HSS Impact Defense File

Arctic War

1NC Arctic War

No risk of Arctic War in the squo cooperation and diplomacy
Bukkvoll 11
Tor Bukkvoll, Visiting fellow at The Leverhulme Program on the Changing Character of War, University of
Oxford, 9/22/11, (Prospects for peace and cooperation in the Arctic,
http://valdaiclub.com/russia_and_the_world/31960.html)//AW On a related note, one must also keep
in mind that while there is nothing inevitable about a deterioration of relations in the Arctic, the fact
that it can or will be avoided should also not be taken for granted. The chances for building peaceful
relations in the Arctic are good, but it will demand serious focus, a great deal of dialogue and willingness
to compromise from the states involved. Regional cooperation arrangements such as the Arctic and
Barents Councils can also play an important role in this regard. Despite the reasons for conflict discussed
above, the conditions for conflict resolution through peaceful means are probably more promising in the
Arctic than in many other regions where similar conflicts exist. First, all the states concerned, to varying
degrees, are relatively economically developed and politically stable. They are therefore likely to be
more predictable in their policies than less economically developed and politically stable states. Second,
a comprehensive basis of agreements and normative acts for regulating bilateral relations in the area
already exists. Third, civilian cooperation among the Arctic states is expanding on issues such as
maritime search and rescue and environmental monitoring, to mention just two. Such cooperation could
also be expected to have a spillover effect into the security realm. Fourth, in military terms the most
significant players in the Arctic the USA and Russia face much greater security challenges elsewhere
in the world. The USA is concerned by the rise of Chinas military capacity, their continued ability to be a
significant military player if the Pacific, and the defense of U.S. interests in a number of hot spots in the
developing world. Russia is concerned by the significant potential for political upheaval along its
southern and eastern borders, in addition to also keeping an eye on Chinas rising military might. Thus,
both countries could be expected to work particularly hard to avoid the Arctic becoming yet another
area of instability. Fifth, to some extent the Arctic five share a common interest in limiting non-Arctic
states access to the region. On the one hand this could lead to greater cooperation among the Arctic
five on limiting outside influence, but on the other hand it could also lead to conflict between them
should differences of opinion arise about what the role of outsiders should be or whether some
should be given priority over others.

2NC Arctic War

The Arctic is safe no miscalc, intentions are benign
Rybachenkov 13
(Vladimir, Counselor for nuclear affairs at the Russian embassy in Washington, Lecturere at Carnagie-
Plowshare, The Arctic: region of multilateral cooperation or platform for military tension?,
http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_04_03/The-Arctic-region-of-multilateral-cooperation-or-platform-for-
military-tension/) Some western media have recently been highlighting the view that military conflicts
in the struggle to secure the Arctic's natural resources are inevitable. Russia is carefully monitoring
developments in polar region and considers the general situation in the area to be positive, stable and,
on the whole, predictable, based on the assumption that there are no immediate issues that might call
for a military solution. This assessment has recently been confirmed in a report by the Stockholm
Institute for Peace Research (SIPRI), which refuted recent conjecture about a polar arms race. It is
commonly recognised that there are currently three major factors determining the Arctic situation;
Firstly, the end to military and political confrontation from the Cold War when the Arctic was almost
exclusively seen in the context of flight trajectories for strategic nuclear weapons as well a route for
nuclear submarine patrols. Now the threat of a global nuclear war is substantially reduced, with US
Russian arms control treaties being a key element in the gradual movement towards a world without
nuclear weapons. Impartial assessment of the arms control process shows that both countries' nuclear
potentials have steadily diminished over the last 20 years. The START 1 treaty resulted in the removal
of about 40% of the nuclear weapons deployed in Russia and the USA while the 2010 New START treaty
provided for their further fourfold reduction. Substantial efforts have also been made by both countries
to reduce the likelihood of accidental nuclear launches due to unauthorised actions or
misunderstandings: strategic nuclear bombers were taken off full time alert and Open ocean
targeting" was mutually agreed, meaning that in the event of an accidental launch, the missile would
be diverted to land in the open ocean. Two other factors were contributing to the opening up of new
opportunities in the Arctic: the emergence of new technologies and rapid thawing of the Arctic ice, both
rendering natural resources and shipping routes more accessible. It should also be noted that the ice-
cap depletion also has a military dimension, namely the gradual increase of US multipurpose nuclear
submarines and the deployment of missile defence AEGIS warships in the Northern Seas may be
considered by Russia as a threat to its national security. Russia was the first Arctic state to adopt, in
2008, a long term policy report in response to the new realities, it pointed to the Arctic region as a,
strategic resource base for the country" which would require the development of a new social and
economic infrastructure as well as an upgrading of military presence in the region to safeguard the
Arctic territory. The document however underlined that there was no question of militarising the
Arctic and expressed the importance of sub-regional and international cooperation to form a
favourable social, cultural and economic space. All other Arctic states have adopted similar strategies
with the key common point being a statement that the national interests of each Arctic state can only
be met through multilateral cooperation. A race" for territory, energy and seafood has been curtailed
by historical decisions taken at the 2008 Ilulissat (Greenland) meeting when five Arctic coastal states
declared that their basic framework for future cooperation, territorial delimitation, resolution of
disputes and competing claims would be the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS ).

No risk of war empirics are conclusive
Hong 11
Nong, Postdoctoral fellow with the China Institute, University of Alberta, Deputy Director at the
Research Centre for Oceans Law and Policy, National Institute for the South China Sea Studies, Arctic
Energy: Pathway to Conflict or Cooperation in the High North?,
http://www.ensec.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=310:arctic-energy-pathway-to-
conflict-or-cooperation-in-the-high-north&catid=116:content0411&Itemid=375 While there are
disagreements between the Arctic states on maritime boundaries, there are still reasons to believe that
these disagreements can be resolved amicably. The prospect for conflicts relating to unresolved
boundary disputes seems remote. The existing vehicles for dispute resolution and cooperation in the
region, UNCLOS and the Arctic Council, will also help to reduce tensions. Joint management of resource
fields is another option that might come into play as countries involved in a dispute might see more
advantage in approaching the disagreement this way rather than losing a claim in an international
tribunal. Cooperation between Norway and Iceland regarding the development of the Dreki field could
serve as a model for similar arrangements in the future. Another example is the continental shelf
dispute concerning an area rich in natural gas between Russia and Norway in the Barents Sea. Both
countries dispute the other's interpretation of where their borders extend into the offshore EEZ. While it
is possible that there could be a conflict between the two countries over this area, it seems highly
unlikely given the potential costs versus the potential benefits. Geopolitical issues are not exclusively
conflicts over interests, although such concerns tend to dominate. They can also reflect cooperative,
multilateral initiatives by which a state pursues its interests vis--vis others. Such cooperative ventures
are often considered desirable and even unavoidable when a state is seeking a result that cannot be
achieved unilaterally. At the same time, cooperation frequently establishes a level of governance in
some cases formally, in others less formally by which mutual understanding can clarify intentions
and help to build trust. Recognizing and respecting each others rights constitutes the legal basis for
cooperation between Arctic and non-Arctic states. In accordance with UNCLOS and other relevant
international laws, Arctic states have sovereign rights and jurisdiction in their respective areas in the
region, while non-Arctic states also enjoy rights of scientific research and navigation. To develop a
partnership of cooperation, Arctic and non-Arctic states should, first and foremost, recognize and
respect each other's rights under the international law. Examples between Arctic and non-Arctic states
are there. On 22 November 2010, the Sovcomflot Group (SCF) and China National Petroleum
Corporation (CNPC) signed a strategic long-term cooperation agreement. The parties agreed to develop
a long-term partnership in the sphere of seaborne energy solutions, with the SCF fleet serving the
continually growing Chinese imports of hydrocarbons. Taking into account the significant experience
gained by Sovcomflot in developing the transportation of hydrocarbons in the Arctic seas, SCF and CNPC
agreed upon the format for coordination in utilizing the transportation potential of the Northern Sea
Route along Russias Arctic coast, both for delivering transit shipments of hydrocarbons and for the
transportation of oil and gas from Russias developing Arctic offshore fields to China. A new fleet of
tankers designed to operate in ice as well as additional heavy-duty ice breakers will be built to that end.
South Koreas Samsung Industries is looking into filling the technological gap to make it possible to
deliver Arctic natural gas across the pacific ocean to East Asia. Russia is building massive duel-bowed oil
tankers that are set to come into use as soon as next year. While traveling forward, the ships move as
they normally would through open water. But when the vessels move backward, they can act as ice-
breakers. Construction is underway on two 70,000-tonne ships and two more 125,000 tonne ships and
there are rumors that another five are on order.

China-US War
1NC No US-China War
US-China war wont escalate
Dobbins, 2012 (James Dobbins, directs the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation, previously
served as American Ambassador to the European Community and Assistant Secretary of State, August/September 2012, War with China,
Survival, Vol. 54, No. 4, p. 7-24)
It is important to begin any such analysis by recognising that China is seeking neither territorial aggrandisement nor
ideological sway over its neighbours. It shows no interest in matching US military expenditures,
achieving a comparable global reach, or assuming defence commitments beyond its immediate
periphery. Such intentions might change, but if so, the United States would probably receive considerable
warning, given the lead times needed to develop such capabilities. Despite cautious and pragmatic Chinese policies, the risk of conflict with
the United States remains, and this risk will grow in consequence and perhaps in probability as Chinas strength increases. Among the sources
of conflict most likely to occasion a ChinaUS military clash over the next 30 years, listed in descending order of probability, are changes in the
status of North Korea and Taiwan, Sino-American confrontation in cyberspace, and disputes arising from Chinas uneasy relationships with
Japan and India. All these sources are on Chinas immediate periphery, where Chinese security interests and capabilities seem likely to remain
focused. It is important to stress that a ChinaUS military conflict is not probable in any of these cases, but that
judgement is based on the view that the United States will retain the capacity to deter behaviour that could lead to such a clash throughout this
period.
2NC No US-China War

Recent Summit solved military relations
Rudd 13
*Kevin Rudd, former prime minister of Australia, A subtle defrosting in Chinas chilly war with America Financial Times, June 10, 2013,
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/594776d2-d1ba-11e2-9336-00144feab7de.html#axzz2WXapvlZM]
High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See
our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. In Beijing analysts still struggle to define the precise state of the
China-US relationship. As one said to me recently: Bu shi rezhan, bu shi lengzhan; er shi liangzhan. Or, in the Queens English: Its not
a hot war, its not a cold war; its more like a chilly war. The problem for leaders, diplomats and analysts is that the relationship defies simple
definition. Variants range from strategic engagement, strategic co-operation and strategic competition to China as a responsible global
stakeholder. The problem with these ideas is that they mean very little to the Chinese. The phrase that hits home
in both capitals these days is strategic trust deficit a gap between China and the US which, if left unchecked, could destabilise the entire
Asia-Pacific region. Such a deficit is potentially disastrous for both parties. We see it in the world of cyber espionage and cyber warfare; in
escalating tensions in the East and South China Seas, where hundreds of naval and air assets are deployed; in escalating tensions on the Korean
peninsula; and in the UN Security Council stalemate over Syria. That is why the working summit between presidents
Barack Obama of the US and Xi Jinping of China at the weekend was so important. There had been no
high-level political mechanism for the two sides to manage these and other apparently intractable
challenges facing the regional and global order. With this summit, with more to follow, we at last have the capacity to build such a
mechanism. The fact is, unless the Chinese president himself (simultaneously chairman of the Central Military Commission and general
secretary of the Communist party) engages personally in negotiations with his US counterpart, Chinas political system is geared to the defence
of the status quo. In the US, the secretaries both of state and defence are able to make some strategic calls in negotiations. But their Chinese
counterparts are not even among the 250 most senior officials in the party hierarchy. Only the president, in consultation with the other six
members of the Politburo Standing Committee, can make the genuinely big calls. Despite opposition in both capitals, both
presidents decided to depart from the diplomatic conventions that have governed relations for the past
40 years and convened a working summit, free of the pomp normally associated with state visits. This is a
success in its own right. More importantly, both camps are privately delighted by the tone, depth and content of this first engagement, with
neither expecting a laundry list of deliverables. Nobody present saw this as the cyber summit described in the US media. So, what are
the outcomes? First, the agreement to establish a regular military-to-military dialogue is critical . It
could contribute to rules of the road on cyber security; crisis management for the Korean peninsula; the
management of incidents at sea and in the air as well as creating a mechanism to develop basic confidence
and security-building measures for the region. Second, the summit represented the first systematic
engagement and calibration between the two nations on the future of North Korea, including their
reported public commitment to prevent Pyongyang acquiring nuclear weapons. Third, there was
agreement on climate change, perhaps reflecting the start of a commitment to make the global rules-
based order more effective. No one should expect Chinese policy to change quickly. Much could go wrong. But, without a
programme of working bilateral summitry, there is little prospect of getting much of strategic importance right. After 20 years of drift in the
relationship following the elimination of the Soviet threat, which for the previous 20 years provided the underlying rationale for co-operation
this meeting could mark the start of a new period of detente. We were headed towards strategic competition or
worse. We may now have the capacity to build sufficient trust in the relationship, creating a framework to manage the growing complexity of
bilateral, regional and global challenges the nations face. It could even lead to what Mr Xi himself described as a new model of great power
relations for the future, one that does not mindlessly replicate the bloody history of the rise and fall of great powers in centuries past.



2NC No Oil War

China oil wars wont happen
Victor 07 (David G. Victor professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and director of the Schools new
Laboratory on International Law and Regulation, The National Interest, 2007, What Resource Wars?
http://irps.ucsd.edu/dgvictor/publications/Faculty_Victor_Article_2007_What%20Resource%20Wars_The%20National%20Interest.pdf)
Among the needed resources, oil has been the most visible. Indeed, Chinese state-owned oil companies are dotting Africa, Central Asia
and the Persian Gulf with projects aimed to export oil back home. The overseas arm of India's state oil company has followed a similar strategy-unable to compete
head-to-head with the major Western companies, it focuses instead on areas where human- rights abuses and bad governance keep be major oil companies at bay
and where India's foreign policy can open doors. To a lesser extent, Malaysia engages in the same behavior. The American threat industry rarely
sounds the alarm over Indian and Malaysian efforts, though, in part because those firms have less capital so splash around and mainly because their
stories just don't compare with fear of the rising dragon. These efforts to lock up resources by going out fit well with the standard narrative for resource wars--a
zero-sum struggle for vital supplies. But ? To be sure, the struggle over resources has yielded a wide array of commercial
conflicts as companies duel for con- tracts and ownership. State-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation's (CNOOC) failed
bid to acquire U.S.-based Unocal-and with it Unocals valuable oil and gas supplies in Asia-is a recent example. But that is hardly unique to re- sources-
similar conflicts with tinges of national security arise in the control over ports, aircraft engines,
databases laden with private information and a growing array of advanced technologies for which civilian and military functions are hard to distinguish.
These disputes win and lose some friendships and contracts, but they do not unleash violence. Most
importantly, China's going-out strategy is unlikely to spur resource wars because it simply does not work, a
lesson the Chinese are learning. Oil is a fungible commodity, and when it is sourced far from China it is better to sell
(and buy) the oil on the world market. The best estimates suggest that only about one-tenth of the oil produced overseas by Chinese investments (so-called "equity
oil") actually makes it back to the country. So, thus far, the largest beneficiaries of China's strategy are the rest of the worlds oil consumers-first and foremost the
Unit- ed States-who gain because China subsidize: production. . Until recently, the strategy of going out for oil looked like a good bet for China's interests. But,
despite threat-industry fear-mongering, we need not worry that it will continue over the long term because Chinese enterprises are already
poised to follow a new strategy that is less likely to engender conflict. The past strategy rested on a trifecta of passing fads.
One fad was the special access that Chinese state enterprises had to cheap capital from the government and by retaining their earnings. The ability to direct that
spigot to political projects is diminishing as China engages in reforms that expose state enterprises to the real cost of capital and as the Chinese state and its
enterprises look for better commercial returns on the money they invest. Second, nearly all the equity-oil investments overseas have occurred since the late 1990s,
as prices have been rising. Each has looked much smarter than the last because of the surging value of oil in the ground. But that trend is slowing in many places
because the cost of discovering and developing oil resources is rising.


Competitiveness
1NC Competitiveness High
Competitiveness resilient and high structural factors
Krishnadev Calamur 13 is an editor at NPR in DC, NPR, U.S. Competitiveness Up, Ranking Fifth, Survey Says, 9/4/2013,
http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/09/04/218902510/u-s-competitiveness-up-ranking-fifth-survey-says
U.S. competitiveness among global economies suffered after the 2008 global economic crisis. Four years
after the crisis, the U.S. slipped in the World Economic Forum's annual competitiveness ranking. This
year it's back up a bit: The U.S. rose to fifth position overall from seventh last year, in the forum's latest
survey, which was released Wednesday. Here's what the survey says about the U.S., the world's largest
economy: "Overall, many structural features continue to make the US economy extremely productive.
US companies are highly sophisticated and innovative, supported by an excellent university system that
collaborates admirably with the business sector in R&D. Combined with flexible labor markets and the
scale opportunities afforded by the sheer size of its domestic economy the largest in the world by far
these qualities continue to make the United States very competitive.

Cyber
1NC No Cyber Impact
Zero Threat of Cyber Attack their ev is hype
Singer, 12 (Peter Director 21
st
Century Defense Initiative, November, The Cyber Terror Bogeyman
Armed Forces Journal, http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2012/11/cyber-terror-singer)

About 31,300. That is roughly the number of magazine and journal articles written so far that discuss the phenomenon of cyber terrorism.
Zero. That is the number of people that who been hurt or killed by cyber terrorism at the time this went to press. In many
ways, cyber terrorism is like the Discovery Channels Shark Week, when we obsess about shark attacks despite the fact that you
are roughly 15,000 times more likely to be hurt or killed in an accident involving a toilet. But by looking at how terror groups actually use the
Internet, rather than fixating on nightmare scenarios, we can properly prioritize and focus our efforts. Part of the problem is the way
we talk about the issue. The FBI defines cyber terrorism as a premeditated, politically motivated attack
against information, computer systems, computer programs and data which results in violence against non-combatant
targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents. A key word there is violence, yet many discussions sweep all sorts of nonviolent online
mischief into the terror bin. Various reports lump together everything from Defense Secretary Leon Panettas recent statements that a terror
group might launch a digital Pearl Harbor to Stuxnet-like sabotage (ahem, committed by state forces) to hacktivism, WikiLeaks and credit card
fraud. As one congressional staffer put it, the way we use a term like cyber terrorism has as much clarity as cybersecurity that is, none at
all. Another part of the problem is that we often mix up our fears with the actual state of affairs. Last year, Deputy
Defense Secretary William Lynn, the Pentagons lead official for cybersecurity, spoke to the top experts in the field at the RSA Conference in
San Francisco. It is possible for a terrorist group to develop cyber-attack tools on their own or to buy them on the black market, Lynn warned.
A couple dozen talented programmers wearing flip-flops and drinking Red Bull can do a lot of damage. The deputy defense secretary was
conflating fear and reality, not just about what stimulant-drinking programmers are actually hired to do, but also what is
needed to pull off an attack that causes meaningful violence. The requirements go well beyond finding top cyber
experts. Taking down hydroelectric generators, or designing malware like Stuxnet that causes nuclear centrifuges to spin
out of sequence doesnt just require the skills and means to get into a computer system. Its also knowing what to do once you
are in. To cause true damage requires an understanding of the devices themselves and how they run, the engineering and physics behind the
target. The Stuxnet case, for example, involved not just cyber experts well beyond a few wearing flip-flops, but also experts in areas that ranged
from intelligence and surveillance to nuclear physics to the engineering of a specific kind of Siemens-brand industrial equipment. It also
required expensive tests, not only of the software, but on working versions of the target hardware as well. As George R. Lucas Jr., a professor at
the U.S. Naval Academy, put it, conducting a truly mass-scale action using cyber means simply outstrips the intellectual, organizational and
personnel capacities of even the most well-funded and well-organized terrorist organization, as well as those of even the most sophisticated
international criminal enterprises. Lucas said the threat of cyber terrorism has been vastly overblown.

2NC No Cyber Impact
Redundancy solves anyway
Rid 12 (Thomas, writer for Foreign Policy, Think Again: Cyberwar, March,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles /2012/02/27/cyberwar)

Just because there's more malware, however, doesn't mean that attacks are becoming easier. In fact,
potentially damaging or life-threatening cyberattacks should be more difficult to pull off. Why?
Sensitive systems generally have built-in redundancy and safety systems, meaning an attacker's likely
objective will not be to shut down a system, since merely forcing the shutdown of one control system, say a power plant,
could trigger a backup and cause operators to start looking for the bug. To work as an effective weapon, malware would
have to influence an active process -- but not bring it to a screeching halt. If the malicious activity extends over a
lengthy period, it has to remain stealthy. That's a more difficult trick than hitting the virtual off-button. Take
Stuxnet, the worm that sabotaged Iran's nuclear program in 2010. It didn't just crudely shut down the centrifuges at
the Natanz nuclear facility; rather, the worm subtly manipulated the system. Stuxnet stealthily infiltrated the
plant's networks, then hopped onto the protected control systems, intercepted input values from sensors, recorded these data, and then
provided the legitimate controller code with pre-recorded fake input signals, according to researchers who have studied the worm. Its objective
was not just to fool operators in a control room, but also to circumvent digital safety and monitoring systems so it could secretly manipulate the
actual processes. Building and deploying Stuxnet required extremely detailed intelligence about the systems it
was supposed to compromise, and the same will be true for other dangerous cyberweapons. Yes,
"convergence," standardization, and sloppy defense of control-systems software could increase the risk of
generic attacks, but the same trend has also caused defenses against the most coveted targets to
improve steadily and has made reprogramming highly specific installations on legacy systems more
complex, not less.

Deforestation

1NC Deforestation

Alt cause Brazilian deregulation of the Amazon means deforestation is inevitable
Purdom and Nokes 14 - Associate Dean for Innovation and New Programs, Associate Professor of Law
AND JD/MELP 15 (Rebecca and Kelly, Brazil repeals forest code and deforestation accelerates,
Vermont Law School, 2014, http://watchlist.vermontlaw.edu/brazil-repeals-forest-code-and-
deforestation-accelerates/)//KG
Brazils iconic Amazon forest provides an essential natural defense against global warming by capturing
world-wide carbon dioxide emissions. Once dubbed the lungs of the earth by Vice President and
climate change activist Albert Gore, and perpetually under attack by illegal logging and a host of other
concerns, Brazils forests have benefitted from regulations that recognized the importance of protecting
the worlds largest equatorial forest. Instead of strengthening forest protection in light of their critical
role in climate change protection, the Brazilian forests came under even graver danger with a 2012
revision of the 1965 Forest Code, which greatly reduced protections in place for over 70 years. Despite
Presidential vetoes of the most egregious provisions in the 2012 revisions, the nearly wholesale
dismantling of forest and ecosystem protections still stand as current Brazilian law. The impacts of the
revised code are only just becoming clear, as deforestation rates shot up a whopping 28% in the period
of August 2012 to July 2013. The revised law provides amnesty for illegal loggers who unlawfully
cleared land prior to July 2008. These lawbreakers now only need to recover 50% of the cleared lands,
down from the required 80% under the old law. Some small landholders are not required to recover at
all. Perhaps most shockingly, these criminals are now exonerated from any outstanding penalties
resulting from their unlawful deforestation over the last half decade. In a country still struggling to
enforce the rule of law in outlying areas, the last half decade of illegal behavior has just been
retroactively forgiven, incentivizing even more illegal logging under the weakened forest code. The
problems with the forest codes revisions go beyond cutting down trees. The revised code also weakens
stream-buffer protections, removes hilltops under 100 meters from protected status, eliminates
intermittent stream protections, and decreases safeguards for mangrove forests. It also fosters an
environment of deregulation, an atmosphere championed by the countrys powerful agricultural and
energy lobbies. In 2013 controversial revisions to the countrys mining laws were introduced, paralleling
revisions to the Forest Code. In light of other disturbing actions including increased sugarcane ethanol
production, the construction of the highly contested Belo Monte dam on the Amazons Xingu River, and
scheduled deep water oil drilling off the countrys southeast coast Brazils recent forest code revisions
herald dark times for environmental regulation across multiple fronts.

Disease
1NC No Extinction
Diseases wont cause extinction burnout or variation
York, 6/4/2014 (Ian, head of the Influenza Molecular Virology and Vaccines team in the Immunology and Pathogenesis Branch,
Influenza Division at the CDC, former assistant professor in immunology/virology/molecular biology (MSU), former RA Professor in antiviral and
antitumor immunity (UMass Medical School), Research Fellow (Harvard), Ph.D., Virology (McMaster), M.Sc., Immunology (Guelph), Why Don't
Diseases Completely Wipe Out Species? 6/4, http://www.quora.com/Why-dont-diseases-completely-wipe-out-species#THUR)
But mostly diseases don't drive species extinct. There are several reasons for that. For one, the most dangerous
diseases are those that spread from one individual to another. If the disease is highly lethal, then the
population drops, and it becomes less likely that individuals will contact each other during the infectious phase.
Highly contagious diseases tend to burn themselves out that way. Probably the main reason is
variation. Within the host and the pathogen population there will be a wide range of variants. Some hosts may be
naturally resistant. Some pathogens will be less virulent. And either alone or in combination, you end
up with infected individuals who survive. We see this in HIV, for example. There is a small
fraction of humans who are naturally resistant or altogether immune to HIV, either because of their CCR5 allele or their MHC Class I
type. And there are a handful of people who were infected with defective versions of HIV that didn't progress to
disease. We can see indications of this sort of thing happening in the past, because our genomes contain many
instances of pathogen resistance genes that have spread through the whole population. Those all started off
as rare mutations that conferred a strong selection advantage to the carriers, meaning that the specific infectious diseases were serious threats to the species.
And, international actors check
Wayne, 2014 (Alex, syndicated columnist on US health policy, Global Effort Signed to Halt Spread of Infectious Disease,
Bloomber, 2/13, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-13/global-effort-signed-to-halt-spread-of-infectious-
disease.html#THUR)
The U.S. won commitments from 25 countries and the World Health Organization to work together on systems
to better detect and combat outbreaks of infectious diseases such as H7N9 avian flu and Ebola virus. The
Obama administration plans to spend $40 million in 10 countries this year to upgrade laboratories and
communications networks so outbreaks can be controlled more quickly, Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, said today in an interview. President Barack Obama will seek another $45 million next year to expand the program. Infectious
diseases account for about 1 in 4 deaths worldwide, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. While diseases such as Ebola and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome havent posed a
threat to the U.S., lapses in other countries may allow an outbreak to spread rapidly, Frieden said. No country can protect itself solely within its borders, Frieden said. Were all
only as safe as the weakest link out there. This is an effort to essentially make the U.S. safer and make the
world safer, to improve countries capacity to better find, stop and prevent health threats. Frieden and
Kathleen Sebelius, the U.S. health secretary, held a videoconference today with the partners in the effort. While no other country made a specific financial commitment today, Frieden said,
all the nations at the conference including China, Russia, France and the U.K. agreed to accelerate
progress and address not just the health sector but include security in health in new ways. First Consensus
For the first time, really, we have a consensus on not only what are the threats, but what do we have to
do to address them, he said. As an example, Frieden said Turkeys government agreed to host a WHO office to
respond to outbreaks in its region. The agreement will also target emerging infections such as Middle East
Respiratory Syndrome. The 10 countries in line for the U.S. investment, which will be funded by the CDC and the Department of Defense, werent identified. The CDC plans to
build on test projects last year in Uganda and Vietnam, where the agency helped the two nations health officials improve
systems to detect and combat outbreaks of dangerous pathogens that include drug-resistant tuberculosis, Ebola virus and exotic flu
strains. In Uganda, CDC officials helped the countrys Ministry of Health upgrade laboratories where tissue samples would be
tested in the event of an outbreak, and developed a system for local doctors to report cases of illness by text message, according to an
article published in the CDCs journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Uganda now is able to quickly transport tissue samples from
rural outbreaks to a high-security lab in the capital, Kampala, by motorcycle courier and overnight mail, Frieden said. A mobile phone network-connected
printer then texts lab results back to rural hospitals, he said. Ultimately every country in the world should have this kind of
system, Frieden said. The $40 million, he said, is certainly enough to make a good start.

2NC No Extinction
Diseases wont cause extinction humans will outgrow disease
National Geographic, 2004 (Our Friend, The Plague: Can Germs Keep Us Healthy? September 8,
http://www.promedpersonnel.com/whatsnew.asp?intCategoryID=73&intArticleID=443)
Disease organisms can, in fact, become less virulent over time. When it was first recognized in Europe around 1495,
syphilis killed its human hosts within months. The quick progression of the disease from infection to death limited
the ability of syphilis to spread. So a new form evolved, one that gave carriers years to infect others.
For the same reason, the common cold has become less dangerous. Milder strains of the virus spread by people out and about, touching
things, and shaking hands have an evolutionary advantage over more debilitating strains. You cant spread a cold very easily if youre
incapable of rolling out of bed. This process has already weakened all but one virulent strain of malaria:
Plasmodium falciparum succeeds in part because bedridden victims of the disease are more vulnerable to mosquitoes that carry and transmit
the parasite. To mitigate malaria, the secret is to improve housing conditions. If people put screens on doors and windows, and use bed nets, it
creates an evolutionary incentive for Plasmodium falciparum to become milder and self-limiting. Immobilized people protected by nets and
screens cant easily spread the parasite, so evolution would favor forms that let infected people walk around and get bitten by mosquitoes.
There are also a few high-tech tricks for nudging microbes in the right evolutionary direction. One company, called MedImmune, has created a
flu vaccine using a modified influenza virus that thrives at 77 degrees Fahrenheit instead of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the normal human body
temperature. The vaccine can be sprayed in a persons nose, where the virus survives in the cool nasal passages but not in the hot lungs or
elsewhere in the body. The immune system produces antibodies that make the person better prepared for most normal, nasty influenza bugs.
Maybe someday well barely notice when we get colonized by disease organisms. Well have co-opted
them. Theyll be like in-laws, a little annoying but tolerable. If a friend sees us sniffling, well just say, Oh, its nothing just a touch of
the plague.
Lethal diseases burn out fast, pandemic is unlikely
Morse, 2004 (Stephen S. director of the Center for Public Helth Preparedness, at the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia
University, and a faculty member in the epidemiology department, An ActionBioscience,org original interview, Emerging and Reemerging
Infectious Diseases: A Global Problem, http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/morse.html)
ActionBioscience.org: How do infectious diseases become pandemic? Morse: A pandemic is a very big epidemic. It requires a number of things.
There are many infections that get introduced from time to time in the human population and, like Ebola,
burn themselves out because they kill too quickly or they dont have a way to get from person to
person. They are a terrible tragedy, but also, in a sense, it is a lucky thing that they dont have an
efficient means of transmission. In some cases, we may inadvertently create pathways to allow
transmission of infections that may be poorly transmissible, for example, spreading HIV through needle
sharing, the blood supply, and, of course, initially through the commercial sex trade. The disease is not
easily transmitted, but we provided, without realizing it, means for it to spread. It is now pandemic in
spite of its relatively inefficient transmission. We also get complacent and do not take steps to prevent
its spread.

Virus burnout solves the impact
The Guardian, 2003 (Second Sight, September 25, http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1048929,00.html)
The parallel with the natural world is illustrative. Take the case of everyone's favourite evil virus, Ebola. This is so virulent that it
kills up to 90% of infected hosts within one to two weeks. There is no known cure. So how come the entire
population hasn't dropped dead from haemorrhaging, shock or renal failure? The "organism" is just
too deadly: it kills too quickly and has too short an incubation period, so the pool of infected people
doesn't grow.
SARS changed everything created effective mechanisms and political will for
multilateral cooperation to survey, contain and treat disease
Roos, 2013 (Robert, medical editor, master's degree in science journalism (Minnesota), fellow at the Center for Infectious Disease
Research and Policy, Experts: SARS Sparked Global Cooperation to Fight Disease, Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and
Policy, 4/15, http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2013/04/experts-sars-sparked-global-cooperation-fight-disease#THUR)
A new set of journal articles related to the 10th anniversary of the SARS epidemic in 2003 says the episode did much to boost
recognition of the need for coordinated international and national responses to emerging infectious diseases. The
articles and commentaries in Emerging Infectious Diseases reflect on the effects of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), which arose in China in late 2002 and
spread to more than 30 countries in early 2003, sickening about 8,000 people and killing around 800. The outbreak was first publicized by the World Health
Organization (WHO) on Mar 12, 2003. Among the reports is one describing two new SARS-like coronavirusesclose relatives of the SARS coronavirusfound in bats
in China. The new viruses are more distant relatives of the novel human coronavirus that has caused illnesses in 17 people, with 11 deaths, in the past year. All of
the cases had connections to the Middle East. Publication of the articles comes as the world is contending with still another
emerging pathogen, the novel H7N9 influenza virus in China, which has infected at least 64 people and killed 14 in recent weeks. Surveillance
and response In a "synopsis" piece, a team led by Christopher R. Braden, MD, of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports on
progress in global surveillance and response capacity in the 10 years since SARS emerged. They review the
milestones of the epidemic, from its silent emergence in southern China in November 2002 to its spread to Hong Kong and, boosted by a
"superspreader," from there to many other countries. They say the SARS epidemic powerfully stimulated international
cooperation to fight emerging diseases. "Perhaps the most important legacy of SARS is the recognition of
the critical need for a multilateral response, led by WHO, in the event of a rapidly moving but ultimately containable global
epidemic," they write. "The central role of WHO in coordinating the laboratory network that identified the etiologic agent and
shared reagents, the epidemiology network that characterized the spread and identified the most effective control measures, and the policy
and communications network that incorporated rapidly changing knowledge into measured travel advisories was critical for the control of the
epidemic and a credit to WHO. " The SARS epidemic dramatically reduced global travel and business, showing how disruptive a new pathogen
could be, Braden and colleagues observe. Those effects stimulated pandemic flu planning and surveillance, a greater focus
on global health security, and improved laboratory and surveillance networks. Further, the episode
spurred efforts to update the International Health Regulations, which had not been revised since
1969, the article says. The regulations took effect in 2007. However, fewer than 20% of the 194 WHO countries that accepted the regulations had complied with
their core requirements by the June 2012 deadline, according to Braden and colleagues. Another effect of SARS was to spur the
establishment of new national public health agencies in Canada (the Public Health Agency of Canada, or PHAC) and the
United Kingdom (the Health Protection Agency), the authors say. In a related perspective article, a team led by Jeffrey P. Koplan, MD, MPH, of Emory
University, a former CDC director, says the value of national public health institutes was one of the major lessons of
SARS. Koplan is joined by authors from the PHAC and its counterparts in Hong Kong and China. They note that more than 80 national public health
institutes are now linked through the International Association of National Public Health Institutes,
which promotes the establishment of new institutes and helps strengthen existing ones.


Economy
1NC No Econ Impact
Royal concludes neg
Royal 10 (Jedediah Royal, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of Defense,
2010, Economic Integration, Economic Signaling and the Problem of Economic Crises, in Economics of
War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, ed. Goldsmith and Brauer)
CONCLUSION The logic of ECST supports arguments for greater economic interdependence to reduce
the likelihood of conict. This chapter does not argue against the utility of signalling theory. It does,
however, suggest that when considering the occurrence of and conditions created by economic crises,
ECST logic is dubious as an organising principle for security policymakers. The discussion pulls together
some distinct areas of research that have not yet featured prominently in the ECST literature. Studies
associating economic interdependence, economic crises and the potential for external conict indicate
that global interdependence is not necessarily a conict suppressing process and may be conict-
enhancing at certain points. Furthermore, the conditions created by economic crises decrease the
willingness of states to send economic costly signals, even though such signals may be most effective
during an economic crisis. These two points warrant further consideration in the debate over ECST and,
more broadly, theories linking interdependence and peace. The debate takes on particular importance
for policymakers when considering the increasingly important US-China relationship and the long-term
prospects for peace in the Asia-Pacic. Recent US policy towards China, such as the responsible
stakeholder approach, assumes that greater interdependence with China should decrease the
likelihood for conict. Some have even suggested that the economic relationship is necessary to ensure
strategic competition does not lead to major war (see, e.g., Kastner, 2006). If US or Chinese
policymakers do indeed intend to rely on economic interdependence to reduce the likelihood of conict,
much more study is required to understand how and when interdependence impacts the security and
the defence behaviour of states. This chapter contributes some thoughts to that larger debate. NOTES I.
Notable counterarguments include Barbieri (1996). Gowa (I994), and Levy and Ali I998 . 2. Of<):ial
statements have focused on this explanation as well. See, for example, Bernanke (2009). 3. For a
dissenting study. see Elbadawi and Hegre (2008). 4. Note that Skaperdas and Syropoulos (2001) argue
that states will have a greater incentive to arm against those with which it is interdependent to hedge
against coercion. This argument could be extended to include protectionism in extreme cases. Creseenzi
(2005) both challenges and agrees with Copelands theory by suggesting that a more important indicator
is the exit costs involved in terminating an economic relationship. which could be a function of the
availability of alternatives. 5. There is also substantial research to indicate that periods of strong
economic growth are also positively correlated with a rise in the likelihood of conict. Pollins (2008) and
Pollins and Schweller (I999) provide excellent insights into this body of literature.
No impact to economic decline

Thirlwell 10
MPhil in economics from Oxford U, postgraduate qualifications in applied finance from Macquarie U, program director in International Economy for the Lowy Institute for International Policy
(Mark, September 2010, The Return of Geo-economics: Globalisation and National Security, Lowy Institute for International Policy, google scholar,)
Summing up the evidence, then, I would judge that while empirical support for the Pax Mercatoria is not conclusive, nevertheless its still
strongly supportive of the general idea that international integration is good for peace, all else equal. Since there is also even stronger evidence
that peace is good for trade, this raises the possibility of a nice virtuous circle: globalisation (trade) promotes peace,
which in turn promotes more globalisation. In this kind of world, we should not worry too much about the big
power shifts described in the previous section, since they are taking place against a backdrop of greater economic integration which
should help smooth the whole process. Instead of ending this section on that optimistic note, however, its worth thinking about some reasons
why the Pax Mercatoria might nevertheless turn out to be a poor, or at least overly optimistic, guide to our future.
The first is captured by that all important get-out-of-gaol-free card, all else equal. Its quite possible that the peace-promoting effects of
international commerce will end up being swamped by other factors, just as they were in 1914. Second, perhaps the theory itself is wrong.
Certainly, a realist like John Mearsheimer would seem to have little time for the optimistic consequences of the rise of new powers implied by
the theory. Heres Mearsheimer on how the US should view Chinas economic progress, for example: . . . the United States has a profound
interest in seeing Chinese economic growth slow considerably in the years ahead . . . A wealthy China would not be a status quo power but an
aggressive state determined to achieve regional hegemony. 62 Such pessimistic (or are they tragic?) views of the world would also seem to run
the risk of being self-fulfilling prophecies if they end up guiding actual policy. Finally, there is the risk that the shift to a multipolar
world might indirectly undermine some of the supports needed to deliver globalisation. Here I am thinking about
some simple variant on the idea of hegemonic stability theory (HST) the proposition that the global economy needs a leader (or
hegemon) that is both able and willing to provide the sorts of international public goods that are required for its
smooth functioning: open markets (liberal or free trade), a smoothly functioning monetary regime, liberal capital
flows, and a lender of last resort function. 63 Charles Kindleberger argued that the 1929 depression was so wide, so deep,
and so long because the international economic system was rendered unstable by British inability and US
unwillingness to assume responsibility for stabilizing it, drawing on the failures of the Great Depression to make the original case for
HST: . . . the international economic and monetary system needs leadership, a country that is prepared . . . to
set standards of conduct for other countries and to seek to get others to follow them, to take on an undue share of the
burdens of the system, and in particular to take on its support in adversity... 64 Kindlebergers assessment appears to capture a rough
empirical regularity: As Findlay and ORourke remind us, periods of sustained expansion in world trade have tended to
coincided with the infrastructure of law and order necessary to keep trade routes open being provided by a dominant hegemon
or imperial power. 65 Thus periods of globalisation have typically been associated with periods of hegemonic or
imperial power, such as the Pax Mongolica, the Pax Britannica and, most recently, the Pax Americana (Figure 9). The risk, then, is that by
reducing the economic clout of the United States, it is possible that the shift to a multipolar world economy
might undermine either the willingness or the ability (or both) of Washington to continue to supply the
international public goods needed to sustain a (relatively) smoothly functioning world economy. 66 That in turn
could undermine the potential virtuous circle identified above.
Econ decline wont cause war the 2008 crash disproves their claim.
Drezner 12 (Daniel W. Drezner is professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, a
nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a blogger for the Washington Post. He has previously held positions with University
of Chicago, Civic Education Project, the RAND Corporation, and the US Department of the Treasury. THE IRONY OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE: THE
SYSTEM WORKED This publication is part of the International Institutions and Global Governance program October 2012
http://i.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/IIGG_WorkingPaper9_Drezner.pdf)
The final outcome addresses a dog that hasnt barked: the effect of the Great Recession on crossborder
conflict and violence. During the initial stages of the crisis, multiple analysts asserted that the financial crisis would
lead states to increase their use of force as a tool for staying in power.19 Whether through greater internal
repression, diversionary wars, arms races, or a ratcheting up of great power conflict, there were
genuine concerns that the global economic downturn would lead to an increase in conflict. Violence in
the Middle East, border disputes in the South China Sea, and even the disruptions of the Occupy
movement fuel impressions of surge in global public disorder. The aggregate data suggests otherwise, however. A
fundamental conclusion from a recent report by the Institute for Economics and Peace is that the average level of
peacefulness in 2012 is approximately the same as it was in 2007.20 Interstate violence in particular
has declined since the start of the financial crisisas have military expenditures in most sampled countries. Other studies
confirm that the Great Recession has not triggered any increase in violent conflict; the secular decline in
violence that started with the end of the Cold War has not been reversed.
Global econ is resilient
FSB 14 (The Financial Stability Board (FSB) is an international body that monitors and makes recommendations about the global financial
system FSB Plenary meets in London 31 March 2014
http://www.financialstabilityboard.org/press/pr_140331.htm)
The global economy has been improving, and monetary policy in the US is in the early stages of a
normalisation process, after an extended period of exceptional accommodation. A comprehensive programme of
regulatory reforms and supervisory actions since the crisis has made the global financial system more
resilient. Currently, European authorities are putting in place a comprehensive set of measures to strengthen further the region's financial
system. Emerging markets have coped relatively well to date with occasional bouts of turbulence, in part
reflecting the positive impact of both past and more recent reforms.


2NC No Econ Impact
Economic decline doesnt cause war
Jervis,11 (Robert, Professor PolSci Columbia, December, Force in Our Times Survival, Vol 25 No 4, p 403-425)
Even if war is still seen as evil, the security community could be dissolved if severe conflicts of interest were to arise. Could the more peaceful
world generate new interests that would bring the members of the community into sharp disputes? 45 A zero-sum sense of status would be
one example, perhaps linked to a steep rise in nationalism. More likely would be a worsening of the current economic difficulties,
which could itself produce greater nationalism, undermine democracy and bring back old-fashioned beggar-my-neighbor
economic policies. While these dangers are real, it is hard to believe that the conflicts could be great enough to
lead the members of the community to contemplate fighting each other. It is not so much that economic
interdependence has proceeded to the point where it could not be reversed states that were more internally interdependent than anything
seen internationally have fought bloody civil wars. Rather it is that even if the more extreme versions of free trade and
economic liberalism become discredited, it is hard to see how without building on a preexisting high
level of political conflict leaders and mass opinion would come to believe that their countries could
prosper by impoverishing or even attacking others. Is it possible that problems will not only become severe, but that
people will entertain the thought that they have to be solved by war? While a pessimist could note that this argument does not appear as
outlandish as it did before the financial crisis, an optimist could reply (correctly, in my view) that the very fact that we have seen
such a sharp economic down-turn without anyone suggesting that force of arms is the solution shows
that even if bad times bring about greater economic conflict, it will not make war thinkable.

No impact
Barnett 9 (Thomas, Senior Strategic Researcher Naval War College, The New Rules: Security Remains
Stable Amid Financial Crisis, Asset Protection Network, 8-25, http://www.aprodex.com/the-new-rules--
security-remains-stable-amid-financial-crisis-398-bl.aspx)

When the global financial crisis struck roughly a year ago, the blogosphere was ablaze with all sorts of scary
predictions of, and commentary regarding, ensuing conflict and wars -- a rerun of the Great Depression leading to
world war, as it were. Now, as global economic news brightens and recovery -- surprisingly led by China and emerging markets -- is the talk
of the day, it's interesting to look back over the past year and realize how globalization's first truly worldwide recession has had
virtually no impact whatsoever on the international security landscape. None of the more than three-dozen
ongoing conflicts listed by GlobalSecurity.org can be clearly attributed to the global recession. Indeed, the last new
entry (civil conflict between Hamas and Fatah in the Palestine) predates the economic crisis by a year, and three quarters of
the chronic struggles began in the last century. Ditto for the 15 low-intensity conflicts listed by Wikipedia (where the latest entry is the Mexican
"drug war" begun in 2006). Certainly, the Russia-Georgia conflict last August was specifically timed, but by most accounts the opening
ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was the most important external trigger (followed by the U.S. presidential campaign) for that sudden spike in
an almost two-decade long struggle between Georgia and its two breakaway regions. Looking over the various databases, then, we see a most
familiar picture: the usual mix of civil conflicts, insurgencies, and liberation-themed terrorist movements. Besides the recent Russia-
Georgia dust-up, the only two potential state-on-state wars (North v. South Korea, Israel v. Iran) are both tied to
one side acquiring a nuclear weapon capacity -- a process wholly unrelated to global economic trends. And with the
United S tates effectively tied down by its two ongoing major interventions (Iraq and Afghanistan-bleeding-into-Pakistan), our
involvement elsewhere around the planet has been quite modest , both leading up to and following the onset of the
economic crisis: e.g., the usual counter-drug efforts in Latin America, the usual military exercises with allies across Asia, mixing it up with pirates
off Somalia's coast). Everywhere else we find serious instability we pretty much let it burn , occasionally pressing the
Chinese -- unsuccessfully -- to do something. Our new Africa Command, for example, hasn't led us to anything beyond advising and training
local forces. So, to sum up: No significant uptick in mass violence or unrest (remember the smattering of urban riots last
year in places like Greece, Moldova and Latvia?); The usual frequency maintained in civil conflicts (in all the usual places); Not a single
state-on-state war directly caused (and no great-power-on-great-power crises even triggered); No great
improvement or disruption in great-power cooperation regarding the emergence of new nuclear powers (despite all that
diplomacy); A modest scaling back of international policing efforts by the system's acknowledged Leviathan power (inevitable given the strain);
and No serious efforts by any rising great power to challenge that Leviathan or supplant its role. (The worst things we can cite are Moscow's
occasional deployments of strategic assets to the Western hemisphere and its weak efforts to outbid the United States on basing rights in
Kyrgyzstan; but the best include China and India stepping up their aid and investments in Afghanistan and Iraq.) Sure, we've finally seen global
defense spending surpass the previous world record set in the late 1980s, but even that's likely to wane given the stress on public budgets
created by all this unprecedented "stimulus" spending. If anything, the friendly cooperation on such stimulus packaging was the most notable
great-power dynamic caused by the crisis. Can we say that the world has suffered a distinct shift to political radicalism as a
result of the economic crisis? Indeed, no. The world's major economies remain governed by center-left or center-right political
factions that remain decidedly friendly to both markets and trade. In the short run, there were attempts across the board to insulate
economies from immediate damage (in effect, as much protectionism as allowed under current trade rules), but there was no great
slide into "trade wars." Instead, the World T rade Organization is functioning as it was designed to function, and regional
efforts toward free-trade agreements have not slowed. Can we say Islamic radicalism was inflamed by the economic crisis? If it was, that
shift was clearly overwhelmed by the Islamic world's growing disenchantment with the brutality displayed by violent
extremist groups such as al-Qaida. And looking forward, austere economic times are just as likely to breed connecting evangelicalism as
disconnecting fundamentalism. At the end of the day, the economic crisis did not prove to be sufficiently frightening to provoke major
economies into establishing global regulatory schemes, even as it has sparked a spirited -- and much needed, as I argued last week -- discussion
of the continuing viability of the U.S. dollar as the world's primary reserve currency. Naturally, plenty of experts and pundits have attached
great significance to this debate, seeing in it the beginning of "economic warfare" and the like between "fading" America and "rising" China.
And yet, in a world of globally integrated production chains and interconnected financial markets, such "diverging interests" hardly constitute
signposts for wars up ahead. Frankly, I don't welcome a world in which America's fiscal profligacy goes undisciplined, so bring it on -- please!
Add it all up and it's fair to say that this global financial crisis has proven the great resilience of America's post-World War II international liberal
trade order. Do I expect to read any analyses along those lines in the blogosphere any time soon? Absolutely not. I expect the fantastic
fear-mongering to proceed apace. That's what the Internet is for.

2NC Econ Resilient
Global Econ resilient. Checks are improving.
Drezner 12
Daniel W. Drezner is professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, a
nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a blogger for the Washington Post. He has previously held positions
with University of Chicago, Civic Education Project, the RAND Corporation, and the US Department of the Treasury. THE IRONY
OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE: THE SYSTEM WORKED This publication is part of the International Institutions and Global
Governance program October 2012 http://i.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/IIGG_WorkingPaper9_Drezner.pdf
The 2008 financial crisis posed the biggest challenge to the global economy since the Great Depression
and provided a severe stress test for global economic governance. A review of economic outcomes, policy
outputs, and institutional resilience reveals that these regimes performed well during the acute phase of
the crisis, ensuring the continuation of an open global economy. Even though some policy outcomes have been less
than optimal, international institutions and frameworks performed contrary to expectations. Simply put, the system worked.
During the first ten months of the Great Recession, global stock market capitalization plummeted lower as a percentage of its precrisis level
than during the first ten months of the Great Depression.1 Housing prices in the United States declined more than twice as much as they did
during the Great Depression.2 The global decline in asset values led to aggregate losses of $27 trillion in 2008a halfyears worth of global
economic output.3 Global unemployment increased by an estimated fourteen million people in 2008 alone.4 Nearly four years after the crisis,
concerns about systemic risk still continue.5 The demand for global economic governance structures to perform effectively is at its greatest
during crises. An open global economy lessens the stagnation that comes from a financial crisis, preventing a downturn from metastasizing into
another Great Depression. One of the primary purposes of multilateral economic institutions is to provide global public goodssuch as keeping
barriers to cross-border exchange low. Even if states are the primary actors in world politics, they rely on a bevy of acronym-laden
institutionsthe International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Trade Organization (WTO), Bank for International Settlements (BIS), and Group of
Twenty (G20)to coordinate action on the global scale. International institutions can be the policymakers pacifier. In an anarchic world, these
structures reduce uncertainty for all participating actors. When they function well, they facilitate communication and foster shared
understanding between policy principals. When they function poorly, a lack of trust and a surfeit of uncertainty stymies responsible authorities
from cooperating. Since the Great Recession began, there has been no shortage of scorn for the state of global
economic governance among pundits and scholars.6 Nevertheless, a closer look at the global response to
the financial crisis reveals a more optimistic picture. Despite initial shocks that were more severe than the
1929 financial crisis, national policy elites and multilateral economic institutions responded quickly and robustly. Whether
one looks at economic outcomes, policy outputs, or institutional resilience, global economic governance structures have either
reinforced or improved upon the status quo since the collapse of the subprime mortgage bubble. To be sure, there remain areas
where governance has either faltered or failed, but on the whole, the global regime worked.

Global economy is resilient financial crisis proves.
I.C.A. 14
ICA is Interarab Cambist Association. This is a professional association involving foreign exchange dealers in countries from
North Africa, Gulf and Middle East THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC SYSTEM EMERGES FROM THE CRISIS: PLUS A CHANGE
March 22
nd
http://www.icaconference.com/news
The global economic crisis was early on a seen as a transformative period with the potential to revamp the
global currency system, undermine the dynamics of global trade, reform financial regulation, and challenge
economic integration. Seven years later, important changes have indeed materialized but the system has almost
manifested unexpected resilience and continuity. The calls for replacing the US Dollar as the global
reserve currency have faded, the Euro-zone has not only held together but grown, and the globalization
narrative is continuing.

Economy resilient debt ceiling and gridlock prove even if crises hinder growth, they
dont prevent it
Perez 13
{Tom, US Secretary of Labor, former law professor (Maryland), M.A. Public Policy (Harvard), Ph.D. in Law
(Harvard), The Resilience of the American Economy, US Department of Labor, 11/8,
http://social.dol.gov/blog/the-resilience-of-the-american-economy/#THUR}
The American economy is resilient. Octobers jobs report demonstrates continued steady growth, with
the addition of 212,000 total private sector jobs in October. The unemployment rate, which fell in September to a nearly-five year low
of 7.2 percent, remains essentially unchanged at 7.3 percent, while American manufacturers added 19,000 jobs in
the month of October. But while American businesses continue to add jobs 7.8 million over the last 44 months of private
sector job growth they do so in spite of Congress, not because of it. Octobers job growth was undoubtedly
restrained by the brinksmanship and uncertainty created by the federal government shutdown and
the near-default on the nations debt. The American economy is resilient, but it is not immune to
manufactured crises. We see signs that suggest the shutdown had a discouraging effect on Americas
continued recovery. We remain concerned about the drop in the labor force participation rate, and American workers on temporary
layoffs rose by nearly 448,000, the largest monthly increase in the history of that series of data. The American people deserve
leadership that focuses on growing the economy not holding it hostage. Lets keep our eye on the ball by passing immigration
reform, which has bipartisan support and would inject a trillion dollars into the economy, and investing in infrastructure upgrades that would
create thousands of middle class jobs right now. Instead of erecting political roadblocks, lets work together to pave bipartisan roads to full
recovery. Todays employment numbers are a reminder that while the economy continues to grow and
create new jobs, it remains on uncertain footing. Too many Americans still find the rungs on the ladder of opportunity
beyond their reach. We need to move forward with common-sense proposals that will create jobs, strengthen the middle class, reduce our
deficit and expand opportunity for American families. The president and I stand ready to work with Congress to do just that.
2014 economy particularly resilient
Mantell 14
,Ruth, syndicated economic reporter, Leading Data Signal Resilient Economy in 2014, Market Watch
via Wall Street Journal, 2/20, http://www.marketwatch.com/story/leading-data-signal-resilient-
economy-in-2014-2014-02-20#THUR}

The economy will likely remain resilient in the first half of 2014, with underlying conditions improving,
the Conference Board said Thursday as it reported monthly growth and stable trends for its gauge of leading
economic indicators. The LEI rose 0.3% in January, following no change in December, signaling an economy that is
expanding moderately, although the pace is somewhat held back by persistent and severe inclement weather, said Ken Goldstein , a board
economist. Effects from the harsh winter have also shown up in recent data on retail sales and housing . Unfortunately, the poor weather makes it tough for
economists to clearly identify trends underlying month-to-month economic volatility. Some of the economic activity that has been delayed by
poor weather, such as home construction, could spring back in coming months. Elsewhere Thursday, reports were mixed
on how poor weather is impacting manufacturers. A gauge from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
signaled that a sharp drop in February for its regional manufacturing gauge was largely due to winter
storms. Meanwhile, a separate barometer that covers U.S. manufacturing showed that growth picked up this month to
the highest level since 2010, indicating a rebound from the winter slowdown. The LEI is a weighted gauge of 10
indicators designed to signal business cycle peaks and troughs. Among the 10 indicators tracked by the Conference Boards
index, five made positive contributions in January, led by the interest rate spread. The largest negative contribution came
from building permits. Meanwhile, core capital goods orders these are the sort of big-ticket investments companies make when they are confident about their
future were neutral last month. If the economy is going to move on to a faster track in 2014 compared to last year, consumer demand and especially investment
will need to pick up significantly from their current trends, Goldstein said. On a brighter note, trends for the LEI reflect stability.
Over the six months through January, the LEI rose 3.1%, close to a gain of 3.2% for the six-month period that ended in December.

AT: Diversionary War
Diversionary war theory is false
Boehmer 7 (Charles, political science professor at the University of Texas, Politics & Policy, 35:4, The Effects of Economic Crisis,
Domestic Discord, and State Efficacy on the Decision to Initiate Interstate Conflict)
This article examines the contemporaneous effect of low economic growth and domestic instability on the threat of regime change and/ or
involvement in external militarized conflicts. Many studies of diversionary conflict argue that lower rates of economic
growth should heighten the risk of international conflict. Yet we know that militarized interstate conflicts, and especially
wars, are generally rare events whereas lower rates of growth are not. Additionally, a growing body of literature shows that regime changes are
also associated with lower rates of economic growth. The question then becomes which event, militarized interstate conflict or regime change,
is the most likely to occur with domestic discord and lower rates of economic growth? Diversionary theory claims that leaders
seek to divert attention away from domestic problems such as a bad economy or political scandals, or to garner
increased support prior to elections. Leaders then supposedly externalize discontented domestic sentiments onto other nations, sometimes as
scapegoats based on the similar in-group/out-group dynamic found in the research of Coser (1956) and Simmel (1955), where foreign countries
are blamed for domestic problems. This process is said to involve a rally-round-the-flag effect, where a leader can expect a short-term boost
in popularity with the threat or use of force (Blechman, Kaplan, and Hall 1978; Mueller 1973). Scholarship on diversionary conflict has focused
most often on the American case1 but recent studies have sought to identify this possible behavior in other countries.2 The Falklands War is
often a popular example of diversionary conflict (Levy and Vakili 1992). Argentina was reeling from hyperinflation and rampant unemployment
associated with the Latin American debt crisis. It is plausible that a success in the Falklands War may have helped to rally support for the
governing Galtieri regime, although Argentina lost the war and the ruling regime lost power. How many other attempts to use diversionary
tactics, if they indeed occur, can be seen to generate a similar outcome? The goal of this article is to provide an assessment of the extent to
which diversionary strategy is a threat to peace. Is this a colorful theory kept alive by academics that has little
bearing upon real events, or is this a real problem that policy makers should be concerned with? If it is a strategy readily available to
leaders, then it is important to know what domestic factors trigger this gambit. Moreover, to know that requires an understanding of the
context in external conflict, which occurs relative to regime changes. Theories of diversionary conflict usually emphasize
the potential benefits of diversionary tactics, although few pay equal attention to the prospective
costs associated with such behavior. It is not contentious to claim that leaders typically seek to remain in office. However, whether they
can successfully manipulate public opinion regularly during periods of domestic unpopularity through their states
participation in foreign militarized conflictsespecially outside of the American caseis a question open for debate. Furthermore,
there appears to be a logical disconnect between diversionary theories and extant studies of domestic conflict and regime change. Lower rates
of economic growth are purported to increase the risk of both militarized interstate conflicts (and internal conflicts) as well as regime changes
(Bloomberg and Hess 2002). This implies that if leaders do, in fact, undertake diversionary conflicts, many may still be
thrown from the seat of powerespecially if the outcome is defeat to a foreign enemy. Diversionary conflict would thus
seem to be a risky gambit (Smith 1996). Scholars such as MacFie (1938) and Blainey (1988) have nevertheless questioned the validity of the
diversionary thesis. As noted by Levy (1989), this perspective is rarely formulated as a cohesive and comprehensive
theory, and there has been little or no knowledge cumulation. Later analyses do not necessarily build on past studies and the discrepancies
between inquiries are often difficult to unravel. Studies have used a variety of research designs, different dependent
variables (uses of force, major uses of force, militarized disputes), different estimation techniques, and different data sets covering
different time periods and different states (Bennett and Nordstrom 2000, 39). To these problems, we should add a lack of theoretical precision
and incomplete model specification. By a lack of theoretical precision, I am referring to the linkages between economic conditions and domestic
strife that remain unclear in some studies (Miller 1995; Russett 1990). Consequently, extant studies are to a degree incommensurate; they offer
a step in the right direction but do not provide robust cross-national explanations and tests of economic growth and interstate conflict. Yet a
few studies have attempted to provide deductive explanations about when and how diversionary tactics might be employed. Using a Bayesian
updating game, Richards and others (1993) theorize that while the use of force would appear to offer leaders a means to boost their popularity,
a poorly performing economy acts as a signal to a leaders constituents about his or her competence. Hence, attempts to use
diversion are likely to fail either because incompetent leaders will likewise fail in foreign policy or
people will recognize the gambit for what it is. Instead, these two models conclude that diversion is likely to be undertaken
particularly by risk-acceptant leaders. This stress on a heightened risk of removal from office is also apparent in the work of Bueno de Mesquita
and others (1999), and Downs and Rocke (1994), where leaders may gamble for resurrection, although the diversionary scenario in the
former study is only a partial extension of their theory on selectorates, winning coalitions, and leader survival. Again, how often do leaders fail
in the process or are removed from positions of power before they can even initiate diversionary tactics? A few studies focusing on leader
tenure have examined the removal of leaders following war, although almost no study in the diversionary literature has looked at the effects of
domestic problems on the relative risks of regime change, interstate conflict, or both events occurring in the same year.3
Low growth makes politicians cautiousthey dont want to risk war because it makes
them vulnerable
Boehmer 7 (Charles, political science professor at the University of Texas, Politics & Policy, 35:4, The Effects of Economic Crisis,
Domestic Discord, and State Efficacy on the Decision to Initiate Interstate Conflict)
Economic Growth and Fatal MIDs The theory presented earlier predicts that lower rates of growth suppress participation in
foreign conflicts, particularly concerning conflict initiation and escalation to combat. To sustain
combat, states need to be militarily prepared and not open up a second front when they are already
fighting, or may fear, domestic opposition. A good example would be when the various Afghani resistance fighters expelled the Soviet Union
from their territory, but the Taliban crumbled when it had to face the combined forces of the United States and Northern Alliance insurrection.
Yet the coefficient for GDP growth and MID initiations was negative but insignificant. However, considering that there are many
reasons why states fight, the logic presented earlier should hold especially in regard to the risk of
participating in more severe conflicts. Threats to use military force may be safe to make and may be
made with both external and internal actors in mind, but in the end may remain mere cheap talk that
does not risk escalation if there is a chance to back down. Chiozza and Goemans (2004b) found that secure leaders were more likely
to become involved in war than insecure leaders, supporting the theory and evidence presented here. We should find that leaders
who face domestic opposition and a poorly performing economy shy away from situations that could
escalate to combat if doing so would compromise their ability to retain power.

AT: US Econ k2 Global Econ

U.S. isnt key to the global economy
ML 6 (Merrill Lynch, US Downturn Wont Derail World Economy, 9-18,
http://www.ml.com/index.asp?id=7695_7696_8149_63464_70786_71164)
A sharp slowdown in the U.S. economy in 2007 is unlikely to drag the rest of the global economy down
with it, according to a research report by Merrill Lynchs (NYSE: MER) global economic team. The good news is that there are strong
sources of growth outside the U.S. that should prove resilient to a consumer-led U.S. slowdown. Merrill Lynch
economists expect U.S. GDP growth to slow to 1.9 percent in 2007 from 3.4 percent in 2006, but non-U.S. growth to decline by only half a
percent (5.2 percent versus 5.7 percent). Behind this decoupling is higher non-U.S. domestic demand, a rise in
intraregional trade and supportive macroeconomic policies in many of the worlds economies. Although some
countries appear very vulnerable to a U.S. slowdown, one in five is actually on course for faster GDP growth in 2007. Asia, Japan and India
appear well placed to decouple from the United S tates, though Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore are more likely to be
impacted. European countries could feel the pinch, but rising domestic demand in the core countries should help the region weather the storm
much better than in previous U.S. downturns. In the Americas, Canada will probably be hit, but Brazil is set to decouple.



Environment

1NC No Environment Impact

Ecosystem collapse wont cause human extinction
Raudsepp-Hearne et al., 10 (Ciarra, PhD in the Department of Geography, Elena M. Bennett is an
assistant professor in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences and McGill School of Environment,
Graham K. MacDonald is a doctoral student in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences, and Laura
Pfeifer is a masters student in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences and the McGill School of
Environment, all at McGill University, in Montreal, Quebec. Garry D. Peterson is a researcher at the
Stockholm Resilience Centre and the Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, at
Stockholm University. Maria Teng is currently a researcher at the Department ofSystems Ecology and
the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University. Tim Holland currentlyworks for SNV Netherlands
Development Organisation in Hanoi, Vietnam. Karina Benessaiah is currently a doctoral student in the
Department of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University. September 2010;
Untangling the Environmentalists Paradox: Why Is Human Well-being Increasing as Ecosystem Services
Degrade?; http://www.aibs.org/bioscience-press-releases/resources/Raudsepp-Hearne.pdf)
Although many people expect ecosystem degradation to have a negative impact on human well-being,
this measure appears to be increasing even as provision of ecosystem services declines. From George Perkins
Marshs Man and Nature in 1864 to today (Daily 1997), scientists have described how the deterioration of the many services provided by
nature, such as food, climate regulation, and recreational areas, is endangering human well-being. However, the Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment (MA), a comprehensive study of the worlds resources, found that declines in the majority of
ecosystem services assessed have been accompanied by steady gains in human well-being at the global
scale (MA 2005). We argue that to understand this apparent paradox, we need to better understand the ways in which ecosystem services
are important for human well-being, and also whether human well-being can continue to rise in the future despite projected continued
declines in ecosystem services. In this article, we summarize the roots of the paradox and assess evidence relating to alternative explanations
of the conflicting trends in ecosystem services and human well-being. The environmentalists expectation could be
articulated as: Ecological degradation and simplification will be followed by a decline in the provision
of ecosystem services, leading to a decline in human well-being. Supporters of this hypothesis cite evidence of
unsustainable rates of resource consumption, which in the past have had severe impacts on human well-being, even causing the collapse of
civilizations (e.g., Diamond 2005). Analyses of the global ecological footprint have suggested that since 1980, humanitys footprint has
exceeded the amount of resources that can be sustainably produced by Earth (Wackernagel et al. 2002). Although the risk of local
and regional societies collapsing as a result of ecological degradation is much reduced by globalization
and trade, the environmentalists expectation remains: Depletion of ecosystem services translates into fewer benefits
for humans, and therefore lower net human well-being than would be possible under better ecological management. By focusing on
ecosystem servicesthe benefits that humans obtain from ecosystemsthe MA set out specifically to identify and assess the links between
ecosystems and human well-being (MA 2005). The MA assessed ecosystem services in four categories: (1)
provisioning services, such as food, water, and forest products; (2) regulating services, which modulate
changes in climate and regulate floods, disease, waste, and water quality; (3) cultural services, which
comprise recreational, aesthetic, and spiritual benefits; and (4) supporting services, such as soil
formation, photosynthesis, and nutrient cycling (MA 2003). Approximately 60% (15 of 24) of the ecosystem services
assessed by the MA were found to be in decline. Most of the declining services were regulating and supporting services, whereas the majority
of expanding ecosystem services were provisioning services, such as crops, livestock, and fish aquaculture (table 1). At the same time,
consumption of more than 80% of the assessed services was found to be increasing, across all categories. In other words, the use of
most ecosystem services is increasing at the same time that Earths capacity to provide these services
is decreasing. The MA conceptual framework encapsulated the environmentalists expectation, suggesting tight feedbacks between
ecosystem services and human well-being. However, the assessment found that aggregate human well-being grew
steadily over the past 50 years, in part because of the rapid conversion of ecosystems to meet human
demand for food, fiber, and fuel (figure 1; MA 2005). The MA defined human well-being with five components: basic materials,
health, security, good social relations, and freedom of choice and actions, where freedom of choice and actions is expected to emerge from
the other components of well-being. Although the MA investigated each of the five components of well-being at some scales and in relation
to some ecosystem services, the assessment of global trends in human well-being relied on the human development index (HDI) because
of a lack of other data. The HDI is an aggregate measure of life expectancy, literacy, educational attainment, and per capita GDP (gross
domestic product) that does not capture all five components of well-being (Anand and Sen 1992).
2NC No Environment Impact

Ecosystems are resilient and recover quickly
McDermott, 9 (Mat, Editor for Business and Energy sections; Master Degree from NYUs Center for
Global Affairs in environment and energy policy. May, 27, 2009: Good News: Most Ecosystems Can
Recover in One Lifetime from Human-Induced or Natural Disturbance;
http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/good-news-most-ecosystems-can-recover-in-one-
lifetime-from-human-induced-or-natural-disturbance.html)
There's a reason the phrase "let nature take its course" exists: New research done at the Yale University
School of Forestry & Environmental Science reinforces the idea that ecosystems are quiet resilient and can rebound
from pollution and environmental degradation. Published in the journal PLoS ONE, the study shows that most
damaged ecosystems worldwide can recover within a single lifetime, if the source of pollution is
removed and restoration work done. The analysis found that on average forest ecosystems can recover in 42
years, while in takes only about 10 years for the ocean bottom to recover. If an area has seen multiple,
interactive disturbances, it can take on average 56 years for recovery. In general, most ecosystems take
longer to recover from human-induced disturbances than from natural events, such as hurricanes. To
reach these recovery averages, the researchers looked at data from peer-reviewed studies over the past 100 years on the rate of ecosystem
recovery once the source of pollution was removed. Interestingly, the researchers found that it appears that the rate at
which an ecosystem recovers may be independent of its degraded condition: Aquatic systems may recover more
quickly than, say, a forest, because the species and organisms that live in that ecosystem turn over more rapidly than in the forest. As to what
this all means, Oswald Schmitz, professor of ecology at Yale and report co-author, says that this analysis
shows that an increased effort to restore damaged ecosystems is justified, and that: Restoration could
become a more important tool in the management portfolio of conservation organizations that are
entrusted to protect habitats on landscapes. We recognize that humankind has and will continue to actively domesticate
nature to meet its own needs. The message of our paper is that recovery is possible and can be rapid for many
ecosystems, giving much hope for a transition to sustainable management of global ecosystem

AT: Invisible Threshold
No invisible threshold new technology allows us to revive extinct species
Ridley 12 (Matt, 2007 Davis Award winner for the History of Science, Reversing extinction; March 13,
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/reversing-extinction.aspx)
The fruit of a narrow-leaved campion, buried in permafrost by a ground squirrel 32,000 years ago on the
banks of the Kolyma river in Siberia, has been coaxed into growing into a new plant, which then
successfully set seed itself in a Moscow laboratory. Although this plant species was not extinct, inch by
inch scientists seem to be closing in on the outrageous goal of bringing a species back from the dead. I
don't expect to live to see a herd of resurrected mammoths roaming the Siberian steppe, but I think my grandchildren just might. The
mammoth is the best candidate for resurrection mainly because flash-frozen ones with well-preserved tissues are regularly found in the
Siberian permafrost. Occasionally these have been fresh enough to tempt scientists to cook and eat them, usually with disappointing results.
Just last week a Chinese paleontologist in Canada, Xing Lida, filmed himself frying and eating what he said was a small mammoth steak. Cells
from such carcasses have been recovered, encouraging a rivalry between Japanese and Russian scientists to be the first to revive one of these
huge, elephant-like mammals by cloning. Four years ago the mammoth genome was sequenced, so we at least now know the genetic recipe.
The news of the resurrected flower does, apparently, remove one obstacle. After 32,000 years the
plant's DNA had not been so damaged by natural radioactivity in the soil as to make it unviable, which is a
surprise. Mammoth carcasses are often much younger - the youngest, on Wrangel Island, being about 4,700 years old, contemporary with the
Pharoahs. So the DNA should be in even better shape. However, plants are much better at cloning themselves from any old cutting. Coaxing an
elephant cell into becoming an embryo is not at all easy; though, as Dolly the sheep showed, not impossible. To do the same for a mammoth
cell would be harder still. And then there is the problem of how to get the embryo to grow. Implanting it into the womb of an Indian elephant
(its closest living relative) is the best bet, but experiments with implanting rare embryos into other species' wombs have been mostly
unsuccessful. For example, a rare form of wild ox, the gaur, was going to have its embryos reared in cattle wombs, but it did not work. So do
not book the Siberian mammoth safari trip just yet. Equally, don't bet against it eventually coming off. Which other species might follow? One
that only recently went extinct (last seen in 1936) is the marsupial carnivore called the thylacine, or "Tasmanian tiger". A few years ago, genes
from a dead thylacine were injected into a mouse and "expressed" in its tissue. The great auk, the dodo and other creatures that died out
before the invention of refrigeration are going to be much harder to revive. Perhaps fortunately, Neanderthals, dead for 28,000 years, unfrozen
and not very closely related to their likely surrogate parent (you and me), would be harder still, though their DNA sequence is now known. And
as for the dinosaurs - 65 million years dead - forget it. Although come to think of it, re-engineering a chicken until it looks like a dinosaur cannot
be ruled out, once people learn to play genetics well enough. The real significance of the Siberian flower, though, is that
it makes future extinctions potentially reversible. So long as we can flash-freeze seeds and tissues from
threatened species (a disused mine in a frozen mountain in Spitsbergen already holds a seedbank of rare
plant varieties), then we can give posterity the chance to resurrect them. Combine this with the news
that extinction rates, at least of birds and mammals, have been falling in recent decades, and there are
grounds for a glimmer of ecological optimism. The great spasm of extinction caused by humans - mainly
when we spread our rats, weeds and bugs to oceanic islands - may be coming to an end. Far more
significant than the reversal of extinction, however, is the revival of wild ecosystems. Ecologists are
finding that wild habitats can be put back together more easily than they thought. A marine reserve off
Mexico is now teeming with large fish again. Yellowstone Park's ecological revival following the
introduction of the wolf is remarkable: by cutting the numbers of elk, wolves have brought back aspen
trees and long grass and hence beavers, rodents and hawks. In Costa Rica, a rainforest rich in tree
species is now thriving on what was, in 1993, exhausted farmland. Once a canopy of sun-loving trees was planted,
hundreds of other tree species moved in naturally. One commentator says: "The accepted belief is that once destroyed, tropical rainforests
could never be restored. But is that really the case or just a myth?" Environmentalists will worry that such optimism
breeds complacency about habitat destruction. But it might instead breed ambition to restore habitats
and revive rare species. Over the past 50 years, agricultural yields have risen and, in real terms, food prices have fallen, with the result
that marginal land has been released from growing food worldwide. Forest cover has increased in most of Europe and North America; nature
reserves have expanded even in the tropics. So here's an image of the future. With much of the world's meat grown, brain-free and legless, in
factories, and much of its fruit and vegetables in multi-storey urban farms lit with cheap fusion power, there will again be vast steppes,
savannahs, prairies and rain forests, teeming with herds of wild game. Perhaps even a few woolly mammoths among them.



Famine

1NC Famine
Alt causes to food supply and prices political instability, lack of natural resources and infrastructure,
bad communication and information technology
FAO 13 - Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (The State of Food Insecurity in the World: The
multiple dimensions of food security, 2013, http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3434e/i3434e.pdf)//KG
Progress in reducing hunger reflects country and regional specificities in terms of economic conditions,
infrastructure, the organization of food production, the presence of social provisions and political and
institutional stability. In Western Asia, the worsening undernourishment trend appears to be mostly
related to food price inflation and political instability. In Northern Africa, where progress has been slow,
the same factors are relevant. Lack of natural resources, especially good-quality cropland and renewable
water resources, also limit the regions food production potential. Meeting the food needs of these
regions rapidly growing populations has been possible only through importing large quantities of
cereals. Some of these cereal imports are financed by petroleum exports; simply put, these regions
export hydrocarbons and import carbohydrates to ensure their food security. Both food and energy are
made more affordable domestically through large, untargeted subsidies. The regions dependency on
food imports and oil exports make them susceptible to price swings on world commodity markets. The
most precarious food security situations arise in countries where proceeds from hydrocarbon exports
have slowed or stalled, food subsidies are circumscribed by growing fiscal deficits or civil unrest has
disrupted domestic food chains. While at the global level there has been an overall reduction in the
number of undernourished between 199092 and 201113 (Figure 4), different rates of progress across
regions have led to changes in the distribution of undernourished people in the world. Most of the
worlds undernourished people are still to be found in Southern Asia, closely followed by sub-Saharan
Africa and Eastern Asia. The regional share has declined most in Eastern Asia and South-Eastern Asia,
and to a lesser extent in Latin America and the Caribbean and in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Meanwhile, the share has increased in Southern Asia, in sub-Saharan Africa and in Western Asia and
Northern Africa. Many countries have experienced higher economic growth over the last few years, a
key reason for progress in hunger reduction. Still, growth does not reach its potential, owing to
structural constraints. Arguably the most important is the often woefully inadequate infrastructure that
plagues vast areas of rural Africa. Much improved communication and broader access to information
technology may, to some extent, have helped overcome traditional infrastructure constraints, and
promoted market integration. Also encouraging is the pick-up in agricultural productivity growth,
buttressed by increased public investment, incentives generated by higher food prices and renewed
interest of private investors in agriculture. In some countries, remittance inflows from migrants have
helped spur domestic growth. Remittances have increased smallscale investment, which was particularly
beneficial to growth where food production and distribution still rely on smallscale and local networks.
This holds in particular for sub- Saharan African countries, where a combination of higher crop yields
and increased livestock production have led to a reduction of undernourishment.

Some degree of food insecurity inevitable
Harsch 3
(Ernest, Africa Recovery, May, http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol17no1/171food1.htm)
To many around the world, the image of famine in Africa is closely linked to drought and, in some
countries, war. But even when there is no drought or other acute crisis, about 200 million Africans
suffer from chronic hunger, UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Director-General Jacques
Diouf noted during a recent visit to Senegal. The reasons are multiple: low farm productivity, grinding
poverty, the ravages of HIV/AIDS and unstable domestic and international agricultural markets. "Food
insecurity in Africa has structural causes," Mr. Annan emphasizes. "Most African farmers cultivate small
plots of land that do not produce enough to meet the needs of their families. The problem is
compounded by the farmers' lack of bargaining power and lack of access to land, finance and
technology." Because small-scale farmers and other rural Africans have so few food stocks and little
income, a period of drought can quickly trigger famine conditions. This is especially true for rural
women, who are among the poorest of the poor and who account for the bulk of food production in
Africa.

No impact large swings in prices dont trickle down
FAO 13 - Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (The State of Food Insecurity in the World: The
multiple dimensions of food security, 2013, http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3434e/i3434e.pdf)//KG
The evolution of the prevalence of undernourishment estimates capture trends in chronic hunger.
Because of the characteristics of the data on which it is based, the prevalence of undernourishment
indicator does not reflect acute, short-term changes in malnutrition resulting from short-term changes
in the economic environment. The large swings in primary food prices observed since 2008, often
measured by the FAO Food Price Index (FPI), are a prominent example of such short-term shocks. Price
and income swings affect the food security of poor and hungry people more than the steady trend in the
prevalence of undernourishment suggests. But recent data on global and regional food consumer price
indices (food CPIs) suggest that food price hikes at the primary commodity level generally have little
effect on consumer prices and that the swings in consumer prices were much more muted than those
faced by agricultural producers or recorded in international trade. Overall, the new data on food prices
at the consumer level give rise to two basic findings. The first is that increases in the FPI translate into
higher consumer prices only to a very limited degree and with a time lag of a few months. The lag in
transmission from international prices (as captured by the FPI) to consumer prices (food CPI) is
explained, in large measure, by the time needed to harvest, ship and then process primary products into
final food items for consumers. The lag is highlighted if the two indicators are plotted on different scales
(Figure 5, left). The limited transmission is explained by a combination of factors that determine vertical
price transmission in every food economy, including mark-ups for transportation, processing and
marketing, and by any subsidies at the consumer level. The limited nature of this price transmission is
well illustrated by plotting both indicators on the same scale (Figure 5, right). The second finding is that
regional differences in price transmission are surprisingly small. This means that, even in regions
characterized by short supply chains and high levels of subsistence production, changes in producer
prices of primary products have only a limited effect on final consumer prices (Figure 6). The only
noticeable exception is Eastern Africa, where price transmission is high and consumers have been
exposed more fully to swings in prices of primary food products. This is also the case for lowincome,
food-importing countries, in which poor consumers may allocate more than 75 percent of their
expenditure to food; in these countries, increases in producer prices can significantly reduce the ability
of consumers to meet their food needs.


Alt cause honeybees
AP 08 (Honey Bee Crisis could lead to higher food prices,
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-ap-sick-bees,0,622176.story)
WASHINGTON Food prices could rise even more unless the mysterious decline in honey bees is
solved, farmers and businessmen told lawmakers Thursday. "No bees, no crops," North Carolina grower
Robert D. Edwards told a House Agriculture subcommittee. Edwards said he had to cut his cucumber
acreage in half because of the lack of bees available to rent. About three-quarters of flowering plants
rely on birds, bees and other pollinators to help them reproduce. Bee pollination is responsible for $15
billion annually in crop value. In 2006, beekeepers began reporting losing 30 percent to 90 percent of
their hives. This phenomenon has become known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Scientists do not know
how many bees have died; beekeepers have lost 36 percent of their managed colonies this year. It was
31 percent for 2007, said Edward B. Knipling, administrator of the Agriculture Department's Agricultural
Research Service. "If there are no bees, there is no way for our nation's farmers to continue to grow the
high quality, nutritious foods our country relies on," said Democratic Rep. Dennis Cardoza of California,
chairman of the horticulture and organic agriculture panel. "This is a crisis we cannot afford to ignore."

Alt cause Population growth
Von Braun, 08 Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (Joachim, April
2008
High Food Prices: What should be done?, http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/bp/bp001.asp)
At the same time, the growing world population is demanding more and different kinds of food. Rapid
economic growth in many developing countries has pushed up consumers' purchasing power, generated
rising demand for food, and shifted food demand away from traditional staples and toward higher-value
foods like meat and milk. This dietary shift is leading to increased demand for grains used to feed
livestock.

Alt cause GM crops cause mass crop failure and famine
Ho 1/21/07 (Mae-Wan Ho, PhD, director of the London-based Institute for Science in Society (ISIS),
Making the World GM-Free and Sustainable, http://www.westonaprice.org/farming/gm-free-
sustainable.html)
Genetically modified (GM) crops epitomize industrial monoculture, with its worst features exaggerated.
They are part and parcel of the "environmental bubble economy," built on the over-exploitation of
natural resources, which has destroyed the environment, depleted water and fossil fuels and
accelerated global warming. As a result, world grain yields have been falling for six of the seven past
years. Expanding the cultivation of GM crops at this time is a recipe for global bio-devastation, massive
crop failures and global famine. GM crops are a dangerous diversion from the urgent task of getting our
food system sustainable in order to really feed the world.


2NC Alt Cause

Multiple alternate causes to food prices
Teslik 08 Assistant Editor at Council on Foreign Relations (Lee Hudson, Food Prices, 6/30/2008,
http://www.cfr.org/publication/16662/food_prices.html)
Before considering factors like supply and demand within food markets, it is important to understand
the umbrella factors influencing costs of production and, even more broadly, the currencies with which
and economies within which food is traded. Energy Prices. Rising energy prices have direct causal
implications for the food market. Fuel is used in several aspects of the agricultural production process,
including fertilization, processing, and transportation. The percentage of total agricultural input
expenditures directed toward energy costs has risen significantly in recent years. A briefing from the
U.S. Department of Agriculture notes that the U.S. agricultural industrys total expenditures on fuel and
oil are forecast to rise 12.6 percent in 2008, following a rise of 11.5 percent in 2007. These costs are
typically passed along to customers and are reflected in global spot prices (i.e. the current price a
commodity trades for at market). The input costs of electricity have also risen, furthering the burden.
Though it isnt itself an energy product, fertilizer is an energy-intensive expense, particularly when
substantial transport costs are borne by local farmersso that expense, too, is reflected in the final
price of foodstuffs. (Beyond direct causation, energy prices are also correlated to food prices, in the
sense that many of the same factors pushing up energy pricespopulation trends, for instance, or
market speculationalso affect food prices.) Currencies/Inflation. When food is traded internationally
particularly on commodities exchanges or futures marketsit is often denominated in U.S. dollars. In
recent years, the valuation of the dollar has fallen with respect to many other major world currencies.
This means that even if food prices stayed steady with respect to a basket of currencies, their price in
dollars would have risen. Of course, food prices have not stayed steadythey have risen across the
boardbut if you examine international food prices in dollar terms, it is worth noting that the decline of
the dollar accentuates any apparent price increase. Demand Demand for most kinds of food has risen in
the past decade. This trend can be attributed to several factors: Population trends. The worlds
population has grown a little more than 12 percent in the past decade. Virtually nobody argues that this
trend alone accounts for rising food pricesagricultural production has, in many cases, become more
efficient, offsetting the needs of a larger populationand some analysts say population growth hasnt
had any impact whatsoever on food prices. The shortcomings of a Malthusian food-price argument are
most obvious in the very recent past. Richard Posner, a professor of law and economics at the University
of Chicago, argues this point on his blog. He notes that in 2007 the food price index used by the FAO
rose 40 percent, as compared to 9 percent in 2006clearly a much faster rate than global population
growth for that year, which measured a little over 1 percent. Nonetheless, experts say population
trends, distinct from sheer growth rates, have had a major impact on food prices. For instance, the past
decade has seen the rapid growth of a global middle class. This, Posner says, has led to changing tastes,
and increasing demand for food that is less efficient to produce. Specifically, he cites an increased
demand for meats. Livestock require farmland for grazing (land that could be used to grow other food),
and also compete directly with humans for food resources like maize. The production of one serving of
meat, economists say, is vastly less efficient than the production of one serving of corn or rice. Biofuels.
Experts say government policies that provide incentives for farmers to use crops to produce energy,
rather than food, have exacerbated food shortages. Specifically, many economists fault U.S. policies
diverting maize crops to the production of ethanol and other biofuels. The effects of ramped-up U.S.
ethanol productionwhich President Bush called for as part of an initiative to make the United States
energy independentwas highlighted in a 2007 Foreign Affairs article by C. Ford Runge and Benjamin
Senauer. Runge and Senauer write that the push to increase ethanol production has spawned ethanol
subsidies in many countries, not just the United States. Brazil, they note, produced 45.2 percent of the
worlds ethanol in 2005 (from sugar cane), and the United States 44.5 percent (from corn). Europe also
produces biodiesel, mostly from oilseeds. In all cases, the result is the diversion of food products from
global food markets, accentuating demand, pinching supply, and pushing up prices. Joachim von Braun,
the director general of IFPRI, writes in an April 2008 briefing (PDF) that 30 percent of all maize produced
in the United States (by far the largest maize producer in the world) will be diverted to biofuel
production in 2008. This raises prices not only for people buying maize directly, but also for those buying
maize products (cornflakes) or meat from livestock that feed on maize (cattle). Speculation. Many
analysts point to speculative trading practices as a factor influencing rising food prices. In May 2008
testimony (PDF) before the U.S. Senates Committee on Homeland Security, Michael W. Masters, the
managing partner of the hedge fund Masters Capital Management, explained the dynamic. Masters says
institutional investors like hedge funds and pension funds started pouring money into commodities
futures markets in the early 2000s, pushing up futures contracts and, in turn, spot prices. Spot traders
often use futures markets as a benchmark for what price they are willing to pay, so even if futures
contracts are inflated by an external factor like a flood of interest from pension funds, this still tends to
result in a bump for spot prices. Still, much debate remains about the extent to which speculation in
futures markets in fact pushes up food prices. In general we *economists+ think futures markets are a
good reflection of whats likely to happen in the real future, says IFPRIs Orden. Orden acknowledges
that more capital has flowed into agricultural commodities markets in recent years, but says that he
tends to think these markets are pretty efficient and that you shouldnt look for a scapegoat in
speculators. Supply Even as demand for agricultural products has risen, several factors have pinched
global supply. These include: Development/urbanization. During the past half decade, global economic
growth has featured expansion throughout emerging markets, even as developed economies in the
United States, Europe, and Japan have cooled. The economies of China, India, Russia, numerous
countries in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, and a handful of achievers in the Middle
East and Africa have experienced strong economic growth rates. This is particularly true in Asian cities,
where industrial and service sector development has clustered. The result has often been a boost for
per capita earnings but a drag on domestic agriculture, as discussed in this backgrounder on African
agriculture. Farmland has in many cases been repurposed for urban or industrial development projects.
Governments have not, typically, been as eager to invest in modernizing farm equipment or irrigation
techniques as they have been to sink money into urban development. All this has put an increased
burden on developing-world farmers, precisely as they dwindle in number and supply capacity.
Production capacity in other parts of the world has increased by leaps and bounds as efficiency has
increased, and, as previously noted, total global production exceeds global demand. But urbanization
opens markets up to other factorstransportation costs and risks, for instance, which are particularly
high in less accessible parts of the developing worldand prevent the smooth functioning of trade, even
where there are willing buyers and sellers. Weather. Some of the factors leading to recent price
increases have been weather-related factors that tightened supply in specific markets. In 2008, for
instance, two major weather events worked in concert to squeeze Asian rice productionCyclone
Nargis, which led to massive flooding and the destruction of rice harvests in Myanmar; and a major
drought in parts of Australia. Estimates indicate Myanmars flooding instantly destroyed a substantial
portion of Myanmars harvest, limiting the countrys ability to export rice. Meanwhile, Australias
drought wiped out 98 percent of the countrys rice harvest in 2008, forcing Canberra to turn to imports
and further straining Asias rice market. Trade policy. Agricultural trade barriers have long been faulted
for gumming up trade negotiations, including the Doha round of World Trade Organization talks. But in
the midst of the recent food pinch, a different kind of trade barrier has emerged as a problemexport
bans. As discussed before (in the instance of the Philippines meeting difficulty in its efforts to import
rice), several exporters have tightened the reins in light of domestic supply concerns. According to the
UNs World Food Program, over forty countries have imposed some form of export ban in an effort to
increase domestic food security. India, for instance, imposed bans on exporting some forms of rice and
oil in June 2008a move that took food off the market, led to stockpiling, and brought a spike in prices.
China, Kazakhstan, and Indonesia, among other countries, have introduced similar bans. The distorting
effects of these barriers are particularly troubling in the developing world, where a much larger
percentage of average household income is spent on food. The African Development Bank warned in
May 2008 that similar moves among African countries could rapidly exacerbate food concerns on the
African continent. A group of West African countries, meanwhile, sought to mitigate the negative effects
of export bans by exempting one another. Food aid policy and other policies. Experts say flaws in food
aid policies have limited its effectiveness and in some cases exacerbated price pressures on food. CFR
Senior Fellow Laurie Garrett discusses some of these factors in a recent working paper. Garrett cites
illogical aid policies such as grants for irrigation and mechanization of crop production that the Asian
Development Bank plans to give to Bangladesh, a densely populated country without a spare millimeter
of arable land. Garrett also criticizes food aid policies (U.S. aid policies are one example) that mandate
food aid to be doled out in the form of crops grown by U.S. farmers, rather than cash. The rub, she says,
is that food grown in the United States is far more expensive, both to produce and to transport, than
food grown in recipient countries. Such a policy guarantees that the dollar value of donations goes much
less far than it would if aid were directed to funds that could be spent in local markets. Other experts
note additional policies that limit supply. In a recent interview with CFR.org, Paul Collier, an economics
professor at Oxford University, cites European bans on genetically modified crops as a prime example.

Hegemony
1NC No Impact
No impact to heg
Fettweis, 11 (Christopher J. Fettweis, Department of Political Science, Tulane University, 9/26/11, Free Riding or Restraint? Examining
European Grand Strategy, Comparative Strategy, 30:316332, EBSCO)
It is perhaps worth noting that there is no evidence to support a direct relationship between the relative level of U.S.
activism and international stability. In fact, the limited data we do have suggest the opposite may be true.
During the 1990s, the United States cut back on its defense spending fairly substantially. By 1998, the United States was
spending $100 billion less on defense in real terms than it had in 1990.51 To internationalists, defense hawks and
believers in hegemonic stability, this irresponsible peace dividend endangered both national and global security. No serious analyst of
American military capabilities, argued Kristol and Kagan, doubts that the defense budget has been cut much too far to meet Americas
responsibilities to itself and to world peace.52 On the other hand, if the pacific trends were not based upon U.S. hegemony
but a strengthening norm against interstate war, one would not have expected an increase in global
instability and violence. The verdict from the past two decades is fairly plain: The world grew more peaceful while the
United States cut its forces. No state seemed to believe that its security was endangered by a less-capable
United States military, or at least none took any action that would suggest such a belief. No militaries were
enhanced to address power vacuums, no security dilemmas drove insecurity or arms races, and no
regional balancing occurred once the stabilizing presence of the U.S. military was diminished. The rest of the
world acted as if the threat of international war was not a pressing concern, despite the reduction in U.S. capabilities. Most of all, the United States and its allies were no less safe. The
incidence and magnitude of global conflict declined while the United States cut its military spending under President Clinton, and kept declining as the Bush Administration ramped the
spending back up. No complex statistical analysis should be necessary to reach the conclusion that the two are unrelated. Military spending figures by themselves are insufficient to disprove a
connection between overall U.S. actions and international stability. Once again, one could presumably argue that spending is not the only or even the best indication of hegemony, and that it
is instead U.S. foreign political and security commitments that maintain stability. Since neither was significantly altered during this period, instability should not have been expected.
Alternately, advocates of hegemonic stability could believe that relative rather than absolute spending is decisive in bringing peace. Although the United States cut back on its spending during
the 1990s, its relative advantage never wavered. However, even if it is true that either U.S. commitments or relative spending account
for global pacific trends, then at the very least stability can evidently be maintained at drastically lower levels of both. In other words,
even if one can be allowed to argue in the alternative for a moment and suppose that there is in fact a level of engagement
below which the United States cannot drop without increasing international disorder, a rational grand
strategist would still recommend cutting back on engagement and spending until that level is
determined. Grand strategic decisions are never final; continual adjustments can and must be made as time goes
on. Basic logic suggests that the United States ought to spend the minimum amount of its blood and treasure while seeking the maximum
return on its investment. And if the current era of stability is as stable as many believe it to be, no increase in conflict would ever occur
irrespective of U.S. spending, which would save untold trillions for an increasingly debt-ridden nation. It is also perhaps worth noting that if
opposite trends had unfolded, if other states had reacted to news of cuts in U.S. defense spending with more aggressive or insecure behavior,
then internationalists would surely argue that their expectations had been fulfilled. If increases in conflict would have been
interpreted as proof of the wisdom of internationalist strategies, then logical consistency demands that
the lack thereof should at least pose a problem. As it stands, the only evidence we have regarding the likely
systemic reaction to a more restrained United States suggests that the current peaceful trends are
unrelated to U.S. military spending. Evidently the rest of the world can operate quite effectively without the
presence of a global policeman. Those who think otherwise base their view on faith alone.

The USA is incapable of projecting leadership beyond its own hemisphere
Mearsheimer 10 (John, Professor of Political Science at University of Chicago, The Gathering Storm: Chinas Challenge to US Power in
Asia, 2010, http://cjip.oxfordjournals.org/content/3/4/381.full, N.O)
When people talk about hegemony these days, they are usually referring to the United States, which
they describe as a global hegemon. I do not like this terminology, however, because it is virtually impossible for any
stateincluding the United Statesto achieve global hegemony. The main obstacle to world domination is
the difficulty of projecting power over huge distances, especially across enormous bodies of water
like the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The best outcome that a great power can hope for is to achieve
regional hegemony, and possibly control another region that is close by and easily accessible over
land. The United States, which dominates the Western Hemisphere, is the only regional hegemon in
modern history. Five other great powers have tried to dominate their regionNapoleonic France, Imperial Germany, Imperial Japan,
Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Unionbut none have succeeded.

2NC No Impact

Heg collapse doesnt cause global nuclear war conflicts would be small and managable
Haas, 8 (Richard Haas (president of the Council on Foreign Relations, former director of policy planning
for the Department of State, former vice president and director of foreign policy studies at the
Brookings Institution, the Sol M. Linowitz visiting professor of international studies at Hamilton College,
a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a lecturer in public policy at
Harvard Universitys John F. Kennedy School of Government, and a research associate at the
International Institute for Strategic Studies) April 2008 Ask the Expert: What Comes After Unipolarity?
http://www.cfr.org/publication/16063/ask_the_expert.html)
Does a non polar world increase or reduce the chances of another world war? Will nuclear deterrence continue
to prevent a large scale conflict? Sivananda Rajaram, UK Richard Haass: I believe the chance of a world war, i.e., one involving the
major powers of the day, is remote and likely to stay that way. This reflects more than anything else the absence of disputes or goals that
could lead to such a conflict. Nuclear deterrence might be a contributing factor in the sense that no conceivable dispute among the major
powers would justify any use of nuclear weapons, but again, I believe the fundamental reason great power
relations are relatively good is that all hold a stake in sustaining an international order that supports
trade and financial flows and avoids large-scale conflict. The danger in a nonpolar world is not global
conflict as we feared during the Cold War but smaller but still highly costly conflicts involving terrorist groups,
militias, rogue states, etc.

Military superiority doesnt translate into winning wars
Keating, 13 (Joshua, associate editor at Foreign Policy, 3/18, Why can't America win a war these
days?, Foreign Policy,
http://ideas.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/03/18/why_cant_america_win_a_war_these_days) With the 10th
anniversary of the invasion of Iraq this week, it seems a worthwhile time to reflect on the fact that for all its obvious military advantages
over every country on the planet, the United States doesn't seem particularly good at winning wars anymore. In her
book-length study, Who Wins: Predicting Strategic Success and Failure in Armed Conflict, University of North Carolina political scientist Patricia
L. Sullivan writes: "The United States failed to achieve its primary political objectives in approximately 30 percent of its
major military operation between 1946 and 2002. In almost every one of these failues, the United States chose to
terminate its military intervenion short of victory despite the fact that it retained an overwhelming physical
capacity to sustain military operations. The U.S. withdrawal from Somalia after the death of sixteen Army Rangers may appear to be an
extreme case, but it is consistent with a pattern in which the United States experienced higher-than-expected costs and
withdrew its troops short of attaining intervention objectives, despite the fact that its military was, at most,
only marginally degraded in the conflict. The United States' unsuccessful intervention in Vietnam is, of course, the quintessential example. "
Sullivan argues that the most important factor in predicting whether a country will be successful in initiating
military conflict is not its relative military might or prosperity compared to its opponent, or even it's "resolve" to keep up the
fight in the face of high casualties, but the goals and expectations it has going into the conflict. She writest that superior firepower is less of an advantage the more
the attacker's war aims require its opponents to change its behavior: Powerful states do not lose small wars simply because they
have less cost tolerance than their weak adversaries. The extent to which a physically weaker actor's cost-tolerance advantage can
affect armed conflict outcomes is largely a function of the degree to which the stronger actor has war aims that require the weak actor to change its behavior. The
balance of military capabilities between the belligerents is expected to be the most important determinant of outcomes when the objects at stake can be seized and
held with physical force alone. The defender's tolerance for costs becomes more significant when a challenger pursues political objectives that require a change in
target behavior. Operation Desert Storm was an example of the first type of objective. Despite Saddam Hussein's warning to the United States
that "yours is a society which cannot accept 10,000 dead in one battle," the war was over must faster than even U.S. miltary planners expected.
The expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait was a goal that could be accomplished through brute force alone, and the U.S. military advantage was
decisive. This was true of Saddam's initial ouster in 2003 as well. But, Sullivan argues, following the ouster of Iraq, the second Bush
administration vastly overestimated the usefulness of its firepower advantage in supporting the new Iraqi government
against a growing domestic insurgency.
The book's conclusions aren't exactly shocking in the post-Iraq era -- the field of counterinsurgency studies is devoted largely to the question of
how to affect a population's behavior in situations where firepower isn't an advantage -- but judging by the news out of Mali, it's not clear that
militarily-superior western power have exactly learned the lesson.


Iran
1NC No Iran war
No Iranian lashout
Boroujerdi 7 (Mehrzad, Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Middle Eastern
Studies Program, Iranian Nuclear Miasma, Syracuse Law Review, 57 Syracuse L. Rev. 619, Lexis)
The potential for groupthink miscalculations is also thwarted by the existence of multiple consensus-based
decision bodies within the overall multilayered structure. 18 While this complex process can sometimes make Iranian
policy confusing and contradictory, it does not necessarily lend itself to high risk behavior. Even if one agent makes a hasty decision
or issues an aggressive policy statement, it may be immediately contradicted by another authority. 19 Individual
leaders also have difficulty muting [*623] criticism within the regime and forcing all agents to agree on one course of action. While miscalculations and hasty
behavior may be the rule at the micro-level, at the macro-level hasty action is checked by the competing nodes of
power . While this structure could admittedly be problematic with regard to the nuclear program depending on what form of command and control
system to control accidents and illicit transfer is established, it makes the prospect of Iran engaging in a boldly offensive or
miscalculated action less realistic .
2NC No Iran War

Iran isnt a threat
Luttwak, 7 (Luttwak, senior associate CSIS, professor Georgetown and Berkeley, 5/26/7
(Edward, The middle of nowhere, Prospect Magazine)
Now the Mussolini syndrome is at work over Iran. All the symptoms are present, including tabulated lists of Irans warships,
despite the fact that most are over 30 years old; of combat aircraft, many of which (F-4s, Mirages, F-5s, F-14s) have not flown in
years for lack of spare parts; and of divisions and brigades that are so only in name. There are awed descriptions of the
Pasdaran revolutionary guards, inevitably described as elite, who do indeed strut around as if they have won many a war,
but who have actually fought only oneagainst Iraq, which they lost. As for Irans claim to have defeated Israel by Hizbullah
proxy in last years affray, the publicity was excellent but the substance went the other way, with roughly 25 per cent of the best-
trained men dead, which explains the tomb-like silence and immobility of the once rumbustious Hizbullah ever since the ceasefire. Then there is the new
light cavalry of Iranian terrorism that is invoked to frighten us if all else fails. The usual middle east experts now explain that if we annoy the ayatollahs,
they will unleash terrorists who will devastate our lives, even though 30 years of death to America invocations and vast sums spent on maintaining a special
international terrorism department have produced only one major bombing in Saudi Arabia, in 1996, and two in the most
permissive environment of Buenos Aires, in 1992 and 1994, along with some assassinations of exiles in Europe. It is true enough that if Irans nuclear
installations are bombed in some overnight raid, there is likely to be some retaliation, but we live in fortunate times in which we have only the
irritant of terrorism instead of world wars to worry aboutand Irans added contribution is not likely
to leave much of an impression. There may be good reasons for not attacking Irans nuclear sitesincluding the very slow and uncertain
progress of its uranium enrichment effortbut its ability to strike back is not one of them. Even the seemingly fragile tanker traffic down the Gulf and through
the straits of Hormuz is not as vulnerable as it seemsIran and Iraq have both tried to attack it many times without
much success, and this time the US navy stands ready to destroy any airstrip or jetty from which attacks are
launched. As for the claim that the Iranians are united in patriotic support for the nuclear programme, no such nationality even exists. Out of Irans
population of 70m or so, 51 per cent are ethnically Persian, 24 per cent are Turks (Azeris is the regimes term), with other minorities comprising the remaining
quarter. Many of Irans 16-17m Turks are in revolt against Persian cultural imperialism; its 5-6m Kurds have started a
serious insurgency; the Arab minority detonates bombs in Ahvaz; and Baluch tribesmen attack gendarmes and
revolutionary guards. If some 40 per cent of the British population were engaged in separatist struggles of varying intensity, nobody would claim that it
was firmly united around the London government. On top of this, many of the Persian majority oppose the theocratic regime,
either because they have become post-Islamic in reaction to its many prohibitions, or because they are Sufis, whom the regime now
persecutes almost as much as the small Bahai minority. So let us have no more reports from Tehran stressing the countrys national unity. Persian
nationalism is a minority position in a country where half the population is not even Persian. In our times,
multinational states either decentralise or break up more or less violently; Iran is not decentralising, so its future seems highly
predictable, while in the present not much cohesion under attack is to be expected.

The U.S. can credibly deter Iran
Posen 06 (Barry, Ford International Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, AlterNet, March 30, http://www.alternet.org/audits/34219/)
Some worry that Iran would be unconvinced by an American deterrent, choosing instead to gamble that
the United States would not make good on its commitments to weak Middle Eastern states -- but the
consequences of losing a gamble against a vastly superior nuclear power like the United S tates are
grave, and they do not require much imagination to grasp.

1NC No Iran Prolif
No impact to Iran Proliferationcredible U.S. and Israel deterrence, leadership is rational, wont give
weapons to terrorists
Carpenter, 12 (Ted Galen senior fellow at the Cato Institute, April 12, The Pernicious Myth That Iran
Cant Be Deterred, CATO Institute, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/pernicious-myth-
iran-cant-be-deterred)
Rumblings about possible war with Iran have grown louder in Washington and other Western capitals in the past few months.
Speculation has centered on the likelihood that Israel will launch preemptive air strikes against Irans nuclear installations, but there is also considerable talk that
the United States might join in such strikes or even take on the primary mission to make certain that the key sites are destroyed. Most advocates of military action
against Iran contend that the system of international economic sanctions against the clerical regime is not halting progress on the countrys nuclear program and
that the world simply cannot tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. President Obama has stated repeatedly that it would be unacceptable for Tehran to have nuclear
weapons, and Mitt Romney, the Presidents likely opponent in the November election, says flatly that he will never allow the emergence of a nuclear Iran on his
watch. The reason that a growing number of politicians and pundits embrace the war option, even though most of them concede that such a step could create
dangerous instability in an already turbulent region, is that they explicitly or implicitly believe that Iran is undeterrable. The typical allegation is that if
Iran builds nuclear weapons, it will use them certainly against Israel, and possibly against the United States or its NATO allies. Most
realists dispute that notion, pointing out that the United S tates has several thousand nuclear weapons and
successfully deterred such difficult actors as the Soviet Union and Maoist China. They also note that Israel has between 150 and 300
nuclear weapons an extremely credible deterrent. None of that matters, hawks contend, because the Iranian
leadership is not rational and, therefore, the normal logic of deterrence does not apply. Several war advocates stress Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejads obsession with the return of the 12th Imam, an event in Islamic lore that is to be accompanied by an apocalypse. Clifford May, the head of the
neo-conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, argues that more than a few of Irans rulers hold the theological conviction that the return of the
Mahdi, the savior, can be brought about only by an apocalypse. He goes on to cite ultra-hawkish Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis, who asserts that for those who
share Ahmadinejads vision, mutually assured destruction is not a deterrent. Its an inducement. There are several problems with that
thesis. First, Ahmadinejad is hardly the most powerful figure in the Iranian political system. Thats why the all-too-
frequent comparisons of Ahmadinejad to Adolf Hitler are especially absurd. The real power in Iran is held by the
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his inner circle of senior clerics. And members of that leadership elite have publicly rebuked
Ahmadinejad for devoting too much time and energy to the issue of the 12th Imam. Second, the return of the Mahdi in the midst of an
apocalypse is scarcely a unique religious myth. Most major religions have an end of the world mystic scenario
involving a savior. Christianity, for example, has the Book of Revelations, with the appearance of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse,
Armageddon, and the second coming of Jesus Christ. Given the influence of Christianity among American political leaders, foreign critics could make the case that
the United States cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons, because a devout Christian leader who believed Revelations would be tempted to bring about
Armageddon. The reality is that leaders in any political system usually prefer to enjoy the riches and other perks of this life rather
than seek to bring about prematurely the speculative benefits of a next life. There is no credible evidence
that the Iranian leadership deviates from that norm. And those leaders certainly know that a nuclear attack on
Israel, the United S tates, or Washingtons NATO allies would trigger a devastating counter-attack that would end
their rule and obliterate Iran as a functioning society. It is appropriate to demand that hawks produce evidence not
just allegations that deterrence is inapplicable because Iranian leaders are suicidal. But one will search
in vain for such evidence in the thirty-three years that the clerical regime has held power. There is, in fact, an abundance of
counter-evidence. Meir Dagan, the former head of Israels Mossad intelligence agency, has stated that he
considers Irans leaders including Ahmadinejad very rational. Tehrans behavior over the years
confirms that assessment. During the early stages of the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s, the Ayatollah Khomeini said that he would never
make peace with Saddam Hussein. But when the war dragged on for years and the correlation of forces turned against Iran, the countrys military leaders
persuaded Khomeini and the clerical elite to conclude a compromise peace. Thats hardly the behavior of an
irrational, suicidal political system. Indeed, there is strong evidence that Iranian leaders understand that there
are red lines that they dare not cross. One of the specters that Western hawks create is that Iran would transfer nuclear weapons to non-state
terrorist groups. But Iran has had chemical weapons in its arsenal since the days of the Shah. There is not a shred of evidence that Tehran
has passed on such weapons to any of its political clients, including Hezbollah and Hamas. Given the visceral hatred those
organizations harbor toward Israel, it is nearly certain that they would have used chemical weapons against Israeli targets if Iran had ever put them in their hands.
Again, it certainly appears that deterrence neutralized any temptation Tehran might have had to engage in
reckless conduct. A more rational fear than the notion that Iran would commit suicide by launching a nuclear attack against adversaries who have vast
nuclear arsenals, or even that Iran would court a similar fate by supplying terrorist groups with nukes, is the thesis that Tehran would exploit a
nuclear shield to then bully its neighbors. But even that fear is greatly exaggerated . As Cato Institute scholar Justin Logan points out
in the April issue of The American Conservative, Irans conventional forces are weak and the countrys power projection
capabilities are meager. A nuclear Iran likely would be capable of deterring a US attack on its homeland attacks that the United States has a
habit of launching against non-nuclear adversaries like Serbia, Iraq and Libya but such a capability would not translate into Iranian
domination of the Middle E ast. That nightmare scenario is only a little less overwrought than the other theories about the Iranian threat.

They wont proliferatelong timeframe, no evidence theyre making moves, we would detect it,
forceful international response, no covert uranium enrichment plants, no decision from leaders to
develop weapons
Kahl, 12 (Colin H. Kahl Associate Professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University's
Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American
Security, March/April, Not Time to Attack Iran: Why War Should Be a Last Resort, Foreign Affairs,
ProQuest)
Kroenig argues that there is an urgent need to attack Iran's nuclear infrastructure soon, since Tehran could "produce its first nuclear weapon within six months of
deciding to do so." Yet that last phrase is crucial. The I nternational A tomic E nergy A gency (iaea) has documented Iranian efforts to
achieve the capacity to develop nuclear weapons at some point, but there is no hard evidence that Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has yet made the final decision to develop them. In arguing for a six-month horizon, Kroenig also misleadingly
conflates hypothetical timelines to produce weaponsgrade uranium with the time actually required to construct a bomb. According to 2010 Senate
testimony by James Cartwright, then vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staa, and recent statements by the former heads of Israel's national intelligence
and defense intelligence agencies, even if Iran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb in six months, it would
take it at least a year to produce a testable nuclear device and considerably longer to make a
deliverable weapon. And David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security (and the source of Kroenig's six-month
estimate), recently told Agence France-Presse that there is a " low probability " that the Iranians would actually develop
a bomb over the next year even if they had the capability to do so. Because there is no evidence that Iran has built
additional covert enrichment plants since the Natanz and Qom sites were outed in 2002 and 2009, respectively, any near-term move by
Tehran to produce weapons-grade uranium would have to rely on its declared facilities. The iaea would thus detect
such activity with su/cient time for the international community to mount a forceful response . As a result, the
Iranians are unlikely to commit to building nuclear weapons until they can do so much more quickly or out of sight, which could
be years oa. Kroenig is also inconsistent about the timetable for an attack. In some places, he suggests that strikes should begin now, whereas in others, he argues
that the United States should attack only if Iran takes certain actions-such as expelling iaea inspectors, beginning the enrichment of weapons-grade uranium, or
installing large numbers of advanced centrifuges, any one of which would signal that it had decided to build a bomb. Kroeni g is likely right that these developments-
and perhaps others, such as the discovery of new covert enrichment sites-would create a decision point for the use of force. But the Iranians have not
taken these steps yet, and as Kroenig acknowledges, "Washington has a very good chance " of detecting them if
they do.


2NC No Iran Prolif

Prefer our evtheir authors continuously inflate threats
Innocent, 11 (Foreign policy analyst Cato, member IISS, 12/7/11, Malou, http://www.cato-at-
liberty.org/ignore-the-hawks-on-iran-too/)

More credible voices suggest otherwise. The nonprofit Arms Control Association (ACA) observed that the most-recent IAEA report
suggests *I+t remains apparent that a nuclear-armed Iran is still not imminent nor is it inevitable. Iran was engaged in
nuclear weapons development activities until it stopped in 2003, and as Catos Justin Logan observes, the IAEAs own report shows there is
no definitive evidence of Irans diversion of fissile material. When Pletka was called out for her less than a year prediction, she turned up
her nose and snapped: Quibblers will suggest that there are important ifs in both these assessments. And yes, the key if is if Iran decides to build a bomb. So, I
suppose when I said less than a year away from having a nuclear weapon, I should have added, if they want one. But isnt that the point? Do we want to leave
this decision up to Khamenei? Confronted with ambiguous information, and forced to infer intentions, hawks evince the very same
arrogance and overconfidence that helped open the door for Iranian influence in the region in the first place
by toppling Saddam Husseins regime (Pletka advocated repeatedly for this leading up to the 2003 invasion). Pletka and others who years ago
had the gall to argue that Iraq will end when it ends are today worthy of being ignored on Iran.
No Iran prolif security estimates overblown*
Hymans, 13 (Professor IR USC, 2/18, Jacques, Iran Is Still Botching the Bomb Foreign Affairs,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139013/jacques-e-c-hymans/iran-is-still-botching-the-bomb)

At the end of January, Israeli intelligence officials quietly indicated that they have downgraded their assessments of Iran's ability to
build a nuclear bomb. This is surprising because less than six months ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned from the tribune of the United Nations that the Iranian nuclear D-Day might
come as early as 2013. Now, Israel believes that Iran will not have its first nuclear device before 2015 or 20 16 . The news comes as a
great relief. But it also raises questions. This was a serious intelligence failure, one that has led some of Israel's own officials to wonder aloud, "Did we cry wolf too early?" Indeed, Israel has consistently
overestimated Iran's nuclear program for decades. In 1992, then Foreign Minister Shimon Peres announced that Iran was on pace to have the bomb by 1999. Israel's
many subsequent estimates have become increasingly frenzied but have been consistently wrong. U.S. intelligence agencies have been only slightly less alarmist, and they, too, have had to extend their timelines repeatedly.
Overestimating Iran's nuclear potential might not seem like a big problem. However, similar, unfounded fears were the basis for President George W. Bush's preemptive attack against Iraq and its nonexistent weapons of mass
destruction. Israel and the United States need to make sure that this kind of human and foreign policy disaster does not happen again. What explains Israel's most recent intelligence failure? Israeli officials have suggested that Iran
decided to downshift its nuclear program in response to international sanctions and Israel's hawkish posture. But that theory falls apart when judged against Tehran's own recent aggressiveness. In the past few months, Iran has
blocked the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from gaining access to suspect facilities, stalled on diplomatic meetings, and announced a "successful" space shot and the intention to build higher-quality centrifuges. These
are not the actions of a state that is purposely slowing down its nuclear program. Even more to the point, if Tehran were really intent on curbing its nuclear work, an explicit announcement of the new policy could be highly
beneficial for the country: many states would praise it, sanctions might be lifted, and an Israeli or U.S. military attack would become much less likely. But Iran has not advertised the downshift, and its only modest concession of late
has been to convert some of its 20 percent enriched uranium to reactor fuel. It is doubtful that the Iranians would decide to slow down their nuclear program without asking for anything in return. A second hypothesis is that Israeli
intelligence estimates have been manipulated for political purposes. This possibility is hard to verify, but it cannot be dismissed out of hand. Preventing the emergence of a nuclear-armed Iran is Netanyahu's signature foreign policy
stance, and he had an acute interest in keeping the anti-Iran pot boiling in the run-up to last month's parliamentary elections, which he nearly lost. Now, with the elections over, perhaps Israeli intelligence officials feel freer to
convey a more honest assessment of Iran's status. This theory of pre-election spin is not very satisfying, however, because it fails to explain why Israeli governments of all political orientations have been making exaggerated claims
about Iran for 20 years -- to say nothing of the United States' own overly dire predictions. The most plausible reason for the consistent pattern of overstatement is that Israeli and U.S. models of
Iranian proliferation are flawed. Sure enough, Israeli officials have acknowledged that they did not anticipate
the high number of technical problems Iranian scientists have run into recently. Some of those mishaps may have been the product of
Israeli or U.S. efforts at sabotage. For instance, the 2010 Stuxnet computer virus attack on Iran's nuclear facilities reportedly went well. But the long-term impact of such operations is usually small -- or nonexistent: the IAEA and
other reputable sources have dismissed the highly publicized claims of a major recent explosion at Iran's Fordow uranium-enrichment plant, for instance. Rather than being hampered by James Bond exploits, Iran's
nuclear program has probably suffered much more from Keystone Kops-like blunders: mistaken
technical choices and poor implementation by the Iranian nuclear establishment. There is ample reason to believe that
such slipups have been the main cause of Iran's extremely slow pace of nuclear progress all along. The country is
rife with other botched projects, especially in the chaotic public sector. It is unlikely that the Iranian nuclear program is immune to these problems. This is not a knock against the quality of Iranian scientists and engineers, but
rather against the organizational structures in which they are trapped. In such an environment, where top-down mismanagement and political agendas are abundant, even easy technical steps
often lead to dead ends and pitfalls. Iran is not the only state with a dysfunctional nuclear weapons program. As I argued in a 2012 Foreign Affairs article, since the
1970s, most states seeking entry into the nuclear weapons club have run their weapons programs
poorly, leading to a marked slowdown in global proliferation. The cause of this mismanagement is the poor quality of the would-be proliferator's state
institutions. Libya and North Korea are two classic examples. Libya essentially made no progress, even after 30 years of trying. North Korea has gotten somewhere -- but only after 50 years, and with many high-profile
embarrassments along the way. Iran, whose nuclear weapons drive began in the mid-1980s, seems to be following a similar trajectory. Considering Iran in the broader context of the proliferation slowdown, it becomes clear that
the technical problems it has encountered are more than unpredictable accidents -- they are
structurally determined . Since U.S. and Israeli intelligence services have failed to appreciate the weakness of Iran's nuclear weapons program, they
have not adjusted their analytical models accordingly. Thus, there is reason to be skeptical about Israel's
updated estimate of an Iranian bomb in the next two or three years. The new date is probably just the
product of another ad hoc readjustment, but what is needed is a fundamental rethinking. As the little shepherd boy learned, crying wolf too early and too often destroys one's
credibility and leaves one vulnerable and alone. In order to rebuild public trust in their analysis, Jerusalem and Washington need to explain the assumptions on which their scary estimates are based, provide alternative estimates
that are also consistent with the data they have gathered, and give a clear indication of the chance that their estimates are wrong and will have to be revised again. The Iranian nuclear effort is highly provocative. The potential for
war is real. That is why Israel and the United S tates need to avoid peddling unrealistic, worse-than-worst-case scenarios.
No centrifuge acquisition media reports are a hoax
Butt, 13 (Research Professor at James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, 2-20, Yousaf- Former
Scientist at Federation of American Scientists, Physicist at High-Energy Astrophysics Division at the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, , Iran centrifuge magnet story technically questionable
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/iran-centrifuge-
magnet-story-technically-questionable)

Last week, the Washington Post reported that "purchase orders obtained by nuclear researchers show an attempt by Iranian agents to buy 100,000 ring-shaped magnets" and that such "highly specialized magnets used in
centrifuge machines *are+ a sign that the country may be planning a major expansion of its nuclear program." As evidence, the Post's Joby Warrick cited a report authored by David Albright of the Institute for Science and
International Security PDF (ISIS); dated Feb. 13, the report says that an Iranian firm, Jahan Tech Rooyan Pars Co., made an inquiry "posted on a Chinese commercial website to buy 100,000 ring magnets." As Warrick goes on to
explain: "it is unclear whether the attempt succeeded." There are serious deficiencies in both the Washington Post story and the assertions in the ISIS
report. Given that issues of war and peace may hang on the veracity of such claims, the assertions warrant careful scrutiny. The magnets in question have many uses
besides centrifuges and are not only, as Warrick describes them, "highly specialized magnets used in centrifuge
machines." Such ceramic ring magnets are everyday items and have been used in loudspeakers, for example, for more than half a century. The ISIS report neglects to explain
the many other applications for such ceramic ring magnets and jumps to the conclusion that the inquiry
is surely related to Iran's nuclear program. Why ISIS does not offer alternate and more plausible applications of these unspecialized magnets is a puzzle. Such magnets are used in a
variety of electronic equipment. For instance, one vendor outlines some of the various possible uses in speakers, direct current brushless motors, and magnetic resonance imaging equipment. This is not the first time ring magnets
have surfaced in allegations related to centrifuge applications. Almost exactly a decade ago, as the United States was preparing to invade Iraq, then-director of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei said that
reports regarding similar ring magnets in Iraq were unrelated to centrifuges: With respect to reports about Iraq's efforts to import high-strength permanent magnets -- or to achieve the capability for producing such magnets -- for
use in a centrifuge enrichment programme, I should note that, since 1998, Iraq has purchased high-strength magnets for various uses. Iraq has declared inventories of magnets of twelve different designs. The IAEA
has verified that previously acquired magnets have been used for missile guidance systems, industrial
machinery, electricity meters, and field telephones. Through visits to research and production sites, reviews of engineering drawings and analyses of sample magnets,
IAEA experts familiar with the use of such magnets in centrifuge enrichment have verified that none of the magnets that Iraq has declared could be used directly for a centrifuge magnetic bearing. Robert Kelley, a nuclear engineer
and former IAEA chief inspector and deputy leader of the agency's Iraq Action Team, told me last week that, between 2002 and 2003, his group "tracked similar ring magnets that Iraq was trying to procure (openly in insecure
channels) and found they were for field telephones . We got started with an intelligence tip' and ran it to ground. Nothing whatsoever to do with centrifuges." The Iraq Survey Group also weighed in on this issue, saying PDF it
"has not uncovered information indicating that the magnet production capability being pursued by Iraq beginning in 2000 was intended to support a gas centrifuge uranium enrichment program. The declared use of the magnet
production lines were for production of ring magnets in the Saham Saddam Missile and for eld telephones." A pair of ring magnets is used in the top suspension bearing of the IR-1 gas centrifuges. As others have already noted, it
seems to make little sense to order ceramic magnets that are, as ISIS describes, "almost exactly" the right dimensions. If one is intending to purchase 100,000 ceramic ring magnets for critical high-speed centrifuge applications,
why not order them exactly the right size? Ceramics are almost impossible to machine due to their brittle nature and are generally ordered to the precise specifications desired. Albright's suggestion in the ISIS report PDF that
"some minor re-design would be necessary of the top end cap and top magnetic bearing of the IR-1 [centrifuge] design but these are seen as fairly trivial" could be correct. But why would a purchaser wish to redesign, re-machine,
and re-test tens of thousands of centrifuges, instead of ordering the correctly sized part in the first place? Although ISIS redacted measurements in the English translation of the inquiry to purchase the 100,000 magnets, it did not
redact them from the original shown on the last page of the ISIS report PDF. The original clearly states that the magnets have "BHmax Min 3MGo"; MGo is shorthand for mega-Gauss Oersted, a measure of the magnetic energy
stored in the magnets. (B and H are, respectively, the magnetic flux density and the magnetic field strength.) This value is substantially less than the 10 MGo trigger level given for centrifuge applications in Annex 3 of the
Notifications of Exports to Iraq mandated by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1051 (1996). Although magnets with an energy product of 3 MGO could be consistent with applications in suspension bearings of the older IR-
1 centrifuges, they are also consistent with a host of other applications. Curiously, the inquiry to the China-based company that is shown on the last page of the ISIS report PDF is very casual and overt. The alleged inquiry states,
"Dear Sir We are a great factory in south of Iran and for our new project we need 100.000 pcs Ferrite Barium strontium ring magnet . we would like buy from you [sic] company. We should be glad if you supply this magnet for
us." Presumably, an attempt to source 100,000 parts related to Iran's controversial and often secretive nuclear program would not be conducted quite so openly. Not only would such an overt attempt at sourcing the ring magnets
be inconsistent with the secrecy surrounding Iran's nuclear program; it would also be at odds with procurement best-practices, for several reasons. First, such a large order would likely drive up the market price and perhaps even
signal to the supplier to choke off the supply, in hopes of obtaining a better price later. Also, before indicating that such a huge order may be in the works, a serious engineering operation would likely obtain a few sample magnets
to formally qualify them. Such an order would, more reasonably, be directed to the manufacturer or direct supplier (in this case, apparently, a rather small Indian firm, Ferrito Plastronics), rather than to a Chinese middleman.
Obtaining 100,000 ceramic ring magnets without sample qualification would be highly risky and unprofessional. It would be inconsistent with Iran's generally excellent record in systems management and engineering PDF involving
a range of technologies and industries. Both the Washington Post story and the ISIS report on which it is based repeatedly call the inquiry a "purchase order" or "order." This is a mischaracterization. The evidence presented (Figures
3 and 4 in the ISIS report) merely shows a web inquiry as to whether the supplier has any interest in discussing the question further. There is no mention of money, delivery dates, or letters of credit. All of these items would be part
of a formal purchase order. The apparent manufacturer or supplier of the magnets in question, Ferrito Plastronics, is evidently a "tiny firm in a dark alley in Chennai's electronic spare parts hub on Meeran Sahib Street." According
to the Times of India, "the Chennai firm does supply magnets. But these, avers company proprietor Bala Subramanian, are the ones used in loudspeakers, coils, and medical equipment. Besides these, there are decorative magnets
for fridges." The proprietor states that his monthly turnover is slightly less than $2,000. Such a firm would seem unlikely to be the optimal source for 100,000 high-quality centrifuge ring magnets. Although the
purpose of the alleged inquiry is subject to interpretation, it seems unlikely to be related to Iran's
nuclear program. Assuming that the request to buy 100,000 magnets is genuine, it would be consistent with, for instance, an Iranian loudspeaker
company interested in obtaining such ceramic ring magnets. That is just one possible hypothesis, of course, but it seems a better
explanation of the alleged inquiry than the suggestion of an overt attempt by Iran's nuclear program to
source 100,000 of the wrong-sized ceramic ring magnets from a tiny Indian company via a Chinese
middleman. It is worth noting that the best Western intelligence concludes that no nuclear weapons work is going
on in Iran right now, and that Iran is not an imminent nuclear threat. James Clapper, the US director of
national intelligence , has confirmed PDF that he has "a high level of confidence" that no nuclear weaponization
work is underway in Iran . Outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has also weighed in: "Are [Iranians] trying to
develop a nuclear weapon? No ." And in an interview for a 2011 article in the New Yorker, ElBaradei said PDF that he did not see "a shred of
evidence" that Iran was pursuing the bomb after 2003, adding, "I don't believe Iran is a clear and present danger. All I see is the hype
about the threat posed by Iran." Given these expert assessments, reporters and editors should raise the bar for the
evidence underpinning stories of alleged Iranian nuclear weapons-related work . This Washington Post article is the second in
about three months to make serious unsubstantiated claims regarding Iran's nuclear program. In the previous story, the Associated Press used flimsy evidence to suggest that Iran may be working on a nuclear bomb. Clearly,
the media reporting on Iran's controversial nuclear program have a duty to do a better job of vetting
evidence and sources. Similarly, non-governmental organizations that are supposed to supply unbiased expert
advice should strive to provide professional analyses that lay out all possible explanations and do not
jump to unwarranted conclusions. We have all been witness to what may happen when a fictional threat is spun up over non-existent weapons of mass destruction -- the result isn't pretty.
When news reports cast thin evidence in hyperbolic terms, the public is invited to run rampant with
speculation about Iran's nuclear program. At a time when military action is apparently being seriously contemplated, the international community
needs to look past trivialities, focus on the facts, and find realistic opportunities for ending the Iranian nuclear standoff.
No prolif risk just fear-mongering
Mueller, 12 (Professor PolSci Ohio State, 11-19, John, History and Nuclear Rationality
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/history-nuclear-rationality)

We seem to be at it again. Just about the entire foreign-policy establishment has taken it as a central article of faith
that nuclear proliferation is a dire security threat and that all possible measures, including even war if necessary, must
be taken to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Concern is justified, but the experience of two-thirds of a
century suggests that if Iran does obtain the weapons, it will use them in the same way others have: to
stoke the national ego and to deter real or imagined threats. For the mostpart, the few countries to which the
weapons have proliferated have found them a notable waste of time, money, effort and scientific talent.
They havent even found much benefit in rattling them from time to time. This was the case even when the weapons
were taken on by large countries with seemingly deranged leaders. Thus, when he got nukes, the Soviet Unions Stalin was
plotting to transform nature by planting lots of trees and Chinas Mao had recently launched a campaign to remake his society that
created a famine killing tens of millions. It was simplicity and spook on steroids. It is scarcely ever observed that nuclear
proliferation has thus far had consequences that are substantially benign. This suggests that simplicity
and spook continue to prevail up there at that foreign-policy summit. Send in the chimps.

Naval Power

1NC No Naval Power Impact
Sea power solves nothing
Goure 10Vice President, Lexington Institute, PhD (Daniel, 2 July 2010, Can The Case Be Made For
Naval Power?, http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/can-the-case-be-made-for-naval-power-
?a=1&c=1171)
This is no longer the case. The U.S. faces no great maritime challengers. While China appears to be
toying with the idea of building a serious Navy this is many years off. Right now it appears to be
designing a military to keep others, including the United States, away, out of the Western Pacific and
Asian littorals. But even if it were seeking to build a large Navy, many analysts argue that other than
Taiwan it is difficult to see a reason why Washington and Beijing would ever come to blows. Our former
adversary, Russia, would have a challenge fighting the U.S. Coast Guard, much less the U.S. Navy. After
that, there are no other navies of consequence. Yes, there are some scenarios under which Iran might
attempt to close the Persian Gulf to oil exports, but how much naval power would really be required to
reopen the waterway? Actually, the U.S. Navy would probably need more mine countermeasures
capabilities than it currently possesses. More broadly, it appears that the nature of the security
challenges confronting the U.S. has changed dramatically over the past several decades. There are only a
few places where even large-scale conventional conflict can be considered possible. None of these
would be primarily maritime in character although U.S. naval forces could make a significant
contribution by employing its offensive and defensive capabilities over land. For example, the
administrations current plan is to rely on sea-based Aegis missile defenses to protect regional allies and
U.S. forces until a land-based variant of that system can be developed and deployed. The sea ways,
sometimes called the global commons, are predominantly free of dangers. The exception to this is the
chronic but relatively low level of piracy in some parts of the world. So, the classic reasons for which
nations build navies, to protect its own shores and its commerce or to place the shores and commerce
of other states in jeopardy, seem relatively unimportant in todays world.
No challengers to the Navy were too far ahead
Tillman 9 (Barrett Tillman, Historian specializing in naval and aviation topics, 2009. U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings Magazine, Fear and
Loathing in the Post-Naval Era, http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/story.asp?STORY_ID=1896)
In attempting to justify a Cold War force structure, many military pundits cling to the military stature of China as
proof of a possible large conventional-war scenario against a pseudo-peer rival. Since only China possesses anything remotely
approaching the prospect of challenging American hegemonyand only in Asian watersBeijing ergo becomes
the "threat" that justifies maintaining the Cold War force structure. China's development of the DF-21 long-range
antiship ballistic missile, presumably intended for American carriers, has drawn much attention. Yet even granting the
perfection of such a weapon, the most obvious question goes begging: why would China use it? Why would
Beijing start a war with its number-two trading partnera war that would ruin both economies?10
Furthermore, the U.S. Navy owns nearly as many major combatants as Russia and China combined. In
tonnage, we hold a 2.6 to 1 advantage over them. No other coalitionactual or imaginedeven comes close.
But we need to ask ourselves: does that matter? In today's world the most urgent naval threat consists not of ships,
subs, or aircraft, but of mines-and pirates.11
2NC No Naval Power Impact
Naval power does not solve conflict prefer our empirical evidence that it leads to
war not prevent it
Robert S. Ross is Professor of Political Science at Boston College and Associate of the John King Fairbank
Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University. His current research focuses on Chinese security
policy, East Asian security, and U.S.-China relations, International Security, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Fall 2009), pp.
4681 , Chinas Naval Nationalism , The financial restraints on naval power have not always prevailed
on a land power s strategic choices. Naval nationalism has frequently encouraged conti- nental powers
to seek battle-capable surface eets. Naval nationalism is one manifestation of prestige strategies,
whereby governments seek interna- tional success to bolster their domestic popularity. Prestige-seeking
govern- ments sometimes provoke war in the pursuit of a popular military victory.10 But governments
also can seek greater prestige by developing defense policies and acquiring weaponry that do not
provoke war but nonetheless destabilize great power relations. Naval nationalism is one example of a
potentially de- stabilizing prestige strategy. During the nineteenth century, with the emergence of
European popular nationalism, naval nationalism became a prominent prestige strategy and a critical
source of maritime rivalries. Napoleons acquisition of capital ships and his challenge to Britains
maritime superiority and presence in North Africa were the rst steps toward realizing his maritime
ambition to oust the British from India and reected his insatiable need for military successes to sustain
his domestic nationalist legitimacy.11 Nationalism drove the French na- val buildup in the 1860s, when
there was popular widespread support for en- hancing French prestige and grandeur through possession
of large capital ships. Louis Napoleons legitimacy depended on his satisfying this nationalist desire, and
he personally participated in developing Frances naval policy. In six years, Frances naval budget grew
by more than 30 percent and strained the countrys nances. French naval nationalism reemerged in the
1880s, when widespread interest in enhancing Frances prestige demanded large colonial possessions
and a large navy to protect them.12 Naval nationalism drove German development of the dreadnought
and the Anglo-German arms race in the early twentieth century. Tirpitzs risk eet was not subjected
to rigorous military analysis before it was developed, and it was resisted by many German military
ofcers. Nevertheless, Tirpitz se- cured funding for the dreadnoughts because Kaiser Wilhelm II valued
the German Navy as the personal otilla of a world leader and as the foremost ex- pression of Germanys
power and mission to achieve its place in the sun. Just as the Greeks and the Romans each had their
time, the Spaniards had theirs and the French also; now it was Germanys turn.13 Thus, not only did
Germany devote insufcient resources to its ground forces, but the kaiser s preoccupation with capital
ships prevented it from developing adequately its submarine force until 1916.14 Russias drive into the
North Pacic in the late nineteenth and early twenti- eth centuries and its war with Japan in the North
Pacic in 190405 reected the impact of nationalism on Russian defense policy. Russian leaders, includ-
ing Czar Nicholas II, were acutely aware of Russian vulnerability to Japanese naval supremacy; they
believed it was imperative for Russia to avoid war. Russias belligerence reected excessive condence in
Russian cultural superi- ority over Asians and its resistance to suggesting weakness or humiliation in the
face of Japanese pressure, especially in the context of early twentieth- century domestic political
instability.15 Soviet maritime policy in the late twen- tieth century similarly reected naval
nationalism. The Soviet Union began development of a large surface eet in 1972, just as its ground
forces incurred the cost of a second front with China.16 It laid the keel of its rst aircraft carrier in 1983,
just as it was entering into a comprehensive arms race with the United States and its economy began
to stagnate. Yet the Soviet Union was not a trad- ing country, and it relied on domestic sources of
energy. Russian nationalism and the intrinsic militant ideology ingrained in the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union led to a maritime policy that aimed to establish the superiority of the countrys communist
political and economic system.17 Nationalism drove Japans simultaneous pursuit of continental and
mari- time empires in East Asia in the early twentieth century. The Meiji effort to cre- ate a national
identity fostered a nationalist culture that sought validation for Japan through empire and forced
industrialization. Once unleashed, this na- tionalism dictated Japans security agenda and, in the context
of economic de- pression and social instability, became the foundation of the governments legitimacy.
Japan thus pursued a relentless expansionist agenda even as it en- countered growing economic
difculties and diminished resources.18 Ulti- mately, naval nationalism led to Japans pursuit in the
1930s of an East Asian maritime empire even as its ground forces occupied China and maintained a
continental empire.
The Navy is ineffective at deterring conflicts
Farley 7 (Roberts, Assistant Professor @ the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International
Commerce, "The False Decline of U.S. Navy," Oct 23,
http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_false_decline_of_the_us_navy,
We live in strange times. While the United States is responsible for close to 50 percent of aggregate world military expenditure, and maintains
close alliances with almost all of the other major military powers, a community of defense analysts continues to insist that we need to spend
more. In the November issue of The Atlantic, Robert Kaplan asserts that United States hegemony is under the threat of elegant decline, and
points to what conventional analysts might suggest is the most secure element of American power; the United States Navy. Despite the
fact that the U.S. Navy remains several orders of magnitude more powerful than its nearest rival, Kaplan
says that we must beware; if we allow the size of our Navy to further decline, we risk repeating the experience of the United Kingdom
in the years before World War I. Unfortunately, since no actual evidence of U.S. naval decline exists, Kaplan is forced
to rely on obfuscation, distortion, and tendentious historical analogies to make his case. The centerpiece of Kaplans
argument is a comparison of the current U.S. Navy to the British Royal Navy at the end of the 19th century. The decline of the Royal Navy
heralded the collapse of British hegemony, and the decline of the U.S. Navy threatens a similar fate for the United States. The only problem
with this argument is that similarities between the 21st century United States and the 19th century United Kingdom are more imagined than
real. Its true that the relative strength of the Royal Navy declined at the end of the 19th century, but this was due entirely the rise of the
United States and Germany. But the absolute strength of the Royal Navy increased in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as the United
Kingdom strove to maintain naval dominance over two countries that possessed larger economies and larger industrial bases than that of Great
Britain. In other words, the position of the Royal Navy declined because the position of the United Kingdom declined; in spite of this decline,
the Royal Navy continued to dominate the seas against all comers until 1941. Britains relative economic decline preceded its naval decline,
although the efforts to keep up with Germany, the United States, and later Japan did serious damage to the British economy. The United States
faces a situation which is in no way similar. Returning to the present, Kaplan takes note of the growth of several foreign navies, including the
Indian, Chinese, and Japanese. He points out that the Japanese Navy has a large number of destroyers and a growing number of submarines. He
warns that India may soon have the worlds third largest navy without giving any indication of why that matters. Most serious of all, he
describes the threat of a growing Chinese Navy and claims that, just as the Battle of Wounded Knee opened a new age for American
imperialism, the conquest of Taiwan could transform China into an expansionist, imperial power. The curious historical analogies aside, Kaplan
is careful to make no direct comparisons between the growing navies of foreign countries and the actual strength of the United States Navy.
Theres a good reason for this oversight; there is no comparison between the U.S. Navy and any navy afloat today.
The United States Navy currently operates eleven aircraft carriers. The oldest and least capable is faster,
one third larger, and carries three times the aircraft of Admiral Kuznetsov, the largest carrier in the Russian
Navy. Unlike Chinas only aircraft carrier, the former Russian Varyag, American carriers have engines and are
capable of self-propulsion. The only carrier in Indian service is fifty years old and a quarter the size of its
American counterparts. No navy besides the United States has more than one aircraft carrier capable of
flying modern fixed wing aircraft. The United States enjoys similar dominance in surface combat vessels and
submarines, operating twenty-two cruisers, fifty destroyers, fifty-five nuclear attack submarines, and ten amphibious assault ships (vessels
roughly equivalent to most foreign aircraft carriers). In every category the U.S. Navy combines presumptive numerical
superiority with a significant ship-to-ship advantage over any foreign navy. This situation is unlikely to
change anytime soon. The French Navy and the Royal Navy will each expand to two aircraft carriers over the next decade. The most
ambitious plans ascribed to the Peoples Liberation Army Navy call for no more than three aircraft
carriers by 2020, and even that strains credulity, given Chinas inexperience with carrier operations and the
construction of large military vessels. While a crash construction program might conceivably give the Chinese the ability to achieve local
dominance (at great cost and for a short time), the United States Navy will continue to dominate the worlds oceans
and littorals for at least the next fifty years. In order to try to show that the U.S. Navy is insufficient in
the face of future threats, Kaplan argues that we on are our way to a 150 ship navy that will be overwhelmed
by the demands of warfighting and global economic maintenance. He suggests that the 1,000 Ship Navy proposal, an international plan to
streamline cooperation between the worlds navies on maritime maintenance issues such as piracy, interdiction of drug and human smuggling,
and disaster relief, is an effort at elegant decline, and declares that the dominance of the United States Navy cannot be maintained through
collaboration with others. Its true that a 600 ship navy can do more than the current 250-plus ship force of the current U.S. Navy, but
Kaplans playing a game of bait and switch. The Navy has fewer ships than it did two decades ago, but
the ships it has are far more capable than those of the 1980s. Because of the collapse of its competitors,
the Navy is relatively more capable of fighting and winning wars now than it was during the Reagan
administration. Broadly speaking, navies have two missions; warfighting, and maritime maintenance. Kaplan wants to confuse the
maritime maintenance mission (which can be done in collaboration with others) with the warfighting mission (which need not be). A navy can
require the cooperation of others for the maintenance mission, while still possessing utter military superiority over any one navy or any
plausible combination of navies on the high seas. Indeed, this is the situation that the United States Navy currently enjoys. It cannot be
everywhere all at once, and does require the cooperation of regional navies for fighting piracy and smuggling. At the same time, the U.S. Navy
can destroy any (and probably all, at the same time) naval challengers. To conflate these two missions is equal parts silly and dishonest. The
Navy has arrived at an ideal compromise between the two, keeping its fighting supremacy while leading
and facilitating cooperation around the world on maritime issues. This compromise has allowed the Navy to build
positive relationships with the navies of the world, a fact that Kaplan ignores. While asserting the dangers posed by a variety
of foreign navies, Kaplan makes a distortion depressingly common to those who warn of the decline of
American hegemony; he forgets that the United States has allies. While Kaplan can plausibly argue that
growth in Russian or Chinese naval strength threatens the United States, the same cannot reasonably be
said of Japan, India, France, or the United Kingdom. With the exception of China and Russia, all of the most
powerful navies in the world belong to American allies. United States cooperation with the navies of NATO, India, and
Japan has tightened, rather than waned in the last ten years, and the United States also retains warm relations with third tier navies such as
those of South Korea, Australia, and Malaysia. In any conceivable naval confrontation the United States will have
friends, just as the Royal Navy had friends in 1914 and 1941. Robert Kaplan wants to warn the American people of the dangers of impending
naval decline. Unfortunately, hes almost entirely wrong on the facts. While the reach of the United States Navy may have
declined in an absolute sense, its capacity to fight and win naval wars has, if anything, increased since
the end of the Cold War. That the United States continues to embed itself in a deep set of cooperative
arrangements with other naval powers only reinforces the dominance of the U.S. Navy on the high seas.
Analysts who want to argue for greater U.S. military spending are best advised to concentrate on the fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan.
2NC No Challengers
Naval primacy inevitable US will adapt and is too far ahead
Harris 8 (Stuart, BEc (Sydney) and PhD (The Australian National University), is Professor in the
Department of International Relations at the Australian National University, China's "new" diplomacy:
tactical or fundamental change?, Google Books, pg 20)
The United States also keeps a close eye on Chinas military modernization. It believes that by 2020
"China will be, by any measure, a first rate military power."6 It will therefore take whatever steps it sees
as necessary to maintain its military superiority, notably in the seas in and around the region. Nor is this
superiority being challenged directly by China. That Chinas concept for sea-denial capability is limited to
the seas around Taiwan and against Chinas eastern coast has been acknowledged by the United States.7
Outside of that, although President Hu Jintao has spoken of the need to develop Chinas naval
capabilities, overwhelming U.S. naval superiority will remain for a long time.
Marine Biodiversity/Hotspots
1NC No Impact
Marine ecosystems are resilient
Kennedy, 2002 (Victor Kennedy, PhD Environmental Science and Dir. Cooperative Oxford Lab., 2002, Coastal and Marine Ecosystems
and Global Climate Change, Pew, http://www.pewclimate.org/projects/marine.cfm)
There is evidence that marine organisms and ecosystems are resilient to environmental change. Steele (1991) hypothesized that
the biological components of marine systems are tightly coupled to physical factors, allowing them to
respond quickly to rapid environmental change and thus rendering them ecologically adaptable. Some
species also have wide genetic variability throughout their range, which may allow for adaptation to
climate change.
Hotspots thesis flawed there are no tipping points and regional ecosystems arent
key to global ones.
Brook, 2013 (Barry, Professor at the University of Adelaide, leading environmental scientist, holding the Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of
Climate Change at the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and is also Director of Climate Science at the University of Adelaides
Environment Institute, author of 3 books and over 250 scholarly articles, Corey Bradshaw is an Associate Professor at the University of Adelaide
and a joint appointee at the South Australian Research and Development Institute, Brave New Climate, March 4, 2013, "Worrying about global
tipping points distracts from real planetary threats", http://bravenewclimate.com/2013/03/04/ecological-tipping-points/)
Barry Brook We argue that at the global-scale, ecological tipping points and threshold-like planetary
boundaries are improbable. Instead, shifts in the Earths biosphere follow a gradual, smooth
pattern. This means that it might be impossible to define scientifically specific, critical levels of biodiversity loss or land-use change. This has important
consequences for both science and policy. Humans are causing changes in ecosystems across Earth to such a degree that there is now broad agreement that we live
in an epoch of our own making: the Anthropocene. But the question of just how these changes will play out and especially whether we might be approaching a
planetary tipping point with abrupt, global-scale consequences has remained unsettled. A tipping point occurs when an ecosystem attribute, such as species
abundance or carbon sequestration, responds abruptly and possibly irreversibly to a human pressure, such as land-use or climate change. Many local- and regional-
level ecosystems, such as lakes,forests and grasslands, behave this way. Recently however, there have been several efforts to define
ecological tipping points at the global scale. At a local scale, there are definitely warning signs that an
ecosystem is about to tip. For the terrestrial biosphere, tipping points might be expected if ecosystems across Earth respond in similar ways to
human pressures and these pressures are uniform, or if there are strong connections between continents that allow for rapid diffusion of impacts across the planet.
These criteria are, however, unlikely to be met in the real world. First, ecosystems on different
continents are not strongly connected. Organisms are limited in their movement by oceans and
mountain ranges, as well as by climatic factors, and while ecosystem change in one region can affect the global circulation of, for
example, greenhouse gases, this signal is likely to be weak in comparison with inputs from fossil fuel combustion
and deforestation. Second, the responses of ecosystems to human pressures like climate change or land-
use change depend on local circumstances and will therefore differ between locations. From a planetary
perspective, this diversity in ecosystem responses creates an essentially gradual pattern of change, without
any identifiable tipping points. This puts into question attempts to define critical levels of land-use change or biodiversity loss scientifically.
Why does this matter? Well, one concern we have is that an undue focus on planetary tipping points may distract from the
vast ecological transformations that have already occurred. After all, as much as four-fifths of the biosphere is today characterised
by ecosystems that locally, over the span of centuries and millennia, have undergone human-driven regime shifts of one or more kinds. Recognising this reality and
seeking appropriate conservation efforts at local and regional levels might be a more fruitful way forward for ecology and global change science. Corey Bradshaw
(see also notes published here on ConservationBytes.com) Lets not get too distracted by the title of the this article Does the terrestrial biosphere have planetary
tipping points? or the potential for a false controversy. Its important to be clear that the planet is indeed ill, and its largely due to us. Species are going extinct
faster than they would have otherwise. The planets climate system is being severely disrupted; so is the carbon cycle. Ecosystem services are on the decline. But
and its a big but we have to be wary of claiming the end of the world as we know it, or people will shut down and continue blindly with their growth and
consumption obsession. We as scientists also have to be extremely careful not to pull concepts and numbers out of thin air without empirical support. Specifically,
Im referring to the latest craze in environmental science writing the idea of planetary tipping points and
the related planetary boundaries. Its really the stuff of Hollywood disaster blockbusters the world
suddenly shifts into a new state where some major aspect of how the world functions does an immediate about-face. Dont get me wrong: there are plenty of
localised examples of such tipping points, often characterised by something we call hysteresis. Brook defines hysterisis as: a situation where the current state of
an ecosystem is dependent not only on its environment but also on its history, with the return path to the original state bei ng very different from the original
development that led to the altered state. Also, at some range of the driver, there can exist two or more alternative states and tipping point as: the critical point
at which strong nonlinearities appear in the relationship between ecosystem attributes and drivers; once a tipping point threshold is crossed, the change to a new
state is typically rapid and might be irreversible or exhibit hysteresis. Some of these examples include state shifts that have happened (or mostly likely will) to the
cryosphere, ocean thermohaline circulation, atmospheric circulation, and marine ecosystems, and there are many other fine-scale examples of ecological systems
shifting to new (apparently) stable states. However, claiming that we are approaching a major planetary boundary for our
ecosystems (including human society), where we witness such transitions simultaneously across the globe, is simply not upheld by
evidence. Regional tipping points are unlikely to translate into planet-wide state shifts. The main reason
is that our ecosystems arent that connected at global scales. The paper provides a framework against which one can test
the existence or probability of a planetary tipping point for any particular ecosystem function or state. To date, the application of the idea has floundered because
of a lack of specified criteria that would allow the terrestrial biosphere to tip. From a more sociological viewpoint, the claim of imminent shift to some worse state
also risks alienating people from addressing the real problems (foxes), or as Brook and colleagues summarise: framing global change in the dichotomous terms
implied by the notion of a global tipping point could lead to complacency on the safe side of the point and fatalism about catastrophic or irrevocable effects on
the other. In other words, lets be empirical about these sorts of politically charged statements instead of crying Wolf! while the hordes of foxes steal most of the
flock.

2NC No Impact
Resilient for two reasons:
1. Biological component tightly couple components allow rapid responses
2. Variability allows for adaptation Thats Kennedy
Ecosystems resilient and will recover BO Spill proves
Garvin, 2010 (Internally quoting Luis A. Soto, a deep-sea biologist with advanced degrees from Florida State University and the
University of Miami who teaches at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. By Glenn Garvin reporter for McClathy news Ixtoc: The
Gulf's other massive oil spill no longer apparent McClatchy Newspapers June 12, 2010 ev is modified for gendered language
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/12/95793/ixtoc-the-gulfs-other-massive.html#storylink=cpy)
But if the BP spill seems to be repeating one truth already demonstrated in the Ixtoc spill ... that human technology is no
match for a high-pressure undersea oil blowout ... scientists are hoping that it may eventually confirm another: that
the environment has a stunning capacity to heal itself from (hu)manmade insults. "The environment
is amazingly resilient, more so than most people understand,'' says Luis A. Soto, a deep-sea biologist
with advanced degrees from Florida State University and the University of Miami who teaches at the
National Autonomous University of Mexico. "To be honest, considering the magnitude of the spill, we
thought the Ixtoc spill was going to have catastrophic effects for decades ... But within a couple of
years, almost everything was close to 100 percent normal again.''
Oceans species are resilient.
Lomborg, 2001 (Bjorn, adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre and a
former director of the Environmental Assessment Institute in Copenhagen. Skeptical Environmentalist, pg 189)
But the oceans are so incredibly big that our impact on them has been astoundingly insignificant - the
oceans contain more than 1,000 billion billion liters of water.1407 The UN's overall evaluation of the
oceans concludes: "The open sea is still relatively clean. Low levels of lead, synthetic organic compounds and
artificial radionuclides, though widely detectable, are biologically insignificant. Oil slicks and litter are
common along sea lanes, but are, at present, a minor consequence to communities of organisms living in
open-ocean waters."1408 It actually turns out that the very lumps of oil that Heyerdahl was so worried about are now much fewer in
number. It is estimated that in 1985 about 60 percent of the marine sources of oil pollution came from the routine tanker transport operation,
while 20 percent came from regular oil spills of the kind we see on TV. and about 15 percent come from natural oil seepage at the bottom of
the sea and from sediment erosion.1*09
Hot spot thesis wrong multiple warrants
1. Tipping points improbable
2. Shifts follow a pattern
3. Ecosystems are not strongly connected
4. Organism movement is limited
5. Human Pressures allow for gradual change thats Brook
Hotspots theory wrong redundancy means species are unlikely to live solely in one
regional hotspot.
Maser, 1992 (Chris Maser, internationally recognized expert in forest ecology and governmental consultant, 1992, Global Imperative:
Harmonizing Culture and Nature, p. 40)
Redundancy means that more than one species can perform similar functions. Its a type of ecological
insurance policy, which strengthens the ability of the system to retain the integrity of its basic relationships. The insurance of
redundancy means that the loss of a species or two is not likely to result in such severe functional
disruptions of the ecosystem so as to cause its collapse because other species can make up for the functional loss.

Military Readiness
1NC No Impact
No impact weve survived periods of low readiness
NSN, 8 (National Security Network 8 (May 13, http://www.nsnetwork.org/node/850)

Our military is second to none, but eight years of negligence, lack of accountability, and a reckless war in Iraq have
left our ground forces facing shortfalls in both recruitment and readiness. Every service is out of
balance and ill-prepared. We need a new strategy to give the military the tools it needs for the challenges we face today. And we
need leadership that meets our obligations to the men and women who put their lives on the line. Overview The U.S. military is a fighting
force second to none. It didnt get that way by accident it took decades of careful stewardship by civilian as well as military leaders in the
Pentagon, the White House, and on Capitol Hill. But eight years of Administration recklessness, and a lack of oversight from conservatives
on Capitol Hill, have put the military under enormous strain. Active-duty generals at the highest levels have said that the current
demand for our forces is not sustainable We cant sustain the all-volunteer force at the pace that we are going on right
now (Army Chief of Staff George Casey, April 2008); that in terms of readiness, many brigades being sent back to
Afghanistan and Iraq were not where they need to be (Army Vice-Chief of Staff Richard Cody, SASC subcommittee
hearing, April 14, 2008); and that we cannot now meet extra force requirements in places like Afghanistan
(Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mullen on National Public Radio, April 2008). Readiness and Response: Two-thirds of the Army
virtually all of the brigades not currently deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq are rated not combat ready. The dramatic equipment
shortages of a few years ago have been improved but not completely remedied. Recruitment and Retention: These conditions of
service, and the strains they place on military family members, have hindered Army efforts (and to a
lesser extent those of the Marine Corps) to recruit and retain the requisite number and quantity of service
members. The Army has been forced to lower its educational and moral standards and allow an
increasing number of felons into its ranks. It is also struggling to keep junior officers, the brains of the force, who
represent the height of the militarys investment in its people and whose willingness to stay on represents a crucial judgment on
Administration policies. The Marine Corps, Americas emergency 911 force, is under similar strain. The Commandant of the Marine Corps
said in February 2008 that the Marines will not be able to maintain a long term presence in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The National Guard
and Reserve are already suffering from severe shortages of equipment and available combat personnel. In many states, the Army National
Guard would struggle to respond to a natural or man-made disaster just as the Kansas National Guard struggled to respond to the severe
tornados last year. How, and whether, we rebuild our military in the wake of the fiasco in Iraq will likely shape it for the next generation.
Too much of our military posture is left over from the Cold War. Our forces are being ground down
by low-tech insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the most immediate threat confronting the
U.S. is a terrorist network that possesses no tanks or aircraft. We must learn the lessons of Iraq and dramatically
transform our military into a 21st century fighting force ready to confront the threats of today and tomorrow.
2NC No Impact
Readiness is overrated
George 99 (James, Former Congressional Professional Staff Member for National Security Affairs, Is Military Readiness Overrated?,
Cato Institute, 5-27, http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5445)
Military readiness promises to be a major issue when Congress marks up a defense bill later this year. Some members of Congress are
already using readiness as a reason to increase funding in the emergency spending bill for the war in Yugoslavia. Most experts cite the initial stages of the Korean
War and the Hollow Force of the late 1970s as cautionary examples of being ill-prepared. A closer look at both those examples, however,
shows that they really had little to do with readiness. Moreover, the current crisis in Yugoslavia illustrates once again why
readiness may be overrated and the funds better spent elsewhere. Although often used as a generic term for all military
capabilities, readiness--defined as the ability to respond with appropriate force with little or no warning--is only one of four pillars of
military preparedness. The other pillars are force structure, modernization and sustainability. Thus, an
effective military force depends on much more than just readiness. Interestingly, the two favorite examples
cited by readiness alarmists fail to prove their case. The performance of Task Force Smith, an ill-prepared battalion quickly sent to the
front and fairly easily routed by the North Koreans during the initial days of the Korean War, is often cited as the worst case. "No More Task Force Smiths" has
become a mantra for the Army. However, critics of Task Force Smith fail to point out that U.S. commanders made the most basic of military mistakes--including
grossly underestimating the enemy and sending TFS to an exposed position. When such blunders occur, the end result will be the same whether it is an ill-trained
Task Force Smith in Korea or well-trained Marines in Beirut or elite Rangers in Somalia. Moreover, critics also fail to mention that barely a
month later the United States stabilized the situation in South Korea, and in another month the Marines conducted their
famous Inchon Landing. In fact, without the Chinese intervention, the United States would have won the Korean War a few months after it began. Not
bad for a U.S. force that was supposedly ill-prepared. Similarly, the Hollow Force of the late 1970s was not primarily a readiness problem
but a combination of many factors--including a military characterized by low morale after Vietnam, serious drug and racial problems, the erroneous induction of too many mentally
substandard recruits and low pay eroded further by high inflation. At the same time, major structural changes were transforming the U.S. military, including the introduction of women into the regular forces, the switch from a draft
to an all-volunteer force and the initiation of the Total Force Concept that placed more reliance on the Reserves. Given all of that turbulence, no wonder we had a Hollow Force. Often overlooked, however, is how quickly those
problems were solved. In some cases, solutions were found without spending a dime. For example, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Thomas Hayward instituted his "Not in my Navy" program of zero tolerance for drugs. The drug
problem was solved almost overnight. The induction of too many mentally substandard recruits by mistake which had lowered standards, was identified and corrected. That correction solved most other personnel problems (and
should be a warning to people who want to lower standards today). Some members of Congress are now using the crisis in Yugoslavia to get more funds for readiness by arguing that the military is now stretched "too thin."
(Congress doubled President Clinton's request for $6 billion in emergency spending for the war.) In fact, the situation is quite the opposite. Leaving aside the question of whether the United States should even be involved in
Yugoslavia, the new Clinton Doctrine, which does not plan to use ground troops ( a position that is supported by many Republicans), limits the stress placed on the military. Those decisions are all deliberate political actions that
have absolutely nothing to do with readiness. Under a well-conceived strategy, even a modestly capable force will probably perform well; but under a poorly conceived strategy, even a force with the highest degree of readiness
will probably have serious problems. The experiences of Task Force Smith and the Hollow Force, as well as the invocation of a Clinton Doctrine that eschews the use of ground forces, have major implications. More
forces, for example, could be placed in the reserves and scarce funds spent elsewhere. In addition, the military could switch
to what Sen. John McCain (R- Ariz.) has called "Tiered Readiness:" a few forces would be kept on expensive ready status and be augmented by reserve forces that
could be mobilized if a substantial threat to U.S. security arose. Military readiness is certainly important, and no one is suggesting a return to the truly shallow force
of the late 1940s or the Hollow Force of the 1970s. But a close look at those forces shows that their difficulties involved much
more than just poor readiness.

Natural Disasters
1NC No Tsunamis Impact
Aff exaggerates the risk and death toll from future tsunamis in the Indian Ocean.
S.E.E.D. 14 (Schlumberger Excellence in Education Development (SEED) is a volunteer-based, nonprofit education program focused on
underserved communities. The Earth A Living Planet: More Earthquakes, But Why No Tsunamis?
http://www.planetseed.com/relatedarticle/more-earthquakes-why-no-tsunamis)
On December 26, 2004, an earthquake-generated tsunami devastated many countries surrounding the Indian
Ocean. It caused more casualties than any other tsunami in recorded history. In the following months, many more
moderate to strong earthquakes have taken place in the region. The surviving residents have
understandably been very frightened each time the ground shakes. Fearing another tsunami, they flee to higher
ground. Yet, for the most part, the tsunamis did not materialize. Those that did were small and
insignificant, resulting in very little damage. The country of Indonesia was especially hard hit by the December earthquake,
which measured 9.0 on the Richter scale. The resulting tsunami created further devastation. The combined death toll was over 200,000 people.
Just three months later, on March 28, 2005, a quake with a magnitude of 8.7 struck the region again, killing more
than a thousand people and destroying several hundred buildings. A tsunami alert went out, and residents fled inland. This time, however,
any resulting tsunami-driven surges of water were hardly noticeable. A three-meter (nine feet) tsunami did some damage
to a nearby port, and surges as high as one meter (three feet) were observed in some places along the coast of Sumatra. In contrast, the
December tsunamis measured as high as 10.5 m (34 feet) when they reached shore.

Overfishing
1NC Fish Resilient
Fish stocks resilient to status quo levels of overfishing
Hilborn, 2010 (Ray, professor of aquatic and fishery sciences at the University of Washington. Apocalypse Forestalled: Why All the
Worlds Fisheries Arent Collapsing The Science Chronicles November
http://www.atsea.org/doc/Hilborn%202010%20Science%20Chronicles%202010-11-1.pdf)
About 30 percent of the stocks would currently be classified as overfished but, generally, fishing pressure has been reduced enough that all
but 17 percent of stocks would be expected to recover to above overfished thresholds if current fishing pressure continues. In the United
States, there was clear evidence for the rebuilding of marine ecosystems and stock biomass. The idea that 70 percent of the
worlds fish stocks are overfished or collapsed and that the rate of overfishing is accelerating (Pauly 2007) was shown by
Worm et al. (2009) and FAO (2009) to be untrue. The Science paper coming out of the NCEAS group also showed that the success in
reducing fishing pressure had been achieved by a broad range of traditional fisheries management tools including catch-and-effort
limitation, gear restrictions and temporary closed areas. Marine protected areas were an insignificant factor in the success achieved. The
database generated by the NCEAS group and subsequent analysis has shown that many of the assumptions fueling the
standard apocalyptic scenarios painted by the gloom-and-doom proponents are untrue: For instance, the
widespread notion that fishermen (fisherpeople) generally sequentially deplete food webs (Pauly et al. 1998) starting
with the predators and working their way down is simply not supported by data. Declining trophic level of fishery landings is
just as often a result of new fisheries developing rather than old ones collapsing (Essington et al. 2006). Catch data also show that fishing
patterns are driven by economics, with trophic level a poor predictor of exploitation history (Sethi et al. 2010). Furthermore, the mean trophic
level of marine ecosystems is unrelated to (or even negatively correlated with) the trophic level of fishery landings (Branch et al. 2010). And
the oft-cited assessment that the large fish of the oceans were collapsed by 1980 (Myers and Worm 2003) is
totally inconsistent with the database we have assembled for instance, world tuna stocks in total
are at present well above the level that would produce maximum sustained yield, except bluefin tuna and
some other billfish that are depleted (Hutchings 2010).
2NC Fish Resilient
Fish stocks resilient. Wont be a horror story, theyll recover quickly.
Dean, 2012 (Cornelia, Guest Lecturer in Environmental Studies @ the Center for Environmental Studies at Brown University. She is also a
writer for the New York Times. This card is internally quoting Ray Hilborn is a professor of aquatic and fishry sciences at the University of
Washington. How Well, and How Poorly, We Harvest Ocean Life New York Times April 16, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/science/overfishing-book-review-how-well-and-poorly-we-harvest-ocean-life.html)
To hear some other people tell it, many depleted stocks are recovering nicely. Ray Hilborn, a fisheries scientist at the
University of Washington, wades into this disagreement in his new book and comes out with a lucid explication of a highly tangled issue. Each
argument, he concludes, has some truth on its side. It depends on where you look, he writes. You can paint horror story after
horror story if you want. You can paint success after success. He navigates the path between horror and success through scores of
questions and answers, nearly all of which demonstrate how difficult it is to sort this issue out. Take the most basic question: What is
overfishing? There are several answers, the book tells us. There is yield overfishing, in which people take so many fish that they leave too few
to spawn or catch too many fish before they are grown. Then there is economic overfishing, in which economic benefits are less than they
could be. If too many boats chase too few fish, for example, the struggle to make a good catch leads to overspending on boats, fuel and so on.
(There is also ecological overfishing, but that is something we must live with as long as we want to eat fish, Dr. Hilborn says. Fishing by
definition alters the marine environment.) Dr. Hilborn tells us of fisheries that succeed like the halibut industry in Alaska
and fish stocks managed into difficulty, and then out again, like the pollock of the Bering Sea. And he gets into the issue
of trawling, in which boats drop weighted nets to the bottom and drag them along, scraping up everything in their path. Critics liken
trawling to harvesting timber by clear-cutting. For Dr. Hilborn, this analogy is not always apt, since in
some areas the creatures rapidly repopulate the ocean floor.


Aff exaggerates stocks are resilient in the face of over-fishing
Hilborn, 2011 (Ray, professor of aquatic and fishery sciences at the University of Washington. New York Times Let Us Eat Fish
April 14, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/opinion/15hilborn.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&)
Over the last decade the public has been bombarded by apocalyptic predictions about the future of
fish stocks in 2006, for instance, an article in the journal Science projected that all fish stocks could be gone
by 2048. Subsequent research, including a paper I co-wrote in Science in 2009 with Boris Worm, the lead author of the 2006 paper, has
shown that such warnings were exaggerated. Much of the earlier research pointed to declines in catches and concluded that
therefore fish stocks must be in trouble. But there is little correlation between how many fish are caught and how many actually exist; over the
past decade, for example, fish catches in the United States have dropped because regulators have lowered the allowable catch. On
average, fish stocks worldwide appear to be stable, and in the United States they are rebuilding, in many cases at a
rapid rate.

Resource Wars

1NC No Resource Wars (Generic)

No resource wars abundance more likely to cause conflict
Salehyan 2007 Idean Salehyan Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas. The
New Myth About Climate Change Corrupt, tyrannical governmentsnot changes in the Earths
climatewill be to blame for the coming resource wars., Foreign Policy.com, August 14, 2007
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2007/08/13/the_new_myth_about_climate_change)//JS
First, aside from a few anecdotes, there is little systematic empirical evidence that resource scarcity and changing
environmental conditions lead to conflict. In fact, several studies have shown that an abundance of natural
resources is more likely to contribute to conflict. Moreover, even as the planet has warmed, the number of civil wars and insurgencies
has decreased dramatically. Data collected by researchers at Uppsala University and the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo shows a steep decline in the
number of armed conflicts around the world. Between 1989 and 2002, some 100 armed conflicts came to an end, including the wars in Mozambique, Nicaragua,
and Cambodia. If global warming causes conflict, we should not be witnessing this downward trend. Furthermore, if famine and drought led to
the crisis in Darfur, why have scores of environmental catastrophes failed to set off armed conflict
elsewhere? For instance, the U.N. World Food Programme warns that 5 million people in Malawi have
been experiencing chronic food shortages for several years. But famine-wracked Malawi has yet to
experience a major civil war. Similarly, the Asian tsunami in 2004 killed hundreds of thousands of people,
generated millions of environmental refugees, and led to severe shortages of shelter, food, clean water,
and electricity. Yet the tsunami, one of the most extreme catastrophes in recent history, did not lead to
an outbreak of resource wars. Clearly then, there is much more to armed conflict than resource scarcity and natural disasters.

War causes resource scarcity not the other way around
Allouche 11 fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at Brighton, UK (Jeremy, "The sustainability and resilience of global water
and food systems: Political analysis of the interplay between security, resource scarcity, political systems and global trade" Food Policy, Volume
36, Supplement 1)
Armed conflict is the main cause of emergency food insecurity in the world today (FAO, 2000) and,
hunger is routinely used as a weapon or a political tool during conflicts. In Ethiopia for example, the government
attempted to deny food to rebel forces and their supporters livestock, farms and food stores in Tigre and Eritrea were systematically bombed
(Keller, 1992, p. 620). More generally, it has been estimated that approximately 24 million people in 28
countries across the world are hungry and in need of humanitarian assistance due to war (Messer et al.,
2001). The most affected people are usually refugees and internally displaced persons of which women and children are a large majority. The
impact of armed conflict on food production and food availability is important especially in the African context where most people earn at least
a part of their livelihood through agriculture or livestock keeping. One study estimated that food production in 13 war-
torn countries of Sub-Saharan Africa during 19701994 was on average 12.3% lower in war years
compared to peace adjusted values (Messer et al., 1998). In another study covering all developing countries the FAO estimated
that from 1970 to 1997 conflict induced losses of agricultural output totalled $121 billion in real terms (or an average of $4.3 billion annually)
(FAO, 2000). These impacts are not just on food production but there is also a devastating human dimension in terms of hunger and
malnutrition. So far the emphasis has been on the impacts of armed conflict on food security but there is also an important post-conflict
dimension. A number of studies have shown how violent conflict in Africa plays a decisive role in the
creation of conditions leading to famine ([De Waal, 1990], [De Waal, 1993] and [Macrae and Zwi, 1994]), and point to the
changing nature of the relationship between conflict and vulnerability to famine. As highlighted by a recent
FAO study (2008), food shortages linked to conflict set the stage for years of long-term food emergencies, continuing well after fighting has
ceased. These situations can be characterized as chronic entitlement failures where communities,
households and individuals who have had their assets stripped through conflict, lack the income and
livelihood resources to access food and assure their food security, even where food is available (see
Macrae and Zwi, 1994). The impact of war on water is also a serious issue. Ensuring safe water and decent sanitation for civilians in conflict
zones is crucial in the sense that diseases have an even large impact in terms of mortality than military casualties during conflicts. The provision
of water and sanitation is of utmost priority in post-conflict states. Unsafe water equates directly with poor health, but the lack of adequate
public revenues, government capacity, and investor interest often results in failure to re-establish access to basic infrastructural services
(Allouche, 2010). Overall, it seems clear that perceived resource scarcity is not an adequate explanation for
war at the international level. At the national level, water and food insecurity are relatively important
factors in the causes of civil wars. At the local level, water scarcity and food insecurity may lead to local political instability and
sometimes violent forms of conflict. Armed conflict creates situation of emergency food and water insecurity and has a long-term impact on
post-conflict societies. In the near future, it seems that despite climate change, international resource wars are
unlikely and resource allocation will be settled through diplomatic negotiation and perhaps most
importantly international trade as will be discussed in the next section.


Resource scarcity doesnt lead to war
Bier 11 (David Bier immigration policy expert, November 28
th
, 2011, Steven Pinker: Resource Scarcity Doesnt Cause Wars, Global
Warming.org, http://www.globalwarming.org/2011/11/28/steven-pinker-resource-scarcity-doesnt-cause-wars/)//JS
Once again it seems to me that the appropriate response is maybe, but maybe not. Though climate change can cause plenty of misery it will not necessarily lead
to armed conflict. The political scientists who track war and peace, such as Halvard Buhaug, Idean Salehyan, Ole Theisen, and Nils
Gleditsch, are skeptical of the popular idea that people fight wars over scarce resources. Hunger and resource shortages
are tragically common in sub-Saharan countries such as Malawi, Zambia, and Tanzania, but wars involving them are not.
Hurricanes, floods, droughts, and tsunamis (such as the disastrous one in the Indian Ocean in 2004) do not generally lead to conflict. The American dust
bowl in the 1930s, to take another example, caused plenty of deprivation but no civil war. And while temperatures have been rising
steadily in Africa during the past fifteen years, civil wars and war deaths have been falling. Pressures on access to land and water can
certainly cause local skirmishes, but a genuine war requires that hostile forces be organized and armed, and that depends
more on the influence of bad governments, closed economies, and militant ideologies than on the sheer
availability of land and water. Certainly any connection to terrorism is in the imagination of the terror warriors: terrorists tend to be
underemployed lower-middle-class men, not subsistence farmers. As for genocide, the Sudanese government finds it convenient to blame violence i n Darfur on
desertification, distracting the world from its own role in tolerating or encouraging the ethnic cleansing. In a regression analysis on armed conflicts from 1980 to
1992, Theisen found that conflict was more likely if a country was poor, populous, politically unstable, and abundant in oil, but not if it had suffered from droughts,
water shortages, or mild land degradation. (Severe land degradation did have a small effect.) Reviewing analyses that examined a large
number (N) of countries rather than cherry-picking one or toe, he concluded, Those who foresee doom, because of the relationship between
resource scarcity and violent internal conflict, have very little support from the large-N literature.

2NC No Resource Wars (Generic)
No risk of resource wars
Victor 2007 (David G. Victor professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and director of the Schools new
Laboratory on International Law and Regulation, The National Interest, 2007, What Resource Wars?
http://irps.ucsd.edu/dgvictor/publications/Faculty_Victor_Article_2007_What%20Resource%20Wars_The%20National%20Interest.pdf)
Rising energy prices andmounting concerns about environmental depletion have animated fears that the world may be
headed for a spate of "resource wars" - hot conflicts triggered by a struggle to grab valuable resources. Such fears come in many stripes, but the threat industry has sounded the alarm bells especially loudly
in three areas. First is the rise of China, which is poorly endowed with many of the resources it needs - such as oil, gas, timber and most minerals - and has already "gone out" to the world with the goal of securing what it
wants. Violent conflicts may follow as the country shunts others aside. A second potential path down the road to resource wars starts with all the money now flowing into poorly governed but resource-rich countries.
Money can fund civil wars and other hostilities, even leaking into the hands of terrorists. And third is global climate change, which could multiply stresses on natural resources and trigger water wars, catalyze the
spread of disease or bring about mass migrations. Most of this is bunk, and nearly all of it has focused on the wrong lessons for policy. Classic resource wars are good material
for Hollywood screenwriters. They rarely occur in the real world. To be sure, resource money can
magnify and prolong some conflicts, but the root causes of those hostilities usually lie elsewhere. Fixing them
requires focusing on the underlying institutions that govern how resources are used and largely determine whether stress explodes into violence. When conflicts do arise, the weak link
isn't a dearth in resources but a dearth in governance. Feeding the dragon Resource wars are largely back in
vogue within the US threat industry because of China's spectacular rise. Brazil, India, Malaysia and many others that used to sit on the periphery
of the world economy are also arcing upward. This growth is fueling a surge in world demand for raw materials. Inevitably, these countries have looked overseas for what they need, which has animated fears of a coming clash with
China and other growing powers over access to natural resources. Within the next three years, China will be the world's largest consumer of energy. Yet, it's not just oil wells that are working harder to fuel China, so too
are chainsaws. Chinese net imports of timber nearly doubled from 2000 to 2005. The country also uses about one-third of the world's steel (around 360 million tons), or three times its 2000 consumption. Even in coal resources, in
which China is famously well-endowed, China became a net importer in 2007. Across the board, the combination of low efficiency, rapid growth and an emphasis on heavy industry - typical in the early stages of industrial
growth - have combined to make the country a voracious consumer and polluter of natural resources. America, England and nearly every other industrialized country went through a similar pattern, though with a human
population that was much smaller than today's resource-hungry developing world
Resource scarcity will solve itself
Sharp 07 (Travis Sharp fellow at Center for a New American Security PhD. Student Princeton University Woodrow Wilson school of
Public and International Affairs, The Center for Arms-Control and Non proliferation, July September 2007, Resource Conflict in the 21
st

Century, http://armscontrolcenter.org/issues/securityspending/articles/resource_conflict_twenty_first_century/)//JS
Scholars have developed two separate visions of resource depletion. The Cornucopian model offers an optimistic approach to dealing
with non-renewable resources. Relying on the virtues of the free market, the Cornucopian model asserts that, ceteris paribus, as
resources become scarce and supply decreases, prices will increase and prolong total depletion. In the
time between initial price increases and total depletion, humans will make technological advances that ameliorate the
crisis. Essentially, the Cornucopian model is a prescription for procrastination - we will wait until the situation is critical before we start working on solutions.
The Malthusian model takes the opposite view of resource depletion. Emerging from the writings of English economist Thomas Malthus, this theory suggests that
population growth will place an undue burden on resources and ultimately lead to a cataclysmic clash over scarce commodities. Advocates of the Malthusian
worldview support immediate action to prevent the apocalypse coming as a result of world resource depletion.
1NC No Food War
Their neo-Malthusian claims are false food scarcity doesnt cause war
Allouche 11 fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at Brighton, UK (Jeremy, "The sustainability and resilience of global water
and food systems: Political analysis of the interplay between security, resource scarcity, political systems and global trade" Food Policy, Volume
36, Supplement 1)
The question of resource scarcity has led to many debates on whether scarcity (whether of food or water) will lead to conflict and war. The
underlining reasoning behind most of these discourses over food and water wars comes from the Malthusian belief that there is an imbalance
between the economic availability of natural resources and population growth since while food production grows linearly, population increases
exponentially. Following this reasoning, neo-Malthusians claim that finite natural resources place a strict limit on
the growth of human population and aggregate consumption; if these limits are exceeded, social
breakdown, conflict and wars result. Nonetheless, it seems that most empirical studies do not
support any of these neo-Malthusian arguments. Technological change and greater inputs of capital have dramatically
increased labour productivity in agriculture. More generally, the neo-Malthusian view has suffered because during
the last two centuries humankind has breached many resource barriers that seemed
unchallengeable. Lessons from history: alarmist scenarios, resource wars and international relations In a so-called age of uncertainty, a
number of alarmist scenarios have linked the increasing use of water resources and food insecurity
with wars. The idea of water wars (perhaps more than food wars) is a dominant discourse in the media (see for example Smith, 2009),
NGOs (International Alert, 2007) and within international organizations (UNEP, 2007). In 2007, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon declared that
water scarcity threatens economic and social gains and is a potent fuel for wars and conflict (Lewis, 2007). Of course, this type of discourse has
an instrumental purpose; security and conflict are here used for raising water/food as key policy priorities at the international level. In the
Middle East, presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers have also used this bellicose rhetoric. Boutrous Boutros-Gali said; the next war
in the Middle East will be over water, not politics (Boutros Boutros-Gali in Butts, 1997, p. 65). The question is not whether the
sharing of transboundary water sparks political tension and alarmist declaration, but rather to what
extent water has been a principal factor in international conflicts. The evidence seems quite weak .
Whether by president Sadat in Egypt or King Hussein in Jordan, none of these declarations have been
followed up by military action . The governance of transboundary water has gained increased attention these last decades. This
has a direct impact on the global food system as water allocation agreements determine the amount of water that can used for irrigated
agriculture. The likelihood of conflicts over water is an important parameter to consider in assessing the
stability, sustainability and resilience of global food systems. None of the various and extensive
databases on the causes of war show water as a casus belli. Using the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) data set and
supplementary data from the University of Alabama on water conflicts, Hewitt, Wolf and Hammer found only seven disputes where water
seems to have been at least a partial cause for conflict (Wolf, 1998, p. 251). In fact, about 80% of the incidents relating to water were limited
purely to governmental rhetoric intended for the electorate (Otchet, 2001, p. 18). As shown in The Basins At Risk (BAR) water event database,
more than two-thirds of over 1800 water-related events fall on the cooperative scale (Yoffe et al., 2003). Indeed, if one takes into account a
much longer period, the following figures clearly demonstrate this argument. According to studies by the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO), organized political bodies signed between the year 805 and 1984 more than 3600 water-related treaties, and
approximately 300 treaties dealing with water management or allocations in international basins have been negotiated since 1945 ([FAO, 1978]
and [FAO, 1984]). The fear around water wars have been driven by a Malthusian outlook which equates scarcity with violence, conflict and war.
There is however no direct correlation between water scarcity and transboundary conflict. Most specialists now tend to agree that the major
issue is not scarcity per se but rather the allocation of water resources between the different riparian states (see for example [Allouche, 2005],
[Allouche, 2007] and [Rouyer, 2000]). Water rich countries have been involved in a number of disputes with other relatively water rich
countries (see for example India/Pakistan or Brazil/Argentina). The perception of each states estimated water needs really constitutes the core
issue in transboundary water relations. Indeed, whether this scarcity exists or not in reality, perceptions of the amount of available water
shapes peoples attitude towards the environment (Ohlsson, 1999). In fact, some water experts have argued that scarcity drives the process of
co-operation among riparians ([Dinar and Dinar, 2005] and [Brochmann and Gleditsch, 2006]). In terms of international relations,
the threat of water wars due to increasing scarcity does not make much sense in the light of the
recent historical record. Overall, the water war rationale expects conflict to occur over water, and
appears to suggest that violence is a viable means of securing national water supplies, an argument
which is highly contestable. The debates over the likely impacts of climate change have again popularised the idea of water wars.
The argument runs that climate change will precipitate worsening ecological conditions contributing to resource scarcities, social breakdown,
institutional failure, mass migrations and in turn cause greater political instability and conflict ([Brauch, 2002] and Pervis and Busby, 2004
Pervis, Nigel, Busby, Joshua, 2004. The Security Implications of Climate Change for the UN System. Environmental Change and Security Project
Report 10, pp. 6773.[Pervis and Busby, 2004]). In a report for the US Department of Defense, Schwartz and Randall (2003) speculate about the
consequences of a worst-case climate change scenario arguing that water shortages will lead to aggressive wars (Schwartz and Randall, 2003, p.
15). Despite growing concern that climate change will lead to instability and violent conflict, the
evidence base to substantiate the connections is thin ([Barnett and Adger, 2007] and [Kevane and Gray, 2008]).


No resource wars abundance more likely to cause conflict
Salehyan 2007 Idean Salehyan Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas. The
New Myth About Climate Change Corrupt, tyrannical governmentsnot changes in the Earths
climatewill be to blame for the coming resource wars., Foreign Policy.com, August 14, 2007
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2007/08/13/the_new_myth_about_climate_change)//JS
First, aside from a few anecdotes, there is little systematic empirical evidence that resource scarcity and changing
environmental conditions lead to conflict. In fact, several studies have shown that an abundance of natural
resources is more likely to contribute to conflict. Moreover, even as the planet has warmed, the number of civil wars and insurgencies
has decreased dramatically. Data collected by researchers at Uppsala University and the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo shows a steep decline in the
number of armed conflicts around the world. Between 1989 and 2002, some 100 armed conflicts came to an end, including the wars in Mozambique, Nicaragua,
and Cambodia. If global warming causes conflict, we should not be witnessing this downward trend. Furthermore, if famine and drought led to
the crisis in Darfur, why have scores of environmental catastrophes failed to set off armed conflict
elsewhere? For instance, the U.N. World Food Programme warns that 5 million people in Malawi have
been experiencing chronic food shortages for several years. But famine-wracked Malawi has yet to
experience a major civil war. Similarly, the Asian tsunami in 2004 killed hundreds of thousands of people,
generated millions of environmental refugees, and led to severe shortages of shelter, food, clean water,
and electricity. Yet the tsunami, one of the most extreme catastrophes in recent history, did not lead to
an outbreak of resource wars. Clearly then, there is much more to armed conflict than resource scarcity and natural disasters.



1NC No Oil War

Resource wars not going to happen especially over oil
Tetrais 2012 (Bruno Tetrais senior researcher at fellow foundation for Strategic Research, Summer
2012, The Washington Quarterly, The Demise of Ares: The End of War as we know it?,
http://csis.org/files/publication/twq12SummerTertrais.pdf)
Future resource wars are unlikely. There are fewer and fewer conquest wars. Between the Westphalia peace and the end of World War II, nearly half
of conflicts were fought over territory. Since the end of the Cold War, it has been less than 30 percent.61 The invasion of Kuwaita nationwide bank robberymay go
down in history as being the last great resource war. The U.S.-led intervention of 1991 was partly driven by the need to maintain the free
flow of oil, but not by the temptation to capture it. (Nor was the 2003 war against Iraq motivated by oil.) As for the
current tensions between the two Sudans over oil, they are the remnants of a civil war and an offshoot of a botched secession process, not a desire to control new
resources. Chinas and Indias energy needs are sometimes seen with apprehension: in light of growing oil and gas scarcity, is there not a risk of
military clashes over the control of such resources? This seemingly consensual idea rests on two fallacies. One is
that there is such a thing as oil and gas scarcity, a notion challenged by many energy experts.62 As prices rise, previously untapped
reserves and non-conventional hydrocarbons become economically attractive. The other is that spilling blood is a rational way to
access resources. As shown by the work of historians and political scientists such as Quincy Wright, the economic rationale for war has
always been overstated. And because of globalization, it has become cheaper to buy than to steal. We no longer live in the world of
1941, when fear of lacking oil and raw materials was a key motivation for Japans decision to go to war. In
an era of liberalizing trade, many natural resources are fungible goods. (Here, Beijing behaves as any other actor: 90 percent of the oil its companies produce
outside of China goes to the global market, not to the domestic one.)63 There may be clashes or conflicts in regions in maritime resource-rich areas
such as the South China and East China seas or the Mediterranean, but they will be driven by nationalist passions, not the
desperate hunger for hydrocarbons.

1NC No Water War
Their evidence is hype
Katz, Enviro Studies Prof at Tel Aviv, 11 (David, February, Hydro-Political Hyperbole: Examining
Incentives for Overemphasizing the Risks of Water Wars Global Environmental Politics, Vol 11 No 1,
ProjectMuse) Incentives to Stress a Water War Scenario Incentives Presented in Existing Literature
Observers have noted that various actors may have incentives to stress or even exaggerate the risks of
water wars. Lonergan notes, for instance, that in many cases, the comments are little more than
media hype; in others, statements have been made for political reasons.49 Beyond mere
acknowledgement of the possibility of such incentives, however, little research has attempted to
understand what these incentives are and how they may differ between actors. An understanding of the
different motivations of various groups of actors to stress the possibility of imminent water wars can
help explain the continued seemingly disproportionate popularity of such messages and help to evaluate
such warnings more critically. Mueller offers a general explanation for a focus on violence in public
discourse by postulating that, following the end of the Cold War, policy-makers, the press, and various
analysts seek to fill a catastrophe quota.50 According to this theory, various actors seek out new areas
of potential violence to justify fears that had become commonplace during the Cold War period. Simon,
while not specifically addressing environmental conflict, suggests four possible reasons for academic
researchers to offer what he claimed were overly gloomy scenarios resulting from resource scarcity.51
The first reason is that international funding organizations are eager to fund research dealing with
crises, but not work that produces good news. The second is that bad news sells more newspapers and
books. The third is a psychological predisposition to focus on bad news or worst-case scenarios. The
fourth is a belief that sounding alarm bells can mobilize action to improve environmental issues. Haas
offers two reasons why exaggerated beliefs about resource scarcity and their possible threats to
environmental security persist. The first is the absence of any consensual mechanism for reconciling
inter-discourse (or interparadigm) disputes. This, Haas argues, allows for ideological disputes to
continue [End Page 18] unresolved. The second reason is the elective affinity between environmental
and security discourses on the one hand, and other dominant discourses in social discussions . . . on
the other hand. Consequently self-interested political actors can borrow from discourses that are
similar in their ontology and structure and that justify pre-existing political ambitions.52 Trottier,
addressing the risks of water wars specifically, suggests that certain private-sector actors in the water
industry may stress the risks of water wars in order to promote water-related infrastructure.53

Tech solves
BBC News 4 October 19, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3747724.stm New technology can
help, however, especially by cleaning up pollution and so making more water useable, and in
agriculture, where water use can be made far more efficient. Drought-resistant plants can also help.
Drip irrigation drastically cuts the amount of water needed, low-pressure sprinklers are an
improvement, and even building simple earth walls to trap rainfall is helpful. Some countries are now
treating waste water so that it can be used - and drunk - several times over. Desalinisation makes sea
water available , but takes huge quantities of energy and leaves vast amounts of brine. The optimists say
"virtual water" may save the day - the water contained in crops which can be exported from water-
rich countries to arid ones.


Russia

1NC No Ukraine/Russia Impact
No US-Russia escalation over Former Soviet States Ukraine proves.
Apps, 4/11/2014 This evidence is internally quoting Dmitri Gorenburg, Russia analyst at the Centre for Naval Analyses. Peter Apps is
political risk correspondent for Reuters for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, covering a range of stories on the interplay between politics,
economics and markets. West struggles as Russia moves to dominate old USSR Reuters April 11
th
, 2014
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/04/11/uk-ukraine-crisis-strategy-analysis-idUKBREA3A0FQ20140411)
"This is a timely wake-up call," said Michael Leigh, former deputy head of external relations for the European Commission and now senior
adviser to the German Marshall Fund. "With the West scarcely responding to Crimea, Putin may feel he has
nothing to lose for further annexation. "A couple of tough winters is a price worth paying." A Russian move into eastern
Ukraine would almost certainly spark at least limited military conflict between Russia and Ukraine. How
the West would react to that is currently very far from clear. In Washington, President Barack Obama faces calls to arm
Ukraine and step up training and other military links. But there is little real enthusiasm for direct involvement, much
less a nuclear face-off with Moscow. If a Russian invasion did spark a messy insurgency, the West might
find itself gradually dragged into providing at least some covert support to Kiev or any other Western-leaning government in a
similar position. But it would almost certainly remain extremely limited. On April 1, NATO announced what it called
"concrete measures" to boost Ukraine's ability to defend itself. In reality, however, these appeared limited to ill-defined "capacity building"
measures and boosting the size of NATO's liaison office in the capital. "It's not that the West couldn't stop it - a couple of
brigades of NATO troops would almost certainly deter an invasion," says Dmitri Gorenburg, Russia analyst at the Centre for Naval Analyses, a
U.S. government-funded body that advises the military. "But that isn't going to happen. When it comes to pushing back Russia's
actions in the former Soviet Union, there is no strategy and there is no appetite."
2NC No Ukraine/Russia Impact
The Advantage exaggerates Putin doesnt have imperial ambitions and the regional
wars wont escalate.
Hallinan, 2014 (Conn Hallinan is a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus. A retired lecturer in journalism at the University of California,
Santa Cruz., he previously was an editor of People's World when it was a West Coast publication. Marching on Moscow Foreign Policy in
Focus June 3
rd
http://fpif.org/marching-moscow/)
Misrepresentations of the situation abound. Putin is not trying to recreate the old Soviet Empire, as
some Western news sources have suggested. Meanwhile, although the overthrow of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych
was certainly a coupwhat else do you call an armed uprising that causes an elected president to flee? it wasnt just ex-Nazis and fascists
who caused it, as some Russian officials have claimed. The revolt reflected genuine mass anger at corruption in the Yanukovych government.
Nonetheless, two of the groups that spearheaded the coupand who currently control seven ministries in the Western Ukraine government
openly admire those who fought with Waffen-SS divisions during World War II. The Germans killed some 25 million Russians during that war
so if the Russians today act a bit cranky about people who hold celebrations honoring the vilest divisions of an evil army, one can hardly fault
them. The Americans and the Europeans, for their parts, have long had their eye on Ukraine, though their interests diverge due to their
differing economic relations with Russia. The EU gets 30 percent of its energy needs from Russia; for countries like Finland and Slovakia, that
figure climbs to 100 percent. The EU had $370 billion in trade with Russia in 2012, compared to a modest $26 billion for the United States.
Moreover, several large European energy giants, including BP, Austrias OMV, ENI, Royal Dutch Shell, and Norways Statoil, are heavily invested
in Russian gas and oil. All told, its oil and gas combined make Russia the largest energy exporter in the world. For Europe, Russia also provides a
growing consumer market of 144 million people, with retail spending growing 20 percent a year between 2000 and 2012. The Americans aim to
expand NATO and open up a market of 46 million people in the heart of Eastern Europe. For that, they need to get the 28 members of the
NATO alliance to finally pull their own weight. The United States currently foots 75 percent of NATOs bills, and is caught between a shrinking
military budget at home and a strategy of expanding the United States military presence in Asia, the so-called Asian pivot. NATO members
are supposed to spend 2 percent of their Gross Domestic Product on the military, but very few countriesBritain, Estonia, and Greece among
themactually clear that bar. Nor is there any groundswell to do so in European economies still plagued with low growth and high
unemployment. In other words: Yes, get the Russkies, but not at our expense. At least in its rhetoric, NATO is pushing hard. U.S. general and
NATO commander Gen. Phillip Breedlove recently called for beefing up NATO forces on the Russian border. But for all the talk about a
new Russian threat, NATO is not going to war over Ukraine, anymore than it did over Georgia in 2008. A
few neoconservatives and hawks, like U.S. Senator John McCain, might make noises about intervention, but it
will be a very lonely venture if they try.
Economic interdependence checks escalation and US-Russia rivalry
Lawless, 2014 (Jill Lawless Special Reporter for the Associated Press, East Vs West Ukraine Conflict Not a New Cold War, ABC News,
3-17-2014, http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/east-west-ukraine-conflict-cold-war-22939847)
NATO planes monitor Ukraine's border. East and West fight for influence and trade angry warnings. Russian troops conduct massive war games
as tensions rise. With its brinksmanship, bellicose rhetoric, threats and counter-threats, the crisis over Moscow's takeover of Ukraine's
Crimean Peninsula seems to have whisked the world back to the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union squared
off in a high-stakes standoff that divided the world into two opposing camps. But this is not Cold War 2.0. Communism has long ceased to be the
feared enemy. The ideological certainties of that era are gone. And Russia and the West are locked in economic
interdependency. Here is a look at how the Ukraine crisis may have turned into an East-West standoff but not a Cold War. ENTWINED ECONOMIES The
West's economic and diplomatic pressure may harken back to an age of isolated blocs. And measures such as visa bans, financial sanctions and threats to boycott
the G-8 summit that Russia is slated to host all certainly seem intended to isolate Moscow. But the economies of Russia and the West have become entwined since
the Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago meaning it would be hard to go back to the hermetic "us-versus-them" world of the Cold
War. U.S. brands including McDonald's and Pepsi have a big presence in Russia, and the European Union does far more trade with the
country than the U.S. The Europeans are less eager than Washington to take punitive economic measures, in part
because European companies from German engineering firm Siemens to British oil giant BP have major Russian investments.
And Russia supplies almost a third of Europe's natural gas. But economic rupture could hurt Russia
even more. Russia relies heavily on income from oil and gas, which make up more than two-thirds of the country's exports.
Around half of Russia's exports, mainly natural gas, oil and other raw materials, heads to the EU. And rich Russians rely on places like
London for a place to stash their cash in homes, businesses and discreet, stable banks so much so that some
British people refer to their capital as "Londongrad." "London is more important to Russians than Russians are to London," said Yolande Barnes, head of global
research at real estate agent Savills. She says Russians buy about 2.5 percent of prime London properties. "If Russians disappeared, I think London would barely
blink." MILITARY LIMITS Rhetoric such as "dangerous escalation" and "brink of disaster" as well as talk of boosting military
defenses in Europe echo Cold War tensions. But Western leaders show little appetite for a military
response. NATO did deploy two surveillance planes to fly over Poland and Romania on Wednesday to monitor Ukraine, and the U.S. sent additional fighter
jets to Lithuania and Poland to boost air patrols. Russia is in military control of Crimea but has not moved into other areas of Ukraine, aside from seizing a gas
distribution facility just outside of Crimea's border. The crisis could still escalate. Adrian Basora, a former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic, said
that if Russia sent troops into eastern Ukraine, it could trigger an escalation that might pull NATO troops into eastern Europe. He acknowledged that would be "an
extremely dangerous situation." But even that is unlikely to turn into a global confrontation. Crucially, China the rising global
power of the 21st century has shown no desire to take sides. Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has discussed the crisis with U.S. President Barack Obama, has
merely urged calm and restraint. It is true that Putin has launched a huge military modernization program. And Russia's defense minister said last month that it was
seeking to expand its worldwide presence by seeking permission for navy ships to use ports in Algeria, Cyprus, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba, Seychelles, Vietnam and
Singapore. Still, Matthew Clements, editor of Jane's Intelligence Review, said Russia's "ability to undertake operations across the
globe is fairly limited." "This is not a reformation of the Soviet Red Army," he said. CLASH OF CULTURES In one area the Cold War comparison may be
apt: a mutual lack of comprehension and trust. The Ukraine crisis has revealed that Russia and the West remain far apart not just politically and diplomatically,
but culturally and temperamentally. Putin has stoked a brand of macho nationalism increasingly at odds with liberal Europeans, who have reacted with anger to the
jailing of punk protesters Pussy Riot and Russia's ban on homosexual "propaganda." Attempts to isolate Russia further may boost support for Putin whose poll
ratings have soared due to his tough stance on Ukraine and make rapprochement harder. But historians see fundamental differences. "Two things characterized
the Cold War. First of all there was an ideological divide which was kind of black and white 'You're either with us or against us,'" said Margot Light, professor
emeritus of international relations at the London School of Economics. "That really doesn't exist anymore. "And the Cold War started off as European, but it
became global. And again, this isn't it. I think neither Russia nor the United States have that kind of global
reach any longer."
No US-Russia war over Former Soviet States US and NATO wont get involved.
Apps April 11
th

2014 Peter Apps is political risk correspondent for Reuters for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, covering a range of stories
on the interplay between politics, economics and markets. West struggles as Russia moves to dominate old USSR Reuters
April 11
th
, 2014 http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/04/11/uk-ukraine-crisis-strategy-analysis-idUKBREA3A0FQ20140411
NATO says tens of thousands of Russian troops are massed on the border with Ukraine for a potential
invasion, yet Western states still lack a strategy to stop Moscow from intervening in its former Soviet
neighbours. With military action to protect non-NATO states effectively ruled out, current and former
officials say sanctions and isolation provide the best - and perhaps only - way to pressure Moscow. Ramping up the
pressure on the rich and powerful around President Vladimir Putin, they say, might in time push him towards a much more conciliatory
approach. But that, they concede, could prove a long game, and some both in and outside government worry that a more isolated Russia may
simply become both more nationalist and self-sufficient. Putting Putin under more pressure, they worry, may give him even more incentive to
take a populist, more aggressive approach. Ultimately, Moscow's commitment to rebuild the former USSR as its own
unilateral sphere of influence may outstrip the determination of Washington and its European allies to stop it.

No US-Russia escalation M.A.D. and US disinterest check
Clark 14
Christopher Clark, General Editor at Urban Times, Former Deputy Editor of The Cape Town Globalist, Urban Times, 3-5,
http://urbantimes.co/2014/03/5-reasons-why-the-ukrainian-crisis-is-unlikely-to-lead-to-world-war-iii/
5 Reasons Why The Ukrainian Crisis Won't Lead To World War III 1. The US Has Not Even Threatened To
Use Its Military It is telling that over the past couple of days the possibility of the US deploying its army in Ukraine
has not been threatened as an option. Despite Secretary of State John Kerrys assertion that all options are on the table, it
appears that an attempted political and economic isolation of Russia will be the favoured method of punishing Putins
indiscretions in Crimea. In a statement to the press, a senior US official indicated that military options were not currently being considered:
Right now, I think we are focused on political, diplomatic and economic options. Frankly our goal is to uphold the territorial integrity and
sovereignty of Ukraine, not to have a military escalation I dont think were focused right now on the notion of some U.S. military
intervention. I dont think that necessarily would be a way to de-escalate the situation. 2. Western Governments Would have
Little Success In Selling Military Intervention Both David Cameron and Barack Obama will have learnt from
their failure to win support for military strikes on Syria. Despite Bashar al-Assad crossing Obamas red line by using
chemical weapons against his own people, the UK parliament voted against possible military strikes. The US Congress narrowly avoided voting
on what would have been an extremely divisive issue after a deal was brokered with the Russians to pursue a diplomatic solution It is likely that
a potential military intervention in Ukraine would receive equally scant public and political support in both
countries. 3. Putin Would Not Have Invaded Had He Thought Military Retaliation Was Likely Vladamir Putin has proven time and time again to
be a master strategist when it comes to international affairs. Last years foreign policy victories over the US on Snowden and Syria proved this
to be the case. If the immediate deployment of NATO troops to protect the Ukraine was likely, the invasion of Crimea would have been a
reckless and potentially suicidal act on Moscows part, regardless of its significant interests in the Ukraine. The Wests inability to act against
Assad in Syria will have fed into Russian confidence in acting in such a heavy handed manner in the Ukraine. Moreover, US and European
impotence during the 2008 invasion of Georgia will have provided further assurances of Moscows impunity in carrying out regional relations as
it sees fit. Once more, Forbes magazines most powerful man has defied the West. Putin has acted strongly and decisively, placing the ball
firmly in the court of Obama and his allies. 4. David Vs. Goliath Without the assurance of western military intervention backing them up,
Ukraines fledgling government will be very reluctant to act alone against the Russian forces currently occupying the Crimean Peninsula. Despite
the government calling up all army reservists and Ukrainians volunteering for military service in their droves, the size and fire-power of the
Ukrainian army is dwarfed by that of its powerful neighbour. Ukrainian forces dispatched to Crimea in the past few days have already begun to
surrender and in some cases switch allegiance to the pro-Russian local authorities. 5. Mutually Assured Destruction The threat
of nuclear war will make direct conflict between the US and Russia extremely unlikely The Cold War
military doctrine which has so far ensured no two nuclear powers have engaged in a full scale military conflict will remain a
significant deterrent in the Ukrainian case. Despite enduring a bitter military rivalry and arms race which
lasted for over 4 decades, the US and Soviet Union never engaged in direct confrontation with each other as each
side was aware of the potentially catastrophic consequences of nuclear war. With both the US and Russia
holding considerable military nuclear capabilities, the possibility of direct military confrontation is
very low.

No escalating war US and NATO wont go to the mat for Former Soviet States.
Apps April 11
th

2014 Peter Apps is political risk correspondent for Reuters for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, covering a range of stories
on the interplay between politics, economics and markets. West struggles as Russia moves to dominate old USSR Reuters
April 11
th
, 2014 http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/04/11/uk-ukraine-crisis-strategy-analysis-idUKBREA3A0FQ20140411
Experts say Moscow has been infiltrating its neighbours ever more deeply, building its influence amongst
security forces, government officials and politicians. That, some say, allows it to stir up instability in locations like eastern
Ukraine and create both confusion and potential preconditions to invade. "What we're seeing here is a new form
of warfare and part of a concerted strategy," said Chris Donnelly, a former senior adviser to NATO on Russia and now director of
the Institute for Statecraft in London. "Either we stand up to it or we let it happen. So far the response has been totally inadequate." With
Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula now largely seen an irreversible fait accompli, many now see more confrontation over the
years to come. In a March 18 speech following the Crimea intervention, Putin made it clear he would be willing to use force to safeguard the
interests of Russian-speaking minorities. The breakup of the USSR left some 25 million ethnic Russians outside the borders of the Russian
Federation, concentrated in places like Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Central Asian and Baltic states and breakaway enclaves in Georgia and Moldova.
Tens of millions more - classified in their old Soviet passports as ethnic Ukrainians, Belarussians or others - speak Russian as their first language.
There may be little Western states can do to stop Moscow reabsorbing into the Russian Federation three
breakaway statelets its military already occupies - Moldova's Transdniestria region and Georgia's South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Nor is
there political will to stop Russia going further if truly determined to do so. The only true red line, some say, is that attacking
the NATO member Baltic states would trigger NATO's self defence clause and a wider war with the alliance and its nuclear super power the
United States. "LITTLE WEST CAN DO" "We are in new territory," said one Western official on condition of anonymity. "Realistically there
is little the West can do to prevent Putin invading Ukraine or other non-NATO former Soviet states
except for applying diplomatic and economic pressure. The priority now is to deter any aggression against NATO."
Economics will check escalation
El Erian 14
Mohamed A. El-Erian is the former CEO/co-CIO of PIMCO, the global investment management firm. He is chief economic
advisor at Allianz and member of its International Executive Committee, chair of President Obama's Global Development
Council and author of the NYT/WSJ bestseller "When Markets Collide." Foreign Policy named him one of the world's "Top 100
Global Thinkers" for 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012., 3-17-2014 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mohamed-a-elerian/economy-
ukraine-crisis_b_4975866.html
Can good old-fashioned economic self-interest provide temporary relief for what now seems to be an intractable crisis in the
Ukraine? The answer is yes it can; and, more importantly, may well eventually and temporarily do so. . .by incentivizing a de-escalation of
mounting tensions, but failing to durably resolve underlying problems that will likely re-emerge down the road. The crisis in Ukraine pits multiple parties against each other,
both domestic and foreign. Each of them is operating with a different set of internal and external constraints, along with contrasting interpretations of the past and present -- and of course,
the future. As recent developments vividly illustrate, none of the parties involved is strong enough to impose its will and interpretation of events on the others. Because of this complex reality,
the crisis has already taken quite a few surprising and precarious turns, including this weekend's referendum. Concurrently, various attempts to find some "circuit breaker" -- no matter how
imperfect, small and temporary -- have proven frustratingly ineffective. Over the next few weeks, however, another reality is likely to gradually
impose itself -- and this one in which rational economic considerations could gradually dominate geo-political
ones. In a rational content, it would only be a matter of time before it becomes abundantly clear to all major parties
involved -- yes all, internal and external -- that the path that the Ukrainian crisis is currently on is detrimental to both their individual
and collective economic interests. Indeed, the actual and prospective economic losses are likely to be so large as to seriously overwhelm any
real or perceived geo-political victory. Ukraine itself is in the worst position of all. The country is on the verge of significant economic and financial disruptions.
Already, it urgently needs tens of billions of dollars just to stabilize its shaky finances, limit shortages, avoid crippling inflation and sidestep international default. Capital flight is a problem
notwithstanding controls. Reports of people standing in line to take money out of ATMs are adding to the general anxiety. Ukraine's urgent need for large exceptional external assistance does
not stop at immediate stabilization requirements. The country will require even more funding and debt relief to support the implementation of multi-year reforms aimed at generating high
growth and adequate job creation. As messy as the Ukrainian situation sounds -- and it is very messy -- its standalone systemic implications could theoretically be contained from both a
regional and global perspective. After all, with a GDP of around $175 billion, its economy is small on the global stage. Other than a conduit for Europe's energy supplies from Russia, it does not
influence important global supply chains and demand patterns. And its role in international capital markets is very small. This would be good news for the rest of the world, especially as
Ukraine's internal social and political divisions are unlikely to be resolved in a durable fashion any time soon. However, having said that, Ukraine is indeed systemic for a simple yet powerful
reason: its messy political crisis entangles Russia, western European countries and the United States. To this point, these external parties have not been able to trigger a circuit breaker, let
alone negotiate a longer-term compromise or, even better, a durable resolution. Neither the calls between Presidents Obama and Putin nor the face-to-face negotiations among their foreign
ministers and the United Nation meetings have yielded anything substantive. Instead, the rhetoric continues to heat up; and the stakes keep on getting bigger. This weekend's referendum in
Crimea was yet another step away from de-escalation, as was the understandable tone and content of last week's G-7 statement that included strong legal and moral condemnation of Russia
together with the west's reminder that it has suspended "participation in any activities related to preparation" of the G-8 meeting scheduled to be held in Russia. Needless to say, Russia's
response was equally harsh. And the cycle goes on. . . Indeed, wherever you look, the momentum would seem to call for a further escalation of the crisis. But, importantly, there may be an
important and rational twist out there that could become more apparent and relevant over time: Neither Russia nor the West can avoid the serious economic damage that would accompany a
continued deterioration at the current rate. "Neither Russia nor the West can avoid the serious economic damage that would
accompany a continued deterioration at the current rate." Consider the Russian situation. The minute President
Putin moved on Ukraine, international markets immediately jacked up the risk premiums on the Russian
sovereign bonds, quasi-sovereigns (such as Gazprom), banks and companies; and it has kept the at these elevated levels. The result is higher borrowing costs for all Russian entities, along with
more limited access to international capital. Markets also put immediate pressure on the Russian ruble, making it the second worse performing currency in the world this year -- and this
despite the central bank using tens of billions of dollars in international reserves to soften the blow. The financial pressures will likely be amplified by the prospects of higher capital outflows
and lower inward flows of foreign direct investments. As a result, and in addition to the hit to economic growth, ordinary Russians would be paying higher prices for a wide range of imported
goods in their consumption basket. Given that Russia is the eighth largest economy in the world (with a $2 trillion GDP) and is quite integrated in the global financial system, Russians
are not the only ones that would suffer from a further escalation of the Ukrainian crisis. The rest of the world would be impacted, starting with Europe.
Europe accounts for almost 40 percent of Russia's trade. As such, western firms would feel pain from the reduction in Russian sales while
others would be impacted by possible disruptions in supplies from Russia. And the last thing that Europe needs right now is less demand and higher input uncertainties. Already, the region's
emergence from recession is proving both muted and tentative. Meanwhile, the fall in prices of Russian financial instruments has already translated into mark-to-market losses for global
investors and international banks. If the selloff continues -- which will happen if the Ukrainian geo-political crisis continues to escalate -- it is only a matter of time before this contaminates the
financial standing of some western entities, starting with banks that are heavily exposed to Russia. The economic consequences for both Europe and
Russia would be significantly worse if a complete breakdown in the dialogue on Ukraine were to lead to generalized trade and financial sanctions and boycotts,
including a disruption in Russian energy supplies to the West and in Russian banks' access to international payments and settlement services. Such an outcome would send Europe and Russia
into recession and, most likely, reignite global financial instability. Of all the major parties, the U.S. is in the best relative shape. Its direct economic and financial linkages to Russia and Ukraine
are limited. Its domestic demand component is a much more effective stabilizer. And its financial institutions are less exposed. Yet even the United States cannot totally
sidestep the adverse contagion emanating from eastern and western Europe. It would likely experience
some economic collateral damage from the combination of recessions in Europe and Russia and renewed global financial market turmoil. As recognition mounts of
these "lose-lose" dynamics, look for economic interests to gradually serve as an incentive to push each of the major
parties to a messy compromise -- one that is far from optimal but still attractive because it avoids a much worse outcome in the short-term. And while such a compromise,
as rational as it seems, is far from guaranteed, it would become a more possible outcome over the next few weeks.
Economics check Russian aggression stock markets after the Ukraine affair prove.
Cowen 14
Tyler Cowen, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Crimea Through a Game-Theory Lens, New York Times, 3-
15, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/business/crimea-through-a-game-theory-
lens.html?hpw&rref=business&action=click&module=Search&region=searchResults%230&version=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fquery
.nytimes.com%2Fsearch%2Fsitesearch%2F%3Faction%3Dclick%26region%3DMasthead%26pgtype%3DHomepage%26module%
3DSearchSubmit%26contentCollection%3DHomepage%26t%3Dqry407%23%2FCowen%2Fsince1851%2Fallresults%2F1%2Fallau
thors%2Fnewest%2F&_r=0
Its worth viewing the crisis in Ukraine through the prism of game theory, too, as applied on several
fronts: NUCLEAR DETERRENCE From the standpoint of game theory as developed by Thomas C. Schelling, a 2005 Nobel laureate in economic
science, the conflict can be seen as a case study in nuclear deterrence. Thats because, after the Soviet Union split into many pieces in the
1990s, a newly independent Ukraine gave up its portion of the old Soviet nuclear arsenal. In part, it did so in exchange for a memorandum
supporting its territorial integrity, signed by both Russia and the United States. Eliminating its nuclear weapons may have seemed a good deal
for Ukraine at the time, and it can be argued that the world became a safer place. Yet if Ukraine were a nuclear power today, it would surely
have a far greater ability to deter Russian military action. TIPPING POINTS Long before Malcolm Gladwell popularized the concept, Mr. Schelling
created an elegant model of tipping points in his groundbreaking work Micromotives and Macrobehavior. The theory applies to war, as well
as to marketing, neighborhood segregation and other domestic issues. In this case, the idea of negotiated settlements to political conflicts may
be fraying, and the trouble in Crimea may disturb it further, moving the world toward a very dangerous tipping point. First, some background:
With notable exceptions in the former Yugoslavia and in disputed territories in parts of Russia and places like Georgia, the shift to new
governments after the breakup of the Soviet Union was mostly peaceful. Borders were redrawn in an orderly way, and political deals were
made by leaders assessing their rational self-interest. In a recent blog post, Jay Ulfelder, a political scientist, noted that for the last 25 years the
world has seen less violent conflict than might have been expected, given local conditions. Lately, though, peaceful settlements have been
harder to find. This change may just reflect random noise in the data, but a more disturbing alternative is that conflict is now more likely. Why?
The point from game theory is this: The more peacefully that disputes are resolved, the more that peaceful resolution is expected. That
expectation, in turn, makes peace easier to achieve and maintain. But the reverse is also true: As peaceful settlement becomes less common,
trust declines, international norms shift and conflict becomes more likely. So there is an unfavorable tipping point. In the formal terminology of
game theory, there are multiple equilibria (peaceful expectations versus expectations of conflict), and each event in a conflict raises the risk
that peaceful situations can unravel. Weve seen this periodically in history, as in the time leading up to World War I. There is a significant
possibility that we are seeing a tipping point away from peaceful conflict resolution now. MARKET DETERRENCE A more
reassuring kind of deterrence has to do with the response of Russian markets to the crisis. Russia is a
far more globalized economy than it was during the Soviet era. On the first market day after the
Crimean takeover, the reaction was a plunging ruble, and a decline in the Russian stock market of
more than 10 percent. Russias central bank raised interest rates to 7 percent from 5.5 percent to protect the rubles
value. Such market reactions penalize Russian decision makers, who also know that a broader conflict
would endanger Russias oil and gas revenue, which makes up about 70 percent of its export income.
In this case, market forces provide a relatively safe form of deterrence. Unlike governmental sanctions, market-led
penalties limit the risk of direct political retaliation, making it harder for the Russian government to turn
falling market prices into a story of victimization by outside powers.

1NC No Miscalc/Accidents Impact
No miscalc, over-reaction, or accidental war 100s of incidents disprove their thesis.
Quinlan, 2009 (Sir Michael, Consulting Senior Fellow International Institute for Strategic Studies and Former Permanent Under-
Secretary of State UK Ministry of Defense, Thinking About Nuclear Weapons: Principles, Problems, Prospects, p. 63-69)
Even if initial nuclear use did not quickly end the fighting, the supposition of inexorable momentum in a developing exchange, with each side
rushing to overreaction amid confusion and uncertainty, is implausible. It fails to consider what the situation of the decision-makers would really be. Neither side could
want escalation. Both would be appalled at what was going on. Both would be desperately looking for signs that the other was ready to
call a halt. Both, given the capacity for evasion or concealment which drive modern delivery platforms and vehicles can possess, could have in reserve significant forces invulnerable enough not to entail use-or-lose
pressures. (It may be more open to question, as noted earlier, whether newer nuclear weapon possessors can be immediately in that position; but it is within reach of any substantial state with advanced technological capabilities
and attaining it is certain to be a high priority in the development of forces.) As a result, neither side can have any predisposition to suppose, in an ambiguous situation of fearful risk, that the right course when in doubt is to go on
copiously launching weapons. And none of this analysis rests on any presumption of highly subtle or pre-concerted rationality. The rationality required is plain. The argument is reinforced if we consider the possible reasoning of an
aggressor at a more dispassionate level. Any substantial nuclear armoury can inflict destruction outweighing any possible prize that aggression could hope to seize. A state attacking the possessor of such an armoury must therefore
be doing so (once given that it cannot count upon destroying the armoury pre-emptively) on a judgment that the possessor would be found lacking in the will to use it. If the attacker possessor used nuclear weapons, whether first
or in response to the aggressors own first use, this judgment would begin to look dangerously precarious. There must be at least a substantial probability of the aggressor leaders concluding that their initial judgment had been
mistakenthat the risks were after all greater than whatever prize they had been seeking, and that for their own countrys survival they must call off the aggression. Deterrence planning such as that of NATO was directed in the
first place to preventing the initial misjudgment and in the second, if it were nevertheless made, to compelling such a reappraisal. The former aim had to have primacy, because it could not be taken for granted that the latter was
certain to work. But there was no ground for assuming in advance, for all possible scenarios, that the chance of its working must be negligible. An aggressor state would itself be at huge risk if nuclear war developed, as its leaders
would know. It may be argued that a policy which abandons hope of physically defeating the enemy and simply hopes to get him to desist is pure gamble, a matter of who blinks first; and that the political and moral nature of most
likely aggressors, almost ex hypothesi, makes them less likely to blink. One response to this is to ask what is the alternativeit can be only surrender. But a more hopeful answer lies in the fact that the criticism is posed in a political
vacuum. Real-life conflict would have a political context. The context which concerned NATO during the Cold War, for example, was one of defending vital interests against a postulated aggressor whose own vital interests would
not be engaged or would be less engaged. Certainty is not possible, but a clear asymmetry of vital interest is a legitimate basis for expecting an asymmetry, credible to both sides, of resolve in conflict. That places upon statesmen,
as page 23 has noted, the key task in deterrence of building up in advance a clear and shared grasp of where limits lie. That was plainly achieved in cold-war Europe. If vital interests have been defused in a way that is clear, and also
clearly not overlapping or incompatible with those of the adversary; a credible basis has been laid for the likelihood of greater resolve in resistance. It was also sometimes suggested by critics that whatever might be indicated by
theoretical discussion of political will and interests, the military environment of nuclear warfare particularly difficulties of communication and controlwould drive escalation with overwhelming probability to the limit. But it is
obscure why matters should be regarded as inevitably so for every possible level and setting of action. Even if the history of war suggested (as it scarcely does) that military decision-makers are mostly apt to work on the principle
When in doubt, lash out, the nuclear revolution creates an utterly new situation. The pervasive reality, always plain to both sides during the cold war, is if this goes on to the end, we are all ruined. Given that inexorable
escalation would mean catastrophe for both, it would be perverse to suppose them permanently incapable of framing arrangements which avoid it. As page 16 has noted, NATO gave its military commanders no widespread
delegated authority, in peace or war, to launch nuclear weapons without specific political direction. Many types of weapon moreover had physical safeguards such as PALS incorporated to reinforce organizational ones. There were
multiple communication and control systems for passing information, orders, and prohibitions. Such systems could not be totally guaranteed against disruption if at a fairly intense level at strategic exchangewhich was only one
of many possible levels of conflict an adversary judged it to be in his interest to weaken political control. It was far from clear why he necessarily should so judge. Even then, however, it remained possible to operate on a general
tail-safe presumption: no authorization, no use. That was the basis on which NATO operated. If it is feared that the arrangements which a nuclear-weapon possessor has in place do not meet such standards in some respects, the
logical course is to continue to improve them rather than to assume escalation to be certain and uncontrollable, with all the enormous inferences that would have to flow from such an assumption. The likelihood of escalation can
never be 100 per cent, and never zero. Where between those two extremes it may lie can never be precisely calculable in advance; and even were it so calculable, it would not be uniquely fixedit would stand to vary hugely with
circumstances. That there should be any risk at all of escalation to widespread nuclear war must be deeply disturbing, and decision-makers would always have to weigh it most anxiously. But a pair of key truths about it need to be
recognized. The first is that the risk of escalation to large-scale nuclear war is inescapably present in any significant armed conflict between nuclear-capable powers, whoever may have started the conflict and whoever may first
have used any particular category of weapon. The initiator of the conflict will always have physically available to him options for applying more force if he meets effective resistance. If the risk of escalation, whatever its degree of
probability, is to be regarded as absolutely unacceptable, the necessary inference is that a state attacked by a substantial nuclear power must forgo military resistance. It must surrender, even if it has a nuclear armory of its own.
But the companion truth is that, as page 47 has noted, the risk of escalation is an inescapable burden also upon the aggressor. The exploitation of that burden is the crucial route, if conflict does break out, for managing it to a
tolerable outcomethe only route, indeed, intermediate between surrender and holocaust, and so the necessary basis for deterrence beforehand. The working nut of plans to exploit escalation risk most effectively in deterring
potential aggression entails further and complex issues. It is for example plainly desirable, wherever geography, politics, and available resources so permit without triggering arms races, to make provisions and dispositions that are
likely to place the onus of making the bigger and more evidently dangerous steps in escalation upon the aggressor who wishes to maintain his attack, rather than upon the defender. The customary shorthand fur this desirable
posture used to be escalation dominance.) These issues are not further discussed here. But addressing them needs to start from acknowledgement that there are in any event no certainties or absolutes available, no options
guaranteed to be risk-free and cost-free. Deterrence is not possible without escalation risk; and its presence can point to no automatic policy conclusion save for those who espouse outright pacifism and accept its consequences.
Accident and Miscalculation Ensuring the safety and security of nuclear weapons plainly needs to be taken most seriously. Detailed
information is understandably not published, but such direct evidence as there is suggests that it always has been so taken in every possessor state,
with the inevitable occasional failures to follow strict procedures dealt with rigorously. Critics have nevertheless from time to time argued that the possibility of accident involving nuclear weapons is so substantial that it must
weigh heavily in the entire evaluation of whether war-prevention structures entailing their existence should be tolerated at all. Two sorts of scenario are usually in question. The first is that of a single grave event involving an
unintended nuclear explosiona technical disaster at a storage site, for example, or the accidental or unauthorized launch of a delivery system with a live nuclear warhead. The second is that of some eventperhaps such an
explosion or launch, or some other mishap such as malfunction or misinterpretation of radar signals or computer systemsinitiating a sequence of response and counter-response that culminated in a nuclear exchange which no
one had truly intended. No event that is physically possible can be said to be of absolutely zero probability (just as at an opposite extremer it is absurd to claim, as has been heard from distinguished figures, that nuclear-weapon
use can be guaranteed to happen within some finite future span despite not having happened for over sixty years.) But human affairs cannot be managed to the standard of either zero or total probability. We have to assess levels
between those theoretical limits and weigh the reality and implications against other factors, in security planning as in everyday life There have certainly been, across the decades since 1945, many
known accidents involving nuclear weapons, from transporters skidding off roads to bomber aircraft crashing with or accidentally dropping the weapons they carried (in past days when
such carriage was a frequent feature of readiness arrangements it no longer is). A few of these accidents may have released into the nearby environment highly toxic material. None however has
entailed a nuclear detonation. Some commentators suggest that this reflects bizarrely good fortune amid such massive activity and deployment
over so many years. A more rational deduction from the facts of this long experience would however be that the probability of any accident
triggering a nuclear explosion is extremely low. It might be further nested that the mechanisms needed to set of such an explosion are technically demanding, and that in a large
number of ways the past sixty years have seen extensive improvements in safety arrangements for both the design and the handling of weapons. It is undoubtedly possible to see respects in which, after the cold war, some of the
factors bearing upon risk may be new or more adverse; but some are now plainly less so. The years which the world has come through entirely without accidental or unauthorized detonation have included early decades in which
knowledge was sketchier, precautions were less developed, and weapon designs were less ultra-safe than they later became, as well as substantial periods in which weapon numbers were larger, deployments immure widespread
arid diverse, movements more frequent, and several aspects of doctrine and readiness arrangements more tense. Similar considerations apply to the hypothesis of nuclear war being mistakenly triggered by false alarm.
Critics again point to the fact, as it is understood, of numerous occasions when initial steps in alert sequences for US nuclear
forces were embarked upon, or at least called for, by indicators mistaken or misconstrued. In none of these instances, it is accepted, did matters get at all
near to nuclear launchextraordinary good fortune again, critics have suggested. But the rival and more logical
inference from hundreds of events stretching over sixty years of experience presents itself once more: that the
probability of initial misinterpretation leading far towards mistaken launch is remote. Precisely because any
nuclear weapon processor recognizes the vast gravity of any launch, release sequences have many steps, and
human decision is repeatedly interposed as well as capping the sequences. To convey that because a first step was prompted the
world somehow came close to accidental nuclear war is wild hyperbole, rather like asserting, when a tennis champion
has lost his opening service game, that he was nearly beaten in straight sets. History anyway scarcely offers any ready example
of major war started by accident even before the nuclear revolution imposed an order-of-magnitude increase of
caution. In was occasion conjectured that nuclear war might be triggered by the real but accidental or unauthorized launch of a strategic nuclear-weapon delivery system in the direction of a potential adversary. No such
launch is known to have occurred in over sixty years. The probability of it is therefore very low. But even if it did happen,
the further hypothesis of it initiating a general nuclear exchange is far-fetched. It fails to consider the real situation of decision-makers, as pages 63-4 have
brought out. The notion that cosmic holocaust might be mistakenly precipitated in this way belongs to science fiction.
2NC No Miscalc/ Accidents Impact
No risk of Russia war
Ball 5 (Desmond, Professor Strategic Defence Studies Centre at Australian National University, The Probabilities of On
the Beach Assessing Armageddon Scenarios in the 21st Century, May,
http://www.manningclark.org.au/papers/se05_ball.html)
The prospects of a nuclear war between the US and Russia must now be deemed fairly remote. There are
now no geostrategic issues that warrant nuclear competition and no inclination in either Washington or
Moscow to provoke such issues. US and Russian strategic forces have been taken off day-to-day alert and
their ICBMs 'de-targeted', greatly reducing the possibilities of war by accident, inadvertence or
miscalculation. On the other hand, while the US-Russia strategic competition is in abeyance, there are several aspects of current US nuclear weapons policy
which are profoundly disturbing. In December 2001 President George W. Bush officially announced that the US was withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile
(ABM) Treaty of 1972, one of the mainstays of strategic nuclear arms control during the Cold War, with effect from June 2002, and was proceeding to develop and
deploy an extensive range of both theatre missile defence (TMD) and national missile defence (NMD) systems. The first anti-missile missile in the NMD system,
designed initially to defend against limited missile attacks from China and North Korea, was installed at Fort Greely in Alaska in July 2004. The initial system,
consisting of 16 interceptor missiles at Fort Greely and four at Vandenberg Air Force in California, is expected to be operational by the end of 2005. The Bush
Administration is also considering withdrawal from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and resuming nuclear testing. (The last US nuclear test was on 23
September 1992). In particular, some key Administration officials believe that testing is necessary to develop a 'new generation' of nuclear weapons, including low-
yield, 'bunker-busting', earth-penetrating weapons specifically designed to destroy very hard and deeply buried targets (such as underground command and control
centres and leadership bunkers).

Media wrong US-Russia hotline still working even after Ukraine spats. Solves
miscalc.
Lubold 14
Gordon Lubold is a national security reporter for Foreign Policy. Before arriving at Foreign Policy Magazine, he was a senior
advisor at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, where he wrote on national security and foreign policy. Prior to
his arrival at USIP, he was a defense reporter for Politico. Prior to that, he was the Pentagon and national security
correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor Hagel's Hotline to the Kremlin Passport a website run by Foreign Policy
Magazine APRIL 29, 2014 http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/04/29/hagel_and_shoygu_will_the_talking_help
Although media reports indicated that Moscow had suspended high-level discussions with
Washington, the White House said the two countries were still in contact. Obama and Putin haven't spoken since
April 14, however, which has largely left it to Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry to keep the lines open. During Hagel's
call with Shoygu Monday, their second since the crisis began, Defense Department officials said that Hagel pressed for
concrete details about Russia's intentions toward eastern Ukraine, where Moscow has massed tens of thousands of troops. Shoygu assured
Hagel that Russia had no plans to invade, the officials said. "The call between Minister Shoygu and Hagel was not two people talking
past each other," said a senior defense official, who described Monday's 45-minute conversation as civil, candid and forthright, but also
"terse at times." "It was noteworthy that while they did not agree on everything, they did agree to continue
talking, and that's not insignificant," the official said. Last week, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, spoke for a second time with his counterpart, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General
Staff of the Russian military, to convey his concerns about what Dempsey described as Russia's "aggressive
military behavior." That included an incident that occurred with the USS Donald Cook earlier this
month in which a Russian fighter jet buzzed the American destroyer in the Black Sea about a dozen
times. The two agreed to "keep an open line of communication," according to a later readout of the call. And despite
an official suspension of the military relationship with the Russian military, Gen. Philip Breedlove, the supreme allied commander
in Europe, has also been in close touch with his own counterparts there. The mil-to-mil relationships
between the U.S. and countries like Egypt and Pakistan have always been hugely important for top military leaders, and
those in uniform have taken great pride in maintaining them even when diplomatic ties were strained
or non-existent. "Relationships between militaries (both uniformed and defense ministers) become even more important when
diplomatic, economic, and political relations fray," Jim Stavridis, the retired Navy admiral who last served as supreme allied commander in
Europe, wrote in an email. "While they will not always advance the situation, they almost always have the effect of preventing things from
getting catastrophically worse." Generally speaking, the channel allows commanders and military chiefs to prevent a
crisis and engage in an "exchange of information" that is typically seen by both sides as separate and
apart from the political dialogue between two countries.
No accidental launch
Williscroft 10
(Six patrols on the John Marshall as a Sonar Technician, and four on the Von Steuben as an officer a total of twenty-two
submerged months. Navigator and Ops Officer on Ortolan & Pigeon Submarine Rescue & Saturation Diving ships. Watch and
Diving Officer on Oceanographer and Surveyor. Accidental Nuclear War
http://www.argee.net/Thrawn%20Rickle/Thrawn%20Rickle%2032.htm)

Is there a realistic chance that we could have a nuclear war by accident? Could a ballistic submarine
commander launch his missiles without specific presidential authorization? Could a few men conspire
and successfully bypass built-in safety systems to launch nuclear weapons? The key word here is realistic. In the
strictest sense, yes, these things are possible. But are they realistically possible? This question can best be
answered by examining two interrelated questions. Is there a way to launch a nuclear weapon by accident? Can a specific accidental series of
events take placeno matter how remotethat will result in the inevitable launch or detonation of a nuclear weapon? Can one individual
working by himself or several individuals working in collusion bring about the deliberate launch or detonation of a nuclear weapon? We are
protected from accidental launching of nuclear weapons by mechanical safeguards, and by carefully structured and controlled mandatory
procedures that are always employed when working around nuclear weapons. Launching a nuclear weapon takes the specific
simultaneous action of several designated individuals. System designers ensured that conditions
necessary for a launch could not happen accidentally. For example, to launch a missile from a ballistic missile
submarine, two individuals must insert keys into separate slots on separate decks within a few seconds
of each other. Barring this, the system cannot physically launch a missile. There are additional
safeguards built into the system that control computer hardware and software, and personnel controls that we
will discuss later, butin the final analysiswithout the keys inserted as described, there can be no launchits not physically possible.
Because the time window for key insertion is less than that required for one individual to accomplish, it
is physically impossible for a missile to be launched accidentally by one individual. Any launch must
be deliberate. One can postulate a scenario wherein a technician bypasses these safeguards in order to effect a launch by himself.
Technically, this is possible, but such a launch would be deliberate, not accidental. We will examine measures designed to prevent this in a later
column. Maintenance procedures on nuclear weapons are very tightly controlled. In effect always is the
two-man rule. This rule prohibits any individual from accessing nuclear weapons or their launch
vehicles alone. Aside from obvious qualification requirements, two individuals must be present. No matter how familiar the
two technicians may be with a specific system, each step in a maintenance procedure is first read by one
technician, repeated by the second, acknowledged by the first (or corrected, if necessary), performed by the
second, examined by the first, checked off by the first, and acknowledged by the second. This makes
maintenance slow, but absolutely assures that no errors happen. Exactly the same procedure is followed every time an access cover is
removed, a screw is turned, a weapon is moved, or a controlling publication is updated. Nothing, absolutely nothing is done
without following the written guides exactly, always under two-man control. This even applies to guards. Where nuclear
weapons are concerned, a minimum of two guardsalways fully in sight of each otherstand duty. There is no realistic scenario
wherein a nuclear missile can be accidentally launched...ever...under any circumstances...period!
Accidental war unlikely
Farley 13
(Robert, assistant professor at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce University of Kentucky, April 5,
North Korea and the Fallacy of Accidental Wars, The Diplomat, http://thediplomat.com/2013/04/05/north-korea-and-the-
fallacy-of-accidental-wars/?all=true)

Accidental wars rarely happen. Historians have demonstrated that most wars initially deemed accidental,
(perhaps most notably the First World War), have in actuality resulted from deliberative state policy, even if the
circumstances of the war were unplanned. While war seems discordant, it actually requires a great deal of cooperation
and coordination. Fundamentally, two parties have to agree to conduct a war; otherwise, you have either a
punitive raid or an armed surrender negotiation.

Science Leadership
1NC No Science Leadership Impact

Science diplomacy fails, scientists and policy makers cant work together
Marlow 12 (Jeffery, Writer for wired.com, The Promise and Pitfalls of Democracy, Wired.com, 12/11/12,
http://www.wired.com/2012/12/the-promise-and-pitfalls-of-science-diplomacy/, CTC)
On July 17th, 1975, Alexei Leonov and Tom Stafford did something extraordinary: they shared a meal of canned beef tongue and black bread. It
may not have been the most delicious culinary experience the men had ever had, but the setting of the meal was slightly more noteworthy:
outer space, where two spacecraft had docked and were orbiting the earth at nearly 18,000 miles per hour. The two men and their crews
conducted scientific observations, exchanged gifts, and spoke intermittently in English, Russian, and Oklahomski, the Soviet commanders
description of Staffords drawl. Far below Leonov and Stafford, their political leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Gerald Ford, respectively were
embroiled in the maneuverings of the Cold War. Diplomatic tensions ran deep, but with the Space Race to the Moon in the rearview mirror,
joint missions seemed to operate above the fray of political discourse. The Apollo-Soyuz episode was a unique moment in American space
exploration history, a pivot from antagonism and competition to measured cooperation that previewed a similar move toward engagement in
the political arena over a decade later. Indeed, crosstalk between members of supposedly clashing countries is a common feature of the
scientific enterprise. These sorts of collaborations may not directly solve the issues at the heart of tense diplomatic situations, but they do get
parties on either side talking. The very neutrality of the subject matter the pursuit of truth may actually help the process, allowing
mistrust to thaw and preconceptions to crumble while engaging in a shared aim. This notion of science as a diplomatic tool its
use as an entry point to a recalcitrant society that simultaneously breaks down politically steeped preconceptions and offers tangible benefits
is a promising mode of development and a constructive brand of international relations. The Obama Administration
understands the value of science diplomacy; last month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the expansion of the Science Envoy
program, appointing Barbara Schaal of Washington University in St. Louis, Bernard Amadei of the University of Colorado, and Susan Hockfield of
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to the position. These prominent scientists represent the third class of envoys the program began
in 2009 and has sponsored visits to nearly 20 countries. The philosophy behind the envoy program is noble, but its current
directive is a bit vague. As noted in the State Departments official release, the science envoys travel in their capacity as private citizens and
advise the White House, the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. scientific community about the insights they gain from their travels and
interactions. A recent assessment of the program by envoy Elias Zerhouni noted the challenge of following through on
initiatives predicated on the personal credibility and contacts of the individual envoys. Leveraging the networks of
world-renowned scientists within the framework of a coherent policy of international relations is difficult,
particularly when funding for longer-term projects is uncertain. The trust of international partners requires a predictable
political and financial environment. When President Obama launched the program during a speech in Cairo, he said that the
envoys would collaborate on programs that develop new sources of energy, create green jobs, digitize records, clean water, and grow new
crops. Whether these programs are mandated by the executive branch or are the responsibility of the envoys is unclear. A more explicit
structure could allow science diplomats to be more effective, building on the strong record of science as an invaluable tool in the soft power
arsenal.
Alt-Cause: Science leadership is impossible as long as fracking is prevalent in the U.S.
Magill 13 (Bobby Magill is an award-winning science, environment and energy journalist who is currently the senior science writer covering
energy and climate change for Climate Central in New York City. My work has appeared in Popular Mechanics, Scientific American, Bloomberg
News, the Guardian, Huffington Post, Salon, USA Today, High Country News, New West.net, and daily newspapers throughout Colorado,
Fracking hurts US climate change credibility, say scientists, The Guardian via Climate Central,
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/11/fracking-us-climate-credibility-shale-gas, N.O.)
As we produce more, we burn more, and we send more CO2 per person into the atmosphere than
almost any other country, said Susan Brantley, geosciences professor and director of the Earth and Environmental
Systems Institute at Pennsylvania State University. We are blanketing our world with greenhouse gas, warming the planet. Several years ago
in Pennsylvania, scientists were talking about carbon sequestration in shale formations deep underground, she said. However, since 2005,
we have been fracking shales and have drilled 6,000 shale gas wells, she said. This extraordinary rate of
development is good for our country in terms of jobs and energy prices, but bad in that we are not worrying
as much about the greenhouse gas problem as we are about exploiting gas with hydrofracking. It is hard for
us to have credibility in global discussions of greenhouse gas unless we can use this new source of gas a
transitional fuel that bridges us from hydrocarbons to renewable, non-carbon fuels, she said. Even among advocates for
greenhouse gas emissions reductions, there is disagreement about what the U.S. role as chief oil and gas producer means for Americas
credibility on climate change. Those who already see the U.S. as a major bad actor will continue to do so, and
cite this hydrocarbon boom as further evidence, said Armond Cohen, executive director of the Boston-based Clean Air Task
Force. By contrast, if the U.S. took a more progressive global stance on overall emissions control, increased
domestic production would be probably irrelevant; the world would be relieved to see U.S. leadership.

Chinas STEM related degrees statistics prove China is the leader for the long run
Friedman, 14 (Lauren, Senior Health Reporter at Business Insider and has written for many places including Scientific American Scientific
American Mind, 3 Charts That Chinas Scientific Dominance Over The US is a Done Deal, Business Insider, June 19, 2014,
http://www.businessinsider.com/chinas-scientific-dominance-is-a-done-deal-2014-6, TS)
While China and the U.S. currently award science and engineering degrees to an equivalent proportion of
their populations, China has sharply increased the number of graduates in these fields and the U.S. does
not seem poised to catch up anytime soon. Chinese students also receive more American doctoral
degrees in science and engineering than any other foreign students. Between 1987 and 2010, there was a threefold
increase in the number of Chinese students in these programs (from 15,000 to 43,000).

2NC No Science Leadership Impact

No impact to science diplomacy cooperation is limited to science
Dickson 9 | David Dickson was the founding director of SciDev.Net and spent many years at Nature, as its Washington correspondent and
later as news editor. He also worked on the staffs of Science and New Scientist, specializing in reporting on science policy. He started a career in
journalism as a sub-editor, following a degree in mathematics, The limits of science diplomacy, 6/27/14, http://www.scidev.net/global/capacity-
building/editorials/the-limits-of-science-diplomacy.html, Accessed 6/27/14, CCHS-AY
Using science for diplomatic purposes has obvious attractions and several benefits. But there are limits to what it
can achieve. The scientific community has a deserved reputation for its international perspective scientists often ignore national
boundaries and interests when it comes to exchanging ideas or collaborating on global problems. So it is
not surprising that science attracts the interest of politicians keen to open channels of communication with other states. Signing agreements on
scientific and technological cooperation is often the first step for countries wanting to forge closer working relationships. More
significantly, scientists have formed key links behind-the-scenes when more overt dialogue has been
impossible. At the height of the Cold War, for example, scientific organisations provided a conduit for discussing nuclear weapons control.
Only so much science can do Recently, the Obama administration has given this field a new push, in its desire to pursue "soft
diplomacy" in regions such as the Middle East. Scientific agreements have been at the forefront of the administration's activities in countries
such as Iraq and Pakistan. But as emerged from a meeting entitled New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy, held in London this week (12 June)
using science for diplomatic purposes is not as straightforward as it seems. Some scientific collaboration clearly
demonstrates what countries can achieve by working together. For example, a new synchrotron under construction in
Jordan is rapidly becoming a symbol of the potential for teamwork in the Middle East. But whether scientific cooperation can
become a precursor for political collaboration is less evident. For example, despite hopes that the Middle East
synchrotron would help bring peace to the region, several countries have been reluctant to support it until the Palestine problem is resolved.
Indeed, one speaker at the London meeting (organised by the UK's Royal Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science)
even suggested that the changes scientific innovations bring inevitably lead to turbulence and upheaval. In such a context, viewing
science as a driver for peace may be wishful thinking. Conflicting ethos Perhaps the most contentious area discussed at
the meeting was how science diplomacy can frame developed countries' efforts to help build scientific capacity in the developing world.
There is little to quarrel with in collaborative efforts that are put forward with a genuine desire for
partnership. Indeed, partnership whether between individuals, institutions or countries is the new buzzword in the "science for
development" community. But true partnership requires transparent relations between partners who are
prepared to meet as equals. And that goes against diplomats' implicit role: to promote and defend their own countries' interests.
John Beddington, the British government's chief scientific adviser, may have been a bit harsh when he told the meeting that a diplomat is
someone who is "sent abroad to lie for his country". But he touched a raw nerve. Worlds apart yet co-dependent The truth is that science and
politics make an uneasy alliance. Both need the other. Politicians need science to achieve their goals, whether social, economic or
unfortunately military; scientists need political support to fund their research. But they also occupy different universes. Politics is, at
root, about exercising power by one means or another. Science is or should be about pursuing
robust knowledge that can be put to useful purposes. A strategy for promoting science diplomacy that respects these
differences deserves support. Particularly so if it focuses on ways to leverage political and financial backing for science's more humanitarian
goals, such as tackling climate change or reducing world poverty. But a commitment to science diplomacy that ignores
the differences acting for example as if science can substitute politics (or perhaps more worryingly,
vice versa), is dangerous. The Obama administration's commitment to "soft power" is already faltering. It faces challenges ranging
from North Korea's nuclear weapons test to domestic opposition to limits on oil consumption. A taste of reality may be no bad
thing. David Dickson Director, SciDev.Net
Science diplomacy isnt a substitution for regular diplomacy
Dickson 10 (David, Director of SciDev.net, Science in diplomacy: On tap but not on top , SciDev.net, 28/6/2010,
http://scidevnet.wordpress.com/2010/06/28/the-place-of-science-in-diplomacy-%E2%80%9Con-tap-but-not-on-top%E2%80%9D/, CTC)
Theres a general consensus in both the scientific and political worlds that the principle of science diplomacy, at least in the
somewhat restricted sense of the need to get more and better science into international negotiations, is a desirable objective. There
is less agreement, however, on how far the concept can or indeed should be extended to embrace broader goals
and objectives, in particular attempts to use science to achieve political or diplomatic goals at the international
level. Science, despite its international characteristics, is no substitute for effective diplomacy. Any more
than diplomatic initiatives necessarily lead to good science. These seem to have been the broad conclusions to emerge from a three-day
meeting at Wilton Park in Sussex, UK, organised by the British Foreign Office and the Royal Society, and attended by scientists, government
officials and politicians from 17 countries around the world. The definition of science diplomacy varied widely among participants. Some saw it
as a subcategory of public diplomacy, or what US diplomats have recently been promoting as soft power (the carrot rather than the stick
approach, as a participant described it). Others preferred to see it as a core element of the broader concept of innovation diplomacy,
covering the politics of engagement in the familiar fields of international scientific exchange and technology transfer, but raising these to a
higher level as a diplomatic objective. Whatever definition is used, three particular aspects of the debate became the focus of attention during
the Wilton Park meeting: how science can inform the diplomatic process; how diplomacy can assist science in achieving its objectives; and,
finally, how science can provide a channel for quasi-diplomatic exchanges by forming an apparently neutral bridge between countries. There
was little disagreement on the first of these. Indeed for many, given the increasing number of international issues with a scientific dimension
that politicians have to deal with, this is essentially what the core of science diplomacy should be about. Chris Whitty, for example, chief
scientist at the UKs Department for International Development, described how knowledge about the threat raised by the spread of the highly
damaging plant disease stem rust had been an important input by researchers into discussions by politicians and diplomats over strategies for
persuading Afghan farmers to shift from the production of opium to wheat. Others pointed out that the scientific community had played a
major role in drawing attention to issues such as the links between chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere and the growth of the ozone hole,
or between carbon dioxide emissions and climate change. Each has made essential contributions to policy decisions. Acknowledging this role
for science has some important implications. No-one dissented when Rohinton Medhora, from Canadas International Development Research
Centre, complained of the lack of adequate scientific expertise in the embassies of many countries of the developed and developing world alike.
Nor perhaps predictably was there any major disagreement that diplomatic initiatives can both help and occasionally hinder the process of
science. On the positive side, such diplomacy can play a significant role in facilitating science exchange and the launch of international science
projects, both essential for the development of modern science. Europes framework programme of research programmes was quoted as a
successful advantage of the first of these. Examples of the second range from the establishment of the European Organisation of Nuclear
Research (usually known as CERN) in Switzerland after the Second World War, to current efforts to build a large new nuclear fusion facility
(ITER). Less positively, increasing restrictions on entry to certain countries, and in particular the United States after the 9/11 attacks in New York
and elsewhere, have significantly impeded scientific exchange programmes. Here the challenge for diplomats was seen as helping to find ways
to ease the burdens of such restrictions. The broadest gaps in understanding the potential of scientific diplomacy lay in
the third category, namely the use of science as a channel of international diplomacy, either as a way of helping to forge
consensus on contentious issues, or as a catalyst for peace in situations of conflict. On the first of these, some pointed to recent climate
change negotiations, and in particular the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as a good example, of the way that the
scientific community can provide a strong rationale for joint international action. But others referred to the failure of the
Copenhagen climate summit last December to come up with a meaningful agreement on action as a demonstration of the
limitations of this way of thinking. It was argued that this failure had been partly due to a misplaced belief that
scientific consensus would be sufficient to generate a commitment to collective action, without taking into
account the political impact that scientific ideas would have. Another example that received considerable attention was the current
construction of a synchrotron facility SESAME in Jordan, a project that is already is bringing together researchers in a range of scientific
disciplines from various countries in the Middle East (including Israel, Egypt and Palestine, as well as both Greece and Turkey). The promoters of
SESAME hope that as with the building of CERN 60 years ago, and its operation as a research centre involving, for example, physicists from
both Russia and the United States SESAME will become a symbol of what regional collaboration can achieve. In that sense, it would become
what one participant described as a beacon of hope for the region. But others cautioned that, however successful SESAME may turn out to be
in purely scientific terms, its potential impact on the Middle East peace process should not be exaggerated. Political conflicts have deep roots
that cannot easily be papered over, however open-minded scientists may be to professional colleagues coming from other political contexts.
Indeed, there was even a warning that in the developing world, high profile scientific projects, particular those with explicit political backing,
could end up doing damage by inadvertently favouring one social group over another. Scientists should be wary of having their prestige used in
this way; those who did so could come over as patronising, appearing unaware of political realities. Similarly, those who hold science in esteem
as a practice committed to promoting the causes of peace and development were reminded of the need to take into account how advances in
science whether nuclear physics or genetic technology have also led to new types of weaponry. Nor did science automatically lead to the
reduction of global inequalities. Science for diplomacy therefore ended up with a highly mixed review. The
consensus seemed to be that science can prepare the ground for diplomatic initiatives and benefit from diplomatic agreements
but cannot provide the solutions to either. On tap but not on top seems as relevant in international
settings as it does in purely national ones. With all the caution that even this formulation still requires.
The positive effects of scientific diplomacy are contestable; the potential to backlash is always
present, results are unpredictable, and scientists have limited ability to influence politics
Smith 14 (Frank, Professor at the Centre of International Security Studies at the University of Sydney, Advancing science diplomacy:
Indonesia and the US Naval Medical Research Unit, Sage Journals , June 17, 2014,
http://sss.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/06/16/0306312714535864.full N.O.)
Finally, the mechanisms through which science diplomacy creates international cooperation are
underspecified, providing little confidence that it will not backfire. Science diplomacy is related to public diplomacy,
but merely citing public opinion polls about the popularity of science and technology does not explain how this attraction is leveraged to build
goodwill abroad. While their products might be popular, are scientists and technicians typically movers
and shakers of mass public opinion? Maybe, but this seems unlikely when they are compared with celebrities or
other public figures, especially if we consider variation in the public understanding of science and efficacy of
science communication. In addition, like propaganda, public diplomacy that aims to improve mass public opinion can
have the opposite effect and inadvertently undermine trust (Goldsmith and Horiuchi, 2009).
2NC Alt Cause
US Science leadership fallen behind and already structurally destined to fall regardless of oceans
Lowrey 14 (Anne, political and economic writer for the New York Times, U.S. Dominance in Science Faces Asian Challenge, New York
Times, February 13 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/us/us-dominance-in-science-faces-asian-challenge.html?_r=0, N.O.)
At the same time, the share of research done by Asian countries grew to 34 percent from 25 percent, with Chinas share alone growing to 15
percent from 2 percent in 2000. As a result, the Asian economies now perform a larger share of global research and
development than the United States does. China carries out about as much high-tech manufacturing
as the United States does, the report found. But the report also highlights some important market sectors
where the United States appears to be falling behind. For instance, emerging economies invested about
$100 billion in clean energy in 2012, with China alone investing more than $60 billion. The United
States spent only $29 billion. More worryingly, the report finds that the United States might be lagging in the
research and development spending that scientists say is the most important fuel for future innovation.
Extension China Rise Inevitable
Chinese scientists paid more than Americansmore incentive and more scientists=more success
Friedman, 14 (Lauren, Senior Health Reporter at Business Insider and has written for many places including Scientific American Scientific
American Mind, 3 Charts That Chinas Scientific Dominance Over The US is a Done Deal, Business Insider, June 19, 2014,
http://www.businessinsider.com/chinas-scientific-dominance-is-a-done-deal-2014-6, TS)
People who pursue science in China have much better earning potential than their counterparts in the
U.S. Chinese scientists are paid better than their highly educated peers, while in the U.S., the reverse is
true. U.S. lawyers, for example, go to school for less time than Ph.D. scientists, but make much more
money. "When talented youth face alternative career options, everything else being equal, more Chinese would be attracted to science than
Americans," because of the pay the researchers write. The PNAS researchers identify "four factors [that] favor China's
continuing rise in science: a large population and human capital base, a labor market favoring academic
meritocracy, a large diaspora of Chinese-origin scientists, and a centralized government willing to invest
in science. "Still, scientists in the United States have some serious advantages, since, as the researchers note, "China's science faces potential difficulties due to political interference and scientific fraud."


Softpower
1NC No Softpower Impact
Soft power doesnt work it wont shift minds of nations that werent already
inclined.
Adegbite, 2011 (Saheed Adegbite, completed his MA in International Studies and Diplomacy at The Centre for International Studies
and Diplomacy, the University of London in 2011. He currently works as a Senior Officer with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in
Europe (OSCE). How crucial is soft power to the successful conduct of diplomacy? International Relations and Diplomacy Sunday, 13
March 2011 http://thenewdiplomats.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-crucial-is-soft-power-to-successful.html)
One difficulty in attempting to decide conclusively that soft power is crucial is in the vague way it is
measured by many. As defined soft power is the ability to get someone to do what they would not
otherwise do by attraction. As such this can only be measured where we have established firstly the context that
the other party wouldnt have done it anyway. If I ask or persuade my daughter to jump, I can only
claim to my soft power being crucial with the assurance that she doesnt love jumping. The context of
measuring goes also into determining if there are already shared values or cultures which serve in themselves to facilitate. The power
relationship is therefore always changing and how crucial soft power is in diplomatic negotiation is also
fluid. One recent phenomenon that underlines soft power essence especially in the last two decades is the proliferation of non-state actors
including NGOs and their growing importance in diplomacy in general. As a result of this there are a growing number of new issues that face
nations and their foreign services such as Climate Change, Human rights, HIV and their securitization which has minimum to do with hard
power alone. States consistently have to weld soft power for legitimacy in these issues closely adopting what is in essence important stages of
implementation i.e. In conclusion therefore, soft power in isolation does not seem to dominate in its importance in
diplomacy. The contemporary political landscape means it is growing in importance with need however for economic military power to
implement it. The limitations remain though in it cannot be a replacement for good policy and contradiction can be counterproductive along
with the fact that bounce can create competition. The degree to which soft power has played a role positively in
any diplomatic negotiation remains dependent on the nature of the power relationship, shared values
and culture amongst other things.
2NC No Softpower Impact
US soft power resilient
Cox, 2012 (Michael, Professor IR London School of Economics, December, Power Shifts, Economic Change and the Decline of the West?
International Relations, Vol 26 No 4, p 369-388, SagePub)
If China has a real problem in projecting a positive and confident picture of itself or of the world it would like to build, the same can hardly be
said of the United States. 92 The US may have lost good deal of standing in the world because of the Iraq War;
meanwhile the West has clearly suffered a setback because of the economic crisis. However, the first
was partially vitiated by the election of Obama in 2008, and the second has not led to anybody serious proposing an alternative.
Moreover, the West for all its faults growing inequality, ethical standards in decline and all the rest still looks a more
attractive proposition than anything else on offer. As a recent study has shown, soft power is almost entirely the
preserve of Western, or more precisely democratic, countries with the United States still leading a league table that includes most
West European countries as well as two countries from Asia Japan and South Korea. China on the other hand comes in 20th, just ahead of
Brazil at 21st, followed by India at 27th and Russia 28th out of a total of 30 countries assessed. 93 There are several reasons why
the West continues to score well in terms of soft power, the most obvious being that Western
countries have a pluralist political culture where having dissident views, will not, by and large, end up
with one spending a rather long term in prison or worse. But another reason clearly connected has to do with its open
system of higher education. Here, even the much-maligned United States continues to have great
magnetic pull, nowhere more so than in China itself, judging by the enormous number of Chinese students who every year seek a place in
US institutions of higher learning. Many of them may in the end return to China. However, they clearly believe that getting an education in a US
college will improve their job prospects in an increasingly tough Chinese job market. 94 Nor is this temporary brain drain a mere accident of
history. Indeed, one of the more obvious signs of continued Western and American strength is its university sector. 95 Other countries and
continents obviously have universities. But very few of them rank especially high in international terms. 96 The BRIC countries in particular
seem to face almost insuperable difficulties in raising standards. Brazil and India for example have no universities in the top 100, Russia only
one and China a mere five three of these being in Hong Kong. The United States, in 2011, meanwhile remained home to 8 of
the top 10 ranked universities in the world, 37 of the top 50 and 58 of the top 100. Even the United Kingdom does well, having
17 ranked universities compared to a total of 13 in the whole of Asia. 97

Soft power doesnt shape foreign policy decisions of others.
Ellwood, 2014 (David Ellwood is an Associate Professor of International History at University of Bologna and Adjunct Professor in
European-American Relations at Johns Hopkins University, SAIS Bologna Center Soft power is a flawed tool in foreign policy, but a valuable
form of global leadership The London School of Economics daily blog on American Politics and Policy Jan 18
th

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2014/01/18/soft-power-is-a-flawed-tool-in-foreign-policy-but-a-valuable-form-of-global-leadership/)
Leaving aside its glibness and air of casuistry, the soft power concept is fundamentally flawed at just the point
where Nye insists on its usefulness: as a tool of foreign policy. The more states attempt consciously to
project the force of example they see in their nations and its ways, the more the rest will see manipulation and
propaganda. Two US analysts who commented on the prospects for British foreign policy in a new book, Influencing Tomorrow: Future
Challenges for British Foreign Policy, were happy to say that the BBC may be a more effective tool of British foreign policy than the Royal Navy
or the British Army. But they also warned against the temptations and risks of leverage: when you reach for the tool of soft
power, you find it evaporates in your hand. In the American case in particular, the temptation seems
to be to try to mobilize the charismatic nature of so many successful American inventions and people as
though they are resources at the disposal of the state. But they are not; they are the values and products of that society in the
most diffuse sense, and its creative industries in particular, with all their talent for absorbing and re-configuring the inventions of the world
then re-launching them for a global market.

Soft power doesnt work; relations more complex
Krepon, 2013 (Michael Krepon co-founder of the Stimson Center, a nonprofit and nonpartisan international security think tank
Politico Obama's ambition-free foreign policy 8-14-2013 http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/obamas-ambition-free-foreign-policy-
95490.html)
Remember when American presidents set out to do big things in the world? That was when denizens of the Oval Office had one powerful
attribute: ambition. And thats exactly what President Barack Obama is lacking today: a desire to shape world events
to Americas liking, and a willingness to take big risks to make that happen. No wonder he is making
little progress on the enormous foreign policy and national security challenges facing the United
States. The less ambition an administration has, the harder achieving anything becomes. While trying to
tackle hard problems can make them more complicated, not tackling at least some of them in a serious way increases the likelihood that they
will get worse. Success will come, if at all, against long odds. Without trying, failure is guaranteed. For the president, significant diplomatic
accomplishments seem nowhere in sight. Instead, the terrain looks barren or smoldering with problems from hell in Syria, Egypt and elsewhere,
a Putinized Russia, and a China that is asserting territorial claims in troubling ways. This unwelcome landscape helps explain the modesty of the
Obama administrations foreign policy and national security aims. If one is unlikely to make serious progress on very hard problems, and if
Sisyphean efforts might well complicate matters further, why try? One good reason is that, without ambition, firefighting becomes the default
position, as was evident during Hillary Clintons tenure as secretary of state. She either didnt seek or wasnt given the lead on the Middle East,
China, Russia, and nonproliferation portfolios. Its perfectly acceptable for the White House to hold on to every one of them, but whats the
point of doing so in order to pursue modest initiatives? Administrations that make their mark on the world have great ambition at rare
junctures of dramatic change and opportunity. Its the Obama administrations lot to operate in a changing international environment that
seems devoid of opportunity. Some problems from hell might burn themselves out and others must be handled with care, especially after
expending so much blood and treasure in Iraq and Afghanistan. Wars that are poorly conceived, planned and executed are unlikely to end well,
and have a properly chastening effect. The George W. Bush administrations use of hard power and the Obama
administrations use of soft power have not increased U.S. persuasiveness abroad. So, what is an
administration to do when no hard and consequential problem seems ripe for diplomatic accomplishment? Diplomatic risk-taking is a
high wire act, with only four potential wire-walkers: the president, vice president, the secretary of
state, and the national security advisor. Secretary of State John Kerry, unlike his predecessor, has been cleared by the White
House to walk the high wire. He has decided that a renewed effort to seek an Israeli-Palestinian settlement is worth the effort and that failure
to try is likely to have dire consequences. His ambitious and draining efforts stand in stark contrast to the administrations apparent lack of
ambition on other hard national security problems. The Obama administration cant be blamed for its lack of ambition in dealing with Vladimir
Putin, whose choices continue to mortgage Russias future. Opportunities for a strategic opening with Beijing offer more hope. The most
promising avenue of increasing strategic cooperation with China lies in space, rather than on nuclear issues. A collaborative space initiative and
a code of conduct setting or strengthening norms for responsible space-faring nations could have strategic import. But so far, there are no
takers for high-wire walking between Washington and Beijing. Pakistan has a new prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, who wants to increase trade
and otherwise normalize relations with India. He and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have appointed trusted individuals for back-
channel talks, eliciting the usual qualms from the usual quarters. Spoilers are at work, creating incidents along disputed borders. Washington
has no place getting in front of this process, but does not even appear to be in the rear-view mirror, prodding or offering incentives from
behind the scenes. North Korea has a new, young leader who has started out by making poor decisions. Washington has chosen not to see
whether he might embark on a different course. Instead of seeking direct dealings with Kim Jong-un, the Obama
administration seems content with multilateral approaches that offer little prospect for gain. The most
glaring absence of ambition at present appears to be in the run-up to nuclear negotiations with a newly elected Iranian President Hassan
Rouhani. A window of opportunity for significant deal making may well be narrow, but it is now open. This window will shut quickly if the
Obama administration approaches the renewal of talks with an abundance of timidity, as if the next move depends on how Tehran reacts to its
last cautious gambit. Sanctions, no matter how harsh, are a means to an end. Like sanctions, the threat of military strikes against Iranian
nuclear facilities will not help produce a satisfactory diplomatic settlement unless an ambitious U.S. initiative is forthcoming. Many seasoned
diplomats, including high-ranking nonproliferation officials who have recently departed from the Obama administration, have called for a more
ambitious negotiating approach. They are not known for throwing caution to the wind, and have good reason to be skeptical of success. And
yet, they still advise an ambitious offer at this juncture. If the effort is made, success may well remain elusive. If an ambitious proposal is not
offered, failure seems assured, with consequences to follow. What ever happened to the audacity of hope?

South China Sea
1NC No SCS Impact
US-China tension over SCS wont escalate history proves.
Taylor 14 (Brendan Head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian and PhD National Australian University, The
South China Sea is Not a Flashpoint, The Washington Quarterly, Spring 2014, Volume 34, Issue 1, Taylor & Francis)
Finally, the capacity of Beijing and Washington to navigate crises in their bilateral relationship further
suggests that the South China Sea is not a flashpoint. Over the past two or more decades, the United States
and China have gone to great lengths to manage bilateral tensions and prevent them from spiraling out
of control. A recent example occurred in May 2012, when the two arrived at a mutually acceptable
solution after the blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng sought refuge at the U.S. embassy in Beijing.48
In the South China Sea, two major, modern SinoU.S. crises have been successfully managed. The first
occurred in April 2001, when a U.S. EP-3 conducting routine surveillance in airspace above the South
China Sea collided with a Chinese J-8 jet fighter and was forced to make an emergency landing on Hainan
Island. To be sure, efforts to address this crisis did not initially proceed particularly smoothly, as Chinese officials
refused to answer incoming calls from the U.S. Embassy. Ultimately, however, those most intimately involved in the crisis
such as then-Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, Admiral Dennis Blairhave written subsequently how top U.S. officials
made every effort to exercise prudence and restraint while they collected more information about the nature of the incident.
They have also acknowledged that their Chinese counterparts made a series of grudging concessions that
ultimately resulted in successafter they decided that it was important to overall SinoU.S. relations to
solve the incident.49 Again in March 2009, while diplomatic tensions between Beijing and Washington
heightened in the immediate aftermath of an incident involving the harassment of the USNS
Impeccable by five Chinese vessels, good sense also prevailed as senior U.S. and Chinese officials issued
statements maintaining that such incidents would not become the norm and pledging deeper
cooperation to ensure so.50 Added to these examples of effective crisis management, it is also worth noting that
Washington reportedly facilitated a compromise to the April 2012 Scarborough Shoal standoff.51
2NC No SCS Impact
Economic interdependence checks serious China-ASEAN fights over SCS.
Chaibi, 2013 (Abraham Chaibi Author at Politics in Spires and Summer Associate at Institute for Defense Analyses The outlook for
continuing stability in the South China Sea Politics in Spires March 4, 2013 http://politicsinspires.org/the-outlook-for-continuing-
stability-in-the-south-china-sea/)
East Asias rapid economic and military development has captured global attention, but pundits are quick to point to the South China Sea,
North Korea, and Taiwan as potential obstacles to the regions continued growth. Analysis of news coverage demonstrates that regional
economies and tensions have been growing in tandem. The South China Sea has historically been of particular interest
because of the number of conflicting claims on the islands and sea-lanes it encompasses. China, Malaysia, Brunei, the
Philippines, Vietnam, and Taiwan, among others, have often engaged in bilateral disagreements with resulting
spikes in diplomatic tension and even military confrontation. Of note, these conflicts have never escalated to a
full-scale regional war. Direct extrapolation suggests that previous restraint in military interactions implies the
nations involved do not consider the potential benefits sufficient to justify an upset to the balance of
power. However, contemporary changes in economic and security conditions complicate the issue. While current tensions appear
unlikely to lead to a full-scale military conflict, the diversion of national resources needed to maintain the status quo is
substantial. Institutional changes to increase transparency; clarify US treaties with ASEAN nations; and increase states internal enforcement of
international agreements, although initially costly, would allow the neighbouring states to redirect these resources to long-term growth.
Historically, China has been involved in a majority of the military conflicts in the South China Sea. A 1947 Chinese map delineates Chinas
controversial claim to approximately 80% of the sea. China aggressively used its navy to conclude a dispute with Vietnam in the Battle of the
Paracel Islands in 1974 and then in 1988 during the Johnson South Reef Skirmish for the Spratly Islands. Conflict was narrowly averted in 1995
when the Philippines chose not to shell fort-like Chinese military structures on Mischief Reef (China maintained they were only intended as
shelter for fisherman); however, the Philippines continues to assert that this is an example of creeping occupation. This form of venting
tensions, while far short of total war, is extremely costly over the long run; the combination of of resources, energy, and lives expended to
establish a claim to the islands creates a significant and avoidable opportunity cost. These skirmishes are not merely an imprint of the 20th
century but continue today as witnessed by the Chinese establishment of the Sansha garrison-city in 2012 and the Sino-Philippines stand-off in
the Scarborough Shoal. What then is the evidence suggesting a continued reluctance to engage in full-scale
military confrontation? Although in the past conflict has often arisen between economically
interdependent nations (viz. the previous peak of global trade in 1914), the China-ASEAN relationship is one of
fundamental interdependence of production, visible in the prevalence of international supply chaining in manufacturing
processes, rather than solely trade and labour movement[i]. The burgeoning economic interdependence and growth of
neighbouring states contributes a major incentive to prevent a conflagration. $5.3 trillion of trade, of which
approximately 20% is US, transits the South China Sea annually and any interruption would not only severely restrict regional trade revenues,
but would also very likely guarantee US military intervention[ii]. The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) is becoming increasingly
interconnected and 2015 will mark a key turning point with the opening of internal ASEAN borders for free movement of labor. The ASEAN bloc
has also concluded a number of reconciliation agreements with China. Regarding security, both the 2002 Code of Conduct and the 2011
Guidelines to the Code of Conduct are intended to help coordinate diplomacy and maintain peace in South China Sea disputes. Economically
China has been ASEANs largest trading partner since 2009, and at its opening in 2010 the ASEAN-China free trade area (ACFTA) became the
largest in the world by population. These arrangements come at a time when growing estimates of the value of the natural resources contained
in the South China Sea are generating pressures associated with ensuring energy security.
China wont escalate SCS conflicts.
Taylor 14
Brendan Head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian and PhD National Australian University, The
South China Sea is Not a Flashpoint, The Washington Quarterly, Spring 2014, Volume 34, Issue 1, Taylor & Francis

But doubts remain over whether Beijing truly regards the South China Sea as a core interest. Michael Swaine
reports that his investigation of Chinese official sources failed to unearth a single example of a PRC
official or an official PRC document or media source that publicly and explicitly identifies the South China Sea as a PRC
core interest.25 By contrast, Chinese officials have not exhibited such reticence when referring publicly to Taiwan or Tibet in such terms.
Nor has Beijing shown any reluctance to threaten or to actually use military force in relation to these. During the 199596 Taiwan Strait Crisis,
Beijing twice fired ballistic missiles into waters off Taiwan in an effort to intimidate voters in advance of the islands first democratic
presidential election.26 China went further in March 2005 when the National Peoples Congress passed an anti-secession law requiring the
use of non-peaceful means against Taiwan in the event its leaders sought to establish formal independence from the mainland.27
Explicit threats and promises of this nature are absent in official Chinese statements on the South China Sea even
when, as in May 2012, the normally smooth-talking Vice Foreign Minister Fu Ying ambiguously warned the
Philippines not to misjudge the situation and not to escalate tensions without considering consequences at the
height of the Scarborough Shoal standoff.28 Indeed, although Beijing appears eager to demonstrate its growing naval
capabilities by conducting military exercises in the South China Seaas in March 2013 when it controversially conducted
exercises within 50 miles of the Malaysian coastlineit is striking that Chinese efforts to actually exercise jurisdiction in this
region continue to be confined, by and large, to the use of civil maritime law enforcement vessels.29

We control uniqueness. No South China Sea war unless Chinas fired-upon.
Du 14 (Roger Yu Du is an analyst at Global Risk Insights. Global Risk Insights provides the webs best political risk analysis for businesses
and investors. Our contributors are some of the brightest minds in economics, politics, finance, and international relations. GRI has been
referenced by leading publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker and Christian Science Monitor. China territorial
deadlocks hurt regional trade Global Risk Insights June 7, 2014 http://globalriskinsights.com/2014/06/07/china-territorial-deadlocks-
hurt-regional-trade/)
Since 2007, China has been in frequent territorial disputes with the Philippines, Japan, Malaysia and
Vietnam, which eventually led to some level of military standoff in the South China and East China Seas. In
November 2013, China set up its East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone that covers the disputed Diaoyu Island with Japan, justifying its
military presence in the area. Several close encounters between Chinese and Japanese planes ensued. In May 2014, China Oilfield
Services Limited, a Chinese state-owned company, deployed its oil rig in the contested waters, which eventually triggered
riots against China in Vietnam. It seems that China is getting more assertive about its territorial claims and not shying away from
competition. Although tensions have escalated, it is unlikely that they will lead to larger scale military
confrontations or even war in the next decade. Most of the East Asian states have important domestic mandates that would require
a relatively peaceful international environment. China is gradually restructuring its domestic economy. According to some analysts, it would
take over ten years for China to complete a series of reforms to evade the middle-income trap. In the meantime, Southeast Asian
countries are Chinas potential export markets and sources of cheap labor, while Japan and South Korea could
provide China with investments and technology. Unless fired upon, it is unwise to wage a war that would benefit so
little compared with what China could achieve after its successful economic transformation.
China-ASEAN spats havent escalated over the SCS. The reason is economic
interdependence.
Weismman 10
Mikael Weissmann Associated Researcher at Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Researcher at FOI, Lecturer at
Stockholm University THE SOUTH CHINA SEA CONFLICT AND SINO-ASEAN RELATIONS: A STUDY IN CONFLICT PREVENTION AND
PEACE BUILDING ASIAN PERSPECTIVE, Vol. 34, No. 3, 2010, pp. 35-69. Available at: http://www.ui.se/upl/files/49747.pdf
When applying the peace continuum to the SCS conflict, it becomes clear that the conflict has been
transformed since the early 1990s, when it was best characterized as a very fragile, unstable peace. At the time,
military forces were seizing claims and a conflict between the Philippines and China over the Mischief Reef in 1995 stopped short of military
conflict mainly because of the unequal power of the two. Since then the conflict has moved toward a more stable
peace. Despite tensions and unresolved underlying incompatibilities in the SCS, war is considered most unlikely as
the SCS conflict cannot be separated from the overarching Sino-ASEAN relations. Since the early 1990s,
peaceful relations between China and ASEAN have been institutionalized, and there has been a strong
regional integration process that links the two and makes them economically interdependent. Thus, as a
manifestation of the latter, the conflict is tilting toward a stable peace where war is very unlikely, rather than
toward an unstable peace.

Economic ties will prevent conflict over the SCS.
Galiano 11
Emilia Galiano, m.a. candidate at Johns Hopkins university, The People's Republic of China: an Alternative Model?, BC Journal,
June 11, http://bcjournal.org/volume-14/the-peoples-republic-of-china.html?printerFriendly=true
According to Mearsheimer, every great power aims at becoming a regional hegemon since this is the only condition that will guarantee its security.8 to be
able to achieve this goal, states will develop their economic and military capabilities to the fullest possible extent. According to Mearsheimer: In the anarchic world
of international politics it is better to be godzilla than Bambi.9 Both the United States and China would compete for regional hegemony in the Asia Pacific region,
according to this view. Moreover, a future clash between them will be almost inevitable: China will pursue assertive policies to reform the system, while the united
States will aim for the maintenance of the status quo. Nevertheless, this perspective cannot account for the rising economic
interdependence between these two countries, nor for the increasing disengagement of the United
States from the region, and thus the increasing reliance on Japan and China in dealing with security
issues in Asia-Pacific. The participation of China in the talks regarding the North Korean nuclear crisis is one
prominent example. Another perspective applied to the Chinese case is the balance of power theory, which forecasts that,
given the insecurity of living in an anarchic environment and the presence of superior powers in the
system, a country can choose between balancing or bandwagoningthat is, to look for reliable allies to counter the
predominant countries in the system or side with the latter against the weakest.10 the predictions resulting from the application of this perspective to Asia would
be as follows: on the one hand, China would balance the superior power of the united States, looking for allies in the region and upgrading its defense systems; on
the other hand, as China rises, other countries, both in the region and in the global system, should increasingly balance Chinese rising power, if they feel it is a
threat. Nevertheless, these predictions can be countered by some arguments drawn from liberal theorists. Again,
the rising interdependence and cooperation between the united States and China cannot really be
explained by the balancing theory: if China did seek to balance a more powerful America, which it saw as a threat, it would surely
not engage in trade, finance its domestic debt, or cooperate on security issues. It is true that East Asian countries,
especially Japan and South Korea, are balancing Chinese power and bandwagoning with the United States by modernizing their defense apparatuses and regularly
carrying out military exercises with American troops. Yet it is also true that these same countries have pursued economic
cooperation, which leads to ever increasing economic flows in terms of trade and FDI, with a country
they should perceive as threatening. This economic integration has led to the creation of a China-ASEAN free trade area, the Chiang Mai
Initiative, and projects for a potentially wider free trade area that includes Japan and South Korea. Economic cooperation pursued both by the Peoples Republic of
China and other countries in the region has been accompanied by a cooperative attitude towards security issues and a moderate stance on territorial disputes on
the part of all the parties involved.11 Although I do not want to spend too much time here describing the situation in the east and South China Seas, suffice it to say
that governments are trying to avoid confrontational attitudes; some steps towards a resolution of the dispute have been taken, including the Declaration on the
Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea in 2002 and a 2008 agreement on the joint exploration of the seabed near the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. Incidents are still
possible, however, as demonstrated by the recent issue concerning a Chinese fishing boat near the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. Balance of power
theory, offensive realism, and hegemonic stability theory are insufficient to explain Chinas behavior
in the international arena and the responses of other stakeholders in the system. Put differently, this
behavior would be explained only if one could assume that economic objectives can be separated
from strategic and security issues. This assumption is not possible in a realist framework, in which economic
growth, security, and power are closely interrelated: in such a framework, economic integration is only possible if it does not lead
to an excessive dependence, if it serves vital interests of the state, and if the trade partner is not perceived as a threat.12 relative gains from trade
and security externalities arising from economic integration can help sustain this argument: on the one hand, countries will only engage in trade if the partners
relative gains are not excessively high; on the other, trade will mainly occur between allies who will invest gains from trade in mutual security. 13 taking either of
these approaches, how can the rising economic ties binding countries in the Asian region and in the world to China be explained? If China is perceived as a threat
because of its assertive interests, why are these countries not balancing the rising Chinese power by cutting these economic ties?14 Liberal theory could provide a
more moderate perspective: China has not pursued aggressive objectives because it has been integrated into the
global economy. According to institutionalism, becoming part of international institutions and
regimes facilitated cooperation and understanding with rival countries. This strand of liberalism considers that issues
concerning anarchy and security can be overcome through cooperation, which is possible within international institutions where information is easier to acquire and
transaction costs are lower. Moreover, considering interdependence liberalism, greater economic
interdependence would highly increase the costs of a possible conflict. Now that Chinas economy is
growing at double-digit rates thanks to huge flows of FDI and the exports of cheap, labor-intensive
goods, why would it try to disrupt and challenge the system? Economic growth also fosters the emergence of domestic social
groups, who profit from economic reforms and greater openness and will favor even more liberalization and integration with the global economy. However, while
liberals criticize realists by pointing out the importance of institutions and economic incentives resulting from increased integration, realists in turn criticize liberals
as being too utopian and not seeing that Chinas real intentions are aggressive in the long run. According to realist scholars, the supposed attitudinal change in
Chinas foreign policy is nothing but a Charm offensive.15 this last critique highlights the problematic fact that deciphering a countrys intentions is indeed
difficultthe more so given that China in particular still has some strong territorial claims, feels victimized, and is ruled by a party seeking to legitimize itself
internally, partly by drawing on nationalistic ideology. Moreover, it is important to note that at the regional level China is not really binding itself to a given set of
values or procedures, as all the regional forums it participates in are discussion forums. This makes drawing conclusions about the efficacy of these institutions
difficult. Before considering the last perspective, constructivism, I would like to summarize the issues treated up to this point by citing the opinion of a constructivist
scholar. Legro, in an article published in 2007, points out that both realism and liberalism are overly deterministic in that they
do not leave room for considering the effects of unpredictable events.16 More than predicting future behavior,
constructivists explain Chinas present increased integration and moderate attitude within international organizations. They focus on the concept of socialization:
Chinas exposure to Western values, decision-making processes, and behavioral procedures have completely changed the set of incentives the country faces. In
the end, this is what the ASEAN Way is all aboutintegrating the Peoples Republic of China in a
regional framework, and thereby encouraging the country to share a set of common values and views regarding regional security and the promotion of
economic development.17 Liberalization of its domestic economy and integration into the international system have indeed contributed to the development of new
ideas regarding Chinas foreign policy, such as the new Security Concept and the preference for multilateralism, in order to attain a common, comprehensive, and
cooperative kind of security.18 Constructivism might seem appealing given its ability to explain why China has adopted a more moderate foreign policy stance,
which is no longer guided by the exportation of Communist revolution, and why the countries in the region have not engaged in balancing behavior. Nevertheless,
this perspective fails to deliver a comprehensive interpretation of Chinas economic and security objectives. In particular, it fails to explain the prioritization of the
goal of economic growth, which is arguably the single most important determinant of the countrys foreign policy, both now and in the future. The
prioritization of economic growth has been included in the CCPs domestic agenda in order to ensure
the countrys development and the partys survival; it has not only produced an agenda of gradual
domestic political reforms, but also a new attitude in the international arena one guided by the need to ensure a
stable and peaceful environment to allow for the countrys continued economic prosperity. This development can hardly be linked to a this is mainly concerned with
international relations and how complex regimes, based on specific values, together with socialization dynamics can shape a countrys behavior. By focusing on the
prioritization of economic objectives and the CCPs survival, I am adopting a different level of analysis from one of nation-states as main actors to one that focuses
on nation states as domestic actors and looks at their incentives and preferences. Such a change in the level of analysis allows perception into what makes
Chinas foreign policy choices so unusual and not ascribable to any particular theory or perspective. It
also introduces the next section about the domestic situation. The prioritization of economic development is linked to the lack of political reforms and the prospects
of survival for the CCP.


Space Travel

1NC No Space
Human space travel is a pipe dream
Reichhardt 14 - senior editor at Air & Space (Tony, To Mars! (But Not the Way Were Going), AirSpace
Mag, 6-25-14, http://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/mars-not-way-were-going-180951855/)//KG
NASA will need more money Without a significant boost in the space agencys budget, we should forget
about Mars, says the panel. Sending humans to the Red Planet will cost on the order of hundreds of
billions of dollars, and even though this will be amortized over decades, the nation should be prepared
to pay that cost. Americans should also understand that people will likely die carrying out such an
ambitious mission. Spaceflight is popular, but only up to a point This wasnt the typical committee of ex-
NASA officials and aerospace engineers, repeating the same tired arguments. The panel included
historians, economists (co-chair Mitch Daniels is a former head of the U.S. government budget office),
and in Roger Tourangeau, one of the leading academic experts on public opinion. As a result, their
analysis of public support for spaceflight goes far beyond counting Twitter followers and Facebook likes,
or relying on quickie polls to show that people like space. Basically, Americans want a human
spaceflight program, but its far from a priority. At any given time, a relatively small proportion of the
U.S. public pays close attention to space exploration, the committee wrote. Furthermore, most
Americans do not favor increased spending on space explorationwhich seems a serious problem,
given the need to increase NASAs budget. But, said Daniels in a press briefing timed for the reports
release, this may not be a showstopper. If the public wont demand more spending, neither is it likely to
object if leaders invest more in space, especially if NASA can show tangible results. The United States
cant go it alone If NASA aims to send people to Mars, the program will have to be international, and
other nations will have to contribute well above the amounts theyve historically invested in human
spaceflight. China should be included. NASA needs an overhaul NASA facilities that are obsolete or dont
contribute to the mission should be closed. (This, of course, requires wise management by Congress,
whose political patronage sometimes keeps NASA programs alive beyond the point of usefulness.) If the
reports conclusions sound blunt, theyre meant to. As Daniels told reporters, We recognize that many
of our recommendations will be seen by many as unrealisticto which we would only observe that,
absent changes along the lines we are recommending, the goal of reaching Mars in any meaningful
timeframe is itself unrealistic. In fact, in discussing their recommendations, the panel members make
a point of saying if the nation wants to do this. The clear implication is that we may well drop the
baton, and that government-funded human spaceflighton the scale of Apollo or even the
International Space Stationwill simply fizzle out. Failure is definitely an option. Either way, the
Committee on Human Spaceflight has laid out our choices. From here on, we wont need more reports
on what to do in space. Those who control NASAs future should just read this one, and follow its advice.
2NC No Space

Tons of reasons why space travel wont happen anytime soon technical issues, risk to astronaut
health, and lack of necessity
Watson 10 writer for USA Today (Traci, Obama plan to land on asteroid may be unrealistic for 2025,
USA Today, 6-21-10, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2010-06-20-asteroid-obama-
nasa-plan_N.htm)//KG
That doesn't mean it would be easy. Although experts agree it could be done, here are four asteroid-size
reasons why life won't imitate art. Astronauts can't hop on a space shuttle to get there. In
Armageddon, Willis' character and his crew blast off in two modified space shuttles to reach the killer
asteroid. But NASA has long planned to retire the shuttles within the next year. And even if they weren't
all headed to museums, they're useless as asteroid transporters. The shuttles were built only to circle
Earth, says Dan Adamo, a former mission control engineer who has studied human missions to
asteroids. They don't carry the fuel to jump into deep space, and their heat shields aren't designed to
withstand the extra-high temperatures of returning from a destination other than the Earth's orbit.
What's needed instead is a giant rocket on the scale of the monstrous Saturn V taller than Big Ben
that propelled man to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s. Such a project is "a difficult challenge" that will
cost in the multiple billions of dollars, says Ray Colladay, a member of NASA's advisory council. NASA
spent more than $52 billion in 2010 dollars to develop and build the Saturn V. Building a 21st-century
version can be done but will require a sharp increase in the NASA budget later this decade, some space
experts say. "That's the issue everybody wants to duck right now, because it's uncomfortable to face
that," Colladay says. NASA would also need to build a spaceship where the astronauts can live and store
all the oxygen, food and water needed for a long voyage. One option is to launch a small space pod
carrying the crew, then, once safely in space, unleash an inflatable habitat, Leshin says. NASA has little
practice with such a blow-up spacecraft. The trip takes a long, long time. Willis and company arrive at
their target asteroid in a few days, if not a few hours. Admittedly, it's streaking toward Earth at the time.
NASA would prefer to go to one before it gets to that stage. Studies by Adamo, former astronaut
Thomas Jones and others show that a round trip to a target asteroid would typically take five to six
months. That assumes NASA shoots for one of the 40 or so asteroids that come closest to the Earth's
path in the 2020s and 2030s and relies on spacecraft similar to those NASA had designed for Bush's
moon mission. Another problem during the journey the crew would spend months "cooking" in space
radiation, says NASA's Dave Korsmeyer, who has compiled a list of the most accessible asteroids. Shuttle
passengers are somewhat screened from such radiation by Earth's magnetic field. Astronauts who leave
Earth's orbit have no such protection. Space radiation raises the risk of cancer and in extreme cases
causes nausea and vomiting, says Walter Schimmerling, former program scientist of NASA's space
radiation program. The astronauts might need to take drugs to prevent the ill effects of radiation. Then
there's the "prolonged isolation and confinement" that the crew will have to endure, says Jason Kring of
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. "This crew will be more on their own than any other crew in
history." If there's an emergency halfway into the trip, the astronauts would not be able to get home in
a few days, as the Apollo 13 crew did. Instead it would take weeks, if not months. Humans can't walk or
drive on an asteroid. Once they land on the asteroid "the size of Texas," the heroes of Armageddon run
over the spiky terrain, except when they're steering two tank-like vehicles. In reality, even the biggest
asteroids have practically no gravity. So anything in contact with the surface could easily drift away.
"You don't land on an asteroid," says former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart, a longtime advocate of
asteroid studies. "You pull up to one and dock with it. ... And getting away from it, all you have to do is
sneeze and you're gone." He envisions a spaceship hovering next to the asteroid and occasionally firing
its thrusters to stay in place. Astronauts wouldn't walk on an asteroid. They would drift next to it,
moving themselves along with their gloved hands. To keep from floating into space, crewmembers could
anchor a network of safety ropes to the asteroid's surface, but "that has its own risks, because we don't
understand how strong the surfaces of asteroids are and whether (they) would hold an astronaut in
place," says Daniel Scheeres, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado. The minimal gravity also
means that any dust the astronauts stir up will hang in a suspended cloud for a long time. Because
there's no weather on an asteroid, there's no erosion to smooth the dust particles. "It's all going to stay
pretty razor-sharp. ... It's not the most friendly stuff in the universe," Korsmeyer says. Keeping humans
safe as they explore an asteroid "is going to be really tricky." Humanity doesn't hang in the balance. In
Armageddon, NASA must send a crew to an asteroid or life on Earth will be wiped out. "Even the
bacteria," says the NASA chief, played by Billy Bob Thornton. In the real world, that irrefutable
motivation is absent. By 2025, Obama's target date, there will have been four presidential elections. Any
could result in the mission's cancellation, just as Obama canceled Bush's moon plan. "The politics of this
is far more challenging than the engineering," Colladay says. The Obama administration has promised to
increase NASA's budget by $6 billion over the next five years, but priorities may change. The Bush
administration, for example, in 2007 cut long-term funding for its own moon program by $1.2 billion. As
the deficit looms larger, "especially as the November elections come along ... I would just not be
surprised if enthusiasm for some big human spaceflight mission ends," says Marcia Smith, founder of
spacepolicyonline.com. As it is, the extra $6 billion Obama has promised NASA is inadequate for all the
tasks the agency is supposed to tackle, Jones says. "The declaration that we're going to deep space is not
matched by budget reality," he says.



Terrorism (Conventional)
1NC No Terrorism Impact
No terrorismno linkages, experts, your evidence is alarmism, data,
John Mueller political scientist at Ohio State and co-author of Terror, Security, and Money: Balancing the Risks, Benefits, and Costs of
Homeland Security Has the threat from terrorism been exaggerated? The Commentator 1/8/14
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4579/has_the_threat_from_terrorism_be en_exaggerated
Two years after the raid on Osama bin Ladens hideaway, terrorism alarmists remain in peak form explaining that
although al-Qaeda has been weakened it still manages to present a grave threat. Various well-honed techniques are
applied to support this contention. One is to espy and assess various linkages or connections of ties or threads between and
among a range of disparate terrorists or terrorist groups, most of which appear rather gossamer and of only limited
consequence on closer examination. Another is to exaggerate the importance and effectiveness of the
affiliated groups linked to al-Qaeda central. In particular, alarmists point to the al-Qaeda affiliate in chaotic Yemen, ominously hailing it
as the deadliest and the most aggressive of these and a major threat. Yet its chief efforts at international terrorism have
failed abysmally: an underwear bomb and laser printer bombs on cargo planes. With that track record, the
group may pose a problem or concern, but it scarcely presents a major threat outside of war zones. More generally, al-
Qaeda is its own worst enemy, as Robert Grenier, a former top CIA counterterrorism official, notes.
Where they have succeeded initially, they very quickly discredit themselves. Any terrorist threat within
the developed world seems even less impressive. The Boston terrorists of 2013 were the first in the United States since
9/11 in which Islamist terrorists actually were able to assemble and detonate bombs -- albeit very primitive ones. But
except for that, they do not seem to have been more competent than most of their predecessors. Amazingly,
they apparently thought they could somehow get away with their deed even though they chose to set their bombs off
at the most-photographed spot on the planet at the time. Moreover, they had no coherent plan of escape and, as commonly
found, no ability to explain how killing a few random people would advance their cause. While the scope of
the tragedy in Boston should not be minimized, it should also be noted that if the terrorists aim was to kill a large number
of people, their bombs failed miserably. As recent cases in Colorado and Connecticut sadly demonstrate, far more fatalities have
been inflicted by gunmen. Before Boston, some 16 people had been killed by Islamist terrorists in the United States in the
years since 2001, and all of these were murdered by people who were essentially acting alone. By contrast, in the 1970s, organized
terrorists inflicted hundreds of attacks, mostly bombings, in the United States, killing 72. As concern about organized attacks has
diminished, fear of lone wolf attacks has grown in recent years, and one official assessment contends that lone offenders currently present
the greatest threat. This is a reasonable observation, but those concerned should keep in mind that, as analyst Max Abrahms has noted,
while lone wolves may be difficult to police, they have carried out only two of the 1,900 most deadly terrorist
attacks over the last four decades. The key question, at least outside of war zones, is not, are we safer? but how safe are we? At
current rates, an Americans chance of becoming a victim of terrorism in the U.S., even with 9/11 in the
calculation, is about 1 in 3.5 million per year. In comparison, that same American stands a 1 in 22,000 yearly chance of becoming
a homicide victim, a 1 in 8,000 chance of perishing in an auto accident, and a 1 in 500 chance of dying from cancer. These calculations
are based, of course, on historical data. However, alarmists who would reject such history need to explain why
they think terrorists will suddenly become vastly more competent in the future. But no one seems to be making that
argument. Indeed, notes one reporter, U.S. officials now say that al-Qaeda has become less capable of a large attack like
9/11. But she also says that they made this disclosure only on condition of anonymity out of fear that publicly identifying themselves could
make them a target of terrorists. In contrast, one terrorism specialist, Peter Bergen, has observed in heroic full attribution mode that,
The last terror attack (in the West) was seven years ago in London, that there havent been any major
attacks in the U.S. , and that they are recruiting no-hopers and dead-enders.

AT: Energy Terror

No impact to energy terror reserves and diffuse production
Matthew Hulbert 11/26/12 (Lead Analyst for European Energy Review and consultant to numerous
governments and institutional investors, most recently as Senior Research Fellow at Clingendael
International Energy Programme, A Terrorist Guide To Energy Carnage
http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewhulbert/2012/11/16/a-terrorist-guide-to-energy-carnage/)
Well, the bad news for you guys is that youre against the clock. This is a very hard time to be a terrorist with global
ambitions in the energy world. Weve added 200bn barrels of potential reserves oil over the past few years from
unconventional plays, with gas reserves believed to be up to 28, 0000 trillion cubic feet. Obviously whats in the ground and whats produced are two very different
things, but if oil and gas production increases, markets will not just become far more fungible and deep, but coming from
every point on the compass. Resources are no longer the preserve of the Gulf, but span Latin America, East Africa, Australasia, Russia, the Caspian
and especially North America. Youll have no clue what you should be blowing up, and mores the point, it wont have
much impact if you do. Youll merely highlight AQs increasing structural irrelevance to the energy world.

No impact and attacks inevitable
Matthew Hulbert 11/26/12 (Lead Analyst for European Energy Review and consultant to numerous
governments and institutional investors, most recently as Senior Research Fellow at Clingendael
International Energy Programme, A Terrorist Guide To Energy Carnage
http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewhulbert/2012/11/16/a-terrorist-guide-to-energy-carnage/)
If thats the threat, then fear not NATO, the actual risk of it happening isnt nearly so grim. Obviously if AQ managed
to pull any of this off the impacts would be profound, but capabilities appear down, and imagination, limited. Saudi Arabia
and Qatar both take hydrocarbon security very seriously (at least against perceived external threats), and the U.S. 5th fleet
maintains a strong presence off Bahrain. European naval deployments over in the Gulf of Aden could also quickly shift
geographical focus if needed. Do keep tabs on it, but you need to think more broadly about what role you can play on day to day terrorist problems. Global jihad is
the flashy end of the business, but local insurgency gripes tend to be the standard fayre. Now, dont get us wrong, the energy security experts
who think every bomb and minor attack on pipelines in strange places matter couldnt be more wrong.
The market has already priced it in be it in Yemen, Iraq or Sudan. Sure, stranded energy isnt free, but neither is security
provision. Everything you do should be based on cost-benefit analysis, accepting you cant lock down every piece of energy infrastructure (not even close), and
accept that the commercial energy world is exclusively predicated on a risk vs. reward basis. That means being bright very bright about locating
where insurgency strikes actually matter for market and political dynamics to be of genuine use.


Terrorism (Nuclear)

1NC No Nuke Terror

No risk of nuclear terrorism technically impossible
Michael, 12 (Professor Nuclear Counterprolif and Deterrence at Air Force Counterprolif Center, 12
(George, March, Strategic Nuclear Terrorism and the Risk of State Decapitation Defence Studies, Vol
12 Issue 1, p 67-105, T&F Online)
Despite the alarming prospect of nuclear terrorism, the obstacles to obtaining such capabilities are
formidable. There are several pathways that terrorists could take to acquire a nuclear device. Seizing an intact nuclear weapon would be the most direct method. However,
neither nuclear weapons nor nuclear technology has proliferated to the degree that some observers
once feared. Although nuclear weapons have been around for over 65 years, the so-called nuclear club stands at only nine members. 72 Terrorists could attempt to purloin a weapon
from a nuclear stockpile; however, absconding with a nuclear weapon would be problematical because of tight security
measures at installations. Alternatively, a terrorist group could attempt to acquire a bomb through an illicit
transaction, but there is no real well-developed black market for illicit nuclear materials. Still, the deployment of
tactical nuclear weapons around the world presents the risk of theft and diversion. 73 In 1997, the Russian General, Alexander Lebed, alleged that 84 suitcase bombs were missing from the
Russian military arsenal, but later recanted his statements. 74 American officials generally remain unconvinced of Lebeds story insofar as they were never mentioned in any Soviet war plans.
75 Presumably, the financial requirements for a transaction involving nuclear weapons would be very high, as
states have spent millions and billions of dollars to obtain their arsenals. 76 Furthermore, transferring such sums
of money could raise red flags, which would present opportunities for authorities to uncover the plot.
When pursuing nuclear transactions, terrorist groups would be vulnerable to sting operations. 77 Even if terrorists acquired an intact nuclear
weapon, the group would still have to bypass or defeat various safeguards, such as permissive action links (PALs),
and safing, arming, fusing, and firing (SAFF) procedures. Both US and Russian nuclear weapons are outfitted with
complicated physical and electronic locking mechanisms. 78 Nuclear weapons in other countries are
usually stored partially disassembled, which would make purloining a fully functional weapon very
challenging. 79 Failing to acquire a nuclear weapon, a terrorist group could endeavor to fabricate its own Improvised Nuclear Device (IND). For years, the US government has
explored the possibility of a clandestine group fabricating a nuclear weapon. The so-called Nth Country Experiment examined the technical problems facing a nation that endeavored to build a
small stockpile of nuclear weapons. Launched in 1964, the experiment sought to determine whether a minimal team in this case, two young American physicists with PhDs and without
nuclear-weapons design knowledge could design a workable nuclear weapon with a militarily significant yield. After three man-years of effort, the two novices succeeded in a hypothetical
test of their device. 80 In 1977, the US Office of Technology Assessment concluded that a small terrorist group could develop and detonate a crude nuclear device without access to classified
material and without access to a great deal of technological equipment. Modest machine shop facilities could be contracted for purposes of constructing the device. 81 Numerous experts
have weighed in on the workability of constructing an IND. Hans Bethe, the Nobel laureate who worked on the Manhattan Project,
once calculated that a minimum of six highly-trained persons representing the right expertise would be
required to fabricate a nuclear device. 82 A hypothetical scenario developed by Peter Zimmerman, a former chief scientist for the Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency, and Jeffrey G. Lewis, the former executive director of the Managing the Atom Project at Harvard Universitys Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs,
concluded that a team of 19 persons could build a nuclear device in the United States for about $10 million. 83 The most crucial step in the IND pathway is
acquiring enough fissile material for the weapon. According to some estimates, roughly 25 kilograms of weapons-
grade uranium or 8 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium would be required to support a self-
sustaining fission chain reaction. 84 It would be virtually impossible for a terrorist group to create its own fissile material. Enriching uranium, or producing plutonium
in a nuclear reactor, is far beyond the scope of any terrorist organization. 85 However, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which maintains a database, confirmed 1,562 incidents
of smuggling encompassing trade in nuclear materials or radioactive sources. Fifteen incidents involved HEU or plutonium. 86 Be that as it may, according to the IAEA, the total of
all known thefts of HEU around the world between 1993 and 2006 amounted to less than eight
kilograms, far short of the estimated minimum 25 kilograms necessary for a crude improvised nuclear
device. 87 An amount of fissile material adequate for a workable nuclear device would be difficult to procure from one source or in one transaction. However, terrorists could settle on
less demanding standards. According to an article in Scientific American, a nuclear device could be fabricated with as little as 60 kilograms of HEU (defined as concentrated to levels of 20
percent for more of the uranium 235 isotope). 88 Although enriching uranium is well nigh impossible for terrorist groups, approximately 1,800 tons of HEU was created during the Cold War,
mostly by the United States and the Soviet Union. 89 Collective efforts, such as the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, the G-8 Partnership against the Spread of Weapons of Mass
Destruction, and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, have done much to secure nuclear weapons and fissile materials, but the job is far from complete. 90 And other problems are on the horizon. For
instance, the number of nuclear reactors is projected to double by the end of the century, though many, if not most, will be fueled with low-enriched uranium (LEU). With this development,
comes the risk of diversion as HEU and plutonium stockpiles will be plentiful in civilian sectors. 91 Plutonium is more available around the world than HEU and smuggling plutonium would be
relatively easy insofar as it commonly comes in two-pound bars or gravel-like pellets. 92 Constructing an IND from plutonium, though, would be
much more challenging insofar as it would require the more sophisticated implosion-style design that
would require highly trained engineers working in well-equipped labs. 93 But, if an implosion device does not detonate precisely as
intended, then it would probably be more akin to a radiological dispersion device, rather than a mushroom. Theoretically, plutonium could be used in a gun-assembly weapon, but the
detonation would probably result in an unimpressive fizzle, rather than a substantial explosion with a yield no greater than 10 to 20 tons of TNT, which would still be much greater than one
from a conventional explosive. 94 But even assuming that fissile material could be acquired, the terrorist group would
still need the technical expertise to complete the required steps to assemble a nuclear device. Most experts
believe that constructing a gun-assembly weapon would pose no significant technological barriers. 95 Luis Alvarez once asserted that a fairly high-level nuclear explosion could be occasioned
just by dropping one piece of weapons-grade uranium onto another. He may, however, have exaggerated the ease with which terrorists could fabricate a nuclear device. 96 In sum, the
hurdles that a terrorist group would have to overcome to build or acquire a nuclear bomb are very high.
If states that aspire to obtain nuclear capability face serious difficulties, it would follow that it would be
even more challenging for terrorist groups with far fewer resources and a without a secure geographic
area in which to undertake such a project. The difficulty of developing a viable nuclear weapon is illustrated by the case of Saddam Husseins Iraq, which
after 20 years of effort and over ten billion dollars spent, failed to produce a functional bomb by the time the country was defeated in the 1991 Gulf War. 97 Nevertheless, the quality of a
nuclear device for a non-state entity would presumably be much lower as it would not be necessary to meet the same quality standards of states when fabricating their nuclear weapons. Nor
would the device have to be weaponized and mated with a delivery system. In order to be successful, terrorists must succeed at each
stage of the plot. With clandestine activities, the probability of security leaks increases with the number
of persons involved. 98 The plot would require not only highly competent technicians, but also unflinching loyalty and discipline from the participants. A strong
central authority would be necessary to coordinate the numerous operatives involved in the acquisition
and delivery of the weapon. Substantial funding to procure the materials with which to build a bomb
would be necessary, unless a weapon was conveyed to the group by a state or some criminal entity. 99 Finally, a network of competent and dedicated operatives would be
required to arrange the transport of the weapon across national borders without detection, which could be challenging considering heightened security measures, including gamma ray
detectors. 100 Such a combination of steps spread throughout each stage of the plot would be daunting. 101 As Matthew Bunn and Anthony Wier once pointed out, in setting the
parameters of nuclear terrorism, the laws of physics are both kind and cruel. In a sense, they are kind insofar as the
essential ingredients for a bomb are very difficult to produce. However, they are also cruel in the sense that while it is not easy to make a
nuclear bomb, it is not as difficult as believed once the essential ingredients are in hand. 102 Furthermore, as more and more countries undergo industrialization concomitant with the
diffusion of technology and expertise, the hurdles for acquiring these ingredients are now more likely to be surmounted, though HEU is still hard to procure illicitly. In a global economy, dual-
use technologies circulate around the world along with the scientific personnel who design and use them. 103 And although both the US and Russian governments have substantially reduced
their arsenals since the end of the Cold War, many warheads remain. 104 Consequently, there are still many nuclear weapons that could fall into the wrong hands.



2NC No Nuke Terror

No risk of WMD terrorism dont have the resources or focus
Mueller and Stewart, 12 (Professor PolSci Ohio State, and Stewart, Professor Infrastructure
Performance at U of Newcastle, 12, John- Senior Research Scientist Mershon Center for International
Security Studies, Mark- Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow, Summer, The Terrorism
Delusion: Americas Overwrought Response to September 11 International Security, Vol 37 No 1,
ProjectMuse)
Few of the sleepless, it seems, found much solace in the fact that an al-Qaida computer seized in Afghanistan in 2001 indicated
that the groups budget for research on weapons of mass d estruction (almost all of it focused on primitive chemical
weapons work) was $2,000 to $4,000.49 In the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden, officials now have many more al-Qaida
computers, and nothing in their content appears to suggest that the group had the time or inclination,
let alone the money, to set up and staff a uranium-seizing operation, as well as a fancy, super-high-
technology facility to fabricate a bomb. This is a process that requires trusting corrupted foreign
collaborators and other criminals, obtaining and transporting highly guarded material, setting up a
machine shop staffed with top scientists and technicians, and rolling the heavy, cumbersome, and
untested finished product into position to be detonated by a skilled crewall while attracting no
attention from outsiders.50 If the miscreants in the American cases have been unable to create and set
off even the simplest conventional bombs, it stands to reason that none of them were very close to
creating, or having anything to do with, nuclear weaponsor for that matter biological, radiological, or
chemical ones. In fact, with perhaps one exception, none seems to have even dreamed of the prospect ; and the exception is
Jos Padilla (case 2), who apparently mused at one point about creating a dirty bomba device that would disperse radiationor even possibly an atomic one. His
idea about isotope separation was to put uranium into a pail and then to make himself into a human centrifuge by swinging the pail around in great arcs.51 [End
Page 98] Even if a weapon were made abroad and then brought into the United S tates, its detonation
would require individuals in-country with the capacity to receive and handle the complicated weapons
and then to set them off. Thus far, the talent pool appears, to put mildly, very thin.
Theoretical possibilities are irrelevant there are too many difficult steps which make it functionally
impossible
Chapman 12 (Stephen, editorial writer for Chicago Tribune, CHAPMAN: Nuclear terrorism unlikely,
May 22, http://www.oaoa.com/articles/chapman-87719-nuclear-terrorism.html)
A layperson may figure its only a matter of time before the unimaginable comes to pass. Harvards Graham Allison, in his book Nuclear Terrorism, concludes, On
the current course, nuclear terrorism is inevitable. But remember: Afxter Sept. 11, 2001, we all thought more attacks were a
certainty. Yet al-Qaida and its ideological kin have proved unable to mount a second strike. Given their inability
to do something simple say, shoot up a shopping mall or set off a truck bomb its reasonable to ask
whether they have a chance at something much more ambitious. Far from being plausible, argued Ohio State University
professor John Mueller in a presentation at the University of Chicago, the likelihood that a terrorist group will come up with an
atomic bomb seems to be vanishingly small. The events required to make that happen comprise a multitude of
Herculean tasks. First, a terrorist group has to get a bomb or fissile material, perhaps from Russias inventory of
decommissioned warheads. If that were easy, one would have already gone missing. Besides, those devices are
probably no longer a danger, since weapons that are not maintained quickly become what one expert calls radioactive scrap metal. If
terrorists were able to steal a Pakistani bomb, they would still have to defeat the arming codes and
other safeguards designed to prevent unauthorized use. As for Iran, no nuclear state has ever given a bomb to an ally
for reasons even the Iranians can grasp. Stealing some 100 pounds of bomb fuel would require help from rogue individuals inside some
government who are prepared to jeopardize their own lives. Then comes the task of building a bomb. Its not something you
can gin up with spare parts and power tools in your garage. It requires millions of dollars, a safe haven
and advanced equipment plus people with specialized skills, lots of time and a willingness to die for
the cause. Assuming the jihadists vault over those Himalayas, they would have to deliver the weapon onto American soil.
Sure, drug smugglers bring in contraband all the time but seeking their help would confront the plotters with possible exposure or extortion. This, like
every other step in the entire process, means expanding the circle of people who know whats going on,
multiplying the chance someone will blab, back out or screw up. That has heartening implications. If al-Qaida embarks on the
project, it has only a minuscule chance of seeing it bear fruit. Given the formidable odds, it probably wont bother. None of this means
we should stop trying to minimize the risk by securing nuclear stockpiles, monitoring terrorist communications and improving port screening. But it offers good
reason to think that in this war, it appears, the worst eventuality is one that will never happen.



Warming

1NC No Warming Impact

Warming inevitable and doesnt cause extinction
Ridley 6/19/14, (Matt Ridley is the author of The Rational Optimist, a columnist for the Times (London) and a member of the
House of Lords. He spoke at Ideacity in Toronto on June 18., PCC commissioned models to see if global warming would reach
dangerous levels this century. Consensus is no , [ http://tinyurl.com/mgyn8ln ] , //hss-RJ)
The debate over climate change is horribly polarized. From the way it is conducted, you
would think that only two positions are possible: that the whole thing is a hoax or that
catastrophe is inevitable. In fact there is room for lots of intermediate positions,
including the view I hold, which is that man-made climate change is real but not likely
to do much harm, let alone prove to be the greatest crisis facing humankind this
century. After more than 25 years reporting and commenting on this topic for various
media organizations, and having started out alarmed, thats where I have ended up. But
it is not just I that hold this view. I share it with a very large international organization,
sponsored by the United Nations and supported by virtually all the worlds
governments: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) itself. The IPCC
commissioned four different models of what might happen to the world economy, society and technology in the
21st century and what each would mean for the climate, given a certain assumption about the atmospheres sensitivity to carbon
dioxide. Three of the models show a moderate, slow and mild warming, the hottest of which leaves the planet just 2 degrees
Centigrade warmer than today in 2081-2100. The coolest comes out just 0.8 degrees warmer. Now two degrees is the
threshold at which warming starts to turn dangerous, according to the scientific
consensus. That is to say, in three of the four scenarios considered by the IPCC, by the
time my childrens children are elderly, the earth will still not have experienced any
harmful warming, let alone catastrophe. But what about the fourth scenario? This is known as
RCP8.5, and it produces 3.5 degrees of warming in 2081-2100. Curious to know what assumptions lay behind this model, I decided
to look up the original papers describing the creation of this scenario. Frankly, I was gobsmacked. It is a world
that is very, very implausible. For a start, this is a world of continuously increasing
global population so that there are 12 billion on the planet. This is more than a billion
more than the United Nations expects, and flies in the face of the fact that the world
population growth rate has been falling for 50 years and is on course to reach zero i.e.,
stable population in around 2070. More people mean more emissions. Second, the
world is assumed in the RCP8.5 scenario to be burning an astonishing 10 times as much
coal as today, producing 50% of its primary energy from coal, compared with about 30% today. Indeed, because oil is
assumed to have become scarce, a lot of liquid fuel would then be derived from coal. Nuclear and renewable technologies
contribute little, because of a slow pace of innovation and hence fossil fuel technologies continue to dominate the primary
energy portfolio over the entire time horizon of the RCP8.5 scenario. Energy efficiency has improved very little. These are
highly unlikely assumptions. With abundant natural gas displacing coal on a huge scale in the United States today,
with the price of solar power plummeting, with nuclear power experiencing a revival, with gigantic methane-hydrate gas resources
being discovered on the seabed, with energy efficiency rocketing upwards, and with population growth rates continuing to fall fast
in virtually every country in the world, the one thing we can say about RCP8.5 is that it is very, very implausible. Notice,
however, that even so, it is not a world of catastrophic pain. The per capita income of
the average human being in 2100 is three times what it is now. Poverty would be
history. So its hardly Armageddon. But theres an even more startling fact. We now have many different studies
of climate sensitivity based on observational data and they all converge on the conclusion that it is much lower than assumed by the
IPCC in these models. It has to be, otherwise global temperatures would have risen much faster than they have over the past 50
years. As Ross McKitrick noted on this page earlier this week, temperatures have not risen at all now for more than 17 years. With
these much more realistic estimates of sensitivity (known as transient climate response), even RCP8.5 cannot produce dangerous
warming. It manages just 2.1C of warming by 2081-2100. That is to say, even if you pile crazy assumption upon crazy assumption
till you have an edifice of vanishingly small probability, you cannot even manage to make climate change cause minor damage in
the time of our grandchildren, let alone catastrophe. Thats not me saying this its the IPCC itself. But what strikes me as truly
fascinating about these scenarios is that they tell us that globalization, innovation and economic growth are unambiguously good
for the environment. At the other end of the scale from RCP8.5 is a much more cheerful scenario called RCP2.6. In this happy world,
climate change is not a problem at all in 2100, because carbon dioxide emissions have plummeted thanks to the rapid development
of cheap nuclear and solar, plus a surge in energy efficiency. The RCP2.6 world is much, much richer. The average person has an
income about 15 times todays in real terms, so that most people are far richer than Americans are today. And it achieves this by free
trade, massive globalization, and lots of investment in new technology. All the things the green movement keeps saying it opposes
because they will wreck the planet. The answer to climate change is, and always has been, innovation. To worry now in
2014 about a very small, highly implausible set of circumstances in 2100 that just might,
if climate sensitivity is much higher than the evidence suggests, produce a marginal
damage to the world economy, makes no sense. Think of all the innovation that happened between 1914 and
2000. Do we really think there will be less in this century? As for how to deal with that small risk, well there are several possible
options. You could encourage innovation and trade. You could put a modest but growing tax on carbon to nudge innovators in the
right direction. You could offer prizes for low-carbon technologies. All of these might make a little sense. But the one thing you
should not do is pour public subsidy into supporting old-fashioned existing technologies that produce more carbon dioxide per unit
of energy even than coal (bio-energy), or into ones that produce expensive energy (existing solar), or that have very low energy
density and so require huge areas of land (wind). The IPCC produced two reports last year. One said that the cost of climate change
is likely to be less than 2% of GDP by the end of this century. The other said that the cost of decarbonizing the world economy with
renewable energy is likely to be 4% of GDP. Why do something that you know will do more harm than good?

Asia pollution offsets any US action global warming is inevitable
Knappenberger 12 Mr. Paul Knappenberger is the Assistant Director of the Cato Institutes Center for
the Study of Science. He holds an M.S. degree in Environmental Sciences (1990) from the University of
Virginia as well as a B.A. degree in Environmental Sciences (1986) from the same institution.His over 20
years of experience as a climate researcher have included 10 years with the Virginia State Climatology
Office and 13 years with New Hope Environmental Services, Inc. June 7th, 2012, "Asian Air Pollution
Warms U.S More than Our GHG Emissions (More futility for U.S. EPA)"
www.masterresource.org/2012/06/asian-air-pollution-warming/
The whims of foreign nations, not to mention Mother Nature, can completely offset any climate changes induced by U.S. greenhouse gas
emissions reductions. So, whats the point of forcing Americans into different energy choices? A new study provides evidence
that air pollution emanating from Asia will warm the U.S. as much or more than warming from U.S.
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The implication? Efforts by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(and otherwise) to mitigate anthropogenic climate change is moot. If the future temperature rise in
the U.S. is subject to the whims of Asian environmental and energy policy, then what sense does it make
for Americans to have their energy choices regulated by efforts aimed at mitigating future temperature
increases across the countryefforts which will have less of an impact on temperatures than the
policies enacted across Asia? Maybe the EPA should reconsider the perceived effectiveness of its
greenhouse gas emission regulationsat least when it comes to impacting temperatures across the U.S. New Study A new
study just published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters is authored by a team led by
Haiyan Teng from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, Colorado. The paper is titled Potential
Impacts of Asian Carbon Aerosols on Future US Warming. Skipping the details of this climate modeling study and cutting to the chase, here is
the abstract of the paper: This study uses an atmosphere-ocean fully coupled climate model to investigate
possible remote impacts of Asian carbonaceous aerosols on US climate change. We took a 21st century mitigation
scenario as a reference, and carried out three sets of sensitivity experiments in which the prescribed carbonaceous aerosol concentrations over
a selected Asian domain are increased by a factor of two, six, and ten respectively during the period of 20052024. The resulting
enhancement of atmospheric solar absorption (only the direct effect of aerosols is included) over Asia
induces tropospheric heating anomalies that force large-scale circulation changes which, averaged over
the twenty-year period, add as much as an additional 0.4C warming over the eastern US during
winter and over most of the US during summer. Such remote impacts are confirmed by an atmosphere
stand-alone experiment with specified heating anomalies over Asia that represent the direct effect of
the carbon aerosols. Usually, when considering the climate impact from carbon aerosol emissions (primarily in the form of black
carbon, or soot), the effect is thought to be largely contained to the local or regional scale because the atmospheric
lifetime of these particulates is only on the order of a week (before they are rained out). Since Asia lies on the far side of the Pacific Oceana
distance which requires about a week for air masses to navigatewe usually arent overly concerned about the quality of Asian air or the
quantity of junk that they emit into it. By the time it gets here, it has largely been naturally scrubbed clean. But in the Teng et al. study, the
authors find that, according to their climate model, the local heating of the atmosphere by the Asian carbon aerosols
(which are quite good at absorbing sunlight) can impart changes to the character of the larger-scale
atmospheric circulation patterns. And these changes to the broader atmospheric flow produce an
effect on the weather patterns in the U.S. and thus induce a change in the climate here characterized by 0.4C *surface air
temperature] warming on average over the eastern US during winter and over almost the entire US during summer averaged over the 2005
2024 period. While most of the summer warming doesnt start to kick in until Asian carbonaceous aerosol emissions are upped in the model to
10 times what they are today, the winter warming over the eastern half of the country is large (several tenths of a C) even at twice the current
rate of Asian emissions. Now lets revisit just how much global warming that stringent U.S. greenhouse gas emissions reductions may avoid
averaged across the country. In my Master Resource post Climate Impacts of Waxman-Markey (the IPCC-based arithmetic of no gain) I
calculated that a more than 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. by the year 2050 would
result in a reduction of global temperatures (from where they otherwise would be) of about 0.05C.
Since the U.S. is projected to warm slightly more than the global average (land warms faster than the
oceans), a 0.05C of global temperature reduction probably amounts to about 0.075C of temperature
savings averaged across the U.S., by the year 2050. Comparing the amount of warming in the U.S.
saved by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by some 80% to the amount of warming added in the
U.S. by increases in Asian black carbon (soot) aerosol emissions (at least according to Teng et al.) and
there is no clear winner. Which points out the anemic effect that U.S. greenhouse gas reductions will
have on the climate of the U.S. and just how easily the whims of foreign nations, not to mention
Mother Nature, can completely offset any climate changes induced by our greenhouse gas emissions
reductions. And even if the traditional form of air pollution (e.g., soot) does not increase across Asia (a slim chance of that), greenhouse
gases emitted there certainly will. For example, at the current growth rate, new greenhouse gas emissions from China will
completely subsume an 80% reduction in U.S. greenhouse gas emission in just over a decade. Once again,
pointing out that a reduction in domestic greenhouse gases is for naught, at least when it comes to mitigating climate change. So, whats the
point, really, of forcing Americans into different energy choices? As I have repeatedly pointed out, nothing we do here (when it
comes to greenhouse gas emissions) will make any difference either domestically, or globally, when it
comes to influences on the climate. What the powers-that-be behind emissions reduction schemes in the U.S. are hoping for is
that 1) it doesnt hurt us too much, and 2) that China and other large developing nations will follow our lead. Both outcomes seem dubious at
time scales that make a difference.


No impact warming promotes plant growth and species can adapt, IPCC
exaggerates
Carter et al. 14, Dr. Craig D. Idso is founder and chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.
Since 1998, he has been the editor and chief contributor to the online magazine CO2 Science. He is the author of several books,
including The Many Benefits of Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment (2011) and CO2 , Global Warming and Coral Reefs (2009). He earned
a Ph.D. in geography from Arizona State University (ASU), where he lectured in meteorology and was a faculty researcher in the
Office of Climatology. Dr. Sherwood B. Idso is president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.
Previously he was a Research Physicist with the U.S. Department of Agricultures Agricultural Research Service at the U.S. Water
Conservation Laboratory in Phoenix, Arizona. He is the author or co-author of over 500 scientific publications including the books
Carbon Dioxide: Friend or Foe? (1982) and Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: Earth in Transition (1989). He served as an Adjunct
Professor in the Departments of Geology, Geography, and Botany and Microbiology at Arizona State University. He earned a Ph.D.
in soil science from the University of Minnesota. Dr. Robert M. Carter is a stratigrapher and marine geologist with degrees from the
University of Otago (New Zealand) and University of Cambridge (England). He is the author of Climate: The Counter Consensus
(2010) and Taxing Air: Facts and Fallacies About Climate Change (2013). Carter's professional service includes terms as head of the
Geology Department, James Cook University, chairman of the Earth Sciences Panel of the Australian Research Council, chairman of
the national Marine Science and Technologies Committee, and director of the Australian Office of the Ocean Drilling Program. He is
currently an Emeritus Fellow of the Institute of Public Affairs (Melbourne). Dr. S. Fred Singer is one of the most distinguished
atmospheric physicists in the U.S. He established and served as the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, now part of
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and earned a U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal Award
for his technical leadership. He is coauthor, with Dennis T. Avery, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years (2007, second
ed. 2008) and many other books. Dr. Singer served as professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, VA (1971-94), and is founder and chairman of the nonprofit Science and Environmental Policy Project. He earned a
Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University. Barnes, David J. Australian Institute of Marine Science (retired) Australia Botkin, Daniel
B. University of Miami University of California Santa Barbara USA Cloyd, Raymond A. Kansas State University USA Crockford,
Susan University of Victoria, B.C. Canada Cui, Weihong Chinese Academy of Sciences China DeGroot, Kees Shell International
(retired) The Netherlands Dillon, Robert G. Physician USA Dunn, John Dale Physician USA Ellestad, Ole Henrik Research Council
of Norway (retired) Norway Goldberg, Fred Swedish Polar Institute Sweden Goldman, Barry Australian Museum Lizard Island
Research Station (retired) Australia Hoese, H. Dickson Consulting Marine Biologist USA Jdal, Morten Independent Scientist
Norway Khandekar, Madhav Environment Canada (retired) Canada Kutilek, Miroslav Czech Technical University (emeritus) Czech
Republic Leavitt, Steven W. University of Arizona Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research USA Maccabee, Howard Doctors for Disaster
Preparedness USA Marohasy, Jennifer Central Queensland University Australia Ollier, Cliff University of Western Australia
Australia Petch, Jim University of Manchester Trican Manchester Metropolitan University (retired) United Kingdom Reginato,
Robert J. Agricultural Research Service U.S. Department of Agriculture USA Reiter, Paul Laboratoire Insectes et Maladies
Infectieuses Institut Pasteur France Segalstad, Tom Resource and Environmental Geology University of Oslo Norway Sharp, Gary
Independent Consultant Center for Climate/ Ocean Resources Study USA Starck, Walter Independent Marine Biologist Australia
Stockwell, David Central Queensland University Australia Taylor, Mitchell Lakehead University Canada Weber, Gerd Independent
Meteorologist Germany Wilson, Bastow University of Otago New Zealand Wust, Raphael James Cook University Australia,
(Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts, http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/ccr2b/pdf/Summary-for-
Policymakers.pdf, 3/31/2014) Kerwin
5. Impact on Terrestrial Animals IPCCs Fourth Assessment Report claimed new evidence suggests that climate-driven extinctions
and range retractions are already widespread and the projected impacts on biodiversity are significant and of key relevance, since
global losses in biodiversity are irreversible (very high confidence) (IPCC, 2007). However, as shown in the first volume of the
Climate Change Reconsidered II series, Physical Science, there is a growing divide between IPCCs climate
model simulations and real-world observations of global warmth. The species-modeling
research IPCC almost exclusively relies on to make these predictions depends on
climate models known to exaggerate future global warming and extreme weather
events. Even assuming IPCC climate models were unbiased and reasonably accurate at regional scales, the climate envelope
models used by IPCC are deeply flawed due to assumptions about the immobility of species that are routinely contradicted by real-
world observations. IPCC also improperly characterizes the adaptive responses (e.g., range shifts,
phenotypic or genetic adaptations) of many species as supporting their model-based extinction
claims, when in reality such adaptive responses provide documentary evidence of
species resilience. Chapter 5 begins with a review and analysis of IPCC-based species extinction claims, highlighting many
of the problems inherent in the models on which such claims are based. The model projections are then evaluated against real-world
observations of various animal species and their response to what IPCC has called the unprecedented rise in atmospheric CO2 and
temperature of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Results of that evaluation reveal that although
there likely will be some changes in species population dynamics, few (if any) likely
will be driven even close to extinction. In a number of instances, real-world data indicate
warmer temperatures and higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations will be highly
beneficial, favoring a proliferation of species. IPCC continues to ignore such positive externalities of rising
temperature and atmospheric CO2. Key findings from Chapter 5 appear in Figure 8. 6. Impact on Aquatic Life IPCC postulates that
human interference in the climate will significantly harm aquatic life by causing temperatures of the worlds water bodies to rise
and through the absorption of CO2 from the atmosphere into water, thereby lowering the pH of freshwater and ocean water (a
process referred to as acidification). In both scenarios, IPCC projects marine and freshwater species will be negatively impacted
and will experience future declines, which, in some instances, may be so severe as to cause species extinctions. In contrast, the
material presented in Chapter 6, representing the findings of hundreds of peerreviewed research
analyses, suggests a much better future is in store for Earths aquatic life. Many
laboratory and field studies demonstrate growth and developmental improvements in
response to higher temperatures and reduced water pH levels. Other research
illustrates the capability of both marine and freshwater species to tolerate and adapt to
the rising temperature and pH decline of the planets water bodies. When these observations are
considered, the pessimistic projections of IPCC give way to considerable optimism with respect to the future of the planets marine
life. The key findings of this chapter, which challenge the alarming and negative projections of IPCC, are presented in Figure 10. 7.
Impact on Human Health Carbon dioxide (CO2) is invisible, odorless, nontoxic, and does not
seriously affect human health until the CO2 content of the air reaches approximately
15,000 ppm, more than 37 times greater than the current concentration of atmospheric
CO2 (Luft et al., 1974). There is no reason to be concerned about any direct adverse human
health consequences of the ongoing rise in the airs CO2 content now or in the future, as
even extreme model projections do not indicate anthropogenic activities will raise the
airs CO2 concentration above 1,000 to 2,000 ppm. Nevertheless, IPCC contends rising CO2 concentrations
are causing several indirect threats to human health, which they project will worsen as the airs CO2 concentration rises in the
future. In a draft Technical Summary of its upcoming report, Working Group II claims, The health of human populations is
sensitive to shifts in weather patterns and other aspects of climate change [very high confidence] and There is emerging evidence
of non-linearities in response (such as greater-thanexpected mortality due to heat waves) as climates become more extreme (IPCC,
2013b). Research reviewed in CCR-IIb, however, shows IPCCs view of the impacts of rising temperatures and atmospheric CO2 on
human health is simply wrong. Numerous peer-reviewed studies demonstrate a warmer planet is
beneficial to humanity, as warmer temperatures in all parts of the world lead to
decreases in temperature-related mortality. The key findings of this chapter are presented in Figure 11. The
medical literature shows warmer temperatures and a smaller difference between daily
high and low temperatures, as occurred during the twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries, reduce mortality rates due to cardiovascular and respiratory disease and
stroke occurrence. Similarly, the research is quite clear that climate has exerted only a
minimal influence on recent trends in vector-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue fever, and tick-
borne diseases. Other factors, many of them related to economic and technological setbacks or progress and not to weather, are far
more important in determining the transmission and prevalence of such diseases. Finally, and perhaps surprisingly, IPCC entirely
overlooks the positive effects of rising levels of atmospheric CO2 on human health. Carbon dioxide fertilization has
been shown to enhance certain health-promoting substances in plants, such as
antioxidants, vitamin C, and fatty acids, and promote the growth of plants such as St.
Johns wort used for the treatment of a variety of illnesses. In this way, global warming
portends great health benefits for humans. IPCC makes no mention of these benefits.

2NC No Warming Impact

No impact warming will take centuries and adaptation solves
Mendelsohn 9 Robert O. Mendelsohn 9, the Edwin Weyerhaeuser Davis Professor, Yale School of
Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, June 2009, Climate Change and Economic
Growth, online: http://www.growthcommission.org/storage/cgdev/documents/gcwp060web.pdf
These statements are largely alarmist and misleading. Although climate change is a serious problem that deserves attention,
societys immediate behavior has an extremely low probability of leading to catastrophic
consequences. The science and economics of climate change is quite clear that emissions over the next few
decades will lead to only mild consequences. The severe impacts predicted by alarmists require a century (or
two in the case of Stern 2006) of no mitigation. Many of the predicted impacts assume there will be no or little
adaptation. The net economic impacts from climate change over the next 50 years will be small regardless. Most of the more severe
impacts will take more than a century or even a millennium to unfold and many of these potential
impacts will never occur because people will adapt. It is not at all apparent that immediate and
dramatic policies need to be developed to thwart longrange climate risks. What is needed are longrun balanced
responses.

Warming rates are slowing and its not anthropogenic
Carter et al. 14, Dr. Craig D. Idso is founder and chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.
Since 1998, he has been the editor and chief contributor to the online magazine CO2 Science. He is the author of several books,
including The Many Benefits of Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment (2011) and CO2 , Global Warming and Coral Reefs (2009). He earned
a Ph.D. in geography from Arizona State University (ASU), where he lectured in meteorology and was a faculty researcher in the
Office of Climatology. Dr. Sherwood B. Idso is president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.
Previously he was a Research Physicist with the U.S. Department of Agricultures Agricultural Research Service at the U.S. Water
Conservation Laboratory in Phoenix, Arizona. He is the author or co-author of over 500 scientific publications including the books
Carbon Dioxide: Friend or Foe? (1982) and Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: Earth in Transition (1989). He served as an Adjunct
Professor in the Departments of Geology, Geography, and Botany and Microbiology at Arizona State University. He earned a Ph.D.
in soil science from the University of Minnesota. Dr. Robert M. Carter is a stratigrapher and marine geologist with degrees from the
University of Otago (New Zealand) and University of Cambridge (England). He is the author of Climate: The Counter Consensus
(2010) and Taxing Air: Facts and Fallacies About Climate Change (2013). Carter's professional service includes terms as head of the
Geology Department, James Cook University, chairman of the Earth Sciences Panel of the Australian Research Council, chairman of
the national Marine Science and Technologies Committee, and director of the Australian Office of the Ocean Drilling Program. He is
currently an Emeritus Fellow of the Institute of Public Affairs (Melbourne). Dr. S. Fred Singer is one of the most distinguished
atmospheric physicists in the U.S. He established and served as the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, now part of
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and earned a U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal Award
for his technical leadership. He is coauthor, with Dennis T. Avery, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years (2007, second
ed. 2008) and many other books. Dr. Singer served as professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, VA (1971-94), and is founder and chairman of the nonprofit Science and Environmental Policy Project. He earned a
Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University. Barnes, David J. Australian Institute of Marine Science (retired) Australia Botkin, Daniel
B. University of Miami University of California Santa Barbara USA Cloyd, Raymond A. Kansas State University USA Crockford,
Susan University of Victoria, B.C. Canada Cui, Weihong Chinese Academy of Sciences China DeGroot, Kees Shell International
(retired) The Netherlands Dillon, Robert G. Physician USA Dunn, John Dale Physician USA Ellestad, Ole Henrik Research Council
of Norway (retired) Norway Goldberg, Fred Swedish Polar Institute Sweden Goldman, Barry Australian Museum Lizard Island
Research Station (retired) Australia Hoese, H. Dickson Consulting Marine Biologist USA Jdal, Morten Independent Scientist
Norway Khandekar, Madhav Environment Canada (retired) Canada Kutilek, Miroslav Czech Technical University (emeritus) Czech
Republic Leavitt, Steven W. University of Arizona Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research USA Maccabee, Howard Doctors for Disaster
Preparedness USA Marohasy, Jennifer Central Queensland University Australia Ollier, Cliff University of Western Australia
Australia Petch, Jim University of Manchester Trican Manchester Metropolitan University (retired) United Kingdom Reginato,
Robert J. Agricultural Research Service U.S. Department of Agriculture USA Reiter, Paul Laboratoire Insectes et Maladies
Infectieuses Institut Pasteur France Segalstad, Tom Resource and Environmental Geology University of Oslo Norway Sharp, Gary
Independent Consultant Center for Climate/ Ocean Resources Study USA Starck, Walter Independent Marine Biologist Australia
Stockwell, David Central Queensland University Australia Taylor, Mitchell Lakehead University Canada Weber, Gerd Independent
Meteorologist Germany Wilson, Bastow University of Otago New Zealand Wust, Raphael James Cook University Australia,
(Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts, http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/ccr2b/pdf/Summary-for-
Policymakers.pdf, 3/31/2014) Kerwin
Global climate models are unable to make accurate projections of climate even 10
years ahead, let alone the 100-year period that has been adopted by policy planners. The
output of such models should therefore not be used to guide public policy formulation. Neither the rate nor the
magnitude of the reported late twentieth century surface warming (19792000) lay outside the range
of normal natural variability, nor were they in any way unusual compared to earlier episodes in Earths climatic
history. Solar forcing of temperature change is likely more important than is currently
recognized. No unambiguous evidence exists of dangerous interference in the global climate caused by human-related CO2
emissions. In particular, the cryosphere is not melting at an enhanced rate; sea-level rise is not
accelerating; and no systematic changes have been documented in evaporation or
rainfall or in the magnitude or intensity of extreme meteorological events. Any
human global climate signal is so small as to be nearly indiscernible against the
background variability of the natural climate system. Climate change is always occurring. A phase of
temperature stasis or cooling has succeeded the mild warming of the twentieth century. Similar periods of warming
and cooling due to natural variability are certain to occur in the future irrespective of
human emissions of greenhouse gases.

Warming inevitable and temperature rises are negligible reject their inaccurate models
Michaels and Knappenberger 11/19/13, (*Chip Knappenberger is the assistant director of the Center for the
Study of Science at the Cato Institute, and coordinates the scientific and outreach activities for the Center. He has over 20 years of
experience in climate research and public outreach, including 10 years with the Virginia State Climatology Office and 15 years as the
Research Coordinator for New Hope Environmental Services, Inc, **Patrick J. Michaels is the director of the Center for the Study of
Science at the Cato Institute. Michaels is a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and was program chair
for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society. He was a research professor of Environmental
Sciences at University of Virginia for thirty years. Michaels was a contributing author and is a reviewer of the United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Chanage, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, With or Without a Pause
Climate Models Still Project Too Much Warming, [ http://www.cato.org/blog/or-without-pause-climate-models-still-project-too-
much-warming ] //hss-RJ)
A new paper just hit the scientific literature that argues that the apparent pause in the rise in global average surface temperatures
during the past 16 years was really just a slowdown. As you may imagine, this paper, by Kevin Cowtan and Robert Way is being
hotly discussed in the global warming blogs, with reaction ranging from a warm embrace by the global-warming-is-going-to-be-
bad-for-us crowd to revulsion from the human-activities-have-no-effect-on-the-climate claque. The lukewarmers (a school we take
some credit for establishing) seem to be taking the results in stride. After all, the pause as curious as it
is/was, is not central to the primary argument that, yes, human activities are pressuring
the planet to warm, but that the rate of warming is going to be much slower than is
being projected by the collection of global climate models (upon which mainstream
projections of future climate changeand the resulting climate alarm (i.e., calls for
emission regulations, etc.)are based). Under the adjustments to the observed global
temperature history put together by Cowtan and Way, the models fare a bit better than
they do with the unadjusted temperature record. That is, the observed temperature
trend over the past 34 years (the period of record analyzed by Cowtan and Way) is a
tiny bit closer to the average trend from the collection of climate models used in the
new report from the U.N.s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) than is
the old temperature record. Specifically, while the trend in observed global
temperatures from 1979-2012 as calculated by Cowtan and Way is 0.17C/decade, it is
0.16C/decade in the temperature record compiled by the U.K. Hadley Center (the
record that Cowtan and Way adjusted). Because of the sampling errors associated with
trend estimation, these values are not significantly different from one another. Whether
the 0.17C/decade is significantly different from the climate model average simulated
trend during that period of 0.23C/decade is discussed extensively below. But, suffice it
to say that an insignificant difference of 0.01C/decade in the global trend measured
over more than 30 years is pretty small beer and doesnt give model apologists very
much to get happy over. Instead, the attention is being deflected to The Pausethe
leveling off of global surface temperatures during the past 16 years (give or take). Here,
the new results from Cowtan and Way show that during the period 1997-2012, instead
of a statistically insignificant rise at a rate of 0.05C/decade as is contained in the old
temperature record, the rise becomes a statistically significant 0.12C/decade. The Pause is
transformed into The Slowdown and alarmists rejoice because global warming hasnt stopped after all. (If the logic sounds
backwards, it does to us as well, if you were worried about catastrophic global warming, wouldnt you rejoice at findings that
indicate that future climate change was going to be only modest, more so than results to the contrary?) The science behind the new
Cowtan and Way research is still being digested by the community of climate scientists and other interested parties alike. The
main idea is that the existing compilations of the global average temperature are very
data-sparse in the high latitudes. And since the Arctic (more so than the Antarctic) is warming faster than the global
average, the lack of data there may mean that the global average temperature trend may be underestimated. Cowtan and Way
developed a methodology which relied on other limited sources of temperature information from the Arctic (such as floating buoys
and satellite observations) to try to make an estimate of how the surface temperature was behaving in regions lacking more
traditional temperature observations (the authors released an informative video explaining their research which may better help
you understand what they did). They found that the warming in the data-sparse regions was progressing faster than the global
average (especially during the past couple of years) and that when they included the data that they derived for these regions in the
computation of the global average temperature, they found the global trend was higher than previously reportedjust how much
higher depended on the period over which the trend was calculated. As we showed, the trend more than doubled over the period
from 1997-2012, but barely increased at all over the longer period 1979-2012. Figure 1 shows the impact on the global average
temperature trend for all trend lengths between 10 and 35 years (incorporating our educated guess as to what the 2013 temperature
anomaly will be), and compares that to the distribution of climate model simulations of the same period. Statistically speaking,
instead of there being a clear inconsistency (i.e., the observed trend value falls outside of the range which encompasses 95% of all
modeled trends) between the observations and the climate mode simulations for lengths ranging generally from 11 to 28 years and a
marginal inconsistency (i.e., the observed trend value falls outside of the range which encompasses 90% of all modeled trends) for
most of the other lengths, now the observations track closely the marginal inconsistency line, although trends of length 17, 19, 20, 21
remain clearly inconsistent with the collection of modeled trends. Still, throughout the entirely of the 35-yr
period (ending in 2013), the observed trend lies far below the model average simulated
trend (additional information on the impact of the new Cowtan and Way adjustments
on modeled/observed temperature comparison can be found here). The Cowtan and
Way analysis is an attempt at using additional types of temperature information, or
extracting information from records that have already told their stories, to fill in the missing data in the Arctic. There are
concerns about the appropriateness of both the data sources and the methodologies
applied to them. A major one is in the applicability of satellite data at such high
latitudes. The nature of the satellites orbit forces it to look sideways in order to
sample polar regions. In fact, the orbit is such that the highest latitude areas cannot be
seen at all. This is compounded by the fact that cold regions can develop substantial
inversions of near-ground temperature, in which temperature actually rises with
height such that there is not a straightforward relationship between the surface
temperature and the temperature of the lower atmosphere where the satellites measure
the temperature. If the nature of this complex relationship is not constant in time, an
error is introduced into the Cowtan and Way analysis. Another unresolved problem
comes up when extrapolating land-based weather station data far into the Arctic Ocean.
While land temperatures can bounce around a lot, the fact that much of the ocean is
partially ice-covered for many months. Under well-mixed conditions, this forces the
near-surface temperature to be constrained to values near the freezing point of salt
water, whether or not the associated land station is much warmer or colder. You can run this
experiment yourself by filling a glass with a mix of ice and water and then making sure it is well mixed. The water surface
temperature must hover around 33F until all the ice melts. Given that the near-surface temperature is close to the water
temperature, the limitations of land data become obvious. Considering all of the above, we advise caution with regard to Cowtan
and Ways findings. While adding high arctic data should increase the observed trend, the nature of the data means that the amount
of additional rise is subject to further revision. As they themselves note, theres quite a bit more work to be done this area. In the
meantime, their results have tentatively breathed a small hint of life back into the climate models, basically buying them a bit more
timetime for either the observed temperatures to start rising rapidly as current models expect, or, time for the modelers to try to
fix/improve cloud processes, oceanic processes, and other process of variability (both natural and anthropogenic) that lie behind
what would be the clearly overheated projections. Weve also taken a look at how sensitive the results
are to the length of the ongoing pause/slowdown. Our educated guess is that the bit
of time that the Cowtan and Way findings bought the models is only a few years long,
and it is a fact, not a guess, that each additional year at the current rate of lukewarming
increases the disconnection between the models and reality.

2NC IPCC Indicts

IPCC report is nothing but alarmism they cant explain why ice caps are expanding and
warming has halted
Daily Mail 13, this article is citing Dr Richard Lindzen, an MIT climate professor, (MIT scientist ridicules IPCC climate
change report, calls findings 'hilarious incoherence' , http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2438434/MIT-scientist-ridicules-
IPCC-climate-change-report-calls-findings-hilarious-incoherence.html, 9/23/2013) Kerwin
Not all experts agree with the latest United Nations report on global warming, some are
even amused by its findings. A climate scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) has come out blasting the report for blaming humans for a global
warming trend that appears to have cooled in recent decades and then glossing over
the warming slowdown. I think that the latest IPCC report has truly sunk to level of
hilarious incoherence, Dr. Richard Lindzen told Climate Depot a site known for questioning the theory of global
warming. Dr Linzens amusement from the lack of correlation between predictions and
actual conditions. They are proclaiming increased confidence in their models as the
discrepancies between their models and observations increase, Dr Linzen continued.
The UNs Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change asserted in the report that it is 95
per cent sure humans use of fossil fuels is the cause of global warming. The report also
provided what Dr Linzen felt was a shoddy explanation for the lack of warming over the past 17 years. Their excuse for
the absence of warming over the past 17 years is that the heat is hiding in the deep
ocean, the amused scientist said. However, this is simply an admission that the models fail to
simulate the exchanges of heat between the surface layers and the deeper oceans. This
slapdash explanation for the lack of warming, Dr Linzen stressed, is proof the IPCC
knows little about what is actually happening. They now, somewhat obscurely, admit
that their crucial assumption was totally unjustified, said the amused scientist. Dr Linzens derision of
the IPCC report comes amid evidence that warming hasnt occurred over the past 17
years, and that polar ice caps are even expanding. Despite strong evidence that global warming may be on
hold, the IPCC still insisted that the reports findings should alarm anyone denying the theory. The report found support among
American politicians. Chief among them, Secretary of State John Kerry. Those who deny the science or choose excuses over action
are playing with fire, Secretary of State John Kerry said shortly after the reports release. Once again, the science grows clearer,
the case grows more compelling and the costs of inaction grow beyond anything that anyone with conscience or common sense
should be willing to even contemplate, he added.

Their consensus claims are lies all of their data is wrong
Tol 6/6, Richard Tol is a professor of economics at the University of Sussex, and a professor of the economics of climate change
at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is a member of the Academia Europaea. He was a contributer for the IPCC before he
withdrew due to their exaggeration. He has a PhD from VU University Amsterdam. (The claim of a 97% consensus on global
warming does not stand up Consensus is irrelevant in science. There are plenty of examples in history where everyone agreed and
everyone was wrong, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2014/jun/06/97-consensus-global-warming, 6/6/2014)
Kerwin
Dana Nuccitelli writes that I accidentally confirm the results of last years 97% global
warming consensus study. Nothing could be further from the truth. I show that the
97% consensus claim does not stand up. At best, Nuccitelli, John Cook and colleagues may have accidentally
stumbled on the right number. Cook and co selected some 12,000 papers from the scientific
literature to test whether these papers support the hypothesis that humans played a
substantial role in the observed warming of the Earth. 12,000 is a strange number. The
climate literature is much larger. The number of papers on the detection and attribution
of climate change is much, much smaller. Cooks sample is not representative. Any
conclusion they draw is not about the literature but rather about the papers they
happened to find. Most of the papers they studied are not about climate change and its
causes, but many were taken as evidence nonetheless. Papers on carbon taxes naturally
assume that carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming but assumptions are not
conclusions. Cooks claim of an increasing consensus over time is entirely due to an increase of the number of irrelevant
papers that Cook and co mistook for evidence. The abstracts of the 12,000 papers were rated, twice, by 24 volunteers. Twelve
rapidly dropped out, leaving an enormous task for the rest. This shows. There are patterns in the data that
suggest that raters may have fallen asleep with their nose on the keyboard. In July 2013, Mr
Cook claimed to have data that showed this is not the case. In May 2014, he claimed that data never existed. The data is also
ridden with error. By Cooks own calculations, 7% of the ratings are wrong. Spot checks
suggest a much larger number of errors, up to one-third. Cook tried to validate the
results by having authors rate their own papers. In almost two out of three cases, the
author disagreed with Cooks team about the message of the paper in question. Attempts to
obtain Cooks data for independent verification have been in vain. Cook sometimes claims that the raters are interviewees who are
entitled to privacy but the raters were never asked any personal detail. At other times, Cook claims that the raters are not
interviewees but interviewers. The 97% consensus paper rests on yet another claim: the raters are incidental, it is the rated papers
that matter. If you measure temperature, you make sure that your thermometers are all
properly and consistently calibrated. Unfortunately, although he does have the data,
Cook does not test whether the raters judge the same paper in the same way. Consensus
is irrelevant in science. There are plenty of examples in history where everyone agreed
and everyone was wrong. Cooks consensus is also irrelevant in policy. They try to
show that climate change is real and human-made. It is does not follow whether and by
how much greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced. The debate on climate policy
is polarised, often using discussions about climate science as a proxy. People who want
to argue that climate researchers are secretive and incompetent only have to point to the
97% consensus paper. On 29 May, the Committee on Science, Space and Technology of the US House of Representatives
examined the procedures of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Having been active in the IPCC since 1994,
serving in various roles in all its three working groups, most recently as a convening lead author for the fifth assessment report of
working group II, my testimony to the committee briefly reiterated some of the mistakes made in the fifth assessment report but
focused on the structural faults in the IPCC, notably the selection of authors and staff, the weaknesses in the review process, and the
competition for attention between chapters. I highlighted that the IPCC is a natural monopoly that is largely unregulated. I
recommended that its assessment reports be replaced by an assessment journal. In an article on 2 June, Nuccitelli ignores the subject
matter of the hearing, focusing instead on a brief interaction about the 97% consensus paper co-authored by Nuccitelli. He
unfortunately missed the gist of my criticism of his work. Successive literature reviews, including the ones by the IPCC, have time
and again established that there has been substantial climate change over the last one and a half centuries and that humans caused a
large share of that climate change. There is disagreement, of course, particularly on the extent to which humans contributed to the
observed warming. This is part and parcel of a healthy scientific debate. There is widespread agreement, though, that climate
change is real and human-made. I believe Nuccitelli and colleagues are wrong about a number of
issues. Mistakenly thinking that agreement on the basic facts of climate change would
induce agreement on climate policy, Nuccitelli and colleagues tried to quantify the
consensus, and failed. In his defence, Nuccitelli argues that I do not dispute their main result. Nuccitelli fundamentally
misunderstands research. Science is not a set of results. Science is a method. If the method is
wrong, the results are worthless. Nuccitellis pieces are two of a series of articles published in the Guardian
impugning my character and my work. Nuccitelli falsely accuses me of journal shopping, a despicable practice. The
theologist Michael Rosenberger has described climate protection as a new religion,
based on a fear for the apocalypse, with dogmas, heretics and inquisitors like Nuccitelli.
I prefer my politics secular and my science sound.



Government agendas contradict science and promote misallocation of funding
Green 10/28, Kesten Green is a senior lecturer at the University of South Australia in Adelaide and is director of the major
website on forecasting methods, www.ForecastingPrinciples.com. J. Scott Armstrong teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and
has published 12 peer-reviewed articles on forecasting. Willie Soon of Salem, Massachusetts is a solar and climate scientist who has
been frequently published in the peer-reviewed literature. (The Science Fiction of IPCC Climate Models,
http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2013/10/28/science-fiction-ipcc-climate-models, 10/28/2013) Kerwin
Government Agendas Contradict Science Is it surprising the government would
support an alarm lacking scientific support? Not really. In our study of situations
analogous to the current alarm over global warming, we identified 26 earlier
movements based on scenarios of manmade disaster, including the global cooling alarm
in the 1960s to 1970s. None of them was based on scientific forecasts. And yet,
governments imposed costly policies in response to 23 of them. In no case did the
forecast of major harm come true. There is no support from scientific forecasting for an
upward trend in temperatures, or a downward trend. Without support from scientific forecasts,
the global warming alarm is baseless and should be ignored. Government programs,
subsidies, taxes, and regulations proposed as responses to the global warming alarm
result in misallocations of valuable resources. They lead to inflated energy prices,
declining international competitiveness, disappearing industries and jobs, and threats
to health and welfare. Humanity can do better with the old, simple, tried-and-true no-trend climate forecasting model.
This traditional method is also consistent with scientific forecasting principles.

AT: Biodiversity Impact
No Impact to biodiversity adaptation and evolution solves
Carter et al. 14, Dr. Craig D. Idso is founder and chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.
Since 1998, he has been the editor and chief contributor to the online magazine CO2 Science. He is the author of several books,
including The Many Benefits of Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment (2011) and CO2 , Global Warming and Coral Reefs (2009). He earned
a Ph.D. in geography from Arizona State University (ASU), where he lectured in meteorology and was a faculty researcher in the
Office of Climatology. Dr. Sherwood B. Idso is president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.
Previously he was a Research Physicist with the U.S. Department of Agricultures Agricultural Research Service at the U.S. Water
Conservation Laboratory in Phoenix, Arizona. He is the author or co-author of over 500 scientific publications including the books
Carbon Dioxide: Friend or Foe? (1982) and Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: Earth in Transition (1989). He served as an Adjunct
Professor in the Departments of Geology, Geography, and Botany and Microbiology at Arizona State University. He earned a Ph.D.
in soil science from the University of Minnesota. Dr. Robert M. Carter is a stratigrapher and marine geologist with degrees from the
University of Otago (New Zealand) and University of Cambridge (England). He is the author of Climate: The Counter Consensus
(2010) and Taxing Air: Facts and Fallacies About Climate Change (2013). Carter's professional service includes terms as head of the
Geology Department, James Cook University, chairman of the Earth Sciences Panel of the Australian Research Council, chairman of
the national Marine Science and Technologies Committee, and director of the Australian Office of the Ocean Drilling Program. He is
currently an Emeritus Fellow of the Institute of Public Affairs (Melbourne). Dr. S. Fred Singer is one of the most distinguished
atmospheric physicists in the U.S. He established and served as the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, now part of
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and earned a U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal Award
for his technical leadership. He is coauthor, with Dennis T. Avery, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years (2007, second
ed. 2008) and many other books. Dr. Singer served as professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, VA (1971-94), and is founder and chairman of the nonprofit Science and Environmental Policy Project. He earned a
Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University. Barnes, David J. Australian Institute of Marine Science (retired) Australia Botkin, Daniel
B. University of Miami University of California Santa Barbara USA Cloyd, Raymond A. Kansas State University USA Crockford,
Susan University of Victoria, B.C. Canada Cui, Weihong Chinese Academy of Sciences China DeGroot, Kees Shell International
(retired) The Netherlands Dillon, Robert G. Physician USA Dunn, John Dale Physician USA Ellestad, Ole Henrik Research Council
of Norway (retired) Norway Goldberg, Fred Swedish Polar Institute Sweden Goldman, Barry Australian Museum Lizard Island
Research Station (retired) Australia Hoese, H. Dickson Consulting Marine Biologist USA Jdal, Morten Independent Scientist
Norway Khandekar, Madhav Environment Canada (retired) Canada Kutilek, Miroslav Czech Technical University (emeritus) Czech
Republic Leavitt, Steven W. University of Arizona Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research USA Maccabee, Howard Doctors for Disaster
Preparedness USA Marohasy, Jennifer Central Queensland University Australia Ollier, Cliff University of Western Australia
Australia Petch, Jim University of Manchester Trican Manchester Metropolitan University (retired) United Kingdom Reginato,
Robert J. Agricultural Research Service U.S. Department of Agriculture USA Reiter, Paul Laboratoire Insectes et Maladies
Infectieuses Institut Pasteur France Segalstad, Tom Resource and Environmental Geology University of Oslo Norway Sharp, Gary
Independent Consultant Center for Climate/ Ocean Resources Study USA Starck, Walter Independent Marine Biologist Australia
Stockwell, David Central Queensland University Australia Taylor, Mitchell Lakehead University Canada Weber, Gerd Independent
Meteorologist Germany Wilson, Bastow University of Otago New Zealand Wust, Raphael James Cook University Australia,
(Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts, http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/ccr2b/pdf/Summary-for-
Policymakers.pdf, 3/31/2014) Kerwin
IPCCs forecast of future species extinction relies on a narrow view of the literature that is highly selective and based almost
entirely on model projections as opposed to real-world observations; the latter often contradict the former. Numerous
shortcomings are inherent in the models utilized in predicting the impact of climate on the health and distributions of animal
species. Assumptions and limitations make them unreliable. Research suggests amphibian populations will
suffer little, if any, harm from projected CO2- induced global warming, and they may
even benefit from it. Although some changes in bird populations and their habitat areas have been documented in the
literature, linking such changes to CO2-induced global warming remains elusive. Also, when there have been
changes, they often are positive, as many species have adapted and are thriving in
response to rising temperatures of the modern era. Polar bears have survived historic
changes in climate that have exceeded those of the twentieth century or are forecast by computer
models to occur in the future. In addition, some populations of polar bears appear to be stable despite rising temperatures and
summer sea ice declines. The biggest threat they face is not from global warming but hunting by humans, which historically has
taken a huge toll on polar bear populations. The net effect of climate change on the spread of
parasitic and vector-borne diseases is complex and at this time appears difficult to
predict. Rising temperatures increase the mortality rates as well as the development
rates of many parasites of veterinary importance, and temperature is only one of many variables that influence the range
of viruses and other sources of diseases. Existing published research indicates rising temperatures likely will not increase, and
may decrease, plant damage from leaf-eating herbivores, as rising atmospheric CO2 boosts the production of certain defensive
compounds in plants that are detrimental to animal pests. Empirical data on many other animal species,
including butterflies, other insects, reptiles, and other mammals, indicate global
warming and its myriad ecological effects tend to foster the expansion and proliferation
of animal habitats, ranges, and populations, or otherwise have no observable impacts
one way or the other. Multiple lines of evidence indicate animal species are adapting,
and in some cases evolving, to cope with climate change of the modern era, as expected
by Darwinian evolution and wellestablished ecological concepts.

AT: Health Impact
Warming boots agriculture productivity and human health solves medicinal biodiversity
Carter et al. 14, Dr. Craig D. Idso is founder and chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.
Since 1998, he has been the editor and chief contributor to the online magazine CO2 Science. He is the author of several books,
including The Many Benefits of Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment (2011) and CO2 , Global Warming and Coral Reefs (2009). He earned
a Ph.D. in geography from Arizona State University (ASU), where he lectured in meteorology and was a faculty researcher in the
Office of Climatology. Dr. Sherwood B. Idso is president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.
Previously he was a Research Physicist with the U.S. Department of Agricultures Agricultural Research Service at the U.S. Water
Conservation Laboratory in Phoenix, Arizona. He is the author or co-author of over 500 scientific publications including the books
Carbon Dioxide: Friend or Foe? (1982) and Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: Earth in Transition (1989). He served as an Adjunct
Professor in the Departments of Geology, Geography, and Botany and Microbiology at Arizona State University. He earned a Ph.D.
in soil science from the University of Minnesota. Dr. Robert M. Carter is a stratigrapher and marine geologist with degrees from the
University of Otago (New Zealand) and University of Cambridge (England). He is the author of Climate: The Counter Consensus
(2010) and Taxing Air: Facts and Fallacies About Climate Change (2013). Carter's professional service includes terms as head of the
Geology Department, James Cook University, chairman of the Earth Sciences Panel of the Australian Research Council, chairman of
the national Marine Science and Technologies Committee, and director of the Australian Office of the Ocean Drilling Program. He is
currently an Emeritus Fellow of the Institute of Public Affairs (Melbourne). Dr. S. Fred Singer is one of the most distinguished
atmospheric physicists in the U.S. He established and served as the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, now part of
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and earned a U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal Award
for his technical leadership. He is coauthor, with Dennis T. Avery, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years (2007, second
ed. 2008) and many other books. Dr. Singer served as professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, VA (1971-94), and is founder and chairman of the nonprofit Science and Environmental Policy Project. He earned a
Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University. Barnes, David J. Australian Institute of Marine Science (retired) Australia Botkin, Daniel
B. University of Miami University of California Santa Barbara USA Cloyd, Raymond A. Kansas State University USA Crockford,
Susan University of Victoria, B.C. Canada Cui, Weihong Chinese Academy of Sciences China DeGroot, Kees Shell International
(retired) The Netherlands Dillon, Robert G. Physician USA Dunn, John Dale Physician USA Ellestad, Ole Henrik Research Council
of Norway (retired) Norway Goldberg, Fred Swedish Polar Institute Sweden Goldman, Barry Australian Museum Lizard Island
Research Station (retired) Australia Hoese, H. Dickson Consulting Marine Biologist USA Jdal, Morten Independent Scientist
Norway Khandekar, Madhav Environment Canada (retired) Canada Kutilek, Miroslav Czech Technical University (emeritus) Czech
Republic Leavitt, Steven W. University of Arizona Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research USA Maccabee, Howard Doctors for Disaster
Preparedness USA Marohasy, Jennifer Central Queensland University Australia Ollier, Cliff University of Western Australia
Australia Petch, Jim University of Manchester Trican Manchester Metropolitan University (retired) United Kingdom Reginato,
Robert J. Agricultural Research Service U.S. Department of Agriculture USA Reiter, Paul Laboratoire Insectes et Maladies
Infectieuses Institut Pasteur France Segalstad, Tom Resource and Environmental Geology University of Oslo Norway Sharp, Gary
Independent Consultant Center for Climate/ Ocean Resources Study USA Starck, Walter Independent Marine Biologist Australia
Stockwell, David Central Queensland University Australia Taylor, Mitchell Lakehead University Canada Weber, Gerd Independent
Meteorologist Germany Wilson, Bastow University of Otago New Zealand Wust, Raphael James Cook University Australia,
(Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts, http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/ccr2b/pdf/Summary-for-
Policymakers.pdf, 3/31/2014) Kerwin
Warmer temperatures lead to a decrease in temperature-related mortality, including
deaths associated with cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, and strokes. The evidence
of this benefit comes from research conducted in every major country of the world. In the United States the average person who
died because of cold temperature exposure lost in excess of 10 years of potential life, whereas the average person who died because
of hot temperature exposure likely lost no more than a few days or weeks of life. In the U.S., some 4,600 deaths are delayed each
year as people move from cold northeastern states to warm southwestern states. Between 3 and 7% of the gains in longevity
experienced over the past three decades was due simply to people moving to warmer states. Cold-related deaths are
far more numerous than heat-related deaths in the United States, Europe, and almost all countries outside the
tropics. Coronary and cerebral thrombosis account for about half of all cold-related mortality. Global warming is
reducing the incidence of cardiovascular diseases related to low temperatures and
wintry weather by a much greater degree than it increases the incidence of cardiovascular diseases associated
with high temperatures and summer heat waves. A large body of scientific examination and research contradict the claim that
malaria will expand across the globe and intensify as a result of CO2-induced warming. Concerns over large
increases in vector-borne diseases such as dengue as a result of rising temperatures are
unfounded and unsupported by the scientific literature, as climatic indices are poor predictors for
dengue disease. While temperature and climate largely determine the geographical distribution of ticks, they are not among the
significant factors determining the incidence of tick-borne diseases. The ongoing rise in the airs CO2 content
is not only raising the productivity of Earths common food plants but also significantly
increasing the quantity and potency of the many healthpromoting substances found in
their tissues, which are the ultimate sources of sustenance for essentially all animals and
humans. Atmospheric CO2 enrichment positively impacts the production of
numerous health-promoting substances found in medicinal or health food plants, and
this phenomenon may have contributed to the increase in human life span that has occurred over the past century or so. There is
little reason to expect any significant CO2-induced increases in human-health-harming substances produced by plants as
atmospheric CO2 levels continue to rise.


AT: Oceans Impact
Warming doesnt affect the ocean AND Adaptation solves
Carter et al. 14, Dr. Craig D. Idso is founder and chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.
Since 1998, he has been the editor and chief contributor to the online magazine CO2 Science. He is the author of several books,
including The Many Benefits of Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment (2011) and CO2 , Global Warming and Coral Reefs (2009). He earned
a Ph.D. in geography from Arizona State University (ASU), where he lectured in meteorology and was a faculty researcher in the
Office of Climatology. Dr. Sherwood B. Idso is president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.
Previously he was a Research Physicist with the U.S. Department of Agricultures Agricultural Research Service at the U.S. Water
Conservation Laboratory in Phoenix, Arizona. He is the author or co-author of over 500 scientific publications including the books
Carbon Dioxide: Friend or Foe? (1982) and Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: Earth in Transition (1989). He served as an Adjunct
Professor in the Departments of Geology, Geography, and Botany and Microbiology at Arizona State University. He earned a Ph.D.
in soil science from the University of Minnesota. Dr. Robert M. Carter is a stratigrapher and marine geologist with degrees from the
University of Otago (New Zealand) and University of Cambridge (England). He is the author of Climate: The Counter Consensus
(2010) and Taxing Air: Facts and Fallacies About Climate Change (2013). Carter's professional service includes terms as head of the
Geology Department, James Cook University, chairman of the Earth Sciences Panel of the Australian Research Council, chairman of
the national Marine Science and Technologies Committee, and director of the Australian Office of the Ocean Drilling Program. He is
currently an Emeritus Fellow of the Institute of Public Affairs (Melbourne). Dr. S. Fred Singer is one of the most distinguished
atmospheric physicists in the U.S. He established and served as the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, now part of
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and earned a U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal Award
for his technical leadership. He is coauthor, with Dennis T. Avery, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years (2007, second
ed. 2008) and many other books. Dr. Singer served as professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, VA (1971-94), and is founder and chairman of the nonprofit Science and Environmental Policy Project. He earned a
Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University. Barnes, David J. Australian Institute of Marine Science (retired) Australia Botkin, Daniel
B. University of Miami University of California Santa Barbara USA Cloyd, Raymond A. Kansas State University USA Crockford,
Susan University of Victoria, B.C. Canada Cui, Weihong Chinese Academy of Sciences China DeGroot, Kees Shell International
(retired) The Netherlands Dillon, Robert G. Physician USA Dunn, John Dale Physician USA Ellestad, Ole Henrik Research Council
of Norway (retired) Norway Goldberg, Fred Swedish Polar Institute Sweden Goldman, Barry Australian Museum Lizard Island
Research Station (retired) Australia Hoese, H. Dickson Consulting Marine Biologist USA Jdal, Morten Independent Scientist
Norway Khandekar, Madhav Environment Canada (retired) Canada Kutilek, Miroslav Czech Technical University (emeritus) Czech
Republic Leavitt, Steven W. University of Arizona Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research USA Maccabee, Howard Doctors for Disaster
Preparedness USA Marohasy, Jennifer Central Queensland University Australia Ollier, Cliff University of Western Australia
Australia Petch, Jim University of Manchester Trican Manchester Metropolitan University (retired) United Kingdom Reginato,
Robert J. Agricultural Research Service U.S. Department of Agriculture USA Reiter, Paul Laboratoire Insectes et Maladies
Infectieuses Institut Pasteur France Segalstad, Tom Resource and Environmental Geology University of Oslo Norway Sharp, Gary
Independent Consultant Center for Climate/ Ocean Resources Study USA Starck, Walter Independent Marine Biologist Australia
Stockwell, David Central Queensland University Australia Taylor, Mitchell Lakehead University Canada Weber, Gerd Independent
Meteorologist Germany Wilson, Bastow University of Otago New Zealand Wust, Raphael James Cook University Australia,
(Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts, http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/ccr2b/pdf/Summary-for-
Policymakers.pdf, 3/31/2014) Kerwin
Multiple studies from multiple ocean regions confirm ocean productivity tends to
increase with temperature. Subjects of this research include phytoplankton and
macroalgae, corals, crustaceans, and fish. Rising seawater temperature is conducive to
enhanced coral calcification, leading some experts to forecast coral calcification will
increase by about 35% beyond pre-industrial levels by 2100, and no extinction of coral
reefs will occur in the future. Many aquatic species demonstrate the capability to
adjust their individual critical thermal maximum (the upper temperature at which the onset of behavioral
incapacitation occurs) upwards in response to temperature increases of the amount forecast by IPCC. Aquatic life has
survived decadal, centennial, and millennial-scale climate oscillations that have
persisted for millions of years. Evidence indicates they are well-equipped to adapt to
forecasted increases in temperature, if necessary. Caution should be applied when interpreting results from
laboratory-based studies of lower seawater pH levels. Such studies often are incapable, or fall far short, of mimicking conditions in
the real world, and thus they frequently yield results quite different than what is observed in nature. Rising
atmospheric CO2 levels do not pose a significant threat to aquatic life. Many aquatic
species have shown considerable tolerance to declining pH values predicted for the next
few centuries, and many have demonstrated a likelihood of positive responses in
empirical studies. The projected decline in ocean pH levels in the year 2100 (as compared to preindustrial times) may be
significantly overstated, amounting to only half of the 0.4 value IPCC predicts. The natural variability of oceanic pH is often much
greater than the change in pH levels forecast by IPCC. Natural fluctuations in pH may have a large impact on the development of
resilience in marine populations, as heterogeneity in the environment with regard to pH and pCO2 exposure may result in
populations that are acclimatized to variable pH or extremes in pH. For those aquatic species showing
negative responses to pH declines in experimental studies, there are adequate reasons
to conclude such responses will be largely mitigated through phenotypic adaptation or
evolution during the many decades to centuries the pH concentration is projected to
fall.

Oceans have been warming way before C02 emissions began to rise no risk of
anthropogenic ocean warming we control the most accurate data
Morano 10/8/2013, (Marc Morano is the executive director and chief correspondent of ClimateDepot.com, a project of the
Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), B.A in political science from George Mason University , Study finds global
ocean warming has decelerated 50% over the past 50 years 2012 paper published in Nature Climate Change, [
http://www.climatedepot.com/2013/10/08/study-finds-global-ocean-warming-has-decelerated-50-over-the-past-50-years-2012-
paper-published-in-nature-climate-change/ ] , //hss-RJ)
The currently-favored excuse du jour for no statistically-significant global warming
over the past 20 years is that the oceans ate the man-made global warming. However,
a 2012 paper published in Nature Climate Change torpedoes this notion, finding the
global oceans started warming at least 135 years ago just after the Little Ice Age, on or
before the historic voyage of the HMS Challenger in the 1870s. More importantly, the
study finds that ocean warming has decelerated 50% over the past 50 years. If, as
claimed, man-made greenhouse gases are causing the oceans to warm, the opposite
would have been expected, namely an acceleration of ocean warming over the past 50
years, beginning in the ~1950s. The fact that the oceans were warming long before CO2
levels significantly increased, and at a higher rate before 50 years ago, clearly
demonstrates ocean warming is a natural recovery from the Little Ice Age, and not due
to man-made CO2. The paper is corroborated by a recent paper finding the oceans have
warmed only 0.09C over the past 55 years, a rate of 0.0016C per decade, and a 36%
deceleration from the rate of 0.0025 per decade over the past 134 years found by this
study. Further, climate alarmists claim that the missing heat is hiding below 1,500
meters deep, but this paper finds the oceans have instead cooled below 1,500 meters
over the past 134 years [see third figure below]. In addition, if man-made CO2 was
warming the oceans, there should have been an acceleration of steric sea level rise over
the past 50 years due to thermal expansion, but no acceleration of sea level rise has been
found over the past 203 years. Related: An additional 60+ links that torpedo the oceans ate my global warming
theory New Comparison of Ocean Temperatures Reveals Rise over the Last Century Ocean robots used in Scripps-led study that
traces ocean warming to late 19th century A new study contrasting ocean temperature readings of the 1870s with temperatures of
the modern seas reveals an upward trend of global ocean warming spanning at least 100 years. The research led by Scripps
Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego physical oceanographer Dean Roemmich shows a .33-degree Celsius (.59-degree
Fahrenheit) average increase in the upper portions of the ocean to 700 meters (2,300 feet) depth. The increase was largest at the
ocean surface, .59-degree Celsius (1.1-degree Fahrenheit), decreasing to .12-degree Celsius (.22-degree Fahrenheit) at 900 meters
(2,950 feet) depth. The report is the first global comparison of temperature between the
historic voyage of HMS Challenger (1872-1876) and modern data obtained by ocean-
probing robots now continuously reporting temperatures via the global Argo program.
Scientists have previously determined that nearly 90 percent of the [alleged, "missing"]
excess heat added to Earths climate system since the 1960s has been stored in the
oceans. The new study, published in the April 1 advance online edition of Nature
Climate Change and coauthored by John Gould of the United Kingdom-based National
Oceanography Centre and John Gilson of Scripps Oceanography, pushes the ocean
warming trend back much earlier. The significance of the study is not only that we see a temperature difference
that indicates warming on a global scale, but that the magnitude of the temperature change since the 1870s is twice that observed
over the past 50 years, said Roemmich, co-chairman of the International Argo Steering Team. This implies that the time scale for
the warming of the ocean is not just the last 50 years but at least the last 100 years. Although the Challenger data set covers only
some 300 temperature soundings (measurements from the sea surface down to the deep ocean) around the world, the
information sets a baseline for temperature change in the worlds oceans, which are
now sampled continuously through Argos unprecedented global coverage. Nearly
3,500 free-drifting profiling Argo floats each collect a temperature profile every 10 days.
Roemmich believes the new findings, a piece of a larger puzzle of understanding the earths climate, help scientists to understand
the longer record of sea-level rise, because the expansion of seawater due to warming is a significant contributor to rising sea level.
Moreover, the 100-year timescale of ocean warming implies that the Earths climate system as a whole has been gaining heat for at
least that long. Launched in 2000, the Argo program collects more than 100,000 temperature-
salinity profiles per year across the worlds oceans. To date, more than 1,000 research
papers have been published using Argos data set.