OTEC Supplement

Aff

Politics Link Turns

OTEC Bipartisan

OTEC is bipartisan in congressAkaka, Hawaiian State Senator, 7[Daniel Kahikina, June 2007, Alaska Senate Website, “Senate Passes Progressive Energy Policy,” http://akaka.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Newsletters.Home&month=6&year=2007&release_id=1779]On June 21, 2007, sustainable energy policy took a giant leap forward when the United States Senate passed H.R. 6, the Renewable Fuels, Consumer Protection, and Energy Efficiency Act of 2007. This comprehensive measure, passed with strong bipartisan support, will grow our economy, strengthen our national security, and protect our environment. If enacted into law, it will put us on a path toward reducing our reliance on oil, foreign and domestic, by increasing the production and supply of renewable fuels and reducing the amount of energy we use, both at home and at work. For the first time since 1975, our bill raises standards for new cars and trucks from 25 to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. That will save us up to one billion gallons of gasoline every day. The bill also reduces crude oil consumption by more than 10 percent over the next 15 years by producing more renewable fuels domestically. There are numerous incentives that will benefit Hawaii farmers who are interested in growing the feedstock necessary for the production of cellulosic ethanol, providing a boost to our agricultural industry. New energy efficiency standards for lighting, appliances and water use, will save electricity and half a trillion gallons of water every year. Because government should lead by example, we will also dramatically improve the energy efficiency of federal buildings and vehicles, saving billions of American taxpayer dollars while helping our planet. The bill protects consumers from price gouging and supply manipulation during times of national crisis, and also invests in technologies that will drive our energy future, like carbon capture and storage which holds the hope of containing carbon emissions from existing power sources before they ever reach the air. I am also pleased that an amendment I introduced which authorized $50 million to establish a research and development program to promote marine and hydrokinetic sources of renewable energy was included in the bill. The funding will allow researchers to study innovative ways to harness energy from our ocean's waves, tides, and currents, as well as free flowing water in rivers, lakes and streams, and ocean thermal energy conversion. It establishes up to six National Ocean Energy Research Centers which will work with institutions such as the University of Hawaii to conduct research, development, demonstration and testing of these new ocean energy technologies. This is an exciting prospect, especially for Hawaii and the coastal regions of the mainland as studies have shown huge potential in this vast source of renewable energy.

GOP Supports Renewables

Majority of Republicans support renewables and climate mitigation – the GOP is changingHower, Sustainable Brands, Associate Editor, 13[Mike Hower, Triple Pundit, Contributor, 4-04-13, Triple Pundit, “Ending the Debate: Most Republicans Actually Support Increased Renewable Energy Use”, http://www.triplepundit.com/2013/04/breaking-debate-republicans-actually-support-increased-renewable-energy/, accessed, 7-07-13]Apparently, the debate over global warming is not as big as the hard-liners at Fox News and on Capitol Hill would lead us to believe. A recent study released by Yale and George Mason University found that nearly 80 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents support increasing renewable energy use and more than 60 percent believe the United States should take action to address climate change.Interestingly, the report also found that only a third of Republican respondents agree with the GOP’s position on climate change, which has changed dramatically since 2008.

AT: Oil Lobbies

Renewable lobbies are fighting and winning against oil lobbyingRaymundo, Latin Post columnist, 14[Shawn, 4-20-14, Latin Post, “Koch Brothers, Conservatives & Oil Companies Lobby States Using Renewable Energy Sources: Alternative, Solar Power And Environmentalism Gaining Popularity,” http://www.latinpost.com/articles/10814/20140420/koch-brothers-conservatives-oil-companies-lobby-states-using-renewable-energy-sources-alternative-solar-power-and-environmentalism-gaining-popularity.htm, accessed 7-9-14, AKS]As more and more states are beginning to utilize solar energy and adapt to other clean green energy solutions, conservative lobby groups and oil tycoons have aggressively started pushing back against alternative energy.The Koch brothers, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and a number of powerful companies in the nation have started running campaign ads in Arizona, Kansas and North Carolina that paint renewable energy as a greedy bad guy, according to the Los Angeles Times.With the help of solar power companies, environmentalists are battling back against big oil companies and their lobbyists over states that have implemented two types of energy policies: net metering and renewable energy requirements.Net metering allows homeowners or businesses that have solar panels installed on roofs to sell back extra electricity to the power grid at attractive rates. The other policy requires utility companies to generate at least 10 percent of renewable energy, the Times reported.The majority of states in the U.S. have begun operating under at least one of the two policies if not both. The only states to not use net metering or generate power from renewable energy are Alabama, Idaho, Mississippi and Tennessee.South Dakota and Texas are the only two states without metering programs but generate a percentage of their power from renewable energy, according to the Times.

AT: ASW DA/DOD CP

Litany of alt causes to ASW – China and Iran development, faltering tech, and natural ocean variabilityKeller, writer for Military and Aerospace, 12 [John, December 2012, “U.S. anti-submarine capability is eroding, and it may be too late to turn it around”, http://www.militaryaerospace.com/blogs/aerospace-defense-blog/2012/12/u-s-anti-submarine-capability-is-eroding-and-it-may-be-too-late-to-turn-it-around.html, 7/18/14, TYBG]Here's a not-so-comforting thought. The U.S. Navy's anti-submarine warfare (ASW) skills are getting rusty during the same period that quiet submarine technology in China and Iran is improving at a noticeable rate.I wish that were the only bad news on the submarine warfare front, but it isn't. We have U.S. ASW capability going backward, submarine capability of U.S. strategic adversaries going forward, and U.S. Navy capability as a whole in decline, according to a top Navy official."We're long past the point of doing more with less," says Under Secretary of the Navy, Robert Work. "We are going to be doing less with less in the future."Work was quoted in an AOL blog by Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. headlined U.S. Military Will Have To Do 'Less With Less': Hill Must Vote On Money .Freedberg wasn't finished there, however. "The capacity of the US and allied navies to hunt enemy submarines has suffered even as potential adversaries like China and Iran have built up their sub fleets," he blogged in a piece headlined Navy's Sub-Hunting Skills Declined While China, Iran Built More Submarines .The subtle message here is that vital U.S. Navy ASW capability is eroding due to a longtime emphasis on counter insurgency, and with strong prospects for a dwindling future Navy budget, it might already be too late to turn around the ASW decline.Yikes.You can talk about stealth aircraft technology all you want, but there's really only one kind of military stealth vehicle on the planet, and that's the submarine.Stealth aircraft might have low radar cross sections, but they still can be seen with the naked eye, and heard from long distances. Aircraft, no matter what their futuristic shapes, have a difficult time hiding from ever-more-sophisticated electro-optical sensors.Land vehicles? They still have substantial infrared signatures, and they can be seen and heard just like aircraft. Surface ships? Please. Big metal objects against a cool, flat surface. Not much ability to hide there.But submarines, they're a different story. It's true that ASW technology is advancing throughout the world, and today's advanced diesel-electric submarines are as close to silent as you can get.The ocean, however, is a difficult and unpredictable environment in which to hunt submerged vessels. Water columns at different depths, water densities, and salinity levels often can be a difficult, if not impossible, barrier to even the most sophisticated sonar sensors.Sophisticated U.S. submarines for decades have enjoyed the ability to hide from almost everyone. Today, however, it's getting tougher to do as adversaries make up technological ground quickly.

Perm: establish a DOE and DOD formal liason for research and development of ocean thermal energy conversion – this is the conclusion to their author’s articleShapiro, Energy Consultant to TRW and Tracor, 81[David I. Shapiro, Energy and Sea Power: Challenge for the Decade, “Military Applications and Implications for Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion Systems”, p. 129, 7/18/14, TYBG]Major recommendations resulting from this preliminary assessment of military applications and implications of OTEC facility and plant- ship equipment and platforms are: 1. Establishment of Department of Defense - Department of Energy Liaison - Formal liaison should be established between the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Energy (DOE) on a weekly basis, at least initially. This would require a part-time DOD billet at DOE to be filled by a senior-level U.S. Navy officer. In this matter, a current information base regarding rapidly changing OTEC technology, proposed OTEC facility and plantship deployments, and inter- national developments can be maintained at DOD. Furthermore, the liaison, if effectively instituted, could provide the foundation for informed responses required by the Secretary of Defense (together with other affected Executive Branch secretaries) by Sections 101 and 102 of Public Law 96-320, the Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion Act of 1980.

OTEC can produce 16.5 million kg of hydrogen and sequester 726 thousand tonnes of Co2 per yearBaird, University of Calgary, B.S. in Chemistry 14 (Jim, University of Calgary, B.S. in Chemistry July 10, 2014, Owner at Global Warming Mitigation Method, “Carbon Sequestering Energy Production” http://theenergycollective.com/jim-baird/423076/carbon-sequestering-energy-production Accessed: July 18, 2014, KS)

According to a 2005 NREL it takes about 52.5 kWh of electricity to produce 1 kg of hydrogen through electrolysis. If my calculations are correct a 100 MW OTEC plant could therefore produce about 16,500,000 kilograms of hydrogen a year and since this is equivalent to 16,500,000 gallons of gasoline at current price of roughly $3.70/gallon, the value of the hydrogen generated would be about $62 million.

With every mole of hydrogen produced however you would also generate about 1 mole of Na, if you electrolyzed the desalination concentrate, and this in turn would precipitate 1 mole of CO2 out of the ocean and/or atmosphere. Since a mole of CO2 weighs 44 grams (*) you could therefore sequester about 726,000 tonnes of CO2 per year with a 100 MW OTEC plant.

Carbon neutral energy sources like OTEC will be net carbon negative- feasibility of aquaculture proves Jovine, inventor, 8 (Raffael, inventor, Oct 29, 2008, Patent Application: US 8278082 B2, “Method of carbon sequestration” http://www.google.com/patents/EP2364201A1?cl=en Accessed: July 18, 2014, KS)

The method makes use of an OTEC process that has been modified to make it suitable for use in combination with large-scale land-based aquaculture of coccolithophorid algae for carbon

sequestration. OTEC is a method for generating electricity that utilizes the temperature difference that exists between deep and shallow waters. The use of OTEC is currently limited to particular geographical areas where the temperature difference between the warm surface water and the cold deep seawater is large, ideally at least 20° C. This temperature difference only really occurs in equatorial waters, defined as lying between 10° N and 10° S, which are adequate.3 In these areas, coastal land use is intensive. In contrast, in areas where there is significant availability of coastal land that lies unused, the surface water is cool and, thus, there is an insufficient temperature differential for OTEC to function efficiently.

The inventor hereof has realized that by heating seawater using solar energy under controlled conditions, a sufficient temperature difference can be established between this heated water and cooler, nutrient-rich deep seawater to allow OTEC to be used in regions where land is unutilized and/or available. This modified OTEC system can thus be used in regions with vast areas of arid, desert or under-utilized or non-productive coastal land (such as in the Gulf States, the Californian Peninsula in Mexico, Australia, Western, Northern and Southern Africa and Chile), which are ideal for large-scale land-based aquaculture. Because this land is commonly not used for economic benefit, the economics of this modified system become practical for carbon sequestration.

This solves several problems from which land-based aquaculture of marine algae suffers, at least in the context of carbon sequestration. Of course, pumping nutrient-rich seawater onto land requires large amounts of energy. Given that the purpose of these aquaculture preserves is to provide a net carbon sink, any CO2 produced in order to supply the water for the aquaculture must be more than offset within the CO2 that is sequestered by the algae. Thus, only renewable, or carbon neutral, sources of energy are suitable in this context. Examples of renewable energy sources include solar energy, high altitude and ground level wind power, tidal, hydroelectric, and biomass fueled power generation. Other carbon neutral, although not renewable energy sources, such as nuclear or geothermal power may also be suitable to generate the power necessary to pump the large quantities of water for the aquaculture preserves. Both nuclear and geothermal power have the advantage of creating heated water that could be exploited by OTEC.

NEG- Compiled Frontlines

Aquaculture

1NC

Aquaculture Bad

Aquaculture fails and is environmentally hazardous – significant waste, diseases, chemical run-off, and invasive species means the technology doesn’t protect fish stocksMother Jones, news organization, 6[March/April, Mother Jones, “Is Aquaculture the Answer?,” http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/03/aquaculture-answer, accessed 7/2/14, TYBG]Q: Can aquaculture have a negative impact on the environment? A: Yes, very much so. Organic wastes from fish cages in public waters can have a significant effect on the surrounding water quality. Waste from fish farms can include : fecal matter and uneaten food , along with chemicals used in farming such as pesticides, herbicides, and antibiotics. Because fish and other organisms are kept in close proximity, they are more likely to breed diseases. All of these can impact the surrounding environment . In addition, many " crops" are transported from one region to another for farming, which can introduce new organisms and diseases into the surrounding area. A few examples: In New Brunswick, despite the fact that salmon farming sites occupy less than 0.01 percent of the coastal area in their region, scientists have found significant degradation of the water in the surrounding area. A: lowered oxygen levels, replacement of native seaweeds with invasive species, algal blooms, reduction of wild species, and a loss of nursery habitat for wild fish. In the United States, a pathogen that attacks the eastern oyster was likely introduced into the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts through aquaculture. There are also concerns that fish will escape from the fish farms and either breed with wild fish — affecting genetic diversity and decreasing their survivability — or else compete for food and spread diseases . Over the past decade, nearly one million non-native Atlantic salmon have escaped from fish farms and established themselves in streams of the Pacific Northwest. Q: Are some fish farms dependent on wild fisheries for food? A: Yes. Many farmed fish species are carnivorous, so other wild fish species must be harvested to maintain the farm. Carnivorous species of fish, such as salmon, trout, tuna, grouper, and cod, require a protein rich, high-energy diet. Herring are used to make salmon feed, so they have been heavily harvested in the wild, putting pressure on the many other wild species that depend on herring for food. So fish farms can end up leading to over-fishing of the very wild fisheries they are supposed to help protect.

Mangrove DA

Mangroves are on the verge of extinction- loss kills fish populations, Polidoro et al., professor of Environmental Chemistry @ ASU, ‘10[Beth A., Kent E. Carpenter, Lorna Collins, Norman C. Duke, Aaron M. Ellison, Joanna C. Ellison, Elizabeth J. Farnsworth, Edwino S. Fernando, Kandasamy Kathiresan, Nico E. Koedam, Suzanne R. Livingstone, Toyohiko Miyagi, Gregg E. Moore, Vien Ngoc Nam, Jin Eong Ong, Jurgenne H. Primavera, Severino G. Salmo III, Jonnell C. Sanciangco, Sukristijono Sukardjo, Yamin Wang, Jean Wan Hong Yong, PLOSONE, 04/08/10, “The Loss of Species: Mangrove Extinction Risk and Geographic Concern,” http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0010095, 07/01/14, PD]Mangrove species are uniquely adapted to tropical and subtropical coasts, and although relatively low in number of species, mangrove forests provide at least US $1.6 billion each year in ecosystem services and support coastal livelihoods worldwide. Globally, mangrove areas are declining rapidly as they are cleared for coastal development and aquaculture and logged for timber and fuel production. Little is known about the effects of mangrove area loss on individual mangrove species and local or regional populations. To address this gap, species-specific information on global distribution, population status, life history traits, and major threats were compiled for each of the 70 known species of mangroves. Each species' probability of extinction was assessed under the Categories and Criteria of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Eleven of the 70 mangrove species (16%) are at elevated threat of extinction. Particular areas of geographical concern include the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Central America, where as many as 40% of mangroves species present are threatened with extinction . Across the globe, mangrove species found primarily in the high intertidal and upstream estuarine zones, which often have specific freshwater requirements and patchy distributions, are the most threatened because they are often the first cleared for development of aquaculture and agriculture. The loss of mangrove species will have devastating economic and environmental consequences for coastal communities, especially in those areas with low mangrove diversity and high mangrove area or species loss. Several species at high risk of extinction may disappear well before the next decade if existing protective measures are not enforced. Introduction The importance of mangroves for humans and a variety of coastal organisms has been well documented [1]–[7]. Mangrove forests are comprised of unique plant species that form the critical interface between terrestrial, estuarine, and near-shore marine ecosystems in tropical and subtropical regions . They protect inland human communities from damage caused by coastal erosion and storms [8]–[11], provide critical habitat for a variety of terrestrial, estuarine and marine species [5], [12]–[14], and serve as both a source and sink for nutrients and sediments for other inshore marine habitats including seagrass beds and coral reefs [2], [15]. Mangrove species that form dense and often monospecific stands are considered “foundation species” that control population and ecosystem dynamics, including fluxes of energy and nutrients, hydrology, food webs, and biodiversity [16]. Mangroves have been widely reviewed [17] as supporting numerous ecosystem services including flood protection, nutrient and organic matter processing, sediment control, and fisheries. Mangrove forests are the economic foundations of many tropical coastal regions [18] providing at least US$1.6 billion per year in “ecosystem services” worldwide [7]. It is estimated that almost 80% of global fish catches are directly or indirectly dependant on mangroves [1], [19]. Mangroves sequester up to 25.5 million tonnes of carbon per year [20], and provide more than 10% of essential organic carbon to the global oceans [21]. Although the economic value of mangroves can be difficult to quantify, the relatively small number of mangrove species worldwide collectively provide a wealth of services and goods while occupying only 0.12% of the world's total land area [22].

Turn: Aquaculture destroys mangroves and decreases fish stocksEmerson, Supervising editor of Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts and PhD in Oceanography, ‘99[Craig, Community Supported Agriculture, December, “Aquaculture Impacts on the Environment,” http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/aquacult/overview.php, 07/01/14, PD]Nowhere are the negative impacts on the natural environment more apparent than with shrimp farming and the associated destruction of mangrove forests 22 . In Asia, over 400,000 hectares of mangroves have been converted into brackishwater aquaculture for the rearing of shrimp. Farmed shrimp boost a developing country's foreign exchange earnings, but the loss of sensitive habitat is difficult to reconcile. Tropical mangroves are analogous to temperate salt marshes , a habitat critical to erosion prevention, coastal water quality, and the reproductive success of many marine organisms . Mangrove forests have also provided a sustainable and renewable resource of firewood, timber, pulp, and charcoal for local communities. To construct dyked ponds for shrimp farming, these habitats are razed and restoration is extremely difficult. Unfortunately, shrimp ponds are often profitable only temporarily as they are subject to disease and to downward shifts in the shrimp market. Growing political pressure in western countries may restrict the shrimp market in response to consumers' avoidance of environmentally-unfriendly products. More significantly, Japan's economy is experiencing difficulty at present, and Japan is the world's largest market for shrimp; when the market falls, ponds are abandoned. A return to traditional fishing is not always possible because the lost mangroves no longer serve as nursery areas which are critical for the recruitment of many wild fish stocks . Unemployment prospects cannot always balance short-term gains . It is clear that socio-economic effects are as important as pollution and ecological damage when evaluating the sustainability of aquaculture.

Eutro Turn

Eutrophication and resulting algal blooms turns the case—results in toxic food, increased disease transmission, and decreased productionEmerson, Ph.D in Oceanography from Dalhousie University, 99[Craig, 12-99, CSA, “Aquaculture Impacts on the Environment,” http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/aquacult/overview.php, 6-25-14, IC]An increasingly significant effect of intensive fish culture is eutrophication of the water surrounding rearing pens or the rivers receiving aquaculture effluent. Fish excretion and fecal wastes combine with nutrients released from the breakdown of excess feed to raise nutrient levels well above normal, creating an ideal environment for algal blooms to form. To compound the problem, most feed is formulated to contain more nutrients than necessary for most applications. In Scotland, an estimated 50,000 tonnes of untreated and contaminated waste generated from cage salmon farming goes directly into the sea, equivalent to the sewage waste of a population of up to three quarters of Scotland's population7. Once the resulting algal blooms die , they settle to the bottom where their decomposition depletes the oxygen. Before they die, however, there is the possibility that algal toxins are produced . Although any species of phytoplankton can benefit from an increased nutrient supply, certain species are noxious or even toxic to other marine organisms and to humans . The spines of some diatoms (e.g. Chaetoceros concavicornis) can irritate the gills of fish, causing decreased production or even death 8 . More importantly, blooms ("red tides") of certain species such as Chattonella marina often produce biological toxins that can kill other organisms. Neurotoxins produced by several algal species can be concentrated in filter-feeding bivalves such as mussels and oysters, creating a serious health risk to people consuming contaminated shellfish (e.g. paralytic shellfish poisoning9). Fish is low in fat and considered a healthy alternative to other meats, but consumers cannot ignore the potential health risks of cultured species, just as they must not ignore the risks associated with terrestrial agriculture. In addition to shellfish contaminated with toxic algae, cultured seafood can pose additional concerns from disease transmission . Most fish pathogens are not hazardous to humans, but some fish pathogens such as Streptococcus bacteria can infect humans10. High levels of antibiotics and genetically-engineered components in fish feed (e.g. soya additives) can also pose risks. The challenge for regulatory agencies like the Food & Drug Administration in the United States is to ensure that these risks are "acceptable".

Red Tide Turn

Eutrophication and resulting algal blooms turns the case—results in toxic food, increased disease transmission, and decreased productionEmerson, Ph.D in Oceanography from Dalhousie University, 1999[Craig, 12-99, CSA, “Aquaculture Impacts on the Environment,” http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/aquacult/overview.php, 6-25-14, IC]An increasingly significant effect of intensive fish culture is eutrophication of the water surrounding rearing pens or the rivers receiving aquaculture effluent. Fish excretion and fecal wastes combine with nutrients released from the breakdown of excess feed to raise nutrient levels well above normal, creating an ideal environment for algal blooms to form. To compound the problem, most feed is formulated to contain more nutrients than necessary for most applications. In Scotland, an estimated 50,000 tonnes of untreated and contaminated waste generated from cage salmon farming goes directly into the sea, equivalent to the sewage waste of a population of up to three quarters of Scotland's population7. Once the resulting algal blooms die , they settle to the bottom where their decomposition depletes the oxygen. Before they die, however, there is the possibility that algal toxins are produced.Although any species of phytoplankton can benefit from an increased nutrient supply, certain species are noxious or even toxic to other marine organisms and to humans . The spines of some diatoms (e.g. Chaetoceros concavicornis) can irritate the gills of fish, causing decreased production or even death 8 . More importantly, blooms ("red tides") of certain species such as Chattonella marina often produce biological toxins that can kill other organisms. Neurotoxins produced by several algal species can be concentrated in filter-feeding bivalves such as mussels and oysters, creating a serious health risk to people consuming contaminated shellfish (e.g. paralytic shellfish poisoning9).Fish is low in fat and considered a healthy alternative to other meats, but consumers cannot ignore the potential health risks of cultured species, just as they must not ignore the risks associated with terrestrial agriculture. In addition to shellfish contaminated with toxic algae, cultured seafood can pose additional concerns from disease transmission. Most fish pathogens are not hazardous to humans, but some fish pathogens such as Streptococcus bacteria can infect humans10. High levels of antibiotics and genetically-engineered components in fish feed (e.g. soya additives) can also pose risks. The challenge for regulatory agencies like the Food & Drug Administration in the United States is to ensure that these risks are "acceptable".

AT: Algae

Algae fails – none of their studies consider the impacts of large-scale algae production – here’s the only piece of evidence that doesScience Daily 2012 [October 24, Science Daily, National Academy of Sciences “Large-scale production of biofuels made from algae poses sustainability concerns,” http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2012/10/121024133413.htm]//CV, 7-8-14, JY]Oct. 24, 2012 — Scaling up the production of biofuels made from algae to meet at least 5 percent --

approximately 39 billion liters -- of U.S. transportation fuel needs would place unsustainable demands on energy, water, and nutrients, says a new report from the National Research Council. However, these concerns are not a definitive barrier for future production, and innovations that would require research and development could help realize algal biofuels' full potential. Biofuels derived from algae and cyanobacteria are possible alternatives to petroleum-based fuels and could help the U.S. meet its energy security needs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide (CO2). Algal biofuels offer potential advantages over biofuels made from land plants, including algae's ability to grow on non-croplands in cultivation ponds of freshwater, salt water, or wastewater. The number of companies developing algal biofuels has been increasing, and several oil companies are investing in them. Given these and other interests, the National Research Council was asked to identify sustainability issues associated with large-scale development of algal biofuels. The committee that wrote the report said that concerns related to large-scale algal biofuel development differ depending on the pathways used to produce the fuels. Producing fuels from algae could be done in many ways, including cultivating freshwater or saltwater algae, growing algae in closed photobioreactors or open-pond systems, processing the oils produced by microalgae, or refining all parts of macroalgae. The committee's sustainability analysis focused on pathways that to date have received active attention. Most of the current development involves growing selected strains of algae in open ponds or closed photobioreactors using various water sources, collecting and extracting the oil from algae or collecting fuel precursors secreted by algae, and then processing the oil into fuel. The committee pointed out

several high-level concerns for large-scale development of algal biofuel, including the relatively large

quantity of water required for algae cultivation; magnitude of nutrients, such as nitrogen,

phosphorus, and CO2, needed for cultivation; amount of land area necessary to contain the ponds

that grow the algae; and uncertainties in greenhouse gas emissions over the production life cycle . Moreover, the algal biofuel energy return on investment would have to be high, meaning more energy would have to be produced from the biofuels than what is required to cultivate algae and convert them to fuels. The committee found that to produce the amount of algal biofuel equivalent to 1 liter of gasoline, between 3.15 liters to 3,650 liters of freshwater is required, depending on the production pathway. Replenishing water lost from evaporation in growing systems is a key driver for use of freshwater in production, the committee said. In addition, water use could be a serious concern in an algal biofuel production system that uses freshwater without recycling the "harvest" water. To produce 39 billion liters of algal biofuels, 6 million to 15 million metric tons of nitrogen and 1 million to 2 million metric tons of phosphorus would be needed each year if the nutrients are not recycled, the report says. These requirements represent 44 percent to 107 percent of the total nitrogen use and 20

percent to 51 percent of the total phosphorus use in the U.S . However, recycling nutrients or utilizing

wastewater from agricultural or municipal sources could reduce nutrient and energy use, the committee said. Another resource that could limit the amount of algal biofuels produced is land area and the number of suitable and available sites for algae to grow. Appropriate topography, climate, proximity to water supplies -- whether freshwater, inland saline water, marine water, or wastewater -- and proximity to nutrient supplies would have to be matched carefully to ensure successful and sustainable fuel production and avoid costs and energy consumption for transporting those resources to cultivation facilities. If the suitable sites for growing algae are near urban or suburban centers or coastal recreation areas, the price of those lands could be prohibitive. A national assessment of land requirements for algae cultivation that takes into account various concerns is needed to inform the potential amount of algal biofuels that could be produced economically in the U.S. One of the primary motivations for using alternative fuels for transportation is reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, estimates of greenhouse gas emissions over the life cycle of algal biofuel production span a wide range; some studies suggest that algal biofuel production generates less greenhouse gas emissions than petroleum-based fuels while other studies suggest the opposite. These emissions depend on many factors in the production process, including the amount of energy needed to dewater and harvest algae and the electricity sources used. The committee emphasized that the crucial aspects to sustainable development are positioning algal growth ponds close to water and nutrient resources and recycling essential resources. With proper management and good engineering designs, other environmental effects could be avoided, the committee said. Examples include releasing harvest water in other bodies of water and creating algal blooms and allowing harvest water to seep into ground water. For algal biofuels to contribute a significant amount of fuels for transportation in the future, the committee said, research and development would be needed to improve algal strains, test additional strains for desired characteristics, advance the materials and methods for growing and processing algae into fuels, and reduce the energy requirements for multiple stages of production. To aid the U.S. Department of Energy in its decision-making process regarding sustainable algal biofuel development, the committee proposed a framework that includes an assessment of sustainability throughout the supply chain, a cumulative impact analysis of resource use or environmental effects, and cost-benefit analyses.

AT: Food Scarcity

New agricultural models proves no food scarcity will existEisenstein, Analyst and Senior Writer and graduated from Yale University in 1989 with a degree in Mathematics and Philosophy, 13(Charles, 09-3-13, Resilience, “Permaculture and The Myth Of Scarcity”, http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-09-03/permaculture-and-the-myth-of-scarcity, accessed 7-2-14, YLP)Food scarcity, in fact, is a myth. In Sacred Economics I cite research showing that when it is done properly, organic growing methods can deliver two to three times the yield of conventional methods. (Studies showing the opposite are poorly constructed. Of course if you take two fields and plant each with a monocrop, then the one without pesticides will do worse than the one with, but that isn’t really what organic farming is.) Conventional agriculture doesn’t seek to maximize yield per acre; it seeks to maximize yield per unit of labor. If we had 10% of the population engaged in agriculture rather than the

current 1%, we could easily feed the country without petrochemicals or pesticides. It turns out, though, that my statistics are way

too conservative. The latest permaculture methods can deliver much more than just double or triple the yield of

conventional farming. I recently came across this article by David Blumechronicling his nine-year permaculture enterprise in California. Running a CSA for 300-450 people on two acres of land, he achieved yields eight times what the Department of Agriculture says is possible per square foot. He didn’t do it by “mining the soil” either – soil fertility increased dramatically over his time there. When people project an imminent food crisis based on population growth or Peak Oil, they take for granted the agricultural methods we practice today. Thus, while the transitional period may involve temporary food shortages and real hardship, permaculture methods can easily feed the peak world population of perhaps 10 or 11 billion we’ll see by mid-century. It is true that the old, control-based methods of agriculture are nearing the peak of their productive potential. Further investments in this kind of technology are bringing diminishing marginal returns – witness the proliferation of Roundup-resistant weeds and the “necessity” of new kinds of herbicides to deal with them. This parallels the situation with so many other kinds of control-based technology, whether in medicine, in education, politics…. we are indeed nearing the end of an era.

AT: Water Wars

Water wars promote cooperation – international law checks the impactIRIN News, 4/22[“Analysis: Water and conflict”, http://www.irinnews.org/report/99972/analysis-water-and-conflict, 7/2/14, TYBG] In 2001 then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared: “Fierce competition for fresh water may well become a source of conflict and wars in the future.” A year later he revised that position, saying water problems could be a “catalyst for cooperation ”. Delivered after decades of “water war” threats that never materialized, Annan’s conflicting statements hint at the complexity of understanding how water and conflict interact. Ahead of a water security summit in Malaysia on 23 April called the 2014 Aid & International Development Forum, IRIN talked to experts to learn more. “If you come at it analysing water like other resources, you’ll see an absence of conflict in a lot of situations where you might expect to see conflict,” explained Janani Vivekananda, the environment, climate change and security manager at London-based International Alert’s peacebuilding issues programme. In fact, some scholars point to an ancient Babylonian conflict 4,500 years ago as being the only true “water war” to have ever occurred . But when one fifth of the world’s population faces water scarcity and another 1.6 billion people live in countries where infrastructure is too weak to get water to where it is needed, why is there not more violence over this precious resource? And how dire are warnings from the US Central Intelligence Agency such as: “During the next 10 years, many countries… will experience water problems - shortages, poor water quality, or floods - that will risk instability and state failure, [and] increase regional tensions”? By way of an answer, experts point to unique characteristics surrounding water : it is a natural resource that makes it both valuable and a challenge to control; there is an international legal framework that encourages local cooperation; and there is also a ubiquitous understanding that sustained water access is vital for life to continue.

AT: Seaweed

Global seaweed aquaculture is impossible—the oceans are too crowded and no organizations exist to oversee their developmentCosta-Pierce, University of New England Marine Science Center Director, 2012[Barry A., 1-29-12, Ecological Aquaculture, “EXPANSION OF SEAWEED AQUACULTURE IS NOT A PANACEA: IT NEEDS ECOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO DEVELOPMENT AND AN ENLIGHTENED GOVERNANCE SYSTEM TO BE AN IMPORTANT SOLUTION TO GLOBAL FOOD SECURITY,” http://ecologicalaquaculture.org/welcome/2012/01/29/expansion-of-seaweed-aquaculture-is-not-a-panacea-it-needs-ocean-space-and-a-governance-system-to-be-an-important-solution-to-global-food-security/, 6-25-14, IC]Seaweed aquaculture is now being seen in a new light for good reasons, but again is being viewed as yet another “new”

panacea. It is neither new, nor is a panacea. Scientists have well recognized all of its advantages versus land-based farming. The development of alternative, socio-ecological approaches to the science and management of aquaculture has been formalized (see the Ecosystem Approach to Aquacultureby the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations). However, large scale global projections of seaweed farms of 180,000 square kilometers, the size of Washington state, and seaweeds providing enough protein for the entire world population, or setting aside 3% of the world’s oceans for seaweed farming to

meet world energy needs are fanciful, and get us nowhere. The governance systems of coastal states, and of the

ocean commons, are completely inadequate to handle these types of large scale seaweed aquaculture developments. China is the world’s largest producer of farmed seaweed (63% of global production), but just one massive seaweed farm (located in Jiazhou Bay in Quingdao) accounts for almost half of global production (and is visible from space!). Needless to say, China has a very unique governance system that is incompatible with that of most coastal nations. Overall, the governance systems to manage the ocean commons for large scale seaweed developments do not exist (see Walljasper, 2010). Expansion of seaweed aquaculture will be viewed by many ocean agencies and decision-makers as yet another “new” use of already crowded ocean

space, and will compete for that space with increased maritime traffic, energy and mining developments, just to

name a few, so rigorous spatial planning within a participatory governance system with plans for adaptive management will be needed (see examples: the R.I. Ocean Special Area Management Plan and the Massachusetts Ocean Management Plan). In many parts of the

world, such participatory ocean planning and adaptive management processes do not exist, or are in their infancy.

Marine aquaculture can flourish on a crowded ocean planet only if such processes exist. If they do our greatest opportunity may be within the jurisdiction of small island states with their vast coastlines and huge exclusive economic zones (EEZs). As H.E. Mr. Peter Thomson, Permanent Representative of Fiji to the United Nations stated recently on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States at the Rio+20 Second Preparatory Committee Meeting in New York, “We are not ‘small island’ nations, but ‘large ocean’ nations.”

AT: Food Prices

Internal market policies solve global agricultural price fluctuationsHendrix visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, is Assistant Professor of Government at the College of William & Mary 2011 [Cullen S. Hendrix, , 7-11, [“Markets vs. Malthus: Food Security and the Global Economy,” Policy Brief, N u m b er Pb 11-12, http://www.mi.iie.com/publications/pb/pb11-12.pdf] E. Liu]Beginning with the Agricultural Act of 1949 in the United States and the Treaty of Rome in the European Union, enhancing food self-sufficiency through programs of domestic subsidies has been a goal of agricultural policy in the developed world. Japan’s agricultural markets are character- ized by even more massive distortions. In spite of significant pressure during the Doha round of WTO negotiations, the United States and European Union have been reticent to back away from significant domestic support for agriculture, and Japanese liberalization has been glacial. In the midst of the 2007–08 crisis, Michel Barnier, current EU Commissioner for Internal Market and Services and then French Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, defended the EU’s policy on food self-sufficiency, arguing, “Food is not televisions or cars. You can’t leave all that to the laws of the market.”11 While food sovereignty—or reducing import depen- dency , at least—has been on the agenda in the United States and Europe for decades, it is back in vogue in the developing world. In 1960, developing countries ran food trade surpluses totaling $1 billion; by the beginning of the 21st century, defi- cits were the norm and 48 of 63 low income countries, and 45 of the 46 least developed countries, were net food importers. Speaking this year at the World Social Forum in Dakar, former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said that African nations should pursue a “green revolution” and move toward food self-sufficiency, noting, “There can be no sovereignty without food sovereignty.”12 During the price spike of 2007–08, over 85 percent of the 105 emerging and developing countries surveyed by the World Bank had taken some policy measures to reduce the trans- mission of world food prices to domestic consumers. While these measures included a reduction of import restrictions, they also included releasing food from reserves, price controls and consumer subsidies, direct cash transfers, food-for-work programs, food rations or stamps, and export restrictions, some of which, particularly export restrictions, have large market- distorting effects (FAO 2008, World Bank 2008, 2009). Acute crises often call for extensive market interventions. In the aftermath of these crises, however, renewed emphasis has been placed on food sovereignty or food self-sufficiency as a durable policy goal by many developing countries. Even Qatar and Saudi Arabia, two arid countries with extremely limited access to renewable water, announced plans to become food self-sufficient through a mixture of increasing domestic production and leasing farmland abroad. Qatar plans to increase cultivated land by over 140 percent in the next decade using water from solar-powered desalinization plants.13 Olivier de Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, recently called on the G20 to help developing countries reverse dependence on food imports via producer subsidies and protected markets.14 There is some evidence that agricultural protectionism is rising. Since 2007, global average import tariffs on maize, the main staple in much of Latin American and Africa, have increased by 68 percent, while the percentage of duty free maize imports has dropped by over a third (see figure 3). Tariffs for wheat, however, have seen secular declines throughout the period.

Sea Colonies

1NC

Colonies fail – Laundry List

[] Don’t solve extinction – nations can still launch nukes at the colonies – even if the colonies are underwater, the aquaculture has to be aboveFloating settlements fail- political, physical, and technological complication plague development and cause costs to balloonLee, member of the Association of Professional Futurists and founder of Strategic Foresight Investments, ‘04[James H., February 2004, Journal of Futures Studies, “Microtopias,” http://www.jfs.tku.edu.tw/8-3/A02.pdf, 06/29/14, PD]Political considerations aside, there are also many purely physical challenges to creation of a floating microtopia. The sea is a harsh and difficult environment for constructio n. Storms , waves and ocean currents all pose potential design challenges . The ocean i s largely a 3% solution of salt water, which has known corrosive qualities . Biofouling from barnacles and local plant life can impair mobility and longevity for any ocean-going craft. These issues can turn the creation of a floating paradise into a potentially expensive proposition. Projects such as the Freedom Ship will cost billions of dollars to complete. Countless new country projects have floundered due to inadequate funding . Unless these projects are made profitable (such as at ResidenSea).

Very few of them will be funded as a matter of philanthropic principal. Furthermore, there is also the issue of financing . One could hardly expect to apply for a 30-year mortgage backed by the Federal Housing Authority for a n experimental seastead . (How would it pass inspection?) This issue alone could place many of these alternative communities out of

consideration for many. Assuming that a microtopia is established, there is also the question of sustainability . A microtopia may be responsible for the generation of its own food, energy, raw materials and economic support. A "balance of energy” is required such that a microtopia should rave a self-sufficient supply of energy, or else it

would have to rely upon out- side sources. Many plans for microtopias rely on OTEC technology (explained earlier). While this is uniquely appropriate for oceanic colonies, it is still a largely theoretical technology . Also, OTECs have some scalability issues. Large OTECs can exploit much greater thermal differential and

therefore generate significant levels of productivity. Unfortunately, initial start-up costs increase dramatically with size as well. There are currently no operating OTEC plants. Several projects have treated OTEC as a virtually free energy source, when it is in reality very expensive ." Alternatives to this would be solar or wind energy, which are generally competitive with traditional sources of energy only when located "off-grid.”

[] The Buoyancy and Energy internal link concedes that sea colonies are built slowly and one at a time, meaning by the time enough of the human population lives on the VLFSs, their impacts would have already occurred

Aquaculture Fails

Aquaculture fails and is environmentally hazardous – significant waste, diseases, chemical run-off, and invasive species means the technology doesn’t protect fish stocksMother Jones, news organization, 6[March/April, Mother Jones, “Is Aquaculture the Answer?,” http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/03/aquaculture-answer, accessed 7/2/14, TYBG]Q: Can aquaculture have a negative impact on the environment? A: Yes, very much so. Organic wastes from fish cages in public waters can have a significant effect on the surrounding water quality. Waste from fish farms can include : fecal matter and uneaten food , along with chemicals used in farming such as pesticides, herbicides, and antibiotics. Because fish and other organisms are kept in close proximity, they are more likely to breed diseases. All of these can impact the surrounding environment . In addition, many " crops" are transported from one region to another for farming, which can introduce new organisms and diseases into the surrounding area. A few examples: In New Brunswick, despite the fact that salmon farming sites occupy less than 0.01 percent of the

coastal area in their region, scientists have found significant degradation of the water in the surrounding area. A: lowered oxygen levels, replacement of native seaweeds with invasive species, algal blooms, reduction of wild species, and a loss of nursery habitat for wild fish. In the United States, a pathogen that attacks the eastern oyster was likely introduced into the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts through aquaculture. There are also concerns that fish will escape from the fish farms and either breed with wild fish — affecting genetic diversity and decreasing their survivability — or else compete for food and spread diseases . Over the past decade, nearly one million non-native Atlantic salmon have escaped from fish farms and established

themselves in streams of the Pacific Northwest. Q: Are some fish farms dependent on wild fisheries for food? A: Yes. Many farmed fish species are carnivorous, so other wild fish species must be harvested to maintain the farm. Carnivorous species of fish, such as salmon, trout, tuna, grouper, and cod, require a protein rich, high-energy diet. Herring are used to make salmon feed, so they have been heavily harvested in the wild, putting pressure on the many other wild species that depend on herring for food. So fish farms can end up leading to over- fishing of the very wild fisheries they are supposed to help protect.

Chamberland Solvency Args

a. Submarine collisions and sonar interference Chamberland, Nuclear Engineer, 2007[Dennis, Former United States Naval Officer and M.S. in Bioenvironmental engineering @ Oklahoma State, Undersea Colonies: the future of permanent undersea settlements, page 184, JF]But submarines are most famous for their conspicuous lack of windows and if they fail to update their charts or the navigator is not paying attention, it could be a very bad day for everyone . The seas of the world

are full of submarines from many nations and to prevent undersea collisions, everybody has to be paying attention. It is likely that all undersea colonies will have some form of acoustic warning device so that if a submarine passes within their range, they can activate it immediately. This requires that the submariners of the world know what that noise means and that it therefore warns them away instead of actually attracting them! The other hazard is exposure to the submarine’s powerful sonar. Inside an undersea colony,

if a submarine is located ‘feet’ away and pings the colony directly , the acoustic energy could cause damage to the structure or harm the hearing of those inside . However, the undersea colony will be the noisiest thing in the oceans and submarines will certainly hear it miles away. Hopefully they will understand the source of that noise by looking on their corrected charts before they rush over to see what it is! Of all the nameless hazards , submarines worry me the most.

b. Hurricanes Chamberland, Nuclear Engineer, 7[Dennis, Former United States Naval Officer and M.S. in Bioenvironmental engineering @ Oklahoma State, Undersea Colonies: the future of permanent undersea settlements, page 184, JF]For colonies in hurricane or typhoon prone waters, these are the next biggest threat . As we have discussed in

previous chapters, these storms come with a mighty punch of hydrodynamic energy. It is very probable that colonists in the path of a storm will be evacuated. In this event, the greatest threat to the colonists will be their attitude. If they see themselves as ‘permanent’ colonists with no intention of ever returning to the surface, they may resist evacuation . As Mission Commander, I would require that all possible crew members submit to a psychological evaluation to pre-determine any such mindsets. ‘Permanence’ as a resident of the sea in no way means that they will never again stick their heads above the surface. It means the Aquatican views the undersea dominion as their permanent home. It does not mean they will never visit relatives, take vacations or in many cases take a shore based job and return home to Aquatica each day. And it most certainly does not mean they cannot leave in the face of a hurricane! It is no more of a ‘shame’ for an Aquatican to evacuate to safety in a hurricane threat than any other land based citizen. A well placed hurricane or typhoon has just as much potential to leave an undersea colony in shambles as it does any other city.

c. Oxygen depletionChamberland, Nuclear Engineer, 2007[Dennis, Former United States Naval Officer and M.S. in Bioenvironmental engineering @ Oklahoma State, Undersea Colonies: the future of permanent undersea settlements, page 223, JF]An undersea habitat – whether it is on shore or under the sea – is a closed system. That means the very second you close the door, you begin depleting your oxygen and creating a cloud of carbon dioxide that you will have to re-breath e . This system is therefore a dangerous one by its most elemental definition. I would strongly suggest you take the very same approach I always have when building an undersea habitat – leave the windows and doors off until you are ready for the water.

Warming

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No Warming

No warming – historical data disproves the climate change hypothesis and statistical analysis disproves the predictive capability of climate models Fyfe, Research Scientist with the Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling, et al, 13 [John, with Nathan Gillett, Research Scientist with the Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling, and Francis Zwiers, Director of the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium and Adjunct Professor in the Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics of the University of Victoria, September, “Overestimated Global Warming Over the Past 20 Years,” Nature, Vol. 3, p. 767-769] Global mean surface temperature over the past 20 years (1993–2012) rose at a rate of 0.14 ± 0.06 °C per decade (95% confidence interval)1. This rate of warming is significantly slower than that simulated by the

climate models participating in Phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). To illustrate this, we considered

trends in global mean surface temperature computed from 117 simulations of the climate by 37 CMIP5

models (see Supplementary Information). These models generally simulate natural variability — including that associated

with the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and explosive volcanic eruptions — as well as estimate the combined response of climate to changes in greenhouse gas concentrations, aerosol abundance (of sulphate, black carbon and organic

carbon, for example), ozone concentrations (tropospheric and stratospheric), land use (for example, deforestation) and solar variability. By averaging simulated temperatures only at locations where corresponding observations exist, we find an average simulated rise in global mean surface temperature of 0.30 ± 0.02 °C per decade (using 95% confidence

intervals on the model average). The observed rate of warming given above is less than half of this simulated rate , and only a few simulations provide warming trends within the range of observational uncertainty (Fig. 1a).

The inconsistency between observed and simulated global warming is even more striking for temperature trends computed over the past fifteen years (1998–2012). For this period, the observed trend of 0.05 ± 0.08 °C per decade is more than four times smaller than the average simulated trend of 0.21 ± 0.03 °C per decade (Fig. 1b). It is worth noting

that the observed trend over this period — not significantly different from zero — suggests a temporary ‘hiatus’ in

global warming 2–4. The divergence between observed and CMIP5- simulated global warming begins in the early 1990s, as can be seen

when comparing observed and simulated running trends from 1970–2012 (Fig. 2a and 2b for 20-year and 15-year running trends, respectively). The evidence, therefore, indicates that the current generation of climate models (when run as a group, with the

CMIP5 prescribed forcings) do not reproduce the observed global warming over the past 20 years, or the slowdown in global warming over the past fifteen years. This interpretation is supported by statistical

tests of the null hypothesis that the observed and model mean trends are equal, assuming that either: (1) the models are exchangeable with each other (that is, the ‘truth plus error’ view); or (2) the models are exchangeable with each other and with the observations (see Supplementary Information). Differences between observed and simulated 20-year trends have p values (Supplementary Information) that drop to close to zero by 1993–2012 under assumption (1) and to 0.04 under assumption (2) (Fig. 2c). Here we note that the smaller the p value is, the stronger the evidence against the null hypothesis. On this basis, the rarity of the 1993–2012 trend difference under assumption (1) is obvious. Under assumption (2), this implies that such an inconsistency is only expected to occur by chance once in 500 years, if 20-year periods are considered statistically independent. Similar results apply to trends for 1998–2012 (Fig. 2d). In conclusion, we reject the null hypothesis that the observed and model mean trends are equal at the 10% level. One possible explanation for the discrepancy is that forced and internal variation might combine differently in observations than in models. For example, the forced

trends in models are modulated up and down by simulated sequences of ENSO events, which are not expected to

coincide with the observed sequence of such events. For this reason the moderating influence on global

warming that arises from the decay of the 1998 El Niño event does not occur in the models at that time. Thus we employ here an established technique to estimate the impact of ENSO on global mean temperature, and to incorporate the effects of dynamically induced atmospheric variability and major explosive volcanic eruptions 5,6. Although these three

natural variations account for some differences between simulated and observed global warming, these differences do not substantively change our conclusion that observed and simulated global warming are not in

agreement over the past two decades (Fig. 3). Another source of internal climate variability that may contribute to the

inconsistency is the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation7 (AMO). However, this is difficult to assess as the observed and simulated variations in global temperature that are associated with the AMO seem to be dominated by a large and concurrent signal of presumed anthropogenic origin (Supplementary Fig. S1). It is worth noting that in any case the AMO has not driven cooling over the past 20 years. Another possible driver of the difference between observed and simulated global warming is increasing stratospheric

aerosol concentrations. Results from several independent datasets show that stratospheric aerosol

abundance has increased since the late 1990s, owing to a series of comparatively small tropical volcanic eruptions8 . Although none of the CMIP5 simulations take this into account, two independent sets of model simulations estimate that increasing stratospheric aerosols have had a surface cooling impact of about 0.07 °C per

decade since 1998,9. If the CMIP5 models had accounted for increasing stratospheric aerosol, and had responded with the same surface

cooling impact, the simulations and observations would be in closer agreement. Other factors that contribute to the

discrepancy could include a missing decrease in stratospheric water vapour 10 (whose processes are not well

represented in current climate models), errors in aerosol forcing in the CMIP5 models, a bias in the prescribed solar

irradiance trend , the possibility that the transient climate sensitivity of the CMIP5 models could be on average

too high 11,12 or a possible unusual episode of internal climate variability not considered above 13,14. Ultimately the causes of this inconsistency will only be understood after careful comparison of simulated internal climate variability and climate model forcings with observations from the past two decades, and by waiting to see how global temperature responds over the coming decades.

No Impact

Even if warming is real it doesn’t cause extinction – the newest IPCC report concludes with other independent studies that catastrophe is impossible – slowing population growth, energy efficiency, and innovation Ridley, writer at the Financial Post, 14[Matt, 6/19/14, The Financial Post, “Junk Science Week: IPCC commissioned models to see if global warming would reach dangerous levels this century. Consensus is ‘no’,” http://business.financialpost.com/2014/06/19/ipcc-climate-change-warming/, accessed 7/1/14, TYBG]The debate over climate change is horribly polarized. From the way it is conducted, you would think that only two positions are possible: that the whole thing is a hoax or that catastrophe is inevitable. In fact there is room for lots of intermediate positions, including the view I hold, which is that man-made climate change is real but not likely to do much harm , let alone prove to be the greatest crisis facing humankind this century. After more than 25 years reporting and commenting on this topic for various media organizations, and having started out alarmed, that’s where I have ended up. But it is not just I that hold this view. I share it with a very large international organization, sponsored by the United Nations and supported by virtually all the world’s governments: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) itself. The IPCC commissioned four different models of what might happen to the world economy, society and technology in the 21st century and what each would mean for the climate, given a certain assumption about the atmosphere’s “sensitivity” to carbon dioxide. Three of the models show a moderate, slow and mild warming , the hottest of which leaves the planet just 2 degrees Centigrade warmer than today in 2081-2100. The coolest comes out just 0.8 degrees warmer. Now two degrees is the threshold at which warming starts to turn dangerous, according to the scientific consensus. That is to say, in three of the four scenarios considered by the IPCC, by the time my children’s children are elderly, the earth will still not have experienced any harmful warming, let alone catastrophe. But what about the fourth scenario? This is known as RCP8.5, and it produces 3.5 degrees of warming in 2081-2100. Curious to know what assumptions lay behind this model, I decided to look up the original papers describing the creation of this scenario. Frankly, I was gobsmacked. It is a world that is very, very implausible . For a start, this is a world of “continuously increasing global population” so that there are 12 billion on the planet. This is more than a billion more than the United Nations expects, and flies in the face of the fact that the world population growth rate has been falling for 50 years and is on course to reach zero – i.e., stable population – in around 2070. More people mean more emissions. Second, the world is assumed in the RCP8.5 scenario to be burning an astonishing 10 times as much coal as today, producing 50% of its primary energy from coal, compared with about 30% today. Indeed, because oil is assumed to have become scarce, a lot of liquid fuel would then be derived from coal. Nuclear and renewable technologies contribute little, because of a “slow pace of innovation” and hence “fossil fuel technologies continue to dominate the primary energy portfolio over the entire time horizon of the RCP8.5 scenario.” Energy efficiency has improved very little. These are highly unlikely assumptions. With abundant natural gas displacing coal on a huge scale in the United States today, with the price of solar power plummeting , with nuclear power experiencing a revival , with gigantic methane-hydrate gas resources being discovered on the seabed , with energy efficiency rocketing upwards, and with population growth rates continuing to fall fast in virtually every country in the world, the one thing we can say about RCP8.5 is that it is very, very implausible. Notice, however, that even so, it is not a world of catastrophic pain. The per capita income of the average human being in 2100 is three times what it is now. Poverty would be history. So it’s hardly Armageddon. But there’s an even more startling fact. We now have many different studies of climate sensitivity based on observational data and they all converge on the conclusion that it is much lower than assumed by the IPCC in these models . It has to be, otherwise global temperatures would have risen much faster than they have over the past 50 years. As Ross McKitrick

noted on this page earlier this week, temperatures have not risen at all now for more than 17 years. With these much

more realistic estimates of sensitivity (known as “transient climate response”), even RCP8.5 cannot produce dangerous warming. It manages just 2.1C of warming by 2081-2100. That is to say, even if you pile crazy assumption upon crazy assumption till you have an edifice of vanishingly small probability, you cannot even manage to make climate change cause minor damage in the time of our grandchildren, let alone catastrophe. That’s not me saying this – it’s the IPCC itself.

Modeling

The aff doesn’t get modeled – this means they can win all of their other internal links but OTEC isn’t sufficient to solve warming because structural international barriers prevent a global shiftKlein, environmental writer, 14[Ezra, 6/5/14, Vox, “7 reasons America will fail on climate change,” http://www.vox.com/2014/6/5/5779040/7-reasons-America-fail-global-warming, accessed 7/2/14, TYBG]In 2006, China passed the United States as the world's leading emitter of carbon dioxide. And their emissions aren't projected to peak until 2030. They talk about capping carbon emissions, but as Plumer writes, there's little reason to be optimistic. "So far, when China has had to choose between economic growth and cutting its emissions, it usually chooses growth ." At the same time, the hope is that India will continue to develop and Indonesia will continue to develop and Brazil will continue to develop and Sub-Saharan Africa will see growth surge. All that development is carbon intensive, at least using current technologies. If all goes

well for the world's poor it's going to go very badly for the planet. This is climate change 's ugliest tradeoff: it pit s our most fundamental economic goal against our core environmental imperative. I n the modern world, better lives are more carbon-intensive lives. As people get richer they want to eat meat and drive cars and live in bigger

homes and travel to wonderful places. They know that America powered its growth with cheap fossil fuels and they don't find it very credible when we warn them against doing the same — particularly when we're not radically upending our lives and our economy to transition to renewable fuels. In a dangerous but brilliant essay, Chris Hayes builds on work by Bill McKibben to put numbers to what we're asking countries and companies to do. The basic estimate is that we can safely burn about 565 gigatons of carbon dioxide by midcentury. But experts think there's about 2,700 gigatons of carbon dioxide in proven fossil fuel reserves — and much more might yet be discovered. Consider what that means: The work of the climate movement is to find a way to force the powers that be, from the government of Saudi Arabia to the board and shareholders of ExxonMobil, to leave 80 percent of the carbon they have claims on in the ground . That stuff you own, that property you're counting on and pricing into your stocks? You can't have it. Given the fluctuations of fuel prices, it's a bit tricky to put an exact price tag on how much money all that unexcavated carbon would

be worth, but one financial analyst puts the price at somewhere in the ballpark of $20 trillion . So in order to preserve a roughly habitable planet, we somehow need to convince or coerce the world's most profitable corporations and the nations that partner with them to walk away from $20 trillion of wealth. The nearest thing to an economic analogue in American history, Hayes argues, is abolitionism. But this isn't just about America. This carbon is locked underground in China and Uzbekistan and Iran and Russia and Nigeria and Venezuela. It's owned by energy companies, in some cases, but it's owned by nations in others. The kind of international cooperation (and, perhaps, international redistribution) required to pass, implement and verify viable carbon caps is completely unprecedented, at least outside of wartime.

Adaptation Solves

No extinction – we have time to adaptMendelsohn, Professor of Environmental Studies at Yale University, 9(Robert O., “Climate Change and Economic Growth,” http://www.growthcommission.org/storage/cgdev/documents/gcwp060web.pdf) These statements are largely alarmist and misleading. Although climate change is a serious problem that deserves attention,

society’s immediate behavior has an extremely low probability of leading to catastrophic consequences. The science and economics of climate change is quite clear that emissions over the next few decades will lead to only mild consequences. The severe impacts predicted by alarmists require a century (or two in the case of Stern

2006) of no mitigation. Many of the predicted impacts assume there will be no or little adaptation. The net economic impacts from climate change over the next 50 years will be small regardless. Most of the more severe impacts will take more than a century or even a millennium to unfold and many of these “potential” impacts will never occur because people will adapt. It is not at all apparent that immediate and dramatic policies need to be developed to thwart long‐range climate risks. What is needed are long‐run balanced responses.

Too Late

Too late to solve warming- we can’t avoid it Dickinson 9 (Pete, 26 August 2009, The Socialist Alternative, “Global Warming: Can we avoid it?”, http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article19.php?id=1142, 7/1/14, JA) Note – paper cited is by Susan Solomon - atmospheric chemist working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – Gian-Kasper Plattnerb- Group, Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, UCLA - Reto Knuttic - Institute for Atmopsheric and Climate Science, PhDNew research is claiming that concentrations of carbon dioxide (the main greenhouse gas, CO2) will remain high for at least 1,000 years, even if greenhouse gases are eliminated in the next few decades. The climate scientists who

produced this work assert that the effects of global warming , such as high sea levels and reduced rainfall in certain areas, will also persist over this time scale. (The findings are in a paper published in February in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by researchers from the USA, Switzerland and France, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0812721106 ) Most previous estimates of the longevity of global warming effects, after greenhouse gases were removed, have ranged from a few decades to a century, so this new analysis could represent a development with very serious implications, including political ones. For example, those campaigning for action on climate change could be disheartened and climate sceptics could opportunistically say that

nothing should be done because it is now too late . The authors of the paper make various estimates of CO2 concentrations based on

the year emissions are cut, assumed to be from 2015 to 2050. They make optimistic assumptions, for instance, that emissions are cut at a stroke rather than graduall y, and that their annual rate of growth before cut-off is 2%, not the 3%

plus witnessed from 2000-05. They then estimate what the effects would be on surface warming, sea level rise and rainfall over a 1,000-year period using the latest climate models. The results of the melting of the polar ice caps are not included in the calculations of sea levels, only the expansion of the water in the oceans caused by the surface temperature increase so, as the authors point out, the actual new sea level will be much higher. The best-case results for surface warming, where action is taken in 2015 to eliminate

emissions, show that over 1,000 years the temperature rises from 1.3 to 1.0 degree centigrade above pre-industrial levels. The worst case, where action is delayed to 2050, predicts surface temperatures will increase from just under to just over four degrees by 2320 and then remain approximately constant for the rest of the millennium. High levels of CO2 persist in the atmosphere because, over long timescales, reduction of the gas is dependent on the ability of the oceans to absorb it , but there are limits to

this due to the physics and chemistry of deep-ocean mixing. On the other hand, the amount of heat in the atmosphere that can be

absorbed by the sea , the key way surface temperatures are decreased, is limited by the same scientific laws. As a result, carbon concentrations cannot fall enough to force temperatures down while there is simultaneously reduced cooling due to limited heat loss to the oceans.

AT: Phytoplankton

Phytoplankton sequestration is minimal – defer to recent scientific studiesScience Daily, 9[1/29/2009, “Iron Fertilization To Capture Carbon Dioxide Dealt A Blow: Plankton Stores Much Less Carbon Dioxide Than Estimated”, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090128183744.htm, 7/2/14, TYBG]A possible solution to global warming may be further away than ever, according to a new report published in the journal Nature. Scientists measuring how much of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is locked away in the deep ocean by plankton when it dies found that it was significantly less than previous estimates. Plankton is a natural sponge for carbon dioxide. It occurs naturally in the ocean and its growth is stimulated by iron which it uses to photosynthesis and growth. When plankton dies it sinks to the bottom of the ocean locking away some of the carbon it has absorbed from the atmosphere. Fertilising plankton by the artificial addition of iron has long been proposed as a potential way to geo-engineer the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Researchers analysed an area of the Southern ocean known to be naturally rich in iron and their report reveals that the amount of carbon sequestered to the deep ocean for a given input of natural iron falls far short of previous geo-engineering estimates. This has serious implications for proposals to influence climate change through iron fertilisation of the sea.

AT: Sequestration – Barry

CO2 emissions of OTEC plants outweigh sequestrationBarry, Naval architect and co-chair of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineer , 08(Christopher, 7-1-08, Renewable Energy World, “Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion and CO2 Sequestration”, http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2008/07/ocean-thermal-energy-conversion-and-co2-sequestration-52762, accessed 7-1-14, YLP)The actual effectiveness of OTEC in raising ocean fertility and thereby sequestering carbon still has to be verified, and there has to be a careful examination of other possible harmful environmental impacts — an old saying among

engineers is "it seemed like a good idea at the time." The most important issue is that the deep water already has substantial dissolved carbon dioxide, and so an OTEC plant may actually release more carbon than it sequesters, or it might just speed up the existing cycle, sending down as much as it brings up with no net effect. This question has to be answered before OTEC is implemented. It may also be possible to optimize sequestration by being selective about the depths that water is drawn from, or possibly by adding other trace nutrients, especially those that enhance species that sequester carbon in shells. An OTEC plant optimized for ocean fertility will also probably be different than one optimized to generate power, so any OTEC-based carbon scheme has to include transfer payments of some sort — it won't come for free. Finally, who owns the ocean thermal resource? Most plants will be in international waters, though these waters tend to be off the coasts of the developing world.

AT: Bio-d

IPPC conceded there’s no real risk of extinction – their own simulations disprove the impactBojanowski, Graduate Geologist and writer at Spiegel Online, 4/26[Axel, “UN Backtracks: Will Global Warming Really Trigger Mass Extinctions?, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/new-un-climate-report-casts-doubt-on-earlier-extinction-predictions-a-960569.html, 7/1/14, TYBG]The last remaining passenger pigeon, Martha, died a century ago in a Cincinnati zoo. The bird's downfall was having tender, tasty meat so pleasing to the human palate. Hundreds of species have suffered the same fate in modern times. The last Tasmanian wolf died in an Australian zoo in 1936. Two years later, the final remaining Schomburgk's deer met its end as a pet in a Thai temple. The Chinese river dolphin hasn't been sighted for years either. In total, 77 species of mammal, 130 birds, 22 reptiles and 34 amphibians have vanished from the face of the earth since 1500, according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Humans have shrunk the habitats of many life forms, through unsustainable agriculture, fishing or hunting. And it is going to get even worse. Global warming is said to be threatening thousands of animal and plant species with extinction. That, at least, is what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been predicting for years. But the UN climate body now says it is no longer so certain. The second part of the IPCC's new assessment report is due to be presented next Monday in Yokohama, Japan. On the one hand, a classified draft of the report notes that a further "increased extinction risk for a substantial number of species during and beyond the 21st century" is to be expected. On the other hand, the IPCC admits that there is no evidence climate change has led to even a single species becoming extinct thus far. 'Crocodile Tears' At most, the draft report says, climate change may have played a role in the disappearance of a few amphibians, fresh water fish and mollusks. Yet even the icons of catastrophic global warming, the polar bears, are doing surprisingly well. Their population has remained stable despite the shrinking of the Arctic ice cap. Ragnar Kinzelbach, a zoologist at the University of Rostock, says essential data is missing for most other life forms, making it virtually impossible to forecast the potential effects of climate change. Given the myriad other human encroachments in the natural environment, Kinzelbach says,

"crocodile tears over an animal kingdom threatened by climate change are less than convincing." The draft report includes a surprising admission by the IPCC -- that it doubts its own computer simulations for species extinctions. "There is very little confidence that models currently predict extinction risk accurately ," the report notes. Very low extinction rates despite considerable climate variability during past hundreds of thousands of years have led to concern that "forecasts for very high extinction rates due entirely to climate change may be overestimated." In the last assessment report, Climate Change 2007, the IPCC predicted that 20 to 30 percent of all animal and plant species faced a high risk for extinction should average global temperatures rise by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit). The current draft report says that scientific uncertainties have "become more apparent" since 2007.

Too many alt causes that the aff can’t resolve – population, habitat destruction, pollution, and agricultureRCF, 13[Rainforest Conservation Fund, “5) Causes of recent declines in biodiversity”, http://www.rainforestconservation.org/rainforest-primer/2-biodiversity/g-recent-losses-in-biodiversity/5-causes-of-recent-declines-in-biodiversity, 7/1/14, TYBG] a. Human population growth: The geometric rise in human population levels during the twentieth century is the fundamental cause of the loss of biodiversity. It exacerbates every other factor having an impact on

rainforests (not to mention other ecosystems). It has led to an unceasing search for more arable land for food production and livestock grazing, and for wood for fuel, construction, and energy. Previously undisturbed areas (which may or may not be suitable for the purposes to which they are constrained) are being transformed into agricultural or pasture land, stripped of wood, or mined for resources to support the energy needs of an ever-growing human population. Humans also tend to settle in areas of high biodiversity, which often have relatively rich soils and other attractions for human activities. This leads to great threats to biodiversity, especially since many of these areas have numerous endemic species.

Balmford, et al., (2001) have demonstrated that human population size in a given tropical area correlates with the number of endangered species, and that this pattern holds for every taxonomic group. Most of the other effects mentioned below are either consequent to the human population expansion or related to it. The human population was approximately 600,000 million in 1700, and one billion in 1800. Just now it exceeds six billion, and low estimates are that it may reach 10 billion by the mid-21st century and 12 billion by 2100. The question is whether many ecological aspects of biological systems can be sustained under the pressure of such numbers. Can birds continue to migrate, can larger organisms have space (habitat) to forage, can ecosystems survive in anything like their present form, or are they doomed to impoverishment and degradation? b. Habitat destruction: Habitat destruction is the single most important cause of the loss of rainforest biodiversity and is directly related to human population growth. As rainforest land is converted to ranches, agricultural land (and then, frequently, to degraded woodlands, scrubland, or desert), urban areas

(cf. Brasilia) and other human usages, habitat is lost for forest organisms. Many species are widely distributed and thus, initially, habitat destruction may only reduce local population numbers. Species which are local, endemic, or which have specialized habitats are much more vulnerable to extinction, since once their particular habitat is degraded or converted for human activity, they will disappear. Most of the habitats being destroyed are those which contain the highest levels of biodiversity, such as lowland tropical wet forests. In this case, habitat loss is caused by clearing, selective logging, and burning. c. Pollution: Industrial, agricultural and waste-based pollutants can have catastrophic effects on many species. Those species which are more tolerant of pollution will

survive; those requiring pristine environments (water, air, food) will not. Thus, pollution can act as a selective agent. Pollution of water in lakes and rivers has degraded waters so that many freshwater ecosystems are dying. Since almost 12% of

animals species live in these ecosystems, and most others depend on them to some degree, this is a very serious matter. In developing countries approximately 90% of wastewater is discharged, untreated, directly into waterways. d.

Agriculture: The dramatic increase in the number of humans during the twentieth century has instigated a concomitant growth in agriculture , and has led to conversion of wildlands to croplands, massive diversions of water from lakes, rivers and underground aquifers, and , at the same time, has polluted water and land resources with pesticides, fertilizers, and animal wastes. The result has been the destruction, disturbance or disabling of terrestrial ecosystems, and polluted, oxygen-depleted and atrophied water resources. Formerly, agriculture in different regions of the world was relatively independent and local. Now, however, much of it has become part of the global exchange economy and has caused significant changes in social organization.

At worst, warming only causes biodiversity gains – best scientific studies flow affBastach, Writer for the Daily Caller, 5/15/14[Michael, “Global Warming Is Increasing Biodiversity Around The World”, http://dailycaller.com/2014/05/15/global-warming-is-increasing-biodiversity-around-the-world/, 7/1/14, TYBG]A new study published in the journal Science has astounded biologists: global warming is not harming biodiversity, but instead is increasing the range and diversity of species in various ecosystems. Environmentalists have long warned that global warming could lead to mass extinctions as fragile ecosystems around the world are made unlivable as temperatures increase. But a team of biologists from the United States, United Kingdom and Japan found that global warming has not led to a decrease in biodiversity. Instead, biodiversity has increased in many areas on land and in the ocean. “Although the rate of species extinction has increased markedly as a result of human activity across the biosphere, conservation has focused on endangered species rather than on shifts in assemblages,” reads the editor’s abstract of the report. The study says “species turnover” was “above expected but do not find evidence of systematic biodiversity loss.” The editor’s abstract adds that the result “could be caused by homogenization of species assemblages by invasive species, shifting distributions induced by climate change, and asynchronous change across the planet.” R esearchers reviewed 100 long-term species monitoring studies from around the world and found increasing biodiversity in 59 out of 100 studies and decreasing biodiversity in 41 studies. The rate of change in biodiversity was modest in all of the studies, biologists said.

AT: Dead Zones

Dead zones naturally repair themselves because they create iron sulfides that promote phytoplankton growth which in turn creates more oxygenGriffin, writer for Science World Report, 5/19[Catherine, “Dangerous Ocean 'Dead Zones' May be Limited by Natural Cutoff Switch” http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/14810/20140519/dangerous-ocean-dead-zones-limited-natural-cutoff-switch.htm, 7/1/14, TYBG]Dead zones can impact ocean ecosystems in large ways, causing fish species to decline and populations of animals to move to different locations in order to survive. Now, scientists have found that there may be a natural limiting switch to keep these ocean systems from developing persistent dead zones--and it all has to do with iron.Iron is a crucial catalyst for fueling biological productivity in the ocean. Without it, microscopic plants called phytoplankton cannot fully consume nitrates and phosphates. This, in turn, limits their growth . Iron can enter the ocean through river sediments, windblown dust and continental margin sediments. Yet this iron needs to be dissolved rather than locked up in sediments so that the phytoplankton can use it; it appears that oxygen, in this case, is the key.In a high-oxygen environment, most of the iron that is dissolved in the water precipitates and turns into iron oxide coatings on particles, which sink to the seafloor; this makes it unavailable to phytoplankton. When a hypoxic environment occurs , though, the iron oxides dissolve and may diffuse back into the water column. This makes them available to fertilize plankton growth which can make a hypoxic state worse as the plankton decays and sinks to the seafloor."When this moderate hypoxic state occurs, the iron release fuels more biological productivity and the organic particles fall to the sea floor where they decay and consume more oxygen, making hypoxia worse," said Florian Scholz, one of the researchers, in a news release. "That leads to this feedback loop of more iron release triggering more productivity, triggering more iron release."Yet there's apparently a limiting factor for hypoxia. The researchers examined concentrations of sediments dating back 140,000 years and made some interesting discoveries."But we found that when the oxygen approaches zero a new group of minerals, iron sulfides, are formed," said Scholz in a news release. "This is the key to the limit switch because when the iron gets locked up in sulfides, it is no longer dissolved and thus not available to the plankton. The runaway hypoxia stops and the hypoxic region is limited."The findings reveal that there is a limit for hypoxic conditions . That said, dead zones still remain and issue, and we should continue to limit the amount of pollutants which enter our coastal waters.

AT: Acidification

No impact to ocean acidification – it’s over-exaggerated and species can adaptRidley, British Scientist and Journalist, 12 (Matt, Jan 7, “Taking Fears of Acid Oceans With a Grain of Salt”, Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970203550304577138561444464028, Tang)Coral reefs around the world are suffering badly from overfishing and various forms of pollution. Yet many experts argue that the greatest threat to them is the acidification of the oceans from the dissolving of man-made carbon dioxide emissions.¶ The effect of acidification, according to J.E.N. Veron, an Australian coral scientist, will be "nothing less than catastrophic.... What were once thriving coral gardens that supported the greatest biodiversity of the marine realm will become red-black bacterial slime, and they will stay that way."¶ Humans have placed marine life under pressure, but the chief culprits are overfishing and pollution. John S. Dykes¶ This is a common view. The Natural Resources Defense Council has called ocean acidification "the scariest environmental problem you've never heard of." Sigourney Weaver, who narrated a film about the issue, said that "the scientists are freaked out." The head of the

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calls it global warming's "equally evil twin."¶ But do the scientific data support such alarm? Last month scientists at San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography and other authors published a study showing how much the pH level (measuring alkalinity versus acidity) varies naturally between parts of the ocean and at different times of the day, month and year.¶ "On both a

monthly and annual scale, even the most stable open ocean sites see pH changes many times larger than the annual rate of acidification, " say the authors of the study, adding that because good instruments to measure ocean pH have only recently been deployed, "this variation has been under-appreciated." Over coral reefs,

the pH decline between dusk and dawn is almost half as much as the decrease in average pH expected over the next 100 years. The noise is greater than the signal.¶ Another recent study , by scientists from the U.K., Hawaii and Massachusetts, concluded that "marine and freshwater assemblages have always experienced variable pH condition s," and that "in

many freshwater lakes, pH changes that are orders of magnitude greater than those projected for the 22nd-century oceans can occur over periods of hours ." ¶ This adds to other hints that the ocean-acidification problem may have been exaggerated . For a start, the ocean is alkaline and in no danger of becoming acid (despite headlines like that from Reuters in 2009: "Climate Change Turning Seas Acid"). If the average pH of the ocean drops to 7.8 from 8.1 by 2100 as predicted, it will still be well above seven, the neutral point where alkalinity becomes acidity.¶ The central concern is that lower pH will make it hard er for corals, clams and other "calcifier" creatures to make calcium carbonate skeletons and shells. Yet this concern also may be overstated . Off Papua New Guinea and the Italian

island of Ischia, where natural carbon-dioxide bubbles from volcanic vents make the sea less alkaline, and off the Yucatan, where underwater springs make seawater actually acidic, studies have shown that at least some kinds of calcifiers still thrive—at least as far down as pH 7.8.¶ In a recent experiment in the Mediterranean, reported in Nature Climate Change, corals and mollusks were transplanted to lower pH sites, where they proved "able to calcify and grow at even faster than normal rates when exposed to the high [carbon-dioxide] levels projected for the next 300 years." In any case, freshwater mussels thrive in Scottish rivers, where the pH is as low as five.¶ Laboratory experiments find that more marine creatures thrive than suffer when carbon dioxide lowers the pH level to 7.8. This is because the carbon dioxide dissolves mainly as bicarbonate, which many calcifiers use as raw material for carbonate.¶ Human beings have indeed placed marine ecosystems under terrible pressure, but the chief culprits are overfishing and pollution. By comparison, a very slow reduction in the alkalinity of the oceans, well within the range of natural variation, is a modest threat, and it certainly does not merit apocalyptic headlines.

AT: Disease

Satellites monitor environmental factors – that prevents spreadWalter-Range and John, Research analysts for the Space Foundation 10 (Micah and Mariel, research analyst for the Space Foundation, September 1, 2010, “Disease and Pandemic Early Warning,” Space Foundation, http://www.spacefoundation.org/sites/default/files/downloads/Solutions_from_Space_Disease_and_Pandemic_Early_Warning_0.pdf, 7/12/13)Remote sensing satellites cannot directly detect disease outbreaks but they are able to detect a wide range of environmental factors , such as ground water, vegetation, or flooding . 1 Before a model can be developed, an association must be found between environmental factors and the ecology of the disease agent or host. This is usually possible for vector-borne diseases, in which a third party, or vector, is necessary to transmit the disease. Malaria, which is spread by mosquitoes, provides a good example. Mosquitoes breed in water, so they are often more prevalent when there is a greater amount of surface water. Increased amounts of surface water or rainfall, which can be detected by remote sensing satellites, represent a possible predictor for an outbreak of malaria in regions where the disease is known to exist. 2 These models are more effective when they integrate other data sources that help to identify multiple links between environmental factors and a disease . In addition, some models incorporate the biological process of susceptibility, exposure, infection, and recovery. This requires an understanding of what causes people to be particularly vulnerable to a particular disease, the ways in which people come into contact with the disease, the process by which the infection affects the body, and the process of recovery. 3 It is also important for these models to include information about the region being studied, often referred to as geospatial information. For example, predictions of areas at risk of outbreak should take into account the population density throughout the region. If an area likely to have many mosquitoes is also near a village, there is a higher risk of a malaria outbreak than would be the case for a very sparsely populated area. Once these associations have been identified, historical data is used to demonstrate that there is a correlation between the environmental factors and disease outbreaks . In addition to the satellite imagery and population data, it is necessary to gather epidemiological data , including information about when and where outbreaks have occurred in the past, in order to validate the connection. This data can be difficult to acquire, particularly for rural areas or in developing countries. Because of the wide range of environmental factors that could affect the spread of disease in different areas, it is necessary to have data representing as much of the area of interest as possible. This first step, which includes identifying and validating links between diseases and environmental factors, is usually carried out by researchers either in academia or government. 5

Warming doesn’t cause disease – predictions are speculative, unfounded, and empirics proveMoore, Senior Fellow at Hoover Institution for Stanford University, 1[Thomas, February 2001, Stanford, “Why Global Warming Doesn't Cause Disease,” http://web.stanford.edu/~moore/WarmingandDisease.html, accessed 7/1/14, TYBG]Even if the White House ignores WCR's frequent, informative messages on global warming and health, these officials should pay attention to the experts on disease. Both the scientific community and the medical establishment say the frightful forecasts are unfounded, exaggerated, or misleading . Further, and more important for policy-makers to note, these rumors of an upsurge in disease and early mortality stemming from climate change do not require action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As Science reports: "Predictions that global warming will spark epidemics have little basis, say infectious-disease specialists, who argue that public health measures will inevitably outweigh effects of climate." The article adds: "Many of the researchers behind the dire predictions concede that the scenarios are speculative ." The director of the division of vector-borne infectious diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Duane Gubler, calls those prophecies "'gloom and doom' based on 'soft data.'" Others attribute them to "simplistic thinking." These experts agree that "breakdowns in public health rather than climate shifts are to blame for the recent disease outbreaks." Even El Nino, our most recent climate scapegoat, cannot take the blame for recent epidemics. The claim that dengue fever epidemics in Latin America in1994 and 1995 were due in part to El Nino is simply wrong. Science quotes dengue experts at the Pan American Health Organization: "The

epidemics resulted from the breakdown of eradication programs aimed at Aedes aegypti in the 1970s and the

subsequent return of the mosquito. Once the mosquito was back the dengue followed." Oh, no! Not U.S. The CDC's Gubler also dismisses the idea that these diseases may spread into the United States. According to Science, "He calls such predictions 'probably the most blatant disregard for other factors that influence disease transmission.'" Mosquito control programs, implemented decades ago, eliminated the insects that had inflicted these diseases on Americans for centuries. Heat has little, if anything, to do with it . The Gulf Coast states in the United States are warmer now than the Caribbean islands that are currently suffering from dengue fever. As Gubler says, "If temperature was the main factor, we would see epidemics in the Southern U.S. We have the mosquito; we have higher temperatures and constant introduction of viruses, which means we should have epidemics, but we don't." According to Science, even those who have made these dire predictions agree that the forecasts are speculative , but justify them as playing "a useful role in consciousness-raising." In other words, let's scare people with hobgoblins in order to convince them to do "the right thing": Give up cheap energy.

Oil

1NC

AT: Peak OilPeak oil is over exaggerated- it’s nowhere soon- their ev doesn’t assume new extraction techKlare, a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the defense correspondent of The Nation, 1/9[Michael, 1/9/14, TheNation.com, “Peak Oil Is Dead. Long Live Peak Oil!”, http://www.thenation.com/article/177859/peak-oil-dead-long-live-peak-oil, 7/1/14, JA]Among the big energy stories of 2013, “ peak oil ” —the once-popular notion that worldwide oil production would soon reach a maximum

level and begin an irreversible decline—was thoroughly discredited. The explosive development of shale oil and other unconventional fuels in the United States helped put it in its grave . As the year went on, the eulogies came

in fast and furious. “Today, it is probably safe to say we have slayed ‘peak oil’ once and for all, thanks to the combination of new shale oil and gas production techniques,” declared Rob Wile, an energy and economics reporter for Business Insider. Similar comments from energy experts were commonplace, prompting an R.I.P.headline at Time.com announcing, “Peak Oil is Dead.” Not so fast, though. The present round of eulogies brings to mind the Mark Twain’s famous line: “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Before obits for peak oil theory pile up too high, let’s take a careful look at these assertions. Fortunately, the International Energy Agency(IEA), the Paris-based research arm of the major industrialized powers, recently did just that—and the results were unexpected. While not exactly reinstalling peak oil on its throne, it did make clear that much of the talk of a perpetual gusher of American shale oil is greatly exaggerated. The exploitation of those shale reserves may delay the onset of peak oil for a year or so, the agency’s experts noted, but the long-term picture “has not changed much with the arrival of [shale oil].” The IEA’s take on this subject is especially noteworthy because its assertion only a year earlier that the US would overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s number one oil producer sparked the “peak oil is dead” deluge in the first place. Writing in the 2012 edition of its World Energy Outlook, the agency claimed not only that “the United States is projected to become the largest global oil producer” by around 2020, but also that with US shale production and Canadian tar sands coming online, “North America becomes a net oil exporter around 2030.” That November 2012 report highlighted the use of advanced production technologies—notablyhorizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”)—to extract oil and natural gas from once inaccessible rock, especially shale. It also covered the accelerating exploitation of Canada’sbitumen (tar sands or oil sands), another resource previously considered too forbidding to be economical to develop. With the output of these and other “unconventional” fuels set to explode in the years ahead, the report then suggested, the long awaited peak of world oil production could be pushed far into the future. The release of the 2012 edition of World Energy Outlook triggered a global frenzy of speculative reporting, much of it announcing a new era of American energy abundance. “Saudi America” was the headline over one such hosanna in the Wall Street Journal. Citing the new IEA study, that paper heralded a coming “US energy boom” driven by “technological innovation and risk-taking funded by private capital.” From then on, American energy analysts spoke rapturously of the capabilities of a set of new extractive technologies, especially fracking, to unlock oil and natural gas from hitherto inaccessible shale formations. “This is a real energy revolution,” the Journalcrowed. But that was then. The most recent edition of World Energy Outlook, published this past November, was a lot more circumspect. Yes, shale oil, tar sands, and other unconventional fuels will add to global supplies in the years ahead, and, yes, technology will help prolong the life of petroleum. Nonetheless, it’s easy to forget that we are also witnessing the wholesale depletion of the world’s existing oil fields and so all these increases in shale output must be balanced against declines in conventional production. Under ideal circumstances—high levels of investment, continuing technological progress, adequate demand and prices—it might be possible to avert an imminent peak in worldwide production, but as the latest IEA report makes clear, there is no guarantee whatsoever that this will occur. Inching Toward the Peak Before plunging deeper into the IEA’s assessment, let’s take a quick look at peak oil theory itself. As developed in the 1950s by petroleum geologist M. King Hubbert, peak oil theory holds that any individual oil field (or oil-producing country) will experience a high rate of production growth during initial development, when drills are first inserted into a oil-bearing reservoir. Later, growth will slow, as the most readily accessible resources have been drained and a greater reliance has to be placed on less productive deposits. At this point—usually when about half the resources in the reservoir (or country) have been extracted—daily output reaches a maximum, or “peak,” level and then begins to subside. Of course, the field or fields will continue to produce even after peaking, but ever more effort and expense will be required to extract what remains. Eventually, the cost of production will exceed the proceeds from sales, and extraction will be terminated. For Hubbert and his followers, the rise and decline of oil fields is an inevitable consequence of natural forces: oil exists in pressurized underground reservoirs and so will be forced up to the surface when a drill is inserted into the ground. However, once a significant share of the resources in that reservoir has been extracted, the field’s pressure will drop and artificial means—water, gas, or chemical insertion—will be needed to restore pressure and sustain production. Sooner or later, such means become prohibitively expensive. Peak oil theory also holds that what is true of an individual field or set of fields is true of the world as a whole. Until about 2005, it did indeed appear that the globe was edging ever closer to a peak in daily oil output, as Hubbert’s followers had long predicted. (He died in 1989.) Several recent developments have, however, raised questions about the accuracy of the theory. In particular, major private oil companies have taken to employing advanced technologies to increase the output of the reservoirs under their control, extending the lifetime of existing fields through the use of what’s called “enhanced oil recovery,” or EOR. They’ve also used new methods to exploit fields once considered inaccessible in places like the Arctic and deep oceanic waters, thereby opening up the possibility of a most un-Hubbertian future. In developing these new technologies, the privately owned “international oil companies” (IOCs) were seeking to overcome their principal handicap: most of the world’s “easy oil”—the stuff Hubbert focused on that comes gushing out of the ground whenever a drill is inserted—has already been consumed or is controlled by state-owned “national oil companies” (NOCs), including Saudi Aramco, the National Iranian Oil Company, and the Kuwait National Petroleum Company, among others. According to the IEA, such state companies control about 80 percent of the world’s known petroleum reserves, leaving relatively little for the IOCs to exploit. To increase output from the limited reserves still under their control—mostly located in

North America, the Arctic, and adjacent waters—the private firms have been working hard to develop techniques to exploit “tough oil.” In this, they have largely succeeded: they are now bringing new petroleum streams into the marketplace and, in doing so, have shaken the foundations of peak oil theory. Those who say that “peak oil is dead” cite just this combination of factors. By extending the lifetime of existing fields through EOR and adding entire new sources of oil, the global supply can be expanded indefinitely. As a result, they claim, the world possesses a “relatively boundless supply” of oil (and natural gas). This, for instance, was the way Barry Smitherman of the Texas Railroad Commission (which regulates that state’s oil industry) described the global situation at a recent meeting of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists. Peak Technology In place of peak oil, then, we have a new theory that as yet has no name but might be called techno-dynamism. There is, this theory holds, no physical limit to the global supply of oil so long as the energy industry is prepared to, and allowed to, apply its technological wizardry to the task of finding and producing more of it. Daniel Yergin, author of the industry classics, The Prize andThe Quest, is a key proponent of this theory. He recently summed up the situation this way: “Advances in technology take resources that were not physically accessible and turn them into recoverable reserves.” As a result, he added, “estimates of the total global stock of oil keep growing.” From this perspective, the world supply of petroleum is essentially boundless. In addition to “conventional” oil—the sort that comes gushing out of the ground—the IEA identifies six other potential streams of petroleum liquids: natural gas liquids; tar sands and extra-heavy oil; kerogen oil (petroleum solids derived from shale that must be melted to become usable); shale oil; coal-to-liquids (CTL); and gas-to-liquids (GTL). Together, these “unconventional” streams could theoretically add several trillion barrels of potentially recoverable petroleum to the global supply, conceivably extending the Oil Age hundreds of years into the future (and in the process, via climate change, turning the planet into an uninhabitable desert). But just as peak oil had serious limitations, so, too, does techno-dynamism. At its core is a belief that rising world oil demand will continue to drive the increasingly costly investments in new technologies required to exploit the remaining hard-to-get petroleum resources. As suggested in the 2013 edition of the IEA’s World Energy Outlook, however, this belief should be treated with considerable skepticism. Among the principal challenges to the theory are these: 1. Increasing Technology Costs: While the costs of developing a resource normally decline over time as industry gains experience with the technologies involved, Hubbert’s law of depletion doesn’t go away. In other words, oil firms invariably develop the easiest “tough oil” resources first, leaving the toughest (and most costly) for later. For example, the exploitation of Canada’s tar sands began with the strip-mining of deposits close to the surface. Because those are becoming exhausted, however, energy firms are now going after deep-underground reserves using far costlier technologies. Likewise, many of the most abundant shale oil deposits in North Dakota have now been depleted, requiring an increasing pace of drilling to maintain production levels. As a result, the IEA reports, the cost of developing new petroleum resources will continually increase: up to $80 per barrel for oil obtained using advanced EOR techniques, $90 per barrel for tar sands and extra-heavy oil, $100 or more for kerogen and Arctic oil, and $110 for CTL and GTL. The market may not, however, be able to sustain levels this high, putting such investments in doubt. 2. Growing Political and Environmental Risk: By definition, tough oil reserves are located in problematic areas. For example, an estimated 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil lies in the Arctic, along with 30 percent of its untapped natural gas. The environmental risks associated with their exploitation under the worst of weather conditions imaginable will quickly become more evident—and so, faced with the rising potential for catastrophic spills in a melting Arctic, expect a commensurate increase in political opposition to such drilling. In fact, a recent increase has sparked protests in both Alaska and Russia, including the much-publicized September 2013 attempt by activists from Greenpeace to scale a Russian offshore oil platform—an action that led to their seizure and arrest by Russian commandos. Similarly, expanded fracking operations have provoked a steady increase in anti-fracking activism. In response to such protests and other factors, oil firms are being forced to adopt increasingly stringent environmental protections, pumping up the cost of production further. Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50! 3. Climate-Related Demand Reduction: The techno-optimist outlook assumes that oil demand will keep rising, prompting investors to provide the added funds needed to develop the technologies required. However, as the effects of rampant climate change accelerate, more and more polities are likely to try to impose curbs of one sort or another on oil consumption, suppressing demand—and so discouraging investment. This is already happening in the United States, where mandated increases in vehicle fuel-efficiency standards are expected to significantly reduce oil consumption. Future “demand destruction” of this sort is bound to impose a downward pressure on oil prices, diminishing the inclination of investors to finance costly new development projects. Combine these three factors, and it is possible to conceive of a “technology peak” not unlike the peak in oil output originally envisioned by M. King Hubbert. Such a techno-peak is likely to occur when the “easy” sources of “tough” oil have been depleted, opponents of fracking and other objectionable forms of production have imposed strict (and costly) environmental regulations on drilling operations, and global demand has dropped below a level sufficient to justify investment in costly extractive operations. At that point, global oil production will decline even if supplies are “boundless” and technology is still capable of unlocking more oil every year. Peak Oil Reconsidered Peak oil theory, as originally conceived by Hubbert and his followers, was largely governed by natural forces. As we have

seen, however, these can be overpowered by the application of increasingly sophisticated technology.

Reservoirs of energy once considered inaccessible can be brought into production, and others once deemed exhausted can be returned to production; rather than being finite, the world’s petroleum base now appears virtually inexhaustible. Does this mean that global oil output will continue rising, year after year, without ever reaching a peak? That appears unlikely. What seems far more probable is that we will see a slow tapering of output over the next decade or two as costs of production rise and climate change—along with opposition to the path chosen by the energy giants—gains momentum. Eventually, the forces tending to reduce supply will overpower those favoring higher output, and a peak in production will indeed result, even if not due to natural forces alone. Such an outcome is, in fact, envisioned in one of three possible energy scenarios the IEA’s mainstream experts lay out in the latest edition of World Energy Outlook. The first assumes no change in government policies over the next 25 years and sees world oil supply rising from 87 to 110 million barrels per day by 2035; the second assumes some effort to curb carbon emissions and so projects output reaching “only” 101 million barrels per day by the end of the survey period. It’s the third trajectory, the “450 Scenario,” that should raise eyebrows. It assumes that momentum develops for a global drive to keep greenhouse gas emissions below 450 parts per million—the maximum level at which it might be possible to prevent global average temperatures from rising above two degrees Celsius (and so cause catastrophic climate effects). As a result, it foresees a peak in global oil output occurring around 2020 at about 91 million barrels per day, with a decline to 78 million barrels by 2035. It would be premature to suggest that the “450 Scenario” will be the immediate roadmap for humanity, since it’s clear enough that, for the moment, we are on a highway to hell that combines the IEA’s first two scenarios. Bear in mind, moreover, that many scientists believe a global temperature increase of even two degrees Celsius would be enough to produce catastrophic climate

effects. But as the effects of climate change become more pronounced in our lives, count on one thing: the clamor for government action will grow more intense, and so eventually we’re likely to see some variation of the 450 Scenario take shape. In the process, the world’s demand for oil will be sharply constricted, eliminating the incentive to invest in costly new production schemes. The bottom line: global peak oil remains in our future, even if not purely for the reasons given by Hubbert and his followers. With the gradual disappearance of “easy” oil, the major private firms are being forced to exploit increasingly tough, hard-to-reach reserves, thereby driving up the cost of production and potentially discouraging new investment at a time when climate change and environmental activism are on the rise. Peak oil is dead! Long live peak oil!

AT: Oil Dependence

Fracking solves oil dependency – our evidence is future predictiveSpencer, Middle East Correspondent, 13 [Richard, citing Fatih Birol, chief economist of the IEA, Dec. 23. 2013, “Fracking boom frees the US from old oil alliances”, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/oil/10476647/Fracking-boom-frees-the-US-from-old-oil-alliances.html, 6-28-14, Tang]Yet this is what he said in his annual outlook on the important trends of the moment: "By around 2020, the United States is projected to become the largest global oil producer," he wrote. "The result is a continued fall in US oil imports, to the extent that North America becomes a net oil exporter around 2030. "The United States, which currently imports around 20 per cent of its total energy needs, becomes all but self-sufficient in net terms – a dramatic reversal of the trend seen in most other energy-importing countries." Far from sending its armies round the world to secure oil, in other words, before long it will be sending marketing consultants to sell it. A dramatic reversal indeed: it seems like only yesterday that every commentator was talking about Peak Oil, the theory that the world's biggest reserves had all been discovered and that the planet's booming population would all soon be scrapping over the dribbles that still came out of the pipelines that remained. Now, with fracking technology revolutionising output in the United States - soon to be followed by other countries - that talk has dried up rather quicker than the pipelines ever did. The effects on the countries concerned, particularly those belonging to the OPEC oil cartel, are just starting to be realised. The Saudis, for example, have begun to notice. “Our country is facing continuous threat because of its almost total dependency on oil,” Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the country's most prominent businessman, wrote in an open letter to the oil minister and his own uncle, King Abdullah, in the summer, urging them to wake up to the danger. “The world is increasingly less dependent on oil from OPEC countries including the kingdom ." By the time new talks with Iran over its nuclear programme were announced in the autumn, such sensitive issues had even reached the ever-cautious Saudi press. Moreover, writers had begun to notice that the issue wasn't just economic - important though it is for Saudi Arabia's oil-dependent economy and public finances for oil sales to keep up, prices to remain stable, and the cash to keep rolling in. It has been lost on no-one that the United States in general, and President Barack Obama in particular, is less concerned nowadays to soothe Saudi Arabia's highly-strung nerves on regional politics than it used to be. The outcome of those talks, a deal about which Saudi Arabia remains deeply nervous, was one result. Royal spokesmen have fired off an increasingly furious series of warnings of the dangers the United States is running by making concessions to Iran, as well as by not taking the military route to regime change in Syria, the biggest threat to peace in the Middle East. The Saudi Gazette, for one, made the linkage clear in a piece by its energy analyst, Syed Rashid Husain. "Roles are getting switched," he wrote. "Global energy geopolitics is undergoing a major metamorphosis – as manifested by recent regional political developments. After all, Washington is no more that dependent on Middle Eastern crude supplies – as it was until a few years back."

AT: China

Increasing cooperation on climate change and shale boom proves relations are resilientThiegles, Domestic Energy Policy Analyst for EagleFordTexas, 6/20/14 (Shane, “US could find unlikely energy ally in China”, http://eaglefordtexas.com/news/id/128463/us-find-unlikely-energy-ally-china/, accessed 6/27/14, LLM)For all that America and China butt heads and position themselves as rivals in the global energy game, however, the truth is that our

ongoing energy markets will be inextricably linked moving forward . Ongoing talk says the US is all but certain to loosen restrictions on natural gas exports soon, and oil may not be far behind. When that happens, we will have a huge monetary incentive to sell as much of our massive energy stockpile as we can . There’s more natural gas in America than we can use, leading to rock bottom utility prices but also an almost total lull in natural gas shale drilling, such as is found in Louisiana’s Haynesville and New York’s Marcellus shales. Demand and production are also growing at almost the same rate, meaning that if we want this gas to be profitable we have to find more prospective buyers. American companies have already made deals with China for Liquid Petroleum Gas, and it’s a safe bet that China will be willing to buy whatever we have to sell. The US is also positioning itself as a leader in the worldwide fight against climate change, and a widespread Chinese adoption of US gas would make us look like a diplomatic leader. Recent studies suggesting natural gas won’t reduce long-term ozone damage would also be silenced, with focus shifting to the fight

against a public health hazard. As hydraulic fracturing starts to catch on in the rest of the world, energy supplies and influence will continue to shift in response . Countries like the UK, Venezuela and Mexico are attempting to tap into local shale deposits in hopes of replicating US success. If supply raises accordingly, the resulting price drop could make natural gas unprofitable for the foreseeable future. If the US wants to make money for its efforts, and China wants to buy up diverse power options, the two could do worse than to form a partnership sooner rather than later.

AT: Grids Fragile

The DOE just invested millions in new grid infrastructure and security measures – solves their impactDOE, US Department of Energy, 13[6/11/14, Department of Energy, “Energy Department Invests Over $10 Million to Improve Grid Reliability and Resiliency,” http://www.energy.gov/articles/energy-department-invests-over-10-million-improve-grid-reliability-and-resiliency, accessed 7/2/14, TYBG]As part of the Obama Administration’s commitment to a strong and secure power grid, the Energy Department today announced more than $10 million for projects that will improve the reliability and resiliency of the U.S. electric grid and facilitate quick and effective response to grid conditions. This

investment which includes six projects across five states- California, Hawaii, Missouri, North Carolina and Washington – will help further the deployment of advanced software that works with synchrophasor technology to better detect quickly-changing grid conditions and improve day-to-day grid reliability. “Through advanced sensors and

monitoring devices, U.S. utilities now have unprecedented insight into the power grid – helping industry make decisions that may prevent power outages before they happen and adeptly respond to changing grid conditions without disruption,” said Patricia Hoffman, Assistant Secretary for the Energy Department’s Office of Electricity

Delivery and Energy Reliability. “By partnering with utilities and software developers, the Energy Department can help the U.S. electric industry maintain more reliable and resilient power systems.” In the United States, advanced sensors and monitoring devices are giving utilities unprecedented visibility to see what is happening throughout the grid. For example, synchrophasors can measure the instantaneous voltage, current and frequency at specific locations on the grid – giving utilities the ability to foresee and respond to changing grid conditions, make decisions that prevent power outages and speed up restoration. Synchrophasor technology provides time-

stamped data 30 times per second – about 100 times faster than conventional technology. With the support of the Recovery Act, the Energy Department worked with utilities to deploy more synchrophasors throughout the United States. In 2009, there were approximately 200 synchrophasors connected to the grid. Today, thanks in part to these Recovery Act

investments, there are about 1,700. By creating software that analyzes and visualizes the complex data captured by synchrophasors, these projects announced today will help industry better leverage this new technology and maintain a strong and reliable power grid. The six awards announced today, subject to final negotiation, include:

AT: Cyberattacks

All of their evidence is in the context of paranoid reporters - there’s no impact to cyber terror, and all of their evidence is based on anonymous tips from amateur cyber-security watch-dogsRid, cyber-security writer, 13 [Thomas, 3/13/13, Foreign Policy, “The Great Cyberscare,” http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/03/13/the_great_cyberscare, accessed 7/1/14, TYBG]The Pentagon, no doubt, is the master of razzmatazz. Leon Panetta set the tone by warning again and again of an impending "cyber Pearl Harbor." Just before he left the Pentagon, the Defense Science Board delivered a remarkable report, Resilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat. The paper seemed obsessed with making yet more drastic historical comparisons: "The cyber threat is serious," the task force wrote, "with potential consequences similar to the nuclear threat of the Cold War." The manifestations of an all-out nuclear war would be different from cyberattack, the Pentagon scientists helpfully acknowledged. But then they added, gravely, that "in the end, the existential impact on the United States is the same." A reminder is in order: The world has yet to witness a single casualty , let alone fatality , as a result of a computer attack . Such statements are a plain insult to survivors of Hiroshima. Some sections of the Pentagon document offer such eye- wateringly shoddy analysis that they would not have passed as an MA dissertation in a self-respecting political science department. But in the current debate it seemed to make sense. After all a bit of fear helps to claim -- or keep -- scarce resources when austerity and cutting seems out-of-control. The report recommended allocating the stout sum of $2.5 billion for its top two priorities alone, protecting nuclear weapons against cyberattacks and determining the mix of weapons necessary to punish all-out cyber-aggressors. Then there are private computer security companies. Such firms, naturally, are keen to pocket some of the government's money earmarked for cybersecurity. And hype is the means to that end. Mandiant's much-noted report linking a coordinated and coherent campaign of espionage attacks dubbed Advanced Persistent Threat 1, or "APT1," to a unit of the Chinese military is a case in point: The firm offered far more details on attributing attacks to the Chinese than the intelligence community has ever done, and the company should be commended for making the report public. But instead of using cocky and over-confident language, Mandiant's analysts should have used Words of Estimative Probability, as professional intelligence analysts would have done. An example is the report's conclusion, which describes APT1's work: "Although they control systems in dozens of countries, their attacks originate from four large networks in Shanghai -- two of which are allocated directly to the Pudong New Area," the report found. Unit 61398 of the People's Liberation Army is also in Pudong. Therefore, Mandiant's computer security specialists concluded, the two were identical: "Given the mission, resourcing, and location of PLA Unit 61398, we conclude that PLA Unit 61398 is APT1." But the report conspicuously does not mention that Pudong is not a small neighborhood ("right outside of Unit 61398's gates") but in fact a vast city landscape twice the size of Chicago. Mandiant's report was useful and many attacks indeed originate in China. But the company should have been more careful in its overall assessment of the available evidence, as the computer security expert Jeffrey Carr and others have pointed out. The firm made it too easy for Beijing to dismiss the report. My class in cybersecurity at King's College London started poking holes into the report after 15 minutes of red-teaming it -- the New York Times didn't. Which leads to the next point: The media want to sell copy through threat inflation. "In Cyberspace, New Cold War," the headline writers at the Times intoned in late February. "The U.S. is not ready for a cyberwar," shrieked the Washington Post earlier this week. Instead of calling out the above-mentioned Pentagon report, the paper actually published two supportive articles on it and pointed out that a major offensive cyber capability now seemed essential "in a world awash in cyber-espionage, theft and disruption." The Post should have reminded its readers that the only military-style cyberattack that has actually created physical damage -- Stuxnet -- was actually executed by the United States government. The Times, likewise, should have asked tough questions and pointed to some of the evidential problems in the Mandiant report; instead, it published what appeared like an elegant press release for the firm. On issues of cybersecurity, the nation's fiercest watchdogs too often look like hand-tame puppies eager to lap up stories from private firms as well as anonymous sources in the security establishmen t . Finally, the intelligence community tags along with the hype because the NSA and CIA are still traumatized by missing 9/11. Missing a "cyber 9/11" would be truly catastrophic for America's spies, so erring on the side of caution seems the rational choice. Yes, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's recent testimony was more nuanced than reported and toned down the threat of a very serious cyberattack. But at the same time America's top spies are not as forthcoming with more detailed information as they could be. We know that the intelligence community, especially in the United States, has far better information, better sources, better expertise, and better analysts than private companies like Symantec, McAfee, and Kaspersky

Lab. But for a number of reasons they keep their findings and their analysis classified. This means that the quality of the public debate suffers, as experts as well as journalists have no choice but to rely on industry reports of sometimes questionable quality or anonymous informants whose veracity is hard to assess.

AT: Hydrogen

Structural barriers prevent hydrogen adoption – it’s too expensive, inefficient, and difficult to store – the lack of infrastructure means even if the aff solves it doesn’t happen before peak oil doesMcGlaun, writer for Daily Tech, 13[Shane, 3/22/13, Daily Tech, “VW CEO Says That Hydrogen Fuel Cells Have Failed to Live up to Promises,” http://www.dailytech.com/VW+CEO+Says+That+Hydrogen+Fuel+Cells+Have+Failed+to+Live+up+to+Promises/article30189.htm, accessed 7/1/14, TYBG] A few years ago there were a number of automotive manufacturers putting serious money into hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. These vehicles promised to have a driving range similar to a conventional gasoline-powered automobile, but produce no emissions to pollute the atmosphere. However, the vehicles faced several daunting challenges, including the lack of a hydrogen fuel infrastructure and the fact that hydrogen is highly flammable and difficult to store. Volkswagen CEO Martin

Winterkorn stated this week that hydrogen fuel cells have failed to live up to promises and are unlikely to become an efficient and cost-effective way to power cars in the near future . Winterkorn said, "I do not see the infrastructure for fuel cell vehicles , and I do not see how hydrogen can be produced on large scale at reasonable cost. I do not currently see a situation where we can offer fuel cell vehicles at a reasonable cost that consumers would also be willing to pay." While Volkswagen doesn't see a near-term future with hydrogen vehicles, other manufacturers continue to move forward with the technology. Mercedes-Benz reached a deal with Ford and Nissan-Renault with a goal of selling the first production fuel-cell vehicle starting in 2017. Back in 2010, a study was published predicting 670,000 fuel cell powered vehicles would be sold annually within a decade . So far, that prediction doesn't seem likely to come true . A sleek car glides past the undulating hedgerows of a country lane. The only sounds it makes are snatches of Vivaldi from the stereo, and the exhaust pipe emits nothing more noxious than water vapour. As it passes, a cloud of butterflies takes flight into the clean summer air. Proponents of hydrogen-powered vehicles have long envisioned this as the future of motoring. But today, that dream is almost as distant as ever – and increasingly serves as a distraction in the quest to cut greenhouse gas emissions by replacing petrol. At first glance, hydrogen looks like a suitable alternative. It has a higher energy density (by mass) than petrol, and could be distributed to filling stations through pipelines. And although specially designed internal combustion engines can burn hydrogen directly, hydrogen is even more efficient when it drives a fuel cell to generate electricity. A decade ago, governments and funding agencies drew up ambitious plans to develop cheaper fuel cells and to enable cars to store practicable quantities of hydrogen. In 2003, President George Bush committed $720 million to the research effort. But by 2009, it was clear that hydrogen was no quick fix , and US energy secretary Steven Chu diverted much of the funding into battery research. It was the right move. When the ‘hydrogen economy’ concept was coined in the early 1970s, advocates such as electrochemist John Bockris1 expected cheap, plentiful nuclear power to produce hydrogen by electrolysing water. Using hydrogen as an energy carrier in this way made sense at the time – power-line losses made hydrogen a more efficient way to move energy over long distances, and battery technology simply wasn’t good enough propel electric vehicles much faster or further than a milk float. But nuclear accidents, although extremely rare, have made many governments wary of investing in extra nuclear power stations. And they have also exposed the hidden costs of nuclear power: cleaning up the accidents and dealing with radioactive waste. So, instead, more than 90% of the world’s hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels, through steam reforming of natural gas, for example, which also produces carbon dioxide. That carbon dioxide could be sequestered underground, but it isn’t, because carbon capture and storage technology is not sufficiently well developed and the costs are astronomical. Cleaning up Wind or solar power could be used to drive electrolysis plants, but isn’t that clean electricity better used to feed today’s more efficient power grids, and to charge lithium-ion batteries that far outstrip those available in the 1970s? The fuelling points for battery-powered cars are a relatively simple extension to our existing power grid, and new technology is reducing recharging times. Hydrogen , in contrast, requires an entirely new supply infrastructure . That’s why the only hydrogen car on the road was, until recently, the Honda FCX Clarity; just a few dozen drive around southern California – the only place in the US with a sufficient network of hydrogen filling stations. In February, Hyundai launched its Tucson ix35 hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, and hopes to make 1,000 of them for the European market. Compare that with the European commission’s hydrogen roadmap, which forecasts an incredible 1 million hydrogen fuel cell vehicles by 2020. Storing hydrogen on board a car also requires expensive pressure vessels or

cryogenic systems . Chemists and engineers have worked hard to find alternatives, such as adsorbing hydrogen onto porous materials, or using hydrogen-dense molecules to release hydrogen on demand. For example, Matthias Beller at the University of Rostock, Germany, recently unveiled a ruthenium catalyst that can generate hydrogen from methanol at a relatively mild 65–95°C. But while the ruthenium catalyst is a lovely bit of chemistry, it is not a breakthrough for the hydrogen economy: the reaction releases carbon dioxide, which is much harder to capture from millions of cars than it is at a single power station; the catalyst turnover frequency reached 4700h–1, many orders of magnitude from practicability; and it relies on ruthenium, global stocks of which are thought to be only about 5,000 tonnes. Blind optimism In February, the UKH2Mobility partnership

issued a report suggesting that 1.5 million hydrogen-powered vehicles could be on the road in the UK by 2030. Yet even this optimistic report noted that the effort would only reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 3 million tonnes – less than the world currently emits in one hour. Hydrogen will undoubtedly find transport niches, but talk of hydrogen powering a substantial proportion of the planet’s billion cars (and counting) is driven more by techno-optimism than evidence. Faster and more significant impacts would come from improving battery technology, investing in clean electricity sources and developing carbon sequestration. The hydrogen economy is alluring, but it is a distraction from the important task of decarbonising our transport system.

Can’t solve oil—hydrogen isn’t ready and the fuel chain is highly inefficient Strahan, writer for New Scientist Magazine, 8 [David, 9/28/8, New Sceintist, “Whatever Happened to the Hydrogen Economy?” http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026841.900-whatever-happened-to-the-hydrogen-economy.html?full=true, accessed 7/1/14, TYBG]WHATEVER happened to the hydrogen economy? At the turn of the century it was the nExt big thing, promising a future of infinite clean energy and deliverance from climate change. Generate enough hydrogen, so the claim went, and we could use it to transform the entire energy infrastructure - it could supply power for cars, planes and boats, buildings and even portable gadgets, all without the need for dirty fossil fuels. Enthusiasts confidently predicted the breakthrough was just five to 10 years away. But today, despite ever-worsening news on global warming and with peak oil looming, the hydrogen economy seems as distant as ever. Even in Iceland, whose grand ambitions for a renewable hydrogen economy once earned it the title Bahrain of the north, visible progress has been modest. After years of research, the country now boasts one hydrogen filling station, a handful of hydrogen cars, and one whale-watching boat with a fuel cell for auxiliary power. A trial of three hydrogen-powered buses ended in 2007, when two were scrapped and the third was consigned to a transport museum. More trials are planned, but that was before the meltdown of the country's banking system. In California, where governor Arnold Schwarzenegger promised a "hydrogen highway" with 200 hydrogen filling stations by 2010, there are just five open to the public. Ten hydrogen-fuelled buses are due to come into service in London by 2010, but a plan for 60 smaller hydrogen vehicles was recently scrapped. Despite the setbacks, there is still enormous effort going into hydrogen research. "Fuel cells have been a roller coaster of hype and disillusionment," says Martin Green of Johnson Matthey, which makes fuel-cell components for the car industry, "but I am more confident now that the hydrogen economy is going to happen than ever before." Real products are now inching closer to market (see map). Honda claims to be the first company with a fuel-cell car, the FCX Clarity, in large-scale production. The company will make just 200 of these cars over three years, leasing them to customers for $600 per month, but so far Honda has shifted only three. Meanwhile General Motors (GM) has released the first 100 of its Equinox fuel-cell cars in a free trial for potential customers around the world. The company claims to have spent more than $1.2 billion on hydrogen R&D, and its research boss, Larry Burns, believes a market for fuel-cell vehicles will have emerged by 2014. So could hydrogen finally be ready for take-off, or will the mirage continue to recede? Enthusiasts claim the remaining hurdles are not so much technical as financial, and that mass production will bring costs down dramatically. But so far the fuel cell , which lies at the heart of the entire hydrogen project (see "Hydrogen basics"), has remained stubbornly expensive - and bringing the cost down means changing the technology. One problem is that hydrogen fuel cells, seen as a way to provide electricity in homes as well as

vehicles, rely on precious-metal catalysts like platinum. A conventional automotive fuel-cell stack contains up to 100 grams of

platinum, which could cost more than $3000 at today's prices. For the hydrogen economy to happen, the amount of platinum used in fuel cells has to come down, and soon. Green says this won't be a problem. He is convinced that car makers will be able to slash the amount of platinum needed to just 20 grams per car by the time the technology is commercialised, which he foresees in the middle of the nExt decade. He also points out that the platinum can be recycled. Yet the numbers still look daunting. Global car production in 2007 was just over 71 million, and even with only 20 grams of platinum per car a wholesale shift to hydrogen fuel cells would need 1420 tonnes of platinum per year, six times current production. At that rate the world's resources of platinum-group metals would be gone in 70 years, with output peaking long before reserves are exhausted. And that calculation makes no allowance for any growth in car production, or for the use of fuel cells in homes. "Platinum is really scarce, and only produced in five mines around the world",

says Armin Reller of the University of Augsburg in Germany, a former adviser on hydrogen to the Swiss

government. Reller has studied the resource constraints on a range of new technologies (New Scientist, 23 May 2007, p 34) and is convinced that hydrogen can only be a partial solution at best, because it won't be possible to get platinum out of the ground quickly enough. "When you introduce new technologies the dynamics are such that even if you have the reserves, you can't produce them in time." It looks as if finding an alternative to platinum is a key challenge. For the hydrogen economy to happen, industry must also come up with clean ways of producing it. Most hydrogen is currently made in refineries by heating natural gas with steam in the presence of a catalyst, but this usually relies on energy from fossil fuels and can generate carbon dioxide as a by-product. Because of this, the climate benefits of fuel-cell vehicles are scarcely better than those of petrol hybrids, according to a 2003 study led by Malcolm Weiss at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. To make hydrogen cleanly and in bulk will almost certainly mean using renewable energy to electrolyse water, though this process is costly and energy-intensive. Here too an enormous research effort is under way. A small British company, ITM Power, says it has found a way to slash the costs of electrolysis, allowing it to produce a small-scale electrolyser that will eventually be so cheap that every home could have one. This would also solve the hydrogen distribution problem. Instead of a system of pipelines, production could be decentralised, with fuel produced close to where it will be consumed. All this because the company has invented a new material which it says solves a long-standing conundrum of electrolysis. Industrial electrolysis uses huge cells containing a liquid electrolyte like potassium hydroxide solution. This is alkaline, and so requires a nickel catalyst, much more plentiful and far cheaper than platinum. However, the hydrogen and oxygen gas must be kept separate within the cell - they are explosive when combined - and the equipment needed to do this with a liquid electrolyte would make the cell too bulky and costly for home use. In the 1960s, NASA developed fuel cells that replaced liquid electrolytes with proton exchange membranes (PEMs), and the technology was applied to electrolysers too. However, the membranes were acidic, and an acidic membrane needs a platinum catalyst. What's more, the membranes themselves remain hugely expensive. Now ITM Power claims to have found the holy grail of both electrolysis and fuel cell technologies: a membrane that can be made alkaline so nickel can replace platinum. Using half a dozen commonly available hydrocarbons, it has developed a solid but flexible polymer gel that is three times as conductive as existing PEMs. Thanks to its simplicity and the fact that it is made from readily available materials, it should also be massively cheaper. The company claims that with mass production its membrane would cost just $5 per square metre, compared to $500 for existing PEMs. As a result, ITM Power says the electrolyser would cost $164 per kilowatt of capacity, against a current average of $2000 per kilowatt. To start with, the company is building 10 of its "green box" electrolysers, each about the size of a large refrigerator. Jim Heathcote, chief executive of ITM Power, won't say what they will cost - certainly tens of thousands of pounds each - though he claims that mass production will bring the price tag down to less than £10,000 each. These home electrolysers will be connected to mains water, the company says, and at least partially driven by solar panels or a wind turbine. The hydrogen produced could be used to drive a generator or fuel cell to produce electricity. It could also drive a car powered either by a fuel cell or an internal combustion engine converted to run on hydrogen. Heathcote argues this set-up would not only be low carbon but also reduce reliance on power grids, which he believes will become increasingly unreliable. But do the sums add up? Take Heathcote's own home, where he has installed 60 square metres of solar panels - more than twice the average on UK properties with solar installations. Heathcote's array, costing £50,000, generates about 10,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year. Connected to ITM's electrolyser, which is about 60 per cent efficient, the solar cells would produce enough hydrogen annually to yield 6000 kWh if used to power fuel cells. However, the average house in the UK uses almost four times as much energy as that each year. If that same hydrogen were used to power ITM's converted Ford Focus, the results would be scarcely better. Using the output of Heathcote's home, the car could travel about 7200 kilometres a year, about half the average annual mileage of a British car. "It sounds absurd," Heathcote admits, "but that's how every technology starts. There are early adopters and then mass production brings costs down hugely." He accepts that many homes will never go completely off-grid, but he believes that with Extra insulation many could use ITM Power's approach to obtain most of their household energy. And while he also admits that hydrogen cars will probably never be powered solely from the roof of the house, he maintains the fuel could still be produced by a home electrolyser using other energy sources, such as off-peak nuclear power. The problems don't end there, though. ITM Power

might have found a way to slash the costs of electrolysis, but nobody has solved a more fundamental problem: the inefficiency of the whole hydrogen fuel chain. Energy losses The point was made forcefully by Gary Kendall of the conservation group WWF in a recent report called Plugged In. Kendall, a chemist who previously spent almost a decade working for ExxonMobil, highlights how the energy losses in the fuel chain - from electrolysis to compression of the hydrogen for use to

inefficiencies in the fuel cell itself - mean that only 24 per cent of the energy used to make the fuel does any useful work on the road. By contrast, battery-powered electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, with no electrolysis or compression to worry about, use 69 per cent of the original energy. "Cars running on hydrogen would need three times the energy of those running directly on electricity, and that would force us to build many more wind turbines," says Kendall. "The developed world needs to completely decarbonise electricity generation by 2050, so we can't afford to just throw away three-quarters of the primary energy turning it into hydrogen."

AT: EMP Attack

No real threat of EMPs - the impact would be containableWeinberger, writer for Foreign Policy, 10 [Sharon, 2/17/10, Foreign Policy, “The Boogeyman Bomb,” http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/17/the_boogeyman_bomb?page=0,0]If the primary threat is from a crudely constructed EMP weapon launched from a Scud-type missile, that sort of weapon wouldn't have nearly the capabilities needed to take out U.S. infrastructure, he argues. Butt estimates that such a device, with a one-kiloton yield, would have to be launched much lower in the atmosphere, and thus would have more localized effects. " Serious long-lasting consequences of a one-kiloton EMP strike would likely be limited to a state-sized region of the country," he writes. True, an EMP that affected even a single state would be, no doubt,

traumatic and disruptive, but it would also be recoverable, and more importantly, fall far short of a "continental-scale time machine."

In the end, advocates for EMP preparation could end up being their own worst enemy. The unlikely scenarios they peddle lend themselves to caricature. And though there are certainly some intellectual heavyweights among those who have warned about the effects of EMP -- like Johnny Foster, the former head of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory -- critics have derided EMP defense supporters for relying on the likes of science fiction writer William R. Forstchen to help bolster their case. By talking about "time machines" and turning the EMP bomb into something that goes bump in the night, those advocating for better defenses risk pushing the issue further into the margins of science fiction.

AT: US-China War

No US-China war – nuclear deterrence and geography mean that despite tensions, conflict would never eruptKeck, international relations and defense writer, 13[Zachary, 7/12/13, The Diplomat, “Why China and the US (Probably) Won’t Go to War,” http://thediplomat.com/2013/07/why-china-and-the-us-probably-wont-go-to-war/, accessed 7/1/14, TYBG]But while trade cannot be relied upon to keep the peace, a U.S.-China war is virtually unthinkable because of two other factors: nuclear weapons and geography. The fact that both the U.S. and China have nuclear weapons is the most obvious reasons why they won’t clash, even if they remain fiercely competitive. This is because war is the continuation of politics by other means, and nuclear weapons make war extremely bad politics. Put differently, war is fought in pursuit of policy ends, which cannot be achieved through a total war between nuclear-armed states. This is not only because of nuclear weapons destructive power. As Thomas Schelling outlined brilliantly, nuclear weapons have not actually increased humans destructive capabilities. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that wars between nomads usually ended with the victors slaughtering all of the individuals on the losing side, because of the economics of holding slaves in nomadic “societies.” What makes nuclear weapons different , then, is not just their destructive power but also the certainty and immediacy of it. While extremely ambitious or desperate leaders can delude themselves into believing they can prevail in a conventional conflict with a stronger adversary because of any number of factors—superior will, superior doctrine, the weather etc.— none of this matters in nuclear war. With nuclear weapons, countries don’t have to prevail on the battlefield or defeat an opposing army to destroy an entire country, and since there are no adequate defenses for a large-scale nuclear attack, every leader can be absolute certain that most of their country can be destroyed in short-order in the event of a total conflict. Since no policy goal is worth this level of sacrifice , the only possible way for an all-out conflict to ensue is for a miscalculation of some sort to occur. Most of these can and should be dealt by Chinese and the U.S. leaders holding regularly senior level dialogues like the ones of the past month, in which frank and direct talk about redlines are discussed. These can and should be supplemented with clear and open communication channels, which can be especially useful when unexpected crises arise, like an exchange of fire between low-level naval officers in

the increasingly crowded waters in the region. While this possibility is real and frightening, it’s hard to imagine a plausible scenario where it leads to a nuclear exchange between China and the United State s. After all, at each stage of the crisis leaders know that if it is not properly contained, a nuclear war could ensue, and the complete destruction of a leader’s country is a more frightening possibility than losing credibility among hawkish elements of society. In any case, measured means of retaliation would be available to the party wronged, and

behind-the-scenes diplomacy could help facilitate the process of finding mutually acceptable retaliatory measures. Geography is the less appreciated factor that will mitigate the chances of a U.S.- China war , but it could be nearly as important as nuclear weapons . Indeed, geography has a history of allowing

countries to avoid the Thucydides Trap, and works against a U.S.-China war in a couple of ways. First, both the United States and China are immensely large countries—according to the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. and China are the third and fourth largest countries in the world by area, at 9,826,675 and 9,596,961 square km respectively. They also have difficult topographical features and complex populations. As such, they are virtually unconquerable by another power. This is an important point and differentiates the current strategic environment from historical cases where power transitions led to war. For example, in Europe where many of the historical cases derive from, each state genuinely had to worry that the other side could increase their power capabilities to such a degree that they could credibly threaten the other side’s national survival. Neither China nor the U.S. has to realistically entertain such fears, and this will lessen their insecurity and therefore the security dilemma they operate within. Besides being immensely large countries,

China and the U.S. are also separated by the Pacific Ocean, which will also weaken their sense of

insecurity and threat perception towards one another. In many of the violent power transitions of the past, starting with

Sparta and Athens but also including the European ones, the rival states were located in close proximity to one another. By contrast, when great power conflict has been avoided, the states have often had considerable distance between them, as was the case for the U.S. and British power transition and the peaceful end to the Cold War. The reason is simple and similar to the one above: the difficulty of projecting power across large distances—particularly bodies of waters— reduces each side’s concern that the other will threaten its national survival and most important strategic interests. True, the U.S. operates extensively in China’s backyard, and maintains numerous alliances and partnerships with Beijing’s neighbors. This undeniably heightens the risk of conflict. At the same time, the British were active throughout the Western Hemisphere, most notably in Canada, and the Americans maintained a robust alliance system in Western Europe throughout the Cold War. Even with the U.S. presence in Asia, then, the fact that the Chinese and American homelands are separated by the largest body of water in the world is enormously important in reducing their conflict potential, if history is any guide at least. Thus, while every

effort should be made to avoid a U.S.-China war, it is nearly unthinkable one will occur.

AT: Middle East War

No Middle Eastern war - de-escalation and global deterrence checks conflict - best empirical cases prove no conflict despite tensions Terrill, writer for the Strategic Studies Institute, 9[W. Andrew Terrill, September, Strategic Studies Institute, “Escalation and intrawar deterrence During limited wars in the middle east,” http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub941.pdf, accessed 7/1/14, TYBG]The number of declared nuclear powers has expanded significantly in the last 20 years to include Pakistan, India, and

North Korea. Additionally, other powers such as Iran are almost certainly striving for a nuclear weapons capability while a number of count- ries in the developing world possess or seek biological and chemical weapons. In this milieu, a central purpose of this monograph by W. Andrew Terrill is to reexamine two earlier conflicts for insights that may be relevant for ongoing dangers during limited wars involving

nations possessing chemical or biological weapons or emerging nuclear arsenals. Decision-makers from the United States

and other countries may have to consider the circumstances under which a smaller and weaker enemy will use nuclear weapon s or other mass destruction weapons. Some of Dr. Terrill’s observations may be particularly useful for policymakers dealing with future crises involving developing nations that possess weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Although it is possible that the United States could be a party to such a conflict, any crisis involving nuclear weapons states is expected to be of inherent concern to Washington, even if it is not a combatant. Dr. Terrill has examined two important Middle Eastern wars. These conflicts are the

19 73 Arab- Israeli War and the 19 91 Gulf War . This monograph may be particularly valuable in providing readers, including senior military and political leaders, with a discussion of the implications of these historical case studies in which WMD-armed nations may have seriously considered their use but ultimately did not resort to them. Both of these wars were fought at the conventional level, although the prospect of Israel using nuclear weapons (1973), Egypt using biological weapons (1973), or Iraq using

chemical and biological weapons (1991) were of serious concern at various points during the fighting. The prospect of a U.S. war with WMD-armed opponents (such as occurred in 1991) raises the question of how escalation can be controlled in such circumstances and what are the most likely ways that intrawar deterrence can break down. This monograph

will consider why efforts at escalation control and intrawar deterrence were successful in the two case studies and

assess the points at which these efforts were under the most intensive stress that might have caused them to fail. Dr. Terrill notes that intrawar deterrence is always difficult and usually based on a variety of factors that no combatant can control in all circumstances of an ongoing conflict. The Strategic Studies Institute is pleased to offer this monograph as a contribution to the national secur- ity debate on this important subject as our nation continues to grapple with a variety of problems associated with the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. This analysis should be especially useful to U.S. strategic leaders and intelli- gence professionals as they seek to address the complicated interplay of factors related to regional security issues and the support of local allies. This work may also benefit those seeking greater understanding o f long range issues of Middle Eastern and global security . We hope this work will be of benefit to officers of all services as well as other U.S. Government officials involved in military planning, and that it may cause them to reconsider some of the instances where intrawar deterrence seemed to work well but may have done so by a much closer margin than future planners can comfortably accept. In this regard, Dr. Terrill’s work is important to understanding the lessons of these conflicts which might otherwise be forgotten or oversimplified. Additionally, an understanding of the issues involved with these earlier case studies may be useful in future circumstances where the United States may seek to deter wartime WMD use by potential adversaries such as Iran or North Korea. The two case studies may also point out the inherent difficulties in doing so and the need to enter into conflict with these states only if one is prepared to accept the strong possibility that any efforts to control escalation have a good chance of breaking down. This understanding is particularly important in a wartime environment in which all parties should rationally have an interest in controlling escalation, but may have trouble doing so due to both systemic and wartime misperceptions and mistakes that distort communications between adversaries and may cause fundamental misunderstandings about the nature of the conflict in which these states may find themselves embroiled.