parched soil and withered crops across the Midwestern farm belt.

But in Washington, the underlying problem was being named for the first time. On June 23, NASA scientist James Hansen testified to the US Senate that man-made global warming had begun. The New York Times reported his remarks on page one; the media at home and abroad followed suit. By year's end, "global warming" had become a common phrase in news bureaux, government ministries and living rooms around the world.

The second landmark heat wave occurred in 2003. It escaped many Americans' notice because it took place in Europe, where it was the hottest on record. By August, corpses were piling up outside morgues in Paris. Initial estimates suggested a death toll of 35,000 people across the continent. But a comprehensive study by the European Union later concluded that, in fact, there had been 71,449 excess deaths in the space of six weeks - far more than the number of US dead during the entire Vietnam War.

As in 1988, the 2003 heat wave transformed the political conversation about climate change. David King, the science adviser to the British government, began speaking out more forcefully, calling climate change "the most severe problem we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism".

King cited the finding of British scientists, reported in Nature, that global warming had been responsible for "about half" of the excess temperatures of 2003. It was an historic breakthrough - the first time scientists were able to attribute a carbon fingerprint to a specific weather event. King's advocacy led Prime Minister Tony Blair and other European leaders to endorse stronger actions against global warming and to press the George W Bush administration to do the same.

Landmark heat wave

And the third landmark heat wave? It's very possible we're living through it right now. Summer 2012 has broken thousands of records in the US, bringing misery and worse to millions. The nation is suffering the worst drought in 50 years, leading the US Department of Agriculture to declare 1,000 counties - one of every three in the nation - natural disaster zones. "It's like farming in hell," Fred Below, a plant biologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, told Bloomberg Businessweek.

Because the US is the world's leading agricultural exporter, the reverberations will be global and may include violence. "Corn and soybean prices surged to record highs [in July], surpassing the peaks of the 2007-08 crisis that sparked food riots in more than 30 countries," the Financial Times reported. According to the Christian Science Monitor, street clashes have already occurred in Indonesia, where soybeans are used to make tofu, the main protein source for the nation's poor. 

2AC SO2

1. Even if SO2 has some mirroring effect, it isn’t enough to solve warming. When we look at the total energy balance of the planet, it’s clear that it doesn’t add enough albedo to the planet. That’s 1AC Hansen.

2. We’re still able to cool the earth by reducing GHGs. 1AC Estrada evidence shows that we’re able to control the climate in this way.

3. Dimming causes drought and famine – cooling means less rain formation, lack of water, crop failure

Akina,07 (Jennifer, BA from the Metropolitan State College of Denver, 3/23/07, “Drought: Effect of Global Dimming”, http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/6305/jennifer_akina.html)

Air pollutants such as soot, ash and sulfur dioxide are created from the use of fossil fuels which contribute to what scientists call

global dimming. In short, global dimming occurs when clouds reflect more of the sun's rays back into space than they normally would, thus, allowing less heat and energy to reach the earth's surface. Recent research has shown that global dimming is likely to be the main cause behind the devastating droughts that have killed millions of people in so little as the past three decades.

To better explain the process of global dimming, normal clouds are created when water droplets combine with natural air-borne particles like pollen. But, when these air-borne particles become polluted by soot and ash, clouds are formed with a much larger number of water droplets making the clouds "thicker" and more reflective of sun's rays. Sun rays which play a crucial role in making the earth a living, working ecosystem.

Although global dimming may sound like a perfect counter measure to global warming, it is in fact the cause behind such global catastrophe's as the Ethiopian droughts in the 1970s and 1980s, killing millions of helpless villagers, along with the more recent European heat wave in 2003 left thousands dead.

Scientists who have been studying this meteorological phenomenon believe that the reflection of the sun's heat has caused the oceans in the northern hemisphere to become cooler. As a result, less rain has formed

across the planet because of less evaporation leading to clouds and rain. Crucial moisture once keeping areas livable, like that of Africa and other countries, is no longer filling lakes and rivers. (Horizon)

Most recently in Somalia these water shortages are once again proving to be devastating. Those affected have to walk for hours just to find bone dry riverbeds. The water they are able to salvage after many labor intensive hours is muddy and full of harmful microbes that are further

contributing to the growing death tolls. For those lucky enough to find drinkable water, the amount of exertion used is likely to kill them. The people of Somalia are thirsty, starving and are growing very weary. Drinking water is being limited to a few glasses per day. Within those three or four glasses are the cooking and washing water. If these people aren't able to do all of the normal day to day tasks such as: cooking, washing and drinking, life becomes dreary and starts to deteriorate. According to Mohamed Elmi, a manger of the aid agency regional program in a recent Canadian based CBC.CA news quote, "People cannot survive on just three glasses of water a day when the temperature is hitting 40 [Celsius] degrees." Some children there have been forced to drink their own urine because they are so thirsty and are becoming delirious.

We are learning how global dimming can be the cause behind mass destruction - of human life as well as plants and animals within our brittle ecosystem. While we all do not experience first hand the devastation of drought, that doesn't mean that what is happening halfway across the globe couldn't someday affect America. A way to help would be to play a larger role in decreasing the harmful air-pollutants that contribute to global dimming and, for that matter, anything which perpetuates the decay of earth. There are small things which can affect and benefit our future, such as purchasing hybrid cars or cutting back on water usage and so on. By taking action, the quality of life increases for everyone who shares this fragile planet.

4. Food price increases kill billions

Tampa Tribune (Florida), January 20, 1996, “Grain shortage growing problem,” p. 1

On a global scale, food supplies - measured by stockpiles of grain - are not abundant. In 1995, world production failed to

meet demand for the third consecutive year, said Per Pinstrup-Andersen, director of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C. As a result, grain stockpiles fell from an average of 17 percent of annual consumption in 1994-1995 to 13 percent at the end of the 1995-1996 season, he said. That’s troubling, Pinstrup-Andersen noted, since 13 percent is well below the 17 percent the United Nations considers essential to provide a margin of safety in world food security. During the food crisis of

the early 1970s, world grain stocks were at 15 percent. “ Even if they are merely blips, higher international prices can

hurt poor countries that import a significant portion of their food,” he said. “ Rising prices can also quickly put food out of reach of the 1.1 billion people in the developing world who live on a dollar a day or less.” He also said many people in low-income countries already spend more than half of their income on food.

5. SO2 depletes the ozone layer, causes famine, and causes ice age.

Kaufman, 2012 (Rachel, “Could pumping aerosols into the atmosphere stop global warming?” Tehran Times, August 10, 2012, http://www.tehrantimes.com/science/100433-could-pumping-aerosols-into-the-atmosphere-stop-global-warming)

The effects of aerosol injections are at least somewhat known, since volcanic eruptions produce aerosols naturally and have

produced cooling in the past. Mount Pinatubo, a volcano in the Philippines that erupted in 1991, spewed so much sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere that the planet cooled by 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.55 degrees Celsius) and stayed cool for more than two years.

Skeptics of the idea, however, say it's one thing when a volcano erupts; imitating nature would be another thing entirely.

While Pinatubo-like amounts of sulfur (roughly 20 million tons) pumped into the atmosphere could linger three to four years, cooling the planet within the first months, reversing sea ice melt, and possibly even

promoting tree growth, the side effects are uncertain.

Depleting ozone layer

A 2009 paper found that stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) could lead to drought in Africa and Asia and

deplete the ozone layer, and it would not stop ocean acidification.

A miscalculation in the injections could be a costly mistake, ushering in a new ice age. And if scientists were to stop regular injections without cleaning up the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the rebound effect could be worse for crops, animals and ecosystems than if they had done nothing.

6. Ozone depletion causes extinction

Greenpeace, 1995 (“Full of Homes: The Montreal Protocol and the Continuing Destruction of the Ozone Layer,” http://archive.greenpeace.org/ozone/holes/holebg.html.)

When chemists Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina first postulated a link between chlorofluorocarbons and ozone layer depletion in 1974, the news was greeted with scepticism, but taken seriously nonetheless. The vast majority of credible scientists have since confirmed this hypothesis.

The ozone layer around the Earth shields us all from harmful ultraviolet radiation from

the sun. Without the ozone layer, life on earth would not exist. Exposure to increased levels of ultraviolet radiation can cause cataracts, skin cancer, and immune system suppression in humans as well as innumerable effects on other living systems. This is why Rowland's and Molina's theory

was taken so seriously, so quickly - the stakes are literally the continuation of life on earth.

Updates 2016

AT: Sats – Sat data doesn’t reflect surfact temps, and lags because of atmospheric changesNuccitelli, 2016 (Dana, staff writer, “Record hot 2015 gave us a glimpse at the future of global warming,” The Guardian, 1/25/2016, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/jan/25/record-hot-2015-gave-us-a-glimpse-at-the-future-of-global-warming)

What about the satellite data?

Contrarians have responded to the news of record-shattering 2015 temperatures by noting that in the satellite data, it was only the third-hottest year on record in the lower atmosphere. There are two main reasons for this. First, atmospheric temperatures are more sensitive to changes in El Niño than surface temperatures. As a result, satellites still have 1998 as the hottest year on record, 0.14°C hotter than the second-hottest year of 2010, even though surface temperatures were about 0.07°C hotter in 2010 than 1998, and more than 0.2°C hotter in 2015.

Second, there’s an even bigger lag between changes in El Niño and changes in atmospheric temperatures, where it’s about 6–7 months. Thus the peak temperature influence of the current monster El Niño won’t be reflected in the satellite temperature record until summer 2016. As a result, 2016 is likely to become the hottest year in the satellite record.

However, the surface temperature data are more relevant to humans because they reflect temperatures where we live,

and are less uncertain and more reliable than indirect satellite temperature estimates.

Energy Balance Neg – Observations of the TOA ignore overdetermination from volcanic eruptions and poor observational techniques.Trenberth, Fasullo, and Balmaseda, 2014 (Kevin E. and John T., National Center for Atmospheric Research, Magdalena, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forcasts, “Earth’s Energy Imbalance,” Journal of Climate, May 1, 2014, pg. 3141-3142)

From the estimates discussed here, it is clear that the net energy imbalance at TOA varies naturally in response to weather and climate variations, the most distinctive of which is ENSO. It also varies with the sunspot cycle. Moreover, the net TOA energy flux is profoundly influenced by volcanic eruptions (not new) and almost simultaneously, but with some

blurring, so too is OHC.

All of these influences occur superposed on the climate change signals associated with changes in atmospheric composition. While previous estimates of OHC changes over time have revealed an overall upward trend, their agreement with regard to interannual and even interdecadal variability has been lacking . An obvious key issue is the extent to which the main large climate signals associated with volcanic eruptions and ENSO are clearly evident in the OHC tendencies. ORAS4 has clear volcanic signals following Mt. Agung (1963), El Chichon (1982), and Pinatubo (1991) eruptions, but they are not as clear in other OHC reconstructions, in part because of inadequate temporal resolution. Differences further highlight the remaining issues of adequately dealing with missing data in space and time and how OHC is mapped. The ORAS4 product appears to be a substantial advance in these respects. ORAS4 also has some distinctive ENSO signals after 1992 when the ocean observing system in the tropical Pacific improved markedly, consistent with earlier expectations and the more detailed recent analysis of Roemmich and Gilson (2011). The ability of ORAS4 to adequately resolve such signals is a testament to the reanalysis procedure, offering a viable path forward for improved OHC estimation. However, the continuity of reanalyses is still vulnerable to the changing observing system.

After the effects of Mt. Pinatubo died away in about 1994, several estimates (Trenberth et al. 2009; Hansen et al.

2011; Lyman et al. 2010; Balmaseda et al. 2013b) support the view that the energy imbalance was order 1.0 W m22 from

2000 through 2004. From 2005 to 2010, the quiet sun reduced the energy imbalance by 0.1– 0.15 W m22 (Fig. 2) and there was a noticeable slowing of the increase in OHC above 700-m depth, but not as much as for the full-depth

OHC, that has led to reduced estimates of the overall energy imbalance to 0.3–0.8Wm22 in the latter part of the decade. Assessments such as those by Hansen et al. (2011) and Church et al. (2011) suggest that the TOA imbalance has slowed, in contradiction to the CERES measurements. Here we have used ORAS4 to include the contributions to total OHC from the deeper ocean. The analysis has reinforced and refined estimates from Levitus et al. (2012) that the contribution is significant. For the 2000s, with 0.07W m22 for other components, the total energy imbalance implied by ORAS4 is 0.91 6 0.10W m22 ; this is also about the value preferred by CCSM4 (Fig. 1).

Yet, closure of the observed energy budget over the past 5 years remains largely elusive for interannual variations (Trenberth 2009; Trenberth and Fasullo 2010). While some of the previously missing energy is accounted for, substantial

discrepancies between OHC and CERES at interannual time scales persist and are especially prominent during 2008/09. Thus, state-of-the-art observations and basic analysis are unable to completely account for recent energy variability at interannual time scales, since they provide either an incoherent narrative or imply error bars too large to make the products useful. Both TOA radiation and OHC datasets need to be improved further. A vital need exists for OHC datasets of at least seasonal resolution, with care taken to reduce spurious noise, if real variations in nature are to be adequately understood.

Global Warming CPs

Clean Tech - Thorium

1NC ShellText: The United States federal government should substantially increase the available money in its nuclear loan guarantee program for liquid fluoride thorium reactors.

Only Thorium is able to combat global warming – Traditional nuclear power is too unsafe and renewables can’t produce enough energy to shift away from fossil fuels.Martin 12 (Richard, Award-winning science and technology journalist; contributing editor for Wired, Time, Fortune, The Atlantic, the Asian Wall Street Journal, Martin's December, 2009 Wired story on thorium catalyzed the thorium power revival. Educated at Yale and the University of Hong Kong, SuperFuel: Thorium, the Green Energy Source for the Future 13-14).

Thorium could provide a clean and effectively limitless source of power while allaying all public concerns—weapons proliferation, radioactive pollution, toxic waste, and fuel that is both costly and complicated to process. These concerns have crippled the nuclear power industry since the early 1980s. Today, with global warming accelerating,

climate-neutral nuclear power is poised for a worldwide comeback commonly referred to as the nuclear renaissance. At the same time, it’s clear that the flaws of conventional, uranium-based nuclear power—which accounts for no more than one-fifth of power generation in the United States and less than that worldwide—make it an unsuitable replacement for fossil fuels in the near term. The nuclear accident that followed the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in March 2011 caused many countries to reconsider their ambitious nuclear agendas. The problem is that only by shifting to non–carbon-emitting energy sources, like nuclear power, will we avoid catastrophic global climate change. Outside of the right wing of the Republican Party, hardly anyone today questions the

worldwide scientific consensus that human-caused global warming, if left unchecked, will result in disruptions of a civilization-threatening nature: coastal cities like Calcutta and Miami inundated by seawater, huge swathes of farmland desertified, many now-populated areas uninhabitable, prolonged drought, and so on. According to the International Energy Agency, worldwide demand for energy will rise by nearly 40 percent by 2035—a figure that many analysts, citing booming economic growth in the booming nations of China, India, and Brazil, consider low. Meeting that demand with current energy technologies would result in the addition of many billions of tons of carbon into Earth’s atmosphere—and, most likely, in resource wars,

famine, and the effective collapse of functioning society in many regions. The fossil fuel society on which we have built our civilization is simply no longer tenable. Many well-meaning observers argue that by shifting to renewable sources, like wind and solar, and reducing energy demand through conservation and increased efficiency, we can shift away from fossil fuels in time to avert this disastrous scenario. Unfortunately, those hopes are illusory.

And, loan guarantees check the upfront funding problems and ensure construction.Adams 10—Publisher of Atomic insights. Was in the Navy for 33 years. Spent time at the Naval Academy. Has experience designing and running small nuclear plants (Rod, Concrete Action to Follow Strongly Supportive Words On Building New Nuclear Power Plants, atomicinsights.com/2010/01/concrete-action-to-follow-strongly-supportive-words-on-building-new-nuclear-power-plants.html)

Loan guarantees are important to the nuclear industry because the currently available models are large, capital

intensive projects that need a stable regulatory and financial environment. The projects can be financed because

they will produce a regular stream of income that can service the debt and still provide a profit, but that is only true if the banks are assured that the government will not step in at an inopportune time to halt progress and slow down the revenue generation part of the project. Bankers do not forget history or losses very easily; they want to make sure that government decisions like those that halted Shoreham, Barnwell’s recycling facility or the Clinch River Breeder Reactor program are not going to be repeated this time around.

For the multi-billion dollar projects being proposed, bankers demand the reassurance that comes when the government is officially supportive and has some “skin in the game” that makes frivolous bureaucratic decisions to erect barriers very expensive for the agency that makes that decision . I have reviewed the conditions established for the guarantee programs pretty carefully – at one time, my company (Adams Atomic Engines, Inc.) was considering filing an

application. The loan conditions are strict and do a good job of protecting government interests. They were not

appropriate for a tiny company, but I can see where a large company would have less trouble complying with the rules and conditions. The conditions do allow low or no cost intervention in the case of negligence or safety issues, but they put the government on the hook for delays that come from bad bureaucratic decision making.

2NC Solvency OverviewThe aff winning the permutation doesn’t matter. The Martin 12 evidence shows that the only actual way to solve for global warming is through a transition to thorium power. It’s safe and puts out the megawatts necessary to replace dirty power plants. Extend Adams 10 – this shows that offering loan guarantees means that the power plants actually get built because the primary obstacle is reliable funding and regulatory uncertainty. When the USFG is providing guarantees, both these concerns go away.

The perm is the worst option because China is already working on Thorium, means all the aff arguments about climate leadership go away because it looks like the US is following the ChineseMartin 12 (Richard, Award-winning science and technology journalist; contributing editor for Wired, Time, Fortune, The Atlantic, the Asian Wall Street Journal, Martin's December, 2009 Wired story on thorium catalyzed the thorium power revival. Educated at Yale and the University of Hong Kong, SuperFuel: Thorium, the Green Energy Source for the Future 13-14). 

HERE IS WHERE THE CURRENT nuclear power establishment—the nuclearati— guffaw and roll their eyes. There are a hundred reasons why the scenario I’ve laid out will not happen, they say. Uranium is inexpensive (for now), the existing reactor population is safe (except when it’s not—see Fukushima), plenty of new reactor designs are less radical than LFTRs (which is why they won’t make enough of a difference), and so forth. We can’t do it because we’ve never done it before. They are right about one thing: the United States is not likely to be at the center of the thorium power revolution. Here’s a more likely scenario. Discovering the advantages of thorium technology, the Chinese accelerate their program to build a dozen LFTRs in the next 15 years . They recruit the top thorium talent in the world and co-opt the nascent Japanese program, signing lucrative contracts with the top nuclear suppliers in Japan and South Korea, thus compressing further the R&D timeline. By 2030 China is the leading source of LFTR technology —and of raw thorium fuel—in the world. India, watching its Asian rival move rapidly to the fore in advanced nuclear power, shifts its three-stage program to a more accelerated development schedule based on solid fuel technology from TerraPower and Lightbridge. Using its huge reserves of thorium as leverage with other emerging thorium power nations, such as the United Arab Emirates, India builds a thriving thorium power sector, building reactors at a slower pace than China but, by 2030, becoming a leader in its own right. Enhanced energy security, and the economic power and diplomatic prestige that come with it, allow India to reach a lasting détente with its perennial foe, Pakistan. Farther east, on the Pacific Rim, both Japan and South Korea rapidly build thorium reactor technology sectors, supplying China and India with the advanced materials and components they need while starting to build thorium reactors of their own. By 2030 the fastest-growing source of electricity in Asia is thorium power; by 2050 liquid fluoride thorium reactors are supplying a significant fraction of the power not only in China, India, Japan, and Korea but also in secondary, technology-importing countries like Vietnam, Taiwan, Singapore, and Indonesia.

Carbon Tax CP

1NC ShellText: The United States federal government should phase-in a tax on all carbon emissions in the United States until reaching a cost of $45 per metric ton.

CP solves warming- $45/ton tax cuts US emissions by 40% by 2025.Pianin, 15 (Eric, “A Carbon Tax to Combat Global Warming is Getting a Fresh Look,” The Fiscal Times, July 5, 2015, http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/07/05/Carbon-Tax-Combat-Global-Warming-Getting-Fresh-Look)President Obama once praised the idea, but dropped it after the Senate defeat. Few thought that either cap and trade or a carbon tax would ever again see the light of day. That view is changing as the U.S. and other major industrial powers explore ways to meet their pledges ahead of an international global warming conference in Paris late this year.

Last month, Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Brian Schatz of Hawaii unveiled the American Opportunity Carbon Free Act, a bill that would impose a $45 per metric ton fee on carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel. The proposed tax reflects the federal government’s latest estimate of the “social cost of carbon” – the measure of the damage that climate change causes to the environment, public health and the economy

Whitehouse and Schatz contend that their proposed tax – which would be increased by two percent per year – along

with government credits for carbon sequestration could cut U.S. emissions by at least 40 percent by 2025 – a reduction far greater than the 26 percent to 28 percent the United States has pledged to achieve through regulatory changes over the same period. Rep. John Delaney (D-MD) is promoting a similar version of a coal tax.

The Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution and other think tanks have begun promoting a carbon tax as a vital component of comprehensive tax reform. While it’s unlikely that Congress will take on major tax reform until after the 2016 presidential election, proponents say they want to get an early start in building support for a versatile tax that could generate tens of billions of dollars that could be used for an array of worthy causes.

2NC Solvency OverviewThe aff winning the permutation doesn’t matter. The Pianin 15 evidence shows a 2% phase-in carbon tax will cut 40% of US emissions by 2025. The affirmative won’t be able to show why (a) there is a solvency deficit to the CP, or (b) why the permutation giving double-solvency is a reason why the perm is better than the CP itself. If the aff authors are to be trusted, a 40% reduction in the US will be more than enough to stabilize the climate, that means there’s no reason to vote aff on warming.

Neg Frontlines

1NC Frontline Defense1. Even if all anthropogenic emissions of GHGs were stopped immediately the impacts of climate change and the warming of the surface would still be irreversible – this is the most recent scientific consensusIPCC, ‘14 (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it’s where all of your statistics come from, 2014 Synthesis Report, http://ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/SYR_AR5_FINAL_full.pdf) CG; AD: 4/4

Many aspects of climate change and its associated impacts will continue for centuries, even if anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are stopped. The risks of abrupt or irreversible changes increase as the magnitude of the warming increases. Warming will continue beyond 2100 under all RCP scenarios except RCP2.6. Surface temperatures will remain approximately constant at elevated levels for many centuries after a complete cessation of net anthropogenic CO2 emissions (see Section 2.2.5 for the relationship between CO2 emissions and global temperature change.). A large fraction of anthropogenic climate change resulting from CO2 emissions is irreversible on a multi-century to millennial timescale, except in the case of a large net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere over a sustained period (Figure 2.8a,

b). {WGI SPM E.1, SPM E.8, 12.5.2} Stabilization of global average surface temperature does not imply stabilization for all aspects of the climate system. Shifting biomes, re-equilibrating soil carbon, ice sheets, ocean temperatures and associated sea level rise all have their own intrinsic long timescales that will result in ongoing changes for hundreds to thousands of years after global surface temperature has been stabilized. {WGI SPM E.8, 12.5.2–12.5.4, WGII 4.2} confidence), Ocean acidification will continue for centuries if CO2 emissions continue, it will strongly affect marine ecosystems (high and the impact will be exacerbated by rising temperature extremes (Figure 2.5b). {WGI

3.8.2, 6.4.4, WGII SPM B-2, 6.3.2, 6.3.5, 30.5, Box CC-OA} Global mean sea level rise will continue for many centuries beyond 2100 (virtually certain). The few available analyses that go beyond 2100 indicate sea level rise to be less than 1 m above the pre-industrial level by 2300 for GHG concentrations that peak and decline and remain below 500 ppm CO2-eq, as in scenario RCP2.6. For a radiative forcing that corresponds to a CO2-eq concentration in 2100 that is above 700 ppm but below 1500 ppm, as in scenario RCP8.5, the projected rise is 1 m to more than 3 m by 2300 (medium confidence) (Figure 2.8c). There is low confidence in the available models’ ability to project solid ice discharge from the Antarctic ice sheet. Hence, these models likely underestimate the Antarctica ice sheet contribution, resulting in an underestimation of projected sea level rise beyond 2100. {WGI SPM E.8, 13.4.4, 13.5.4} There is little evidence in global climate models of a tipping point or critical threshold in the transition from a perennially ice-covered to a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean,

beyond which further sea-ice loss is unstoppable and irreversible. {WGI 12.5.5} There is low confidence in assessing the evolution of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation beyond the 21st century because of the limited number of analyses and equivocal results. However, a collapse beyond the 21st century for large sustained warming cannot be excluded. {WGI SPM E.4, 12.4.7, 12.5.5} Sustained mass loss by ice sheets would cause larger sea level rise, and part of the mass loss might be irreversible. There is high confidence that sustained global mean warming greater than a threshold would lead to the near-complete loss of the Greenland ice sheet over a millennium or more, causing a sea level rise of up to 7 m. Current estimates indicate that the threshold is greater than about 1°C (low confidence) but less than about 4°C (medium confidence) of global warming with respect to pre-

industrial temperatures. Abrupt and irreversible ice loss from a potential instability of marine-based sectors of the Antarctic ice sheet in response to climate forcing is possible , but current evidence and understanding is insufficient to make

a quantitative assessment. {WGI SPM E.8, 5.6.2, 5.8.1, 13.4.3, 13.5.4} Within the 21st century, magnitudes and rates of climate change associated with medium to high emission scenarios (RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5) pose a high risk of abrupt and irreversible regional-scale change in the composition, structure and function of marine , terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, including wetlands (medium confidence), as well as warm water coral reefs (high

confidence). Examples that could substantially amplify climate change are the boreal-tundra Arctic system (medium confidence) and the Amazon forest (low confidence). {WGII 4.3.3.1, Box 4.3, Box 4.4, 5.4.2.4, 6.3.1–6.3.4, 6.4.2, 30.5.3–30.5.6, Box CC-CR, Box CC-MB} A reduction in permafrost extent is virtually certain with continued rise in global temperatures. Current permafrost areas are projected to become a net emitter of carbon (CO2 and CH4) with a loss of 180 to 920 GtCO2 (50 to 250 GtC) under RCP8.5 over the 21st century (low confidence). {WGI TFE.5, 6.4.3.4, 12.5.5, WGII 4.3.3.4}

2. Adaptation more important than mitigation. Trisolini 14 (Katherine, Associate Professor of Law, Loyola Law School, “HOLISTIC CLIMATE CHANGE GOVERNANCE: TOWARDS MITIGATION AND ADAPTATION SYNTHESIS”, University of Colorado Law Review, July 18, 2014)

Unfortunately, the need for climate change adaptation can no longer be ignored. While scientists admonish us that

GHG [*618] production trajectories must be cut deeply and quickly to avoid the worst impacts, n2 past emissions already have committed the planet to at least some further warming. n3 Consequently, even under the best emissions scenarios, this century will see more frequent and severe storms, flooding, heat waves, droughts, and fires. n4 Sea level is anticipated to rise, possibly abruptly, although projections vary dramatically. n5 Researchers expect that these changes will exacerbate security risks, alter food production, shift disease vectors, and prompt human migrations, among other phenomena. n6 In light of these impending changes, this Article argues that

effective climate change governance requires fundamentally rethinking physical and regulatory infrastructure that was designed for historically more stable climatic conditions. The legal system should direct investment toward adaptive and adaptable infrastructure that reduces human risks, decreases reliance on complex networks, and curbs (or at least does not exacerbate) the degree of scientific uncertainty that legislators and administrative agencies will face while regulating in an unfamiliar and evolving physical environment. Part of this rethinking process asks whether legal mechanisms designed to mitigate climate change by incentivizing GHG emissions reductions will aid or hinder adaptation. The most effective policy will synthesize both

efforts, favoring coordinated over unilateral approaches to either issue. Initially, legal scholarship on climate change focused heavily on mitigation. n7 Although not a subject of analysis until [*619] recently, and by some accounts a formerly "taboo" topic,

scholars have begun turning attention to strategies fo r adapting to a changed climate . While mitigation aims to limit the extent of global warming (for example, by reducing fossil fuel combustion or sequestering carbon dioxide),

adaptation reduces harm to humans, animals, and ecosystems from the warming that does occur.

Adaptation measures could include, for example, shifting populations away from coastal areas that are vulnerable to rising seas. The increasing attention to adaptation likely stems from recognition that some degree of warming and ecosystem change is now inevitable ; hence mitigation can limit, but not eliminate, adverse impacts. Analyses of mitigation and adaptation in the United States have largely occurred on parallel tracks. n10 Scholars have extensively debated the best design of mitigation regimes - focusing predominantly on proposals to incentivize GHG emissions reductions through market mechanisms

such as cap-and-trade. n11 With the recent entry of adaptation into legal scholarship, academics have asked how to promote ecosystem resilience and reduce harm to human populations. n12 They have also evaluated how environmental and natural resources law should change to give agencies new decision-making tools and increased flexibility. However, with few exceptions, scholars have not yet considered the intersection of these two issues. Up to now, federal policymakers have similarly analyzed [*620]  mitigation and adaptation separately.  Given that changing

3. Most warming is natural – anthropogenic unimportant.Bastasch 15 [Michael, reporter for the Daily Caller, “Former UN Lead Author: Global Warming Caused By ‘Natural Variations’ In Climate” The Daily Caller, May 22 2015, http://dailycaller.com/2015/05/22/former-un-lead-author-global-warming-caused-by-natural-variations-in-climate/] AW

Global temperature change observed over the last hundred years or so is well within the natural variability of the last 8,000 years, according to a new paper by a former Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) lead author. Dr. Philip Lloyd, a South Africa-based physicist and climate researcher, examined ice core-based temperature data going back 8,000

years to gain perspective on the magnitude of global temperature changes over the 20th Century. What Lloyd found was that the standard deviation of the temperature over the last 8,000 years was about 0.98 degrees Celsius– higher than the 0.85 degrees climate scientists say the world has warmed over the last century. “This suggests that while some portion of the temperature change observed in the 20th century was probably caused by greenhouse gases, there is a strong likelihood that the major portion was due to natural variations,” Lloyd wrote in his study. The United Nations’ IPCC claims there’s been 0.85 degrees Celsius of warming since the late 1800s, and concludes that most of this warming is due to human activities– mainly, the burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use. The IPCC says that “more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010” have been caused by human activity. If Lloyd’s results hold,

the IPCC may have to revise how much warming it attributes to mankind. In any case, the IPCC’s estimate of man-made and natural warming (0.85 degrees) is still below the standard deviation for the last 8,000, according to Lloyd’s

results. This means that warming is not very significant within the context of the Earth’s recent climate history.

4. No extinction from climate change NIPCC 11 (the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, an international panel of nongovernment scientists and scholars, March 8, 2011, “Surviving the Unprecedented Climate Change of the IPCC,” online: http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2011/mar/8mar2011a5.html)

In a paper published in Systematics and Biodiversity, Willis et al. (2010) consider the IPCC (2007) "predicted climatic changes for the next century" -- i.e., their contentions that "global temperatures will increase by 2-4°C and possibly

beyond, sea levels will rise (~1 m ± 0.5 m), and atmospheric CO2 will increase by up to 1000 ppm" -- noting that it is "widely

suggested that the magnitude and rate of these changes will result in many plants and animals going extinct," citing studies that suggest that "within the next century, over 35% of some biota will have gone extinct (Thomas et al., 2004; Solomon et al., 2007) and there will be extensive die-back of the tropical rainforest due to climate change (e.g. Huntingford et al., 2008)."¶

On the other hand, they indicate that some biologists and climatologists have pointed out that "many of the predicted increases in climate have happened before, in terms of both magnitude and rate of change (e.g.

Royer, 2008; Zachos et al., 2008), and yet biotic communities have remained remarkably resilient (Mayle and

Power, 2008) and in some cases thrived (Svenning and Condit, 2008)." But they report that those who mention these things are often "placed in the 'climate-change denier' category," although the purpose for pointing out these facts is simply to present "a sound scientific basis for understanding biotic responses to the magnitudes and rates of climate change predicted for the future through using the vast data resource

that we can exploit in fossil records."¶ Going on to do just that, Willis et al. focus on "intervals in time in the fossil record

when atmospheric CO2 concentrations increased up to 1200 ppm, temperatures in mid- to high-latitudes

increased by greater than 4°C within 60 years, and sea levels rose by up to 3 m higher than present," describing studies of past biotic responses that indicate "the scale and impact of the magnitude and rate of such climate changes on biodiversity." And

what emerges from those studies, as they describe it, "is evidence for rapid community turnover, migrations, development of novel ecosystems and thresholds from one stable ecosystem state to another." And, most importantly in this

regard, they report "there is very little evidence for broad-scale extinctions due to a warming world."¶ In

concluding, the Norwegian, Swedish and UK researchers say that "based on such evidence we urge some caution in assuming broad-scale extinctions of species will occur due solely to climate changes of the magnitude and

rate predicted for the next century," reiterating that "the fossil record indicates remarkable biotic resilience to wide amplitude fluctuations in climate."

5. Warming inevitable - oceansNPR 09 (1/26, Global Warming Is Irreversible, Study Says, All Things Considered, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99888903)

Climate change is essentially irreversible, according to a sobering new scientific study. As carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise,

the world will experience more and more long-term environmental disruption. The damage will persist even when, and if, emissions are brought under control, says study author Susan Solomon, who is among the world's top climate scientists. "We're used to thinking about pollution problems as things that we can fix," Solomon says. "Smog, we just cut back and everything will be better later. Or haze, you know, it'll go away pretty quickly." That's the case for some of the gases that contribute to climate change, such as methane and nitrous oxide. But as Solomon and colleagues suggest in a new study published in the Proceedings of the National

Academy of Sciences, it is not true for the most abundant greenhouse gas: carbon dioxide. Turning off the carbon dioxide emissions won't stop global warming. "People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide that the climate would

go back to normal in 100 years or 200 years. What we're showing here is that's not right. It's essentially an irreversible change that will last for more than a thousand years," Solomon says. This is because the oceans are currently soaking up a lot of the planet's excess heat — and a lot of the carbon dioxide put into the air. The carbon dioxide and heat will eventually start coming out of the ocean. And that will take place for many hundreds of years. Solomon is a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Her new study looked at the consequences of this long-

1NC Offense Frontline1. Co2 key to expanded food production and solves plant biodiversity loss.Carter et al 14 (Dr. Craig D. Idso, Dr. Sherwood B. Idso, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Dr. Robert M. Carter, Emeritus Fellow, Institute of Public Affairs and Dr. S. Fred Singer, Science and Environmental Policy Project, CLIMATE CHANGE RECONSIDERED II: BIOLOGICAL IMPACTS, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, 2014, p. 473-475. Gender edited)The key findings of this chapter are listed below.

• Rising atmospheric CO2 and warming temperatures, both of which IPCC claims constitute a significant threat to the biosphere, benefited agriculture in the ancient past and in the twentieth century.

• Empirical studies suggest a future warming of the climate coupled with rising atmospheric CO2 levels will boost global agricultural production and help meet the food needs of the planet’s growing population.

• When model-based studies fully account for the growth-enhancing and water-conserving benefits of atmospheric CO2 enrichment, they project significant gains for future agricultural production.

• The vigor of the terrestrial biosphere has been increasing with time, revealing a great greening of the planet that extends across the globe.

• Satellite-based analyses of net terrestrial primary productivity (NPP) reveal an increase of around 6– 13% since the 1980s.

• There is no empirical evidence to support the model-based claim that future carbon uptake will diminish on a global scale due to rising temperatures.

• Earth’s land surfaces were a net source of CO2- carbon to the atmosphere until about 1940. From 1940 onward, the terrestrial biosphere has become, in the mean, an increasingly greater sink for CO2- carbon.

• Over the past 50 years, global carbon uptake has doubled from 2.4 ± 0.8 billion tons in 1960 to 5.0 ± 0.9 billion tons in 2010.

• The observed greening of the Earth has occurred in spite of the many real and imagined assaults on the planet’s vegetation over this time period, including fires, disease, outbreaks of pests, deforestation, and climatic changes (primarily in temperature and precipitation).

• The atmosphere’s rising CO2 content—which IPCC considers to be the chief culprit behind its concerns about the future of the

biosphere—is most likely the primary cause of the observed greening trends.

• In the future, plants should be able to adjust their physiology to accommodate a warming of the magnitude and rate of rise typically predicted by climate models to accompany the projected future increase in atmospheric CO2 content.

• The rise in the air’s CO2 concentration and its antitranspiration effect, which improves plant wateruse efficiency, are enhancing and will continue to enhance the vegetative productivity of Africa .

• The rise of the air’s CO2 concentration and temperature to their highest values of the past century enhanced the terrestrial vegetative productivity of all parts of Asia, including deserts, forests, grasslands, and the Tibetan Plateau.

• Evergreen vegetation, woody plants, and other plant life have increased across Australia over the past 200 years as a result of CO2 enrichment.

• Over the last two decades of the twentieth century, Europe as a whole became greener and much of it is seeing an increase in woodlands due to the recent rise in atmospheric CO2, which has tended to offset the detrimental effects of climate change in the region.

• Opposite the forecasts promulgated by the models used by IPCC, land-based plants of the Arctic and near-Arctic regions of North America are thriving , thanks in large part to the ongoing rise in the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration and global warming.

• Late twentieth-century increases in air temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration did not negatively affect plant communities in the eastern United States. Rather, the temp erature and CO2 increases significantly enhanced local and regional productivit y, and there is little reason to think such enhancements will not continue throughout the foreseeable future.

• The late twentieth-century rise in temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentrations improved the productivity of plant communities in the central region of the United States, notwithstanding model-based concerns to the contrary.

• The late twentieth-century rise in temperature and atmospheric CO2 improved the productivity of plant communities in the western region of the United States, notwithstanding model-based projections of unprecedented ecological disaster due to rising temperatures and drought.

• Warmer temperatures and higher CO2 concentrations are resulting in net primary productivity increasing across tropical South America, overcoming the effects of deforestation, forest fires, and incursions by human civilization into natural areas.

• It is likely the greening of the planet will continue in the future, even if the largest temperature increases predicted by the models occur, because the optimum temperature for plant growth and development typically rises with increasing levels of atmospheric CO2. This response, coupled with expected increases in plant photosynthetic rates from the rise in the air’s CO2 concentration, is more than enough to compensate for any temperature-induced plant stress caused by global warming.

• Real-world observations reveal plants have many ways of adjusting to changes in climate in addition to their ability to spread from places of rising warmth to cooler habitats, and these observations suggest the planet’s current assemblage of plants is likely to be around a good deal longer than many theoretical models have predicted.

• A major cause of biodiversity reductions is not rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations, but instead the direct encroachment of [hu]man[s] upon the world of nature . Anthropogenic global warming , to whatever extent it exists, is helping plants overcome these assaults and thrive despite the growing human presence.

2. Food wars cause extinction – outweighs warming Cribb 10 (Julian Cribb, principal of JCA, fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, 2010, The Coming Famine: The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do to Avoid It, google books,)

The character of human conflict has also changed: since the early 1990S, more wars have been triggered by disputes over food, land, and water than over mere political or ethnic differences. This should not surprise US: people have fought over the

means of survival for most of history. But in the abbreviated reports on the nightly media, and even in the rarefied realms of government policy, the focus is almost invariably on the players—the warring national, ethnic, or religious factions—rather than on the play, the deeper subplots building the tensions that ignite conflict. Caught up in these are groups of ordinary, desperate people fearful that there is no longer sufficient food, land, and water to feed their children—and believing that they must fight ‘the others” to secure them. At the same time, the number of refugees in the world doubled, many of them escaping from conflicts and famines precipitated by food

and resource shortages. Governments in troubled regions tottered and fell. The coming famine is planetary because it involves both the immediate effects of hunger on directly affected populations in heavily populated regions of the world in the next

forty years—and also the impacts of war, government failure, refugee crises, shortages, and food price spikes that will affect all human beings , no matter who they are or where they live. It is an emergency because unless it is solved, billions will experience great hardship, and not only in the poorer regions. Mike Murphy, one of the world’s most progressive dairy farmers, with operations in

Ireland, New Zealand, and North and South America, succinctly summed it all up: “Global warming gets all the publicity but the real

imminent threat to the human race is starvation on a massive scale . Taking a 10—30 year view, I believe that food

shortages, famine and huge social unrest are probably the greatest threat the human race has ever faced. I believe

future food shortages are a far bigger world threat than global warming .”2° The coming famine is also complex, because it is driven not by one or two, or even a half dozen, factors but rather by the confluence of many large and profoundly intractable causes that tend to amplify one another. This means that it cannot easily be remedied by “silver bullets” in the form of technology, subsidies, or single-country policy changes, because of the synergetic character of the things that power it.

3. Humans can adapt to warming, not massive sheets of ice. New ice age risks coming in 2022, now’s not the time for co2 reductions.Marsh 12 (Gerald E. Marsh, Retired Physicist from the Argonne National Laboratory and a former consultant to the Department of Defense on strategic nuclear technology and policy in the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton Administration, “The Coming of a New Ice Age,” http://www.winningreen.com/site/epage/59549_621.htm, 2012)

CHICAGO — Contrary to the conventional wisdom of the day, the real danger facing humanity is not global warming, but more likely the coming of a new Ice Age. What we live in now is known as an interglacial, a relatively brief period between long ice ages. Unfortunately for us, most interglacial periods last only about ten thousand years, and that is how long it has been since the last Ice Age ended. How much longer do we have before the ice begins to spread across the Earth’s surface? Less than a hundred years or several

hundred? We simply don’t know. Even if all the temperature increase over the last century is attributable to human activities, the rise has been relatively modest one of a little over one degree Fahrenheit — an increase well within

natural variations over the last few thousand years. While an enduring temperature rise of the same size over the next century would cause humanity to make some changes, it would undoubtedly be within our ability to adapt. Entering a new ice age, however, would be catastrophic for the continuation of modern civilization . One has only to look at maps showing the extent of the great ice sheets during the last Ice Age to understand what a return to

ice age conditions would mean. Much of Europe and North-America were covered by thick ice, thousands of feet thick in many areas and the world as a whole was much colder. The last “little” Ice Age started as early as the 14th century when the Baltic Sea froze over followed by unseasonable cold, storms, and a rise in the level of the Caspian Sea. That was followed by the extinction of the Norse settlements in Greenland and the loss of grain cultivation in Iceland. Harvests were even severely reduced in Scandinavia And this was a mere foreshadowing of the miseries to come. By the mid-17th century, glaciers in the Swiss Alps advanced, wiping out farms and entire villages. In England, the River Thames froze during the winter, and in 1780, New York Harbor froze. Had this continued, history would have been very different. Luckily, the decrease in solar activity that caused the Little Ice Age ended and the result was the

continued flowering of modern civilization. There were very few Ice Ages until about 2.75 million years ago when Earth’s climate entered an unusual period of instability. Starting about a million years ago cycles of ice ages lasting about 100,000 years, separated by relatively short interglacial periods, like the one we are now living in became the rule . Before the onset of the Ice Ages, and for most of the Earth’s history, it was far warmer than it is today. Indeed, the Sun has been getting brighter over the whole history of the Earth and large land plants have flourished. Both of these had

the effect of dropping carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere to the lowest level in Earth’s long history. Five hundred million years ago, carbon dioxide concentrations were over 13 times current levels; and not until about 20 million years ago did carbon dioxide levels dropped to a little less than twice what they are today . It is

possible that moderately increased carbon dioxide concentrations could extend the current interglacial period. But we have not reached the level required yet, nor do we know the optimum level to reach . So, rather than call for arbitrary limits on carbon dioxide emissions, perhaps the best thing the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the climatology community in general could do is spend their efforts on determining the optimal range of carbon dioxide needed to extend the

current interglacial period indefinitely. NASA has predicted that the solar cycle peaking in 2022 could be one of the weakest in centuries and should cause a very significant cooling of Earth’s climate . Will this be the trigger that initiates a new Ice Age? We ought to carefully consider this possibility before we wipe out our current prosperity by spending trillions of dollars to combat a perceived global warming threat that may well prove to be only a will-o-the-wisp.

4. ecosystems are resilient to climate change- but co2 is essential to food and biodiversity Carter et al 14 (Dr. Craig D. Idso, Dr. Sherwood B. Idso, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Dr. Robert M. Carter, Emeritus Fellow, Institute of Public Affairs and Dr. S. Fred Singer, Science and Environmental Policy Project, “Summary for Policymakers,” CLIMATE CHANGE RECONSIDERED II: BIOLOGICAL IMPACTS, 2014 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), 2014, p. 3.

• Atmospheric carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is a non-toxic, non-irritating, and natural component of the atmosphere. Long-term CO2 enrichment studies confirm the findings of shorter-term experiments, demonstrating numerous growth-enhancing, water-conserving, and stress-alleviating effects of elevated atmospheric CO2 on plants growing in both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems .

• The ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content is causing a great greening of the Earth. All across the planet, the historical increase in the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration has stimulated vegetative productivity. This observed stimulation, or greening of the Earth, has occurred in spite of many real and imagined assaults on Earth’s vegetation, including fires, disease, pest outbreaks, deforestation, and climatic change.

• There is little or no risk of increasing food insecurity due to global warming or rising atmospheric CO2 levels. Farmers and others who depend on rural livelihoods for income are benefitting from rising agricultural productivity throughout the world, including in parts of Asia and Africa where the need for increased food supplies is most critical. Rising temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels play a key role in the realization of such benefits.

• Terrestrial ecosystems have thrived throughout the world as a result of warming temperatures and rising levels of atmospheric CO2. Empirical data pertaining to numerous animal species, including amphibians, birds, butterflies, other insects, reptiles, and mammals, indicate global warming and its myriad ecological effects tend to foster the expansion and proliferation of animal habitats, ranges, and populations, or otherwise have no observable impacts one way or the other. Multiple lines of evidence indicate animal species are adapting , and in some cases evolving, to cope with climate change of the modern era.

• Rising temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels do not pose a significant threat to aquatic life. Many aquatic species have shown considerable tolerance to temperatures and CO2 values predicted for the next few centuries, and many have demonstrated a likelihood of positive responses in empirical studies. Any projected adverse impacts of rising temperatures or declining seawater and freshwater pH levels (“acidification”) will be largely mitigated through phenotypic adaptation or evolution during the many decades to centuries it is expected to take for pH levels to fall.

• A modest warming of the planet will result in a net reduction of human mortality from temperature-related events. More lives are saved by global warming via the amelioration of cold-related deaths than those lost under excessive heat. Global warming will have a negligible influence on human morbidity and the spread of infectious diseases, a phenomenon observed in virtually all parts of the world.

2NC CO2 AG OverviewExtend Carter 14 – scientists have observed plants doing better in climates with higher surface temperatures and co2 concentration than those without. You should be highly skeptical of the aff’s claims about models, because our evidence is empirical. This is impacted by Cribb 10 – He notes that in a world where we have less food, it increases the propensity for wars on a massive scale. This happens before the long-term effects of warming and come first.

Food insecurity is a conflict multiplier – most likely scenario for nuclear war.Future Directions International ’12 (“International Conflict Triggers and Potential Conflict Points Resulting from Food and Water Insecurity Global Food and Water Crises Research Programme”, May 25, http://www.futuredirections.org.au/files/Workshop_Report_-_Intl_Conflict_Triggers_-_May_25.pdf,)

There is a growing appreciation that the conflicts in the next century will most likely be fought over a lack of resources.¶ Yet, in a sense, this is not new. Researchers point to the French and Russian revolutions as conflicts induced by a lack of food. More recently, Germany’s World War Two efforts are said to have been inspired, at least in

part, by its perceived need to gain access to more food. Yet the general sense among those that attended FDI’s recent workshops, was that the scale of the problem in the future could be significantly greater as a result of population pressures, changing weather, urbanisation, migration, loss of arable land and other farm inputs, and increased affluence in the developing world.¶ In his book, Small Farmers Secure Food, Lindsay Falvey, a participant in FDI’s March 2012 workshop on the issue of food and conflict, clearly expresses the problem and

why countries across the globe are starting to take note. .¶ He writes (p.36), “…if people are hungry, especially in cities, the state is not stable – riots, violence, breakdown of law and order and migration result.”¶ “Hunger feeds anarchy.”¶ This view is also shared

by Julian Cribb, who in his book, The Coming Famine, writes that if “large regions of the world run short of food, land or water in the

decades that lie ahead, then wholesale, bloody wars are liable to follow.”¶ He continues: “An increasingly credible scenario for World War 3 is not so much a confrontation of super powers and their allies, as a festering, self-perpetuating chain of resource conflicts.” He also says: “The wars of the 21st Century are less likely to be global conflicts with sharply defined sides and huge armies, than a scrappy mass of failed states , rebellions,

civil strife, insurgencies, terrorism and genocides, sparked by bloody competition over dwindling resources.Ӧ As

another workshop participant put it, people do not go to war to kill; they go to war over resources, either to protect or to gain the resources for themselves.¶ Another observed that hunger results in passivity not conflict. Conflict is over resources, not because

people are going hungry.¶ A study by the International Peace Research Institute indicates that where food security is an issue, it is more likely to result in some form of conflict. Darfur, Rwanda, Eritrea and the Balkans experienced such wars. Governments,

especially in developed countries, are increasingly aware of this phenomenon.¶ The UK Ministry of Defence, the CIA, the US Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Oslo Peace Research Institute, all identify famine as a potential trigger for conflicts and possibly even nuclear war.

Don’t buy the hype – new studies show that warming is good for plants and is highly adaptable.Follett, 2016 (Andrew, Energy and Environmental Reporter, The Daily Caller, “MIT Study: No Scientific Consensus on Global Warming Crop Impact,”

http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/08/mit-study-no-scientific-consensus-on-global-warming-crop-impact/)

Scientists disagree on the effects of global warming on American agriculture, according to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study published Friday.

The research used climate and agricultural computer models to conclude that global warming would have numerous positive impacts on US farming, including fewer frosts, a longer growing season and an earlier start of field operations by the end of the century. However, the study also found that plants could potentially suffer from more heat stress and more dry days.

The study’s one firm conclusion was that farmers would likely be able to adapt to the potential challenges caused by global warming.

“The new study, and its approach to trying to better identify the type and character of future climate changes that may be best related to future agricultural productivity is useful, primarily, as the authors point out, in helping to drive adaptive strategies,” Chip Knappenberger,

climate scientist at the libertarian Cato Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “It is silly to think that U.S. farmers will not adapt to climate change—after all adaptive measures are at the heart of agriculture, as different crop varieties, different farming techniques, different technologies, etc., are what drives crop yields ever higher, even in the face climate change. This has happened in the past and will continue to happen in the future.”

2NC CO2 AG LinksMassive food crisis coming absent co2—also solves carbon cycleCarter et al 14 (Dr. Craig D. Idso, Dr. Sherwood B. Idso, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Dr. Robert M. Carter, Emeritus Fellow, Institute of Public Affairs and Dr. S. Fred Singer, Science and Environmental Policy Project, CLIMATE CHANGE RECONSIDERED II: BIOLOGICAL IMPACTS, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, 2014, p. 481.

Several researchers have expressed concerns about a looming food production crisis on the horizon, suggesting just a few decades from now the evergrowing human population of the planet will need a near-doubling of present-day agricultural production . One example is the brief Perspective article published in Science, where Running (2012) resurrected shades of Meadows et al.’s 1972 treatise on The Limits to Growth.

Noting “terrestrial plant production is the foundation of the biospheric carbon cycle” and that “water and atmospheric CO2 are transformed into plant carbohydrate matter with the help of solar energy ,”

Running states this plant matter “sustains the global food web and becomes the source of food, fiber and fuel for humanity.” A problem Running sees, however, is that for more than 30 years, global net primary production (NPP) has “stayed near 53.6 Pg per year, with only ~1 Pg of inter-annual variability,” citing two studies of which he was a

coauthor (Nemani et al., 2003; Zhao and Running, 2010). He thus speculates, “if global NPP is fixed by planetary constraints, then no substantial increase in plant growth may be possible .”

If true, this would indeed have catastrophic consequences , for it is almost universally agreed, as Running writes, “the

projected 40% increase in human population by 2050 CE, combined with goals to substantially improve standards of living for the poorest 5 billion people on Earth, implies at least a doubling of future resource demand by 2050.” The most important of these resources is food.

But is a doubling of food production by midcentury realistic? Agriculture already consumes 38% of the world’s land surface, and Running notes

“many analyses now conclude that freshwater use for irrigation has already reached a planetary boundary.” Furthermore, with “massive river pollution and ocean anaerobic dead zones,” he states, “if anything, future increases in NPP must be achieved with less, not more, irrigation and fertilizer use.” Others have noted additional challenges, such as Tilman et al. (2009) noting “land previously allocated to food production is transformed to bioenergy production, raising food prices for the people who can

least afford it.” Has the planet reached a limit to its growth? In a 2012 paper published in Nature, titled “Increase in observed net carbon dioxide uptake by land and oceans during the past 50 years,” Ballantyne et al. (2012) suggest it has not. The five U.S. scientists state their mass balance analysis shows “net global carbon uptake has increased significantly by about 0.05 billion tonnes of carbon per year and that global carbon uptake doubled, from 2.4 ± 0.8 to 5.0 ± 0.9 billion tonnes per year, between 1960 and 2010.” They conclude, “there is no empirical evidence that carbon uptake has started to diminish on the global scale.” In fact, as their results indicate, just the opposite appears to be the case, with global carbon uptake actually doubling over the past half-century. There are many reasons why this doubling has occurred: breeding of better crop varieties that are higher-yielding, more competitive with weeds, less tasty to insect pests, more nutritious, and more drought-resistant, as well as smarter ways of farming, improved technologies, and the worldwide aerial fertilization and transpiration-reducing effects of the historical and still-ongoing rise in the atmosphere’s CO2 content. The latter two phenomena benefit agriculture and nature simultaneously.

Also concerned about adequately meeting the food needs of a growing world population, Parry and Hawkesford (2010) note “food production

needs to increase 50% by 2030 and double by 2050 to meet projected demands.” They say while the demand for food is increasing, production is progressively being limited by “non-food uses of crops and cropland,” such as the production of biofuels. In their UK homeland, for example, they note, “by 2015 more than a quarter of wheat grain may be

destined for bioenergy production,” which is both sad and puzzling, as they also point out “currently, at least one billion people are

chronically malnourished and the situation is deteriorating ,” with more people “hungrier now than at the start of the millennium.”

The two researchers turn their discussion to photosynthesis, the all-important process by which plants “convert light energy into chemical energy, which is used in the assimilation of atmospheric CO2 and the formation of sugars that fuel growth and yield.” These phenomena make this natural and lifesustaining process “a major target for improving crop productivity both via conventional breeding and biotechnology,” they write.

Next to a plant’s need for carbon dioxide is its need for water, the availability of which, in the words of Parry and Hawkesford, “is the major constraint on world crop productivity.” They state, “since more than 80% of the [world’s] available water is used for agricultural production, there is little opportunity to use additional water for crop production,” because as populations increase, “the demand to use water for other activities also increases.” Hence they conclude, “a real and immediate challenge for agriculture is to increase crop production with less available water.” They provide an example of a success story: the Australian wheat variety Drysdale, which gained fame “because it uses water more efficiently.” This valued characteristic was achieved “by slightly restricting stomatal aperture and thereby the loss of water from the leaves.” They note this ability “reduces photosynthetic performance slightly under ideal conditions,” but it enables plants to “have access to water later in the growing season thereby increasing total photosynthesis over the life of the crop.”

Of course, Drysdale is but one variety of one crop, and the ideal goal would be to get nearly all varieties of all crops to use water more

efficiently. That goal in fact can be reached without doing anything new, because allowing atmospheric CO2 concentrations to rise will cause the vast majority of plants to reduce the apertures of their stomata and thereby lower the rate at which water vapor escapes from them into the air. The result is even better than

that produced by the breeding of Drysdale, because the extra CO2 in the air more than overcomes the photosynthetic reduction that results from the partial closure of plant stomatal apertures, allowing even more yield to be produced per unit of water transpired in the process.

Human ingenuity can make the situation better still, by breeding and selecting crop varieties that perform better under higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations than the varieties people currently rely upon, and by employing various technological means of altering them. Humanity can succeed even though “the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of substantially reducing the world’s hungry by 2015 will not be met,” as Parry and Hawkesford conclude. This truly seems to be the path to take, as they write “at least one billion people are chronically malnourished and the situation is deteriorating,” with more people “hungrier now than at the start of the millennium.”

590 studies prove co2 ag science is goodCarter et al 14 (Dr. Craig D. Idso, Dr. Sherwood B. Idso, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, and Dr. S. Fred Singer, Science and Environmental Policy Project, “Summary for Policymakers,” CLIMATE CHANGE RECONSIDERED II: BIOLOGICAL IMPACTS, 2014 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), 2014, p. 4-5.

Carbon dioxide is the basis of nearly all life on Earth. It is the primary raw material utilized by most plants to produce the organic matter from which they construct their tissues. Not surprisingly, thousands of laboratory and field experiments conducted over the past 200 years demonstrate that plant productivity and growth both rise as the CO2 concentration of the air increases.

As early as 1804, 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 a growth-enhancing effect of atmospheric CO2 enrichment was observed to occur (Demoussy, 1902-1904; Cummings and Jones, 1918).

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 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.

Five years later, at the International Conference on Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Plant Productivity, it was concluded a doubling

of the air’s CO2 concentration likely would 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). In the years since, many other studies have been conducted on hundreds of different plant species , repeatedly confirming the growth-enhancing, water-saving, and stress-alleviating advantages that elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations bestow upon Earth’s plants and soils (Idso and Singer, 2009; Idso and Idso, 2011).

Chapter 1 focuses on basic plant productivity

responses to elevated CO2 and includes in two appendices tabular presentations of more than 5,500 individual plant photosynthetic and

biomass responses to CO2-enriched air, finding nearly all plants experience increases in these two parameters at higher levels of CO2. Chapter 1 also examines the effect of elevated CO2 on ecosystems including forests, grasslands, peatlands,

wetlands, and soils. This review of the literature reveals elevated CO2 improves the productivity of ecosystems both in plant tissues aboveground and in the soils beneath them. The key findings of Chapter 1 are presented in Figure 4.

The net effects on plant productivity are positiveCarter et al 14 (Dr. Craig D. Idso, Dr. Sherwood B. Idso, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Dr. Robert M. Carter, Emeritus Fellow, Institute of Public Affairs and Dr. S. Fred Singer, Science and Environmental Policy Project, “Summary for Policymakers,” CLIMATE CHANGE RECONSIDERED II: BIOLOGICAL IMPACTS, 2014 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), 2014, p. 5.

Chapter 2 examines these and other effects of atmospheric CO2 enrichment on plant characteristics. Extensive research finds those effects are overwhelmingly positive . For example, rising CO2 levels promote plant growth by increasing the concentrations of plant hormones that stimulate cell division, cell elongation, and protein synthesis; by enabling plants to produce more and larger flowers; by increasing the production of glomalin, an important protein created by fungi living in symbiotic association with the roots of most vascular plants; and by affecting leaf characteristics of agricultural plants that lead to higher rates and efficiencies of photosynthesis and growth as well as increased resistance to herbivory and pathogen attack . The key findings of Chapter 2 are presented in Figure 5.

Even in a worst case scenario warming is highly unlikely to reduce yieldsLobell and Gourdji 10-10-12 (Stanford University, 10-10, “The influence of climate change on global crop productivity” David B. Lobell and Sharon M. Gourdji Department of Environmental Earth System Science and Center on Food Security and the Environment. Standord, http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/early/2012/10/10/pp.112.208298.full.pdf

6. Conclusions Growth rates in aggregate crop productivity to 2050 will continue to be mainly driven by technological and agronomic improvements, just as they have for the past century. Even in the most pessimistic scenarios, it is highly unlikely that climate change would result in a net decline i n global yields . Instead, the relevant question at the global scale is how much of a headwind climate change could present in the perpetual race to keep productivity growing as fast as demand. Overall, the net effect of climate change and CO2 on global average supply of calories is likely to be fairly close to zero over the next few decades, but could be as large as 20-30% of overall yield trends. Of course, this global picture hides many changes at smaller scales that could be of great relevance to food security, even if global production is maintained (Easterling et al., 2007).

2NC Ice Age OverviewExtend March 12 – a slow down in solar forcing by 2022 means that it’s inevitable that the Earth’s temperature will be cooling down in the near term. This evidence also explains that anthropogenic warming is an important cause for the prolonged interglacial period. This is important because while there might be some challenges adapting to a warmer climate, it’s comparatively more difficult to adapt when glaciers are levelling your cities. You should prefer ice age because of the adaptation debate.

More evidence - Emissions solve ice age PERISCOPE POST, 2012 (“Human Carbon Emissions Have Averted Ice Age, Say Scientists, But Global Warming Dangers Remain,” January 9, 2012, l/n)

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.

AT: Can’t AdaptExtend Trisolini 14 – Adaptation is the more important tactic for dealing with global warming because some degree of warming is already priced into the climate.

Humans adapt—their models are flawedGoklany, 12 (Indur, former IPCC review, “Is Global Warming the Number One Threat to Humanity?” BRIEFING PAPER n. 7, Global Warming Policy Foundation, December 2012, p. 5-6.)

The paper notes that global warming impact studies systematically overestimate negative impacts and simultaneously underestimate positive consequences. The net negative impacts, therefore, are likely to be substantially overestimated because these studies fail to consider adequately society’s capacity to adapt autonomously to either mitigate or take advantage of climate change impacts. This violates the IPCC’s methodological guidelines for impact assessments, which require consideration of autonomous or automatic adaptations. These adaptations depend on, among other things, adaptive capacity, which should advance with time

due to the assumption of economic growth embedded in each IPCC emission scenario (see Figure 1). 16 However, these advances are rarely accounted for fully in impacts assessments . For example, the FTA’s water resource study totally ignores adaptive capacity while its malaria study assumes no change in adaptive capacity between the baseline year (1990) and projection year (2085) (see

here17). Consequently, the assessments are internally inconsistent because future adaptive capacity does not reflect the future economic development used to derive the emission scenarios that underpin global warming estimates.

Their claims are alarmist groupthink- ignores technological ingenuityTorres, 14 (Richard, William F. Buckley Fellow at the National Review Institute, “IPCC Insider Rejects Global-Warming Report,” April 3, 2014 http://www.nationalreview.com/node/374986/print)

Richard Tol, a professor of economics at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom and an expert on climate change, removed his name from the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. While he considers much of the science sound and supports the underlying

purpose of the IPCC, Tol says the United Nations agency’s inflammatory and alarmist claims delegitimize the IPCC as a credible and neutral institution. “In the SPM [Summary for

Policymakers], and much more largely in the media, we see all these scare stories,” Tol tells National Review Online. “We’re all going to die , the four horsemen of the apocalypse . . . I felt uncomfortable with the direction [the IPCC report] was going.” Tol, who has been working with the IPCC since 1994, was the lead author of Chapter 10 of the report, on key economic sectors and services. He was also a contributor to Chapters 17 and 19, on the

economics of adaptation to climate change and emergent risks, respectively. He took his name off of the final summary because he felt the IPCC did not properly account for human tech nological ingenuity and downplayed the potential benefits of global warming. “In the current SPM there are a number of statements in there that are widely cited that are just not correct ,” Tol says. One prediction has it that crop yields will begin to fall dramatically, a statement “that is particularly not supported by the chapter itself,” Tol says. “What it completely forgets is technological progress and that crop yields have been going up for as long as we’ve looked at crop yields .” Beyond misleading statements on

agriculture, Tol says the IPCC report cites only the maximum estimate for how much it will cost to protect against sea-level rise associated with current climate-change predictions.

“Why do we show the maximum but not the average?” he says. Estimates say that “for a tenth of a percent of [worldwide] GDP we can protect all vulnerable populations along all coasts.” The report also stresses that global warming will cause more deaths due to heat stress, but ignores that global warming would reduce cold

stress, which actually kills more people than heat stress each year. Tol is far from a conspiracy theorist , but he nonetheless thinks the IPCC has

built-in biases that keep it from adequately checking alarmism . First, there is a self-selection bias: People who are most concerned about the impact of climate change are most likely to be represented on the panel . Next,

most of the panelists are professors involved in similar academic departments , surrounded by like- minded people who reinforce each other’s views . Those views are welcomed by the civil servants who review the report, because their “departments, jobs, and careers depend on climate being a problem ,” Tol says. “There are natural forces pushing these people in the same direction . I think the IPCC should have safeguards against this tendency, but it does not.”

AT: Global Warming = ExtinctionNo risk of extinction, climate models are all alarmist McShane 08 — Owen, chairman of the policy panel of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition and director of the Centre for Resource Management Studies, April 4, 2008 (Cites Roy Spencer, principal research scientist for U of Alabama in Huntsville and recipient of NASA's Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, “Climate change confirmed but global warming is cancelled”, The National Business Review (New Zealand), Lexis)

Atmospheric scientists generally agree that as carbon dioxide levels increase there is a law of "diminishing

returns" - or more properly "diminishing effects" - and that ongoing increases in CO2 concentration do not generate proportional increases in temperature. The common analogy is painting over window glass . The first layers of paint cut out lots of light but subsequent layers have diminishing impact. So, you might be asking, why the panic? Why does Al Gore talk about temperatures spiraling out of control, causing mass extinctions and catastrophic rises in sea-level, and all his other disastrous outcomes when there is no evidence to support it? The alarmists argue that increased CO2 leads to more water vapour - the main greenhouse gas - and this provides positive feedback and hence makes the overall climate highly sensitive to small increases in the concentration of CO2. Consequently, the IPCC argues that while carbon dioxide may well "run out of puff" the

consequent evaporation of water vapour provides the positive feedback loop that will make anthropogenic global warming reach dangerous levels. This assumption that water vapour provides positive feedback lies behind the famous "tipping point," which nourishes Al Gore's dreams of

destruction, and indeed all those calls for action now - "before it is too late!" But no climate models predict such a tipping point . However, while the absence of hot spots has refuted one important aspect of the IPCC models we lack a mechanism that fully explains these supposed outcomes. Hence the IPCC, and its supporters, have been able to ignore this "refutation." So by the end of last year, we were in a similar situation to the 19th century astronomers, who had figured out that the sun could not be "burning" its fuel - or it would have turned to ashes long ago - but could not explain where the energy was coming from. Then along came Einstein and E=mc2. Hard to explain Similarly, the climate sceptics have had to explain why the hotspots are not where they should be - not just challenge the theory with their observations. This is why I felt so lucky to be in the right place at the right time when I heard Roy Spencer speak at the New York conference on climate change in March. At first I thought this was just another paper setting out observations against the forecasts, further confirming Evans' earlier work. But as the argument unfolded I realised Spencer was drawing on observations and measurements from the new Aqua satellites to explain the mechanism behind this anomaly between model forecasts and observation. You may have heard that the IPCC models cannot predict clouds and rain

with any accuracy. Their models assume water vapour goes up to the troposphere and hangs around to cook us all in a greenhouse future. However, there is a mechanism at work that "washes out" the water vapour and returns it to

the oceans along with the extra CO2 and thus turns the added water vapour into a NEGATIVE feedback

mechanism. The newly discovered mechanism is a combination of clouds and rain (Spencer's mechanism adds to the mechanism earlier identified by Professor Richard Lindzen called the Iris effect). The IPCC models assumed water vapour formed clouds at high altitudes that lead to further warming. The Aqua satellite observations and Spencer's analysis show water vapour actually forms clouds at low altitudes that lead to cooling. Furthermore,

Spencer shows the extra rain that falls from these clouds cools the underlying oceans, providing a second negative feedback to negate the CO2 warming. Alarmists' quandary This has struck the alarmists like a thunderbolt, especially as the lead author of the IPCC chapter on feedback has written to Spencer agreeing that he is right! There goes the alarmist neighbourhood! The climate is not highly sensitive to CO2 warming because water vapour is a damper against the warming effect of

CO2. That is why history is full of Ice Ages - where other effects, such as increased reflection from the ice cover, do provide positive feedback -

while we do not hear about Heat Ages. The Medieval Warm Period, for example, is known for being benignly warm - not dangerously hot. We live on a benign planet - except when it occasionally gets damned cold. While I have done my best to simplify these developments they remain highly technical and many people distrust their own ability to assess competing scientific claims. However, in this case the tipping point theories are based on models that do not include

the effects of rain and clouds. The new Nasa Aqua satellite is the first to measure the effects of clouds and rainfall. Spencer's interpretation of the new data means all previous models and forecasts are obsolete. Would anyone trust long-term forecasts of farm production that were hopeless at forecasting rainfall? The implications of these breakthroughs in measurement and understanding are dramatic to say the least. The responses will be fun to watch.

AT: There’s time to solve

There is absolutely no chance the aff solves warmingSquassoni, 08 (Sharon, Senior Associate, Nonproliferation Program -- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 3-12, “The Realities of Nuclear Expansion” Congressional Testimony: House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming, Washington, DC)

In 2004, Princeton scientists Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow published a “wedge analysis” for stabilizing global climate change.3 Since fossil fuels currently emit seven billion tons of carbon/year and are projected to double that level through 2050 in the business-as-usual scenario, Pacala and Socolow considered what technologies and/or approaches might help stabilize those emissions at current levels (about 375 ppm). Seven wedges of reduced emissions (a cumulative effect of 25 billion tons through 2050, or one billion tons of carbon/year

reduction at the end of that period) were postulated. One “wedge” would ultimately achieve a reduction of one billion tons per year (or 25 billion cumulative tons) by 2050. For nuclear energy to “solve” just one-seventh of the problem – lowering emissions by one billion tons per year – an additional 700 GWe of capacity would have to be built, assuming the reactors replaced 700 GWe of modern coal-electric plants.4 Because virtually all operating reactors will have to be retired in that time, this means building approximately 1070 reactors in 42 years, or about 25 reactors per year. Current global reactor capacity is 373 GWe or 439 reactors worldwide. In short, one “nuclear wedge” would require almost tripling current capacity. Mapping A “Realistic Growth” Scenario Nuclear Expansion5 The attached maps (see slide 1) depict estimates of reactor capacity growth for 2030 and 2050, according to three scenarios. The first is a “realistic growth” scenario, based on the U.S. Energy Information Administration figures for 2030.6 The second is what states have planned for 2030, or a “wildly optimistic” scenario. The third is roughly based on the high-end projections for 2050 done by MIT in their 2003 study entitled “The Future of Nuclear Power.” This 1500 GWe scenario lies between the Pacala-Socolow wedge and the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change estimates that nuclear energy could reduce carbon emissions between two billion and six billion tons/year (or 1800 GWe – 4500 GWe).7 A few caveats with respect to projecting nuclear energy

expansion are necessary. Nuclear energy is undoubtedly safer and more efficient now than when it began fifty years ago, but it still faces four fundamental challenges: waste, cost, proliferation, and safety . It is an inherently risky business. Most industry executives will admit that it will only take one significant accident to plunge the “renaissance” back into the nuclear Dark Ages . Because of this, estimates are highly uncertain. For example, the U.S. Energy Information Administration

does not use its computer model to estimate nuclear energy growth because, among other things, key variables such as public attitudes and government policy are difficult to quantify and project . That said, estimates tend to extrapolate electricity consumption and demand from gross domestic product (GDP) growth, make assumptions about nuclear energy’s share of electricity production, and then estimate nuclear reactor capacity. The United States, France, and Japan constitute more than half of total world nuclear reactor capacity (see slide 1). Yet half of the 34 reactors now under construction are in Asia.8 Under any scenario, nuclear power is expected to grow most in Asia, because of high Chinese and Indian growth and electricity demand. Under the realistic growth scenario, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates 2030 reactor capacity at 481 GWe. The International Energy Agency (IEA) envisions greater potential for expansion, projecting a range from 414 to 679 GWe in 2030, but the higher number would require significant policy support. With electricity consumption expected to double by 2030, nuclear energy will have a difficult time just keeping its market share – currently 16 percent of global production.9 According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with no change in energy policies, “the energy mix supplied to run the global economy in the 2025-2030 time-frame will essentially remain unchanged with about 80% of the energy supply based on fossil fuels.”10 Coal now provides 59% of electricity production, followed by hydroelectric power at 39% and oil and gas together provide 25%. Renewables are just 1-2%

of total electricity production. Moreover, regions that have coal tend to use it, particularly for electricity generation, which increases greenhouse gas emissions . The IPCC has noted that “in recent years, intensified coal use has been observed for a variety of reasons in developing Asian countries, the USA and some European countries. In a number of countries, the changing relative prices of coal to natural gas have changed the dispatch order in power generation in favor of coal.” Many fear that states such as China and India – both of which

are not subject to Kyoto Protocol targets because they are developing states – will meet their increased demand with cheap coal. Without further policy changes, according to the International Energy Agency, the share of nuclear energy could drop to 10% of global electricity production. “Wildly Optimistic” Growth Scenario Although some states, such as Germany and Sweden, plan to phase out nuclear

power, the trend line is moving in the opposite direction. This growth scenario does not contain projections based on electricity demand, but instead takes at face value what states have projected for themselves. The result is a total of 700 GWe global capacity (see slide 2) – two-thirds of what one nuclear wedge to affect global climate change would require. The reason these estimates are wildly optimistic is that over 20 nations have announced intentions to install nuclear reactors. Several of these – Turkey, Egypt, and Philippines – had planned for nuclear power in the past, but abandoned such plans for various reasons. Some of these new nuclear plans are more credible than others and can be differentiated into those that have approved or funded construction, those that have clear proposals but without formal commitments, and those that are exploring nuclear energy (see slide 3). In the Middle East, these include Iran, Israel, Jordan and Yemen, with potential interest expressed by Syria, Kuwait, and the Gulf Cooperation Council states of Saudi Arabia, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Bahrain. In Europe, Belarus, Turkey and Azerbaijan have announced plans, as well as Kazakhstan. In Asia, Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia have announced plans, and the Philippines has also expressed interest. Venezuela has also declared it will develop nuclear power. In Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Nigeria have announced plans to develop nuclear power, and Algeria and Ghana have expressed interest.11 More than half of all those states are in the Middle East. Although this could result in reduced carbon emissions, because Middle Eastern states use more oil for electricity production (34%) than elsewhere, this is not where the real electricity demand is coming from. “Climate Change” Growth Scenario A rough approximation of where reactor capacity would expand in a climate change scenario is based on the high scenario of the 2003 MIT Study, “The Future of Nuclear Power.” For 1500 GW capacity, MIT estimated that 54 countries (an additional 23) would have commercial nuclear power programs. This essentially means a five-fold increase in the numbers of reactors worldwide and an annual build rate of 35 per year. In the event that smaller-sized reactors are deployed in developing countries – which makes eminent sense – the numbers could be much higher.12 If nuclear energy were assumed to be able to contribute a reduction of between two and six billion tons of carbon per year as outlined in the Stern Report, the resulting reactor capacity would range between 1800 GWe and 4500 GWe – increases ranging from six to ten times the current capacity.13 This would require building between 42 and 107 reactors per year through 2050. Impact on Uranium Enrichment Such increases in reactor capacity would certainly have repercussions for the front and back ends of the fuel cycle. Almost 90 percent of current operating reactors use lowenriched uranium (LEU). Presently, eleven countries have commercial uranium enrichment capacity and produce between 40 and 50 million SWU. A capacity of 1070 GWe – the one “wedge” scenario – could mean tripling enrichment capacity, requiring anywhere from 11 to 22 additional enrichment plants.14 A capacity of 1500 GWe would require quadrupling enrichment capacity (see slide 4).15 Further, if Stern Report nuclear expansion levels are achieved, enrichment capacity would have to increase ten-fold. In assessing where new uranium enrichment capacity might develop, the MIT study assumed that 18 states would have 10 GWe reactor capacity – the point at which domestic uranium enrichment becomes competitive with LEU sold on the international market – and thus might enrich uranium. (See slide 4 for a more modest approach, with nine additional countries enriching uranium).16 Impact on Spent Fuel Reprocessing A key question is whether an expansion of nuclear reactors would result in an expansion of spent fuel reprocessing. This is not necessarily the case, because decisions about whether to store fuel or reprocess it depend on several factors: existing storage capacities; fuel cycle approaches (once-through, one recycle, fast reactors) and new technologies; and cost. A shift to fast reactors that can burn or breed plutonium implies an increase in recycling, whether this is traditional reprocessing that separates out plutonium, or options under consideration now that would not separate out the plutonium. France and Japan now commercially reprocess their spent fuel and recycle the plutonium once in mixed oxide-fuelled reactors. Russia also reprocesses a small percentage of its spent fuel. A troubling development in the last two years from a nonproliferation perspective has been the U.S. embrace of recycling spent fuel under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, after a policy of 30 years of not encouraging the use of plutonium in the civil nuclear fuel cycle. Whether or not the United States ultimately reprocesses or recycles fuel, other states are now more likely to view reprocessing as necessary for an advanced fuel

cycle. Constraints on Nuclear Expansion17 There are significant questions about whether nuclear expansion that could affect global climate change is even possible . In the United States, as the chief operating officer of Exelon recently told an

industry conference, constraints include: the lack of any recent U.S. nuclear construction experience; the atrophy of U.S. nuclear manufacturing infrastructure; production bottlenecks created by an increase in worldwide demand; and an aging labor force.

Physically impossibleSmith and Makhijani 06 (Brice Smith is an assistant professor of physics at the State University of New York, Cortland, and the author of Insurmountable Risks: The Dangers of Using Nuclear Power to Combat Global Climate Change (2006). Arjun Makhijani is president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park, Maryland, and the principal author of Nuclear Power Deception: U.S. Nuclear Mythology From Electricity “Too Cheap to Meter” to ‘‘Inherently Safe” Reactors (1999) [http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/faculty/bhattacharya/102H/nuclear1.pdf, “Nuclear is not the Way” 2006)

The most important consideration is how many nuclear plants would be needed to significantly reduce future CO2 emissions. A 2003 study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The Future of Nuclear Power, considered a reference case in which 1,000 one-gigawatt (GW) nuclear plants would be in operation around the world by 2050. (A gigawatt is enough electricity to power a U.S. city of half a million.)

Even with such an increase , however, the proportion of electricity supplied by nuclear power worldwide would rise only slightly, from about 16 percent in 2000 to about 20 percent in 2050. As a result, the number of fossil fuel power plants, and thus the amount of CO2 emissions, would continue to increase . A

more serious effort to limit carbon emissions through the use of nuclear power would require a larger number of reactors. In Insurmountable Risks: The Dangers of Using Nuclear Power to Combat Climate Change (2006), one of us used the same projected growth in electricity demand employed in the MIT report to estimate the number of reactors required simply to maintain the electricity sector’s CO2 emissions at their 2000

levels. Some 2,500 one-GW nuclear plants would be needed by midcentury. To meet that goal, one plant would have to come online somewhere in the world every six days between 2010 and 2050.

Too late to solve warmingSolomon et al 10 (Susan Solomon et. Al, Chemical Sciences Division, Earth System Research Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Ph.D. in Climotology University of California, Berkeley, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Chairman of the IPCC, Gian-Kasper Plattner, Deputy Head, Director of Science, Technical Support Unit Working Group I, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Affiliated Scientist, Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, University of Bern, Switzerland, John S. Daniel, research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Ph.D. in physics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Todd J. Sanford, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science, University of Colorado Daniel M. Murphy, Chemical Sciences Division, Earth System Research Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder Gian-Kasper Plattner, Deputy Head, Director of Science, Technical Support Unit Working Group I, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Affiliated Scientist, Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, University of Bern, Switzerland Reto Knutti, Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, Eidgenössiche Technische Hochschule Zurich and Pierre Friedlingstein, Chair, Mathematical Modelling of Climate Systems, member of the Science Steering Committee of the Analysis Integration and Modeling of the Earth System (AIMES) programme of IGBP and of the Global Carbon Project (GCP) of the Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP) (Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences of the United States of America, "Persistence of climate changes due to a range of greenhouse gases", October 26, 2010 Vol 107.43: 18354-18359)

Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other greenhouse gases increased over the course of the 20th century due to human activities. The human-caused increases in these gases are the primary forcing that accounts for much of the global warming of the past fifty years, with

carbon dioxide being the most important single radiative forcing agent (1). Recent studies have shown that the human-caused warming linked to carbon dioxide is nearly irreversible for more than 1,000 y, even if emissions of the gas

were to cease entirely (2–5). The importance of the ocean in taking up heat and slowing the response of the climate system to radiative forcing changes has been noted in many studies (e.g., refs. 6 and 7). The key role of the ocean’s thermal lag has also been highlighted by recent approaches to proposed metrics for comparing the warming of different greenhouse gases (8, 9). Among the observations attesting to the importance of these effects are those showing that climate changes caused by transient volcanic aerosol loading persist for more than 5 y (7, 10), and a portion can be expected to last more than a century in the ocean (11–13); clearly these signals persist far longer than the radiative forcing decay timescale of about 12–18 mo for the volcanic aerosol (14, 15). Thus the observed climate response to volcanic events suggests that some persistence of climate change should be expected even for quite short-lived radiative forcing perturbations. It follows that the

climate changes induced by short-lived anthropogenic greenhouse gases such as methane or hydrofluorocarbons

(HFCs) may not decrease in concert with decreases in concentration if the anthropogenic emissions of those gases

were to be eliminated. In this paper, our primary goal is to show how different processes and timescales contribute to determining how long the climate changes due to various greenhouse gases could be expected to remain if anthropogenic emissions were to cease. Advances in modeling have led to improved AtmosphereOcean General Circulation Models (AOGCMs) as well as to Earth Models of Intermediate Complexity (EMICs). Although a detailed representation of the climate system changes on regional scales can only be provided by AOGCMs, the simpler EMICs have been shown to be useful, particularly to examine phenomena on a global average basis. In this work, we use the Bern 2.5CC EMIC (see Materials and Methods and SI Text), which has been extensively intercompared to other EMICs and to complex AOGCMs (3, 4). It should be noted that, although the Bern 2.5CC EMIC includes a representation of the surface and deep ocean, it does not include processes such as ice sheet losses or changes in the Earth’s albedo linked to evolution of vegetation. However, it is noteworthy that this EMIC, although parameterized and simplified, includes 14 levels in the ocean; further, its global ocean heat uptake and climate sensitivity are near the mean of available complex models, and its computed timescales for uptake of tracers into the ocean have been shown to compare well to observations (16). A recent study (17) explored the response of one AOGCM to a sudden stop of all forcing, and the Bern 2.5CC EMIC shows broad similarities in computed warming to that study (see Fig. S1), although there are also differences in detail. The climate sensitivity (which characterizes the long-term absolute warming response to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations) is 3 °C for the model used here. Our results should be considered illustrative and exploratory rather than fully quantitative given the limitations of the EMIC and the uncertainties in climate sensitivity. Results One Illustrative Scenario to 2050. In the absence of mitigation policy, concentrations of the three major greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide can be expected to increase in this century. If emissions were to cease, anthropogenic CO2 would be removed from the atmosphere by a series of processes operating at different timescales (18). Over timescales of decades, both the land and upper ocean are important sinks. Over centuries to millennia, deep oceanic processes become dominant and are controlled by relatively well-understood physics and chemistry that provide broad consistency across models (see, for example, Fig. S2 showing how the removal of a pulse

of carbon compares across a range of models). About 20% of the emitted anthropogenic carbon remains in the atmosphere for many thousands of years (with a range across models including the Bern 2.5CC model being about 19 4% at year

1000 after a pulse emission; see ref. 19), until much slower weathering processes affect the carbonate balance in the ocean (e.g., ref. 18). Models with stronger carbon/climate feedbacks than the one considered here could display larger and more persistent warmings due to both CO2 and non-CO2 greenhouse gases, through reduced land and ocean uptake of carbon in a warmer world. Here our focus is not on the strength of carbon/climate feedbacks that can lead to differences in the carbon concentration decay, but rather on the factors that control the climate response to a given decay. The removal processes of other anthropogenic gases including methane and nitrous oxide are much more simply described by exponential decay constants of about 10 and 114 y, respectively (1), due mainly to known chemical reactions in the atmosphere. In this illustrative study, we do not include the feedback of changes in methane upon its own lifetime (20). We also do not account for potential interactions between CO2 and other gases, such as the production of carbon dioxide from methane oxidation (21), or changes to the carbon cycle through, e.g., methane/ozone chemistry (22). Fig. 1 shows the computed future global warming contributions for carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide for a midrange scenario (23) of projected future anthropogenic emissions of these gases to 2050. Radiative forcings for all three of these gases, and their spectral overlaps, are represented in this work using the expressions assessed in ref. 24. In 2050, the anthropogenic emissions are stopped entirely for illustration purposes. The figure shows nearly irreversible warming for at least

1,000 y due to the imposed carbon dioxide increases, as in previous work. All published studies to date , which use multiple EMICs

and one AOGCM, show largely irreversible warming due to future carbon dioxide increases (to within about 0.5 °C) on a timescale of at least 1,000 y (3–5, 25, 26). Fig. 1 shows that the calculated future warmings due to anthropogenic CH4 and N2O also persist notably longer than the lifetimes of these gases. The figure illustrates that emissions of key non-CO2 greenhouse gases such as CH4 or N2O could lead to warming that both temporarily exceeds a given stabilization target (e.g., 2 °C as proposed by the G8 group of nations and in the Copenhagen goals) and remains present longer than the gas lifetimes even if emissions were to cease. A number of recent studies have underscored the important point that reductions of non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions are an approach that can indeed reverse some past climate changes (e.g., ref. 27). Understanding how quickly such reversal could happen and why is an important policy and science question. Fig.

1 implies that the use of policy measures to reduce emissions of short-lived gases will be less effective as a rapid climate mitigation strategy than would be thought if based only upon the gas lifetime. Fig. 2 illustrates the factors influencing the warming contributions of each gas for the test case in Fig. 1 in more detail, by showing normalized values (relative to one at their peaks) of the warming along with the radiative forcings and concentrations of CO2 , N2O, and CH4 . For example, about two-thirds of the calculated warming due to N2O is still present 114 y (one atmospheric lifetime) after emissions are halted, despite the fact that its excess concentration and associated radiative forcing at that time has dropped to about one-third of the peak value.

AT: SourcesIPCC cherry picks data- NIPCC is unbiasedCarter et al 14 (Dr. Craig D. Idso, Dr. Sherwood B. Idso, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Dr. Robert M. Carter, Emeritus Fellow, Institute of Public Affairs and Dr. S. Fred Singer, Science and Environmental Policy Project, CLIMATE CHANGE RECONSIDERED II: BIOLOGICAL IMPACTS, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, 2014, p. viii-ix.

A careful reading of the chapters below reveals thousands of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles do not support and

often contradict IPCC’s alarmist narrative. NIPCC scientists have worked hard to remain true to the facts in their representations of the studies cited in this work. The research is usually quoted directly and at some length , along with a description of the methodology used and qualifications that accompanied the stated conclusions. Editorial commentary is generally limited to introductions and sometimes brief conclusions at the end of sections.

Whether the subject is the likely effects of warming on crops, trees, weeds, birds, butterflies, or polar bears, it seems IPCC invariably picks the studies and models that paint global warming in the darkest possible hues. IPCC sees “death, injury, and disrupted livelihoods”—to borrow a phrase from Working Group II—everywhere it looks.

Oftentimes, IPCC’s pessimistic forecasts fly in the face of scientific observations . The global ecosystem is not suffering from the rising temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels IPCC has called “unprecedented,” despite all the models and hypotheses IPCC’s

authors marshal to make that case. Real-world data show conclusively that most plants flourish when exposed to higher temperatures and higher levels of CO2 and that the planet’s terrestrial biosphere is undergoing a great post-Industrial Revolution greening that is causing deserts to retreat and forests to expand, enlarging habitat for wildlife. Essentially the same story can be told of global warming’s impact on terrestrial animals, aquatic life, and human health.

Why are these research findings and this perspective missing from IPCC’s reports? NIPCC has been publishing volumes containing this research for five years—long enough, one would think, for the authors of IPCC’s reports to have taken notice, if only to disagree. But the draft of the

Working Group II contribution to IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report suggests otherwise. Either IPCC’s authors purposely ignore this research because it runs counter to their thesis that any human impact on climate must be bad and therefore stopped at any cost, or they are inept and have fail ed to conduct a proper and full scientific investigation of the pertinent literature. Either way, IPCC is misleading the scientific community, policymakers, and the general public. Because the stakes are high, this is a grave disservice.

We are not alone in questioning the accuracy or reliability of IPCC reports. In 2010, the InterAcademy Council, an international organization representing the world’s leading national academies of science, produced an audit of IPCC procedures. In its

report, Climate Change Assessments: Review of the Processes & Procedures of the IPCC, the IAC decried the lack of independent review, reliance on unpublished and non-peer-reviewed sources, refusal by some of the lead authors to share their data with critics, and political interference in the selection of authors and contributors.

Politically motivated scientists conclude for global warming – be skeptical of their science.Happer, 11 (Dr. William, “The Truth About Greenhouse Gases,” George C. Marshall Institute, May 23, 2011, www.marshall.org/article.php?id=953)

The management of most scientific societies has enthusiastically signed on to the global warming bandwagon. This is not surprising, since

governments, as well as many states and foundations, generously fund those who reinforce their desired outcomes under the cover of saving the planet. Certain private industries are also involved: those positioned to profit from enacted controls as well as financial institutions heavily invested in “green technologies” whose rationale disappears the moment global warming is widely understood to be a non-problem. There are known connections and movements of people involved in government policy , scientific societies , and private industry , all with the common thread of influencing the outcome of a set of programs and investments underpinned by the supposed threat of global warming.

AT: Conflict MultiplierWarming is not a threat multiplier

Jeff Kueter, President, “The Climate of Insecurity,” POLICY OUTLOOK, George C. Marshall Institute, 3—14, http://marshall.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Climate-Security-Mar-14.pdf, accessed 4-28-14.

Even when droughts occur, they don’t lead to war. One recent survey explored the linkages between water scarcity, drought, and incidence of civil wars. They found that factors other than the environment were much more significant in explaining the onset of conflict. They conclude: “The results presented in this article demonstrate that there is no direct, short- term relationship between drought and civil war ‐ onset, even within contexts presumed most conducive to violence … Ethnopolitical exclusion is strongly and robustly related to the local risk of civil war. These findings contrast with efforts to blame violent conflict and atrocities on exogenous non- anthropogenic events, such as droughts or desertification. The‐ primary causes of intrastate armed conflict and civil war are political, not environmental.”17 Furthermore, my detailed review of the empirical literature on the role of environmental degradation as a source of conflict shows: “By themselves,

environmental factors and climate change are not threat multipliers . The review of actual experiences with environmental stresses and calamities reveals that they contribute to conflict and state instability only at the margins. From tribesmen in Africa to nation states in both the developing and developed world, environmental and

climatic variables fail to demonstrate explanatory power as a source or driver of conflict.”

Warming solves war- multiple studiesIdsos et al. ‘10 [Sherwood, Bachelor of Physics, Master of Science, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees are all from the University of Minnesota, **Keith, B.S. in Agriculture with a major in Plant Sciences from the University of Arizona and his M.S. from the same institution with a major in Agronomy and Plant Genetics. He completed his Ph.D. in Botany at Arizona State University, and **Craig Idso, B.S. in Geography from Arizona State University, his M.S. in Agronomy from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, and his Ph.D. in Geography from Arizona State University, “War and Peace ... and Climate Change”, Volume 13, Number 13: 31,March 31, http://www.co2science.org/articles/V13/N13/EDIT.php)

In an insightful new study recently published in Climatic Change, Richard Tol and Sebastian Wagner write that in "gloomier scenarios of climate change, violent conflict plays a key part," noting that in such visions of the future "war would break out over declining water resources, and millions of refugees would cause mayhem." In this regard, the two researchers state that "the Nobel Peace Prize of 2007 was partly awarded to

the IPCC and Al Gore for their contribution to slowing climate change and thus preventing war." However, they say that "scenarios of climate-change-induced violence can be painted with abandon," citing the example of Schwartz and Randall (2003), because, as they continue, "there is " little research to either support or refute such claims." Consequently,

and partly to fill this gaping research void, Tol and Wagner proceeded to go where but few had gone before, following in the footsteps of

Zhang et al. (2005, 2006), who broke new ground in this area when they (1) constructed a dataset of climate and violent conflict in China for the last millennium, and (2) found that the Chinese were " more inclined to fight each other when it was cold," which propensity for violence they attributed to the reduced agricultural productivity that typically prevailed during cooler times. Hence, the two researchers essentially proceeded to do for Europe what Zhang et al. had done for China. The results of Tol and Wagner's analyses provide additional evidence that, as they describe

it, "periods with lower temperatures in the pre-industrial era are accompanied by violent conflicts." However, they determined that "this

effect is much weaker in the modern world than it was in pre-industrial times," which implies, in their words, "that future global

warming is not likely to lead to (civil) war between (within) European countries." Therefore, they conclude that "should anyone ever seriously have believed that, this paper does put that idea to rest." In light of this refutation of the rational for the awarding of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, we are inclined to say to its most visible recipient -- in the spirit of the sentiment expressed by President Ronald Reagan on 12 June 1987 at the base of the Brandenburg Gate, near the Berlin wall -- Mr. Gore, give back that prize!