1AC OTEC

Plan

The United States federal government should provide licensing and siting incentives for and demonstrate non-military oceanic Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion.

Warming

Warming is real and anthropogenic-multiple warrantsProthero 12 (Donald R. Prothero, Professor of Geology at Occidental College and Lecturer in Geobiology at the California Institute of Technology, 3-1-2012, "How We Know Global Warming is Real and Human Caused," Skeptic, 17.2, EBSCO)How do we know that global warming is real and primarily human caused? There are numerous lines of evidence that converge toward this conclusion. 1. Carbon Dioxide Increase Carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has increased at an unprecedented rate in the past 200 years. Not one data set collected over a long enough span of time shows otherwise. Mann et al. (1999)

compiled the past 900 years' worth of temperature data from tree rings, ice cores, corals , and direct measurements in the past few centuries, and the sudden increase of temperature of the past century stands out like a sore thumb. This famous graph is now known as the "hockey stick" because it is long and straight through most of its length, then bends sharply upward at the end like the blade of a

hockey stick. Other graphs show that climate was very stable within a narrow range of variation through the past 1000, 2000, or even

10,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age. There were minor warming events during the Climatic Optimum about 7000 years ago, the Medieval Warm Period, and the slight

cooling of the Litde Ice Age in the 1700s and 1800s. But the magnitude and rapidity of the warming represented by the last 200 years is simply unmatched in all of human history. More revealing, the timing of this warming coincides with the Industrial Revolution, when humans first began massive deforestation and released carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning an unprecedented amount of coal, gas, and oil. 2. Melting Polar Ice Caps The

polar icecaps are thinning and breaking up at an alarming rate. In 2000, my former graduate advisor Malcolm McKenna was one of the first humans to fly over the North

Pole in summer time and see no ice, just open water. The Arctic ice cap has been frozen solid for at least the past 3 million years (and maybe longer),[ 4] but now the entire ice sheet is breaking up so fast that by 2030 (and possibly sooner) less than half of the Arctic will be ice covered in the summer.[ 5] As one can see from watching the news, this is an ecological disaster for everything that lives up there, from the polar bears to the seals and walruses to the animals they feed upon, to the 4 million people whose world is melting beneath

their feet. The Antarctic is thawing even faster . In February-March 2002, the Larsen B ice shelf -- over 3000 square km (the size of Rhode Island) and 220 m (700

feet) thick -- broke up in just a few months, a story -typical of nearly all the ice shelves in Antarctica. The Larsen B shelf had survived all the previous ice

ages and interglacial warming episodes over the past 3 million years, and even the warmest periods of the last 10,000 years -- yet it and nearly all the other thick ice sheets on the Arctic, Greenland, and Antarctic are vanishing at a rate never before seen in geologic history. 3. Melting Glaciers Glaciers are all retreating at the highest rates ever documented. Many of those glaciers, along with snow melt, especially in the Himalayas, Andes, Alps, and Sierras, provide most of the freshwater that the populations below the mountains depend upon -- yet this fresh water supply is vanishing. Just think about the percentage of world's population in southern Asia (especially India) that depend on Himalayan snowmelt for their fresh water. The implications are staggering. The permafrost that once remained solidly frozen even in the summer has now thawed, damaging the Inuit villages on the Arctic coast and threatening all our pipelines to the North Slope of Alaska. This is catastrophic not only for life on the permafrost,

but as it thaws, the permafrost releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases which are one of the major contributors to global warming.

Not only is the ice vanishing, but we have seen record heat waves over and over again, killing thousands of people, as each year joins the list of the hottest years on record. (2010 just topped that list as the hottest year, surpassing the previous record in 2009, and we shall know about 2011 soon enough). Natural animal and plant populations are being devastated all over the globe as their environments change.[ 6] Many animals respond by moving their ranges to formerly cold climates, so now places that once did not have to worry about disease-bearing mosquitoes are infested as the climate warms and allows them to breed further north. 4. Sea Level Rise All that

melted ice eventually ends up in the ocean, causing sea levels to rise, as it has many times in the geologic past. At present, the sea level is rising about 3-4 mm per year, more

than ten times the rate of 0.1-0.2 mm/year that has occurred over the past 3000 years. Geological data show that the sea level was virtually unchanged over the past 10,000 years since the present interglacial began. A few mm here or there doesn't impress people, until you consider that the rate is accelerating and that most scientists predict sea levels will rise 80-130 cm in just the next century. A sea level rise of 1.3 m (almost 4 feet) would drown many of the world's low-elevation cities, such as Venice and New Orleans, and low-lying countries such as the Netherlands or Bangladesh. A number of tiny island nations such as Vanuatu and the Maldives, which barely poke out above the ocean now, are already vanishing beneath the waves. Eventually their entire population will have to move someplace else.[ 7] Even a small sea level rise might not drown all these areas, but they are much more vulnerable to the large waves of a storm surge (as happened with Hurricane Katrina), which could do much more damage than sea level rise alone. If sea level rose by 6 m (20 feet), most of the world's coastal plains and low-lying areas (such as the Louisiana bayous, Florida, and most of the world's river deltas) would be drowned. Most of the world's population lives in low-elevation coastal cities such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Miami, and Shanghai. All of those cities would be partially or completely under water with such a

sea level rise. If all the glacial ice caps melted completely (as they have several times before during past greenhouse episodes in the geologic past), sea level would rise

by 65 m (215 feet)! The entire Mississippi Valley would flood, so you could dock an ocean liner in Cairo, Illinois. Such a sea level rise would drown nearly every coastal region under hundreds of feet of water, and inundate New York City, London and Paris. All that would remain would be the tall landmarks such as the Empire State Building, Big Ben, and the Eiffel Tower. You could tie your boats to these pinnacles, but the rest of these drowned cities would lie deep underwater. Climate Change

Critic's Arguments and Scientists' Rebuttals Despite the overwhelming evidence there are many people who remain skeptical. One reason is

that they have been fed distortions and misstatements by the global warming denialists who cloud or confuse the issue. Let's examine some of these

claims in detail: * "It's just natural climatic variability." No, it is not. As I detailed in my 2009 book, Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs, geologists and paleoclimatologists know a lot about past greenhouse worlds, and the icehouse planet that has existed for the past 33 million years. We have a good understanding of how and why the Antarctic ice sheet first appeared at that time, and how the Arctic froze over about 3.5 million years ago, beginning the 24 glacial and

interglacial episodes of the "Ice Ages" that have occurred since then. We know how variations in the earth's orbit (the Milankovitch cycles) controls

the amount of solar radiation the earth receives, triggering the shifts between glacial and interglacial periods. Our current warm interglacial has already lasted 10,000

years, the duration of most previous interglacials, so if it were not for global warming, we would be headed into the next glacial in the next 1000 years or so. Instead, our pumping greenhouse gases into our atmosphere after they were long trapped in the earth's crust has pushed the planet into a "super-interglacial,"

already warmer than any previous warming period. We can see the "big picture" of climate variability most clearly in ice cores from the EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica), which show the details of the last 650,000 years of glacial-inters glacial cycles (Fig. 2). At no time during any previous interglacial did the carbon dioxide levels exceed 300 ppm, even at their very warmest. Our atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are already close to 400 ppm today. The atmosphere is headed to 600 ppm within a few decades, even if we stopped releasing greenhouse gases

immediately. This is decidedly not within the normal range of "climatic variability," but clearly unprecedented in human history. Anyone who

says this is "normal variability" has never seen the huge amount of paleoclimatic data that show otherwise. * "It's just another warming episode, like the Medieval

Warm Period, or the Holocene Climatic Optimum or the end of the Little Ice Age." Untrue. There were numerous small fluctuations of warming and

cooling over the last 10,000 years of the Holocene. But in the case of the Medieval Warm Period (about 950-1250 A.D.), the temperatures increased only 1°C, much less than we have seen in the current episode of global warming (Fig. 1). This episode was also only a local warming in the North Atlantic and northern Europe. Global temperatures over this interval did not warm at all, and actually cooled by more than 1°C. Likewise, the warmest period of the last 10,000 years was the Holocene Climatic Optimum ( 5,000-9,000 B.C.E.) when warmer and wetter conditions in Eurasia contributed to the rise of the first great civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and China. This was largely a Northern Hemisphere-Eurasian phenomenon, with 2-3°C warming in the Arctic and northern Europe. But there was almost no warming in the tropics, and cooling or no change in the Southern Hemisphere.[ 8] From a Eurocentric viewpoint, these warming events seemed important, but on a global scale the effect was negligible. In addition, neither of these warming episodes is related to increasing greenhouse gases. The Holocene Climatic Optimum, in fact, is predicted by the Milankovitch cycles, since at that time the axial tilt of the earth was 24°, its steepest value, meaning the Northern Hemisphere got more solar radiation than normal -- but the Southern Hemisphere less, so the two balanced. By contrast, not only is the warming observed in the last 200 years much greater than during these previous episodes, but it is also global and bipolar, so it is not a purely local effect. The warming that ended the Little Ice Age (from the mid-1700s to the late 1800s) was due to increased solar radiation prior to 1940. Since 1940, however, the amount of solar radiation has been dropping, so the only candidate remaining for the post-1940

warming is carbon dioxide.[ 9] "It's just the sun, or cosmic rays, or volcanic activity or methane." Nope , sorry. The amount of heat that the sun provides has been decreasing since 1940,[ 10] just the opposite of the critics' claims (Fig. 3). There is no evidence of an increase in cosmic ray particles during the past century.[ 11] Nor is there any clear evidence that large-scale volcanic events (such as the 1815 eruption of Tambora in Indonesia, which changed global climate for about a year) have any long-term effects that would explain 200 years of warming and carbon dioxide increase. Volcanoes erupt only 0.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, but humans emit over 29 billion tonnes a year,[ 12] roughly 100

times as much. Clearly, we have a bigger effect. Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas, but there is 200 times more carbon dioxide

than methane, so carbon dioxide is still the most important agent.[ 13] Every other alternative has been looked at and can be ruled out . The only

clear-cut relationship is between human-caused carbon dioxide increase and global warming. * "The climate records since 1995 (or 1998) show cooling ." That's simply untrue. The only way to support this argument is to cherry-pick the data .[ 14] Over the short term, there was a slight cooling trend

from 1998-2000, but only because 1998 was a record-breaking El Nino year, so the next few years look cooler by comparison (Fig. 4). But since 2002, the overall long-term trend of warming is unequivocal. All of the 16 hottest years ever recorded on a global scale have occurred in the last 20 years . They are (in order of hottest first): 2010, 2009, 1998, 2005, 2003, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2001, 1997, 2008, 1995, 1999, 1990, and 2000.[ 15] In other words, every year since 2000 has been on the Top Ten hottest years list. The rest of the top 16 include 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000. Only 1996 failed to make the list (because of the short-term cooling mentioned already). * "We had record snows in the winter of 2009-2010, and also in 2010-2011." So what? This is nothing more than the difference between weather (short-term seasonal changes) and climate (the long-term average of weather over decades and centuries and longer). Our local weather tells us nothing about another continent, or the global average; it is only a local effect, determined by short-term atmospheric and oceano-graphic conditions.[ 16] In fact, warmer global temperatures mean more moisture in the atmosphere, which increases the intensity of normal winter snowstorms. In this particular case, the climate change critics forget that the early winter of November-December 2009 was actually very mild and warm, and then only later in January and February did it get cold and snow heavily. That warm spell in early winter helped bring more moisture into the system, so that when cold weather occurred, the snows were worse. In addition, the snows were unusually heavy only in North America; the rest of the world had different weather, and the global climate was warmer than average. Also, the summer of 2010 was the hottest on record, breaking the previous record set in 2009. * "Carbon dioxide is good for plants, so the world will be better off." Who do they think they're kidding? The Competitive Enterprise Institute (funded by oil and coal companies and conservative foundations[ 17]) has run a series of shockingly stupid ads concluding with the tag line "Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution, we call it life." Anyone who knows the basic science of earth's atmosphere can spot the gross inaccuracies in this ad.[ 18] True, plants take in carbon dioxide that animals exhale, as they have for millions of years. But the whole point of the global warming evidence (as shown from ice cores) is that the delicate natural balance of carbon dioxide has been thrown off balance by our production of too much of it, way in excess of what plants or the oceans can handle. As a consequence, the oceans are warming[ 19, 20] and absorbing excess carbon dioxide making them more acidic. Already we are seeing a shocking decline in coral reefs ("bleaching") and extinctions in many marine ecosystems that can't handle too much of a good thing. Meanwhile, humans are busy cutting down huge areas of temperate and tropical forests, which not only means there are fewer plants to absorb the gas, but the slash and burn practices are releasing more carbon dioxide than plants can keep up with. There is much debate as to whether increased carbon dioxide might help agriculture in some parts of the world, but that has to be measured against the fact that other traditional "breadbasket" regions (such as the American Great Plains) are expected to get too hot to be as productive as they are today. The latest research[ 21] actually shows that increased carbon dioxide inhibits the absorption of nitrogen into plants, so plants (at least those that we depend upon today) are not going to flourish in a greenhouse world. It is difficult to know if those who tell the public otherwise are ignorant of basic atmospheric science and global geochemistry, or if they are being cynically disingenuous. * "I agree that climate is changing, but I'm skeptical that humans are the main cause, so we shouldn't do anything." This is just fence sitting. A lot of reasonable skeptics deplore the right wing's rejection of the reality of climate change, but still want to be skeptical about the cause. If they want proof, they can examine the huge array of data that points directly to human caused global warming.[ 22] We can directly

measure the amount of carbon dioxide humans are producing, and it tracks exactly with the amount of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Through carbon isotope analysis, we can show that this carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is coming directly from our burning of fossil fuels, not from natural sources. We can also measure the drop in oxygen as it combines with the increased carbon levels to produce carbon dioxide. We have satellites in

space that are measuring the heat released from the planet and can actually see the atmosphere getting warmer. The most

crucial evidence emerged only within the past few years: climate models of the greenhouse effect predict that there should be cooling in the stratosphere (the upper layer of the atmosphere above 10 km or 6 miles in elevation), but warming in the troposphere (the bottom layer below 10 km or 6

miles), and that's exactly what our space probes have measured. Finally, we can rule out any other suspects (see above): solar heat is decreasing since 1940, not increasing, and there are no measurable increases in cosmic rays, methane, volcanic gases, or any other potential cause. Face it -- it's our problem. Why Do People Continue to Question the Reality of Climate Change? Thanks to all the noise and confusion over climate change, the general public has only a vague idea of what the debate is really about, and only about

half of Americans think global warming is real or that we are to blame.[ 23] As in the evolution/creationism debate, the scientific community is virtually

unanimous on what the data demonstrate about anthropogenic global warming. This has been true for over a decade. When science historian Naomi

Oreskes[ 24] surveyed all peer-reviewed papers on climate change published between 1993 and 2003 in the world's leading scientific

journal, Science, she found that there were 980 supporting the idea of human-induced global warming and none opposing it. In 2009, Doran and Kendall

Zimmerman[ 25] surveyed all the climate scientists who were familiar with the data. They found that 95-99% agreed that global warming is real and human caused. In 2010, the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a study that showed that 98% of the scientists who actually do research in climate change are in agreement over anthropogenic global warming.[ 26] Every major scientific organization in the world has endorsed the conclusion of anthropogenic climate change as well. This is a rare degree of agreement within such an independent and cantankerous group as the world's top scientists. This is the same degree of scientific consensus that

scientists have achieved over most major ideas, including gravity, evolution, and relativity. These and only a few other topics in science can claim this degree of agreement among nearly all the world's leading scientists, especially among everyone who is close to the scientific data and knows the problem intimately. If it were not such a controversial topic politically, there would be almost no interest in debating it since the evidence is so clear-cut. If the climate science community speaks with one voice (as in the 2007 IPCC

report, and every report since then), why is there still any debate at all? The answer has been revealed by a number of investigations by

diligent reporters who got past the PR machinery denying global warming, and uncovered the money trail. Originally, there were no real "dissenters" to the idea of global warming

by scientists who are actually involved with climate research. Instead, the forces with vested interests in denying global climate change (the energy companies, and the "free-market" advocates) followed the strategy of tobacco companies: create a smokescreen of confusion and prevent the American public from recognizing scientific consensus. As the famous memo[ 27] from the tobacco lobbyists said "Doubt is

our product." The denialists generated an anti-science movement entirely out of thin air and PR. The evidence for this PR conspiracy

has been well documented in numerous sources. For example, Oreskes and Conway revealed from memos leaked to the press that in April 1998 the right-wing Marshall Institute, SEPP (Fred Seitz's lobby that aids tobacco companies and polluters), and ExxonMobil, met in secret at the American Petroleum Institute's headquarters in

Washington, D.C. There they planned a $20 million campaign to get "respected scientists" to cast doubt on climate change, get major PR efforts going, and lobby

Congress that global warming isn't real and is not a threat. The right-wing institutes and the energy lobby beat the bushes to find scientists -- any scientists -- who might disagree with the scientific consensus. As investigative journalists and scientists have documented over and over again,[ 28]

the denialist conspiracy essentially paid for the testimony of anyone who could be useful to them . The day that

the 2007 IPCC report was released (Feb. 2, 2007), the British newspaper The Guardian reported that the conservative American Enterprise Institute (funded largely by

oil companies and conservative think tanks) had offered $10,000 plus travel expenses to scientists who would write negatively about the IPCC report.[ 29] In February 2012, leaks of documents from the denialist Heartland Institute revealed that they were

trying to influence science education, suppress the work of scientists, and had paid off many prominent climate deniers, such as

Anthony Watts, all in an effort to circumvent the scientific consensus by doing an "end run" of PR and political pressure. Other leaks have shown 9 out of 10 major

climate deniers are paid by ExxonMobil.[ 30] We are accustomed to hired-gun "experts" paid by lawyers to muddy up the evidence in the case they are fighting, but

this is extraordinary -- buying scientists outright to act as shills for organizations trying to deny scientific reality. With this kind of money, however, you can always find a fringe scientist or crank or someone with no relevant credentials who will do what they're paid to do. Fishing around to find anyone with some science background who will agree with you and dispute a scientific consensus is a tactic employed by the creationists to sound "scientific". The NCSE created a satirical "Project Steve,"[ 31] which demonstrated that there were more scientists who accept evolution named "Steve" than the total number of "scientists who dispute evolution". It may generate lots of PR

and a smokescreen to confuse the public, but it doesn't change the fact that scientists who actually do research in climate change are unanimous in

their insistence that anthropogenic global warming is a real threat. Most scientists I know and respect work very hard for little pay, yet they still cannot be paid to endorse some scientific idea they know to be false. The climate deniers have a lot of other things in common with creationists and other anti-science movements. They too like to quote someone out of context ("quote mining"), finding a short phrase in the work of legitimate scientists that seems to support their position. But when you read the full quote in context, it is obvious that they have used the quote inappropriately. The original author meant something that does not support their goals. The "Climategate scandal" is a classic case of this. It started with a few stolen emails from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia. If you read the complete text of the actual emails[ 32] and comprehend the scientific shorthand of climate scientists who are talking casually to each other, it is clear that there was no great "conspiracy" or that they were faking data. All six subsequent investigations have cleared Philip Jones and the other

scientists of the University of East Anglia of any wrongdoing or conspiracy.[ 33] Even if there had been some conspiracy on the part of these few scientists, there is no reason to believe that the entire climate science community is secretly working together to generate false

information and mislead the public. If there's one thing that is clear about science, it's about competition and criticism,

not conspiracy and collusion. Most labs are competing with each other, not conspiring together. If one lab publishes a result that is not clearly defensible, other labs will quickly correct it. As James Lawrence Powell wrote: Scientists … show no evidence of being more interested in politics or ideology than the average American. Does it make sense to believe that tens of thousands of scientists would be so deeply and secretly committed to bringing down capitalism and the American way of life that they would spend years beyond their undergraduate degrees working to receive master's and Ph.D. degrees, then go to work in a government laboratory or university, plying the deep oceans, forbidding deserts, icy poles, and torrid jungles, all for far less money than they could have made in industry, all the while biding their time like a Russian sleeper agent in an old spy novel? Scientists tend to be independent and resist authority. That is why you are apt to find them in the laboratory or in the field, as far as possible from the prying eyes of a supervisor. Anyone who believes he could organize thousands of scientists into a conspiracy has never attended a single faculty meeting.[ 34] There are many more traits that the climate deniers share with the creationists and Holocaust deniers and others who distort the truth. They pick on small disagreements between different labs as if scientists can't get their story straight, when in reality there is always a fair amount of give and take between competing labs as they try to get the answer right before the other lab can do so. The key point here is that when all these competing labs around the world have reached a consensus and get the same answer, there is no longer any reason to doubt their common conclusion. The anti-scientists of climate denialism will also point to small errors by individuals in an effort to argue that the entire enterprise cannot be trusted. It is true that scientists are human, and do make mistakes, but the great power of the scientific method is that peer review weeds these out, so that when scientists speak with consensus, there is no doubt that their data are checked carefully Finally, a powerful line of evidence that this is a purely political controversy, rather than a scientific debate, is that the membership lists of the creationists and the climate deniers are highly overlapping. Both anti-scientific dogmas are fed to their overlapping audiences through right-wing media such as Fox News, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh. Just take a look at the "intelligent-design" cre-ationism website for the Discovery Institute. Most of the daily news items lately have nothing to do with creationism at all, but are focused on climate denial and other right-wing causes.[ 35] If the data about global climate change are indeed valid and robust, any qualified scientist should be able to look at them and

see if the prevailing scientific interpretation holds up. Indeed, such a test took place. Starting in 2010, a group led by U.C. Berkeley physicist Richard Muller re-examined all the temperature data from the NOAA, East Anglia Hadley Climate Research Unit, and the Goddard Institute of Space Science sources. Even though Muller started out as a skeptic of the temperature data, and was funded by the Koch brothers and other oil company sources, he carefully checked and re-

checked the research himself. When the GOP leaders called him to testify before the House Science and Technology Committee in spring 2011, they were expecting him to discredit

the temperature data. Instead, Muller shocked his GOP sponsors by demonstrating his scientific integrity and telling the truth: the temperature increase is real, and the scientists who have demonstrated that the climate is changing are right (Fig. 5). In the fall of 2011, his study was published, and the conclusions were clear: global warming is real, even to a right-wing skeptical scientist. Unlike the hired-gun scientists who play political games, Muller did what a true scientist should do: if the data go against your biases and preconceptions, then do the right thing and admit it -- even if you've been paid by sponsors who want to discredit global warming. Muller is a shining example of a scientist whose integrity and honesty came first, and did not sell out to the highest bidder.[ 36] * Science and Anti-Science The conclusion is clear: there's science, and then there's the anti-science of global warming denial. As we have seen, there is a nearly unanimous consensus among climate scientists that anthropogenic global warming is real and that we must do something about it. Yet the smokescreen, bluster and lies of the deniers has created enough doubt so that only half of the American public is convinced the problem requires action. Ironically, the U.S. is almost alone in questioning its scientific reality. International polls taken of 33,000 people in 33 nations in 2006 and 2007 show that 90% of their citizens regard climate change as a serious problem[ 37] and 80% realize that humans are the cause of it.[ 38] Just as in the case of creationism, the U.S. is out of step with much of the rest of the world in accepting scientific reality. It is not just the liberals and environmentalists who are taking climate change seriously. Historically conservative institutions (big corporations such as General Electric and many others such as insurance companies and the military) are already planning on how to deal with global warming. Many of my friends high in the oil companies tell me of the efforts by those companies to get into other forms of energy, because they know that cheap oil will be running out soon and that the effects of burning oil will make their business less popular. BP officially stands for "British Petroleum," but in one of their ad campaigns about 5 years ago, it stood for "Beyond Petroleum."[ 39] Although they still spend relatively little of their total budgets on alternative forms of energy, the oil companies still see the handwriting on the wall about the eventual exhaustion of oil -- and they are acting like any company that wants to survive by getting into a new business when the old one is dying. The Pentagon (normally not a left-wing institution) is also making contingency plans for how to fight wars in an era of global climate change, and analyzing what kinds of strategic threats might occur when climate change alters the kinds of enemies we might be fighting, and water becomes a scarce commodity. The New York Times reported[ 40] that in December 2008, the National Defense University outlined plans for military strategy in a greenhouse world. To the Pentagon, the big issue is global chaos and the potential of even nuclear conflict. The world must "prepare for the inevitable effects of abrupt climate change -- which will likely come [the only question is when] regardless of human activity." Insurance companies have no political axe to grind. If anything, they tend to be on the conservative side. They are simply in the business of assessing risk in a realistic fashion so they can accurately gauge their future insurance policies and what to charge for them. Yet they are all investing heavily in research on the disasters and risks posed by climatic change. In 2005, a study commissioned by the re-insurer Swiss Re said, "Climate change will significantly affect the health of humans and ecosystems and these impacts will have economic consequences."[ 41] Some people may still try to deny scientific reality, but big businesses like oil and insurance and conservative institutions like the military cannot afford to be blinded or deluded by ideology. They must plan for the real world that we will be seeing in the next few decades. They do not want to be caught unprepared and harmed by global climatic change when it threatens their survival. Neither can we as a society.

Contrary data is flawedKevin Trenbeth 12, Distinguished Senior Scientist, Climate Analysis Section, National Center for Atmospheric Research et al., writing with over 30 other distinguished climate researchers( “Check with Climate Scientists for Views on Climate,” WALL STREET JOURNAL, letter to the editor, 2—1—12, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204740904577193270727472662.html)

Observations show unequivocally that our planet is getting hotter . And computer models have recently shown that during periods when there is a smalle r increase of surface temperatures, warming is occurring elsewhere in the climate system, typically in the deep ocean. Such periods are a relatively common climate phenomenon, are consistent with our physical understanding of how the climate system works, and certainly do not invalidate our understanding of human-induced warming or the models used to simulate that warming.

Emissions are set to rise in the squoEB 14(Eco-Business: Climate News Network, “Carbon output 'will climb 29 per cent by 2035',” http://www.eco-business.com/news/carbon-output-will-climb-29-cent-2035/)//BBThe good news, from the climate’s standpoint, is that while global demand for energy is continuing to grow, the growth is slowing. The bad

news is that one energy giant predicts global carbon dioxide emissions will probably rise by almost a third in the next 20 years.¶ The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says greenhouse gas emissions need to peak by 2020 and then decline if the world is to hope to avoid global average temperatures rising by more than 2°C over pre-industrial levels. Beyond 2°C, it says, climate change

could become dangerously unmanageable.¶ But BP’s Energy Outlook 2035 says CO2 emissions are likely to increase by 29 per cent in the next two decades because of growing energy demand from the developing world.¶ It says “energy use in the advanced economies of North America, Europe and Asia as a group is expected to grow only very slowly – and begin to decline in the later years of the forecast period”.¶ “¶ By 2035 energy use in the non-OECD economies is expected to be 69 per cent higher than in 2012¶ BP Energy Outlook 2035¶ But by 2035 energy use in the non-OECD economies is expected to be 69 per cent higher than in 2012. In comparison use in the OECD will have grown by only 5 per cent, and actually to have fallen after 2030, even with continued economic growth. The Outlook predicts

that global energy consumption will rise by 41 percent from 2012 to 2035 , compared with 30 per cent

over the last ten.¶ Nor does it offer much hope that the use of novel energy sources will help to cut emissions. It says: “Shale gas is the fastest-growing source of supply (6.5 per cent p.a.), providing nearly half of the growth in global gas.”

4 degrees centigrade of warming triggers positive feedbacks and pushes us past the tipping pointStern 14 – Professor of Economics, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the LSE(Nicholas, “Climate change is here now and it could lead to global conflict,” The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/13/storms-floods-climate-change-upon-us-lord-stern)//BBIf we do not cut emissions , we face even more devastating consequences , as unchecked they could raise global average temperature to 4C or more above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.¶ This would be far above the threshold warming of 2C that countries have already agreed that it would be dangerous to breach. The average temperature has not been 2C above pre-industrial levels for about 115,000 years, when the ice-caps were smaller and global sea level was at least five metres higher than today.¶ The shift to such a world could cause mass migrations of hundreds of millions of people away from the worst-affected areas. That would lead to conflict and war, not peace and prosperity.¶ In fact, the risks are even bigger than I realised when I was working on the review of the economics of climate change for the UK government in 2006. Since then, annual greenhouse gas emissions have increased steeply and

some of the impacts, such as the decline of Arctic sea ice, have started to happen much more quickly.¶ We also underestimated the potential importance of strong feedbacks, such as the thawing of the permafrost to release methane , a powerful greenhouse gas, as well as tipping points beyond which some changes in the climate may become effectively irreversible .¶ What we have experienced so far is surely small relative to what could happen in the future. We

should remember that the last time global temperature was 5C different from today, the Earth was gripped by an ice age.¶ So the risks are immense and can only be sensibly managed by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which will require a new low-carbon industrial revolution.¶ History teaches us how quickly industrial transformations can occur through

waves of technological development, such as the introduction of electricity, based on innovation and discovery.¶ We are already seeing low-carbon technologies being deployed across the world, but further progress will require investment and facing up to the real prices of energy, including the very damaging emissions from fossil fuels.¶ Unfortunately, the current pace of progress is not nearly rapid enough , with many rich industrialised countries being slow to make the transition to cleaner and more efficient forms of economic growth.

Warming is the only existential risk –laundry list and equivalent to nuclear winterDeibel 7 —Prof IR @ National War College (Terry, “Foreign Affairs Strategy: Logic for American Statecraft,” Conclusion: American Foreign Affairs Strategy Today)Finally, there is one major existential threat to American security (as well as prosperity) of a nonviolent nature, which, though far in the future, demands urgent action. It is the threat of global warming to the stability of the climate upon which all

earthly life depends. Scientists worldwide have been observing the gathering of this threat for three decades now, and what was once a mere possibility has passed through probability to near certainty. Indeed not one of more than 900 articles on climate change published in refereed scientific journals from 1993 to 2003 doubted that anthropogenic warming is occurring. “ In legitimate scientific circles ,” writes Elizabeth Kolbert, “ it is virtually impossible to find evidence of disagreement over the fundamentals of global warming. ” Evidence from a vast international scientific monitoring effort accumulates almost weekly, as this sample of newspaper reports shows: an international panel predicts “brutal droughts, floods and violent storms across the planet over the next century”; climate change could “literally alter ocean currents, wipe away huge portions of Alpine Snowcaps and aid the spread of cholera and malaria”; “glaciers in the Antarctic and in Greenland are melting much faster than expected, and…worldwide, plants are blooming several days earlier than a decade

ago”; “rising sea temperatures have been accompanied by a significant global increase in the most destructive hurricanes”; “NASA scientists

have concluded from direct temperature measurements that 2005 was the hottest year on record, with 1998 a close second”; “Earth’s

warming climate is estimated to contribute to more than 150,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses each year” as disease spreads; “ widespread bleaching from Texas to Trinidad…killed broad swaths of corals” due to a 2-degree rise in sea temperatures. “The world is slowly disintegrating,” concluded Inuit hunter Noah Metuq, who lives 30 miles from the Arctic Circle. “They call it climate change…but we just call it breaking up.” From the founding of the first cities some 6,000 years ago until the beginning of the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere remained relatively constant at about 280 parts per million (ppm). At present they are accelerating toward 400 ppm, and by 2050 they will reach 500 ppm, about double pre-industrial levels. Unfortunately, atmospheric CO2 lasts about a century, so there is no way immediately to reduce levels, only to slow their increase, we are thus in for significant global warming; the only debate is how much and how serous the effects will be. As the

newspaper stories quoted above show, we are already experiencing the effects of 1-2 degree warming in more violent storms , spread of disease , mass die offs of plants and animals, species extinction , and threatened inundation of low-lying countries like the Pacific nation of Kiribati and the Netherlands at a warming of 5 degrees or less the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets could disintegrate , leading to a sea level of rise of 20 feet that would cover North Carolina’s outer banks, swamp the southern third of Florida, and inundate Manhattan up to the middle of Greenwich Village. Another catastrophic effect would be the collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation that keeps the winter weather in Europe far warmer than its latitude would otherwise allow. Economist William Cline once estimated the damage to the United States alone from moderate levels of warming at 1-6 percent of GDP annually; severe warming could cost 13-26 percent of GDP. But the most frightening scenario is runaway greenhouse warming, based on positive feedback from the buildup of water vapor in the atmosphere that is both caused by and causes hotter surface temperatures. Past ice age transitions, associated with only 5-10 degree changes in average global temperatures,

took place in just decades, even though no one was then pouring ever-increasing amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Faced with this specter, the best one can conclude is that “humankind’s continuing enhancement of the natural greenhouse effect is akin to playing Russian roulette with the earth’s climate and humanity’s life support system. At worst, says physics professor Marty Hoffert of New York University, “we’re just going to burn everything up; we’re going to heat the atmosphere to the temperature it was in the Cretaceous when there were crocodiles at the poles, and then everything will collapse .” During the Cold War, astronomer Carl Sagan popularized a theory of nuclear winter to describe how a thermonuclear war between the Untied States and the Soviet Union would not only destroy both

countries but possibly end life on this planet. Global warming is the post-Cold War era’s equivalent of nuclear winter at least as serious and considerably better supported scientifically. Over the long run it puts dangers from terrorism and traditional military challenges to shame. It is a threa t not only to the security and prosperity to the United States, but potentially to the continued existence of life on this planet .

Warming releases Arctic methane from hydrates – triggers runaway warming and extinctionSong 11 – Pulitzer prize winning reporter for Inside Climate News (Lisa Mar 3, 2011, Accessed June 25, 2014. “Up to 40% of Gulf Oil Spill Was Potent Methane Gas, Research Shows” Inside Climate News http://insideclimatenews.org/author/lisa-song)Another risk lies in the hydrates' contribution to climate change. Hydrates keep methane out of the atmosphere by sequestering them underground. But as the planet warms, more of that methane could be released into the air. Deep-sea hydrates like the ones in the Gulf don't pose much of a threat, said Leifer. The deep ocean

warms so slowly that those hydrates will remain stable for at least thousands of years. Arctic hydrates, however, are "extremely worrisome" because they're buried under shallow waters. Under the Arctic Sea lies an expanse of permafrost that's half

the size of the United States, and below the permafrost are layers of sediment containing methane hydrates. The hydrates release methane, which get trapped beneath the permafrost. Cracks in the permafrost then discharge the methane into the atmosphere . Such releases are already happening. Last summer, Leifer's research group measured small methane plumes coming out of Arctic waters. Over a distance of about 930 miles, "everywhere we went with the boat, there were little bubbles coming out," said Leifer. "This may be the normal state of affairs," he continued, but climate change is heating up the Arctic more

quickly than other parts of the globe, and "[the situation] could be getting a lot worse." The Arctic has enough buried methane that a one percent release would quadruple global concentrations of atmospheric methane. That's the equivalent of increasing CO2 by a factor of ten , said Leifer. "It would be pretty close to the end of civilization as we know it, and this could happen. It doesn't mean it's going to happen … but we want people to be aware [of the possibility]." Leifer will return to the Arctic later in March to continue hydrate research.

Explosive methane bursts cause extinctionAym 2010 [Terrence http://www.globalresearch.ca/doomsday-methane-bubble-rupture-how-the-bp-gulf-disaster-may-have-triggered-a-world-killing-event/20131 Doomsday Methane Bubble Rupture?: How the BP Gulf Disaster May Have Triggered a ‘World-Killing’ EventRyskin’s methane extinction theory Northwestern University‘s Gregory Ryskin, a bio-chemical engineer, has a theory: The oceans periodically produce massive eruptions of explosive methane gas. He has documented the scientific evidence that such an event was directly responsible for the mass extinctions that occurred 55 million years ago. [4] Many geologists concur: “The consequences of a methane-driven oceanic eruption for marine and terrestrial life are likely to be catastrophic. Figuratively speaking, the erupting region “boils over,” ejecting a large amount of methane and other gases (e.g., CO2, H2S) into the atmosphere, and flooding large areas of land. Whereas pure methane is lighter than air, methane loaded with water droplets is much heavier, and thus spreads over the land, mixing with air in the process (and losing water as rain). The air-methane mixture is explosive at methane concentrations between 5% and 15%; as such mixtures form in different locations near the ground and are ignited by lightning , explosions and conflagrations destroy most of the terrestrial life, and also produce great amounts of smoke and of carbon dioxide …” [5] The warning signs of an impending planetary catastrophe—of such great magnitude that the human mind has difficulty grasping it-would be the appearance of large fissures or rifts splitting open the ocean floor, a rise in the elevation of the seabed, and the massive venting of methane and other gases into the surrounding

water. Such occurrences can lead to the rupture of the methane bubble containment—it can then permit the

methane to breach the subterranean depths and undergo an explosive decompression as it catapults into the Gulf waters. [6] All three warning signs are documented to be occurring in the Gulf.

Warming kills Pteropodes-causes extinction through food chain collapse—adaption failsTaylor, 14 - research fellow at Stanford University (Larry, “A tiny creature's big warning”, June 26, 2014, Los Angeles Times, Opinion Desk; Part A; Pg. 15, lexis)//AE

Pteropod, meaning "wing foot," refers to a group of animals that have neither wings nor feet as we usually think of them. Instead, these seagoing snails get their name from wing-like extensions they use to swim (the "foot" being the muscular portion of their body). They're unknown to most people, and recent news articles discussing ocean acidification and pteropod shells probably didn't grab the public's attention. But perhaps they should

have.¶ These tiny snails make up the base of many oceanic food webs. Without them, everything in the food chain above them suffers , beginning with salmon and similar fish, then progressing to the species that eat the salmon and so on. Unfortunately, more than half of these snails collected in a recent survey showed extensive damage: Their shells are literally dissolving, killing them off in astounding numbers .¶

The cause of this die-off, ultimately, is believed to be the rising levels of carbon dioxide. Leaving the

chemistry details aside, about a quarter of the CO2 added to the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels is subsequently absorbed by the oceans, making the water more acidic . This change in ocean chemistry reduces the availability of a particular calcium compound that animals such as clams, oysters, mussels and our

aforementioned sea snails need to build their shells. Without it, their shells are weakened , developing holes and slowly disintegrating.¶ This situation isn't entirely new for the planet; about 250 million years ago, the oceans endured similar changes in chemistry. Unfortunately, this past acidification event coincided with the

Permian-Triassic extinction. Far worse than the dinosaur-killing extinction of the Cretaceous period, the Permian

extinction wiped out more than 90% of marine species . The planet took millions of years to recover, the history of life was forever altered -- and the whole thing may have been largely due to increased levels of CO2.¶ That's the conclusion drawn by many geologists and paleontologists, including Jonathan Payne and his colleagues at Stanford University. Payne's research has helped to show that the chemical signatures of acidification are preserved in rocks deposited during the Permian, and that the species most sensitive to acidification were the ones most severely affected by this ancient biological crisis. The cause of the CO2

increase (volcanic eruptions in that case) was obviously different, but the results seem all too familiar. ¶ There have been a host

of grim stories recently involving climate change. Reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Climate

Assessment confirm that climate change is being felt on every continent and in every ocean, and the effects are directly affecting our economy and health. Other reports demonstrate that global temperatures have been higher than the 20th century average for 350 straight months, that Antarctic ice loss has doubled in rate and that rising sea levels are unavoidable.¶

Meanwhile, confused pundits and media across the country pointed to the bitter Northeastern winter as evidence against climate change, when in fact research indicates that both the cold in the Northeast and the drought in California

are ultimately linked to a change in the jet stream resulting from global warming. Finally, other researchers have already forecast a worldwide decline in shellfish harvests and fishery production due to climate change and ocean acidification.¶ The dissolving shells of pteropods are one more indication that the Earth is changing, and it happens to be changing in a way very similar to what caused the greatest extinction in

history . What makes climate change different from so many other threats we've faced is the time scale over which it occurs; our fleeting life spans don't afford us a good perspective from which to assess the situation.¶ Although the warming of the planet over the last few decades may seem like a slow progression, it's a mere instant in Earth's history, and the environmental changes we're causing far outstrip the ability

of life to adapt. It's something akin to the biosphere being diagnosed with a cancer that turns terminal

overnight . And like a cancer, the best we can do is prevent it; once the disease progresses, there's no sure way to cure it. So let's not overlook or dismiss these initial symptoms. ¶ We're growing ever closer to pushing our home over the edge, perhaps into another mass extinction. If food webs collapse, all

species will eventually feel the trickle-up effects, humans included.

Warming causes algal blooms-extinctionGreenbang 9, Founded in 2007, Greenbang is led by a team of former news, business and technology journalists from the Financial Times, the Chicago Tribune and other publications. Greenbang’s audience is made up of policy-makers, business leaders and CXOs, technology and energy professionals, public-sector decision-makers, architects, investors and industry influencers.“Warming planet = more toxic algae = mass extinctions” Greenbang.com, October 19, 2009,http://www.greenbang.com/warming-planet-more-toxic-algae-mass-extinctions_12242.htmlIn fact, just such toxic blooms could have occurred during the five largest mass extinctions in Earth’s history,

according to James Castle and John Rodgers, two researchers at Clemson University. Each time a large die-off occurred in the past, Castle and Rodgers found a spike in the number of fossil algae mats called stromatolites strewn around the planet. Castle was expect to present the research today at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Portland, Oregon. “If you go through theories of mass extinctions, there are always some unanswered questions,” Castle said. “For example, an impact — how does that cause species to go extinct? Is it climate change, dust in the atmosphere? It’s probably not going to kill off all these species on its own.” But as the nutrient-rich fallout from, say, a massive meteorite impact lands in the water, it becomes food for algae. They explode in population, releasing chemicals that can act as anything from skin irritants to potent neurotoxins. Plants on land can pick up the compounds in their roots, and pass them on to herbivorous animals. If the theory is right, it answers a lot of

questions about how species died off in the ancient world. It also raises concerns for how today’s algae may damage the ecosystem in a warmer world. “ Algae growth is favored by warmer temperatures ,” Castle said. “You get accelerated metabolism and reproduction of these organisms, and the effect appears to be enhanced for species

of toxin-producing cyanobacteria .” He added that toxic algae in the United States appear to be migrating slowly northward through the country’s ponds and lakes, and along the coast as temperatures creep upward . Their expanding range portends a host of problems for fish and wildlife , but also for humans , as algae increasingly invade reservoirs and other sources of drinking water. “( T)his hypothesis gives us cause for concern and underscores the importance of careful and strategic monitoring as we move into an era of global climate change,” the researchers write in their study. “Scientists from around the world have been sending us data that support our hypothesis and our concern about the future,” Rodgers said. “I look forward to the debate this work will generate. I hope it helps focus attention on climate change and the consequences we may face.”

Warming kills plankton-extinctionBorenstein 10 – (Seth, “Plankton, base of ocean food web, in a big decline”, NBC news, 7/28, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/38451744/ns/us_news-environment/#.U9BIoqgwLkd)//JFHHWASHINGTON — Despite their tiny size, plant plankton found in the world's oceans are crucial to much of life on Earth. They are the foundation of the bountiful marine food web , produce half the world's oxygen and suck up

harmful carbon dioxide . They also are declining sharply . Worldwide phytoplankton levels are down 40

percent since the 1950s , according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The probable cause is global warming, which makes it hard for the plant plankton to get vital nutrients, researchers say. The numbers are both staggering and disturbing, say the Canadian scientists who did the study and a top U.S. government scientist. "It's concerning because phytoplankton is the basic currency for everything going on in the ocean," said Dalhousie University biology professor Boris Worm, a study co-

author. "It's almost like a recession ... that has been going on for decades." Half a million datapoints dating to 1899 show that plant plankton levels in almost all the world's oceans started to drop in the 1950s. The biggest changes are in the Arctic, southern and equatorial Atlantic and equatorial Pacific oceans. Only the Indian Ocean is not showing a decline. The study's authors said it is too early to say that plant plankton is on the verge of vanishing. Virginia Burkett, the chief climate change scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey, said plankton numbers are worrisome and show problems that cannot be seen just by watching bigger more charismatic species like dolphins

or whales. Advertise "These tiny species are indicating that large-scale changes in the ocean are affecting the primary productivity of the planet," said Burkett, who was not involved in the study. When plant plankton plummet, as they do

during El Nino climate cycles, sea birds and marine mammals starve and die in huge numbers , experts said. "Phytoplankton ultimately affects all of us in our daily lives," said lead author Daniel Boyce, also of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

"Much of the oxygen in our atmosphere today was produced by phytoplankton or phytoplankton precursors over

the past 2 billion years." Plant plankton — some of it visible, some microscopic — help keep Earth cool. They take carbon dioxide, the

key greenhouse gas, out of the air to keep the world from getting even warmer, Boyce said. Worm said when the surface of the ocean gets warmer, the warm water at the top does not mix as easily with the cooler water below. That makes it more difficult for the plant plankton, which are light and often live near the ocean surface, to get nutrients in deeper, cooler water. It also matches other global warming trends, with the biggest effects at the poles and around the equator

No War

Contention 3 is No War:

Multiple factors check war Robb 12—Lieutenant, US Navy (Doug, Why the Age of Great Power War is Over, www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2012-05/now-hear-why-age-great-power-war-over, JZG)Whereas in years past, when nations allied with their neighbors in ephemeral bonds of convenience, today’s global politics are tempered by permanent international organizations , regional military alliances, and formal economic partnerships . Thanks in large part to the prevalence of liberal democracies, these groups are able to moderate

international disputes and provide forums for nations to air grievances , assuage security concerns,

and negotiate settlements —thereby making war a distant (and distasteful) option. As a result, China (and any other global power) has much to lose by flouting international opinion, as evidenced by its advocacy of the recent Syrian uprising, which has

drawn widespread condemnation.¶ In addition to geopolitical and diplomacy issues, globalization continues to transform the world. This interdependence has blurred the lines between economic security and physical security. Increasingly, great-power interests demand cooperation rather than conflict . To that end, maritime nations such as the United States and China desire open sea lines of

communication and protected trade routes, a common security challenge that could bring these powers together, rather than drive them apart (witness China’s response to the issue of piracy in its backyard). Facing these security tasks cooperatively is both mutually advantageous and common sense.¶ Democratic Peace Theory—championed by Thomas Paine and international relations theorists such as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman—presumes that

great-power war will likely occur between a democratic and non-democratic state. However, as information flows freely and people find outlets for and access to new ideas, authoritarian leaders will find it harder to cultivate popular support for total war —an argument advanced by philosopher Immanuel Kant in his 1795 essay “Perpetual Peace.”¶ Consider, for example, China’s unceasing attempts to control Internet access. The 2011 Arab Spring demonstrated that organized opposition to unpopular despotic rule has begun to reshape the political order, a change galvanized largely by social media. Moreover, few would argue that China today is not

socially more liberal, economically more capitalistic, and governmentally more inclusive than during Mao Tse-tung’s regime. As these trends continue, nations will find large-scale conflict increasingly disagreeable.¶ In terms of the military, ongoing fiscal constraints and socio- economic problems likely will marginalize defense issues . All the more reason why great powers will

find it mutually beneficial to work together to find solutions to common security problems , such as

countering drug smuggling, piracy, climate change, human trafficking, and terrorism —missions that Admiral Robert F. Willard, former Commander, U.S. Pacific

Command, called “deterrence and reassurance.”¶ As the Cold War demonstrated, nuclear weapons are a formidable deterrent against unlimited

war. They make conflict irrational; in other words, the concept of mutually assured destruction—however unpalatable—actually had a stabilizing effect on both national behaviors and

nuclear policies for decades. These tools thus render great-power war infinitely less likely by guaranteeing catastrophic results for both sides. As Bob Dylan

warned, “When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.”¶ Great-power war is not an end in itself, but rather a way for nations to achieve their strategic aims. In the current security environment, such a war is equal parts costly, counterproductive, archaic, and improbable.

No China warDeudney and Ikenberry, 09 — MA and PhD in Political Science, Professor, Political Science, Johns Hopkins University; PhD, Professor, International Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University (Daniel and G. John, January/February 2009, "The Myth of the Autocratic Revival: Why Liberal Democracy Will Prevail," Foreign Affairs Volume 88, Issue 1, JZG)

This bleak outlook is based on an exaggeration of recent developments and ignores powerful countervailing factors and forces. Indeed, contrary to what the revivalists describe, the most striking features of the contemporary international landscape are the intensification of economic globalization , thickening institutions , and shared problems of interdependence. The overall structure of the international system today is quite unlike that of the nineteenth century. Compared to older orders, the contemporary liberal-centered

international order provides a set of constraints and opportunities -- of pushes and pulls -- that reduce the likelihood of severe conflict while creating strong imperatives for cooperative problem solving . Those invoking the nineteenth century as a model for the twenty-first also fail to acknowledge the extent to which war as a path to conflict resolution and great-

power expansion has become largely obsolete. Most important, nuclear weapons have transformed great-power war from a routine feature of international politics into an exercise in national suicide. With all of the great powers

possessing nuclear weapons and ample means to rapidly expand their deterrent forces, warfare among these states has truly become an option of last resort. The prospect of such great losses has instilled in the great powers a level of caution and restraint that effectively precludes major revisionist efforts. Furthermore, the diffusion of small arms and the near universality of nationalism have severely limited the ability of great powers to conquer and occupy territory inhabited by resisting populations (as Algeria, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and now Iraq have demonstrated). Unlike during the days of empire building in the nineteenth century, states today cannot translate great asymmetries of power into effective territorial control; at most, they can hope for loose hegemonic relationships that require them to give something in return. Also

unlike in the nineteenth century, today the density of trade, investment, and production networks across international borders raises even more the costs of war. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan, to take one of the most

plausible cases of a future interstate war, would pose for the Chinese communist regime daunting economic costs , both domestic and international. Taken together, these changes in the economy of violence mean that the international system is far more primed for peace than the autocratic revivalists acknowledge.

No scenario for escalation and no miscalc— inevitable incentives for conflict minimization Quinlan 9 - distinguished former British defence strategist, former Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the British Ministry of Defence, Prof. @ Wimbledon College and Merton College, Oxford. Director of the Ditchley Foundation (Sir Michael, Thinking About Nuclear Weapons: Principles, Problems, Prospects, 2009, http://f3.tiera.ru/1/genesis/570-574/571000/17bd00bd730178f675c2b945f0716cd4, JZG)It was occasionally conjectured that nuclear war might be triggered by the real but accidental or unauthorized launch of a strategic nuclear-weapon delivery system in the direction of a potential adversary. No such launch is known to have occurred in over sixty years. The probability of it is therefore very low . But even if it did happen, the further hypothesis of its initiating a general nuclear exchange is far-fetched. It fails to consider the real situation of decision-makers, as pages 63–4 have brought

out. The notion that cosmic holocaust might be mistakenly precipitated in this way belongs to science fiction. One special form of miscalculation appeared sporadically in the speculations of academic commentators, though it was scarcely ever

to be encountered—at least so far as my own observation went—in the utterances of practical planners within government. This is the idea that nuclear war might be erroneously triggered, or erroneously widened, through a state under attack misreading either what sort of attack it was being subjected to, or where the attack came from. The postulated misreading of the nature of the attack referred in particular to the hypothesis that if a delivery system—normally a missile—that was known to be capable of carrying either a nuclear or a conventional warhead was launched in a conventional role, the target country might, on detecting the launch through its earlywarning systems, misconstrue the mission as an imminent nuclear strike and immediately unleash a nuclear counter-strike of its own. This conjecture was voiced, for example, as a criticism of the proposals for giving the US Trident SLBM, long associated with nuclear missions, a capability to deliver conventional warheads. Whatever the

merit of those proposals (it is not explored here), it is hard to regard this particular apprehension as having any real-life credibility. The flight time of a ballistic missile would not exceed about thirty minutes, and that of a cruise missile a few hours, before arrival on target made its character—conventional or nuclear—unmistakable. No government will need, and no nonlunatic government could wish, to take within so short a span of time a step as enormous and irrevocable as the execution of a nuclear strike on the basis of early-warning information alone without knowing the true nature of the incoming attack. The speculation tends moreover to be expressed without

reference either to any realistic political or conflict-related context thought to render the episode plausible, or to the manifest interest

of the launching country , should there be any risk of doubt, in ensuring—by explicit communication if necessary— that there was no misinterpretation of its conventionally armed launch . It may be objected to this analysis that in the cold war the two opposing superpowers had concepts of launch-on-warning. That seems to be true, at least in the sense that successive US administrations declined to rule out such an option and indeed included in their contingency plans both this and the possibility of launchunder- attack (that is launch after some strikes had been suffered and while the sequence of them was evidently continuing). The Soviet Union was not likely to have had more relaxed practices. But

the colossal gravity of activating any such arrangements must always have been recognized. It could have been contemplated only in circumstances where the entire political context made a pre-emptive attack by the adversary plainly a serious and imminent possibility, and where moreover the available information unmistakably indicated that a massive assault with hundreds or thousands of missiles was on the way. That was a scenario wholly unlike that implicit in the supposition that a conventional missile attack might be briefly mistaken for a nuclear one. The other sort of misunderstanding conjectured—that of misreading the source of attack—envisaged, typically, that SLBMs launched by France or the United Kingdom might erroneously be supposed to be coming from US submarines, and so might initiate a superpower exchange which the United States did not in fact intend. (An occasional variant on this was the notion that ‘triggering’ in this way might actually be an element in deliberate French or UK deterrent concepts. There was never any truth in this guess in relation to the United

Kingdom, and French thinking is unlikely to have been different.) The unreality in this category of conjecture lay in the implication that such a scenario could develop without the US government making the most determined efforts to ensure that Soviet (or now Russian) leaders knew that the United States was not responsible for the attack, and with those leaders for their part resorting, on unproven suspicion, to action that was virtually certain to provoke nuclear counter-action from the United States. There used occasionally to be another speculation, that if the Soviet Union suffered heavy nuclear strikes known to come from France or the United Kingdom, it might judge its interests to be best served by ensuring that the United States did not remain an unscathed bystander. But even if that were somehow thought marginally less implausible, it would have been a

different matter from misinterpretation of the initial strike. As was noted earlier in this chapter, the arrangements under which nuclear-weapon inventories are now managed are in several important respects already much less open to concern than they were during much of the cold war. Worries voiced more recently sometimes relate to ‘ cyber-attack’ —hostile interference, whether by states or by other actors such as terrorists, with information systems used in the control of armouries. It is highly unlikely, though details are (again understandably) not made public, that regular reviews of control arrangements are oblivious to any such risks. Perceptions of them do however reinforce the already-strong case that whatever arrangements still remain in place for continuous high readiness to launch nuclear action at short notice should be abandoned. Chapter 13 returns to this.

Deterrence checks nuclear war and irrational actorsTepperman 9 [Deputy Editor at Newsweek. Frmr Deputy Managing Editor, Foreign Affairs. LLM, i-law, NYU. MA, jurisprudence, Oxford. (Jonathan, Why Obama Should Learn to Love the Bomb, http://jonathantepperman.com/Welcome_files/nukes_Final.pdf, CMR]The argument that nuclear weapons can be agents of peace as well as destruction rests on two deceptively simple observations. First, nuclear

weapons have not been used since 1945. Second, there’s never been a nuclear, or even a nonnuclear, war between two states that possess them. Just stop for a second and think about that: it’s hard to overstate how remarkable it is, especially given the singular viciousness of the 20th century. As Kenneth Waltz, the leading “nuclear optimist” and a professor emeritus of political science at UC Berkeley puts it, “We now have 64 years of experience since Hiroshima. It’s striking and against all historical precedent that for that substantial period, there has not been any war among nuclear states.” To understand why—and why the next 64 years are likely to play

out the same way—you need to start by recognizing that all states are rational on some basic level . Their leaders may be stupid, petty , venal, even evil , but they tend to do things only when they’re pretty sure they can get away with them . Take war: a country will start a fight only when it’s almost certain it can get what it wants at an acceptable price. Not even Hitler or Saddam waged wars they didn’t think they could win. The problem historically has been that leaders often make the wrong gamble and underestimate the other side—and millions of

innocents pay the price. Nuclear weapons change all that by making the costs of war obvious, inevitable, and

unacceptable . Suddenly, when both sides have the ability to turn the other to ashes with the push of a button— and everybody knows it

—the basic math shifts. Even the craziest tin-pot dictator is forced to accept that war with a nuclear state is unwinnable and thus not worth the effort . As Waltz puts it, “Why fight if you can’t win and might lose everything?” Why indeed? The iron logic of deterrence and mutually assured destruction is so compelling, it’s led to what’s known as the nuclear peace: the virtually unprecedented stretch since the end of World War II in which all the world’s major powers have avoided coming to blows. They did

fight proxy wars, ranging from Korea to Vietnam to Angola to Latin America. But these never matched the furious destruction of full-

on, great-power war (World War II alone was responsible for some 50 million to 70 million deaths). And since the end of the Cold War, such bloodshed has declined precipitously. Meanwhile, the nuclear powers have scrupulously avoided direct combat, and there’s very good reason to think they always will. There have been some near misses, but a close look at these cases is fundamentally reassuring—because in each instance, very different leaders all came to the same safe conclusion. Take the mother of all nuclear standoffs: the Cuban missile crisis. For

13 days in October 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union each threatened the other with destruction. But both countries soon

stepped back from the brink when they recognized that a war would have meant curtains for everyone. As important as the fact that they did is the reason why: Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s aide Fyodor Burlatsky said later on, “It is impossible to win a

nuclear war, and both sides realized that, maybe for the first time.” The record since then shows the same pattern

repeating: nuclear armed enemies slide toward war, then pull back, always for the same reasons. The best recent example is

India and Pakistan, which fought three bloody wars after independence before acquiring their own nukes in 1998. Getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction didn’t do anything to lessen their animosity. But it did dramatically mellow their behavior. Since acquiring atomic weapons, the two sides have never fought another war, despite severe provocations (like Pakistani-based terrorist attacks on India in 2001 and 2008). They have skirmished once. But during that flare-up, in Kashmir in 1999, both countries were careful to keep the fighting limited and to avoid threatening the other’s vital interests. Sumit Ganguly, an Indiana University professor and coauthor of the forthcoming India, Pakistan, and the Bomb, has found that on both sides, officials’ thinking was strikingly similar to that of the Russians and Americans in 1962. The prospect of war brought Delhi and Islamabad face to face with a nuclear holocaust, and leaders in each country did what they had to do to avoid it.

Nuclear war won’t cause extinction

a. Nuclear winter is wrong, no impact to smoke, few deathsNYQUIST 1999 (J.R., Defense Analyst, Worldnetdaily.com, May 20, 1999, cites multiple studies, scientists, and professors.)I patiently reply to these correspondents that nuclear war would not be the end of the world. I then point to studies showing that " nuclear winter" has no scientific basis, that fallout from a nuclear war would not kill all life on earth. Surprisingly, few of my correspondents are convinced. They prefer apocalyptic myths created by pop scientists, movie producers and journalists. If Dr. Carl Sagan once said "nuclear winter" would follow a nuclear

war, then it must be true. If radiation wipes out mankind in a movie, then that's what we can expect in real life. But Carl Sagan was wrong about nuclear winter. And the movie "On the Beach" misled American filmgoers about the effects of fallout. It is time, once and for all, to lay these myths to rest. Nuclear war would not bring about the

end of the world, though it would be horribly destructive. The truth is, many prominent physicists have condemned the nuclear winter hypothesis. Nobel laureate Freeman Dyson once said of nuclear winter research, "It's an absolutely atrocious piece of science, but I quite despair of setting the public record straight." Professor Michael McElroy, a Harvard physics professor , also criticized the nuclear winter

hypothesis. McElroy said that nuclear winter researchers "stacked the deck " in their study , which was titled "Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions" (Science, December 1983). Nuclear winter is the theory that the mass use of nuclear weapons would create enough smoke and dust to blot out the sun, causing a catastrophic drop in global temperatures. According to Carl Sagan, in this situation the earth would freeze. No crops could be grown. Humanity would die of cold and

starvation. In truth, natural disasters have frequently produced smoke and dust far greater than those expected from a nuclear war. In 1883 Krakatoa exploded with a blast equivalent to 10,000 one-megaton bombs, a detonation greater than the combined nuclear arsenals of planet earth . The Krakatoa explosion had negligible weather effects. Even more disastrous, going back many

thousands of years, a meteor struck Quebec with the force of 17.5 million one-megaton bombs, creating a crater 63 kilometers in diameter. But the world did not freeze. Life on earth was not extinguished. Consider the views of Professor George Rathjens of MIT, a known antinuclear activist, who

said, "Nuclear winter is the worst example of misrepresentation of science to the public in my memory ." Also consider Professor Russell Seitz, at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs, who says that the nuclear winter hypothesis has been discredited. Two researchers, Starley Thompson and Stephen Schneider, debunked the nuclear winter hypothesis in the summer 1986 issue of Foreign Affairs. Thompson and Schneider stated: "the global apocalyptic conclusions

of the initial nuclear winter hypothesis can now be relegated to a vanishingly low level of probability." OK, so nuclear winter isn't

going to happen. What about nuclear fallout? Wouldn't the radiation from a nuclear war contaminate the whole earth, killing everyone? The short

answer is: absolutely not. Nuclear fallout is a problem, but we should not exaggerate its effects. As it happens, there are two types of fallout produced by nuclear detonations.

These are: 1) delayed fallout; and 2) short-term fallout. According to researcher Peter V. Pry, "Delayed fallout will not, contrary to popular belief, gradually kill billions of people everywhere in the world." Of course, delayed fallout would increase the number of people dying of lymphatic cancer, leukemia, and cancer of the thyroid. "However," says Pry, "these

deaths would probably be far few er than deaths now resulting from ... smoking, or from automobile accidents." The real hazard in a nuclear war is the short-term fallout. This is a type of fallout created when a nuclear weapon is detonated at ground level. This type of fallout could kill millions of people, depending on the targeting

strategy of the attacking country. But short-term fallout rapidly subsides to safe levels in 13 to 18 days. It is not permanent. People who live outside of the affected areas will be fine. Those in affected areas can survive if they have access to underground shelters. In some areas,

staying indoors may even suffice. Contrary to popular misconception, there were no documented deaths from short-term or delayed fallout at either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. These blasts were low airbursts, which produced minimal fallout

effects. Today's thermonuclear weapons are even "cleaner." If used in airburst mode, these weapons would produce few (if any) fallout casualties.

b. Isolated survivors, no impact to fires, no CO2 releaseRobock 2010 (Alan, Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, "Nuclear Winter," WIREs Climate Change, May/June, http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/WiresClimateChangeNW.pdf, JZG)While it is important to point out the consequences of nuclear winter, it is also important to point out what will not be the consequences. Although extinction of our species was not ruled out in initial studies by biologists, it now seems that this would not take place . Especially in Australia and New Zealand, humans would have a better chance to survive . Also, Earth will not be plunged into an ice age. Ice sheets, which covered North America and Europe only 18,000 years ago and were more than 3-km thick, take many thousands of years to

build up from annual snow layers, and the climatic disruptions would not last long enough to produce them . The

oxygen consumption by the fires would be inconsequential, as would the effect on the atmospheric greenhouse by carbon dioxide production. The consequences of nuclear winter are extreme enough without these additional effects, however.

Global economic governance prevents economic collapse and trade collapseDrezner 12 professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a contributing editor at Foreign Policy(Daniel, October 2012, “The Irony of Global Economic Governance The System Worked”, Council on Foreign Relations, Google Scholar, http://www.cfr.org/international-organizations-and-alliances/irony-global-economic-governance-system-worked/p29101)

Global economic governance did what was necessary during the Great Recession—but why did the system work? The precrisis observations about sclerotic international institutions and waning Amer- ican power did not seem off the mark. How did these actors

manage to produce the necessary policy outputs and reforms to stave off systemic collapse ? The most

commonly provided answer is that the shared sense of crisis spurred the major economies into joint action. The crisis mentality did not lead to sustained cooperation during the Great Depression, however. Significant postwar economic downturns—such as the end of the Bretton Woods regime, the oil shocks of the 1970s, and the fail- ure of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in the early 1990s—also failed to spur meaningful great power cooperation during the immediate crisis moments. What caused powerful actors to think of the 2008 crisis as a shared one? A fuller answer will require additional research, but some tentative answers can be proffered here. Power, institutions, and ideas are among the primary building blocks of international relations theo- ry, and each of these factors offers a partial explanation for the performance of global economic gov- ernance. Comparing the current situation with the analogous moment during the Great Depression along these three dimensions can help explain why events have unfolded differently this time around. Looking at the

distribution of power, for example, the interwar period was truly a moment of great power transition. At the start of

the Great Depression, the United Kingdom’s lack of financial muscle badly hampered its leadership efforts.

Even as it was trying to maintain the gold standard, Great Brit- ain possessed only 4 percent of the world’s gold reserves.57 In contrast, U.S. power and leadership during the recent crisis turned out to be more robust than expected. This was particularly true in the financial realm. Despite occasional grumblings among the BRICs, the U.S. dollar’s hegemony as the world’s reserve

currency remains unchallenged, giving the United States the financial power that the United Kingdom lacked eight decades ago. Capital surplus countries—such as China—exaggerated the leverage they could obtain from holding large amounts of dollar-denominated

reserves.58 They rapidly discovered that U.S. dollar hegemony bound their interests to the United States on financial issues. While domestic politics might have prevented a more robust U.S. policy response, partisan gridlock did not prevent the United States from pursuing emergency rescue packages (via the 2008 Troubled Assets Relief Program),

expansionary fiscal poli- cy (via the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act), expansionary monetary policy (via

in- terest rate cuts, two rounds of quantitative easing, and Operation Twist), and financial regulatory reform (via the Dodd-Frank

Act). These deeds of U.S. leadership helped secure multilateral coopera- tion on macroeconomic policy coordination for two years, as well as Basel III. Another way to demonstrate the significance of U.S. leadership is to compare and contrast the fi- nance and trade dimensions. As just noted, U.S. power in the financial realm remained significant even after the crisis; according to the IMF, in 2010 the United States was responsible for 25 percent of global capital markets. American policy outputs were significant enough to display leadership on these issues. The picture looks very different on trade. U.S. relative power on this issue had faded: 14 U.S. imports as a

share of total world imports declined from 18.1 percent of total imports in 2001 to 12.3 percent a decade later. U.S. policy on this issue was inert.59 The executive branch’s trade promo- tion authority expired, and legislative demands for protectionism spiked. Not surprisingly, the

global policy response on trade has been somewhat more muted than on finance. Despite weaker U.S. power and leadership, the global trade regime has remained resilient— particularly when compared to the 1930s. This highlights another significant factor: the thicker insti- tutional environment. There were very few multilateral economic institutions of relevance during the Great Depression. No multilateral trade regime existed, and international financial structures re- mained nascent. The last major effort to rewrite the global rules—the 1933 London Monetary and Economic Conference—ended in acrimony.60 Newly inaugurated president Franklin D. Roosevelt unilaterally

took the United States off the gold standard, signaling an end to any attempt at multilat- eral cooperation. In contrast, the current institutional environment is much thicker, with status-quo policies focused on promoting greater economic openness. A panoply of preexisting informal and formal regimes was able to supply needed services during a time of global economic crisis. At a minimum, institu- tions like the G20 functioned as useful focal points for the major economies to coordinate policy re- sponses. International institutions like the Bank of International Settlements further provided crucial expertise to rewrite the global rules of the game. Even if the Doha round petered out, the WTO’s dis- pute settlement mechanism remained in place to coordinate and adjudicate monitoring and enforce- ment. Furthermore, the status-quo preference for each element of these regimes was to promote greater cross-

border exchange within the rule of law. It is easier for international institutions to reinforce existing global economic norms than to devise new ones . Even if these structures were operat- ing on autopilot, they had already been

pointed in the right direction. The final difference between the interwar era and the current day is the state of economic ideas. As the Great Depression worsened during the decade of the 1930s, there was no expert consensus about the best way to resuscitate the economy. Prominent economists like John Maynard Keynes, who had been staunch advocates of free trade a decade earlier, reversed themselves as the depression wors- ened. There was no agreement on the proper macroeconomic policy response to the downturn, nor was there any agreement about how to fix the broken gold standard. There has also been a rethinking of causal beliefs after the 2008 financial crisis, but this rethink has been much less severe. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan made headlines when he admitted that his faith in the intellectual edifice of self-correcting markets had collapsed. As previous- ly noted, the IMF has reversed course on the utility of temporary capital controls. Though the Wash- ington consensus might be fraying, it has not been dissolved or

replaced by a “Beijing consensus”— indeed, it is far from clear that a Beijing consensus actually exists.61 Postcrisis surveys of leading economists suggest that a powerful consensus remains on several essential international policy di- mensions. For example, the University of Chicago has run an economic experts panel for the past few years. The survey results show a strong consensus on the virtues of freer trade and a rejection of re- turning to the gold standard to regulate international exchange rates. On the other hand, there is much less consensus on monetary policy and the benefits of further quantitative easing.62 This ab- sence of agreement reflects a much greater policy debate on the subject, helping to explain why mac- roeconomic policy coordination has been less robust.

Solvency

We’ll isolate five internal links to solvency

First is CO2 emissions

OTEC solves power plants and emissions – curbs CO2Magesh ’10 (R. Magesh, Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering 2010 Vol II WCE 2010, June 30 - July 2, 2010, London, U.K.http://www.iaeng.org/publication/WCE2010/WCE2010_pp1618-1623.pdf, wcp)

Scientists all over the world are making predictions about the ill effects of Global warming and its consequences on the mankind. Conventional Fuel Fired Electric Power Stations contribute nearly 21 .3% of the Global Green House Gas emission annually. Hence, an alternative for such Power Stations is a must to prevent global warming. One fine alternative that comes to the rescue is the Ocean thermal energy conversion ( OTEC ) Power Plant, the complete Renewable Energy Power Station for obtaining Cleaner and Greener Power. Even though the concept is simple and old, recently it has gained

momentum due to worldwide search for clean continuous energy sources to replace the fossil fuels. The design of a 5 Megawatt OTEC Pre-commercial plant is clearly portrayed to brief the OTEC technical feasibility along with economic consideration studies for installing OTEC across the world. OTEC plant can be seen as a combined Power Plant and Desalination

plant. Practically, for every Megawatt of power generated by hybrid OTEC plant, nearly 2.28 million litres of desalinated water is obtained every day. Its value is thus increased because many parts of the globe are facing absolute water scarcity. OTEC could produce enough drinking water to ease the crisis drought-stricken areas. The water can be used for local agriculture and industry, any excess water being given or sold to neighboring communities. Index Terms—Desalinated water, Ocean Temperature

Differences, Rankine Cycle, Renewable Energy. I. INTRODUCTION OCEAN thermal energy conversion is a hydro energy conversion system, which uses the temperature difference that exists between deep and shallow waters in tropical seas to run a heat engine. The economic evaluation of OTEC plants indicates that their commercial future lies in floating plants of approximately 100 MW capacity for industrialized nations and smaller plants for small-island-developing-states (SIDS). The operational data is needed to earn the support required from the financial community and developers. Considering a 100 MW (4-module) system, a 1/5-scaled version of a 25 MW module is proposed as an appropriate size. A 5 MW pre- commercial plant is directly applicable in some SIDS. OTEC works on Rankine cycle, using a low-pressure turbine to generate electric power. There are two general types of OTEC design: closed-cycle plants utilize the evaporation of a working fluid, such as ammonia or propylene, to drive the turbine- generator, and open-cycle plants use steam from evaporated¶ R. Magesh is with Coastal Energen Pvt. Ltd., Chennai 600 006, Tamilnadu, India (e-mail: wellingtonmagesh@ gmail.com).¶ ISBN: 978-988-18210-7-2ISSN: 2078-0958 (Print); ISSN: 2078-0966 (Online)¶ sea water to run the turbine. Another commonly known design, hybrid plants, is a combination of the two. In fact, the plants would cool the ocean by the same amount as the energy extracted from them. Apart from power generation, an OTEC plant can also be used to pump up the cold deep sea water for air conditioning and refrigeration, if it is brought back to shore. In addition, the enclosed sea

water surrounding the plant can be used for aquaculture. Hydrogen produced by subjecting the steam to electrolysis during the OTEC process can fuel hybrid automobiles, provided hydrogen can be transported economically to sea shore. Another undeveloped opportunity is the potential to mine ocean water for its 57 elements contained in salts and other forms and dissolved in solution. The initial capital cost of OTEC power station would look high, but an OTEC plant would not involve the waste- treatment or astronomical decommissioning costs of a nuclear facility. Also, it would offset its expense through the sale of the desalinated water.

That displaces CO2Krock et al. 03(Hans Krock, PhD. professor emeritus in Ocean Engineering at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa and president of OCEES and CTO at DSH. Krock, H. J. Huang, J. C. Oney, S. K. “Revisit Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion System,” Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Volume 8, Issue 2, pp. 160. July 2, 2003. http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/390/art%253A10.1023%252FA%253A1026062531405.pdf?auth66=1403968593_bf29c4fe9b03d9a37a331290161b2cb4&ext=.pdf//ghs-kw)

The ocean covers more than 70.8% of the surface of the earth. A nearly equal fraction of the solar energy intercepted by the earth falls onto the ocean surface. The sun irradiates and releases an output of 380 million billion billion Watts (3.8× 1026 Watts) and about 175 million billion (1.75 × 1017 Watts) reaches the earth. Figure 1 shows the annual earth solar energy fluxes in percentile normalized by the annual total radiated solar energy that reaches the earth. However, not all these energy fluxes can

be transformed into useful form of energy under present available technologies. The current world total energy consumption,

as indicated in the lower right of Figure 1, is about only five thousandth of one percent (0.005%) of the solar energy flux reaching the earth. It is estimated that the amount of thermal energy absorbed in the oceans , on an annual basis, is equivalent to at least 1000 times the total amount of energy presently consumed by human beings over the world (Vega 1995). If only one percent of the solar energy flux in the equatorial zone is extracted from the thermal potential capacity in the ocean alone, it can provide hundreds of times more energy than the total current consumption of electricity . Due to the huge volume and high heat capacity of oceanic water, some rough calculations reveal that all the energies together in the atmosphere, including kinetic energy in hurricanes and other storms, are less than the thermal energy in the surface layer at a two and half meter depth in the ocean.In the tropic ocean, there exists a mixed surface layer of high temperature down to the top of the thermocline, a relatively thin layer of rapid temperature change, and an underlying deep cold layer extending to the bottom with very little vertical temperature gradient. This pattern is shown schematically in Figure 2. The temperature difference between the surface warm layer and the bottom cold water ranges from 20 ◦ to 25 ◦C in the tropical ocean. Higher values are sometimes found in the equatorial waters as shown in Figure 3, the map of the world surface

temperature distribution. These two enormous layers of water, one warm and the other cold, form the basic resource available to a heat engine able to transform the thermal energy into electrical power through a mechanical system.

Second is vehicles

OTEC can be used an alternative to motor vehicle fuel. Avery and Wu, 94- (Avery has B.S. in chemistry from Pomona College and his A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in physical chemistry from Harvard, Wu and the former director of Ocean Energy Programs at John Hopkins, Wu is a professor in the department of mechanical engineering at the US Naval academy) Willam H. Avery, Chih Wu, “Renewable Energy from the Ocean: A guide to OTEC”, 10-11, Oxford University press for the John Hopkins University, 1994, accessed at the University of Michigan Library//{fishnets}

The electrical energy generated on board an OTEC vessel may be stored in the form of chemical energy for periodic transfer to on-land users, or at favorable sites may be transmitted ashore via underwater power cables. Both options may be commercially attractive, depending on the cost of energy or fuel from alternative

sources at the site of intended use. The process of electrolysis provides a mechanism for efficient conversion of electrical energy to energy stored as internal energy of gaseous hydrogen, which may be recovered as heat of combustion or, with fuel cells , as electricity . Unlike heat engines, the energy conversion efficiency of an electrolytic

process can approach 100% at ambient temperatures, and overall efficiency of a process involving electrolysis, transfer of the product to shore, and reconversion to electricity via fuel cells can be 60% or higher. Because grazing

OTEC plantships can operate in ocean regions of maximum T, the energy conversion losses can be compensated by higher net power output compared with shore-based OTEC plants. Furthermore, since the energy carrier is a liquid fuel, this mode of energy transfer has direct applicability to the most pressing U.S. energy need: motor vehicle fuel. Electrochemical cells for water electrolysis have been manufactured commercially for many years to provide a convenient source of hydrogen for applications requiring a reducing atmosphere or to furnish pure oxygen for chemical or biological

applications. Until recently, there has been no significant requirement for large units. The production of electrolytic hydrogen as an alternative fuel to supply the potentially large demands of vehicle transportation or power production has not been commercially attractive ; however, research and development to improve efficiency, increase size, and reduce the cost of water electrolysis systems was conducted from 1975 to 1983, inspired by the predicted rise in hydrocarbon fuel prices. This work resulted in significant improvements in cell design and efficiency (Nuttal, 1981;Kincaide, 1981; Taylor et al., 1986). Engineering design information for construction of efficient multi-megawatt electrolysis systems is now available. Plans have been announced for a 10-MW installation in Quebec that will use low-cost hydroelectric power to produce hydrogen for ammonia synthesis, and possibly for long-range distribution of gaseous hydrogen to consumers via pipeline (Taylor et al., 1986). The Quebec plant will use unipolar cells, but bipolar cells with either acidic or alkaline electrolytes would be attractive alternatives. All types would be adaptable to shipboard installation and would be similar in cost. Preliminary design studies indicated that the General Electric solid polymer electrolyte (SPE) design would be of minimum weight and volume (Nuttal, 1981). The requirements are discussed in Section 4.3.

Third is water vapor-CO2 reductions alone fail

OTEC is our last stand to reverse climate changeBaird ’14 (Jim, B.S. Chemistry, Owner at Global Warming Mitigation Method, “The Existential Imperative: Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion II”, The energy collective, Jan 6th, 2014 http://theenergycollective.com/jim-baird/324161/existential-imperative-ocean-thermal-energy-conversion-ii, wcp)

The fourth IPCC assessment report projects that 40 to 70 percent of species could go extinct if Earth warms by 3.5°C.¶ Ominously, in the light of this projection, a recent study by Australian and French scientists published in Nature, Spread in model climate sensitivity traced to atmospheric convective mixing, predicts that unless greenhouse gas emissions are cut, the planet will heat

up by a minimum of 4°C by 2100 and by more than 8°C by 2200.¶ Compounding the bad news, two German scientists have confirmed the earlier work of a a U.S.-led group that found reducing sunlight by geoengineering – the most widely assumed last line of defence in the face of climate change - will not cool the planet . ¶ It will

however disrupt global rainfall patterns.¶ The Australian/French research indicates that fewer clouds form as the planet warms, meaning less sunlight is reflected back into space, driving temperatures up further.¶ The way clouds affect global warming has been the biggest mystery surrounding future climate change and the main reason why a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is reflected in various climate models as a rise in temperature ranging between 1.5 to 5 degrees Celsius.¶ This spread arises largely from differences in the feedback

from low clouds, for reasons not yet understood. The study compared 43 different climate models and shows that the differences in the simulated strength of convective mixing between the lower and middle tropical troposphere explain about half of the variance in climate sensitivity. This mixing apparently dehydrates the low-cloud layer at a rate that increases as the climate warms.¶ As explained by the NASA Earth Observatory low clouds act to cool the Earth due to the albedo effect while high, thin, cirrus, clouds warm the planet because they are virtually transparent to the incoming shortwave radiation from the Sun yet absorb the long infrared wave lengths that radiate heat from the Earth back to space.¶ As Steven Sherwood of the Climate Change Research Centre and ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science at the University of New South Wales stated in an interview, "4C would likely be catastrophic rather than simply dangerous. . . For example, it would make life difficult, if not impossible, in much of the tropics, and would guarantee the eventual melting of the Greenland ice sheet and some of the Antarctic ice sheet, with sea levels rising by many metres as a result.”¶ The argument for geoengineering goes that since governments show little inclination to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in spite of inexorable warming; we should try to find a way to filter, block, absorb or reflect some of the sunlight hitting the Earth in order that we can continue to burn all of the fossil fuels we like.¶ Axel Kleidon and Maik Renner of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry show that the world doesn’t work that way and concluded geoengineering approaches to reduce global warming are unlikely to succeed in restoring the original climatic conditions.¶ If you make the atmosphere warmer, but keep the sunlight the same, evaporation increases by 2 percent per degree of warming. If you keep the atmosphere the same, but increase the level of sunlight,

evaporation increases by 3 percent per degree of warming.¶ Water is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2.¶ Kleidon

used the analogy of a saucepan on a kitchen stove. “The temperature in the pot is increased by putting on a lid, or by turning up the heat – but these two cases differ by how much energy flows through the pot.”¶ While in the kitchen you can reduce your energy bill by putting the lid on, with Earth's system this slows down the water cycle with wide-ranging potential consequences . ¶ That is because evaporation itself, and the movement of water vapour around the planet, plays a powerful role in the making of climate . To change the pattern and degree of evaporation would inevitably disturb weather systems and disrupt agriculture, with unpredictable and potentially

catastrophic consequences.¶ In US patent application 20100300095 Sea Surface Cooling System Utilizing OTEC, Tohihiko Sakurai comes to a similar conclusion to that reached by the Australian and French scientists referred to above. As the sea surface temperature rises due to global warming, the amount of cloud cover above the sea decreases . The essential reason for this is a weakening of atmospheric convection, and hence a weakening of ascending current over the sea, due to the progression of global warming.¶

Sakurai describes a mechanism of thermal runaway that is effected through a double positive feedback process in which the density of water vapour increases but the amount of cloud cover decreases and postulates that the most cost effective way to counteract this may be to cool the ocean's surface rather than to reduce CO2 levels.¶ His invention would do this using an OTEC system designed solely to produce mechanical energy that would pump cold water from the deep up to the ocean's surface . ¶ You can move a great deal more heat, much faster, through phase changes of a working fluid rather than in masses of water because the latent heat of vaporization and its inverse the latent heat of condensation of a liquid is much greater than its sensible heat and it is easier to move a light vapour than a heavy liquid.

Fourth is sequestration

OTEC increases phytoplankton-that sequesters carbonMuralidharan 2012 (Shylesh Master of Science in Engineering and Management at Pondicherry University – Mechanical Engineering school. “Assessment of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion” 2012 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Archives.pdf .accessed 6/29/14 .nt)7.2.Upwelling of nutrient-rich deep ocean water OTEC helps with artificial upwelling of the ocean water - a process which

imitates natural upwelling responsible for the most productive marine environments on the planet - to fertilize surface ocean waters which are

deficient in nutrients. This process will stimulate the food chain by increasing the growth of plankton. The

increased plankton can be used to increase the stock of fish in these nutrient-rich waters. This process helps

to relocate nutrient-rich water from the deep of the ocean to the surface and uses energy from the sun to create fish biomass for the world. There are several

positive side effects from this type of marine farming. For example, the increased biomass of phytoplankton as a result of

marine farming will also help remove carbon CO; from the atmosphere and reduce global warming ,

notwithstanding the fact that it b a perturbation to the natural system with potential of unintended consequences.

That is a huge internal link to food productionCelestopea 14(Celestopea is an organization dedicated to creating a vibrant world of health, peace and prosperity. It is dedicated to helping people from all walks of life and cultures to have the opportunity to live and raise their families in sustainable, eco-friendly communities on both land and sea, where people are friends, united by common goals and principles of living. Celestopea, “Ocean Thermal Energy Converter,” http://www.celestopea.com/OTEC.htm//ghs-kw)Inexhaustibly renewable, pollution free energy is merely the beginning of the benefits of Celestopean OTEC's. Tropical oceans are nearly devoid of life. Because growing conditions are so ideal, the algae's which are the base of the food chain, bloom in explosive growths that quickly consume all nutrients. They then die and fall to the ocean depths leaving the surface fairly empty of life. The cold, nitrogen and nutrient-rich

water pulled up from the ocean depths will seed a bloom of new life in the tropical ocean deserts. The resulting micro algae and phytoplankton growth will nourish a tremendous increase in many types of fish and higher forms of marine life. The algae will also be farmed both on the open sea and in large shallow containment ponds. The combination of tropical sun, perfect water temperature and nitrogen, nutrient laden water, will produce millions of tons of high quality protein each year . As additional Celestopean cities and OTEC's

begin to be created in the worlds oceans, the protein produced from our sea farms will make a significant dent in the worldwide problem of hunger and malnutrition. According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization,

an adult person should receive a minimum of 35 grams of protein every day. Each day, each 100 megawatt OTEC will pump up 6 billion gallons of deep ocean water rich in nitrogen, the food of phytoplankton. A gallon of seawater contains 1.7 to 1.8 milligrams of nitrogen. Phytoplankton, one of the most highly efficient organisms, will convert 78-80% of the nitrogen into protein. The nitrogen in the daily pumped water of a single OTEC, will be converted by the phytoplankton into over 8 tons of protein each day, of which 65% will be high quality protein. If this high quality protein were harvested and manufactured into a pleasant consumable form, it would be enough to feed almost 150,000 people each day. The 40 degree deep ocean water can be mixed with warm surface water in any

proportion to produce greenhouse and sea farm environments in temperature ranges between 45 - 90 degrees. This allows mini ecosystems to be created that can grow virtually all fruits and vegetables from any continental climate . In addition to tropical fish, the sea farms will also raise many types of cold water fish and shellfish such as salmon, lobster, abalone, trout, oysters and clams, that would normally not survive in warm tropical waters.

Fifth is modelling

OTEC is modelled globally-feasible for over half the world’s countriesLockheed Martin No Date(“OTEC: The Time Is Now” http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/100years/stories/otec.html .nt)The high cost of fossil fuels, the push toward renewable energy and advances in ocean technology are bringing OTEC’s boundless power potential closer to reality than ever before. Oceans serve as the world’s largest solar

panels, every day absorbing the energy equivalent to 250 million barrels of oil. That’s three times the earth’s daily consumption rate. The ocean thermal conditions needed for OTEC are favorable in more than 80 countries in tropical areas of the world, including the southeastern United States, Central America, much of South America, southeast Asia, China, Australia and many

Pacific and Caribbean islands. Resource constraints and high fuel costs in a number of these areas, make achieving grid parity for OTEC closer than people might think . The theory behind OTEC is straight forward. OTEC systems require at least a 36⁰F (20⁰C) difference between surface and deep ocean temperature. This temperature difference drives the OTEC system, much like a steam engine. Warm surface water pumped through a heat exchanger vaporizes a working fluid with a low boiling point, such as ammonia, to drive a turbine generator that produces electricity. The cold deep sea water then condenses the vapor back into a

liquid, creating a repeating cycle. Tapping into a renewable energy source that produces no greenhouse gases, offers virtually no visual impacts from shore and operates consistently with minimal maintenance further strengths the OTEC

case. Perhaps the biggest advantage of OTEC is that it produces the constant, base-load power necessary to maintain stability in a country’s or region’s electrical grid . Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar require a back-up source to ensure there’s power even on calm days or when there are too many clouds in the sky.

The US is an environmental model for countriesSUSSMAN, ’04, Political science professor at Old Dominion UniversityGlen, The USA and Global Environmental Policy: Domestic Constraints on Effective Leadership, International Political Science Review / Revue internationale de science politique, Vol.25, No. 4, Sage Publications, Ltd., JSTOR As a principal actor in global affairs, the USA is expected to offer leadership in international efforts to address global environmental policy problems . While other countries look to the USA to take an activist approach to foster international cooperation regarding the global environment, the changing nature of global environmental problems has made the effort increasingly difficult. A quarter century ago, The Global 2000 Report to the President (Council on Environmental Quality and US Department of State, 1982) provided a basis upon which the US government could implement a global environmental planning process. President Jimmy Carter directed the Council on Environmental Quality and the State Department to prepare a

study through to the end of the century. Although the findings of the report were discouraging, it emphasized the need for international environmental cooperation and observed that the USA had begun to play an active role in this regard. In his study of US foreign policy and global environmentalism, Paul Harris (2001: 34) argued that "The world's governments and other important actors cannot deal effectively with environmental changes if the United States does not play an active role ... Thus, environmental changes have become a major subject and feature of U.S. foreign policy." In fact, according to the US State Department, beginning in the 1990s, the global environment did indeed become an integral feature of US foreign policymaking (US Department of State, 1998,

1999). Moreover, Gary Bryner (1997: 9) contends that the USA is morally responsible to ensure that international environmental commitments are carried out because "Americans pollute more and consume more resources than any other people. The United States is so economically and politically powerful that its participation in global environmental protection efforts is essential." The purpose of this article is to assess the following two questions: what role did the USA play in multilateral efforts to promote environmental protection during the last quarter of the 20th century? What forces have shaped US global environmental policy?

Specifically, Small Island Developing States’ ecosystems are collapsing in the squo-OTEC is adopted and solves every internal linkBinger, 04 – Al, Visiting Professor, Saga University Institute of Ocean Energy, Saga, Japan (“Potential and Future Prospects for Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) In Small Islands Developing States (SIDS),” http://www.sidsnet.org/docshare/energy/20040428105917_OTEC_UN.pdf //Red)

III. OTEC Potential Contribution to Sustainable Development in SIDS OTEC has the potential to contribute to the sustainable development of SIDS in a number of ways , which are described below. Cheap Secure and Unlimited Source of Commercial Energy SIDS, with the exception of Trinidad and Tobago, Papua New Guinea, Sao Tome and Principe, and to a limited extent Cuba and even more limited extent Barbados,

have no petroleum resources . Also with few exceptions (Barbados – solar water heaters) and the sugar producing SIDS (Barbados, St, Kitts, Fiji , Mauritius, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago) that use biomass for electricity generation, during the sugarcane harvesting season,

there is no meaningful development of the abundant renewable energy resources that exists in SIDS. The

dependency on imported petroleum, which results in very high electricity price ranging between US$0.13 per kWh in

the case of Jamaica, to more than US$0.30 in the islands of the Pacific, is a constraint to development in a number of ways. Although SIDS are characterized by limited land and land based natural resources, they have 20 t o 25 % of the world’s ocean in their EEZs. This most productive part of the oceans, with all - year warm water above 25 degrees

Celsius due to the high level of solar radiation drives the photosynthesis supporting large quantities and diversity of marine life. It is estimated that on average, daily direct solar radiation is equivalent to about 25,000 to 30,000 barrels of oil, equivalent/per hectare. On an average day, 60 million square kilometers (23 million square miles) of Tropical Ocean absorbs an amount of solar radiation equal in heat content

to about 250 billion barrels of oil 6. The ocean geology of SIDS is primarily characterized by steep continental shelves , so that the distances from shore from the deep water, with temperatures of 4 to 6 degrees Celsius, are within less than 10 kilometres in the majority of SIDS ( See

Table 5 ). The combination of high year - round sea surface temperature , relatively short distance from shore and excellent thermal profile of the oceans as shown in Figure 5 , represent the ideal conditions for OTEC . While there are other renewable energy resources such as solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind power in SIDS, these cannot compete with the potential of OTEC . The wind power , for example, is limited in the amount of energy because of site requirement ; PV is very costly for SIDS , and available only during sunny daytime. Neither wind power nor PV can provide reliable base load power compared to OTEC. Additionally, they have no direct linkage with water and food production. Clearly, OTEC is in a class by itself as the best renewable energy resource for SIDS. Transportation Fuel Transportation cost in SIDS are the most expensive, as it is based on automobiles powered by petroleum fuels (gasoline, diesel and in a few very limited application LPG) because the petroleum fuels are shipped in relatively small volumes. Only in Vanuatu, and to a limited extent in the Marshall Islands, there is any substitution of renewable based liquid fuel such as coconut oil for petroleum. Cuba is the exception, where there are some passenger railroads. In Cuba, Jamaica and Fiji, railroads are used to a limited extend in industry. In Jamaica, the railway is used by the bauxite and alumina industry and in Fiji by the sugar industry. This points to the great potential for fuel cell vehicles as the foundation of transportation in SIDS in the future using the hydrogen produced by OTEC plants. Increasing Fresh Water Availability With few notable exceptions - Papua New Guinea, Dominica, Samoa,

Fiji, Cuba and Jamaica - SIDS have very limited fresh water resources. Even in a number of these countries, the location of population and fresh water resources are not matched up. Additionally, with economic and population growth, the fresh water resource s become less available and droughts have greater impact than in the past. Based on the Global

Climate Change Models developed by the IPPC 7 , which projects the declining precipitation over the tropical ocean, many SIDS are likely to experience the extended period of reduced fresh water availability , thereby aggravating present situation. This means that SIDS will increasingly have to desalinate sea water and consequently, increasing opportunity for OTEC as the desalination technology of choice, given its projected cost advantages over thermal or reverse osmosis desalination technologies. In the Caribbean , for example , a number of countries are already utilizing desalination processes for the production of potable water, countries include: Antigua and Barbuda, that produces in excess of 6 million litres per day; Barbados produces between 12 and 16 million litres per day from a plant commissioned in February 2000; British Virgin Islands, where production in 1994 exceed 1 billion litres; Trinidad and Tobago, which has the largest facility in the region, providing water for industry, produces approximately 40 million cubic metres per year. Desalination plants are also operating in Anguilla and Belize. In the Cayman Islands, Curacao, Turks and Caicos Islands, and the US Virgin Islands, a number of smaller units are operate d by

hotel to meet their demand. The cost of desalinated water is very high as all these facilities utilize reverse osmosis using electricity generated from petroleum. In the Bahamas, prices range from US $4.40 - $6.60 per cubic meter . In the British Virgin

Islands, the capital cost is in the range of US$1190.00 – $ 2642.00 per cubic meter per day, and the costs is US$3.40 – $ 4.30 per liter. With growing population, expanding tourism and the threat of climate change reducing the availability of fresh water , there are significant opportunities in the SIDS for OTEC to provide potable water in addition to electricity. Food Security in SIDS and the Potential of OTEC In the majority of SIDS, particularly the smaller islands, the limited

availability of land with fertile soil and limited water availability severely constrains food production. All SIDS depend on imports of food to meet both domestic and tourism needs. Food security for SIDS is therefore an issue of having the foreign exchange availability to import the grains, milk and

protein sources that they are either unable to produce or cannot produce in adequate quantities for their demand. With growing population and increasing tourism, the majority of SIDS will have no option but to increase importation of essential foods. OTEC has the potential to contribute to food security in SIDS in many ways. First, direct contribution is the utilization of large volumes of nutrient rich cold water , which would be discharged from an operating facility at about 10

degrees Celsius, for Mariculture production. This application is demonstrated in Hawaii, US. Feasibility studies conducted by the University of the West Indies Centre for Environment and Development (UWICED) , based on

the Hawaiian experience, showed that the gross return per unit of land used for Mariculture 8 would be more than ten times greater than which accrued from growing bananas for export, and more than thirty times sugar earning. The employment generated was 300% greater than for bananas and more than 600% for sugar. Therefore, the first potential

contribution by OTEC to food security would be a combination of enhanced domestic protein production and foreign exchange earnings. The second potential contribution would be through increased availability of fresh water as a coproduct from the OTEC plant, which would be available to support hydroponics farming. The third potential contribution would be using some of the cold sea water discharge to regulate greenhouse temperature and thereby maximize yield. The fourth potential would be based on the use of the water discharged from the plant to regulate the temperature of reefs to maximize photosynthetic activity and increase natural marine production in the

coastal areas and beyond. The final potential contribution would come from the significant reduction in the vulnerability of SIDS to the escalating and volatile prices for petroleum , thereby significantly increasing the availability of foreign exchange available to import food supplies. Enhancing Environmental Security The BPOA pointed out that the sustainable development of SIDS, in the vast majority of cases, would be linked to extracting services and products from the environment. If SIDS were able to do so in a

sustainable manner, i.e., without destroying or degrading the natural environment, their development would be sustainable . As pointed out earlier, the significant degradation of the natural environment in all SIDS, because of their relatively small size and isolation, represent s a serious threat to future survival of the present and future population. To a

large extent, the ongoing environmental degradation is the combination of bad practices driven by the limited availability of options to find means of livelihood for a growing population. The situation is compounded further by the limited training and understanding of how to manage the natural environment and their limited resources.

If the trend continues in the long - term , the impact will be irreversible damage. A particular case is coral reefs, which are the most critical ecosystem for SIDS . They are the basis of the tourism industry, which is the largest means of livelihood for the SIDS population, a principal source of food (protein), which is a

major export for many SIDS, and the natural defence mechanism protecting the coastline, where the bulk of SIDS infrastructure and human settlements is usually located, and also protection from the raging tidal force driven by tropical cyclones/hurricanes. Degradation or destruction of coral reef ecosystems would therefore have dire consequence for many SIDS. An excellent example is presented by the Maldives. The Maldives’ economy is based primarily on fishing and tourism; consequently, it depend s on the extensive coral reef ecosystem. During 1999 to 2001 , there was a two degree Celsius increase in the average temperature in the Indian Ocean. As a result, there was a significant ongoing reduction in the marine

catch, as shown in Figure.6 . This reduction in catch is due to the physiology of the coral reef ecosystem in which a number of symbiotic relationships exist between different biological organisms . An increase in temperature by a few degree s changes the relationships and the coral’s ability to convert sunlight into biomass, which provided the energy for the entire ecosystem including fish. This phenomenon is described as coral bleaching and this ends only when the seawater temperature returns to normal range. Recovery, also shown in Figure 6, takes much longer. OTEC takes heat from the surface as well as bring the cold water to the surface, so this could be utilized to help control bleaching of critical coral reef systems , potentially giving SIDS an option that is now not available. 9 An emerging threat to environmental security in SIDS is the phenomena of climate change and sea level rise, which is likely to become significantly more serious at present, and

in the medium to long-term. A principal concern, which is the increasing sea surface temperature, could have the most serious impact on the ecosystem in SIDS, particularly coral reefs, which are already under severe stress in a number of

SIDS from sedimentation, pollution and improper fishing and maritime activities as outlined in recent reports 9. Therefore, OTEC has the meaningful potential to assist SIDS by: Increasing employment through the lowering of energy costs,

increasing competitiveness in providing goods and services in the global markets. Reducing the amount of outflow of foreign

exchange, which is some SIDS exceed 20 % annually, thereby increasing the financial resources for the investments that creates new employment. New products for export as discussed in the section on food security. Direct and indirect contribution to reduce

local pressure on the terrestrial and coastal environment. To begin the development of its largest undiscovered natural resources in the tropical ocean.

That spurs reglobalization from the bottom up Rifkin 02 (Jeremy, President of The Foundation on Economic Trends, author of The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of the World Wide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth, 12/5, “Hydrogen: Empowering the People”http://www.thenation.com/article/hydrogen-empowering-people) Were all individuals and communities in the world to become the producers of their own energy , the result would be a dramatic shift in the configuration of power : no longer from the top down but from the bottom up. Local peoples would be less subject to the will of far-off centers of power . Communities

would be able to produce many of their own goods and services and consume the fruits of their own labor locally. But, because they would also be connected via the worldwide communications and energy webs, they would be able to share their unique commercial skills, products and services with other communities around the planet. This kind of economic self-sufficiency becomes the starting point for global commercial interdependence, and is a far different economic reality from that of colonial regimes of the past, in which local peoples were made subservient to and dependent on powerful forces from the outside. By redistributing power broadly to everyone, it is possible to establish the conditions for a truly equitable sharing of the earth's bounty. This is the essence of reglobalization from the bottom up.

OTEC is ready but federal demonstrations and incentives are key to commercialization Vega 10(Luis Vega is currently the manager of the USDOE National Marine Renewable Energy Center at the University of Hawaii. He holds degrees in Applied Mathematics, Aerospace Engineering and Applied Ocean Sciences from the US Naval Academy, CALTECH and the University of California. His professional experience ranges from analytical studies to laboratory scale and model basin tests as well as at-sea tests of marine renewable energy equipment. He lead the team that designed and tested an Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) experimental plant demonstrating 24/7 production of electricity and desalinated-water and obtaining operational data required for estimating realistic costs of production. He has also worked in electrification of remote villages in South Pacific Island Nations utilizing solar and wind resources and establishing a Rural Energy Service Company in the nation of Fiji. Vega, Luis A. PhD. “Economics of OTEC: An Update,” presentation at the Offshore Technology Conference, May 2010. http://hinmrec.hnei.hawaii.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/OTEC-Economics-2010.pdf//ghs-kw)

Conclusions and Recommendations The major conclusion reached in the earlier report continues to be applicable: there is a market for OTEC plants that produce electricity and desalinated water, however, operational data must be obtained by building and operating demonstration plants scaled down from sizes identified as cost effective. OTEC systems are in the pre-commercial phase with several experimental projects having already demonstrated that the technology works but lacking the operational records required to proceed ing into commercialization. Adequately sized pilot projects must be operated in situ and for at least one continuous year to obtain these records. Our analysis indicates that a pre-commercial or demonstration plants

sized at about 5 MW must be operated prior implementation of 50 to 100 MW commercial plants. Accounting for externalities in the production and consumption of electricity and desalinated water might eventually help the development and expand the applicability of OTEC. Unfortunately, it is futile to use these arguments to convince the financial community to invest in OTEC plants without an operational record. The major challenge continues to be the requirement to finance relatively high capital investments that must be balanced by the expected but yet to be demonstrated low operational costs. Perhaps a lesson can be learned from the successful commercialization of wind energy due to consistent government funding of pilot or pre-commercial projects that led to appropriate and realistic determination of technical requirements and operational costs in Germany, Denmark and Spain. In this context, by commercialization we mean that equipment can be financed under terms that yield cost competitive

electricity. This of course depends on specific conditions at each site. Presently, for example, in Hawai’i cost competitiveness requires electricity produced at less than about 0.20 $/kWh. Our analysis indicates that, without subsidies or environmental credits, plants would have to be 50 MW or bigger to be cost competitive in Hawai’i.

Independently, USFG regulation is necessary for OTEC to succeed in the private market. Muralidharan 2012 (Shylesh Master of Science in Engineering and Management at Pondicherry University – Mechanical Engineering school. “Assessment of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion” 2012 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Archives.pdf .accessed 6/29/14 .nt)Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) is a promising renewable energy technology to generate

electricity and has other applications such as production of freshwater, seawater air-conditioning,

marine culture and chilled-soil agriculture . Previous studies on the technology have focused on promoting it to generate electricity and produce energy-intensive products such as ammonia and hydrogen. Though the technology has been understood in the past couple of decades through academic studies and limited demonstration projects, the uncertainty around the financial viability of a large-

scale plant and the lack of an operational demonstration project have delayed large investments in

the technology. This study brings together a broad overview of the technology, market locations, technical and economic assessment of the technology, environmental impact of the technology and a comparison of the levelized costs of energy of this technology with competing ones. It also provides an analysis and discussion on application of this technology in water scarce regions of the world, emphasized with a case study of the economic feasibility of this technology for the Bahamas. It was found that current technology exists to build OTEC plants except for some components such as the cold water pipe which presents an engineering challenge when scaled for large-scale power output. The technology is capital intensive and unviable at small scale of power output but can become viable when approached as a sustainable integrated solution to co-generate electricity and freshwater, especially for island nations in the OTEC resource zones with supply constraints on both these commodities. To succeed, this technology requires the support of appropriate government regulation and innovative

financing models to mitigate risks associated with the huge upfront investment costs . If the viability

of this technology can be improved by integrating the production of by-products, OTEC can be an

important means of producing more electricity, freshwater and food for the planet's increasing

population.

OTEC is technologically ready now and cost-competitiveRuiz et al. 10(Dr. Orlando E. Ruiz is an assistant professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, and a director of Offshore Infrastructure Associates. He received a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and also completed the General Electric Edison Engineering Development Program. He has worked with aerospace and computer companies and maintains a consulting practice. Ruiz, O. E. Laboy, M. A. J. Martí, J. A. “Commercial Implementation of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion: Using the Ocean for Commercial Generation of Baseload Renewable Energy and Potable Water,” Sea-Technology magazine, April 2010. https://www.sea-technology.com/features/2010/0410/thermal_energy_conversion.html//ghs-kw)

Technical Feasibility The nearly 80 years of studies and designs since Claude’s first attempt to demonstrate OTEC technology in Cuba in 1930 and the investment of more than $500 million in R&D and engineering during the mid-1970s to the early 1990s—in the United States alone— have provided sufficient data to build commercial-scale OTEC plants at the present time, given the proper economic conditions and the

right markets. In 1980, a report prepared by the RAND Corp. (Santa Monica, California) for the U.S. Department of Energy found that power systems and platforms required for OTEC plants were within the state of the art. Subsequent work, such as designs developed by APL in 1980 and GE in 1983, addressed other issues like the cold-water pipe and the

cable used to transport electricity to shore. Substantial additional progress has occurred since then. For example, submarine cables capable of serving the needs of OTEC plants have been developed and are in use for other applications. Techniques for fabricating and installing large-diameter pipes and immersed tubes developed for other applications, such as offshore oil, ocean outfalls and channel crossings, are adaptable to OTEC. The APL and GE designs, as well as the one developed in 1994 by the Tokyo Electric Power Services Co. for its 10-megawatt-electrical closed-cycle plant to serve the Republic of

Nauru, are all based on the use of commercially available components and techniques. Offshore Infrastructure Associates Inc. (OIA) has developed configurations for commercial-scale OTEC plants based on available technologies in widespread use for other applications. In addition to general design, work has centered on process optimization and system integration, with

the dual objectives of minimizing parasitic power consumption and reducing overall capital cost. Suppliers for plant components have been identified . In summary, OIA has verified conclusions reached by previous investigators: Commercial

OTEC plants are technically feasible today. Commercial Implementation When OTEC is compared to other energy technologies, three basic aspects must be considered. One is capacity factor. OTEC generates power continuously, with an estimated capacity factor of 85 percent or more, comparable only to combustibles and nuclear power. Capacity factors of other renewable technologies are typically in the 25 to 40 percent range. Even conventional hydropower seldom has capacity factors of more than 60 percent, due to flow variations. The second important aspect is that OTEC does not require any fuel . Energy is generated from purely local sources. This makes it attractive to locations that depend on imported fuels, which are highly vulnerable to volatility in prices and to events affecting world energy markets. The third important aspect is environmental. OTEC does not generate emissions of conventional air pollutants, uses no nuclear materials , does not generate solid or toxic wastes and produces effluents similar to the water it receives. The environmental impacts of OTEC are much lower than those of most technologies capable of baseload power generation. The overall impact of these aspects is that OTEC is a realistic option for many locations that presently rely on fossil fuels for their energy needs. Still, for the technology to be commercially viable, plant output must be sold at prices that will cover costs and provide a reasonable return to investors. Economic viability is the key to OTEC commercialization. Commercial viability depends on a number of conditions. First, technologies capable of producing baseline power at a lower cost than OTEC must not be available in the proposed location. In addition, the thermal resource must be present on a continuous basis (i.e., the temperature gradient must be equal to or greater than 20° C throughout the year) and located relatively close to shore. Finally, there must be a market for the output of the plant. These conditions occur in developed locations that presently consume large

amounts of power from fossil fuels, such as Puerto Rico and Hawaii, and also in other locations, such as smaller Caribbean and Pacific islands. OIA estimates that power from an OTEC plant can be sold to consumers at $0.18 per kilowatt-hour or less. More importantly, the price will be stable . For comparison purposes, the average price of electricity in Hawaii in October 2009 was $0.2357 per kilowatt-hour, and it had reached levels as high as $0.32 28 per kilowatt-hour the previous October due to record high oil prices in the preceding months. In locations such as smaller Caribbean or Pacific islands that presently use small diesel plants for power—and that rely on desalination for potable water production— the economics of OTEC are even more attractive. If renewable energy credits or other incentives are available , the economics of OTEC could be even more favorable in these areas and perhaps beyond. In addition, there would be significant benefits to the environment, since the air pollutants and greenhouse gases resulting from fuel combustion would not occur.

No environmental impacts—operational precautions and plant design solveMartí et al 09(Jose A Martí: MSCE Environmental Engineering from Northeastern University, BSCE and Graduate degree in Civil Engineering, University of Puerto Rico. Principal and founder of consulting engineering and planning firm providing services to industry, government and commercial clients, since 1983. Planning, engineering and economic studies. Technical aspects of regulations. Process engineering. Planning and design of multiple major water and wastewater facilities, for utility and industrial clients.

Most recently, firm is involved in alternative energy projects, principally on engineering and planning for renewable energy projects, including Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC), solar PV energy, and related applications. Martí, José A; Thomas J. Plocek; Manuel A.J. Laboy, Offshore Infrastructure Associates, Inc. “Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC): Technical Viability, Cost Projections and Development Strategies,” Presentation to 2009 Offshore Technology Conference. http://www.offinf.com/OIA_at_OTC.pdf//ghs-kw)In terms of air emissions, there will not be any release of pollutants associated to the combustion process of fossil fuels. In an open-cycle or hybrid-cycle plant, gases dissolved in seawater will escape to the atmosphere, resulting in emissions of CO2. Nevertheless, these are significantly lower than the emissions generated from the combustion of a fuel to generate an equivalent amount of energy. In closed or hybrid cycle plants, there are legitimate concerns about the possible effects of releases of the working fluid to the environment. In the past, substances such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s), which are not immediately dangerous to human health, were proposed as working fluid.

However, CFC's have adverse effects on the ozone layer and have been identified as potential contributors to global warming. For this reason, most recent designs have considered ammonia as the working fluid , due to its superior thermal and thermodynamic characteristics. Ammonia has been in use as a refrigerant for more than 100 years, and there is vast experience in the design, operation, maintenance, storage, use and distribution of such systems (Cohen 1982; George and Richards 1980; Avery and Wu 1994). Although ammonia has toxic effects,

history has demonstrated that systems using it as a working fluid can be operated safely and with high reliability , if basic precautions are taken during design , construction and operation. Most large commercial and industrial refrigeration systems use ammonia as the working fluid. OTEC requires moving

large amounts of water. This brings up three important concerns: (1) marine organisms entrainment and impingement through the water current; (2) the effect of chemicals used to reduce/control biofouling buildup inside the seawater pipes and heat exchangers; and (3) the effect known as “ upwelling ”, or rise of the deep cold water to the surface. All three problems can be controlled and mitigated during system design and/or through preventive measures during operation (Cohen 1982; George and Richards 1980; Avery and Wu 1994). The

entrainment and impingement of marine organisms occurs mainly in the ocean warm water surface. Studies have shown that the entrainment of marine organisms is minimal in the deep cold water (Avery and Wu 1994). Nevertheless, proposed commercial designs incorporate mechanisms to divert these organisms and prevent their entrance into the system, minimizing potential harm. To control biological growth in the system it is necessary to apply chemical agents. Uncontrolled use of these agents may cause serious harm to the environment.

Nevertheless, studies show that intermittent low dosages of oxidants are enough to control biofouling under acceptable levels (Panchal et al 1983). To reduce even more this effect, in a commercial plant composed of multiple modules, these agents would be applied to one module at a time, hence, diluting the residual in the effluent by a considerable factor, to probably undetectable levels . Potential effects of “upwelling” have been a true concern associated to the OTEC operation. Deep ocean water is rich in nutrients and low in pathogens. This could cause an accelerated growth of phytoplankton, which would have stimulating effect along the marine food chain. Another possible effect is the difference in

temperature between the effluent and the receiving waters. Design of modern plants takes into consideration the required measures to reduce these effects. One of these measures is to discharge the effluents at a depth where sunlight penetration is minimal. See Figure 2. Some OTEC proponents have suggested that both upwelling and cooling are beneficial since both can increase biological productivity and create fishing resources. Nevertheless, both could alter natural environmental balance, and it is prudent to incorporate measures in design aimed at minimizing their

potential effects. In the case of land-based plants, like in the case of the experimental plants in Hawaii, the deep ocean water can be recovered and used to breed valuable species such as cold water lobsters and micro-algae. Since there is no data from a long-term operation of an OTEC commercial plant it is desirable to include a program to study environmental effects during the operation of the first plants. This way, the magnitude of any impacts can be determined with certainty, to optimize the operation and the design of future plants.

Plan key to solve—boosts investor confidence, incentivizes investment, and streamlines permittingO’Neill 07

(Sean O’Neill is co-founder and president of the Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition. He is also founder and principal of Symmetrix Public Relations & Communication Strategies where he serves the non-profit, energy, and human resources industries. Prior to founding Symmetrix, Mr. O’Neill served as Director of Public Affairs for U.S. Generating Company from 1993 to 2001. Has has served numerous non-profit and non-governmental organizations in developing programs to encourage the development of ocean renewable technologies, electric industry deregulation, water conservation, municipal solid waste management and public safety contributing to broad public policy changes at state and federal levels, increased water and energy conservation, recycling, and seat belt use. His publications include: "Public Acceptance: A Siting Imperative," for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers; "Teaming Legal and Communication Services," for Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly; "Minority Participation in Government Contracting," for the County of San Diego; and, "Disaster Preparedness Capabilities in San Diego County," for the National Science Foundation. Sean has a Masters in Public Communications from American University where he has served on the adjunct faculty and holds an A.B. degree in English from Columbia College in New York. Testimony Before the Committee on Science & Technology Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Hearing on “Developing Untapped Potential: Geothermal and Ocean Power Technologies,” May 17, 2007, http://www.oceanrenewable.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/oneill_testimony.pdf//ghs-kw)

Q. 6 What can Congress and/or the federal government do to help move the technology forward? Is there a role for federal support for R&D?

Why is federal spending necessary? The first thing Congress can do is pass designed to accomplish the following:: --More funding for R&D and technology development: Wind energy has benefited from substantial government investment. Thirty years ago, wind cost 30 cents/kWH to generate; today, that cost stands at 3 to 7 cents/kWH. And even today, DOE continues to invest in wind. Just a few months ago, DOE announced a $27 million partnership with GE to develop large-scale turbines and also issued a $750,000 SBIR to Northern Power for offshore wind technology

development. Private developers have borne the costs of bringing the ocean energy technology forward for the past thirty years, but they need government support. Government funding will also give confidence to private investors and help attract private capital . --Resource Assessment: At present, we do not even know the full potential of offshore renewables, because no agency has ever mapped the resource comprehensively The Energy Policy Act of 2005 directed the Secretary of DOE to inventory our renewable resources but that work has never been funded. And even as MMS moves forward with a rulemaking for

offshore renewables on the OCS, it has not received appropriations to map the resource. Preliminary studies done by EPRI and private companies show that we have substantial ocean resources. But we will not know the full scope without further mapping and study. --Incentives for Private Investment: Offshore renewables are compatible with other large industries in our country, such as oil and maritime industry. These industries, with the right tax incentives, can provide substantial support to offshore renewable development. Incentives could include investment tax credits for investment in offshore renewables and incentive to use abandoned shipyards and decommissioned platforms for prototypes and demonstration projects. --Incentives for coastal communities: Coastal municipalities stand to gain tremendously from installation of offshore renewables. They need to be stakeholders in the process with a voice in development that takes place off

their shores. Congress can support this by continuing to authorize Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (CREBS) and the Renewable Energy Portfolio Incentives (REPI) for coastal projects. --Reduced regulatory barriers: Until companies get projects in the water, we will not learn about the environmental impacts or true costs of offshore renewables. Unfortunately, developers face onerous barriers to siting small, experimental projects. We should establish streamlined regulation and permitting for offshore renewables, with maximum cooperation between state and federal agencies.

Obama has announced ocean initiatives and the NOAA already shifted funding- no link uniqueness for disadsPiltz 7/18 – Rick Piltz is a writer for Climate Science Watch. (“On Obama's new actions to support state and local climate preparedness”, Climate Science Watch, http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2014/07/18/on-obamas-new-actions-to-support-state-and-local-climate-preparedness/, July 18, 2014)It's been a long time coming, but climate change preparedness has finally moved into the mainstream of national policymaking. Responding to the State, Local, and Tribal Leaders Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience he

established in 2013, the President announced a number of initiatives through which the federal government will support preparedness action by states and local communities to enhance resilience to

global climate disruption. These are positive steps, though of course they fall far short of a comprehensive strategy, there is little in the way of new funding, and only proactive state and local leaders are involved, not the denialist governors and other 'leaders' who won't take

action to protect their people. On July 16 the President announced a series of actions (summarized below) to respond to input from the State, Local, and Tribal Leaders Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience he established last November. The Task Force, made up of 26 officials from across the country, held its fourth and final meeting in Washington, D.C., on July 16. They will make their final recommendations in the fall on how the federal government can best support communities in dealing

with the impacts of climate change. Obama included climate change preparedness as one of the three fundamental components of the Climate Action Plan he announced in June 2013. This was followed in November 2013 by his Executive Order on “Preparing the United States for the Impacts of Climate Change.” The new initiatives, following on that Executive Order, continue the development of a national climate change preparedness process. This is something Climate Science Watch called for in March 2008. It took 25 years – since the global warming problem was first recognized as a major public issue – to get to this stage, with climate change preparedness planning and action

being framed as a U.S. presidential order to the Executive Branch. The new initiatives are steps in the right direction. They involve federal-state-local cooperation, and they include actions by multiple federal agencies (USDA, NOAA, EPA, FEMA, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs). Thus they exemplify the essential principle that climate change preparedness must address a very wide range of potentially disruptive impacts, and thus planning and action will need to be woven throughout a very wide range of relevant institutions, jurisdictions, missions, policies, budgets, and programs. Where we are today should be seen as still near the beginning of what will be an ongoing process through which thinking and acting strategically on climate change becomes part of society's decisionmaking. In that context, it must be noted: What has been proposed so far in the way of federal action falls far short of a comprehensive strategy commensurate with the scope and urgency of the problem of disruptive

climate change impacts. There is not a whole lot of new funding, so the actions rely on creative thinking to stimulate innovation, getting the ball rolling in some new areas, and pilots and other programs with limited coverage in some cases. It will be difficult to get the federal preparedness effort up to where it needs to be in the absence of legislative and funding support from a Congress that has been worth less than zero on climate issues during the past few years. The State, Local, and Tribal Leaders task force includes some of the more proactive public officials, who are not at war with climate science. That's who is out there for the federal government to work with on initiatives like those proposed this week. There are still many state and local 'leaders' who are AWOL on climate change. For example, we see global warming impacts denialist governors in Texas, Florida, North Carolina and other states whose retrograde approach to the problem, in effect, stands in the way of protecting the people of their states from what is to come, for example, in the way of drought, wildfires, sea level rise, and coastal storm surge. And clearly, preparedness can take a community, a state, a nation only so far in the absence of effective action to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions and expedite a transformation of the fossil-fuel-based energy system. Preparedness is necessary in order to build resilience ttry to manage the impacts of climate change that are already unavoidable. But on the current global trajectory of energy use and emissions, we are on course to run well up into the 'dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system' realm – a situation that

would likely overwhelm society's ability to adapt to the impacts. The federal preparedness actions announced by the

President this week include: The U.S. Geological Survey and other federal agencies are launching a $13.1 million 3-D Elevation Program partnership to develop advanced 3-dimensional mapping data of the United States, for use in flood risk management, water resource planning, mitigation of coastal erosion and storm surge impacts, and identification of landslide hazards as an

essential component of supporting action on climate resilience. New details were announced for a nearly $1 billion National Disaster Resilience Competition, which will make resources available to communities that have been struck by natural disasters in recent years. The year-long competition will have two phases: (1) risk assessment and planning; and (2) design and implementation. The best proposals will receive funds for implementation to demonstrate how communities across the country can build a more resilient future.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs is launching a new $10 million Federal-Tribal Climate Resilience Partnership and Technical Assistance Program that will help tribes prepare for climate change by developing and delivering

adaptation training. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced awards totaling $236.3 million in funding for eight states to support improved rural electric infrastructure, including deployment of smart grid

technologies. USDA is announcing additional funds to help rural communities that have experienced or are likely to experience a significant decline in the quantity or quality of drinking water due to severe

drought and other emergencies. To ensure that States are preparing for the impacts of climate change, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will release new guidance for State Hazard Mitigation Plans that calls upon States to consider climate variability as part of their requirement to address the probability of future events in state planning efforts – for example, preparing in advance of a disaster to identify and drive actions for more resilient and sustainable recovery, such as elevating or relocating homes and businesses to reduce flood risks associated with sea-level rise and more intense

storms or rebuilding to higher standards. The N ational O ceanic and A tmospheric A dministration announced program guidance and $1.5 million of competitive funding to help states and tribes make

improvements to their coastal management programs, to better prepare for the impacts of climate change and improve

the safety of their communities. The Environmental Protection Agency is launching a Green Infrastructure Collaborative among government agencies, NGOs, and other private sector entities to advance green stormwater infrastructure. Federal agencies will provide funding assistance in at least 25 communities across the country for green infrastructure projects, technical assistance to create integrated green stormwater management and hazard mitigation plans, and recognition and awards programs for innovative green infrastructure projects. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a new guide, “Assessing Health Vulnerability to Climate Change,” to help public health departments assess local vulnerabilities to health hazards associated with climate change.