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1. No political will for climate policies A. Republican ideology and Chinas CCP policy mean no international action on climate change
Hale 11 (Thomas, PhD Candidate in the Department of Politics at Princeton University and a Visiting Fellow at LSE Global
Governance, London School of Economics 2011 Center for Strategic and International Studies, The Washington Quarterly, 34:1 pp. 89-101, A Climate Coalition of the Willing, http://www.twq.com/11winter/docs/11winter_Hale.pdf) Intergovernmental efforts to limit the gases that cause climate change have all but failed. After the unsuccessful 2010 Copenhagen summit, and with little progress at the 2010 Cancun meeting, it is hard to see how major emitters will agree any time soon on mutual emissions reductions that are sufficiently ambitious to prevent a substantial (greater than two degree Celsius) increase in average global temperatures. It is not hard to see why. No deal excluding the United States and China, which together emit more than 40 percent of the worlds greenhouse gases (GHGs), is worth the paper it is written on. But domestic politics in both countries effectively block G-2 leadership on climate. In the United States, the Obama administration has basically given up on national cap-and-trade legislation. Even the relatively modest Kerry-Lieberman-Graham energy bill remains dead in the Senate. The Chinese government, in turn, faces an even harsher constraint. Although the nation has adopted important energy efficiency goals, the Chinese Communist Party has staked its legitimacy and political survival on raising the living standard of average Chinese. Accepting international commitments that stand even a small chance of reducing the countrys GDP growth rate below a crucial threshold poses an unacceptable risk to the stability of the regime. Although the G-2 present the largest and most obvious barrier to a global treaty, they also provide a convenient excuse for other governments to avoid aggressive action. Therefore, the international community should not expect to negotiate a worthwhile successor to the Kyoto Protocol, at least not in the near future.

B. Obama wont enact climate policies too focused on the economy

Cappiello 11 [Dina Cappiello is an award-winning environmental journalist who follows the story looking for specific, factual
information about environmental problems that communities need in order to push for change. Gore: On Global Warming, Obama Has Changed Little 6/22 http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=13900390]
The Democrats' leading environmental messenger, Al Gore, is declaring that President Barack Wednesday by Rolling Stone magazine, on the problem and has done little to move the country forward since he replaced Republican President George W. Bush. Bush infuriated environmentalists by resisting mandatory controls on the pollution blamed for climate change, despite overwhelming scientific evidence that the burning of fossil fuels is responsible. since, Gore argues, . "Obama has never presented to the American people the magnitude of the climate crisis," Gore says. "He has not defended the science against the ongoing withering and dishonest attacks. Nor has he provided a presidential venue for the scientific community ... to bring the reality of the science before the public." Gore does credit Obama's political appointees with making hundreds of changes that have helped move the country "forward slightly" on the climate issue, but says the

Obama has failed to lead on the issue of global warming. In a 7,000-word essay posted online Gore says the president hasn't stood up for "bold action" but Obama has not used it to force significant change

The scientific case has only gotten stronger

. Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, in a speech in early June, said Obama had yet to take up the "mantle of land and water conservation...in a significant way." Gore's comments mark a
president "has simply not made the case for action." He is the second Clinton administration official this month to express disappointment with Obama on environmental issues turnaround for the nation's most prominent global warming advocate, whose work on the climate problem has earned him a Nobel Prize and was adapted into an Oscar-winning documentary.

Global policies based on cooperation are key China and India will still pollute regardless of US policy change
Lewis, et al 10, James A, Director and Senior Fellow, Technology and Public Policy Program at the CSIS, Sarah O. Ladislaw,
Senior Fellow, Energy and National Security Program at the CSIS, Denise E. Zheng, Congressional Staffer at Salary Data [Earth Observation for Climate Change, June, http://csis.org/files/publication/100608_Lewis_EarthObservation_WEB.pdf] Climate change is a global problem. A global response is necessary, using existing or new vehicles for cooperation. While there is broad consensus that national interests are threatened by climate change, turning this consensus into meaningful action will be difficult. Negotiation takes 1. Influential reports and statements, frequently cited by policymakers, that have been released in support of this view include the following :
Sharon Burke et al., A Strategy for American Power: Energy, Climate and National Security (Washington, D.C.: Center for New American Security, June 2008), http://www.cnas. org/files/documents/publications/Burke_EnergyClimateNatlSecurity_June08.pdf; Joshua W. Busby, Climate Change and National Security: An Agenda for Action, Council on Foreign Relations, November 2007, http:// www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/ClimateChange_CSR32.pdf; Kurt Campbell et al., The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change (Washington, D.C.: Center for New American Security and CSIS; November 2007), http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/ publications/CSIS-CNAS_AgeofConsequences_November07.pdf; Thomas Fingar, National Intelligence Assessment on the National Security Implications of Global Climate Change to 2030, Testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, June 25, 2008, http://www.dni.gov/testimonies/20080625_testimony.pdf; Sherri Goodman et al., National Security and the Threat of Climate Change, Center for Naval Analysis Corporation (Alexandria, Va.: CNA Corporation, 2007), http://securityandclimate.cna.org/report/National%20Security%20and%20 the%20Threat%20of%20Climate%20Change.pdf; Michael A. Levi et al., Confronting Climate Change: A Strategy for U.S. Foreign Policy, Council on Foreign Relations, 2008, http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/ attachments/Climate_ChangeTF.pdf; Pew Center on Global Climate Change, National Security Implications of Global Climate Change, August 2009, http://www.pewclimate.org/federal/memo/national-security -implications; Marc A. Levy et al., Assessment of Select Climate Change Impacts on U.S. National Security, Center for International Earth Science Information Network, Columbia University, Working Paper, July 1, 2008, http://www.ciesin.columbia.edu/documents/Climate_Security_CIESIN_July_2008_v1_0 .ed070208_000.pdf; R. Schubert et al., Climate Change as a Security Risk, German Advisory Council on Global Change, May 2007, http://www.wbgu.de/wbgu_jg2007_engl.pdf. earth observation for climate change 2 | earth observation for climate change place in the

The countries most vulnerable to the effects of a changing climate, mostly developing countries, do not have the capacity to cope with these changes and look to developed countries for assistance. Our understanding of how to mitigate and adapt to climate
context of competing national economic interests.

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change is still at an early stage. Remedies have been identified, but their effectiveness has yet to be measured . Finally, the data necessary for assessing the effect of
these efforts and the mechanisms for sharing that data are partial and incomplete, designed to inform science and not policy. There is still a great deal we do not know about the local and global effects of climate change. Several recent studies identified gaps and weaknesses in climate science activities. One of the main conclusions of this research is that climate science to date has been geared toward fulfilling needs within the scientific community rather than meeting the needs of decisionmakers who must determine how to adapt and respond to a changing climate. Managing climate-related risks requires accurate, robust, sustained, and wide-ranging climate information. Sustained and continuous observations are needed for researchers to evaluate and test climate model accuracy and to identify causes of particular elements of climate change. The international community must address four key uncertainties and gaps in climate research if we are to significantly improve our confidence in climate change prediction and understanding: 2 Incomplete global data sets for analysis and modeling uncertainties restrict the types of studies that can be performed. The lack of observational data restricts the types of climate change that can be analyzed. Multi-decadal changes in daily temperature range are not well understood. Confidence in attributing some climate change phenomena to anthropogenic (man-made) influences is limited. These gaps and uncertainties are directly related to the availability of adequate Earth observations. Earth observation provides the evidence necessary for informed decisionmaking. It supports the monitoring and verification of emission reductions. A comprehensive and global perspective in climate monitoring is needed to understand the interconnectivity of Earths terrestrial, atmospheric, and oceanic systems.

Impossible to adapt to climate change too late

Parkinson 10 (Claire L Parkinson is a climatologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, where she's worked since July 1978,
with a research emphasis on sea ice and its role in the global climate system. Claire has a B.A. in mathematics from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in climatology from Ohio State University. She is a fellow of both the American Meteorological Society and Phi Beta Kappa. 2010 The Coming Climate Crisis) When in the late twentieth century the standard climate change paradigm included the assumption that changes in the Earth's climate occur only very slowly, there was a comfortable sense that although the coming changes might be undesirable, at least they would develop slowly, giving humans a chance to adjust slowly as well. This comfort zone has vanished with the determination from Greenland ice cores and elsewhere that climate, at least regionally, not only can change abruptly but has frequently done so. In fact, one conclusion from the new results is that the fairly stable climate the Earth has experienced for the past several thousand years might be unusual. Another possibility is that periods of relative stability might be common enough; for instance, there might be long, relatively stable glacial states and long, relatively stable interglacial states, with the transitions between the two states fraught with multiple abrupt jumps. In any event, the evidence is now strong that abrupt shifts have occurred on many occasions in the past, prior to the past several thousand years, and hence could certainly do so in the future as well, whether triggered naturally or by human activities. This is cause for concern, as despite all our technological prowess, adjusting to abrupt climate change would probably be considerably more difficult for us now than it was many thousands of years ago, when the human population was much smaller, there was far less infrastructure and personal property to deal with, and the Earth had more unoccupied, unclaimed land to which people could migrate. If climate conditions worsened in one region in the distant past, bands of early humans could move to another region considerably more easily than communities could move today. They might have had to do it on foot, but even on foot, it was easier than moving a whole community under today's circumstances.

Too late to solve warmingtoo much CO2

Garnet 10 (Andre Garnet, Senior Analyst at Investology, Inc. 8/14/10 , the energy collective, Slowing CO2 emissions cannot end
global warming, but removing CO2 from the atmosphere will, http://theenergycollective.com/andre-garnet/41653/slowing-co2emissions-cannot-end-global-warming-removing-co2-atmosphere-will) so much CO2 has already accumulated in the atmosphere that even if we ended all CO2 emissions today, global warming would probably continue to increase unabated. However, as explained below, we do have the technology to extract CO2 from the atmosphere and it is due to inept thinking on the part of United Nations scientists that we are not applying it.
Scarcely a day goes by without some announcement as to yet another effort to limit CO2 emissions, here or there, for the purpose of fighting global warming. Yet, all such attempts are futile given that Before going into details, it might be useful to frame the problem: It is since the advent of the industrial revolution circa 1,850 that factories and transportation caused a large and enduring increase in the amount of CO2 emissions. This phenomenon has been compounded by the rapid increase in the population given that humans emit CO2 as they breathe. As a result,

an enormous quantity of CO2 has accumulated in the atmosphere given that we emitted more than could be absorbed by plants and by the sea. So much so, that the amount of new CO2 that we emit nowadays is a drop in the bucket compared to the quantity of CO2 that has already accumulated in the atmosphere since around 1,850 as the atmospheric concentration of CO2 increased by about 30%. It is this enormous quantity of atmospheric CO2 that traps the heat from the Sun, thus causing about 30% of global warming. The point is that, if we are to stop or reverse global warming, we need to extract from the atmosphere more CO2 than we emit. However, all we are currently attempting is to limit emissions of CO2. This is too little, too late and totally useless inasmuch it could reduce our CO2 emissions by only 5% at best, while achieving nothing in terms of diminishing the amount of atmospheric CO2. Rather than wasting precious
time on attempts to LIMIT our CO2 emission, we should focus on EXTRACTING from the atmosphere more CO2 than we are emitting. We have a proven method for this that couldn't be simpler, more effective and inexpensive, so what are we waiting for? More specifically, it has been shown that atmospheric CO2 has been perhaps twice higher than now in the not too distant past (some 250,000 years ago.) So what caused it to drop to as low as it was around 1,850? It was primarily due to the plankton that grows on the surface of the sea where it absorbs CO2 that it converts to biomass before dying and sinking to the bottom of the sea where it eventually becomes trapped in sedimentary rock where it turns to oil or gas. There simply isn't enough biomass on the 30% of Earth's surface that is land (as opposed to sea) for this biomass to grow fast enough to soak up the excess atmospheric CO2 that we have to contend with. Plankton, on the other hand, can grow on the 70% of Earth that is covered by the sea where it absorbs atmospheric CO2 much faster, in greater quantities and sequesters it for thousands of years in the form of oil and gas. Growing plankton is thus an extremely efficient, yet simple and inexpensive process for removing the already accumulated CO2 from the atmosphere. All we need to do is to dust the surface of the ocean with rust (i.e. iron oxides) that serves as a fertilizer that causes plankton to grow. The resulting plankton grows and blooms over several days, absorbing CO2 as it does, and then about 90% of it that isn't eaten by fish sinks to the bottom of the sea. The expert Russ George calculated that if all ocean-going vessels participated in such an effort worldwide, we could return atmospheric CO2 concentration to its 1,850 level within 30 years. It's very inexpensive and easy to do, wouldn't interfere with the ships' normal activities and would, in fact, earn them carbon credits that CO2 emitters would be required to buy. Moreover it is the ONLY approach available for addressing global warming on the global scale that is necessary. By contrast, efforts to limit CO2 emissions by means of CO2 sequestration could address only about 5% of NEW CO2 generated by

, he climatologist James Hansen believes that even if we could stop all CO2 emissions as of today, it may already be too late to avert run-away, global warming as there is enough CO2 in the atmosphere for global warming to keep increasing in what he fears is becoming an irreversible process. In other words, atmospheric CO2 is trapping more heat than Earth can dissipate which causes temperature.
power plants. So even while causing our electricity costs to treble or quadruple, such efforts wouldn't remove any of the massive amount of CO2 already accumulated in the atmosphere. In fact t

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Their framing of climate change ignores other environmental problems and leaves unaddressed the root cause of ecological destruction
Crist 7 (Eileen Bachelor's degree from Haverford College in sociology, doctoral degree from Boston University, teacher at
Virginia Tech in the Department of Science and Technology in Society since 1997, Winter 2007, Telos, Beyond the Climate Crisis: A Critique of Climate Change Discourse, http://biophilosophy.ca/Teaching/2070papers/crist.pdf) While the dangers of climate change are real, I argue that there are even greater dangers in representing it as the most urgent problem we face. Framing climate change in such a manner deserves to be challenged for two reasons: it encourages the restriction of proposed solutions to the technical realm, by powerfully insinuating that the needed approaches are those that directly address the problem; and it detracts attention from the planets ecological predicament as a whole, by virtue of claiming the limelight for the one issue that trumps all others. Identifying climate change as the biggest threat to civilization, and ushering it into center stage as the highest priority problem, has bolstered the proliferation of technical proposals that address the specific challenge. The race is on for figuring out what technologies, or portfolio thereof, will solve the problem. Whether the call is for reviving nuclear power, boosting the installation of wind turbines, using a variety of renewable energy sources, increasing the efficiency of fossil-fuel use, developing carbon-sequestering technologies, or placing mirrors in space to deflect the suns rays, the narrow character of such proposals is evident: confront the problem of greenhouse gas emissions by technologically phasing them out, superseding them, capturing them, or mitigating their heating effects. In his The Revenge of Gaia, for example, Lovelock briefly mentions the need to face climate change by changing our whole style of living.16 But the thrust of this work, what readers and policy-makers come away with, is his repeated and strident call for investing in nuclear energy as, in his words, the one lifeline we can use immediately.17 In the policy realm, the first step toward the technological fix for global warming is often identified with implementing the Kyoto protocol. Biologist Tim Flannery agitates for the treaty, comparing the need for its successful endorsement to that of the Montreal protocol that phased out the ozone-depleting CFCs. The Montreal protocol, he submits, marks a signal moment in human societal development, representing the first ever victory by humanity over a global pollution problem.18 He hopes for a similar victory for the global climate-change problem. Yet the deepening realization of the threat of climate change, virtually in the wake of stratospheric ozone depletion, also suggests that dealing with global problems treaty-by-treaty is no solution to the planets predicament. Just as the risks of unanticipated ozone depletion have been followed by the dangers of a long underappreciated climate crisis, so it would be nave not to anticipate another (perhaps even entirely unforeseeable) catastrophe arising after the (hoped-for) resolution of the above two. Furthermore, if greenhouse gases were restricted successfully by means of technological shifts and innovations, the root cause of the ecological crisis as a whole would remain unaddressed. The destructive patterns of production, trade, extraction, land-use, waste proliferation, and consumption, coupled with population growth, would go unchallenged, continuing to run down the integrity, beauty, and biological richness of the Earth. Industrial-consumer civilization has entrenched a form of life that admits virtually no limits to its expansiveness within, and perceived entitlement to, the entire planet.19 But questioning this civilization is by and large sidestepped in climate-change discourse, with its single-minded quest for a global-warming techno-fix.20 Instead of confronting the forms of social organization that are causing the climate crisisamong numerous other catastrophesclimate-change literature often focuses on how global warming is endangering the culprit, and agonizes over what technological means can save it from impending tipping points.21 The dominant frame of climate change funnels cognitive and pragmatic work toward specifically addressing global warming, while muting a host of equally monumental issues. Climate change looms so huge on the environmental and political agenda today that it has contributed to downplaying other facets of the ecological crisis: mass extinction of species, the devastation of the oceans by industrial fishing, continued old-growth deforestation, topsoil losses and desertification, endocrine disruption, incessant development, and so on, are made to appear secondary and more forgiving by comparison with dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. In what follows, I will focus specifically on how climate-change discourse encourages the continued marginalization of the biodiversity crisisa crisis that has been soberly described as a holocaust,22 and which despite decades of scientific and environmentalist pleas remains a virtual non-topic in society, the mass media, and humanistic and other academic literatures. Several works on climate change (though by no means all) extensively examine the consequences of global warming for biodiversity, 23 but rarely is it mentioned that biodepletion predates dangerous greenhouse-gas buildup by decades, centuries, or longer, and will not be stopped by a technological resolution of global warming. Climate change is poised to exacerbate species and ecosystem lossesindeed, is doing so already. But while technologically preempting the worst of climate change may temporarily avert some of those losses, such a resolution of the climate quandary will not put an end towill barely addressthe ongoing destruction of life on Earth.

No extinction impact to climate change most recent and best study concludes
25/global-warming-rate-could-be-less-than-feared/3694896/?site=melbourne)

Science Online 11 (Genelle Weule 2011 Global warming rate could be less than feared http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11The new study suggests temperatures will rise on average 2.3 degrees under the same conditions. High levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may have less of an impact on the rate of global warming than feared, a new study suggests. The authors of the study stress that

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global warming is real and that increases in atmospheric CO2, which has doubled from pre-industrial standards, will have multiple serious impacts. But more severe estimates that predict temperatures could rise up to an average of 10 degrees Celsius are unlikely, the researchers report in the journal Science. The 2007 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report estimates that surface temperatures could rise by as much as an average of 3 degrees with a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from pre-industrial standards. The new study suggests temperatures will rise on average 2.3 degrees under the same conditions. "When you reconstruct sea and land surface temperatures from the peak of the last ice age 21,000 years ago - which is referred to as the Last Glacial Maximum - and compare it with climate model simulations of that period, you get a much different picture," said lead author Andreas Schmittner, from Oregon State University. "If these palaeoclimatic constraints apply to the future, as predicted by our model, the results imply less probability of extreme climatic change than previously thought." Scientists have long struggled to quantify climate sensitivity, or how the Earth will respond to projected increases in carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Global scale Associate Professor Schmittner notes that many previous studies only looked at periods spanning from 1850 to today, thus not taking into account a fully integrated palaeoclimate data on a global scale. The researchers based their study on ice age land and ocean surface temperature obtained by examining ices cores, bore holes, seafloor sediments and other factors. When they first looked at the palaeoclimatic data, the researchers only found very small differences in ocean temperatures then compared to now. "Yet the planet was completely different - huge ice sheets over North America and northern Europe, more sea ice and snow, different vegetation, lower sea levels and more dust in the air," Associate Professor Schmittner said. "It shows that even very small changes in the ocean's surface temperature can have an enormous impact elsewhere, particularly over land areas at mid to high latitudes." He warned that continued, unabated use of fossil fuels could lead to similar warming of sea surfaces today. Solid foundation Professor Colin Prentice from Macquarie University says he is not surprised by the results. Professor Prentice, who was not involved in the study, says the new paper is based on a careful compilation of data and addresses an issue that is "absolutely central". "What it means is we can be a bit more sure about the sort of range of temperature changes that will result from the given change in the amount of fossil fuel and CO2 and other greenhouse gases," he said. "The key point is that there has been ongoing buzz about the possibility that the climate sensitivity may be way, way higher than in mainstream climate models. "So for very technical reasons with data just from contemporary observations and observations from the recent historical period, you just haven't got enough information to really rule out those numbers. "What [this study] has shown is that those very high values are ruled out. "So it means we still have a major issue about climate change, but it is much better quantified, much better pinned down." The study was funded by the National Science Foundation. ABC/AFP

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