Wildcat Debate Workshop 08

Wildcat Debate Workshop 08 <Global Warming Bad>
Global Warming Bad

Global Warming Bad.........................................................................................................................................................................................1
Warming occurring- Satellite data.....................................................................................................................................................................4
Warming occurring- Models.............................................................................................................................................................................5
Warming Occurring- Models Accurate.............................................................................................................................................................6
Warming occurring – Consensus ......................................................................................................................................................................7
CO2  Warming ..............................................................................................................................................................................................8
CO2  Warming- Historic Data.....................................................................................................................................................................10
CO2  Warming- Ice Records Prove.............................................................................................................................................................11
CO2 Rates are Human Caused........................................................................................................................................................................12
AT: Sun causes warming.................................................................................................................................................................................13
AT: Cosmic Rays  Warming........................................................................................................................................................................14
AT: Natural Checks- phytoplankton................................................................................................................................................................15
Impact- Jellyfish destroy marine ecosystem....................................................................................................................................................16
Impact- Coral Reefs.........................................................................................................................................................................................17
Impact- EXT : Coral Reefs..............................................................................................................................................................................18
Impact- Polar Bears.........................................................................................................................................................................................19
Impact- Salmon................................................................................................................................................................................................20
Impact- EXT: Salmon Die...............................................................................................................................................................................21
Impact- Sea Life..............................................................................................................................................................................................22
Impact- EXT: Warming Kills Sea Life............................................................................................................................................................24
Impact- Bio diversity.......................................................................................................................................................................................27
Impact- EXT: Bio Diversity............................................................................................................................................................................28
Impact- Ecosystem collapse destroys Bio D...................................................................................................................................................29
Impact – Disease..............................................................................................................................................................................................30
Impact- Drought (genocide)............................................................................................................................................................................31
Impact- Drought (Famine)...............................................................................................................................................................................32
Impact- Ice Caps Melting now........................................................................................................................................................................33
Impact- Ice Caps melt because of Warming....................................................................................................................................................34
Impact- Ice Caps Melting increase Sea Levels................................................................................................................................................35
Impact- Sea Level (Bio Diversity)...................................................................................................................................................................36
Impact- Oscillation (agriculture).....................................................................................................................................................................37
Impact- Ice Age...............................................................................................................................................................................................38
Impact- EXT: Ice Age.....................................................................................................................................................................................40
Impact- Hurricanes .........................................................................................................................................................................................41
Impact – EXT: Hurricane................................................................................................................................................................................42
Impact- Fires....................................................................................................................................................................................................43
Impact- Suffocation ........................................................................................................................................................................................44
Impact- Runaway Greenhouse effect...............................................................................................................................................................45
Impact- Ozone.................................................................................................................................................................................................46
Impact- Severe Storms.....................................................................................................................................................................................47
1
Impact- Floods.................................................................................................................................................................................................48
Impact- Poverty...............................................................................................................................................................................................49
Impact- Terrorism ...........................................................................................................................................................................................50
Impact- EXT: Terrorism..................................................................................................................................................................................51
Impact- Middle East War.................................................................................................................................................................................52
Impact- Economic Collapse ............................................................................................................................................................................53
Impact- Nuclear War.......................................................................................................................................................................................54
Impact- Warming Outweighs Nuclear War.....................................................................................................................................................55
Must Act Now.................................................................................................................................................................................................56
AT: Developing nations prevent solving.........................................................................................................................................................57
2
Warming occurring now
Global warming exists, and it has existed since we started using CO2 in the industrial Revolution.
Danielle Murray, 2005
(Earth Policy Institute, Ice Melting Everywhere, July 8, 2008, http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Ice/2005.htm)
Ice is melting everywhere—and at an accelerating rate. Rising global temperatures are lengthening melting seasons, thawing frozen
ground, and thinning ice caps and glaciers that in some cases have existed for millennia. These changes are raising sea level faster than
earlier projected by scientists, and threatening both human and wildlife populations. Since the industrial revolution, human activity has
released ever-increasing amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouses gases into the atmosphere, leading to gradual but unmistakable
changes in climate throughout the world—especially at the higher latitudes. Average surface temperatures in the Arctic Circle have risen
by more than half a degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade since 1981. The extent of Arctic sea ice cover has decreased by 7–
9 percent per decade. And the three smallest extents of summer ice ever seen there have all occurred since 2002. According to the latest
forecasts, the Arctic could be ice-free in the summer by the end of this century. (See data and map for selected ice melt examples from
around the globe.)
Global Temperatures trends are Rising

Kohler and Dutzik Wisconsin Environment Research and Policy Center and Frontier Group 2007 <Wisconsin Environment and
Research and Policy Center, 7-7-08,
https://www.environmentamerica.org/uploads/Uh/NM/UhNMNKKS4XIGqGDc4LtLTQ/_An_Unfamiliar_State_Wisconsin_Global-
Warming.May2007.pdf>
Over the last century, global average temperatures have increased by 1.3° F.1 Scientists believe that temperatures in the last half of the
20th century were likely the highest in the last 1300 years.2 Most of the recent warming is likely due to human-caused releases of global
warming pollutants, primarily carbon dioxide.3 Global warming appears to have intensified in recent years. In 2006, scientists at the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) reported that, since 1975, temperatures have been increasing at a rate of about
0.36° F per decade.4 Worldwide, 11 of the last 12 years (1995 to 2006) rank among the 12 warmest years on record, with 2006 likely the
warmest year in the United States since record-keeping began in 1895.5 (See Fig. 1, next page.) While temperatures have increased on
average, patterns of extreme temperatures have also changed. According to the recent IPCC report, “Cold days, cold nights and frost have
become less frequent, while hot days, hot nights and heat waves have become more frequent.”
3
Warming occurring- Satellite data

Satellite technology proves world is warming unnaturally
Henderson the Times science correspondent 2004
<Times Online, 7-7-08, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article852640.ece>
POWERFUL evidence for global warming has been discovered by scientists funded by the US Government, demolishing the chief
argument of sceptics who deny that the phenomenon is real. A new analysis of satellite data has revealed that temperatures in a critical
part of the atmosphere are rising much faster than previously thought, strengthening the scientific consensus that the world is warming at
an unnatural rate. The discovery resolves one of the most contentious anomalies in climate science, which has often been invoked by the
Bush Administration to question whether man-made global warming is happening. While it is generally accepted that surface
temperatures are increasing by an average of 0.17C (0.31F) per decade, satellites have been unable to detect a parallel trend in the
troposphere — the lowest level of the atmosphere, extending 7.5 miles above the ground, in which most weather occurs.
4
Warming occurring- Models

Warming occurring – Models prove
Black BBC News environment correspondent 2005
<BBC News, 7-7-08, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4495463.stm>
The Earth is absorbing more energy from the Sun than it is giving back into space, according to a new study by climate scientists in the
US. They base their findings on computer models of climate, and on measurements of temperature in the oceans. The group describes its
results as "the smoking gun that we were looking for", removing any doubt that human activities are warming the planet. The results are
published in the journal Science this week. The study attempts to calculate the Earth's "energy imbalance" - the difference between the
amount of energy received at the top of the atmosphere from solar radiation, and the amount that is given back into space. Rather than
measuring the imbalance directly, the researchers draw on data from the oceans, in particular from the growing global flotilla of scientific
buoys and floats, now numbered in the thousands, which monitor sea temperature.
5
Warming Occurring- Models Accurate

New model accounts for more variable and therefore is more accurate
Science Daily. Science research news website. December 13, 2007. “New Model Revises Estimates Of Terrestrial Carbon Dioxide
Uptake”. Accessed July 9, 2008.
Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a new model of global carbon and nitrogen cycling that will fundamentally
transform the understanding of how plants and soils interact with a changing atmosphere and climate. The new model takes into account
the role of nitrogen dynamics in influencing the response of terrestrial ecosystems to climate change and rising atmospheric carbon
dioxide. Current models used in the assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change do not account for nitrogen
processing, and probably exaggerate the terrestrial ecosystem’s potential to slow atmospheric carbon dioxide rise, the researchers say.
They will present their findings this week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. In the face of
global climate change, world leaders are in need of models that can reliably predict how land use and other human activities affect
atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Deforestation and the burning of coal and oil increase atmospheric carbon dioxide and contribute to
global warming.
6
Warming occurring – Consensus

Overwhelming consensus proves CO2 causes warming
Johansen 2
(Prof of Comm @ UNO, “The Global Warming Desk Reference”, p. 49, NetLibrary) DMZ
The public policy debate regarding global warming has often conveyed an impression that scientists are hopelessly divided over the issue
of whether human activities are warming the lower atmosphere. In actuality, a high degree of agreement has existed since the IPCC's First
Assessment was published in 1990. The IPCC's first major report forecast widely varying temperature rises by region with an assumed
doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The largest increases (six to seven degrees C.) were forecast in the interiors of northern
North America and Asia during the winter; increases in the summer for the same regions were forecast at between three and four degrees
C. The largest summer temperature increase (4.8 degrees C.) was forecast for interior southern Asia. the smallest increases year-round
were forecast for the tropics, especially areas near large bodies of water. An IPCC conference during November, 1990, at Geneva,
Switzerland, issued a "ministerial declaration" representing 137 countries which agreed that while climate had varied in the past, "[t]he
rate of climate change predicted by the IPCC to occur over the next century [due to greenhouse warming] is unprecedented." The
ministers declared, "[C]limate change is a global problem of unique character" (Jager and Ferguson 1991, 525). The ministers also
declared that the eventual goal should be "to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that would prevent dangerous
anthropogenic interference with climate" (Jager and Ferguson 1991, 536). The question of whether the Earth is becoming unnaturally
warmer because of huuman activities was largely settled in scientific circles by 1995, with publication of the Second Assessment of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a worldwide group of about 2,500 experts. The panel concluded that the earth's
temperature had increased between 0.5 and 1.1 degrees F. (0.3 to 0.6 degrees C.) since reliable worldwide records became available
between 1850 and 1900. The IPCC noted that warming accelerated as measurements approached the present day (Bolin et al. 1995). The
IPCC's Second Assessment concluded that human activity-increased generation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases-is at least
partially responsible for the accelerating rise in global temperatures. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been rising
nearly every year due to increased use of fossil fuels by ever-larger human populations experiencing higher living standards. The IPCC's
Second Assessment, according to one observer, "makes an unprecedented, though qualified, attribution of the observed climate change to
human causes. Though the human signal is still building and somewhat masked within natural variation, and while there are key
uncertainties to be resolved, the Panel concludes that `the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on
global climate' " (Landsea 1999).
7
CO2  Warming
CO2 leads to increased temperatures because of burning of fossil fuels
BO NORDELL, 2001
Elsevier, Division of Water Resources Engineering, Luleå University of Technology. “Thermal pollution causes global warming,”
December 15, 2001. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VF0-
49FGSB11&_user=508790&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=
d&view=c&_acct=C000025157&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=508790&md5=4891eeb7936f971dddab6d88a624027f. Accessed
on July 7, 2008.
A global rise in temperatures is undoubtedly real according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (Macilwain, 2000).
An increasing body of observations gives a collective picture of a warming world and other changes in the climate system (IPCC, 2001).
The estimated temperature increase during the past century was between 0.4 and 0.8 jC with the 10 warmest years all occurring within the
last 15 years (EPA, 2001). Even though there is a scientific consensus about an ongoing global warming, there is no consensus about its
cause. Most studies, however, assume that it is a result of the increasing greenhouse gas concentrations into the atmosphere, i.e. the
greenhouse effect. The greenhouse explanation is based on the fact that the global mean temperature increase coincides with increasing
emissions of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases) into the atmosphere, which has been increasing since 1800, from about 275 to
370 ppm today (CDIAC, 2002). It is presumed that increases in carbon dioxide and other minor greenhouse gases will lead to significant
increases in temperature. It is generally believed that most of this increase is due to the increased burning of fossil fuels.
Fossil records prove CO2 causes climate change

Kate Melville. Staff writer for science a go go. January 5, 2007. “Fossil Records Show Yo-Yo Effect Of Changing Climate”. Accessed
July 8, 2008. http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20070004210624data_trunc_sys.shtml
The mid-Permian transition from ice age to an ice-free planet was marked by dips and rises in carbon dioxide and extreme swings in
climate, according to University of California, Davis (UC) researchers writing in Science. During the mid-Permian, 300 million years ago,
much of the southern hemisphere was covered in thick ice sheets and floating pack ice likely covered the northern polar ocean. But forty
million years later, all the ice was gone and the climate hot and dry with sparse vegetation. UC's Isabel Montanez, lead author on the
paper, derived levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and sea surface temperatures from the fossils of brachiopod shellfish and fossilized
plants from the ancient rainforests. They also looked at the scars and clues left by glacial ice sheets that once covered the great southern
continent of Gondwanaland, which included most of the land masses of the modern southern hemisphere. Montanez's analysis shows
that throughout the change over millions of years, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels swung back and forth between about 250 parts per
million (close to present-day levels) to more than 2,000 parts per million. At the same time, the southern ice sheets retreated as carbon
dioxide rose and expanded again when levels fell, a pattern compatible with the idea that greenhouse gases caused the end of the late
Paleozoic ice age. "We can see a pattern of increasing carbon dioxide and increasing temperatures, with a series of rises and dips,"
Montanez said. Previously, it was assumed that as the climate warmed, a tipping point would be reached at which the ice sheets would
melt rapidly and for good. Instead, the new data shows that the climate went back and forth between the extremes. Instead of a smooth
shift, the transition occurred in a series of sharp swings between cold and hot conditions, occurring during perhaps a half-million to few
million years. Montanez pointed out that these results cannot be directly applied to current global warming. The current rise in
atmospheric carbon dioxide is occurring throughout a much shorter timescale, for one thing. But the current work does show that such a
major change in climate will likely not proceed in small, gradual steps, but in a series of unstable, dramatic swings. Somewhat
worryingly, while the mid-Permian changeover took millions of years, similar events might take place during a much shorter time span.
"Perhaps this is the behavior one should expect when we go through a major climate transition," Montanez mused.
8
CO2 Causes warming multiple factors prove

Spaulding 3
(Raci Oriona, J.D. @ the U of Iowa College of Law, “Fuel From Vegetables? A Modern Approach to Global Climate Change”, 13
Transnat’l L. & Contemp. Probs. 277, Spring, accessed online p. L/N) DMZ
Perhaps the most serious consequence of the ever-increasing global reliance on the products of industrialized economies is the problem of
global climate change. This change in global climate has been largely attributed to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions - carbon emissions
caused by burning fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and coal. n21 Most available evidence suggests that there [*281] is a detectable human
influence on the global climate. n22 For instance, the U.S. Climate Action Report of 2002, written by the Environmental Protection
Agency, indicated that "greenhouse gases are accumulating in the Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing global mean
surface air temperature and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise." n23 Additionally, Christopher Flavin, President of Worldwatch
Institute, has noted that: From the ice cap at the North Pole, which has lost 40 percent of its thickness in the last decade, to the coral reefs
near the Equator, one-quarter of which have been killed by rising ocean temperatures and other stresses, the Earth is telling us that we are
entering an era of dangerous climate change that is already threatening populations around the world. Already, economic damages from
natural disasters has reached $ 608 billion over the last decade - as much as in the previous four decades combined. n24 Humans magnify
these effects by increasing the global economy's dependence on fossil fuels. As more fossil fuel is demanded by automobiles, factories,
and power plants, more fossil fuel is burned, thus emitting more carbon dioxide into the Earth's atmosphere and exacerbating global
warming. The effects of global warming, while still somewhat uncertain, are expected to do damage around the globe by causing
excessive droughts in some areas while increasing rainfall in others, exacerbating coastal damage like erosion, and increasing instances of
heat stress and respiratory illness in many nations. n25 Statistics from nations around the world demonstrate the truth of this statement. For
instance: Dramatic examples of the human health impacts from severe flooding can be found in China. In 1996, official national statistics
showed 200 million people affected by flooding. There were more than 3,000 deaths and 363,800 injuries; 3.7 million residences were
destroyed, with 18 million damaged. Direct economic loses exceeded U.S. $ 12 billion. n26Chinese statistics have further shown that "200
million people [were] affected by flooding, more than 3,000 [were killed], and 4 million homes [were] damaged; direct economic losses
exceeded U.S. $ 20 billion." n27 While Chinese scientists could not prove [*282]
that all of these impacts are directly attributable to human-induced climate change, [they could] say that the heating of the planet that has
already occurred is likely to be at least partially responsible for the severity of these human health impacts. Moreover, [they could say
that] future heating will make such adverse impacts more probable. n28
9
CO2  Warming- Historic Data

Co2 causes warming – multiple historical perspectives prove
Science Daily, Science publication, 22 May 2006
Dailyscience.com, “Feedback Loops In Global Climate Change Point To A Very Hot 21st Century”, 07/08/08,
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060522151248.htm
Using deuterium-corrected temperature records for the ice cores, which yield hemispheric rather than local temperature conditions, GCM
climate sensitivity, and a mathematical formula for quantifying feedback effects, Torn and Harte calculated the magnitude of the
greenhouse gas-temperature feedback on temperature. “Our results reinforce the fact that every bit of greenhouse gas we put into the
atmosphere now is committing us to higher global temperatures in the future and we are already near the highest temperatures of the past
700,000 years,” Torn said. “At this point, mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions is absolutely critical.”
10
CO2  Warming- Ice Records Prove

Ice core sample proves carbon dioxide cause climate change
Thomas Stocker. Professor of Climate and Environmental Physics at the University of Bern. November 26, 2005. World magazine.
“Ice records of gas startling”. Accessed July 8, 2008. Pg. 27
THERE is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today than at any point during the last 650,000 years, says a major new study that let
scientists peer back in time at the "greenhouse gases" implicated in global warming. The study, by the European Project for Ice Coring
in Antarctica, is published today in the journal Science. Sceptics sometimes dismiss the rise in greenhouse gases as part of a naturally
fluctuating cycle. The new study provides ever-more definitive evidence countering that view. By analysing tiny air bubbles preserved in
Antarctic ice for millennia, the European research team has highlighted how people are dramatically influencing the build-up of these
gases. A previous ice-core sample had traced greenhouse gases back about 440,000 years. This new sample, from East Antarctica, goes
210,000 years further back in time. Today's still rising level of carbon dioxide already is 27 per cent higher than its peak during all those
millennia, said lead researcher Thomas Stocker of the University of Bern, Switzerland. "We are out of that natural range today," he said.
Moreover, that rise is occurring at a speed that "is over a factor of a hundred faster than anything we are seeing in the natural cycles,"
Stocker said. The team, which included scientists from France and Germany, found similar results for methane, another greenhouse gas.
Researchers also compared the gas levels to the Antarctic temperature over that time period, covering eight cycles of alternating glacial or
ice ages and warm periods. They found a stable pattern: lower levels of gases during cold periods and higher levels during warm periods.
Ice record shows correlation between carbon dioxide and temperature levels
Andrew C. Revkin. Staff writer New York Times. November 25, 2005. New York Times. “Gases at Level Unmatched in Antiquity,
Study Shows”. Accessed July 8, 2008. Pg. 14.
The new data from the ice cores also provides the first detailed portrait of conditions during ice-age cycles that occurred more than
400,000 years ago -- a point in Earth's two-million-year history of cold periods and warm intervals after which some unknown influence
lengthened ice ages and shortened and amplified the warm periods. Both before and after that transition, the ice record shows, there was
always a tight relationship between amounts of the greenhouse gases and air temperature. While the overall climate pattern has been set
by rhythmic variations in Earth's orientation to the Sun, the records show that carbon dioxide and methane consistently made the
interglacial climate warmer than it would otherwise have been, said Thomas Stocker, one of the researchers and a physicist at the
University of Bern in Switzerland. Last year, the same cores provided new evidence that the current warm period, the Holocene, which
began about 12,000 years ago, is similar to the longer warm periods that were typical before 400,000 years ago, and could last at least
another 16,000 years. The European team is analyzing deeper, older sections of the Dome C ice cores, and the researchers said they
might be able to take the climate record back 800,000 years, possibly providing information about yet another early warm interval similar
to the Holocene. The new long-term record is essentially creating a subset of climate science, letting scientists compare different warm
periods. They can then sort out influences, including greenhouse gases, said Gavin A. Schmidt, a climate modeler at the Goddard Institute
for Space Studies in Manhattan.
11
CO2 Rates are Human Caused

It’s not just an environmental phenomena – it’s human made.
Pew Center for Climate Change 1
(Ed. Eileen Cluassen, Chairman of the Board, “Climate Change: Science, Strategies, and Solutions”, p. 7-8, NetLibrary) DMZ
The composition of the atmosphere has changed markedly since pre-industrial times: CO2 concentration has risen from about 280 parts
per million (ppm) to around 370 ppm today, CH4 has risen from about 700 parts per billion (ppb) to over 1700 ppb, and N20 has
increased from about 270 ppb to over 310 ppb. Halocarbons, largely nonexistent prior to the 1950s, are now present in amounts that have
a noticeable greenhouse effect. Pre-industrial levels of greenhouse gases are known because the composition of ancient air trapped in
bubbles in ice cores from Antarctica can be measured directly (Etheridge et al., 1998; Gulluk et al., 1998). These ice cores show that the
concentrations of these gases are much higher than in preindustrial times and far exceed levels of the preceding 10,000 years. Human
activity - fossil-fuel burning, land-use changes, production and use of halocarbons, etc. - is the dominant cause of these changes in
atmospheric composition. Human activity is the undeniable source of atmospheric halocarbons (the most climatically important of which
are the chlorofluorocarbons, CFC11 and CFC12) because the vast majority of these gases do not occur naturally. Today, many
halocarbons are controlled under the Montreal Protocol ,2 and substitute chemicals, which do not cause ozone depletion and so are not
controlled, are being introduced. These new gases, like all halocarbons, are strong greenhouse gases (although their net effects on future
climate are expected to be small relative to C02). For C02, CH4, and N2O, the human role is virtually certain too, partly because their
changes since pre-industrial times have been so large and at such unprecedented rates, and also because computer simulations provide an
unequivocal link between the emissions of these gases in recent decades and observed changes in atmospheric composition. In addition to
the gases mentioned above, anthropogenic emissions of the reactive gases, carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NO,), and volatile
organic compounds (VOCs) such as butane and propane have increased concentrations of tropospheric ozone. Tropospheric ozone (03) is
a powerful greenhouse gas. Most greenhouse gases also have natural sources. However, in pre-industrial times emissions were balanced
by natural removal or "sink" processes. Human activities have disturbed this balance.
12
AT: Sun causes warming

Studies disprove sun spots as the source
Johansen 2
(Prof of Comm @ UNO, “The Global Warming Desk Reference”, p. 87, NetLibrary) DMZ
G L O B A L - W A R M I N G S K E P T I C S A N D T H E S U N S P O T C Y C L E Many global-warming skeptics argue that the
sunspot cycle is causing a significant part of the warming that has been measured by surface thermometers during the twentieth
century's final two decades. Accurate measurements of the sun's energy output have been taken only since about 1980, however, so their
archival value for comparative purposes is severely limited. Michaels, editor of the World Climate Report, cites a study of sunspot-related
solar brightness conducted by Judith Lean and Peter Foukal, who contend that roughly half of the 0.55 degree C. of warming observed
since 1850 is a result of changes in the sun's radiative output. "That would leave," says Michaels, "at best, 0.28 degree C. [due] to the
greenhouse effect" (Michaels 1996). J.J. Lean and her associates also estimate that approximately one-half of the warming of the last 130
years has resulted from variations in the sun's delivery of radiant energy to the earth (Lean, Beer, and Bradley 1995). While solar
variability has a role in climate change, Martin I. Hoffert and associates (writing in Nature) believe that those who make it the primary
variable are overplaying their hand: "Although solar effects on this century's climate may not be negligible, quantitative considerations
imply that they are small relative to the anthropogenic release of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide" (Hoffert et al. 1999, 764)
13
AT: Cosmic Rays  Warming

New research proves that the cosmic rays and clouds do not effect Global Warming
Daily Science, Science publication, 4 April 2008,
Dailyscience.com, "Climate Change Is Not Caused By Cosmic Rays, According To New Research" 07/07/08,
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080403083932.htm
New research has dealt a blow to the skeptics who argue that climate change is all due to cosmic rays rather than to man-made
greenhouse gases. The new evidence shows no reliable connection between the cosmic ray intensity and cloud cover. Lauded and
criticised for offering a possible way out of the dangers of man made climate change, UK TV Channel 4's programme "The Great Global
Warming Swindle", broadcast in 2007, suggested that global warming is due to a decrease in cosmic rays over the last hundred years.
This would cause a decrease in the production of low clouds allowing more heat from the sun to warm the Earth and cause global
warming.
14
AT: Natural Checks- phytoplankton

Phytoplankton is not enough to off-set Global warming,
Kevin R. Arrigo, Journalist, 21 November 2007
International Weekly Journal of Science, “Carbon cycle: Marine manipulations”, 07/08/08,
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v450/n7169/full/450491a.html
Nevertheless, there are some notable conclusions to be drawn from this study. First, although CO2 uptake by phytoplankton may be
stimulated in a high-CO2 world, this negative feedback will only partly offset expected increases in atmospheric CO2. In fact, Riebesell et
al. perform some clever calculations to show that the CO2-enhancement effect they identified has probably reduced the rise in
atmospheric CO2 by only 11 atm (about 10%) since the dawn of the industrial revolution.
15
Impact- Jellyfish destroy marine ecosystem

The warmer waters have helped the jellyfish population grow in size and move to more territory.
MSNBC, June 5, 2008
(MSNBC, Like Jellyfish? Warming gives them a boost, July 9, 2008, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24987863/)
Global warming certainly threatens many species, but some can actually benefit — at least in the short run. The lifestyle of the
jellyfish is testament to that, according to a new study. The study looked at jellyfish populations in the Bering Sea off Alaska, noting a
boom in the 1990s followed by a decline since 2000. By about 2000, the jellyfish were about 40 times more abundant than they had
been in 1982, according to analyses of collections from fishing trawlers that were reported in the May 29 issue of the journal Progress in
Oceanography. The National Science Foundation, which helped fund the study, said in a statement that the Bering Sea jellyfish also
expanded their ranges since 1991 by fanning out north and west of the Alaskan Peninsula.
Jellyfish collapse oceanic ecosystems.

George Monbiot, recipient of the United Nations Global 500 award for his work on the environment, 2007. (The Guardian, “Feeding
Frenzy” Accessed on July 10, 2008, http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/04/03/feeding-frenzy/)
But beyond a certain point the collapse is likely to be permanent. Off the coast of Namibia, where the fishery has crashed as a result of
over-harvesting, we have a glimpse of the future. A paper in Current Biology reports that the ecosystem is approaching a “trophic dead-
end”(17). As the fish have been mopped up they have been replaced by jellyfish, which now outweigh them by three to one. The jellyfish
eat the eggs and larvae of the fish, so the switch is probably irreversible. We have entered, the paper tells us, the “era of jellyfish
ascendancy”. It’s a good symbol. The jellyfish represents the collapse of the ecosystem and the spinelessness of the people charged with
protecting it.
Oceans health is key to survival

Robin Kundis Craig, Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law. Taking Steps Toward Marine Wilderness
Protection? Fishing and Coral Reef Marine Reserves in Florida and Hawaii, McGeorge Law Review. Winter, 2003. L/N
The world's oceans contain many resources and provide many services that humans consider valuable. "Occupy[ing] more than [seventy
percent] of the earth's surface and [ninety-five percent] of the biosphere," n17 oceans provide food; marketable goods such as shells,
aquarium fish, and pharmaceuticals; life support processes, including carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling, and weather mechanics; and
quality of life, both aesthetic and economic, for millions of people worldwide. n18 Indeed, it is difficult to overstate the importance of the
ocean to humanity's well-being: "The ocean is the cradle of life on our planet, and it remains the axis of existence, the locus of planetary
biodiversity, and the engine of the chemical and hydrological cycles that create and maintain our atmosphere and climate." n19 Ocean and
coastal ecosystem services have been calculated to be worth over twenty billion dollars per year, worldwide. n20 In addition, many people
assign heritage and existence value to the ocean and its creatures, viewing the world's seas as a common legacy to be passed on relatively
intact to future generations.
16
Impact- Coral Reefs

Coral Reefs are the first to go because of Climate Change—this will occurring only in a few years and is key
to marine bio diversity
Goreau, 2005
Thomas Goreau, He was educated in Jamaica, MIT, Caltech, and Harvard. His research, focusing on reef restoration, global warming,
coral diseases, and community based coastal zone management of nutrient pollution, has taken him across the Caribbean, Indian Ocean,
Pacific, December 5, 2005. Open Democracy, Global warming and coral reefs, http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-
climate_change_debate/2558.jsp Accessed on July 7, 2008//DH
Coral reefs are the most sensitive of all ecosystems to global warming, pollution, and new diseases. They will be first to go as a result of
climate change. As the most important resources for fisheries, tourism, shore protection, and marine biodiversity for more than a hundred
countries, this will be a huge disaster. Almost all reefs have already been heated above their maximum temperature thresholds. Many
have already lost most of their corals, and temperature rise in most places gives only a few years before most corals die from heatstroke.

17
Impact- EXT : Coral Reefs

Global warming has devastating effects on coral reefs.
Sean Markey, for National Geographic News, May 16, 2006
National Geographic News, Global Warming Has Devastating Effect on Coral Reefs, Study Shows,
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/warming-coral.html. Accessed on July 7, 2008//DH
Many reefs have been reduced to rubble, a collapse that has deprived fish of food and shelter. As a result, fish diversity has tumbled by
half in some areas, say authors of the first long-term study of the effects of warming-caused bleaching on coral reefs and fish. The study
focused on reefs near Africa's Seychelles islands, north of Madagascar (see Seychelles map), which sustained heavy losses from
bleaching in 1998. "The outlook for recovery is quite bleak for the Seychelles," said lead study author Nicholas Graham, a tropical
marine biologist at England's University of Newcastle Upon Tyne. The study, in today's Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, predicts that isolated reef ecosystems like that around the Seychelles will suffer the most from global warming-caused bleaching
events.
Even slight changes in temperature are too much for coral reefs.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/warming-coral.html Accessed on July 7, 2008//DH
Small but prolonged rises in sea temperature force coral colonies to expel their symbiotic, food-producing algae, a process known as
bleaching. While the dying reefs, which turn ghostly white, can recover from such events, many do not. In 1998 an El Niño weather
pattern sparked the worst coral-bleaching event ever observed. "Over 16 percent of the world's reefs … were lost in that one year," said
Graham, part of a team that recently received an unrelated research grant from the National Geographic Society Committee for Research
and Exploration. (National Geographic News is a part of the National Geographic Society.) "It was a huge event." With data from a 1994
survey in hand, researchers returned to the Seychelles in 2005 to study the bleaching event's long-term impact on coral reefs and fish
communities. Surveying 60,000 square yards (50,000 square meters) of coral reef across 21 sites, researchers found that fish diversity
declined the most on reefs that had sustained physical and biological erosion. The finding by U.K., Australian, and Seychelles researchers
confirms what many scientists had long suspected. The census also revealed that four fish species—butterfly fish, damselfish, and two
wrasses—may now be locally extinct. Six other fish species have declined to critically low numbers. Describing reefs in the inner
Seychelles as in "various states of collapse," Graham says it appears unlikely they can recover. He says the reefs are too isolated to
recruit young coral from other reef systems. "Coral cover at the moment is at about seven and a half percent [of previous levels] in the
[inner] Seychelles," Graham said. "However less than one percent of that is fast-growing [branching] and plating corals, which in other
places in the world are often the ones that come back and start a recovery process."
Reduction of coral reefs is a problem because of global warming.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/warming-coral.html Accessed on July 7, 2008//DH
Experts say word of vanishing coral reefs has become all too familiar. "By and large, reefs have collapsed catastrophically just in the
three decades that I've been studying them," said Nancy Knowlton, a marine biology professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography
in La Jolla, California. Knowlton, who is also a member of National Geographic Society Committee for Research and Exploration, notes
that corals live precariously close to their thermal limits. As a result, even the most isolated reefs are vulnerable to the effects of global
warming. "These increasingly warm temperatures that we've been seeing in the last couple of decades have been tipping reefs over in
terms of these fast bleaching events," she said. Graham, the study author, says that while local and regional resource managers can
mitigate some damage to coral reefs, broader action is required. "Bleaching is a global issue, and it's driven by global warming," Graham
said. "So the onus is on all of us, really." "We need to reduce greenhouse gases and take these issues seriously."
18
Impact- Polar Bears

Polar bears are declining directly because of global warming.
Fred Langan and Tom Leonard, written articles published in The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph, September 3, 2007
Telegraph.co.uk, Polar Bears ‘thriving as the Arctic warms up’, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1545036/Polar-
bears-'thriving-as-the-Arctic-warms-up'.html
"I don't think there is any question polar bears are in danger from global warming," said Andrew Derocher of the World Conservation
Union, and a professor of biological sciences at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. "People who deny that have a clear interest in
hunting bears." Bear numbers on the west coast of Hudson's Bay had shrunk by 22 per cent over the past decade, he said. "They are
declining due to global warming and changes in when the ice freezes and melts in Hudson's Bay," he added. He and other scientists in his
group are concerned that the retreating ice in the Arctic may pose a danger to future generations of polar bears because of 'habitat loss'.
"The critical problem is the sea ice is changing. "We're looking ahead three generations, 30 to 50 years. "To say that bear populations are
growing in one area now is irrelevant."
Polar bears are a keystone species

WWF, World Wide Fund for Nature. From the Amazon to the Bering Sea, WWF is building a future where human needs are met in
harmony with nature. By 2020 we will conserve 19 of the world’s most important natural places and significantly change global forces to
protect the future of nature, May, 2002
WWF, Polar Bears At Risk, 7/10/08, www.wwf.org
As the polar bear is a keystone species at the top of the food web in the arctic seas, which include some of the world’s most productive
marine ecosystems, it is a good indicator of the overall status of these ecosystems (Eisenberg 1980). Successful conservation of polar
bears and their habitats can thus have positive effects on many other species, in several key ecoregions, as well as on local human
communities within the Arctic. Addressing the conservation of such keystone species therefore has a high priority within WWF. Through
its work in priority ecoregions, WWF is a driving force in the protection of large expanses of unfragmented land and marine areas to
ensure that space-demanding species, such as the polar bear, can continue to roam undisturbed in intact ecosystems.
Without keystone species the rest of the ecosystem will collapse

Rocky Mountain Animal Defense, Keystone Species; Why Prairie Dogs Are So Important. February 22, 2004
http://www.prairiedogs.org/keystone.html accessed July 10, 2008
A keystone species is a species whose very presence contributes to a diversity of life and whose extinction would consequently lead to the
extinction of other forms of life. Keystone species help to support the ecosystem (entire community of life) of which they are a part.
19
Impact- Salmon
Global Warming threatens the livelihood of Salmon and Trout.
Natural Resource Defense Council, 2002
(Natural Resource and Defense Council, Global Warming Threatens Cold Water Fish, July 8, 2008,
http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/ntrout.asp)
Why are salmon and trout so vulnerable to global warming? It's simple: cold-water fish such as trout and salmon thrive in streams with
temperatures of 50 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit. In many areas, the fish are already living at the upper end of their thermal range, meaning
even modest warming could render streams uninhabitable. Projected increases in water temperature differ by location, but average 0.7 to
1.4 degrees Fahrenheit by 2030, 1.3 to 3.2 degrees by 2060, and 2.2 to 4.9 degrees by 2090, depending on future emissions of heat-
trapping gases and the climate model on which projections are based. The analysis covers four species of trout -- brook, cutthroat,
rainbow and brown -- and four species of salmon -- pink, coho, chinook and chum. Researchers looked at air and water temperature data
from more than 2,000 sites across the United States (not including Alaska or Hawaii). Then, using three internationally recognized climate
models, they estimated changes in stream temperatures under a variety of pollution scenarios. In reality, habitat loss could be even more
extensive than predicted. NRDC's study examined only the direct effects of higher air temperatures on water, and did not cover indirect
impacts of global warming, such as shifts in precipitation and evaporation. Nor did it take into account changes in the ocean, where
salmon and some trout species spend much of their lives. As with other consequences of global warming, the disappearance of trout and
salmon is expected to vary by region. For trout, the greatest losses are likely to occur in the South, Southwest and Northeast, largely
because stream temperatures in those areas already are warmer than in other regions. For salmon, significant losses are expected
throughout the current range of the four species, with the most dramatic losses occurring in California. Regardless of location, the
disappearance of cold-water fish will come at a significant cost -- to jobs, recreation and regional culture. Roughly 10 million Americans
spend an average of 10 days a year angling for salmon and trout, and the estimated value of the combined fisheries ranges from $1.5
billion to $14 billion a year. Trout are also central to the culture of the Rocky and Appalachian mountains, while salmon are an integral
part of the Northwest's Native American heritage.
Salmon are a Keystone species

Sierra Club, Salmon; Keystone of the Coast. February 06, 2007 http://www.savethegreatbear.org/CAD/Salmon.htm accessed July 10,
2008
Salmon are keystone species in the rainforest. Not only are they a critical fall food source for the grizzly bear, wolves, eagles and otters,
but they also act as fertilizer for the trees. In addition, because spawning is highly sensitive to stream temperature and sedimentation,
salmon act as an indicator species for the overall health of the ecosystem.
Without keystone species the rest of the ecosystem will collapse

Rocky Mountain Animal Defense, Keystone Species; Why Prairie Dogs Are So Important. February 22, 2004
http://www.prairiedogs.org/keystone.html accessed July 10, 2008
A keystone species is a species whose very presence contributes to a diversity of life and whose extinction would consequently lead to the
extinction of other forms of life. Keystone species help to support the ecosystem (entire community of life) of which they are a part.
20
Impact- EXT: Salmon Die

The Salmon Population will have a hard time living in a hot river.
National Wildlife Federation, March 23, 2008
(National Wildlife Federation, pacific Southwest Salmon In Hot Water, July 8, 2008, http://www.nwf.org/news/story.cfm?
pageId=B78FFA91-0385-8B0A-44A6DFA8FC022F09)
By 2040 up to 20 percent of the Pacific Northwest could become too warm for salmon, steelhead and trout if global warming is left
unchecked, an analysis released today by the National Wildlife Federation shows. Ongoing research conducted by the University of
Washington indicates that higher regional temperatures could also change the timing and volume of rain and snow coming from nearby
glaciers and mountains, affecting stream flows that the fish have historically depended on. “Salmon in the region are struggling to survive
amidst dams, water diversions and development along river shorelines,” says Paula Del Giudice, director of the National Wildlife
Federation’s Northwest Natural Resource Center in Seattle. “Global warming will add an enormous amount of pressure onto what’s left of
the region’s prime cold-water fish habitat. If we don’t act now to curb pollution, within our lifetimes a significant portion of this region’s
salmon, steelhead and trout could be pushed out of existence. We have a responsibility to protect this region’s wildlife heritage for our
children’s future. That means we must unite in confronting global warming starting now.” A 3º F rise in average August temperatures in
the region could cause as much as 20 percent of the area containing suitable habitat for some cold-water fish in the Columbia River Basin
and coastal watersheds of Washington and Oregon to reach nearly 70 degrees F. If translated to stream temperature, the area could
become highly stressful for salmon, steelhead, and trout, concludes the report, Fish Out of Water. Based on recent global warming
projections, a 3º F rise in temperature is plausible by 2040 due to increasing pollution from fossil fuels such as coal and oil. If streams in
the region continue to be degraded by other factors, the impact will likely be even greater.
21
Impact- Sea Life

The accelerated rate of melting ice endangers sealife.
The Arctic melt season has lengthened by 10–17 days, shrinking the amount of ice buildup that remains from year to year. As sea ice thins
and recedes from coastlines, indigenous hunters and fishers are finding themselves cut off from traditional hunting grounds. Coastal
communities face more violent and less predictable weather, rising sea levels, and diminishing access to food sources. Polar bears, unable
to cross thin or nonexistent ice to hunt seals, will soon face a severely reduced food source. Scientists fear that with continued melting, the
bears may become extinct by the end of the century. Seals, walruses, and seabirds will also lose key feeding and breeding grounds along
the ice edge. Marine transport through the Arctic is expected to increase as ice melts and new shipping routes become available. The
length of the navigation season along the Northern Sea Route is projected to increase to about 120 days by 2100, up from the current 20–
30 days. While this could have positive economic effects, some observers worry about the environmental costs that might accompany
increased ship access to Arctic waters, such as oil spills and fishery depletion.
Phytoplankton disappearance caused by Global Warming threatens marine life.
Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer, 2006
(USA Today, Global warming threatens basis of marine life In the world’s oceans, July 9, 2008,
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/2006-12-06-marine-life-threatened_x.htm)
The critical base of the ocean food web is shrinking as the world's seas warm, new NASA satellite data show. The discovery has scientists
worried about how much food will grow in the future for the world's marine life. The data show a significant link between warmer water
— either from the El Nino climate phenomenon or global warming — and reduced production of phytoplankton of the world's oceans,
according to a study in Thursday's journal Nature. Phytoplankton are the microscopic plant life that zooplankton and other marine animals
eat, essentially the grain crop of the world's oceans. "Everything else up the food web is going to be impacted," said oceanographer Scott
Doney of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. "What's worrisome is that small changes that happen in the bottom of food web can
have dramatic changes to certain species at higher spots on the food chain." This is yet another recent scientific study with real-time data
showing the much predicted harmful effects of global warming are not just coming, but in some cases are already here and can be tallied
scientifically, researchers said. A satellite commissioned by NASA tracked water temperature and the production of phytoplankton from
1997 to 2006, finding that for most of the world's oceans when one went up the other went down and vice versa, said study lead author
Michael Behrenfeld, a biological oceanographer at Oregon State University. As water temperatures increased from 1999 to 2004, the crop
of phytoplankton dropped significantly, about 200 million tons a year. On average about 50 billion tons of phytoplankton are produced
yearly, Behrenfeld said. During that time, some ocean regions, especially around the equator in the Pacific, saw as much as a 50% drop in
phytoplankton production, he said. However, the satellite first started taking measurements in 1997 when water temperatures were at their
warmest due to El Nino. That's the regular cyclical warming of part of the Pacific Ocean that affects climate worldwide. After that year,
the ocean significantly cooled until 1999 and the phytoplankton crop soared by 2 billion tons during those two years. "The results are
showing this very tight coupling between production and climate," Behrenfeld said. Phytoplankton, which turn sunlight into food, need
nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphates and iron from colder water below, Behrenfeld said. With warmer surface water, it's harder for the
phytoplankton to get those nutrients. Behrenfeld said the link between the El Nino changes and phytoplankton production is clear. For
years scientists warning about climate change have said warmer waters will reduce phytoplankton production and this shows it's
happening, he said. Other oceanographers agree with the El Nino link but said with only a decade of data it is harder to make global
warming connections. "It's something you certainly can't ignore, because its potential is quite significant," said James Yoder of the Woods
Hole Institute. "But there are some caveats because of the shortness of the record." Another worry is that with reduced phytoplankton, the
world's oceans will suck up less carbon dioxide, increasing the Earth's chief global warming gas, said NASA ocean biology project
manager Paula Bontempi. That's because phytoplankton take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere in making food. This is at least the
third significant peer-reviewed research paper in the past six months showing that long-anticipated global warming biological side effects
are already happening. A study earlier this year linked increases in Western U.S. wildfires to global warming and a mega-study showed
that dozens of species of plants and animals were dying off from global warming. "What you're looking at is almost an avalanche of each
individual effect," said Stanford University biological sciences professor Stephen Schneider. "As it gets warmer and as we measure more
things, the evidence accumulates."
22
23
Impact- EXT: Warming Kills Sea Life

Global warming threatens thousands of sea animals with extinction
Jeremy Lovell, 9-9-02,
Reuters News Agency, “Exotic Antarctic Species Face Climate Wipeout” Reuters. http://www.well.com/~davidu/antarctic.html.
Accessed on July 10, 2008//grice
LEICESTER, England (Reuters) - Thousands of the world's most exotic species of sea animals from spiders the size of dinner plates to
giant woodlice face extinction if Antarctic sea temperatures rise as predicted, a scientist said Monday. "If the models are correct, we are
likely to lose large populations of scallops, giant isopods, bivalve molluscs and giant sea spiders among others," scientist Lloyd Peck of
the British Antarctic Survey told reporters. "So far we have looked at 11 species and the answer has come up the same each time. At a
temperature rise of two to three degrees, they asphyxiate," he said at the British Association for the Advancement of Science annual
festival. The behemoth-scale giant isopods resemble woodlice but grow to the size of a mobile phone. Peck said water temperatures
around the Antarctic -- one of the last outposts of relatively untouched environment in the world -- were rising at more than twice the rate
of the land temperature, having climbed by one degree in the past 15 years. Scientific models trying to predict the pace and scale of
future change pegged the likely rise at up to three degrees within 100 years. Surveys have shown that the Antarctic sea dwellers were
unable to adapt to such temperature changes so they effectively suffocated due to their inability to move oxygen round their bodies.
GROW SLOWLY "These are probably the most fragile group of animals in the world to temperature change," he said. "They grow very
slowly, producing only a few generations in 100 years. Yet studies show it takes several generations to adapt." "Several thousand species
of cold-blooded invertebrate animals would be at risk if we get the kind of temperature rise indicated. In this part of the world we have
some of the most exotic animals there are," Peck said. He said there was every possibility that such a wholesale climatic slaughter would
have an impact higher up the food chain, but that it was impossible to say just how they would be affected.
The Ecosystem of the Ocean is at risk as the temperatures in the ocean rise.
(Environment News Service, Global Warming Threatens Ocean Ecosystems, July 8, 2008, http://www.ens-
newswire.com/ens/aug2002/2002-08-14-06.asp)
Climate change will create increasing challenges to U.S. coastal and marine ecosystems over the next century, warns a new report from
the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. Temperature changes, altered patterns of rain and snowfall, and rising sea level are expected
to upset the delicate balance of fragile coastal ecosystems. The Earth's climate is expected to change must faster than normal over the
coming decades due to the warming influence of human caused increases in greenhouse gas emissions. The world's oceans, which cover
almost 70 percent of the planet's surface, are likely to show the effects of climate change in dramatic and devastating ways, the Pew
Center warns. "Such high rates of change will probably result in local if not total extinction of some species, the alteration of species
distributions in ways that may lead to major changes in their interactions with other species, and modifications in the flow of energy and
cycling of materials within ecosystems," warns the new report, titled "Coastal and Marine Ecosystems and Global Climate Change:
Potential Effects on U.S. Resources." "Climate change could likely be the 'sleeper issue' that pushes our already stressed and fragile
coastal and marine ecosystems over the edge," said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "Particularly
vulnerable are coastal and shallow water areas already stressed by human activity, such as estuaries and coral reefs. The situation is
analogous to that faced by a human whose immune system is compromised and who may succumb to a disease that would not threaten a
healthy person."
Global Warming puts risk to the species of the Ocean for many reasons.
(Environment News Service, Global Warming Threatens Ocean Ecosystems, July 8, 2008, http://www.ens-
newswire.com/ens/aug2002/2002-08-14-06.asp)
Critical coastal ecosystems such as wetlands, estuaries and coral reefs are particularly vulnerable to climate change, the report concludes.
Such ecosystems are among the most biologically productive environments in the world, but their location at the interface between the
land and ocean environments exposes them to a wide variety of human and natural stressors. The added burden of climate change may
further degrade these valuable ecosystems, threatening their ecological sustainability and the flow of goods and services they provide to
human populations, the report warns. Temperature changes in coastal and marine ecosystems will influence the metabolism of marine
species, and alter ecological processes such as productivity and species interactions, the researchers said. Species are adapted to specific
ranges of environmental temperature, the report explains. As temperatures change, the geographic ranges of different species may expand
or contract, creating new combinations of species that will interact in unpredictable ways. Species that are unable to migrate or compete
with other species for resources may face local or global extinction. Changes in precipitation and sea level rise will have far reaching
consequences for the water balance of coastal ecosystems, the report notes. Increases in precipitation and runoff will increase the risk of
coastal flooding, while decreases in precipitation may trigger droughts. Meanwhile, sea level rise will gradually inundate coastal lands,
the study warns. Coastal wetlands may migrate inland with rising sea levels, but only if they are not obstructed by human development.
Climate change is also likely to alter patterns of wind and water circulation in the ocean environment. Such changes may influence the
vertical movement of ocean waters, increasing or decreasing the availability of nutrients and oxygen to marine species. Changes in ocean
circulation patterns can also cause substantial changes in regional ocean and land temperatures and the geographic distributions of marine
species.
24
25
The Carbon Emissions threaten the life of many Marine animals.

CNN, 2005
(CNN.com, Carbon Emissions Threaten Sea Life, July 8, 2008, http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/07/04/oceans.acid/)
Excessive carbon in the atmosphere is already causing irreparable environmental damage to the Earth's oceans and drastic cuts in
emissions are necessary to prevent further devastation, a panel of leading scientists has warned. A report by the Royal Society, the UK's
leading scientific academy, said that rising carbon levels caused by the burning of fossil fuels had dramatically increased the acidity of
seawater, threatening the oceans' ecosystems. Sea creatures such as coral, shell fish and star fish are likely to suffer because higher levels
of acidity will make it harder for them to form shells and skeletons. The report predicts that some types of plankton, a major food source
for marine life, may be unable to make their calcium carbonate shells by the end of the 21st century. Larger marine animals such as squid
could face extinction as they find it harder to extract oxygen from sea water and their food supplies dwindle. Combined with the effects of
climate change, ocean acidification also poses a threat to tropical and subtropical reefs such as Australia's Great Barrier Reef and the
hundreds of thousands of species that live off them, as well as to the human communities that depend on reefs for food and as natural
coastal defenses. "Along with climate change, the rising acidity of our oceans is yet another reason for us to be concerned about the
carbon dioxide we are pumping into the atmosphere," said Professor John Raven, chair of the Royal Society working group on ocean
acidification. "World leaders ... must commit to taking decisive and significant action to cut carbon dioxide emissions. Failure to do so
may mean that there is no place in the oceans of the future for many of the species and ecosystems that we know today." Raven said that
the burning of fossil fuels over the past two centuries had changed the chemistry of the oceans at a rate that was 100 times faster than had
happened for millions of years. Those changes could also contribute directly to global warming if the carbon-saturated oceans reach a
point when they can no longer soak up any further emissions from the atmosphere. In the past two centuries the oceans have absorbed
around half of all carbon produced by humans, soaking up one ton for each person on the planet each year. "The oceans play a vital role in
the earth's climate and other natural systems which are all interconnected. By blindly meddling with one part of this complex mechanism,
we run the risk of unwittingly triggering far reaching effects," said Raven. While the report said that rising levels of ocean acidity are
irreversible in current lifetimes, it warned that urgent action was needed to reduce levels of carbon in the atmosphere and called for
further research into the consequences of ocean acidification.
26
Impact- Bio diversity

Fossil records prove that increased carbon dioxide has lead to mass extinction in the past
Green Car Congress. Energy research company. October 24, 2007. “Fossil Record Provides Evidence Linking Mass Extinction Events
with Climate Change”. Accessed July 8, 2008.
Researchers at the Universities of York and Leeds have identified a close association between Earth's climate and mass extinction
events in a study that examines the relationship between the two over the past 520 million years—almost the entire fossil record available.
Matching data sets of marine and terrestrial diversity against temperature estimates, evidence shows that global biodiversity is
relatively low during warm greenhouse phases and extinctions relatively high, while the reverse is true in cooler icehouse phases.
The research, published in the latest issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B, was carried out by University of York student Gareth
Jenkins, together with his supervisor, Dr Peter Mayhew, and University of Leeds Professor Tim Benton, both of whom are population
ecologists. Proceedings B is the Royal Society’s main biological research journal. “Our results provide the first clear evidence that
global climate may explain substantial variation in the fossil record in a simple and consistent manner. If our results hold for current
warming—the magnitude of which is comparable with the long-term fluctuations in Earth climate—they suggest that extinctions
will increase.” —Dr Peter Mayhew. Future predicted temperatures are within the range of the warmest greenhouse phases that are
associated with mass extinction events identified in the fossil record. Of the five mass extinction events(Cretaceous-Tertiary, End-
Triassic, End-Permian, Late Devonian, Ordovician-Silurian), four—including the one that eliminated the dinosaurs 65 million years
ago—are associated with greenhouse phases. The largest mass extinction event of all, the end-Permian, occurred during one of the
warmest ever climatic phases and saw the estimated extinction of 95% of animal and plant species.
loss of biodiversity leads to extinction.

David Diner, Major US Army, 1993 (The Judge Advocate General's School, United States Army, “THE ARMY AND THE
ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT:WHO' S ENDANGERING WHOM?” Accessed on July 9, 2008, http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-
bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA456541&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf)
It may be difficult to accept that the snail darter, harelip sucker, or Dismal Swamp southeastern shrew, 74 could save mankind. Many, if
not most, species are useless to man in a direct utilitarian sense. Nonetheless, they may be critical in an indirect role, because their
extirpation could negatively affect a directly useful species. In a closely interconnected ecosystem, the loss of each species affects other
species dependent upon it. 75 Moreover, as the number of species decline, the affect of each new extinction on the remaining * species
increases dramatically 76 4. BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY The main premise of species preservation is that diversity is better than
simplicity.77 As the current mass extinction progresses, there has been a general decrease in the world's biological diversity. This trend
occurs within ecosystems by reducing the number of species, and within species by reducing the number of individuals. Both trends carry
serious future implications. 78 Biologically diverse ecosystems are characterized by a large number of specialist species, filling narrow
ecological niches. These ecosystems are inherently more stable than less diverse systems: "'The more complex the ecosystem, the more
successfully it can resist a stress...[l]ike a net, in which each knot is connected to others by several strands, such a fabric can resist
collapse better than a simple, unbranched circle of threadswhich if cut anywhere breaks down as a whole.", 79 By causing widespread
extinctions humans have artificially simplified many ecosystems. As biologic simplicity rises, so does the risk of ecosystem failure. The
spreading Sahara desert in Africa, and the dustbowl conditions of the 1930s in the U.S. are relatively mild examples of what might be
expected if this trend continues. Theoretically, each new animal or plant extinction, with all its dimly perceived and intertwined affects,
could cause total ecosystem collapse, and human extinction. Certainly, each new extinction increases the risk of disaster. Like a mechanic
removing, one by one, the rivets from an aircraft's wings, 80 mankind may be edging closer to the abyss.
27
Impact- EXT: Bio Diversity

At least 1/3 of all plant and animal life will be at risk for extinction by the end of this century due to
warming
World Wildlife Foundation, 2000
“One-third of world's habitat at risk from global warming,” Climate Change. 30 Aug 2000.
http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/ climate_change/news/index.cfm?uNewsID=2141. Accessed on July 7, 2008//grice
London, UK - Global warming could fundamentally alter one third of plant and animal habitats by the end of this century, and cause the
eventual extinction of certain plant and animal species, according to a new study released today by WWF. The report, Global Warming
and Terrestrial Biodiversity Decline, says that in the northern latitudes of Canada, Russia and Scandinavia, where warming is predicted to
be most rapid, up to 70 percent of habitat could be lost. Russia, Canada, Kyrgystan, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Uruguay, Bhutan
and Mongolia are likely to loose 45 per cent or more of current habitat while many coastal and island species will be at risk from the
combined threat of warming oceans, sea-level rise and range shifts. "As global warming accelerates, plants and animals will come under
increasing pressure to migrate to find suitable habitat. Some will just not be able to move fast enough," said Adam Markham, Executive
Director of a US NGO, Clean Air-Cool Planet, one of the co-authors of the report. "In some places, plants would need to move ten times
faster than they did during the last ice age merely to survive. It is likely that global warming will mean extinction for some plants and
animals." Species most at risk are those that are rare or live in isolated or fragmented habitats. They include the rare Gelada baboon in
Ethiopia, the mountain pygmy possum of Australia, the monarch butterfly at its Mexican wintering grounds, and the spoon-billed
sandpiper at its breeding sites in Russia's arctic far east. In the Untied States, most of the northern spruce and fir forest of New England
and New York State could ultimately be lost. In patches of habitat that do survive, local species loss may be as high as 20 per cent in the
most vulnerable mountain ecosystems such as northern Alaska, Russia's Tamyr Peninsula and south-eastern Australia. The report's
predictions are based on a moderate estimate that concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere will double from pre-
industrial levels during this century. However, some projections suggest a three-fold increase in concentrations by 2100 unless action is
taken to rein in the inefficient use of coal, oil and gas for energy production. In this case, the effects on nature could be even more
dramatic. Already, Costa Rica's golden toad has probably become extinct. Birds such as the great tit in Scotland and the Mexican jay in
Arizona are beginning to breed earlier in the year; butterflies are shifting their ranges northwards throughout Europe; and mammals in
many parts of the Arctic — including polar bears, walrus and caribou — are beginning to feel the impacts of reduced sea ice and warming
tundra habitat. "This is a wake-up call to world leaders — if they do not act to stop global warming, wildlife around the globe may suffer
the consequences. World leaders must give top priority to reducing levels of carbon pollution. They must not miss the chance of this
November's climate summit for stepping up action and preventing a catastrophe that could change the world as we know it," said Jennifer
Morgan, Director of WWF's Climate Change Campaign
28
Impact- Ecosystem collapse destroys Bio D

ecosystem collapse causes biodiversity loss.
MIT, 2007, (Mass. Institute of Technology, “Mission 2011: Saving the Ocean,” Accessed on July 10, 2008,
http://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2011/finalwebsite/future/future.shtml)
Evidence from global fisheries data and a plethora of experiments point to the catastrophic impact of biodiversity loss in human-
dominated marine ecosystems. As populations shrink and species die off, the ocean's food chains, water quality, and recovery potential
are adversely affected. This adds to the instability of the ecosystems, which are already under strain from climate change and pollution,
but the information available also suggests that we can still reverse these trends (Worm et al., 2006). With estimates placing the collapse
of fisheries and all seafood species by the year 2050 (ScienCentral, 2006), we have little time to take action and save the oceans and
global fisheries from unprecedented crises.
loss of biodiversity leads to extinction.

Biodiversity is Vital for Human Survival

Food and Agriculture Organization February 18, 2008
<FAO, 7-10-08, http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2008/1000788/index.html>
“Biodiversity is vital for human survival and livelihoods; we need to conserve it for future generations. At the same time, the
unacceptable scale of hunger and rural poverty in our small planet calls for urgent remedial action,” FAO Deputy Director-General James
G. Butler said today. He was addressing the opening session of the thirteenth meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and
Technological Advice of the Convention on Biological Diversity (18-22 February 2008). Ultimately, at the global level, this event –
which involves FAO, the Convention on Biological Diversity and their partners – is aimed at meeting the challenges of sustainable
agricultural production to ensure food security for all peoples, “especially the rural poor – often the managers and custodians of our
biodiversity,” as Mr. Butler put it. The Rome meeting focuses on the implementation of the programmes of work on agricultural
biodiversity and forest biodiversity; the application of sustainable use principles and guidelines to agricultural biodiversity; the linkages
between agricultural biodiversity and climate change; marine, coastal and inland water ecosystems biodiversity; invasive alien species;
and other scientific and technical issues.
29
Impact – Disease
Global warming threatens infectious disease at a time that public health systems are on the brink –
threatens human extinction.
Dotto 2k
(Science Writer, Canadian Science Writers Association awardee, “Storm Warming”, p. 149-52, Netlibrary) DMZ
Global warming skeptics have vigorously attacked suggestions of a link between climate change and infectious diseases. The World Climate Report
claims that advocates of greenhouse gas cuts are trying to scare the public by alleging that a warmer climate would cause death and disease. Some
skeptics argue that if any health problems arise, health care and social support systems will cope with them. Leaving aside the fact that billions of people
don't have access to even the most basic health care and social support systems (some of whom, it should be noted, live in developed countries like
Canada and the U.S.), there is the question of financing. As Scheraga said, "effective health care comes at a cost. There are those who argue we can
adapt, but even if that's true, adaptation costs something and those resources must be diverted from other activities." In any event, there are doubts about
how well the much-vaunted health care systems of industrialized countries would respond to added pressures caused by an increase in climate- and
weather-related health problems. Many are hard-pressed to deal with existing demands. In the U.S., with a mostly private health system, more than 40
million people are without basic medical coverage. Nor is the U.S. health care system well prepared to respond to natural disasters, according to
emergency medicine specialists who spoke at a 1996 conference at the University of Colorado. The report summarizing their remarks said the U.S. will
face "significant problems in providing sufficient emergency medical resources at the local level following catastrophic disasters." They attributed the
lack of medical preparedness to several factors, including fragmentation and downsizing of hospitals and health support systems, increased costs, and
confusion in emergency planning. In Canada, where the public health care system until recently has been a source of national pride, there's also mounting
concern about the erosion caused by years of government cutbacks. There are ominous signs that the system is starting to crumble from the stress of too
much demand and too few resources. With the baby boom generation just entering its senior years, the situation will continue to deteriorate unless these
trends are reversed. It's hard to be sanguine about the ability of this system to handle additional pressures stemming from climate change and weather
extremes. Some infectious disease experts have also expressed concern about failures of public health infrastructure all over the world. There's worrying
evidence that disease outbreaks are increasing everywhere, including in developed countries. A 1995 study by Ann Platt of the World Watch Institute
found that mortality from infectious diseases was rising worldwide and that these diseases accounted for a third of all deaths, more than those caused by
cancer and heart disease combined. The CDC found that U.S. deaths with infectious disease as an underlying cause increased by 58% between 1980 and
1992 (39% when adjusted for population aging). Contrary to previous predictions that infection diseases would wane in the U.S., "these data show that
infectious disease mortality has actually been increasing in recent years," said Robert Pinner of the CDC. The crisis results from both the emergence of
new diseases and the reemergence of old diseases like tuberculosis, once thought beaten in developed countries. The growing drug resistance of many
disease organisms is an added problem that could be exacerbated by climate change. A warming climate is likely to accelerate the reproduction of
parasites, facilitating genetic adaptations that help them fend off drugs and other control methods. Climate change may also reduce the effectiveness of
programs to control disease-carrying vectors. Platt blamed the global increase in infectious diseases on a "deadly mix of exploding populations, rampant
poverty, inadequate health care, misuse of antibiotics, and severe environmental degradation." She noted that 80% of all disease in developing countries
stems from unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation. Even in the U.S., with its advanced sanitation facilities, water-borne diseases cost an estimated $20
billion a year. A 1993 outbreak of cryptosporidium, which affected more than 400,000 people, was partly caused by a nonfunctioning water filtration
plant; similar deficiencies have been found in other U.S. cities. Even with all its resources, the U.S. public health system hasn't been able to prevent either
the resurgence of old diseases like tuberculosis or outbreaks of emerging diseases like hantavirus and Lyme disease. When skeptics argue that the best
way to cope with infectious diseases is to improve sanitation and other public health measures, there's often an assumption that this is not a big problem.
The World Climate Report, for example, states that dealing with cholera is "simple"-merely a matter of filtering and chlorinating the water supply. "A
warmer climate, if it were to occur, would not reduce the effectiveness of these water purification measures." While this is true, it's hardly the point. The
effectiveness of purification measures is irrelevant if they're not implemented, and the fact is, they're not being implemented nearly enough as it is. If this
were really that simple a matter, it would long since have been accomplished. However, many countries are stymied by budget cuts, population growth,
and grinding poverty (which has been described as the deadliest disease of all). Eradicating world poverty is hardly more trivial a challenge than
preventing global warming. We're not dealing particularly well today with the threat of infectious diseases. Indeed, there's evidence that we're losing
ground, even in developed countries. There's little reason to assume our already stressed public health systems can readily handle an increased threat
caused by global warming. At a conference sponsored by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, scientists concluded that, while more research is
needed to reduce uncertainties in linking climate change and infectious diseases, "the lack of complete data should not be used as an excuse for inaction.
Instead, the precautionary principle should apply: If the risk to public health is great, even if there is uncertainty, both policy and action should be biased
in favor of precaution." A report by the World Health Organization notes that humans can probably deal with even fairly major climatic changes-after all,
they live in nearly all climatic environments right now-but the adjustments needed to do this could be substantial, expensive, and "may require many
sacrifices in life-style and wellbeing to re-establish and maintain the basic needs." All aspects of life-housing, clothing, nutrition, mobility, education,
health services, industrial production, and much of the established infrastructure-would be affected. This reality highlights one of the oddest aspects of
the argument that improved social and health care programs can handle any health problems global warming may throw our way-which is that it's so
often proffered by people who generally are not enthusiastic supporters of government spending on social programs or foreign aid. It seems rather
disingenuous to urge delay in cutting greenhouse gas emissions on the grounds that social programs are a better way of coping with health problems
caused by global warming. One wonders if this can be taken as an endorsement of spending whatever's needed to eradicate world poverty and provide
everyone with adequate medical care, clean water, and air conditioning.
30
Impact- Drought (genocide)

Climate change alters weather patterns to induce overwhelming drought resulting in resource wars ending
in genocide – Darfur Proves
Ban Ki Moon, United Nations Secretary-General, 16 June 2007
Washington Post, “A Climate Culprit In Darfur”, 07/10/08, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/06/15/AR2007061501857.html It would be natural to view these as distinct developments. In fact, they are
linked. Almost invariably, we discuss Darfur in a convenient military and political shorthand -- an ethnic conflict pitting Arab militias
against black rebels and farmers. Look to its roots, though, and you discover a more complex dynamic. Amid the diverse social and
political causes, the Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change. Two decades ago,
the rains in southern Sudan began to fail. According to U.N. statistics, average precipitation has declined some 40 percent since the
early 1980s. Scientists at first considered this to be an unfortunate quirk of nature. But subsequent investigation found that it
coincided with a rise in temperatures of the Indian Ocean, disrupting seasonal monsoons. This suggests that the drying of sub-
Saharan Africa derives, to some degree, from man-made global warming. It is no accident that the violence in Darfur erupted
during the drought. Until then, Arab nomadic herders had lived amicably with settled farmers. A recent Atlantic Monthly article by
Stephan Faris describes how black farmers would welcome herders as they crisscrossed the land, grazing their camels and sharing
wells. But once the rains stopped, farmers fenced their land for fear it would be ruined by the passing herds. For the first time in
memory, there was no longer enough food and water for all. Fighting broke out. By 2003, it evolved into the full-fledged tragedy
we witness today.
We have a moral obligation to prevent genocide

Washington Post, As Genocide Unfolds. June 20, 2004. p. B06
THE BUSH administration is waking up to Darfur, the western Sudanese province where Arab death squads have herded African
villagers into refugee camps and are waiting for them to die. Two weeks ago Andrew Natsios, the administration's top aid official,
estimated that at least a third of a million refugees are likely to perish for lack of food or basic medicines, and earlier this month Secretary
of State Colin L. Powell acknowledged to the New York Times that the death squads have been supported by Sudan's government. Mr.
Powell added that State Department lawyers are determining whether the killing, which the administration has already characterized as
ethnic cleansing, may qualify for the term "genocide" -- a determination that would impose moral, political and arguably also legal
obligations to intervene in Darfur. The Darfur killings do look very much like genocide. The U.N. Convention on Genocide defines it as
"acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" by, for example, "deliberately
inflicting on members of the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part." In keeping
with this language, the Darfur violence has been targeted at a group defined by its black skin, with the objective not merely of looting land
or cattle but of physical destruction. Aerial maps, interviews with refugees and reports from the region show that villages with ethnic
African populations have been singled out for destruction; in one area, U.N. fact-finders came upon 23 African villages burned to the
ground, while ethnic Arab villages, some separated from an African one by as little as 500 yards, were unscathed. Moreover, the refugees
from the burned villages now face death not as some byproduct of conflict; their extermination is a main objective of the death squads and
Sudan's government. The death squads attack refugees who venture out of their camps in search of food or firewood, and the government
deliberately hampers international humanitarian efforts to deliver relief supplies. After a rebellion began in Darfur early last year, the
Sudanese regime appears to have decided that, by wiping out a large fraction of the civilian population, it could deter copy-cat rebellions
elsewhere. Whatever label one attaches to these killings, there is a moral obligation to do everything possible to stop them. To ignore
slaughter on this scale is to subscribe to an intolerably cramped view of Western interests, one that would drain foreign policy of its moral
content, undermine its support among voters and damage the West's reputation in developing countries that already seek to paint high-
minded Western rhetoric as hypocritical. The Bush administration, to its credit, understands this. But its strategy is out of kilter with the
crisis on the ground.
31
Impact- Drought (Famine)

Global warming will lead to droughts and millions will die due to hunger
Cahal Milmo, Journalist, September 19, 2007
The Independent (London), “'Too late to avoid global warming,' say scientists”, 07/10/08, LexisNexis
A rise of two degrees centigrade in global temperatures - the point considered to be the threshold for catastrophic climate change
which will expose millions to drought, hunger and flooding - is now "very unlikely" to be avoided, the world's leading climate
scientists said yesterday. The latest study from the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) put the
inevitability of drastic global warming in the starkest terms yet, stating that major impacts on parts of the world - in particular
Africa, Asian river deltas, low-lying islands and the Arctic - are unavoidable and the focus must be on adapting life to survive the most
devastating changes. For more than a decade, EU countries led by Britain have set a rise of two degrees centigrade or less in global
temperatures above pre-industrial levels as the benchmark after which the effects of climate become devastating, with crop failures, water
shortages, sea-level rises, species extinctions and increased disease. Two years ago, an authoritative study predicted there could be as little
as 10 years before this "tipping point" for global warming was reached, adding a rise of 0.8 degrees had already been reached with further
rises already locked in because of the time lag in the way carbon dioxide - the principal greenhouse gas - is absorbed into the atmosphere.
The IPCC said yesterday that the effects of this rise are being felt sooner than anticipated with the poorest countries and the poorest
people set to suffer the worst of shifts in rainfall patterns, temperature rises and the viability of agriculture across much of the developing
world. In its latest assessment of the progress of climate change, the body said: "If warming is not kept below two degrees centigrade,
which will require the strongest mitigation efforts, and currently looks very unlikely to be achieved, the substantial global impacts will
occur, such as species extinctions, and millions of people at risk from drought, hunger, flooding." Under the scale of risk used by
IPCC, the words "very unlikely" mean there is just a one to 10 per cent chance of limiting the global temperature rise to two degrees
centigrade or less.
We have a moral obligation to ensure people have food
32
Impact- Ice Caps Melting now

Global Warming is melting ice all around the world, depleting some of our largest sources of ice.
The Greenland ice sheet is the largest land ice mass in the Northern Hemisphere. It holds enough fresh water to raise the earth’s sea level
by 7.2 meters (24 feet) if it were to melt completely, a result expected if the regional temperature rises 3 degrees Celsius. Scientists
project that concentrations of greenhouse gases will be high enough by 2100 to push temperatures past this threshold. Satellite data show
Greenland’s ice has been melting at higher and higher elevations every year since 1979. A conservative estimate of annual ice loss from
Greenland is 50 cubic kilometers (12 cubic miles) per year, enough water to raise the global sea level by 0.13 millimeters a year. The
Amundsen Sea region in the West Antarctic has experienced some of the world’s greatest temperature change, with annual temperatures
up 2.5 degrees Celsius over the past 60 years. The glaciers flowing into the sea from the Antarctic continent have been getting thinner for
the past 15 years, and ice shelves in the region have decreased by more than 13,500 square kilometers since the 1970s. Since the collapse
of the Delaware-sized Larsen B Ice Shelf in 2002, satellites have shown a two- to sixfold increase in the speed of glaciers flowing toward
the former ice shelf. While most glaciers typically move a few centimeters to several hundred meters annually, these glaciers are currently
moving as much as 1.5 kilometers each year. This type of acceleration has been witnessed throughout Antarctica and Greenland when ice
shelves collapse, removing the barrier to the sea for interior glaciers and quickening the rate of fresh water loss to the ocean. Glaciers in
West Antarctica are discharging about 250 cubic kilometers of ice and water into the ocean per year, 60 percent more than is accumulated
in their catchment areas—a net change sufficient to raise global sea levels by more than 0.2 millimeters per year . Ice melting is not
limited to the poles. According to glaciologist Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University, all but 13 of the 2,000 glaciers in southeast
Alaska are retreating. Montana’s Glacier National Park may have no glaciers left by 2030, and the ice cap on Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro may
disappear completely by 2015.
33
Impact- Ice Caps melt because of Warming

The largest Ice Shelf in the Northern Hemisphere broke in two and melted completely due to 100 years of
Global Warming.
Jim Motavilli, 2003
(E: Environment and Energy Magazine , Climate Change Reality Check, July 8, 2008, on Articlefirst)
If further proof were needed that global climate change is real (see "Welcome to the Greenhouse Century," features, September/October
2000), the breakup of the largest ice shelf in the Northern Hemisphere would seem to offer it. The Canadian Ward Hunt Ice Shelf (which
is up to 100 feet thick and had been in place for at least 3,000 years) began to crack in 2000. Last September it broke in two, draining a
trapped freshwater lake into the Arctic Ocean. Scientists attributed the disintegration to 100 years of relentless warming, a pattern that
had accelerated in recent years. Warwick E Vincent, a Laval University biologist, told the New York times, "It is part of a long-term
process, we believe. But the most recent changes are substantial and correlate with this recent increase in warming that we've seen from
the 1960s to the present. It's an example where a critical threshold has been passed." Average temperatures in the Canadian Arctic have
increased about four-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit every 10 years since 1967. According to the Washington Post, average July
temperatures on the Shelf are now only slightly above freezing.
34
Impact- Ice Caps Melting increase Sea Levels

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is melting, which could cause sea level rise.
Frances C. Moore, February 4, 2008
(Earth Policy Institute, Ice Melt Accelerates Around the World, July 7, 2008, http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Ice/2008.htm)
At the other end of the earth, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is also showing disturbing early signs of disintegration. These include
the thinning and acceleration of glaciers near the coast, the retreat of grounding lines (the point at which glaciers leave the land and
become floating ice shelves), and the increased calving of large icebergs. A recent study estimates that West Antarctica is losing
approximately 132 billion tons of ice per year, 59 percent faster than only a decade ago. In 2007, researchers reported satellite data
showing large lakes and rivers of meltwater flowing beneath the ice sheet, suggesting that the positive-feedback mechanisms recently
found to be accelerating ice loss in Greenland are also at work in Antarctica. The WAIS is thought to be particularly vulnerable to
warming because its base rests largely below sea level; higher sea level or a warmer ocean could lead to an unstable retreat of the
grounding line toward the interior, producing a sudden and rapid disintegration of the ice sheet. The Pine Island Bay area of the WAIS
near the Amundsen Sea has been called the “weak underbelly” of the ice sheet because glaciers there are not buttressed by large floating
ice shelves and so are most vulnerable to climate change. Disintegration of this sector, which alone contains enough ice to raise sea level
by one meter, could trigger widespread retreat in the rest of the ice sheet. Worryingly, a recent study suggests that the rate of mass loss
from these glaciers has more than doubled since 1996: they now account for nearly 70 percent of West Antarctic melt.
35
Impact- Sea Level (Bio Diversity)

Sea Level Rise leads to different salinization which hurts biodiversity
Schubert et al German Advisory Council on Global Change 2006
<Schubert, Schellnhuber, Epiney, Buchmann, Grießhammer, Kulessa, Messner, Rahmstorf, Schmid, WBGU, 7-10-08,
http://www.wbgu.de/wbgu_sn2006_en.pdf>
Changes in the tidal ranges and high-water levels caused by sea-level rise are an additional burden for coastal ecosystems. The
consequences include changes in water depths, light and temperature, and current speeds, and a shift in the freshwater-saltwater
distribution.These can lead to physiological burdens for some animal and plant species that could then require a habitat change. Studies
show that even minor seawater intrusions into coastal seas lead to large disturbances in the structure and diversity of zooplankton
populations. Accordingly, small salinity changes can result in a decline in the biodiversity of coastal ecosystems (Schallenberg et al.,
2003). The functioning and preservation of ecosystems are therefore not only threatened by flooding because of sea-level rise, but also by
changes in the frequency and strength of seawater intrusions.
And, loss of biodiversity leads to extinction.

36
Impact- Oscillation (agriculture)

And if you live in the Midwest, you’ll care – heating of the Earth increases moisture momentum making
every storm larger and more destructive.
Stocker 1
(T.F, Professor of Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, University of Bern, Switzerland, IPCC Third Assessment
Report, Climate Change 2001: Working Group I: The Scientific Basis, Chapter 7. Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks, 2001,
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar...df/TAR-07.PDF) DMZ
Because moisture convergence is likely to be proportionately enhanced as the moisture content increases, it should lead to similarly
enhanced precipitation rates. Moreover, the latent heat released feed back on the intensity of the storms. These factors suggest that, while
global precipitation exhibits a small increase with modest surface warming, it becomes increasingly concentrated in intense events, as is
observed to be happening in many parts of the world (Karl et al., 1995), including the USA (Karl and Knight, 1998), Japan (Iwashima and
Yamamoto, 1993) and Australia (Suppiah and Hennessy, 1998), thus increasing risk of flooding. However, the overall changes in
precipitation must equal evaporation changes, and this is smaller percentage-wise than the typical change in moisture content in most
model simulations (e.g., Mitchell et al, 1987: roads et al., 1996). Thus there are implications for the frequency of storms or other factors
(duration, efficiency, etc.) that must come into play to restrict the total precipitation. One possibility is that individual storms could be
more intense from the latent heat enhancement, but are fewer and farther between Itren berth, 1998, 1999).
And only a few years of such oscillation will result in the deaths of billions because of death of
agriculture
Milbrath 94
(Lester, Director of the Research Program in Environment and Society @ the State University of New York, “The Futurist”, p. xi) DMZ
Another scenario suggests that there could be an extended period, perhaps a decade or two, when there is oscillation-type chaos in the
climate system. Plants will be especially vulnerable to oscillating chaos, since they are injured or die when climate is too hot or too cold,
too dry or too wet. And since plants make food for all other creatures, plant dieback would lead to severe declines in agricultural
production. Farm animals and wildlife would die in large numbers. Many humans also would starve. Several years of climate oscillation
could kill billions of people.
37
Impact- Ice Age

The Atlantic Conveyor Belt not only exists, but it has the power to change Earth’s climate.
Kathryn Brown, 2000
(Science News, The Motion in the Ocean, July 8, 2008, accessed on Expanded Academic ASAP)
Despite their peacefulness on postcards, oceans are in constant motion. Winds, for instance, whip surface waters into major currents.
What's more, the North Atlantic Ocean is like a wet conveyor belt, with cold water constantly sinking in the polar regions and then
traveling, deep in the ocean, back toward the tropics. Somewhere en route, scientists say, this colder, deep water must mix with warmer
surface waters--otherwise, almost all the ocean would become cold and Earth's climate would be strikingly different. What watery spoon
stirs the deep sea--and how?
Global Warming will cause the GCB to shut down, which will cause the next ice age.
Thom Hartmann, 2004
(Common Dreams.com, How Global Warming May Cause the Next Ice Age, July 8, 2008, http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-
bin/print.cgi?file=/views04/0130-11.htm)
If the Great Conveyor Belt, which includes the Gulf Stream, were to stop flowing today, the result would be sudden and dramatic. Winter
would set in for the eastern half of North America and all of Europe and Siberia, and never go away. Within three years, those regions
would become uninhabitable and nearly two billion humans would starve, freeze to death, or have to relocate. Civilization as we know it
probably couldn't withstand the impact of such a crushing blow. And, incredibly, the Great Conveyor Belt has hesitated a few times in
the past decade. As William H. Calvin points out in one of the best books available on this topic ("A Brain For All Seasons: human
evolution & abrupt climate change"): ".the abrupt cooling in the last warm period shows that a flip can occur in situations much like the
present one. What could possibly halt the salt-conveyor belt that brings tropical heat so much farther north and limits the formation of ice
sheets? Oceanographers are busy studying present-day failures of annual flushing, which give some perspective on the catastrophic
failures of the past. "In the Labrador Sea, flushing failed during the 1970s, was strong again by 1990, and is now declining. In the
Greenland Sea over the 1980s salt sinking declined by 80 percent. Obviously, local failures can occur without catastrophe - it's a question
of how often and how widespread the failures are - but the present state of decline is not very reassuring." Most scientists involved in
research on this topic agree that the culprit is global warming, melting the icebergs on Greenland and the Arctic icepack and thus flushing
cold, fresh water down into the Greenland Sea from the north. When a critical threshold is reached, the climate will suddenly switch to an
ice age that could last minimally 700 or so years, and maximally over 100,000 years. And when might that threshold be reached? Nobody
knows - the action of the Great Conveyor Belt in defining ice ages was discovered only in the last decade. Preliminary computer models
and scientists willing to speculate suggest the switch could flip as early as next year, or it may be generations from now. It may be
wobbling right now, producing the extremes of weather we've seen in the past few years.
38
39
Impact- EXT: Ice Age

The Great Conveyor Belt exists and could cause the next ice age.
Thom Hartmann, 2004
It turns out that our warmth is the result of ocean currents that bring warm surface water up from the equator into northern regions that
would otherwise be so cold that even in summer they'd be covered with ice. The current of greatest concern is often referred to as "The
Great Conveyor Belt," which includes what we call the Gulf Stream. The Great Conveyor Belt, while shaped by the Coriolis effect of the
Earth's rotation, is mostly driven by the greater force created by differences in water temperatures and salinity. The North Atlantic Ocean
is saltier and colder than the Pacific, the result of it being so much smaller and locked into place by the Northern and Southern American
Hemispheres on the west and Europe and Africa on the east. As a result, the warm water of the Great Conveyor Belt evaporates out of the
North Atlantic leaving behind saltier waters, and the cold continental winds off the northern parts of North America cool the waters. Salty,
cool waters settle to the bottom of the sea, most at a point a few hundred kilometers south of the southern tip of Greenland, producing a
whirlpool of falling water that's 5 to 10 miles across. While the whirlpool rarely breaks the surface, during certain times of year it does
produce an indentation and current in the ocean that can tilt ships and be seen from space (and may be what we see on the maps of ancient
mariners). This falling column of cold, salt-laden water pours itself to the bottom of the Atlantic, where it forms an undersea river forty
times larger than all the rivers on land combined, flowing south down to and around the southern tip of Africa, where it finally reaches the
Pacific. Amazingly, the water is so deep and so dense (because of its cold and salinity) that it often doesn't surface in the Pacific for as
much as a thousand years after it first sank in the North Atlantic off the coast of Greenland. The out-flowing undersea river of cold, salty
water makes the level of the Atlantic slightly lower than that of the Pacific, drawing in a strong surface current of warm, fresher water
from the Pacific to replace the outflow of the undersea river. This warmer, fresher water slides up through the South Atlantic, loops
around North America where it's known as the Gulf Stream, and ends up off the coast of Europe. By the time it arrives near Greenland,
it's cooled off and evaporated enough water to become cold and salty and sink to the ocean floor, providing a continuous feed for that
deep-sea river flowing to the Pacific. These two flows - warm, fresher water in from the Pacific, which then grows salty and cools and
sinks to form an exiting deep sea river - are known as the Great Conveyor Belt. Amazingly, the Great Conveyor Belt is only thing
between comfortable summers and a permanent ice age for Europe and the eastern coast of North America.
A shut down of the Great Conveyor Belt has been recognized as the reason for the last ice age.
Thom Hartmann, 2004
For early humans living in Europe 30,000 years ago - when the cave paintings in France were produced - the weather would be pretty
much like it is today for well over a thousand years, giving people a chance to build culture to the point where they could produce art and
reach across large territories. And then a particularly hard winter would hit. The spring would come late, and summer would never seem
to really arrive, with the winter snows appearing as early as September. The next winter would be brutally cold, and the next spring didn't
happen at all, with above-freezing temperatures only being reached for a few days during August and the snow never completely melting.
After that, the summer never returned: for 1500 years the snow simply accumulated and accumulated, deeper and deeper, as the continent
came to be covered with glaciers and humans either fled or died out. (Neanderthals, who dominated Europe until the end of these cycles,
appear to have been better adapted to cold weather than Homo sapiens.) What brought on this sudden "disappearance of summer" period
was that the warm-water currents of the Great Conveyor Belt had shut down. Once the Gulf Stream was no longer flowing, it only took a
year or three for the last of the residual heat held in the North Atlantic Ocean to dissipate into the air over Europe, and then there was no
more warmth to moderate the northern latitudes. When the summer stopped in the north, the rains stopped around the equator: At the
same time Europe was plunged into an Ice Age, the Middle East and Africa were ravaged by drought and wind-driven firestorms.
The Great Conveyor Belt relies on a certain balance of salt in the water. Sudden quantities of freshwater
would risk the circulation.
Patrick L. Barry, 2004
(Science @ NASA, A Chilling Possibility, July 8, 2008, http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/05mar_arctic.htm)
Some scientists worry that melting Arctic sea ice will dump enough freshwater into the North Atlantic to interfere with sea currents.
Some freshwater would come from the ice-melt itself, but the main contributor would be increased rain and snow in the region. Retreating
ice cover exposes more of the ocean surface, allowing more moisture to evaporate into the atmosphere and leading to more precipitation.
Because saltwater is denser and heavier than freshwater, this "freshening" of the North Atlantic would make the surface layers more
buoyant. That's a problem because the surface water needs to sink to drive a primary ocean circulation pattern known as the "Great Ocean
Conveyor." Sunken water flows south along the ocean floor toward the equator, while warm surface waters from tropical latitudes flow
north to replace the water that sank, thus keeping the Conveyor slowly chugging along. An increase in freshwater could prevent this
sinking of North Atlantic surface waters, slowing or stopping this circulation.
40
Impact- Hurricanes
Hurricanes become more powerful because of Global Warming
Begley Staff Writer NewsWeek July 7 2008
<NewsWeek, 7-7-08, http://www.newsweek.com/id/143787?tid=relatedcl>
Hurricanes have become more powerful due to global warming. For every rise of 1 degree Celsius (most of it man-made) in surface
temperatures in the tropical Atlantic, rainfall from a tropical storm increases 6 to 18 percent and wind speeds of the strongest hurricanes
increase by up to 8 percent. As the new report acknowledged, "the strongest storms are becoming even stronger." Atmospheric conditions
that bring severe thunderstorms (with hail two inches across and wind gusts of at least 70 miles an hour) and tornadoes with a force of F2
or greater have been on the rise since the 1970s, occurring about 8 percent more often every decade. Get used to it, and don't blame
Mother Nature.
Empirically thousands of people die from hurricanes – Katrina proves

Associated Press, 2006
(MSNBC, Katrina Death Toll Likely Higher Than 1,300, July 10, 2008, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11281267)
Nearly six months after Hurricane Katrina, more than 1,300 bodies have been found, but the real death toll is clearly higher. How much
higher, no one can say with any certainty. Hundreds of people are still unaccounted for, and some of them — again, no one is sure how
many — were probably washed into the Gulf of Mexico, drowned when their fishing boats sank, swept into Lake Pontchartrain or
alligator-infested swamps, or buried under crushed homes, said Dr. Louis Cataldie, Louisiana medical examiner. Cataldie noted that
coffins, disgorged from the earth by the floodwaters, have been found great distances from their graveyards, and “if we have coffins that
have washed 30 miles away, I can assure you there are people who have.”“The likelihood is there are people we will not find,” he said.
New Orleans Coroner Frank Minyard said a final sweep of homes in the devastated Ninth Ward will be done this month with help from
federal officials. After that, he said, any more bodies found will probably be discovered in out-of-the-way places by hunters or fishermen.
But neither he nor Cataldie would venture a guess as to how many how many undiscovered victims are out there.
41
Impact – EXT: Hurricane

The Warmer conditions make the hurricanes stronger and larger and more deadly.
Science Daily, February 1, 2008
(Science Daily, Global Warming Equals Stronger Hurricanes, July 10, 2008, http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2008/0204-
global_warming_equals_stronger_hurricanes.htm)
According to new research, hurricanes in the North Atlantic are stronger and larger than ever before. Scientists now say they know what's
to blame.Winds topping over 75 miles per hour … rain slamming down … waves crashing into the coast!Some climate scientists believe
hurricanes in the North Atlantic loom more dangerous than ever. But now they say … they think know why."Since about 1970, there has
been a warming of the global oceans including the areas where the hurricanes form due to increases in carbon dioxide and greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere," Kevin Trenberth, NCAR Scientist in Boulder, Colo., told Ivanhoe.Trenberth builds his case asking the tough
questions. "Do they get more intense? Do they get bigger? Do they last longer? Are there more of them?" Trenberth asks.Over the past 35
years, the Atlantic's sea surface temperature has increased one degree Fahrenheit. The result … a four-percent increase of atmospheric
water vapor and a six to eight-percent increase in rainfall.Conditions that contribute to larger, more forceful, hurricanes. The cause --
Trenberth says predominantly global warming. "What we think is likely to happen, they will get more intense, they will likely get a little
bigger, but maybe there may not be quite as many," Trenberth said. Other scientists aren't so convinced and believe the warming is a
natural occurrence, but either way -- a forecast for the future that impacts us all.
Global Warming Causes More Hurricanes, Flooding, Salinity Problems, and Droughts
Titus U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 1990
<Environmental Protection Agency, 7-8-08, http://yosemite.epa.gov/OAR%5Cglobalwarming.nsf/UniqueKeyLookup/SHSU5BNJTL/
$File/barrier_islands.pdf>
Other effects of global warming may exacerbate these impacts. Warmer temperatures could increase the frequency and severity of
hurricanes 50 percent (Emmanuel 1988), increasing both erosion and storm damage. Although there is a general consensus that average
annual rainfall will increase, many researchers expect precipitation to become more variable (e.g. Rind et al. 1989), which would imply
dryer droughts and wetter rainstorms, amplifying both salinity and flooding problems.
42
Impact- Fires
Because of Global Warming the Northwest will become a Matchbox
New Scientist Magazine 2008
<NewScientist, 7-8-08, http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/mg19826615.500-global-warming-to-spark-
increase-in-us-wildfires.html>
TODAY much of the north-western US wilderness is already a tinderbox, but thanks to global warming, wildfires will be scorching even
more land every year by the end of the century. Because warmer oceans encourage warmer weather, emergency planners in the US
Southwest have long monitored temperatures in the equatorial Pacific to forecast wildfire activity. But a warm Pacific can spark fires in
the north-west as well, says Yongqiang Liu of the US Department of Agriculture's Forest Service in Athens, Georgia. Warmer-than-
average ocean temperatures in the North Pacific create more low-pressure weather systems than cooler waters do, pushing jet stream
circulation north into Canada. This leaves room for high-pressure systems to move in from the south, bringing drier and hotter air to the
north-west.
Global Warming makes Fires Burn more Frequently and Longer

West About.com Guide to Environmental Issues 2007
<About.com, 7-8-08, http://environment.about.com/b/2007/05/25/global-warming-linked-to-rising-number-of-us-forest-fires.htm>
Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Arizona found four times as many large wildfires occurred
in Western forests between 1987 and 2003 compared to the previous 16 years. The more recent fires burned 6.5 more land, the average
duration of the fires increased from 7.8 to 37 days, and the overall fire season during those years grew by an average of 78 days. Those
changes corresponded to an average 1.5-degree rise in temperature throughout the American West during the same time period.
According to the study, the first to link global warming to wildfires, the warmer temperatures due to climate change have led to longer,
drier seasons, creating ideal conditions for forest fires.
Empirically Proven- Climate Change Leads to Fire Storms

Kornell Santa Barbara Independent Staff Writer July 6, 2008
<Santa Barbara Independent, 7-7-08, http://www.independent.com/news/2008/jul/06/gap-fire-sign-global-warming/?print>
Parked on East Camino Cielo road last Thursday evening, near La Cumbre Peak, Santa Barbara surveyor Jacob Hecter watched stiff
winds shoot spires of flame into the sky above the Goleta hills. Squinting into the sun, he asked a question with which many Californians
can doubtless identify: does the fact that it’s early July and the state has already been besieged by 1,783 separate fires, including the Gap
Fire and the massive Big Sur conflagration have something to do with climate change? The answer is yes and no, say climate scientists.
The current onslaught of wildfire “is what we’ve been projecting to happen, both in short-term fire forecasts and the longer term patterns
that can be linked to global climate change,” said Ron Neilson, a professor at Oregon State University and bioclimatologist with the
USDA Forest Service. Neilson, who for the last fifteen years has also worked for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), cautioned that “with any single event you can’t say unequivocally that it’s climate change, or that it’s natural variability.”
However, he said, “What I would tell people is that what they’re experiencing is very consistent with global warming.
43
Impact- Suffocation
Life will be threatened as CO2 emissions will deny the Earth’s ability to produce oxygen – we literally
suffocate to death.
Brandenburg and Paxon 1999
(Rocket Scientist and Science Editor, “Dead Mars, Dying Earth”, p. 45-7, NetLibrary) DMZ
The monitoring of air samples at Mauna Loa was able to reveal a trend that has continued predictably over time. Since 1955, when
monitoring began, to the present, the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen somewhere between 0.5 and 2.88 parts per million per
year. Each year, the blip in the graph that indicates the change of the seasons takes the line to yet a higher level, irrespective of whether
there was a car driving up the side of the mountain or not.'' Global air contains a little more carbon dioxide every year, and the 1998
reading was the biggest increase in a single year ever recorded. The propane car at the observatory was eventually abandoned when an
increase in traffic of regular cars up the mountain made it pointless to attempt to maintain the purity of the air to the same high standard.
Yet despite the fact that the liquid propane needed to run the car wasn't readily available in 1972 (and it cost more than gasoline) and that
the expense involved in converting the engine of a single car to propane was about $600, Dr. Pueschel felt that conversion was worth the
additional expense, even for the average car owner. Dr. Pueschel knew something that virtually no one else knew: what a single
automobile could do to air quality. He personally had witnessed the impact a lone car had made on the monitoring equipment. "Someday
we will have to pay, and it won't be cheap," he predicted. Dr. Pueschel had also seen the relentless upward climb of the meedle measuring
carbon dioxide in the global atmosphere during the previous two decades. Could his warning have been any more clear? "We take for
granted our air is free, but someday we just won't have it anymore." ' The wisdom of hindsight may illuminate what he really meant when
he told the newspaper why they had bought the propane car. Gradually, incrementally, we are changing Earth's atmosphere. But are we
slowly altering our atmosphere away from something that supports human life toward something deadly like the atmosphere of Mars?
Such an atmosphere would have been very familiar to Joseph Black, who isolated the very first atmospheric gas. Unitarian minister
Joseph Priestley would have recognized the atmosphere of Mars as well. So would coal miners from the early part of the 20th century and
the canary that lay gasping at the bottom of the cage, for the atmosphere of Mars is made of fixed air. The atmosphere of Mars is made of
blackdamp. The atmosphere of Mars is made of carbonic acid gas. The atmosphere of Mars is made of a substance that has over time had
many names reflecting the toxic side of its nature. While today we call all of them "carbon dioxide" (which we think of as a benign
product of our own bodies and the harmless bubbles in soda pop), this substance has clearly not always been viewed as a harmless gas.
Nor should it be in the future, for it is time once again to inform our opinions about this substance and recognize its invisible, dark side.
As long as a stylus attached to the monitoring equipment in some lonely station on the top of an inactive volcano in Hawaii continues to
etch a line ratcheting upward-showing the increased amounts of carbon dioxide that, year after year, flood our atmosphere, threatening us-
then we too must think of it very differently. It isn't a matter of speculation. It is a matter of hard, cold scientific fact supported by
numerous studies conducted by many respected scientists. In the overwhelming majority they agree: Earth's atmosphere has far too much
of what we now must think of as carbon die-oxide. It is warming our planet to the point where life, human life, is endangered. We are
going to have to do something decisive and effective about this killer. No matter how successful or enlightened we think ourselves to be,
we are not exempt from the need to act-in the same way that we are not exempt from the need to breathe.
44
Impact- Runaway Greenhouse effect

Global Warming turns the planet into a fiery Mars – all life will end
Dr. Brandenberg, Physicist (Ph.D.) and Paxson a science writer ’99 – John and Monica, Dead Mars Dying Earth p. 232-3
The ozone hole expands, driven by a monstrous synergy with global warming that puts more catalytic ice crystals into the stratosphere,
but this affects the far north and south and not the major nations’ heartlands. The seas rise, the tropics roast but the media networks no
longer cover it. The Amazon rainforest becomes the Amazon desert. Oxygen levels fall, but profits rise for those who can provide it in
bottles. An equatorial high pressure zone forms, forcing drought in central Africa and Brazil, the Nile dries up and the monsoons fail.
Then inevitably, at some unlucky point in time, a major unexpected event occurs—a major volcanic eruption, a sudden and dramatic shift
in ocean circulation or a large asteroid impact (those who think freakish accidents do not occur have paid little attention to life or Mars),
or a nuclear war that starts between Pakistan and India and escalates to involve China and Russia . . . Suddenly the gradual climb in global
temperatures goes on a mad excursion as the oceans warm and release large amounts of dissolved carbon dioxide from their lower depths
into the atmosphere. Oxygen levels go down precipitously as oxygen replaces lost oceanic carbon dioxide. Asthma cases double and then
double again. Now a third of the world fears breathing. As the oceans dump carbon dioxide, the greenhouse effect increases, which
further warms the oceans, causing them to dump even more carbon. Because of the heat, plants die and burn in enormous fires which
release more carbon dioxide, and the oceans evaporate, adding more water vapor to the greenhouse. Soon, we are in what is termed a
runaway greenhouse effect, as happened to Venus eons ago. The last two surviving scientists inevitably argue, one telling the other, “See!
I told you the missing sink was in the ocean!” Earth, as we know it, dies. After this Venusian excursion in temperatures, the oxygen
disappears into the soil, the oceans evaporate and are lost and the dead Earth loses its ozone layer completely. Earth is too far from the
Sun for it to be the second Venus for long. Its atmosphere is slowly lost—as is its water—because of ultraviolet bombardment breaking
up all the molecules apart from carbon dioxide. As the atmosphere becomes thin, the Earth becomes colder. For a short while
temperatures are nearly normal, but the ultraviolet sears any life that tries to make a comeback. The carbon dioxide thins out to form a
thin veneer with a few wispy clouds and dust devils. Earth becomes the second Mars—red, desolate, with perhaps a few hardy microbes
surviving.
45
Impact- Ozone
Fossil fuel reliance will eventually open up the ozone, making the Earth a giant oven, guaranteeing
extinction.
One can imagine a scenario for global catastrophe that runs similarly. If the human race adopted a mentality like the crew aboard the ship
Californian-as some urge, saying that both ozone hole and global warming will disappear if statistics are properly examined, and we need
do nothing about either-the following scenario could occur. The world goes on its merry way and fossil fuels continue to power it. Rather
than making painful or politically difficult choices, such as investing in fusion research or enacting a rigorous plan of conserving, the
industrial world chooses to muddle through the temperature climb. Let's imagine that America and Europe are too worried about
economic dislocation to change course. The ozone hole expands, driven by a monstrous synergy with global warming that puts more
catalytic ice crystals into the stratosphere, but this affects the far north and south and not the major nations' heartlands. The seas rise, the
tropics roast but the media networks no longer cover it. The Amazon rainforest becomes the Amazon desert. Oxygen levels fall, but
profits rise for those who can provide it in bottles. An equatorial high pressure zone forms, forcing drought in central Africa and Brazil,
the Nile dries up and the monsoons fail. Then inevitably, at some unlucky point in time, a major unexpected event occurs-a major
volcanic eruption, a sudden and dramatic shift in ocean circulation or a large asteroid impact (those who think freakish accidents do not
occur have paid little attention to life or Mars), or a nuclear war that starts between Pakistan and India and escalates to involve China and
Russia . . . Suddenly the gradual climb in global temperatures goes on a mad excursion as the oceans warm and release large amounts of
dissolved carbon dioxide from their lower depths into the atmosphere. Oxygen levels go down precipitously as oxygen replaces lost
oceanic carbon dioxide. Asthma cases double and then double again. Now a third of the world fears breathing. As the oceans dump
carbon dioxide, the greenhouse effect increases, which further warms the oceans, causing them to dump even more carbon. Because of the
heat, plants die and burn in enormous fires which release more carbon dioxide, and the oceans evaporate, adding more water vapor to the
greenhouse. Soon, we are in what is termed a runaway greenhouse effect, as happened to Venus eons ago. The last two surviving
scientists inevitably argue, one telling the other, "See! I told you the missing sink was in the ocean!" Earth, as we know it, dies. After this
Venusian excursion in temperatures, the oxygen disappears into the soil, the oceans evaporate and are lost and the dead Earth loses its
ozone layer completely. Earth is too far from the Sun for it to be the second Venus for long. Its atmosphere is slowly lost-as is its water-
because of ultraviolet bombardment breaking up all the molecules apart from carbon dioxide. As the atmosphere becomes thin, the Earth
becomes colder. For a short while temperatures are nearly normal, but the ultraviolet sears any life that tries to make a comeback. The
carbon dioxide thins out to form a thin veneer with a few wispy clouds and dust devils. Earth becomes the second Mars-red, desolate, with
perhaps a few hardy microbes surviving. In what was once Egypt, near a large but dried-out river bed, a group of pyramids and an eroded
Sphinx confront the dead sky. In a distant future a passing probe from another civilization takes a picture, but most of the scientists who
see it are skeptical that it could represent anything artificial and ridicule those who think otherwise.
46
Impact- Severe Storms

Global Warming Has Lead to an Increase in Severe Storms
It's almost a point of pride with climatologists. Whenever someplace is hit with a heat wave, drought, killer storm or other extreme
weather, scientists trip over themselves to absolve global warming. No particular weather event, goes the mantra, can be blamed on
something so general. Extreme weather occurred before humans began loading up the atmosphere with heat-trapping greenhouse gases
such as carbon dioxide. So this storm or that heat wave could be the result of the same natural forces that prevailed 100 years ago—
random movements of air masses, unlucky confluences of high- and low-pressure systems—rather than global warming. This pretense
has worn thin. The frequency of downpours and heat waves, as well as the power of hurricanes, has increased so dramatically that "100-
year storms" are striking some areas once every 15 years, and other once rare events keep returning like a bad penny. As a result, some
climatologists now say global warming is to blame. Rising temperatures boost the probability of extreme weather, says Tom Karl, director
of the National Climatic Data Center and lead author of a new report from the Bush administration's Climate Change Science Program;
that can "lead to the type of events we are seeing in the Midwest." There, three weeks of downpours have caused rivers to treat their banks
as no more than mild suggestions. Think of it this way: if once we experienced one Noachian downpour every 20 years, and now we
suffer five, four are likely man-made.
Human Activity is the cause of Severe Storms

It's been easier to connect global warming to rising temperatures than to extreme weather events—and even the former hasn't been easy.
Only in this decade have "attribution" studies managed to finger greenhouse gases as the chief cause of the rising mercury, rather than a
hotter sun or cyclical changes. (The last two produce a different pattern of climate change than man-made warming does.) Now the same
"whatdunit?" techniques are being applied to droughts, downpours, heat waves and powerful hurricanes. "We can look at climate-model
simulations and likely attribute [specific extreme weather] to human activity," says Gerry Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric
Research.
Global Warming alters weather patterns

Easterling et al Science Magazine 2000
<Science Magazine, 7-7-08, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/sci;289/5487/2068.pdf>
One of the major concerns with a potential change in climate is that an increase in extreme events will occur. Results of observational
studies suggest that in many areas that have been analyzed, changes in total precipitation are ampliÞed at the tails, and changes in some
temperature extremes have been observed. Model output has been analyzed that shows changes in extreme events for future climates,
such as increases in extreme high temperatures, decreases in extreme low temperatures, and increases in intense precipitation events. In
addition, the societal infrastructure is becoming more sensitive to weather and climate extremes, which would be exacerbated by climate
change. In wild plants and animals, climate-induced extinctions, distributional and phenological changes, and speciesÕ range shifts are
being documented at an increasing rate. Several apparently gradual biological changes are linked to responses to extreme weather and
climate events.
47
Impact- Floods
Global Warming Causes Floods
The Midwest, for instance, suffered three weeks of intense rain in May and June, with more than five inches falling on some days. That
brought a reprise of the area's 1993 flooding, which was thought to be a once-in-500-years event. The proximate cause was the western
part of the jet stream dipping toward the Gulf of Mexico, then rising toward Iowa—funneling moisture from the gulf to the Midwest, says
meteorologist Bill Gallus of (the very soggy) Iowa State University. The puzzle, he says, is why the trough kept reforming in the west,
creating a rain-carrying conveyor belt that, like a nightmarish version of a Charlie Chaplin movie, wouldn't turn off. One clue is that
global warming has caused the jet stream to shift north. That has brought, and will continue to bring, more tropical storms to the nation's
north, and may push around the jet stream in other ways as well.
Global Warming Causes both Floods and Droughts

Global warming has left its clearest fingerprint on heat waves. Since the record scorcher of 1998, the average annual temperatures in the
United States in six of the past 10 years have been among the hottest 10 percent on record. Climatologists predict that days so hot they
now arrive only once every 20 years will, by midcentury, hit the continental United States once every three years. Scientists also discern a
greenhouse fingerprint in downpours, which in the continental United States have increased 20 percent over the past century. In a warmer
world, air holds more water vapor, so when cloud conditions are right for that vapor to form droplets, more precipitation falls. Man-made
climate change is also causing more droughts on top of those that occur naturally: attribution studies trace droughts such as that gripping
the Southwest to higher sea-surface temperatures, especially in the Pacific. Those can fluctuate naturally, as they did when they caused
the severe droughts of the 1930s and 1950s. But they are also rising due to global warming, causing a complicated cascade of changes in
air circulation that shuts down rainfall.
48
Impact- Poverty
Effects of Climate Change uniquely affect impoverished nations ill prepared for disaster causing migration
of displaced peoples
Schwartz and Randall, 2003
Peter and Doug “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security,” Global Business
Network, October 2003. http://www.gbn.com/GBNDocumentDisplayServlet.srv?aid=26231&url=/UploadDocumentDisplayServlet.srv?
id=28566. Accessed on July 7, 2008//grice
With over 400 million people living in drier, subtropical, often over-populated and economically poor regions today, climate change and
its follow-on effects pose a severe risk to political, economic, and social stability. In less prosperous regions, where countries lack the
resources and capabilities required to adapt quickly to more severe conditions, the problem is very likely to be exacerbated. For some
countries, climate change could become such a challenge that mass emigration results as the desperate peoples seek better lives in regions
such as the United States that have the resources to adaptation.
Poverty is the deadliest form of violence it outweighs your disads

Mumia Abu-Jamal, former Reporter and Death Row inmate, 1998
[“A QUIET AND DEADLY VIOLENCE,” 9/19/98, http://www.mumia.nl/TCCDMAJ/quietdv.htm]

It has often been observed that America is a truly violent nation, as shown by the thousands of cases of social and communal violence that
occurs daily in the nation. Every year, some 20,000 people are killed by others, and additional 20,000 folks kill themselves. Add to this
the nonlethal violence that Americans daily inflict on each other, and we begin to see the tracings of a nation immersed in a fever of
violence. But, as remarkable, and harrowing as this level and degree of violence is, it is, by far, not the most violent feature of living in the
midst of the American empire. We live, equally immersed, and to a deeper degree, in a nation that condones and ignores wide-ranging
"structural" violence, of a kind that destroys human life with a breathtaking ruthlessness. Former Massachusetts prison official and writer,
Dr. James Gilligan observes; "By `structural violence' I mean the increased rates of death and disability suffered by those who occupy the
bottom rungs of society, as contrasted by those who are above them. Those excess deaths (or at least a demonstrably large proportion of
them) are a function of the class structure; and that structure is itself a product of society's collective human choices, concerning how to
distribute the collective wealth of the society. These are not acts of God. I am contrasting `structural' with `behavioral violence' by which I
mean the non-natural deaths and injuries that are caused by specific behavioral actions of individuals against individuals, such as the
deaths we attribute to homicide, suicide, soldiers in warfare, capital punishment, and so on." -- (Gilligan, J., MD, Violence: Reflections
On a National Epidemic (New York: Vintage, 1996), 192.) This form of violence, not covered by any of the majoritarian, corporate,
ruling-class protected media, is invisible to us and because of its invisibility, all the more insidious. How dangerous is it -- really? Gilligan
notes: "[E]very fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed in a nuclear war that
caused 232 million deaths; and every single year, two to three times as many people die from poverty throughout the world as were killed
by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating,
thermonuclear war, or genocide on the weak and poor every year of every decade, throughout the world." [Gilligan, p. 196] Worse still, in
a thoroughly capitalist society, much of that violence became internalized, turned back on the Self, because, in a society based on the
priority of wealth, those who own nothing are taught to loathe themselves, as if something is inherently wrong with themselves, instead of
the social order that promotes this self-loathing. This intense self-hatred was often manifested in familial violence as when the husband
beats the wife, the wife smacks the son, and the kids fight each other. This vicious, circular, and invisible violence, unacknowledged by
the corporate media, uncriticized in substandard educational systems, and un-understood by the very folks who suffer in its grips, feeds on
the spectacular and more common forms of violence that the system makes damn sure -- that we can recognize and must react to it. This
fatal and systematic violence may be called The War on the Poor.
49
Impact- Terrorism
US Terrorism will increase because of Global Warming.
Associated Press, 2007
(MSNBC, Report: Global Warming May be Security Factor, July 9, 2008, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18123962/)
Global warming poses a “serious threat to America’s national security” with terrorism worsening and the U.S. will likely be
dragged into fights over water and other shortages, top retired military leaders warn in a new report. Joining calls already made by
scientists and environmental activists, the retired U.S. military leaders, including the former Army chief of staff and President Bush’s
former chief Middle East peace negotiator, called on the U.S. government to make major cuts in emissions of gases that cause global
warming. The report warned that in the next 30 to 40 years there will be wars over water, increased hunger instability from worsening
disease and rising sea levels and global warming-induced refugees. “The chaos that results can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide
and the growth of terrorism,” the 35-page report predicted. “Climate change exacerbates already unstable situations,” former U.S.
Army chief of staff Gordon Sullivan told Associated Press Radio. “Everybody needs to start paying attention to what’s going on. I don’t
think this is a particularly hard sell in the Pentagon. ... We’re paying attention to what those security implications are.” Gen. Anthony
“Tony” Zinni, Bush’s former Middle East envoy, said in the report: “It’s not hard to make the connection between climate change and
instability, or climate change and terrorism.” The report was issued by the Alexandria, Va.-based, national security think-tank The CNA
Corporation and was written by six retired admirals and five retired generals. They warned of a future of rampant disease, water
shortages and flooding that will make already dicey areas — such as the Middle East, Asia and Africa — even worse. “Weakened
and failing governments, with an already thin margin for survival, foster the conditions for internal conflicts, extremism and
movement toward increased authoritarianism and radical ideologies,” the report said. “The U.S. will be drawn more frequently
into these situations.”
And, The impact is extinction

Yonah Alexander; Senior Fellow and Director of the International Center for Terrorism Studies, 2/28/2002 (The University of Wisconsin
Press; Terrorism in the 21st Century; http://www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/terrorism.html)
The September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States have demonstrated that terrorism has unfortunately become a permanent feature of
contemporary life. The safety and welfare of ordinary people, the stability of state systems, the health and pace of economic development,
the expansion of democracy, and even survival of civilization itself are all threatened by this phenomenon. Today's terrorists are better
organized, more professional, and better equipped than their historical counterparts. Technological developments offer new targets-and
their possible use of chemical, biological, and nuclear violence to achieve mass disruption or political turmoil is a real possibility. The
advent of information warfare and cyber-terrorism is a new feature of this potential challenge to the very survival of civilization.
50
Impact- EXT: Terrorism

Global warming affected areas could be the breeding ground for terrorism.
CNN, June 25, 2008
CNN, Global warming could increase terrorism, official says; 7/10/08,
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/25/climate.change.security/
Global warming could destabilize "struggling and poor" countries around the world, prompting mass migrations and creating breeding
grounds for terrorists, the chairman of the National Intelligence Council told Congress on Wednesday. Climate change "will aggravate
existing problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions,"
Thomas Fingar said. "All of this threatens the domestic stability of a number of African, Asian, Central American and Central Asian
countries." People are likely to flee destabilized countries, and some may turn to terrorism, he said. "Economic refugees will perceive
additional reasons to flee their homes because of harsher climates," Fingar predicted. That will put pressure on countries receiving
refugees, many of which "will have neither the resources nor interest to host these climate migrants," he said in testimony to the House
Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.
The impact of fighting the problems of global warming will outweigh global warming itself.
CNN, June 25, 2008
CNN, Global warming could increase terrorism, official says; 7/10/08,
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/25/climate.change.security/
The impact of fighting and preparing for climate change may be greater than the effect of global warming itself, Fingar said.
"Government, business and public efforts to develop mitigation and adaptation strategies to deal with climate change -- from policies to
reduce greenhouse gases to plans to reduce exposure to climate change or capitalize on potential impacts -- may affect U.S. national
security interests even more than the physical impacts of climate change itself," he said. The report, the "National Intelligence Assessment
on the National Security Implications of Global Climate Change to 2030," relied on U.S. government, military, academic and United
Nations studies of climate change.
Because of the adverse effects of global warming, the increase of stress on countries will lead to terrorism.
Larry West, is a professional writer and editor who has written many articles about environmental issues for leading newspapers,
magazines and online publications. He has been a guide at About.com since 2004, June 12, 2007. About.com, Terrorism Linked to
Global Warming, 7/10/08, http://environment.about.com/b/2007/06/12/terrorism-linked-to-global-warming.htm
It turns out that finding solutions to global warming may be more than a global environmental priority; it could also be a matter of
national security. According to a report by the Military Advisory Board, a group of retired general officers from all branches of the U.S.
military, there is a clear link between climate change and terrorism. Global warming will lead to droughts, more frequent and severe
hurricanes and storms, and rising sea levels that are predicted to destabilize many nations and to create as many as 50 million
environmental refugees by 2010. People left homeless or plunged into poverty, hunger and disease by rising temperatures and other
effects of global warming are likely to be susceptible to extremist ideologies. Amy Zalman, Guide to Terrorism Issues for About.com, has
more details.
51
Impact- Middle East War

Global warming collapses moderate regimes key to preserving stability between Israel and Arab nations
Guttman, 2007
Nathan, “Congress Warned That Global Warming Is Threat to Israel and Moderate Arab States,” The Jewish Daily Forward, June 13,
2007. http://www.forward.com/articles/congress-warned-that-global-warming-is-threat-to-i/. Accessed on July 10, 2008//grice
Proponents of tough legislation against greenhouse gas emissions are seizing on a new argument in their attempts to talk lawmakers into
taking action: the threat that global warming will lead to instability in the Middle East and endanger Israel’s security. In a series of
briefings last week on Capitol Hill and with Jewish organizations, a team of experts from Israel presented data indicating that if action to
stop global warming is not taken immediately, moderate regimes in the Middle East might collapse and tensions between Israel
and its neighbors might rise due to a decrease in rainfall, loss of water sources and increase in extreme weather phenomena.
The next interstate war in the Middle East will go nuclear

John Steinbach. Israeli Weapons of Mass Destruction: a Threat to Peace, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG). March 3, 2002
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/STE203A.html accessed 08/15/07
Meanwhile, the existence of an arsenal of mass destruction in such an unstable region in turn has serious implications for future arms
control and disarmament negotiations, and even the threat of nuclear war. Seymour Hersh warns, "Should war break out in the Middle
East again,... or should any Arab nation fire missiles against Israel, as the Iraqis did, a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last
resort, would now be a strong probability."(41) and Ezar Weissman, Israel's current President said "The nuclear issue is gaining
momentum(and the) next war will not be conventional."(42) Russia and before it the Soviet Union has long been a major(if not the major)
target of Israeli nukes. It is widely reported that the principal purpose of Jonathan Pollard's spying for Israel was to furnish satellite
images of Soviet targets and other super sensitive data relating to U.S. nuclear targeting strategy. (43) (Since launching its own satellite in
1988, Israel no longer needs U.S. spy secrets.) Israeli nukes aimed at the Russian heartland seriously complicate disarmament and arms
control negotiations and, at the very least, the unilateral possession of nuclear weapons by Israel is enormously destabilizing, and
dramatically lowers the threshold for their actual use, if not for all out nuclear war. In the words of Mark Gaffney, "... if the familar
pattern(Israel refining its weapons of mass destruction with U.S. complicity) is not reversed soon- for whatever reason- the deepening
Middle East conflict could trigger a world conflagration." (44)
This is the most important war in the debate – Middle East conflict due to warming is the most likely
scenario for conflict – several reasons prove
Guttman, 2007
Nathan, “Congress Warned That Global Warming Is Threat to Israel and Moderate Arab States,” The Jewish Daily Forward, June 13,
2007. http://www.forward.com/articles/congress-warned-that-global-warming-is-threat-to-i/. Accessed on July 10, 2008//grice
“Israel is an insignificant player in contributing to global warming, but it suffers from it in a nonproportional rate,” Bar-Or said. The main
changes, the Israeli experts predicted, would be a drop in the water supply — already a scarce commodity in the Middle East — and an
expected rise in temperature that will make it even more difficult to replenish water sources. According to the information presented this
week, if action is not taken, then Israel might be facing a loss of up to 100 millimeters of rain a year — almost 20% of the country’s
annual rainfall. For Israel, water shortages could influence not only its population but also the future of its relations with neighboring
countries. Israel is already facing difficulties fulfilling its agreement — as part of its 1994 peace treaty with Jordan — to transfer water to
the Hashemite kingdom, and will face great problems when trying to work out water arrangements with Palestinians in a final status
agreement. The Jordanian monarchy, which is based on support of the agricultural communities, might be in danger. The same is true for
the Palestinian leadership, which might encounter an uprising of extremists who will feed on the poverty and despair caused by the
collapse of agriculture due to lack of water. In Egypt, the expected rise of the Mediterranean Sea level could flood rich areas in the Nile’s
Delta and lead to food shortages, which could destabilize the regime. The geopolitical aspects of climate change were recently discussed
in a study in which former generals and admirals of the American military looked at the influence of global warming on national security.
The chapter regarding the Middle East was written by Anthony Zinni, the general who once commanded American military in the region
and then acted as Middle East peace envoy for the Bush administration. “It’s not hard to make the connection between climate change and
instability or climate change and terrorism,” Zinni wrote. He added: “The existing situation makes [the Middle East] more susceptible
to problems. Even small changes may have a greater impact here than they may have elsewhere.”
52
Impact- Economic Collapse

Warming risks economic catastrophe – business relies on the environment and other life – takes our your
economy DA’s.
It is not a time for seeking certainties, it is a time for estimating risks-the probability of human complicity in global change, multiplied by
the damage that will accrue if we do not desist. Since the potential damage is terrible, even a low probability is enough to argue that
certain activities should cease. There are scientists who insist that all the effects, from deformed frogs to ozone holes, to, finally,
greenhouse gas-induced global warming trends, are either illusory or misunderstood natural effects. How certain can they be? Given the
potentially life-threatening consequences, shouldn't we err on the side of safety? Having identified the probable human causes, isn't it
better to dramatically curtail these activities? If we are cautious, even overly cautious, little damage will ensue other than a slowing down
in economic growth. But if we fail to act, to act conservatively-to conserve life on Earth-then the real price in catastrophic economic
losses could bring the U.S. economy and the world's economy to their knees. British Environment Minister Michael Meacher has
suggested that, "People are starting to wake up to the cost of devastating climate change." He warned that the economic costs of rising
seas, hurricanes, flooding and heat waves will "dwarf the costs of trying to prevent them."" It is reasonable to ask how problems such as
global warming can be remedied with the minimum of economic detriment and dislocation, especially for the poor. Economic dislocation
kills people as surely as does pollution or climatic change. But it is also reasonable to consider that, while the economic costs of
environmental problems accrue to everyone, as with most environmental problems, the burdens fall disproportionately on the poor. Yet,
economic consequences can cut both ways, since there may also be economic benefits for those companies and organizations that
innovate and develop new energy solutions, as Amory Lovins at the Aspen Institute points out so powerfully. Nevertheless, fears about
the economy do not represent an adequate justification to delay solving the problems of carbon dioxide. If we are truly committed to a
vibrant world economy, the best strategy would be to make an all-out effort to ensure that safe, low-cost, lowcarbon energy is available to
everyone.
The impact is extinction.
Bearden 2k
(Lieutenant Colonel, THE UNNECESSARY ENERGY CRISIS: HOW WE CAN SOLVE IT, 2000, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Big-
Medicine/message/642)DMZ
Bluntly, we foresee these factors - and others { } not covered - converging to a catastrophic collapse of the world economy in about eight
years. As the collapse of the Western economies nears, one may expect catastrophic stress on the 160 developing nations as the developed
nations are forced to dramatically curtail orders. International Strategic Threat Aspects History bears out that desperate nations take
desperate actions. Prior to the final economic collapse, the stress on nations will have increased the intensity and number of their conflicts,
to the point where the arsenals of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) now possessed by some 25 nations, are almost certain to be
released. As an example, suppose a starving North Korea launches nuclear weapons upon Japan and South Korea, including U.S. forces
there, in a spasmodic suicidal response. Or suppose a desperate China - whose long range nuclear missiles can reach the United States -
attacks Taiwan. In addition to immediate responses, the mutual treaties involved in such scenarios will quickly draw other nations into the
conflict, escalating it significantly. Strategic nuclear studies have shown for decades that, under such extreme stress conditions, once a
few nukes are launched, adversaries and potential adversaries are then compelled to launch on perception of preparations by one's
adversary. The real legacy of the MAD concept is his side of the MAD coin that is almost never discussed. Without effective defense, the
only chance a nation has to survive at all, is to launch immediate full-bore pre-emptive strikes and try to take out its perceived foes as
rapidly and massively as possible. As the studies showed, rapid escalation to full WMD exchange occurs, with a great percent of the
WMD arsenals being unleashed . The resulting great Armageddon will destroy civilization as we know it, and perhaps most of the
biosphere, at least for many decades.
53
Impact- Nuclear War

With the catastrophic effects of global warming, countries will have no other choice but to go to nuke war.
Mark Townsend and Paul Harris, writers for guaridian.co.uk, February 22, 2004
Guaridian.co.uk, Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us, 7/10/08
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver
Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters. A secret
report, suppressed by US defense chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas
as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across
the world. The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear
threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say
the few experts privy to its contents. 'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once
again, warfare would define human life.' 'Can Bush ignore the Pentagon? It's going be hard to blow off this sort of document. Its hugely
embarrassing. After all, Bush's single highest priority is national defence. The Pentagon is no wacko, liberal group, generally speaking it
is conservative. If climate change is a threat to national security and the economy, then he has to act. There are two groups the Bush
Administration tend to listen to, the oil lobby and the Pentagon,' added Watson.
54
Impact- Warming Outweighs Nuclear War

Even if nuclear war happens, it can be limited and people can hide – global warming doesn’t allow this even.
Hunter 3
(Founder of Greenpeace, “Thermageddon”, p. 58-9, Net Library) DMZ
Even though, from the beginning, Rachel Carson had warned of worldwide chemical fallout patterns, the individuals who were most
sensitive to her message believed (some still do) it must be possible to find a haven or refuge outside The System, somewhere beyond the
reach of the thrashing tails of the dying urban dinosaurs. The back-to-the-land movement, with its flurry of communes being set up as
close to the end of the road as possible, in remote valleys or on the shores of isolated bays, was a reenactment of the North American
pioneer stage, embodying the same spirit of independence and naive faith in Utopia. A fantasy existed that even a nuclear war was
survivable if you lived far enough away from any big cities and you had a supply of seeds, some solar panels, iodine pills, a gun, and a
copy of The Whole Earth Catalogue. And it was true, should the nuclear exchange be limited, that it was just possible there would be
survivors out in the bush and the countryside, somewhat unscathed. In the face of a truly drastic climate flip of the ecosystem,
unfortunately, there ultimately will be no safe, remote places left anywhere. The Pacific Northwest's coniferous forests are expected to
last longer than boreal forests, as rising temperatures turn the glacial moraine into a frying pan, but with climate itself affected, everything
- everywhere - is affected. The skies and air and water of even Walden Pond are already degraded and slipping further. If the sudden
global heating we have triggered does indeed activate an ice age, there will be no place in the entire northern hemisphere to hide. In the
worst-case situation, a runaway greenhouse effect, there would be no place on Earth, period. The fantasy of escaping to an organic farm is
no longer a reasonable, let alone viable, option. A better, more realistic hope, by the time my grandson is my age, will be to head out into
space. Good luck making the final crew list, Dexter.
Even if nuclear war accesses extinction, it can be stopped with last-minute diplomacy – warming can’t.
Hunter 3
(Founder of Greenpeace, “Thermageddon”, p. 12, Net Library) DMZ
Surely, my contemporaries will argue, the crisis cannot be compared to the threat of an all-out nuclear exchange, such as we faced until as
recently as the 1989 collapse of the Soviet Union. Even by the late 1980, there was nothing self-evident about the proposition that we
would survive until the end of the century. For a long while, the odds seemed stacked against us. But we did not nuke ourselves, and thus
it can be said that humanity has demonstrated a remarkable gift for last-minute salvation -or incredible luck. Either way, all history since
the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 can rightly be described as borrowed time. Collectively, we had a near-death experience. We thought we
had survived rather nicely, only to look up when the dust of the Cold War settled and see a climate cataclysm rumbling towards us that
could have as devastating an impact on the northern hemisphere as a nuclear exchange. And, if one can bear to think about it, this raises
the even more soul-crushing question of how we are affecting the millennial cycle of climate. Contemplate that. Not just the next few
generations affected, but generation after generation after generation. We won the struggle against those who would have nuked us all, but
now it is all of us who are doing the nuking. It was a relatively simple business, in retrospect, avoiding nuclear destruction. All we had to
do was make sure no one pushed The Button. What do you do to prevent half a billion vehicles' ignition keys from being turned on?
55
Must Act Now

we can’t wait – we can overpass a threshold making catastrophe inevitable.
Oppenheimer and Boyle 90
(Prof of Geosciences and Intl Affairs @ Princeton, “Dead Heat: The Race Against the Greenhouse Effect”, p. 84-85, NetLibrary) DMZ
Warming beyond three degrees, the boundary of experience for the modern human species, is like going over a cliff with little notion of
how far we will fall. Circumstances are changing so rapidly that, even without knowing it, we may approach the edge in a few short years.
The faster we emit greenhouse gases, the further we will be committed to an overshoot before much can be done, and the harder the fall
will be when the effects are manifest. As with Wile E. Coyote, we will have gone quite far past the edge before we understand our
situation.
Warming will only accelerate – as ice caps melt, oceans lose ability to absorb hear – the end is near
Fred Pearce, Journalist, 12 February 2005
New Scientist, "Climate change: Menace or myth?" 07/08/08, http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524861.400
There are counterbalancing negative feedbacks, some of which are already in the models. These include the ability of the oceans to absorb
heat from the atmosphere, and of some pollutants - such as the sulphate particles that make acid rain - to shade the planet. But both are
double-edged. The models predict that the ocean's ability to absorb heat will decline as the surface warms, as mixing between less dense,
warm surface waters and the denser cold depths becomes more difficult. Meanwhile, sulphate and other aerosols could already be
masking far stronger underlying warming effects than are apparent from measured temperatures. Aerosols last only a few weeks in the
atmosphere, while greenhouse gases last for decades. So efforts to cut pollution by using technologies such as scrubbers to remove
sulphur dioxide from power station stacks could trigger a surge in temperatures. Sceptics also like to point out that most models do not
yet include negative feedback from vegetation, which is already growing faster in a warmer world, and soaking up more CO2. But here
they may be onto a loser, as the few climate models so far to include plants show that continued climate change is likely to damage their
ability to absorb CO2, potentially turning a negative feedback into a positive one.
56
AT: Developing nations prevent solving

China and India are trying to combat global warming.
New Scientist Journal 2007
“Climate Angst” 7/8/08 Expanded Academic ASAP
http://find.galegroup.com/itx/retrieve.do?contentSet=IAC-Documents&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2CUS
%2C%29%3AFQE%3D%28KE%2CNone%2C26%29china+india+global+warming
%24&sgHitCountType=None&inPS=true&sort=DateDescend&searchType=BasicSearchForm&tabID=T002&prodId=EAIM&searchId=
R4&currentPosition=2&userGroupName=ksu&docId=A160760671&docType=IAC
INTERNATIONAL momentum to combat climate change is growing, even in the gas-guzzling, notoriously sceptical US. At a meeting on
Capitol Hill last week, legislators and officials from 13 countries including, crucially, China and India, agreed a plan for combating global
warming once the Kyoto protocol expires in 2012. The plan includes setting an absolute global limit for emissions of carbon dioxide so
that future airborne concentrations stay within 450 to 550 parts per million. The concentration in 2005 was already 379 ppm. The post-
Kyoto plan also advocates emissions targets for all countries, with tough targets for rich countries and softer ones for countries
undergoing industrialisation. Other targets include developing energy-efficient technologies, and creating a global market for trading
C[O.sub.2] credits. Adding to the momentum, European environment ministers met on Tuesday to discuss climate change, and agreed in
principle on a 20 per cent cut in C[O.sub.2] output by 2020, with a further 10 per cent if other industrialised nations join in. The UK,
Spain and Slovenia had pushed for 30 per cent cuts. "This year could potentially be a tipping point in the fight against climate change,"
said UK environment minister David Miliband.
57

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Wildcat Debate Workshop 08 <Global Warming Bad>

Global Warming Bad

Global Temperatures trends are Rising

Warming occurring- Satellite data

Warming occurring- Models

Warming Occurring- Models Accurate

Warming occurring – Consensus

Fossil records prove CO2 causes climate change

CO2 Causes warming multiple factors prove

CO2  Warming- Historic Data

CO2  Warming- Ice Records Prove

CO2 Rates are Human Caused

AT: Sun causes warming

AT: Cosmic Rays  Warming

AT: Natural Checks- phytoplankton

Impact- Jellyfish destroy marine ecosystem

Jellyfish collapse oceanic ecosystems.

Oceans health is key to survival

Impact- Coral Reefs

Oceans health is key to survival

Impact- EXT : Coral Reefs

Reduction of coral reefs is a problem because of global warming.

Impact- Polar Bears

Polar bears are a keystone species

Without keystone species the rest of the ecosystem will collapse

Salmon are a Keystone species

Without keystone species the rest of the ecosystem will collapse

Impact- EXT: Salmon Die

Impact- Sea Life

Impact- EXT: Warming Kills Sea Life

The Carbon Emissions threaten the life of many Marine animals.

Impact- Bio diversity

loss of biodiversity leads to extinction.

Impact- EXT: Bio Diversity

Impact- Ecosystem collapse destroys Bio D

loss of biodiversity leads to extinction.

Biodiversity is Vital for Human Survival

Impact- Drought (genocide)

We have a moral obligation to prevent genocide

Impact- Drought (Famine)

We have a moral obligation to ensure people have food

Impact- Ice Caps Melting now

Impact- Ice Caps melt because of Warming

Impact- Ice Caps Melting increase Sea Levels

Impact- Sea Level (Bio Diversity)

And, loss of biodiversity leads to extinction.

Impact- Oscillation (agriculture)

Impact- Ice Age

Impact- EXT: Ice Age

Empirically thousands of people die from hurricanes – Katrina proves

Impact – EXT: Hurricane

Global Warming makes Fires Burn more Frequently and Longer

Empirically Proven- Climate Change Leads to Fire Storms

Impact- Runaway Greenhouse effect

Impact- Severe Storms

Human Activity is the cause of Severe Storms

Global Warming alters weather patterns

Global Warming Causes both Floods and Droughts

Poverty is the deadliest form of violence it outweighs your disads

[“A QUIET AND DEADLY VIOLENCE,” 9/19/98, http://www.mumia.nl/TCCDMAJ/quietdv.htm]

And, The impact is extinction

Impact- EXT: Terrorism

Impact- Middle East War