Jack+and+Rob


 * If you have any questions that need serious responses email Jack- jmichaelmanchester@gmail.com**
 * If you have any K questions/ want a long philosophical/sarcastic response email Rob- jarassick@gmail.com**

=*AFF* = __**Contention one (solvency)-**__ __**Contention two (framing)-**__ __**Contention three (the science business)-**__ __**Contention two (the impacts)-**__
 * IT'S ORDER HAS CHANGED FROM BEFORE- same general business but the order of the advantages is a little different**
 * Here's a quick check list of the 1AC business to make prepping easier:**
 * tech works, internal links to warming, and fed key cards**
 * Reject skeptics, and a precautionary principle card**
 * Warming happening now, it's anthropogenic, positive feedbacks bad, adaptation impossible, decrease rate of warming KT prevent extinction**
 * Generic Bio-d, Boreal Forest good, Middle East War, CO2= Extinction, Food Shortages AND TIME PERMITTING- navy and coral reefs**

1ac Plan
====The United States federal government should substantially increase its investment in backbone pipeline transportation of captured carbon in the United States. ====

Even if regulations aren’t likely now, the plan is key to convincing the world that emissions can be cut without economic cost
MIT 7 Interdisciplinary Study, The Future of Coal, http://web.mit.edu/coal/ Washington, DC – Leading academics from an interdisciplinary  Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT) panel issued a report today that examines how the world can continue to use coal, an abundant and inexpensive fuel, in a way that mitigates , instead of worsens, the global warming crisis . The study , "The Future of Coal – Options for a Carbon Constrained World," advocates <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> the <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">U.S. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> assume global <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">leadership on this issue <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> through adoption of significant policy actions. Led by co-chairs Professor John Deutch, Institute Professor, Department of Chemistry, and Ernest J. Moniz, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems, the report states that carbon capture and sequestration ( <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">CCS) is the // critical //// enabling //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> technology to help reduce CO2 emissions significantly while also allowing coal to meet the world's pressing energy needs <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. According to Dr. Deutch, "As the world's leading energy user and greenhouse gas emitter, <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the U.S. must // take the lead //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> in showing the world CCS can work. Demonstration of <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> technical, economic, and institutional features of <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">CCS <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> at commercial scale coal combustion and conversion plants <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">will give policymakers and the public confidence that a practical carbon mitigation control option exists, will reduce cost of CCS should carbon emission controls be adopted, and will maintain the <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> low-cost <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">coal option <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> in an environmentally acceptable manner." Dr. Moniz added, "There are many opportunities for enhancing the performance of coal plants in a carbon-constrained world – higher efficiency generation, perhaps through new materials; novel approaches to gasification, CO2 capture, and oxygen separation; and advanced system concepts, perhaps guided by a new generation of simulation tools. An aggressive R&D effort in the near term will yield significant dividends down the road, and should be undertaken immediately to help meet this urgent scientific challenge." Key findings in this study: <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Coal is <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> a low-cost, per BTU, <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">mainstay of both the developed and developing world, and its use is projected to increase <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Because of coal's high carbon content, <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">increasing use will exacerbate the problem of climate change unless coal plants are deployed with <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> very high efficiency and large scale <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">CCS <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> is implemented. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">CCS is the // critical //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> enabling technology because it allows significant reduction in CO2 emissions while allowing coal to meet future energy needs <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. A significant charge on carbon emissions is needed in the relatively near term to increase the economic attractiveness of new technologies that avoid carbon emissions and specifically to lead to large-scale CCS in the coming decades. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">We need large-scale <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> demonstration projects of the technical, economic and environmental performance of an integrated <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">CCS <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> system. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">We should proceed with carbon sequestration projects as soon as possible <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Several integrated large-scale demonstrations with appropriate measurement, monitoring and verification are needed in the United States over the next decade with government support. This is important for establishing public confidence for the very large-scale sequestration program anticipated in the future. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The regulatory regime for <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> large-scale commercial <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">sequestration should be developed with <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">a greater sense of <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">urgency <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, with the Executive Office of the President leading an interagency process. The U.S. government should provide assistance only to coal projects with CO2 capture in order to demonstrate technical, economic and environmental performance. Today, IGCC appears to be the economic choice for new coal plants with CCS. However, this could change with further RD&D, so it is not appropriate to pick a single technology winner at this time, especially in light of the variability in coal type, access to sequestration sites, and other factors. The government should provide assistance to several "first of a kind" coal utilization demonstration plants, but only with carbon capture. Congress should remove any expectation that construction of new coal plants without CO2 capture will be "grandfathered" and granted emission allowances in the event of future regulation. This is a perverse incentive to build coal plants without CO2 capture today. Emissions will be stabilized only through global adherence to CO2 emission constraints. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">China and India are unlikely to adopt carbon constraints unless the U.S. does so and // leads the way //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> in the development of // CCS technology //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Key changes must be made to the current Department of Energy RD&D program to successfully promote CCS technologies. The program must provide for demonstration of CCS at scale; a wider range of technologies should be explored; and modeling and simulation of the comparative performance of integrated technology systems should be greatly enhanced.

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">CCS creates the ultimate backstop against runaway warming – allows for indirect air removal
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Mills 11 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> - *MSc in Geological Sciences @ Cambridge <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Robin, “Capturing Carbon: The New Weapon in the War Against Climate Change,” Google Book


 * __<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Indirect capture is __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> therefore **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the ultimate backstop for climate policy __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Storage capacity permitting, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">we can, __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> at a cost in money and energy, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">remove any quantity of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This may be crucial if we discover that we are on the path to sudden, cata-strophic climate change. Even if we were to halt all emissions immediately, it would take millennia for the __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> elevated **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide to be fully absorbed __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. By contrast, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">air cap-ture might be able to take us back to pre-industrial levels within some decades. As a 'geo-engineering' solution, it addresses the problem directly, __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> rather than reducing global warming indirectly.141 Undesirable sjde-effects are, as tar as we can tell now, minimal compared with other gco-cngincering techniques, and it also addresses the other key issue of ocean acidification. Some major studies have dismissed **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">air capture __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> without serious consideration,14- mainly on cost grounds. It is, indeed, likely to be one of the more expensive carbon mitigation options, but it **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">does not have to compete with CCS on large centralised sources, nor with major low-carbon power solutions such as wind or nuclear. It is intended to address __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> otherwise **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">intractable polluters __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> such as flying, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">and __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> to **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">provide a way of returning rapidly to a pre-industrial atmosphere __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. In contrast to other 'carbon offset' schemes such as forestry (see Chapter 4), which have been heavily criticised,141 it **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">offers completely verifiable, and unde-niably 'additional', reductions. __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> I will return to this issue in Chapter 6.

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">CCS is safe – no leaks, their evidence is alarmist environmentalism <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Mills 11 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">- *MSc in Geological Sciences @ Cambridge <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Robin, “Capturing Carbon: The New Weapon in the War Against Climate Change,” Google Book
 * __<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">It is often claimed that carbon capture and storage is 'not proven'. For example, the __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> US's oldest environmental organisation, the **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Sierra Club, has said, "We don't have any idea whether or when this [carbon storage] will be possible __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">...it's pie in the sky.'11*' Andrew McKillop dismisses the idea as 'exotic technological fantasies',117 while Greenpeace com¬mented that the Swedish utility Vattenfall was attempting to deceive ecologists with its CCS plans.118 **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Yet __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, as we will see, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the individual elements of CCS are __****__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">all __****__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> technologically __****__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">proven __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Four industrial-size carbon storage projects are operating, in various parts of the world, and numerous pilots are investigating all the aspects of carbon capture, transportation and storage. Long-distance carbon dioxide transport and storage for enhanced oil recovery is commercially proven, and operating on a large scale. Experience from these projects suggests that they arc __****__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">safe __****__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> and that leakage will be __****__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">minimal __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">.

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">CCS tech coming now- federal investment is key to jumpstart private sector
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Zarraby 12 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> - chemical engineer for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, JD expected from GWU in 2012 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Cyrus, “Note: Regulating Carbon Capture and Sequestration: A Federal Regulatory Regime to Promote the Construction of a National Carbon Dioxide Pipeline Network,” 80 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 950, Lexis <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Rising food prices <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, 1 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">mass migration <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, 2 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">new endangered species <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, 3 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">severe droughts <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> 4 - <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">scientists have linked each of these harms to <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> increased emissions of <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">greenhouse gases <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, and if such harms persist, they will fundamentally change the way human beings live their lives. 5 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Tocombat these harms, the <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> Environmental Protection Agency (" <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">EPA <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">") recently <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">announced that <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, for the first time, <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the United States // will regulate //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> the emissions of <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">greenhouse gases from power plants under the Clean Air Act <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. 6 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">One of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases is coal-fired electricity <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. 7 Coal-fired power generation accounts for roughly one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. 8 Despite its contribution to climate change, the United States' reliance on coal-fired power is increasing: the Energy Information Administration estimates that coal power will account for over forty percent of United States electricity generation in 2035. 9 Carbon Capture and Sequestration (" <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">CCS <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">") <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">is one of the // most promising //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> technologies to curb greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired electric generation <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. 10 [*953] CCS is a process whereby carbon dioxide ("CO<2>") is separated from the power plant emissions and transported and stored in underground reservoirs. 11 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">CCS prevents the release of CO<2> into the atmosphere and effectively // eliminates //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> greenhouse gas emissions <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">from the power plant operations. 12 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Although the technology for capturing and storing CO<2> has been proven in operation <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, 13 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the United States does not have // adequate infrastructure //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> to implement CCS on a national scale. Specifically, tens of thousands of miles of CO<2> pipelines must be constructed to transport the CO<2> from the power plants to underground reservoirs <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. 14 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Currently, there is no comprehensive federal regulation of CO<2> pipelines and existing state regulations are limited <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. 15 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The // uncertainty //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> of this regulatory framework will prevent the development of much-needed CO<2> pipelines <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. 16 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Given the harms that will arise because of greenhouse gas emissions and the continued reliance on coal <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> as a source of electricity, <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">it is // imperative //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> that Congress pass legislation that promotes the construction of new CO<2> pipelines <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. 17

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Federal investment is key – otherwise states will over-regulate
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Klass and Wilson 8 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> - *Professor of Law @ Minnesota, **Professor of Public Policy @ Minnesota** __<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Existing federal __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> environmental **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">statutes __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> that govern air, water, and hazardous waste **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">can act as examples of the federal government setting a floor for environmental standards and allowing states to innovate __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> using their regulatory authority and common law. 217 **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Legislators could use these statutes for guidance in enacting CCS legislation __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. On the other hand, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">when a commercial project is not accompanied by federal __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">research **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> dollars, the siting difficulties that plague much infrastructure development, characterized by “not in my backyard” attitudes, could emerge for CCS as well __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. 218 If states choose to use high liability barriers to keep CCS projects out of their territories, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">eventual CCS project siting __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">— **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">and __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> potential benefits of **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">greenhouse gas reduction __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">— **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">could become impossible __**
 * <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Alexandra and Elizabeth, “CLIMATE CHANGE AND CARBON SEQUESTRATION: ASSESSING A LIABILITY REGIME FOR LONG-TERM STORAGE OF CARBON DIOXIDE,” http://www.law.emory.edu/fileadmin/journals/elj/58/58.1/Klass_Wilson.pdf **

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Use of federal lands necessitates federal investment
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Stephenson 8 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> - Director, Natural Resources and Environment @ GAO <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">“Federal Actions Will Greatly Affect the Viability of Carbon Capture and Storage As a Key Mitigation Option,” GAO, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d081080.pdf <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">In addition to the technical and legal issues affecting CCS’s prospects, key studies, federal advisory committees, and the stakeholders we interviewed also identified an array of other issues that would need to be resolved if the technology is to be deployed within a time frame scientists believe is needed to address climate change. Moreover, whereas many of the technical and regulatory issues discussed earlier fall within the domain of two agencies (DOE and EPA), these other issues cross the jurisdictions of the Departments of the Interior and Transportation, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and other agencies in a manner that would require collaboration between agencies and, in many cases, coordination with state governments and other entities. Under a national CCS program, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">CO2 __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> could be **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> sequestered on __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> both **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">federal __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> and nonfederal **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">lands __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> and **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">would raise complex property rights issues __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> needing resolution in both instances. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">In the case of federal lands, BLM, which manages the federal government’s __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> mineral **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">resources, is required by the Energy Independence and Security Act __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> of 2007 45 to report by December 2008 on a framework **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">to manage __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> geological **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">carbon sequestration activities __****__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">on public lands __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. According to BLM officials, the report will include a discussion of the unresolved property ownership and liability issues related to long-term CO2 storage. They note that the report will also discuss the statutory authority BLM currently has and what it lacks, such as the authority to establish a funding mechanism for monitoring and mitigation efforts associated with sequestration sites. They cautioned, however, that the report will not recommend solutions to current uncertainties and explained that since injected CO2 can move onto adjacent private or state lands, resolving them will require collaboration with private landowners and state agencies. Nationwide CO2 sequestration would also pose major challenges on nonfederal lands. EPA notes that states with primacy for the UIC program have typically addressed such challenges when they have arisen under that program. The agency acknowledged the additional complications that would arise as stored CO2 crossed state boundaries, but noted that such cross-jurisdictional issues typically occur under the UIC program and that states have worked together to address them. Nonetheless, the significantly larger scale of a future CCS program could magnify the problems posed by these jurisdictional issues. EPA officials noted that they are hoping that the proposed rule’s comment process will surface ideas to address these problems. However, EPA officials also note that the agency lacks authority to issue regulations resolving these issues. Furthermore, while EPA’s proposed rule reaffirms liability related to underground sources of drinking water, ambiguity remains regarding who—the injector or the property owner— is ultimately responsible for unanticipated releases of the injected CO2 that have other effects. As discussed earlier, the released CO2 could interfere with the adjacent mineral owners’ abilities to extract those resources, and the injection well’s operator could be held liable for nuisance, trespass, or another tort. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Pipelines are the preferred method of transporting __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> large amounts of **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">CO2 __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> (PHMSA) **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">administers safety regulations for CO2 __****__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">pipelines that affect interstate commerce and certifies states that have adopted regulations compatible with the minimum federal safety standards to regulate __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> their **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">intrastate pipelines __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. No federal agency has claimed jurisdiction over siting, rates, or terms of service for interstate CO2 pipelines. 46 However, early assessments indicate that **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">a nationwide CCS program could require a network of interstate CO2 pipelines that would raise cross-jurisdictional issues and involve multiple regulatory authorities __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">—all in the unprecedented context of a nationwide program to transport massive volumes of CO2

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Only the federal government is modeled
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Mack and Endemann 09 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Latham & Watkins, international law firm (Joel Mack, Buck B. Endemann, October 2, 2009, “Making carbon dioxide sequestration feasible: Toward federal regulation of CO2 sequestration pipelines,” [|http://lw.com/upload/pubContent/_pdf/pub3385_1.pdf)//DR]. H <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Regulation of geologically <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">sequestered CO2 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> also <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">creates potential international environmental concerns. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> For example, North Dakota’s Great Plains Gasification Plant produces CO2 that is shipped across the border to Canada for use in EOR (Basin Electric Power Cooperative, 2009). <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Assuming the United States <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> or Canada <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">enters a treaty that caps carbon emissions at a certain level, the current international agreements do not contemplate how cross-border CO2 transportation for pure geologic sequestration <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> (not associated with EOR) <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">would affect each country’s carbon budget. // Congress //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> and the // executive //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> branch // will have to confront //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> the implications of such transportation and potentially modify or draft new treaties or bilateral agreements to ensure regulations are not unnecessarily restrictive or open to abuse.

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Only our evidence is peer-reviewed, reject their skepticism
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Lewandowsky, 11 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;">- Professor of Cognitive Studies at the University of Western Australia (Stephen, “ Climate change denial and the abuse of peer review,” The Conversation, 6/20/11, [], //JPL) <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> In a similar inversion of normal practice, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">most climate deniers avoid scrutiny by sidestepping the peer-review process that is fundamental to science, instead posting their material in the internet or writing books __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Books may be impressively weighty, but __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> remember that **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">they are printed because a publisher thinks they can make money, not necessarily because the content has scientific value __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Fiction sells, even if dressed up as science. During peer review, by contrast, commercial interests are removed from the publication decision because journals are often published by not-for-profit professional organizations __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Even if private publishers are involved, they make their profit primarily via university subscriptions, and universities subscribe to journals based on their reputation, rather than based on individual publication decisions. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Very occasionally a contrarian paper does appear in a peer-reviewed journal __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, which segments of the internet and the media immediately hail as evidence against global warming or its human causes, as if a single paper somehow nullifies thousands of previous scientific findings. What are we to make of that handful of contrarian papers? Do they make a legitimate if dissenting contribution to scientific knowledge? In some cases, perhaps. But **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">in many __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> other **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">cases, troubling ethical questions arise from examination of the public record surrounding contrarian papers __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">.

====<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Catastrophic climate change should be measured as the highest priority – do not __discount__ the unpredictable impact it will have on future generations. Warming operates above all their impacts ==== <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Scorse 8 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> – Professor of International Studies <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Jason, Assistant Professor @ Monterey Institute of International Studies @ Middlebury College, What Environmentalists Need to Know About Economics, Online Book **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Even though the science now confirms that human activity is contributing to global warming and that this warming is likely to continue if we do not dramatically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, we are still highly uncertain ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> as to what the end results of this warming will be (Parry et al, 2007). **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">We can be sure about a few things-less Arctic ice, more storms, sea level rise- ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">but the range of possibilities still includes some not-so-catastrophic outcomes along with some potentially cataclysmic scenarios; e.g. major new storm activity, sever draught, major species extinction, and the major inundation of coastal areas. Weitzman argues that **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">a small probability of catastrophic damage may be enough to force us to err on the side of action ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> over inaction, **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">even if the most likely average future benefits of action do not merit such a response. Putting a high premium on worst-case scenarios tilts us in the direction of a zero discount rate ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">not **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">because ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> we actually value benefits to people 100 years from now as much as we value benefits today (as many environmentalists and the authors of the Stern Review would like us to believe), but because **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">when our actions pose a reasonably significant risk of making the world much less livable in the future then we have an obligation to go out of our way to reduce that risk. This rationale is not operative when assessing the benefits of most types of ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> environmental **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">investments because they do not pose such dire scenarios. For example, cleaning up a waterway ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> or expanding open space, while perhaps in society's interests, **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">will not greatly impact humanity's chance for survival ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> or greatly affect overall living standards to anywhere **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">near the degree that climate change might. When posed with these more common scenarios we should revert back to the basic arguments for choosing the proper discount rate ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">.

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Warming happening now and is fast- Arctic proves
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Kelly 6/19 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">(Conor “NASA’s Antarctic Study Casts Doubt on Global Warming” ForexTV.com 6/19/12 http://www.forextv.com/forex-news-story/nasa-s-antarctic-study-casts-doubt-on-global-warming) __<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">A recent study published by University of Southern California researchers suggests that Antarctica featured drastically different conditions in its past __<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">—particularly during the Miocene Era. __<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The study, conducted with the purpose of predicting conditions following further climate change, found that global temperature changes in the past have drastically altered the climates of the poles __<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">. By drilling into the crust beneath Antarctic ice sheets, the scientists were able to analyze waxed leaf fossils, suggesting that the climate allowed for vegetation. Past experiments have reached difficulties using this technique, as shifting ice sheets destroy fossils. However, Sarah J. Feakins, leader of the study, was tipped off by pollen samples that suggested hints of plant life. By looking at hydrogen isotopes present in the plant matter, the team was able to determine air and water conditions during the plant’s life __<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">. In a paper published in Nature Geoscience, the researchers reported hotter and wetter conditions in Antarctica’s past than were previously believed. The research has been used by many to claim evidence that global warming is part of a natural phenomenon involving cyclic climate change. Carbon monoxide readings during the Miocene Era fall somewhere between 400 and 600 parts per million (ppm). Readings today are steadily reaching 393 ppm, one of the highest readings in several million years, a trend geologists say match with this period in Earth’s history. USC researchers suggest that at the current rate, global temperatures will reach Miocene Era levels by the end of this century. __

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Deal with It!-C02 Causes Global Warming and the Newest Research Methods Account for the Objections of the Skeptics
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">ORLCF 4/4 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">(Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, April 4, 2012, http://www.olcf.ornl.gov/2012/04/04/carbon-dioxide-caused-global-warming-at-ice-ages-end-pioneering-simulation-shows/) <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Climate science has an equivalent to the “what came first—the chicken or the egg?” question: **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">What came first, greenhouse gases or global warming? A multi-institutional team led by researchers at Harvard, Oregon State __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> University, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">and the University of Wisconsin used a global dataset of paleoclimate records and the Jaguar supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> (ORNL) **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">to find the answer __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">(spoiler alert: **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">carbon dioxide drives warming __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">). **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The results __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, published in the April 5 issue of Nature, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">analyze 15,000 years of climate history __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Scientists hope amassing knowledge of the causes of natural global climate change will aid understanding of human-caused climate change. “ **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">We constructed the first-ever record of global temperature spanning the end of the last ice age based on 80 proxy temperature records from around the world __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">,” **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">said Jeremy Shakun __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">a __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate and Global Change **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">postdoctoral fellow at Harvard and Columbia Universities __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">and first author of the paper. “It’s no small task to get at global mean temperature. Even for studies of the present day you need lots of locations, quality-controlled data, careful statistics. For the past 21,000 years, it’s even harder. But because the data set is large enough, these proxy data provide a reasonable estimate of global mean temperature.” Proxy records from around the world—derived from ice cores and ocean and lake sediments—provide estimates of local surface temperature throughout history, and carbon-14 dating indicates when those temperatures occurred. For example, water molecules harboring the oxygen-18 isotope rain out faster than those containing oxygen-16 as an air mass cools, so the ratio of these isotopes in glacial ice layers tells scientists how cold it was when the snow fell. Likewise, the amount of magnesium incorporated into the shells of marine plankton depends on the temperature of the water they live in, and these shells get preserved on the seafloor when they die. The authors combined these local temperature records to produce a reconstruction of global mean temperature. Additionally, samples of ancient atmosphere are trapped as air bubbles in glaciers, providing a direct measure of carbon dioxide levels through time that could be compared to the global temperature record. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Being the first to reconstruct global mean temperatures throughout this time interval allowed the researchers to show what many suspected but none could yet prove: “This is the first paper to definitively show the role carbon dioxide played in helping to end the last ice age,” __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> said Shakun, who co-wrote the paper with Peter Clark of Oregon State University. “ **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">We found that global temperature mirrored and generally lagged behind rising carbon dioxide during the last deglaciation, which points to carbon dioxide as the major driver of global warming __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">.” Prior results based on Antarctic ice cores had indicated that local temperatures in Antarctica started warming before carbon dioxide began rising, which implied that carbon dioxide was a feedback to some other leading driver of warming. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The delay of global temperature behind carbon dioxide found in this study __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, however, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">shows that the ice-core perspective does not apply to the globe as a whole and instead suggests that carbon dioxide was the primary driver of worldwide warming __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">While the geologic record showed a remarkable correlation between carbon dioxide and global temperature, the researchers also turned to state-of-the-art model simulations to further pin down the direction of causation suggested by the temperature lag. Jaguar recently ran approximately 14 million processor hours to simulate the most recent 21,000 years of Earth’s climate __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Feng He of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a postdoctoral researcher, plugged the main forcings driving global climate over this time interval into an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)–class model called the Community Climate System Model version 3, a global climate model that couples interactions between atmosphere, oceans, lands, and sea ice. The climate science community developed the model with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Energy (DOE), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration and used many codes developed by university researchers. “Our model results are the first IPCC-class Coupled General Circulation Model (CGCM) simulation of such a long duration (15,000 years),” said He, who conducted the modeling with Zhengyu Liu of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Bette Otto-Bliesner of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). “ **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">This is of particular significance to the climate community because it shows, for the first time, that at least one of the CGCMs used to predict future climate is capable of reproducing both the timing and amplitude of climate evolution seen in the past under realistic climate forcing __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">.” The group ran simulations that used 4.7 million processor hours in 2009, 6.6. million in 2010, and 2.5 million in 2011. The Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment program, jointly managed by leadership computing facilities at Argonne and Oak Ridge National Laboratories, awarded the allocations. Shaun Marcott and Alan Mix of Oregon State University analyzed data, and Andreas Schmittner, also of Oregon State, interpreted links between ocean currents and carbon dioxide. Edouard Bard of Centre Européen de Recherche et d’Enseignement des Géosciences de l’Environnement provided data and expertise about radiocarbon calibration. NSF supported this research through its Paleoclimate Program for the Paleovar Project and NCAR. The researchers used resources of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, located in the National Center for Computational Sciences at ORNL, which is supported by DOE’s Office of Science. The paleoclimate community generated the proxy data sets and provided unpublished results of the DATED Project on retreat history of the Eurasian ice sheets. The NOAA NGDC and PANGAEA databases were also essential to this work.

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">There’s over a 95% consensus it’s human induced- best scientists are on our side
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Anderegg et al 10 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> – PhD Candidate @ Stanford in Biology <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">William, “Expert credibility in climate change,” National Academy of Sciences, p. 12107-12109 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Preliminary reviews of scientific literature and surveys of cli- mate scientists indicate striking agreement with the primary conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been responsible for “most” of the “unequivocal” warming of the Earth’s average global temperature over the second half of the 20th century ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">(1–3). **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Nonetheless ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, substantial and **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">growing ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> public **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">doubt remains ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> about the anthropogenic cause and scientific agreement about the role of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in climate change (4, 5). **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">A vocal minority of researchers ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> and other critics **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">contest ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> the conclusions of **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the mainstream scientific assessment, frequently citing large numbers of scientists whom they believe support their claims ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> (6–8). **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">This group ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, often termed climate change skeptics, contrarians, or deniers, **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">has received large amounts of media attention and wields significant influence in the societal debate ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> about climate change impacts and policy (7, 9–14). An extensive literature examines what constitutes expertise or credibility in technical and policy-relevant scientific research (15). Though our aim is not to expand upon that literature here, we wish to draw upon several important observations from this literature in examining expert credibility in climate change. First, though the degree of contextual, political, epistemological, and cultural in- fluences in determining who counts as an expert and who is credible remains debated, many **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">scholars ****<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">acknowledge the need to identify credible experts and account for expert opinion ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> in tech- nical (e.g., science-based) decision-making (15–19). Furthermore, **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">delineating expertise and ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> the relative **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">credibility of claims is critical, especially in areas where it may be difficult for the majority of decision-makers and the lay public to evaluate the full complexities of a technical issue ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> (12, 15). Ultimately, however, societal decisions regarding response to ACC must necessarily include input from many diverse and nonexpert stakeholders. Because the timeline of decision-making is often more rapid than scientific consensus, **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">examining the landscape of expert opinion can greatly inform such decision-making ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> (15, 19). Here, **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">we examine a metric of climate-specific expertise ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> and a metric of overall sci- entific prominence as two dimensions of expert credibility in two groups of researchers. **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">We provide a ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> broad **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">assessment of ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> the rel- ative **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">credibility of researchers convinced by the evidence (CE) of ACC and those unconvinced by the evidence (UE) of ACC ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Our consideration of UE researchers differs from previous work on climate change skeptics and contrarians in that we primarily focus on researchers that have published extensively in the climate field, although we consider all skeptics/contrarians that have signed pro- minent statements concerning ACC (6–8). Such expert analysis can illuminate public and policy discussions about ACC and the extent of consensus in the expert scientific community. **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">We compiled a database of 1,372 climate researchers ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> based on authorship of scientific assessment reports and membership on multisignatory statements about ACC (SI Materials and Methods). We tallied the number of climate-relevant publications authored or coauthored by each researcher (defined here as expertise) and counted the number of citations for each of the researcher’s four highest-cited papers (defined here as prominence) using Google Scholar. **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">We ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> then **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">imposed ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> an a priori **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">criterion ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> that a researcher must have authored a minimum of 20 climate publications to be considered a climate researcher, thus reducing the database to 908 researchers. Varying this minimum publication cutoff did not ma- terially alter results (Materials and Methods). **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">We ranked researchers ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> based on the total number of climate publications authored. Though our compiled researcher list is not comprehensive nor designed to be representative of the entire cli- mate science community, we have drawn researchers from the most high-profile reports and public statements about ACC. Therefore, **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">we have ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> likely **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">compiled the strongest and most credentialed re- searchers ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> in CE and UE groups. Citation and publication analyses must be treated with caution in inferring scientific credibility, but we suggest that our methods and our expertise and prominence criteria provide conservative, robust, and relevant indicators of relative credibility of CE and UE groups of climate researchers (Materials and Methods). Results and Discussion **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The UE [unconvinced by evidence] group ** // comprises only 2% // **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> of the top 50 climate researchers ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> as ranked by expertise (number of climate publications), 3% of researchers of the top 100, and 2.5% of the top 200, excluding researchers present in both groups (Materials and Methods). **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">This result closely agrees with expert surveys, indicating that ** // ≈97% // **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> of ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">self-identified **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> actively publishing climate scientists agree with the tenets of ACC ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> (2). Furthermore, this finding complements direct polling of the climate researcher community, which yields quali- tative and self-reported researcher expertise (2). **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Our findings capture the added dimension of ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> the distribution of researcher **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">expertise ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, quantify agreement among the highest expertise climate researchers, and provide an independent assessment of level of scientific consensus concerning ACC. In addition to the striking difference in number of expert researchers between CE and UE groups, **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> distribution of **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">expertise of the UE group is far below that of the CE group ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> (Fig. 1). Mean expertise of the UE group was around half (60 publications) that of the CE group (119 pub- lications; Mann–Whitney U test: W = 57,020; P < 10−14), as was median expertise (UE = 34 publications; CE = 84 publications). Furthermore, **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">researchers with fewer than 20 climate publications comprise ≈80% the UE group, as opposed to less than 10% of the CE group ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. This indicates that the bulk of UE researchers on the most prominent multisignatory statements about climate change have not published extensively in the peer-reviewed climate literature. We examined a subsample of the 50 most-published (highest- expertise) researchers from each group. Such subsampling facili- tates comparison of relative expertise between groups (normalizing differences between absolute numbers). This method reveals large differences in relative expertise between CE and UE groups (Fig. 2). Though the top-published researchers in the CE group have an average of 408 climate publications (median = 344), the top UE re- searchers average only 89 publications (median = 68; Mann– Whitney U test: W = 2,455; P < 10−15). Thus, this suggests that not all experts are equal, and top CE researchers have much stronger expertise in climate science than those in the top UE group. Finally, **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">our ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> prominence **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">criterion provides an independent and approximate estimate of the relative scientific significance of CE and UE publications ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Citation analysis complements publication analysis because it can, in general terms, capture the quality and impact of a researcher’s contribution—a critical component to overall scientific credibility—as opposed to measuring a research- er’s involvement in a field, or expertise (Materials and Methods). The citation analysis conducted here further complements the publication analysis because it does not examine solely climate- relevant publications and thus captures highly prominent re- searchers who may not be directly involved with the climate field. We examined the top four most-cited papers for each CE and UE researcher with 20 or more climate publications and found immense disparity in scientific prominence between CE and UE communities (Mann–Whitney U test: W = 50,710; P < 10−6; Fig. 3). CE researchers’ top papers were cited an average of 172 times, compared with 105 times for UE researchers. Because a single, highly cited paper does not establish a highly credible reputation but might instead reflect the controversial nature of that paper (often called the single-paper effect), we also considered the av- erage the citation count of the second through fourth most-highly cited papers of each researcher. Results were robust when only these papers were considered (CE mean: 133; UE mean: 84; Mann–Whitney U test: W = 50,492; P < 10−6). Results were ro- bust when all 1,372 researchers, including those with fewer than 20 climate publications, were considered (CE mean: 126; UE mean: 59; Mann–Whitney U test: W = 3.5 × 105; P < 10−15). Number of citations is an imperfect but useful benchmark for a group’s scientific prominence (Materials and Methods), and we show here that even considering all (e.g., climate and nonclimate) publications, the UE researcher group has substantially lower prominence than the CE group. **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">We provide a large-scale quantitative assessment of the relative level of agreement, expertise, and prominence in the climate re- searcher community ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. We show that the **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">expertise and prominence, two integral components of ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> overall expert **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">credibility, of climate researchers convinced by the evidence of ACC ** // vastly overshadows // **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> that of the climate change skeptics and contrarians. This divide is even starker when considering the top researchers ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> in each group. **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Despite ** // media // **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> tendencies to present both sides in ACC debates ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> (9), which can contribute to continued public misunderstanding re- garding ACC (7, 11, 12, 14), **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">not all climate researchers are equal in scientific credibility and expertise ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">in the climate system. **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">This ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> extensive **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">analysis ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> of the mainstream versus skeptical/contrarian researchers **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">suggests a strong role for considering expert credibi- lity in the relative weight of and attention to these groups of re- searchers in ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> future discussions in media, policy, and public **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">forums regarding anthropogenic climate change ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">.

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">There is no other viable explanation
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Rahmstorf 8 – Professor of Physics of the Oceans <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Richard, of Physics of the Oceans at Potsdam University, Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto. Edited by Ernesto Zedillo. “Anthropogenic Climate Change?” pg. 47 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">The first and crucial piece of evidence is, of course, that the magnitude of the warming is what is expected from the <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">anthropogenic perturbation <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> of the radiation balance, so anthropogenic forcing <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">is able to explain all of the temperature rise <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. As discussed here, the rise in <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">greenhouse g <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">ases alone corresponds to 2.6 W/m of forcing. This <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">by itself, <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> after subtraction of the observed 0.6 W/nr of ocean heat uptake, <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">would cause 1.6°C of warming since preinduslrial times <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> for medium climate sensitivity (3°C). With a current "best guess" aerosol forcing of 1 W/m\ the expected warming is 0.8°C. The point here is not that it is possible to obtain the exact observed number—this is fortuitous because the amount of aerosol forcing is still very uncertain—but that <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the expected magnitude is roughly right. There can be **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">little doubt ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">that the anthropogenic forcing is large enough to explain most of the warming <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Depending on aerosol forcing and climate sensitivity, <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">it could explain a large fraction of the warming, or all of it, or even more warming than has been observed <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> (leaving room for natural processes to counteract some of the warming). The second important piece of evidence is clear: **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">there is no viable alternative explanation ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">In the scientific literature, **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">no serious alternative hypothesis ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> has been proposed to explain the observed global warming. Other possible causes, such as solar activity, volcanic activity, cosmic rays, or orbital cycles, arc well observed, but they // do not show trends capable //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> of explaining the observed warming <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Since 1978, solar irradiance has been measured directly from satellites and shows the well-known eleven-year solar cycle, but no trend.44 There arc various estimates of solar variability before this time, based on sunspot numbers, solar cycle length, the geomagnetic AA index, neutron monitor data, and carbon- 1 A data. These indicate that <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">solar activity <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> probably increased somewhat up to 1940. While there is disagreement about the variation in previous centuries, different authors agree that solar activity did not significantly increase during the last sixty-five years.''11 Therefore, this <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">cannot explain the warming, and neither can any of the other factors mentioned. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> Models driven by natural factors only, leaving the anthropogenic forcing aside, show a cooling in the second half of the twentieth century (for an example, see figure 2-2, panel a, in chapter 2 of this volume). The trend in the sum of natural forcings is downward.

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Positive feedbacks would raise sea levels, threaten food security, collapse states, and end civilization
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Brown 8 – Professor @ CAS <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Lester E. Brown, Director and Founder of the global institute of Environment in the U.S., “Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization,” Factiva <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">In 2004, Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow at Princeton Uni­versity published an article in //Science// that showed how <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> annual carbon emissions from fossil fuels could be held at 7 billion tons instead of rising to 14 billion tons over the next 50 years, as would occur with business as usual. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">The goal of Pacala, an ecol­ogist, and Socolow, an engineer, was to prevent atmospheric CO2 concentrations, then near 375 ppm, from rising above 500 ppm. I They described //IS// ways, all using proven technologies, that by //20S4// could each cut carbon emissions by 1 billion tons per year. Any seven of these options could be used together to pre­vent an increase in carbon emissions through 2054. Pacala and Socolow further theorize that advancing technology would allow for annual carbon emissions to be cut to 2 billion tons by 2104, a level that can be absorbed by natural carbon sinks in land and oceans. The Pacala/Socolow conceptualization has been extraordi­narily useful in helping to think about how to cut carbon emis­sions. During the three years since the article was written, the urgency of acting quickly and on a much larger scale has become obvious. We also need now to go beyond the conceptu­al approach that treats all potential methods of reducing carbon emissions equally and concentrate on those that are most prom­ising. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Researchers such as James Hansen, a leading climate scien­tist at NASA, believe that global warming is accelerating and may be approaching a tipping point, a point at which climate change acquires a momentum that makes it irreversible. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> They think <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">we <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> may <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">have a decade to turn the situation around before this threshold is crossed. I agree.?3 We often hear descriptions of what we need to do in the decades ahead or by 2050 to avoid "dangerous climate change," but we are already facing this. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> Two thirds of the glaciers that feed the Yellow and Yangtze rivers of China will disappear by 2060 if even the current 7 percent annual rate of melting con­tinues. Glaciologists report that the Gangotri glacier, which supplies 70 percent of the ice melt that feeds the Ganges River during the dry season, could disappear entirely in a matter of decades.74 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">What could threaten world food security more than the melt­ing of the glaciers that feed the major rivers of Asia <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> during the dry season, the rivers that irrigate the region's rice and wheat fields? In a region with half the world's people, this potential loss of water during the dry season could lead not just to hunger but to starvation on an unimaginable scale. Asian food security would take a second hit because its rice­-growing river deltas and floodplains would be under water. The World Bank tells us that a sea level rise of only 1 meter would inundate half of the riceland in Bangladesh. While a 1-meter rise in sea level will not happen overnight, what is worrisome is that <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">if ice melting continues at today's rates, at some point such a rise in sea level will no longer be preventable. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> The melting that would cause this is not just what may happen if the earth's tem­perature rises further; this is something that is starting to hap­pen right now with the current temperature. As summer neared an end in 2007, reports from Greenland indicated that the flow of glaciers into the sea had accelerated beyond anything glaciologists had thought possible. Huge chunks of ice weighing several billion tons each were breaking off and sliding into the sea, causing minor earthquakes as they did so.!6 With melt-water lubricating the surface between the glaciers and the rocks on which they rested, <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">ice flows were accelerating, flowing into the ocean at a pace of 2 meters an hour. This accel­erated flow <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, along with the earthquakes, <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> shows the potential for the entire ice sheet to break up and collapse <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">?? Beyond what is already happening, the world faces a risk that some of <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the feedback mechanisms will begin to kick in, <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> fur­ther accelerating the warming process. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Scientists who once thought that the Arctic Ocean could be free of ice during the summer by 2100 now see it occurring by 2030. Even this could turn out to be a conservative estimate.78 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> This is of particular concern to scientists because of the albedo effect, where the replacement of highly reflective sea ice with darker open water greatly increases heat absorbed from sunlight. This, of course, has the potential to further accelerate the melting of the Greenland ice sheet <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">. A second feedback loop of concern is the melting of per­mafrost. This would release billions of tons of carbon, <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> some as methane, a potent greenhouse gas with a global warming effect per ton 25 times that of carbon dioxide.79 The risk facing humanity is that <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">climate change could spiral out of control and it will no longer be possible to arrest trends such as ice melting and rising sea level. At this point, the future of civilization would be at risk. This combination of melting glaciers, rising seas, and their effects on food security and low-lying coastal cities could over­whelm the capacity of governments to cope. Today it is largely weak states that begin to deteriorate under the pressures of mounting environmental stresses. But the changes just described could overwhelm even the strongest of states. Civilization itself could begin to unravel <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> under these extreme stresses.

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Adaptation is a myth – only works for rich countries, assumes linear climate change and ignores biodiversity loss
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Hamilton 10 – Professor of Public Ethics @ ANU <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Clive Hamilton, Professor of Public Ethics in Australia, 2010, “Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change,” pg 29-30 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Underlying the discussion of adaptation is an unspoken belief that one way or another we (in rich countries) will be able to adapt in a way that broadly preserves our way of life because global warming will change things slowly, predictably and manageably <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Wealthy countries can easily afford to build flood defences to shield roads and shopping centres from storm surges, and we can 'climate-proof homes against the effects of frequent heatwaves. Yet if our belief in our ability to stabilise the Earth's climate is misconceived then so is our belief in our ability to adapt easily to climate change. If instead of a smooth transition to a new, albeit less pleasant, <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">climate warming sets off a runaway process, adaptation will be a never-ending labour. If warming rises above three or four degrees the chances of severe and abrupt change become high. A harsh and prolonged drought can wipe out an entire regions food production. Fertile plains can turn to dust bowls <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. A week of temperatures above 40°C can kill tens of thousands of people. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Of course, for people in poor countries adaptation means something entirely different. The effects of warming will be more cruel and their ability to adapt is much more limited <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. The melting of Himalayan glaciers would stop water flowing to vast areas for the length of a dry season, leading to famine. Adaptation strategies then become severely circumscribed: the choice becomes migrate or die. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The governments of low-lying island states such as Tuvalu and Maldives are already planning to shift their entire populations. All of these have implications for national security, as waves of environmental refugees seek new places to live <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">.75 Of course, <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">all of the above takes an anthropocentric stance: humans may be able to adapt to significant climate change, but other species and ecosystems will have a much harder time of it. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">This is a huge topic, and here is not the place to canvass it. Suffice to say that across <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">a broad range of ecosystems certain species will <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> prevail (including feral animals and weeds), while others will be driven out and <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">die <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. In the type of scenario I have described, **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">mass extinctions are likely ** <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">.

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Warming is an existential risk – absent //__quickening__// reductions it causes extinction
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Mazo 10 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">– PhD in Paleoclimatology from UCLA <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Jeffrey Mazo, Managing Editor, Survival and Research Fellow for Environmental Security and Science Policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, 3-2010, “Climate Conflict: How global warming threatens security and what to do about it,” pg. 122 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">The best estimates for global warming to the end of the century range from 2.5-4.~C above pre-industrial levels, depending on the scenario. Even in the best-case scenario, the low end of the likely range is 1.goC, and in the worst 'business as usual' projections, which actual emissions have been matching, the range of likely warming runs from 3.1--7.1°C. Even keeping emissions at constant 2000 levels (which have already been exceeded), global temperature would still be expected to reach 1.2°C (O'9""1.5°C)above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century." // Without early and severe reductions //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> in emissions, the effects of climate change in the second half of the twenty-first century are // likely to be catastrophic //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">for the stability and security of countries in the developing world - not to mention the associated human tragedy. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Climate change could <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">even <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">undermine <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> the strength and stability of emerging and <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">advanced economies, beyond the knock-on effects on security of widespread state failure and collapse in developing countries <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">.' And although they have been condemned as melodramatic and alarmist, many informed observers believe that <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">unmitigated climate change <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> beyond the end of the century <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">could pose an // existential threat //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> to civilisation <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">." What is certain is that <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">there is // no precedent //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">in human experience for such rapid change or such climatic conditions <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, and <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">even in the best case adaptation <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> to these extremes <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">would mean profound social, cultural and political changes <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">.

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">\

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Contention 4- Extinction
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Scenario one is Bio-d

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Warming destroys it—that causes extinction
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Hansen 2011 **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> - **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> is member of the National Academy of Sciences, an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and at Columbia’s Earth Institute, and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (James E, “Storms of my Grandchildren”) <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">As long as the total movement of isotherms toward the poles is much smaller than the size of the habitat, or the ranges in which the animals live, the effect on species is limited. But now **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the move­ment is inexorably toward the poles and totals more than one hun­dred miles over the past several decades __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. If **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">greenhouse gases continue to increase at business-as-usual rates, then the rate of isotherm movement will double in this century to at least seventy miles per decade __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Species at the most immediate risk are those in polar climates and the biologically diverse slopes of alpine regions. __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> Polar animals, in effect, will be pushed off the planet. Alpine species will be pushed toward higher altitudes, and toward smaller, rockier areas with thinner air; thus, in effect, they will also be pushed off the planet. A few such species, such as polar bears, no doubt will be "rescued" by human beings, but survival in zoos or managed animal reserves will be small consolation to bears or nature lovers. Earth's history provides an invaluable perspective about what is possible. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Fossils in the geologic record reveal that there have been five mass extinctions during the past five hundred million years— geologically brief periods in which about half or more of the species on Earth disappeared forever __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. In each case, life survived and new species developed over hundreds of thousands and millions of years. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">All these mass extinctions were associated with large and relatively rapid changes of atmospheric composition and climate. __****__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">In the most __****__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">extreme extinction __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, the "end-Permian" event, dividing the Permian Triassic periods 251 million years ago, nearly all life on Earth— **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">more than 90 percent of terrestrial and marine species—was exterminated __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. None of the extinction events is understood in full. Research is active, as increasingly powerful methods of "reading the rocks" are being developed. Yet **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">enough is now known to provide an invalu­able perspective for what is already being called the sixth mass ex­tinction, the human-caused destruction of species __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Knowledge of past extinction events can inform us about potential paths for the future and perhaps help guide our actions, as **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">our single powerful species threatens all others, and our own. __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> We do not know how many animal, plant, insect, and microbe species exist today. Nor do we know the rate we are driving species to extinction. About two million species—half of them being insects, including butterflies—have been cataloged, but more are dis­covered every day. The order of magnitude for the total is perhaps ten million. Some biologists estimate that when all the microbes, fungi, and parasites are counted, there may be one hundred million species. Bird species are documented better than most. Everybody has heard of the dodo, the passenger pigeon, the ivory-billed woodpecker—all are gone—and the whooping crane, which, so far, we have just barely "saved." We are still losing one or two bird species per year. In total about 1 percent of bird species have disap­peared over the past several centuries. If **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the loss of birds is repre­sentative of other species, several thousand species are becoming extinct each year. The current extinction rate is at least one hundred times greater than the average natural rate. So the concern that humans may have initiated the sixth mass extinction is easy to understand. __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> However, the outcome is still very much up in the air, and human-made cli­mate change is likely to be the determining factor. I will argue that **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">if we continue on a business-as-usual path, with a global warming of several degrees Celsius, then we will drive a large fraction of species, conceivably all species, to extinction __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. On the other hand, just as in the case of ice sheet stability, if we bring atmospheric composition under control in the near future, it is still possible to keep human-caus ed extinctions to a moderate level.

//**__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Climate change induced drought and water stress is increasing tree mortality in Canada's boreal forests __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, particularly in western Canada, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">resulting in a reduction in biomass which reduces it's capacity as a carbon sink __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">As tree mortality increases, there is reduced capacity to absorb carbon dioxide, resulting in a feedback loop where conditions become warmer and drier increasing the stress on the boreal forest __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> ecosystem and ability to absorb carbon dioxide that humans keep on pumping into the atmosphere at increasing rates. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">There are big changes happening in the high latitudes where global warming is stronger __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, and the increased temperatures are more pronounced. Canadian boreal forests cover 77 per cent of forested land in Canada and amount to 30 per cent of Boreal forests globally. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The forests play a critical role in the albedo of Earth’s surface and in its global carbon budget __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. The Pew Environment Group described the importance of the Canadian boreal forests: **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Scientists have identified the 1.2 billion acre Canadian boreal forest as the largest intact forest and wetland ecosystem remaining on earth. Rivaling the Amazon in size and ecological importance, Canada’s boreal supports the world's most extensive network of pure lakes, rivers and wetlands and captures and stores twice as much carbon as tropical forests __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">It teems with wildlife—including billions of migratory songbirds, tens of millions of ducks and geese, and millions of caribou. The Canadian boreal is __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> an **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">irreplaceable __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">global treasure. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Climatic warming has affected forests ecosystems around the world with changes in __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> net primary **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">productivity, forest growth, carbon balances, plant phenology and species distribution __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> moving polewards. Much research has been done on impacts of tropical forests and temperate forests. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The boreal forests in the high latitudes have been found to be sensitive to drought and have been identified as an important climate tipping point __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> by research work lead by Dr Changhui Peng from the Laboratory for Ecological Modelling and Carbon Science (ECO-MCS) Lab from the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM). A paper published in Nature Climate Change on 20 November 2011 by Changhui Peng et al - A drought-induced pervasive increase in tree mortality across Canada’s boreal forests (abstract) highlights the importance of this change: **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The possibility of increasing tree mortality in boreal forests is a particular concern because boreal forests have been identified as a critical `tipping element' of the Earth's climate system and are believed to be more sensitive to drought than other forests __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. //
 * <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Specifically it threatens the Canadian boreal forests – that threatens extinction **
 * <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Takver, 12 **– International Climate IMC (“ Climate change increasing Canada's boreal forest mortality reducing carbon sink capacity,” International, 1/31/12, [], //JPL)//

//<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Scenario 2: War // //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Warming causes Middle East and African instability and war – it’s a threat multiplier // //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Broder 11 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">(John, Writer for Green from the New York Times, “Climate Change Drives Instability, U.N. Official Warns,” 2/15/11, []) //PC
 * __<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The United Nations’ top climate change official said on Tuesday that food shortages and rising prices caused by climate disruptions were among the chief contributors to the civil unrest coursing through North Africa and the Middle East __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. In a speech to Spanish lawmakers and military leaders, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Christiana Figueres __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">executive secretary of the United Nations climate office, said that climate change-driven drought, falling crop yields and competition for water were fueling conflict throughout Africa and __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">elsewhere in **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the developing world __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. She warned that **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">unless nations took aggressive action to reduce emissions causing global warming such conflicts would spread, toppling governments and driving up military spending around the world __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. “It is alarming to admit that **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">if __****__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the community of nations is unable to fully stabilize climate change, it will threaten where we can live, where and how we grow food and where we can find water,” __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> said Ms. Figueres, a veteran Costa Rican diplomat and environmental advocate. “In other words **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">, it will threaten the basic foundation – the very stability on which humanity has built its existence.” __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Rising food prices were a factor in the January riots that unseated Tunisia’s longtime president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, although decades of repression and high unemployment also fed the revolution. The link between food and resource shortages and Egypt’s revolution is less clear. But Ms. Figueres said that **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">long-term trends in arid regions did not look promising unless the world took decisive action on climate change __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. She said that <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">a third of all Africans now lived in drought-prone regions and that by 2050<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> as many as 600 million Africans would face water shortages <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. “On a global level, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">increasingly __****__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">unpredictable weather patterns will lead to falling agricultural production and higher food prices, leading to food insecurity __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">,” she said in her address. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">“In Africa, crop yields could decline by as much as 50 percent by 2020. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Recent **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> experiences around the world clearly show how such situations can cause political instability and undermine the performance of already fragile states __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">.” She said that **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">rising sea levels __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, more frequent and severe na **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">tural disasters, pandemics, heat waves and widespread drought could lead to extensive migrations within countries and across national borders. __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Military leaders around the world, including those in the United States, have warned **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">that such effects of a changing climate can serve as “threat multipliers,” adding stresses to nations and regions that already face heavy burdens of poverty and social insecurity __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. “All these factors taken together,” Ms. Figueres concluded, “ **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">mean that climate change, especially if left unabated, threatens to increase poverty and overwhelm the capacity of governments to meet the basic needs of their people, which could well contribute to the emergence, spread and longevity of conflict __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">.”


 * <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Middle East war leads to nuclear war **
 * <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">London 10 **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">(Herbert President Emeritus of [|Hudson Institute]. Graduate of Columbia University, 1960 and the recipient of a Ph.D. from New York University, 1966, “The Coming Crisis In The Middle East,” 6/28/10, The Gatestone Institute, http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/1387/coming-crisis-in-the-middle-east)//PC
 * __<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The coming storm in the Middle East is gaining momentum __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">; like conditions prior to World War I, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">all __****__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">it takes for explosive action to commence is a trigger __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Turkey's provocative flotilla, often described in Orwellian terms as a humanitarian mission, has set in motion a gust of diplomatic activity: if the Iranians send escort vessels for the next round of Turkish ships, which they have apparently decided not to do in favor of land operations, it could have presented a casus belli. [cause for war] **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Syria __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, too, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">has been playing a dangerous game, with both missile deployment and rearming Hezbollah __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. According to most public accounts, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Hezbollah is sitting on 40,000 long-, medium- and short-range missiles, and Syrian territory has been serving as a conduit for military materiel from Iran since the end of the 2006 Lebanon War. Should Syria move its own scuds to Lebanon or deploy its troops as reinforcement for Hezbollah, a wider regional war with Israel could not be contained. __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">In the backdrop is an **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Iran __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">with sufficient fissionable material to produce a couple of nuclear weapons __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. It will take some time to weaponize the missiles, but the road to that goal is synchronized in green lights since neither diplomacy nor diluted sanctions can convince Iran to change course. From Qatar to Afghanistan all political eyes are on Iran, poised to be "the hegemon" in the Middle East; it is increasingly considered the "strong horse" as American forces incrementally retreat from the region. Even Iraq, ironically, may depend on Iranian ties in order to maintain internal stability. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">For Sunni nations like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, regional strategic vision is a combination of deal-making to offset the Iranian Shia advantage, and attempting to buy or develop nuclear weapons as a counterweight to Iranian ambition __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. However, both of these governments are in a precarious state; should either fall, all bets are off in the Middle East neighborhood. It has long been said that the Sunni "tent" must stand on two legs: if one, falls, the tent collapses. Should this tent collapse, and **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">should Iran take advantage of that calamity, it could incite a Sunni-Shia war __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Or feeling empowered, and no longer dissuaded by an escalation scenario, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Iran, with nuclear weapons in tow, might decide that a war against Israel is a distinct possibility __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. However implausible it may seem at the moment, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the possible annihilation of Israel and the prospect of a second holocaust could lead to a nuclear exchange __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The only wild card that can change this slide into warfare is an active United States' policy. Yet, curiously, the U.S. is engaged in both an emotional and physical retreat from the region __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Despite rhetoric which suggests an Iran with nuclear weapons is intolerable, the U.S. has done nothing to forestall this eventual outcome. Despite the investment in blood and treasure to allow a stable government to emerge in Iraq, the anticipated withdrawal of U.S. forces has prompted President Maliki to travel to Tehran on a regular basis. Further, despite historic links to Israel that gave the U.S. leverage in the region as well a democratic ally, the Obama administration treats Israel as a national security albatross that must be disposed of as soon as possible. As a consequence, the U.S. is perceived in the region as the "weak horse," the one dangerous to ride. In every Middle East capital the words "unreliable and United States" are linked. Those individuals seeking a moderate course of action are now in a distinct minority. A political vacuum is emerging, one that is not sustainable and one the Iranian leadership looks to with imperial exhilaration. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">It is no longer a question of whether war will occur, but rather when it will occur, and where it will break out __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. There are many triggers to ignite the explosion, but not many scenarios for containment. Could it be a regional war in which Egypt and Saudi Arabia watch from the sidelines, but secretly wish for Israeli victory? Or will this be a war in which there aren't victors, only devastation? Moreover, should war break out, what does the U.S. do? This is a description far more dire than any in the last century and, even if some believe that it is overly pessimistic, Arab and Jew, Persian and Egyptian, Muslim and Maronite tend to believe in its veracity -- a truly bad sign.

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Scenario 3: CO2

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Unmitigated carbon emissions cause extinction.
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Romm 12- <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Joe Romm is a Fellow at American Progress and is the editor of Climate Progress, “Science: Ocean Acidifying So Fast It Threatens Humanity’s Ability to Feed Itself,” 3/2/2012, http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/02/436193/science-ocean-acidifying-so-fast-it-threatens-humanity-ability-to-feed-itself/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+climateprogre


 * __<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The world’s oceans may be turning acidic faster __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> today **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">from human carbon emissions __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> than they did during four major extinctions in the last 300 million years, when natural pulses of carbon sent global temperatures soaring, says a new study in Science. The study is the first of its kind to survey the geologic record for evidence of ocean acidification over this vast time period. “What we’re doing today really stands out,” said lead author Bärbel Hönisch, a paleoceanographer at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “We know that life during past ocean acidification events was not wiped out—new species evolved to replace those that died off. But **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">if industrial carbon emissions continue at the current pace, we may lose organisms we care about __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">—coral reefs, oysters, salmon.” That’s the news release from a major 21-author Science paper, “The Geological Record of Ocean Acidification” (subs. req’d). We knew from a 2010 Nature Geoscience study that the oceans are now acidifying 10 times faster today than 55 million years ago when a mass extinction of marine species occurred. But this study looked back over 300 million and found that “ **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the unprecedented rapidity of CO2 release currently taking place” has put marine life at risk in a frighteningly unique way: … the current rate of (mainly fossil fuel) CO2 release stands out as capable of driving a combination and magnitude of ocean geochemical changes potentially unparalleled in __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> at least the last ~300 My of **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Earth history __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, raising the possibility that **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">we are entering an unknown territory __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> of marine ecosystem change. That is to say, it’s not just that acidifying oceans spell marine biological meltdown “by end of century” as a 2010 Geological Society study put it. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">We are also warming the ocean and decreasing dissolved oxygen concentration. That is a recipe for mass extinction. __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> A 2009 Nature Geoscience study found that **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">ocean dead zones __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> “devoid of fish and seafood” **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">are poised to expand and “remain for thousands of years.“ __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> And remember, we just learned from a 2012 new Nature Climate Change study that **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">carbon dioxide is “driving fish crazy” and threatening their survival __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Here’s more on the new study: The oceans act like a sponge to draw down excess carbon dioxide from the air; the gas reacts with seawater to form carbonic acid, which over time is neutralized by fossil carbonate shells on the seafloor. But **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">if CO2 goes into the oceans too quickly, it can deplete the carbonate ions that corals, mollusks and some plankton need for reef and shell-building. __**

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">CO2 leads to increased invasive species- destroys food production
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Kjohl et al. 11- <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Mariken Kjøhl, Anders Nielsen and Nils Christian Stenseth, Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis Department of Biology, University of Oslo, 2011 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">(http://www.fao.org/docrep/014/i2242e/i2242e.pdf) <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Invasive species **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Invasive species __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> may **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">benefit from climatic changes and proliferate in their new habitats. Climate change is predicted to increase invasion of alien species __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, especially in northern regions. However, the effects of climate change on invasive species and pollination interactions may vary depending on the species and ecosystem in focus (Schweiger et al. 2010). It is necessary to assess the controllability of invaders in order to assist policy makers in ranking threats from different invasive species for more effective use of limited resources (Ceddia et al. 2009). Pest species, pesticides and pathogens **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Some invasive insect and plant species are pest organisms, which may cause severe damage to agricultural production __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">It is expected that climate change will affect various types of pests in different ways __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> (Garrett et al. 2006; Ghini and Morandi 2006). **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Increased temperatures may speed up pathogen growth rates. Warming may also favour weeds in comparison to crops and increase the abundance, growth rate and geographic range of many crop-attacking insect pests __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> (Cerri et al. 2007 **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">). Increased demand for control of plant pests often involves the use of pesticides, which can have negative impacts on human health and the environmen __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">t (Damalas 2009), **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">including ecosystem services such as pollination __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Diffenbaugh et al. (2008) assessed the potential future ranges of pest species by using empirically generated estimates of pest overwintering thresholds and degree-day requirements along with climate change projections from climate models.

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">That risk multiple extinction scenarios- world war 3, genocide, and terrorism
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">CRIBB 2010 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">(Julian, Julian Cribb is a science communicator, journalist and editor of several newspapers and books. His published work includes over 7,000 newspaper articles, 1,000 broadcasts, and three books and has received 32 awards for science, medical, agricultural and business journalism. He was Director, National Awareness, for Australia's science agency, CSIRO, foundation president of the Australian Science Communicators, and originated the CGIAR's Future Harvest strategy. He has worked as a newspaper editor, science editor for "The Australian "and head of public affairs for CSIRO. He runs his own science communication consultancy, “The coming famine: the global food crisis and what we can do to avoid it,” p.14-18 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">If large regions of the world run short of food <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;">, land, or water in the decades that lie ahead, <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">then wholesale, bloody wars are liable to follow <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;">. These wars have already begun, although many of today's governments and media seem unconscious of the fact. We should not be surprised. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Famine and war have been inseparable Horsemen of the Apocalypse since antiquity. In the modern era famine <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;"> notably <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">propelled <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;"> events as significant as <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the French Revolution <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;">, where what started as a bread crisis ultimately claimed a half million lives in the ensuing civil war and its civilian massacres; and <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the Russian Revolution <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;">, where food protests unleashed a civil war that devoured nine million human lives between 1917 and 1922.2 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Even World War II <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;"> had an imponderable component <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">in the struggle for productive land <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;">—or lebensraum as Nazi philosophy defined it. Yet food, land, and water are nowadays widely disregarded as the wellsprings of war. Carter continued: The devastation occurs primarily in countries whose economies depend on agriculture but lack the means to make their farmland productive. These are developing countries such as Sudan, Congo, Colombia, Liberia, Peru, Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka. . . . The economies of Europe, the United States, Canada and Japan were built on strong agriculture. But many developing countries have shifted their priorities away from farming in favor of urbanization, or they have reduced investments in agriculture because of budget shortages. At the same time, industrialized countries continue to cut their foreign aid budgets, which fund vital scientific research and extension work to improve farming in developing countries. "The message is clear," he concluded. "There can be no peace until people have enough to eat. Hungry people are not peaceful people."3 For decades many academics and policy makers have assumed that war is the parent and famine its child, yet recent conflicts in which critical food shortages have played a part in igniting events have begun to beg the question, Is it war that drives famine, or do scarcities of food, land, and water also sometimes lead to war? Scholars have closely dissected the chicken, but few so far have probed the egg—yet this may be critical to an understanding of one of the primary forces shaping our times.4 The shift began almost imperceptibly in 1999, when a groundbreaking study by scholars affiliated with the International Peace Research Institute of Oslo, an independent think tank devoted to research on global conflict, concluded that with the ending of the Cold War, " <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the new internal wars, extremely bloody in terms of civilian casualties, reflect subsistence crises and are largely apolitical <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;">."'' This hinted, for the first time, that resource <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">scarcity of food <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;">, land, and water <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">could become a major trigger for conflict <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;"> rather than merely a consequence of it. (The prevailing expert view, however, still mainly considers scarcity a consequence.) At the dawn of the century of humanity's greatest resource scarcities it was a serious wake-up call, yet one through which many slumbered on. "The crises stem from the failure of development, the loss of livelihood and the collapse of states. These factors add up to a vicious cycle," the Oslo scholars Indra de Soysa and Nils Petter Gleditsch explained. "The causes of armed conflict are perpetuated by conflict itself. People fight over vital necessities such as food, to protect a livelihood. . . . [S]tatcs that can provide such necessities also create conditions conducive to peace and prosperity."6 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Peace and prosperity, in turn, create the conditions necessary for democratic government, civil society, and a culture of peace <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;">, they added. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Democracy is not commonly thought of as a food by-product, but it probably is <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;">. In their study, de Soysa and Gleditsch published a disturbing map (sec map i). It showed all the countries of the world where food production was most critical to the survival of the nation-state—and all the places where, in the previous ten years, war and strife had broken out. The coincidence was more than striking. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">If your country is at the mercy of a shaky food supply <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;">, the map implies, <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">watch out for war <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;">. The opposite was equally evident: those places where food was plentiful—"old" Europe, North America, Australasia, and parts of Latin America—had escaped mass bloodletting within their own territories during the decade. Peace, the study implied, prefers a full platter. The causes of these wars included disputes between new settlers and existing landholders, unjust land distribution due to corrupt ownership or government, environmental degradation so bad as to reduce the food supply, lack of access to water, and famine. Environmental wars, so far, are rare—but several commentators think that such conflicts may become more frequent as humanity presses against the limits of the Earth's resources. "Conditions affecting the livelihoods of the majority of people in poor countries arc at the heart of the internal violence. The inability to meet food requirements drives people to adopt alternative survival strategies, one of which is to join rebellions and criminal insurgencies. In such situations the use of violence is primarily for economic goals, rather than the political ends that drove many revolutionary movements during the Cold War," de Soysa and Gleditsch wrote.' Added to this may be another factor more primal still: love of one's children. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Of all the indicators that point most reliably to government collapse and the probability of conflict, none is more brutally eloquent than the death rate among children. Starvation and malnutrition-related disease are the main causes of high infant mortality. Those countries with the most child deaths also have high levels of conflict <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;">.8 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Love of children, horribly, is what may <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;">—at times— <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">furnish the motivation for genocide: the blind desire to exterminate "the other," to eliminate the competition they pose for the basics of life. The roots of the 1994 Rwandan genocide were on the farm: <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;"> "The country relied heavily on coffee exports for hard currency and government revenues. The collapse of world prices in the early 1990s led to high unemployment, reduced farm incomes, reduced social spending, and a citizenry receptive to government incitement of ethnic and political violence."9 Most studies still focus on the salient features of genocide rather than its underlying drivers. There remains a gap in our understanding of what propels societies toward this self-mutilating behavior—and part of the answer may well lie in scarcities of food, land, and water. Some <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">observers <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;"> also <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">claim a link between food insecurity and terrorism, pointing out that hungry countries are among those most likely to furnish terrorism recruits <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;">. In 2002, heads of state from fifty countries met at a development summit in Mexico where they discussed the role of poverty and hunger as a breeding ground for terrorism. "No-one in this world can feel comfortable or safe while so many are suffering and deprived," UN secretary general Kofi Annan told them. The president of the UN General Assembly, Han Seung-Soo, added that the world's poorest countries were a breeding ground for violence and despair. The Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo added, "To speak of development is to speak also of a strong and determined fight against terrorism."10 <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Around the world many guerrilla and insurgent causes <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;">—such as Shining Path, the Tamil Tigers, and Abu Sayyaf— <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">have claimed injustice in land ownership and use as one of their motivating causes <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;">.

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">When **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the US Department of Defense released its Quadrennial Defense Review __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> ( **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">QDR __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">) in February 2010, it **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">marked the first time a major Pentagon force planning document had described the strategic implications of climate change and its likely effect on future military missions __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Citing US intelligence assessments, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the QDR stated that ‘climate change could have significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation and the further weakening of fragile governments’ __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">.1 In addition, the document noted, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">climate change could contribute to food and water scarcities, increase the spread of disease and exacerbate mass migration __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">.2 Nine months after publication of the QDR, Rear Admiral David Titley, the US Navy's chief oceanographer and the head of the Navy's Task Force Climate Change (TFCC), told a US Congressional committee how **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">climate change would affect future US Navy missions. ‘While the Arctic is a bellwether for global climate change’, he noted, ‘there are other impacts of climate change on missions that the Navy must consider, including water resources, fisheries and implications for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief’ __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">.3 The following year, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the National Research Council (NRC) issued a report on the implications of climate change for future naval operations. Among its various findings, the NRC concluded that climate change would likely ‘generate geopolitical instability in already vulnerable regions’ of the world, which would have implications for future US military missions __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">.4
 * <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Warming intensifies geopolitical instability and will overstretch America’s Navy **
 * <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Smith, 11 **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">– professor of Security Strategies at the Naval War College, former associate/assistant professor with the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (Paul, “ The geopolitics of climate change: power transitions, conflict and the future of military activities,” Conflict, Security, & Development, [], //JPL)

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Abstract: America is a maritime power, and **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">a strong U.S. Navy is both in America’s long-term interest and essential to the nation’s prosperity __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Yet U.S. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">sea power __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> is in **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">decline. __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> If not reversed, this decline **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">could __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> pass the tipping point, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">l __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">eaving the country economically and strategically unable to reverse course, which would **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">have profound economic and geopolitical consequences __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Members of Congress and the Navy need to work together to develop long-range technology road maps, foster innovation, and properly fund and manage shipbuilding to ensure that the future **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Navy has the size and capabilities needed to protect and advance U.S. interests around the world __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Implications of the Loss of Preponderant Sea Power How the United States might replace its preponderant sea power—if that day ever comes—seems less straightforward. Indeed, the question seems almost ludicrous. The United States is a maritime nation, bordered by two oceans and for much of its history protected by them. Over the past 60 years, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the oceans have been highways for worldwide trade that has helped to lift more than a billion people out of poverty,[3] and those sea lanes have been patrolled by the U.S. Navy, the world’s preeminent naval power __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The U.S. Navy’s global presence has added immeasurably to U.S. economic vitality and to the economies of America’s friends and allies, __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> not to mention those of its enemies. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">World wars __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, which destroyed Europe and much of East Asia **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">, have become almost incomprehensible thanks to __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">the “nuclear taboo” and **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> preponderant American sea power __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">If these conditions are removed, all bets are off. __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> For more than five centuries, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the global system of trade and economic development has grown and prospered in the presence of some dominant naval power. __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and now **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the U.S. __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> have each taken a turn as the major provider of naval power to maintain the global system. Each benefited handsomely from the investment: [These **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">navie __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">s], in times of peace, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">secured the global commons and ensured freedom of movement of goods and people across the globe __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. They **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">support __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">ed **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">global trading systems __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> from the age of mercantilism to the industrial revolution and into the modern era of capitalism. They were a gold standard for international exchange. These forces supported national governments that had specific global agendas for liberal trade, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">the rule of law at sea, and the protection of maritime commerce __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> from illicit activities such as piracy and smuggling.[4] **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">A preponderant naval power occupies a unique position in the global order, __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> a special seat at the table, which when unoccupied creates conditions for instability. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Both world wars __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">several European-wide conflicts, and innumerable regional fights have been fueled by naval arms races, inflamed by __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">the combination of passionate rising powers and **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">feckless declining powers __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. In this scenario, events unfold in a world that is very unstable and unsafe. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">International cooperation declines dramatically as countries hoard natural resources and the U.S. struggles against the strength of other resource-rich and economically robust regions of the world __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Like the recession of 2008, the main trigger for this catastrophe is the international finance system. In 2020, several major European nations default on their debt, causing a flight of private money from the formal financial systems of the European Union (EU), the U.S., and Japan. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Contagion in the financial markets plunges the world economy into global depression __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Virtually every major Western nation finds itself in horrific economic straits, and only nations without expansive social safety nets are able to meet current obligations. Those with robust social welfare programs face aging populations, smaller workforces, and drastic cuts in services that spill over into all sectors of their economies. The U.S. economy contracts from $20 trillion in 2020 to $12 trillion in 2025. During this time, two separate U.S. presidential Administrations seek and obtain significant cuts in the size of the U.S. armed forces. Homeland security becomes the sole focus of the Department of Defense, with policymakers concentrating primarily on port and border security, land-based strategic nuclear forces, anti-terrorism, and managing civil unrest. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Islamic terrorism accelerates the turn inward __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, which had abated in the second decade of the 21st century, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">as terrorists take advantage of the weakened condition of the West, especially the United States. Two “dirty bomb” explosions __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> in 2021 **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">accelerate the worldwide redeployment of U.S. military forces __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> to home bases as the nation demands protection from terrorism. By 2025, U.S. international influence has all but disappeared, and U.S. efforts to counter Islamic terrorism garner little worldwide support due to economic and political interests. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">While the worldwide depression is devastating __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, it is less so in China, which in 2015 began to rebalance its economy aggressively toward domestic consumption. A China–Russia entente dominates the international distribution of resources and is ascendant economically. A global “basket currency” replaces the dollar as the reserve currency of choice, and Southeast Asia leads in technology development. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Global maritime trade declines dramatically due to rising oil prices, terrorism, and piracy, and international cooperation to provide enhanced security does not materialize __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. With the decrease in long-haul international trade, regional trade blocs become the dominant mode of commerce. Even as the depression reduces demand, supply is reduced further. The United Nations is ineffective and ignored, a relic of an age of international cooperation long since past. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Worldwide competition for declining energy resources increases __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, exacerbated by a global decline in energy innovation as commercial investment slows dramatically. Industrial nations with domestic access to energy engage in power politics, creating even more conflict in an already unstable world. In this environment, Americans are not embraced internationally, and the U.S. military loses many of its basing rights as it redeploys to the United States.
 * <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Naval power solves multiple scenarios for nuclear war **
 * <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Eaglen and McGrath 11 ****<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">- **<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">5/16/**11** – — <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Mackenzie Eaglen is Research Fellow for National Security in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation. Bryan McGrath is a retired naval officer and the Director of Delex Consulting, Studies and Analysis in Vienna, Virginia. On active duty, he commanded the destroyer USS Bulkeley (DDG 84) and served as the primary author of the current maritime strategy. (“Thinking About a Day Without Sea Power: Implications for U.S. Defense Policy” http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/05/thinking-about-a-day-without-sea-power-implications-for-us-defense-policy)

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Climate change destroys coral reefs – multiple reasons
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">GBRMPA, 11 <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 11pt;">(Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, “Climate change impacts on coral reefs,” Australian Government, 8/8/11, <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">[] <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 11pt;">, //JPL)
 * __<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Coral reefs are highly vulnerable to climate change and the impacts will be far reaching. Coral reefs are complex structures __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> built mainly from the calcium carbonate (limestone) skeletons laid down by hard corals. These **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">reef-building corals are highly vulnerable to rising sea temperatures and ocean acidification __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Slowed growth and loss of hard corals will reduce essential habitat for many other reef creatures. Reef structures __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> themselves **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">will __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> also **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">begin to crumble __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> if reef growth does not keep pace with erosion by animals and storms. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Coral reefs __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> comprise only six per cent of the area of the Great Barrier Reef, yet they **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">provide critical habitat and food for many species in the ecosystem __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Healthy coral reefs are also the essential foundation for reef-based tourism and fishing. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">They are vitally connected to other __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> Great Barrier Reef **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">habitats __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> including mangroves and salt marshes, seagrass meadows, estuaries, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">and open water environments __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Reefs also act as barriers, protecting inshore habitats and human communities from large waves and storm surges. Rising sea temperature **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Hard corals are highly susceptible to coral bleaching caused by higher-than-normal sea temperatures. Coral bleaching is expected to occur more often and with greater severity in the future, making it difficult for corals to recover between bleaching events __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. As a result, the **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">abundance of living corals on reefs is likely to decline __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> in coming decades. Some coral types, such as staghorn corals, are especially sensitive to bleaching, and these will be the most seriously affected. Coral communities will increasingly be dominated by types that are more tolerant to temperature stress. Large, fleshy **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">seaweeds __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> (macroalgae), **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">which compete with corals for space on the reef, will __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> also **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">benefit from rising temperatures __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> and coral bleaching. Scientists have shown that degrading reefs can be rapidly overgrown by these macroalgae, which in turn impede coral recovery. Reefs dominated by macroalgae and bleaching-resistant corals have less three-dimensional structure than healthy coral reefs. Such reefs provide fewer shelters and refuges for the many animals that rely on the reef for their habitat. Ocean acidification Coral reefs are also highly vulnerable to ocean acidification. Hard corals and many other organisms that contribute to reef building, such as coralline algae, make their skeletons from calcium carbonate (limestone). **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The rate of skeleton formation __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, known as calcification, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">will slow if waters become more acidic and the skeletons of these animals and plants will be weaker __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Reefs are continually worn down by storms __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, and creatures that eat, burrow or dissolve their way through limestone. For a healthy reef to be maintained, the growth of corals and encrusting algae has to at least keep pace with this erosion. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Continuing ocean acidification will __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> ultimately **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">contribute to coral loss, and a weakening and collapse of __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> limestone **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">reef structures __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Extreme weather events The Great Barrier Reef has adapted to cope with the impacts of cyclones and severe storms. However, **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">many scientists predict that intense cyclones __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> (such as cyclone Hamish and cyclone Yasi) **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">will occur more often due to climate change. Reef recovery from such severe storms is slow __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, because fewer corals survive to recolonise affected areas. **__<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">An increase in severe cyclones could therefore contribute to the degradation of reefs structures already weakened by coral bleaching and ocean acidification __**<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">.

<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">Coral reef systems key to human survival
Green Reefs, 12 <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">– Green Reefs environmental magazine (“About Us; Who Are We?” 4/22/12, []<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">, //JPL) <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"> Here at Green Reefs we are dedicated to the preservation of these precious marine ecosystems known as coral reefs. We will examine __<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> **the role these fragile biotopes have in our everyday life, from the food we eat to the medicines which may one day cure cancer. Not only do the reefs sustain much of human life, nearly all of aquatic life depends on these small ecosystems as well** __<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">either directly or indirectly __<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">. **As the effects of climate change** __<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">, global warming, overfishing and overpopulation __<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> **become more dangerous, the reefs find themselves more and more vulnerable. Human survival may ultimately hinge on the survival of the reef ecosystems.** __<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">With that being said, reefs are home to some of the most colorful and majestic creatures in the world, as well as some of the strangest __<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">. **With more biodiversity than the Amazon, new creatures are constantly being discovered. New medicines continue to be developed from venomous creatures in the seas. The oceans are becoming more impactful in human civilization** __<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">. Despite this, the ocean remains relatively unexplored, even though it covers nearly three quarters of our planet. Scientists know more about the surface of the moon than the ocean floor.

=<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;">***NEG*** =
 * Strategies:**
 * Bataille**
 * Anthro**
 * T-invest (vs. NIB, but don't let this distract you, he is a K hack)**
 * Nietzsche**
 * Virillio**