OCS Case Neg

Solvency

1NC FrontlineEven without restrictions no one will invest in it. It’s too risky. Nelder 2009 [Chris Nelder energy analyst and journalist April 29th, 2009 Energy and Capital “Facts and Myths About Offshore Oil: Can We Drill Our Way To Energy Independence?” http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/offshore-oil-drilling/870]

Offshore oil is expensive, and deepwater oil—wells drilled in more than 1000 feet of water—is more expensive still. Leasing rates for high specification drillships able to produce oil from deepwater formations have run as high as $600,000 per day, which is why we have liked our deepwater drilling players for a long time now.¶ Consider the economics of the Mars field as an example. At a water depth of 2,940 feet, it is believed to contain 500 million barrels of oil equivalent. The platform produces some 220,000 barrels per day, at a reported development cost of $100 million. Prior to the development of BPs Thunder Horse platform, it was the most advanced platform in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, where the best prospects for new US oil production are. The Mars platform was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, and rebuilt by Shell at a reported cost of $200 million. (By comparison, the Thunder Horse platform produces oil at about the same rate, but has a total cost of around $5 billion.)¶ Deepwater oil also remains a very risky enterprise, even with modern seismic imaging technology. This week Contango Oil & Gas Co. (AMEX: MCF) reported that it would take a $12.5 million write-off for drilling a dry hole in the Gulf of Mexico. It takes a fluid and committed credit market to sustain that kind of risk, but the world is still in the grips of a credit market freeze.

2NC

Can’t Solve- TimeframeDoesn’t solve fast enoughAlterman and Zornick 2008 [Eric Alterman is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College, and a professor of journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and George Zornick is a New York-based writer June 26, 2008 “Think Again: Drilling Deep to Mislead on Oil Prices” http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/media/news/2008/06/26/4486/think-again-drilling-deep-to-mislead-on-oil-prices/]

The U.S . Department of Energy summarizes the crux of the issue: “Access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030. Leasing would begin no sooner than 2012, and production would not be expected to start before 2017.”

Can’t Solve- Doesn’t Affect PricesOffshore drilling can’t affect pricesNRDC 2011 [NRDC 5/17/2011 Natural Resources Defense Council “Domestic Oil Drilling Still Not a Solution to Rising Gas Prices” http://www.nrdc.org/energy/oildrilling/]

Projections from the Energy Information Administration indicate that an expansion of offshore drilling wouldn't lower gas prices until 2030 , and then by only a few cents per gallon . With only two percent of the world's reserves, the U.S. contribution to the global market could never be high enough to significantly alter world oil prices.

Its 1 percent of global production- that’s with the most generous estimatesMcAuliff 11 [Michael McAuliff 05/06/11 Huffington Post “More U.S. Oil Drilling Won't Lower Gas Prices, Experts Say” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/06/more-us-oil-drilling-wont-help-gas-prices_n_858473.html]

"What comes out of the OCS is about 1 percent of the world total, and that's not enough to affect world prices," Martin said, even noting that she believes there are even more untapped reserves than officials can estimate at the moment.

Econ Answers

1NC FrontlineNatural gas industry is sustainableEconomist 2012 [The Economist Jun 2nd 2012 “Shale of the century” http://www.economist.com/node/21556242]

AMERICA'S “unconventional” gas boom continues to amaze . Between 2005 and 2010 the country's shale-gas industry, which produces natural gas from shale rock by bombarding it with water and chemicals—a technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”—grew by 45% a year. As a proportion of America's overall gas production shale gas has increased from 4% in 2005 to 24% today . America produces more gas than it knows what to do with. Its storage facilities are rapidly filling, and its gas price (prices for gas, unlike oil, are set regionally) has collapsed. Last month it dipped below $2 per million British thermal units (mBtu): less than a sixth of the pre-boom price and too low for producers to break even.¶ Those are problems most European and Asian countries, which respectively pay roughly four and six times more for their gas, would relish. America's gas boom confers a huge economic advantage. It has created hundreds of thousands of jobs, directly and indirectly. And it has rejuvenated several industries, including petrochemicals, where ethane produced from natural gas is a feedstock.¶

The gas price is likely to rise in the next few years, because of increasing demand . Peter Voser, the boss of Royal Dutch Shell, an oil firm with big shale-gas investments, expects it to double by 2015. Yet it will remain below European and Asian prices, so the industry should still grow. America is estimated to have enough gas to sustain its current production rate for over a century.

Can’t solve- The gas industry inflates employment numbers – wrong multiplier, multiplier misuse, ignoring negative employment effectsFood and Water Watch, “Exposing the Oil and Gas Industry’s False Jobs Promise for Shale Gas Development,” November 2011, http://documents.foodandwaterwatch.org/doc/FalseJobsPromiseReport.pdf, accessed 6-19-2012.

PPINYS incorrectly projected the economic spillover effects from direct job creation by selecting the wrong employment multiplier, and then misusing this multiplier . • PPINYS stated that it used a Type II employment multiplier of 3.04, but using this multiplier correctly would have meant that 15,500 direct jobs would lead to 47,120 total jobs. Instead, PPINYS wrongly claimed that 15,500 direct jobs would lead to 47,120 indirect and induced jobs, for a total of 62,620 jobs; and • PPINYS incorrectly assumed, when it selected 3.04 as an employment multiplier, that all direct jobs created through shale gas development spending would be in the gas industry. In fact, most of the direct jobs would be created in other industries , and the employment multipliers for these other industries are smaller than the gas industry multiplier . Based on the findings of a report led by the lead author of the Penn State study and funded by the American Petroleum Institute, an employment multiplier of 1.92 better estimates the potential total jobs across industries created by shale gas development in New York in 2015. Multiplying this employment multiplier with the corrected direct jobs estimate results in a corrected PPINYS estimate of 6,656 total jobs (roughly 1.92 times the corrected PPINYS projection of 3,469 direct jobs). Even if this corrected PPINYS total jobs projection — 6,656 total jobs, down from 62,620 total jobs —were to become reality, it would be insignificant next to overall employment in New York State. To put the

number in perspective, it is less than 0.1 percent of projected employment in 2018 in the state of New York, which is projected to be 9,726,760. Yet it is still overly optimistic to predict that 6,656 new jobs would be sustained in New York by 2018 from the drilling of 500 new wells each year , relative to a baseline of no drilling. The corrected PPINYS projection remains based on industry-supplied spending data and the dubious use of economic forecasting models, not on actual employment data from regions with shale gas development. Unlike forecasting models, actual employment data account for the negative impact that shale gas development has had on employment in other economic sectors , such as agriculture and tourism. Indeed, Food & Water Watch analysis of actual employment data from five Pennsylvania counties adjacent to the five New York counties used in the PPINYS scenario suggested that shale gas development could have far less of an impact than even the corrected PPINYS projection. Local, state and federal policymakers should look to actual employment data, not dubious economic forecasts, when evaluating whether the supposed benefits of allowing shale gas development are sufficient to justify short-term and long-term costs to public health and the environment.

Econ resilientDaniel W. Drezner 12, Professor, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, October 2012, “The Irony of Global Economic Governance: The System Worked,” http://www.globaleconomicgovernance.org/wp-content/uploads/IR-Colloquium-MT12-Week-5_The-Irony-of-Global-Economic-Governance.pdf

It is equally possible, however, that a renewed crisis would trigger a renewed surge in policy coordination.

As John Ikenberry has observed, “the complex interdependence that is unleashed in an open and loosely rule-based order generates some expanding realms of exchange and investment that result in a growing array of firms,

interest groups and other sorts of political stakeholders who seek to preserve the stability and openness of the system.”103 The post-2008 economic order has remained open, entrenching these interests even more across the globe. Despite uncertain times, the open economic system that has been in operation since 1945 does not appear to be closing anytime soon.

Econ collapse doesn’t cause war – prefer our studiesSamuel Bazzi (Department of Economics at University of California San Diego) and Christopher

Blattman (assistant professor of political science and economics at Yale University) November 2011 “Economic Shocks and Conflict: The (Absence of?) Evidence from Commodity Prices” http://www.chrisblattman.com/documents/research/2011.EconomicShocksAndConflict.pdf?9d7bd4

VI. Discussion and conclusions A. Implications for our theories of political instability and conflict The state is not a prize?—Warlord politics and the state prize logic lie at the center of the most influential models of conflict, state development, and political transitions in economics and

political science. Yet we see no evidence for this idea in economic shocks, even when looking at the friendliest cases : fragile and unconstrained states dominated by extractive commodity revenues . Indeed, we see the opposite correlation: if anything, higher rents from commodity prices weakly 22 lower the risk and length of conflict . Perhaps shocks are the wrong test. Stocks of resources could matter more than price shocks (especially if shocks are transitory). But combined with emerging evidence that war onset is no more likely even with rapid increases in known oil reserves (Humphreys

2005; Cotet and Tsui 2010) we regard the state prize logic of war with skepticism.17 Our main political economy models may need a new engine. Naturally, an absence of evidence cannot be taken for evidence of absence. Many of our conflict onset and ending results include sizeable positive and negative effects.18 Even so, commodity price shocks are highly influential in income and should provide a rich source of identifiable variation in instability. It is difficult to find a better-measured, more abundant, and plausibly exogenous independent

variable than price volatility. Moreover, other time-varying variables, like rainfall and foreign aid, exhibit robust correlations with conflict in spite of suffering similar empirical drawbacks and generally smaller sample sizes (Miguel et al. 2004; Nielsen et al. 2011). Thus we take the absence of evidence seriously. Do resource revenues drive state capacity?—State prize models assume that rising revenues raise the value of the capturing the state, but have ignored or downplayed the effect of revenues on self-defense. We saw that a growing empirical political science literature takes just such a revenue-centered approach, illustrating that resource boom times permit both payoffs and repression, and that stocks of lootable or extractive resources can bring political order and stability. This countervailing effect is most likely with transitory shocks, as current revenues are affected while long term value is not. Our findings are partly consistent with this state capacity effect. For example, conflict intensity is most sensitive to changes in the extractive commodities rather than the annual agricultural crops that affect household incomes more directly. The relationship only holds for conflict intensity, however, and is somewhat fragile. We do not see a large, consistent or robust decline in conflict or coup risk when prices fall. A reasonable interpretation is that the state prize and state capacity effects are either small or tend to cancel one another out. Opportunity cost: Victory by default?—Finally, the inverse relationship between prices and war intensity is consistent with opportunity cost accounts, but not exclusively so. As we noted above, the relationship between intensity and extractive commodity prices is more consistent with the state capacity view. Moreover, we shouldn’t mistake an inverse relation between individual aggression and incomes as evidence for the opportunity cost mechanism. The same correlation is consistent with psychological theories of stress and aggression (Berkowitz 1993) and sociological and political theories of relative deprivation and anomie (Merton 1938; Gurr 1971). Microempirical work will be needed to distinguish between these mechanisms. Other reasons for a null result.—

Ultimately, however, the fact that commodity price shocks have no discernible effect on new conflict onsets, but some effect on ongoing conflict, suggests that political stability might be less sensitive to income or temporary shocks than generally believed . One possibility is that successfully mounting an insurgency is no easy task. It comes with considerable risk, costs, and coordination challenges. Another possibility is that the counterfactual is still conflict onset. In poor and fragile nations, income shocks of one type or another are ubiquitous. If a nation is so fragile that a change in prices could lead to war , then other shocks may trigger war even in the absence of a price shock. The same argument has been made in debunking the myth that price shocks led to fiscal collapse and low growth in developing nations in the 1980s.19 B. A general problem of publication bias? More generally, these findings should heighten our concern with publication bias in the conflict literature. Our results run against a number of published results on commodity shocks and conflict, mainly because of select samples, misspecification, and sensitivity to model assumptions, and , most importantly, alternative measures of instability . Across the social and hard sciences, there is a concern that the majority of published research findings are false (e.g. Gerber et al. 2001). Ioannidis (2005) demonstrates that a published finding is less likely to be true when there is a greater number and lesser pre-selection of tested relationships; there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and models; and when more teams are involved in the chase of statistical significance. The cross-national study of conflict is an extreme case of all these. Most worryingly, almost no paper looks at alternative dependent variables or publishes systematic robustness checks. Hegre and Sambanis (2006) have shown that the majority of published conflict results are fragile, though they focus on timeinvariant regressors and not the time-varying shocks that have grown in popularity. We are also concerned there is a “file drawer problem” (Rosenthal 1979). Consider this decision rule: scholars that discover robust results that fit a theoretical intuition pursue the results; but if results are not robust the scholar (or referees) worry about problems with the data or empirical strategy, and identify additional work to be done. If further

analysis produces a robust result, it is published. If not, back to the file drawer. In the aggregate, the consequences are dire: a lower threshold of evidence for initially significant results than ambiguous ones.

2NC

2NC Ext- No War

Economic collapse doesn’t cause war – no causal connectionThomas P.M. Barnett (senior managing director of Enterra Solutions LLC and a contributing editor/online columnist for Esquire

magazine) August 2009 “The New Rules: Security Remains Stable Amid Financial Crisis” http://www.aprodex.com/the-new-rules--security-remains-stable-amid-financial-crisis-398-bl.aspx

When the global financial crisis struck roughly a year ago, the blogosphere was ablaze with all sorts of scary predictions of, and commentary regarding, ensuing conflict and wars -- a rerun of the Great Depression leading to world war, as it were. Now, as global economic news brightens and recovery -- surprisingly led by China and emerging markets -- is the talk of the day, it's interesting to look back over the past year and realize how globalization's first truly worldwide recession has had virtually no impact whatsoever on the international security landscape. None of the more than three-dozen ongoing conflicts listed by GlobalSecurity.org can be clearly attributed to the global recession. Indeed, the last new entry (civil conflict between Hamas and Fatah in the Palestine) predates the economic crisis by a year, and three quarters of the chronic struggles began in the last century. Ditto for the 15 low-intensity conflicts listed by Wikipedia (where the latest entry is the Mexican "drug war" begun in 2006). Certainly, the Russia-Georgia conflict last August was specifically timed, but by most accounts the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was the most important external trigger (followed by the U.S. presidential campaign) for that sudden spike in an almost two-decade

long struggle between Georgia and its two breakaway regions. Looking over the various databases, then, we see a most familiar picture: the usual mix of civil conflicts, insurgencies, and liberation-themed terrorist movements. Besides the recent Russia-Georgia dust-up, the only two potential state-on-state wars (North v. South Korea, Israel v. Iran) are both tied to one side acquiring a nuclear weapon capacity -- a process wholly unrelated to global economic trends. And with the United States effectively tied down by its two ongoing major interventions (Iraq and Afghanistan-bleeding-into-Pakistan), our involvement elsewhere around the planet has been quite modest, both leading up to and following the onset of the economic crisis: e.g., the usual counter-drug efforts in Latin America, the usual military exercises with allies across Asia, mixing it up with pirates off Somalia's coast). Everywhere else we find serious instability we pretty much let it burn, occasionally pressing the Chinese -- unsuccessfully -- to do something. Our new Africa Command, for example, hasn't led us to anything beyond advising and training local forces. So, to sum up: * No significant uptick in mass violence or unrest (remember the smattering of urban riots last year in places like Greece, Moldova and Latvia?); * The usual frequency maintained in civil conflicts (in all the usual places); * Not a single state-on-state war directly caused (and no great-power-on-great-power crises even triggered); * No great improvement or disruption in great-power cooperation regarding the emergence of new nuclear powers (despite all that diplomacy); * A modest scaling back of international policing efforts by the system's acknowledged Leviathan power (inevitable given the strain); and * No serious efforts by any rising great power to challenge that Leviathan or supplant its role. (The worst things we can cite are Moscow's occasional deployments of strategic assets to the Western hemisphere and its weak efforts to outbid the United States on basing rights in Kyrgyzstan; but the best include China and India stepping up their aid and investments in Afghanistan and Iraq.) Sure, we've finally seen global defense spending surpass the previous world record set in the late 1980s, but even that's likely to wane given the stress on public budgets created by all this unprecedented "stimulus" spending. If anything, the friendly cooperation on such stimulus packaging was the most notable great-power dynamic caused by the crisis. Can we say that the world has suffered a distinct shift to political radicalism as a result of the economic crisis? Indeed, no. The world's major economies remain governed by center-left or center-right political factions that remain decidedly friendly to both markets and trade. In the short run, there were attempts across the board to insulate economies from immediate damage (in effect, as much protectionism as allowed

under current trade rules), but there was no great slide into "trade wars." Instead, the World Trade Organization is functioning as it was designed to function, and regional efforts toward free-trade agreements have not slowed. Can we say Islamic radicalism was inflamed by the economic crisis? If it was, that shift was clearly overwhelmed by the Islamic world's growing disenchantment with the brutality displayed

by violent extremist groups such as al-Qaida. And looking forward, austere economic times are just as likely to breed connecting evangelicalism

as disconnecting fundamentalism. At the end of the day, the economic crisis did not prove to be sufficiently frightening to provoke major economies into establishing global regulatory schemes, even as it has sparked a spirited -- and much needed, as I argued last week -- discussion of the continuing viability of the U.S. dollar as the world's primary reserve currency. Naturally,

plenty of experts and pundits have attached great significance to this debate, seeing in it the beginning of "economic warfare" and the like between "fading" America and "rising" China. And yet, in a world of globally integrated production chains and interconnected financial markets, such "diverging interests" hardly constitute signposts for wars up ahead. Frankly, I don't welcome a world in which America's fiscal profligacy goes undisciplined, so bring it on -- please! Add it all up and it's fair to say that this global financial crisis has proven the great resilience of America's post-World War II international liberal trade order. Do I expect to read any analyses along those lines in the blogosphere any time soon? Absolutely not. I expect the fantastic fear-mongering to proceed apace. That's what the Internet is for.

A2 No Demand***DO NOT USE *** Natural gas in electricity now- compensating for oversupply of plantsSmith 2012 [Rebecca Smith Wall Street Journal 3-15-2012 “Cheap Natural Gas Unplugs U.S. Nuclear-Power Revival” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304459804577281490129153610.html]

One reason utilities are finding it hard to resist cheap gas is that there is a surplus of gas-fired generating capacity in many parts of the nation, the result of a building boom that lasted from 1998 to 2005. Due in part to deregulation and inexpensive capital, in 2001 alone utilities added 60,000 gas-fired megawatts, equivalent to more than 120 big plants.¶ But the 2002 collapse of Enron Corp., the big energy marketer, led to a credit squeeze that eventually pushed some of the biggest and most indebted power-plant builders into bankruptcy court, including NRG Energy; Calpine CPN +1.30% Corp.; PG&E Corp.'s PCG -0.16% National Energy Group; and Mirant Corp.¶ "The beauty of inexpensive gas now is utilities are able to take advantage of overbuilding 10 years ago," says Curt Launer, managing director of equities research at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. in New York. "Any utility that can use gas is trying to use more of it."

Electricity sector favors natural gas nowMcgehee 8-6 [Mike Mcgehee, FERC Trip Doggett, Ercot, SEC Wire 8-6-2012, “FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION HOLDS A MEETING ON NATURAL GAS AND ELECTRICITY MARKETS” lexis]

Looking at the sectors that consume the natural gas in the past and into the future, we see that the industrial sector is the largest consumer; however, gas consumption by the industrial, residential, and commercial sectors have remained static since 2000. These sectors are not expected to increase their consumption greatly in 2020.¶ Electric generation is the consuming sector that has seen and will continue to see growth through 2020. Electric generation is now the second leading consumer -- consuming sector in the central region. Natural gas currently fuels a large portion of the electric generation portfolio in the central region, mostly in Texas, (inaudible) expected increase of compliance with environmental regulations, reduce of the number of power plants with high greenhouse gas emissions and more prohibitively expensive regulatory compliance cost requirements and also help balance power fluctuations from renewable power sources.

Natural gas transition now in electricityStreetInsider 7-17 [StreetInsider , “Natural Gas Fueled Cars: Game Changer or Day Dreamer? (UNG)” 7-17-2012 http://www.streetinsider.com/Commodities/Natural+Gas+Fueled+Cars%3A+Game+Changer+or+Day+Dreamer%3F+(UNG)/7585751.html]

Thanks to advances in technology, the U.S. is now the world's largest producer of natural gas. The supply is so great, natural gas prices collapsed to 10-year lows this year.¶ Power companies have been quick to make the swap from coal to natural gas following the price declines, but the automotive industry is nowhere near making natural gas a viable alternative to petroleum products. Currently, there are only about 500 public CNG filling stations in the U.S. That is less than 0.03 percent of the total 159k fueling stations in America.

A2 Supply is UnstableMIT thinks we have plentyMONIZ, JACOBY, and MEGGS 2011 [ERNEST J. MONIZ — CHAIR ¶ Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics ¶ and Engineering Systems, MIT ¶ Director, MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) ¶ HENRY D. JACOBY — CO-CHAIR ¶ Professor of Management, MIT ¶ ANTHONY J. M. MEGGS — CO-CHAIR ¶ Visiting Engineer, MITEI, Massachusetts Institute of Technology “MIT Study on the Future of Natural Gas” 06/09/11, http://web.mit.edu/mitei/research/studies/documents/natural-gas-2011/NaturalGas_Report.pdf]

Globally, there are abundant supplies of natural gas, much of which can be developed ¶ at relatively low cost. The current mean projection of remaining recoverable resource is ¶ 16,200 Trillion cubic feet (Tcf), 150 times current annual global gas consumption, ¶ with low and high projections of 12,400 Tcf and 20,800 Tcf, respectively. Of the mean ¶ projection, approximately 9,000 Tcf could be economically developed with a gas price ¶ at or below $4/Million British thermal units (MMBtu) at the export point.¶

Unconventional gas, and particularly shale gas, will make an important contribution ¶ to future U.S. energy supply and carbon dioxide (CO2¶ ) emission reduction efforts. ¶ Assessments of the recoverable volumes of shale gas in the U.S. have increased ¶ dramatically over the last five years . The current mean projection of the recoverable ¶ shale gas resource is approximately 650 Tcf, with low and high projections of 420 Tcf ¶ and 870 Tcf, respectively. Of the mean projection, approximately 400 Tcf could be ¶ economically developed with a gas price at or below $6/MMBtu at the well-head.

We have a ton, demand will rise preventing a bubbleSmith 2012 [Rebecca Smith Wall Street Journal 3-15-2012 “Cheap Natural Gas Unplugs U.S. Nuclear-Power Revival” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304459804577281490129153610.html]

Natural-gas companies are working to assuage utilities' concerns. Steven Farris, chief executive of Apache Corp., points to the current price—about $2.30 per million British thermal units—as proof that gas is abundant. "Obviously, we've got more gas than we used to, or we'd have $13 gas," he says. "We just have a tremendous amount of gas."¶ Mr. Farris doesn't claim natural gas can or should meet most of the nation's power needs. But he says his industry could furnish enough to replace the 185 biggest coal-burning power plants.¶ The gas industry's goal is to "grow demand for their fuel as they grow production," says John Somerhalder, chief executive of AGL Resources, a big natural-gas distribution utility based in Atlanta. There is no better customer, he says, than the power industry.¶ Enormous quantities of natural gas have been discovered in the U.S., especially in underground shale formations, where it is being extracted through hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking." In 2010, there were more than 487,000 wells producing natural gas in 30 states, led by Texas with 95,000 wells, according to the EIA, the statistics arm of the Department of Energy. So-called shale-gas production now accounts for about one-third of U.S. natural-gas supplies.

Even if the worst estimates yield enough to have low cost natural gasLevi 2012 [Michael Levi is the David M. Rubenstein¶ senior fellow for energy and the environment¶ and director of the Program on Energy Security¶ and Climate Change at the Council on Foreign¶ Relations July 2012 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists “Splitting rock vs. splitting¶ atoms: What shale gas means¶ for nuclear power” Ebsco]

Even in the United States, though, not ¶ everyone is bullish about shale gas. ¶ Some doubt the figures that have been ¶ bandied about regarding the size of US ¶ resources. Others question the claimed¶ costs of production. And many, fearing¶ contamination of water supplies and¶ despoiling of local environments,¶ oppose shale gas production outright.¶ Any of these could, in principle, send¶ natural gas prices back up, making¶ nuclear competitive. So could strong¶ demand for shale gas from new markets,¶ like natural gas cars.¶ Estimates of the size of US shale¶ resources are extremely uncertain. In¶ 2009, the Ground Water Protection¶ Council and ALL Consulting stunned¶ observers with the release of their estimate that a whopping 262 trillion cubic¶ feet of natural gas was trapped in US¶ shale (2009). (Annual US consumption¶ is about one-tenth of that, and the shale¶ resources came on top of large conventional ones that were already known.)¶ Two years after that, the Energy¶ DepartmentÕs Energy Information¶ Administration (EIA) estimated a massive 827 trillion cubic feet of natural¶ gas, only to drop it back to 482 trillion¶ cubic feet in early 2012 (Urbina, 2012).¶ Private analysts have produced even¶ more varied guesses. Absent more¶ drilling experience, particularly away¶ from the most attractive deposits, resolving outstanding disagreements will be¶ tough.¶ That is compounded by uncertainty¶ about how much gas a given well will¶ ultimately recover. Shale gas is a young¶ business, but developers expect a well to¶ produce for decades. Long-term production projections thus rely heavily on¶ theory, and there are intense debates¶ over where that theory points. Some¶ expect production to flatten out at low¶ levels but to then continue for many¶ years; others expect it to decline steeply¶ without end. It will likely be many years¶ before this battle is resolved decisively.¶ In the meantime, uncertainty about¶ ultimate well productivity is tantamount¶ to uncertainty about the cost of producing a given amount of fuel.¶ That all leaves a big question: How¶ much do these differences matter? In¶ 2011, facing questions over natural gas¶ resources and production costs, the¶ EIA took a careful look at five cases¶ (EIA, 2011a). Their best guess, based on¶ moderate-sized resources and moderate¶ drilling costs, saw natural gas prices rise¶ to about $6 for a thousand cubic feet¶ by 2025 and to $7 by 2035. Bigger¶ resources (boosted by 50 percent)¶ meant 2025 prices near $5, and better¶ productivity pushed those down evenfurther, to barely more than $4. Of¶ course, when EIA analysts slashed estimated resources in half, projected prices¶ rose, hitting $7 by 2025. The most¶ extreme case, which featured not only¶

smaller resources but doubled drilling¶ costs, saw prices eventually top $8.¶ Because of their speculative nature ¶ and the lack of experience with shale ¶ gas, these sorts of estimates should be ¶ taken with a grain of salt . Nonetheless,¶ most of the numbers have something¶ important in common: They look ugly¶ for nuclear power. Even $7 natural gas, ¶ one of the worst-case outcomes, translates into new gas-fired power at

about ¶ 7 cents a kilowatt-hour . Nuclear would¶ have a tough time beating that, at least¶ for the next decade or so, except with the¶ most optimistic assumptions possible¶ about its cost.

A2 Infrastructure Kills IndustryThey are building it nowWisenberg Brin 2012 [Dinah Wisenberg Brin Special to CNBC.com 20 Jun 2012 “Natural Gas Prices Are Down but Capital Spending Surges” http://www.cnbc.com/id/47279973/Natural_Gas_Prices_Are_Down_but_Capital_Spending_Surges]

U.S. energy producers’ recent successes in extracting natural gas from shale may have contributed to a price-dampening oversupply for now, but it’s also spurring tens of billions of dollars in capital investments by a reinvigorated industry. ¶ Investments in pipelines and other natural gas infrastructure are expected to enter the trillions of dollars over the next two to three decades, with heavy investment in the near term. ¶ “The gas business in North America has suddenly gone through a dramatic revolution,” as new horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies have allowed access to tremendous natural gas resources, notes industry consultant James Jensen, president of Jensen Associates of Weston, Mass.¶ The industry needs new pipelines to accommodate the significant gas resources being discovered in places where it previously wasn’t found, he said, noting also that "fracking" is leading producers to oil.¶ Shale gas is also sparking capital expenditures by chemical producers that use natural gas as fuel and feedstock, and by other energy-intensive industries, and may prompt investment in natural gas-fueled power generation as well.¶ The shale discoveries could potentially shift the United States to an export market, as well, as shale gas is expected to reduce reliance on liquefied natural gas imports and pare U.S. electricity prices.¶ “The United States has really changed in the past three or four years its energy profile, and that is why we’re seeing this step up in infrastructure investment,” says John Parry, principal energy financial analyst at IHS Herold, an energy company and transaction research arm of IHS Global Insight [IHS 116.16 -1.54 (-1.31%) ].

A2 New Regulations Kill IndustryOUTDATED CARD, Obama will loosen up to oil officials and Republicans to get re-elected. No regulations are coming- when they negotiate the natural gas industry winsBroder 2012 [John M. Broder May 4, 2012 New York Times “New Proposal on Fracking Gives Ground to Industry” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/05/us/new-fracking-rule-is-issued-by-obama-administration.html]

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday issued a proposed rule governing hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas on public lands that will for the first time require disclosure of the chemicals used in the process.¶ But in a significant concession to the oil industry, companies will have to reveal the composition of fluids only after they have completed drilling — a sharp change from the government’s original proposal, which would have required disclosure of the chemicals 30 days before a well could be started.¶ The pullback on the rule followed a series of meetings at the White House after the original regulation was proposed in February. Lobbyists representing oil industry trade associations and individual major producers like ExxonMobil, XTO Energy, Apache, Samson Resources and Anadarko Petroleum met with officials of the Office of Management and Budget, who reworked the rule to address industry concerns about overlapping state regulations and the cost of compliance.¶ Production of domestic oil and natural gas has surged in recent years as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have opened new fields and allowed renewed production from formations that had seemed depleted.¶

President Obama has strongly endorsed the new production as a boon to the economy and energy security. And the president , under intense criticism of his energy policies from Republicans and oil industry officials as he faces a re-election contest, has recently taken steps to ease government regulation of oil operations.

The industry always gets concessions- empirically proven on flaringRestuccia 12 [Andrew Restuccia 04/18/12 The Hill “EPA finalizes first-ever air pollution rules for natural-gas 'fracking'” http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/222303-epa-finalizes-first-ever-air-pollution-rules-for-fracking]

The Environmental Protection Agency unveiled first-ever regulations Wednesday aimed at reducing toxic air pollution from the natural-gas drilling practice known as “fracking.”¶ The regulations — which would also target emissions from compressors, oil storage tanks and other oil-and-gas sector equipment — would cut 95 percent of smog-forming and toxic emissions from wells developed with fracking, EPA said.¶ Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, involves high-pressure injections of sand, water and chemicals that allow natural gas trapped in rock formations to flow.¶ The final regulations have been the subject of an aggressive public relations and lobbying campaign in recent months, with industry groups arguing they will impose huge burdens on companies, and green groups countering that they are essential to protect public health.¶ EPA altered the final regulations to offer a key concession to the natural-gas industry , which had raised concerns about being able to comply with the proposed regulations issued last year.¶ Under the final rules, companies can comply with the standards until 2015 using flaring , which reduces harmful emissions by burning off the gases that would otherwise escape during natural-gas

drilling. After 2015, companies will need to install so-called “green completions,” which are technologies that capture harmful emissions.

A2 Overlapping RegulationsObama’s got this oneRestuccia 12 [Andrew Restuccia 04/18/12 The Hill “EPA finalizes first-ever air pollution rules for natural-gas 'fracking'” http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/222303-epa-finalizes-first-ever-air-pollution-rules-for-fracking]

In an effort to reassure industry groups that are concerned about overlapping federal regulations, Obama announced the formation of a high-level task force last week charged with coordinating oversight of fracking.¶ The executive order forming the task force sought to strike a balance between safety and expanded development.¶ “[I]t is vital that we take full advantage of our natural gas resources, while giving American families and communities confidence that natural and cultural resources, air and water quality, and public health and safety will not be compromised,” the order said.

A2 Natural Gas KeyNatural gas not key to manufacturing – affected sectors are inconsequentialMichael A. Levi, David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment and Director of the Program on Energy Security and Climate Change, “Energy and U.S. Manufacturing: Five Things to Think About,” Council on Foreign Relations, May 16, 2012, http://blogs.cfr.org/levi/2012/05/16/energy-and-u-s-manufacturing-five-things-to-think-about/, accessed 9-18-2012.

The boom in U.S. oil and gas production has sparked talk of a manufacturing renaissance. I mentioned that somewhat skeptically last week in the context of a much broader piece on the excitement surrounding surging U.S. oil and gas output. I want to drill down on five important issues here. Some of this thinking is preliminary, so as always, feedback is most welcome.¶ Energy is of marginal importance to most manufacturing . ¶ Most U.S. manufacturing is not energy intensive. Joe Aldy and Billy Pizer reported in a 2009 paper that only one tenth of U.S. manufacturing involved energy costs exceeding five percent of the total value of shipments . These industries – the most prominent of which are iron and steel, primary aluminum, bulk cement, chemicals, paper, and glass – are what we are talking about when we discuss the potential for an energy-driven manufacturing boom. The size of these sectors would need to grow enormously to have revolutionary consequences for the fate of the U.S. manufacturing sector . Avoiding substantial decline, though, could be more feasible.

Natural gas will not affect manufacturing industries – multiples reasonsMichael A. Levi, David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment and Director of the Program on Energy Security and Climate Change, “Energy and U.S. Manufacturing: Five Things to Think About,” Council on Foreign Relations, May 16, 2012, http://blogs.cfr.org/levi/2012/05/16/energy-and-u-s-manufacturing-five-things-to-think-about/, accessed 9-18-2012.

Manufacturing growth tied to cheap natural gas is mostly a chemicals story.¶ Take a look at the sweep of major energy-intensive industries, and you’ll find that most are still quite insensitive to energy prices. IHS-CERA, which is not shy about extolling the benefits of the “shale gale” (a term it coined), surveyed these areas in an ANGA-funded study on shale jobs late last year and came to some striking conclusions.¶ Aluminum: “Lower U.S. natural gas prices could potentially slow or even halt the slow decay in the aluminum industry. However, it is unlikely that they would change the economics of primary aluminum production enough, even in the long-term, to redirect investment here. ”¶ Steel: “ Cheaper electricity [due to low gas prices] will have only a small positive effect on this industry in terms of profitability and competitiveness. ” ¶ Cement: “ The electricity fraction of costs for cement production is too small to generate a significant impact on competitiveness , and the cost savings are not expected to cause production expansion and capacity investment.”¶ There were, however, two industries that stood out. The (much) smaller one was “iron ore processed from taconite in the Great Lakes region”. Indeed several new projects, each of which would ultimately employ a couple hundred people, appear to be underway. The greatest potential , however, appears to lie in petrochemicals . The basic story is simple: natural gas is partly ethane and propane, feedstocks that makes up the bulk of ethylene and propylene producers’ costs. Greater natural gas production boosts ethane and propane supplies. So do lower natural gas prices, which can make it more profitable to strip out these liquids (not a cheap endeavor) rather than keep it in the gas to boost sales. (Ethane and propane increase the Btu content of natural gas, and thus the amount one can make by selling it.) On the flip side, the main competition for ethane

and propane as feedstocks is naphtha, a product of petroleum refining. High oil prices make ethane in particular a much better bet than naptha so long as oil and gas prices continue to diverge. (High oil prices tend to pull propane prices up, making propane unattractive as an ethylene feedstock.)¶ This explains why we are hearing so much talk of resurgent investment in petrochemicals . A sense of scale, though, is essential. U.S. ethylene production capacity was about 29 million tons annually as of 2009. At a price of $1,300 a ton, that was worth about 40 billion dollars. Even if the United States were to double its ethylene production – an outcome, I hasten to mention, that no one is even remotely talking about – the revenues (not profits) would be another 40 billion.* That’s far from trivial, but it isn’t earth-shattering either.

A2 Creates JobsMultiplier effect cannot be utilized with federal expenditureJefferey Folks, Editor for American Thinker. February 10, 2010. “Multiplier effect defect” http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/multiplier_effect_defect.html

Waste, graft, and inefficiency are bad enough, but as Milton Friedman suggested long ago, the greatest loss of wealth resulting from faith in the multiplier effect comes from the reduction of the private-sector capital base, and from the "rational expectations" of the public, who eventually are led to curtail spending and savings in the face of rising government deficits. Lost investment in the private sector, where the multiplier effect actually does operate, will necessarily reduce future GDP growth. Unlike government, which scatters its seeds in fields controlled by lobbyists and contributors, the private sector tends to plant in fertile fields, where it can expect to earn a return on investment. Christina Romer, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, seems at least half-sensible on the issue of multipliers. She recognizes that job-creation depends on growth of investment in the private sector. No amount of stimulus spending or hiring credits will take the place of growth in the private sector , and the best way to spur such growth is through permanent tax cuts and with stable, predictable tax and regulation policies . Unfortunately, Romer is the odd woman out in this administration.

Stimulus spending can’t create multiplier effectMr. Barro is a professor of economics at Harvard and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Mr. Redlick is a recent Harvard graduate. October 1, 2009. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471504574440723298786310.html

Our research also shows that greater weakness in the economy raises the estimated multiplier: It increases by around 0.1 for each two percentage points by which the unemployment rate exceeds its long-run median of 5.6%. Thus the estimated multiplier reaches 1.0 when the unemployment rate gets to about 12% . The bottom line is this: The available empirical evidence does not support the idea that spending multipliers typically exceed one , and thus spending stimulus programs will likely raise GDP by less than the increase in government spending . Defense-spending multipliers exceeding one likely apply only at very high unemployment rates, and nondefense multipliers are probably smaller. However, there is empirical support for the proposition that tax rate reductions will increase real GDP.

The multiplier effect is overblown – research provesVeronique de Rugy, Ph.D., is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason, “The Myth of the Multiplier,” Reason, November 2009, http://reason.com/archives/2009/10/19/the-myth-of-the-multiplier/1, accessed 6-19-2012.

Under this logic, one possible remedy is for public spending to take the place of private spending. As government increases its spending, the money creates new employment. That, in turn, spurs those new workers to consume more and prompts businesses to buy more machines and equipment to meet the government-induced demand. Economists call this increase in aggregate income the “multiplier” effect. One dollar of government spending, the theory goes, ends up creating more than a dollar of new income. It’s a rare free lunch. As appealing as the Keynesian story sounds, many economists have long doubted it. In 1991, looking across 100 countries , Robert Barro of Harvard presented historical evidence that high government spending actually hurts economies in the long run by crowding out private

spending and shifting resources to the uses preferred by politicians rather than consumers. For a dollar of government spending, we end up seeing less than a dollar of growth. Can long-term poison be short-term medicine? Even in the short run, if there’s a big decline in the demand for workers, why should that alone cause mass unemployment? If all those workers really want to work, why won’t wages just fall until all the workers have jobs? That’s how markets end a glut, whether it’s a glut of employees or a glut of blue jeans: with lower prices. If recessions really are caused by a fall in demand (and nothing else), why don’t wages fall enough to keep people from losing their jobs? It’s because wages are sticky, Keynesians argue. Wages and salaries don’t change on a daily basis the way stock prices and gas prices do, so if a company hits a sales slump, salespeople might earn fewer commissions, but the vast majority of workers don’t get a pay cut. There’s something about the market for workers that keeps businesses from cutting wages in a slump. As long as wages are sticky, in the wake of a nationwide collapse in sales, entrepreneurs will start firing people. If a decline in demand means mass firing, a rise in demand can mean mass hiring. Even if government spending is inefficient, pork-laden, and financed by future tax increases, the theory goes, it can still create some real jobs, some real output, in both the public and private sectors. So what do the data say? There aren’t many studies of the issue. But two stand out: Robert Barro’s work and research by Valerie Ramey, an economist at the University of California–San Diego, on how military spending influences GDP. Both studies found that government spending crowds out the private sector, at least a little. And both found multipliers close to one: Barro’s estimate is 0.8, while Ramey’s estimate is 1.2. This means that every dollar of government spending produces either less than a dollar of economic growth or just a little over a dollar. That’s quite different from the administration’s favored multiplier of four. What’s more, Ramey also found evidence that consumer and business spending actually decline after an increase in government purchases. Why this crowding out of private spending? Government spending comes from three sources: debt, new money, or taxes . In other words, the government can’t inject money into the economy without first taking money out of the economy.

A2 Manufacturing KeyManufacturing is not key to the economy due to changes in the industry – unions are more importantRobert Reich, former U.S. secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at UC Berkeley, “Unions, not manufacturing, key to economic revival,” San Francisco Gate, February 26, 2012, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/25/INC81NADIH.DTL, accessed 6-16-2012.

Meanwhile, American consumers' pent-up demand for appliances, cars and trucks has created a small boomlet in American manufacturing -

setting off a wave of hope and nostalgic patriotism perfectly captured in Clint Eastwood's Super Bowl "Halftime in America" spot. But American manufacturing won't be coming back. Although 404,000 manufacturing jobs have been added since January 2010, that still leaves 5.5 million fewer factory jobs today than in July 2000. The long-term trend is fewer and fewer factory jobs. After World War II, 1 in 3 Americans was employed in manufacturing; today it's 1 in 8. Even if we didn't have to compete with lower-wage workers overseas, we'd still have fewer factory jobs because the old assembly line has been replaced by numerically controlled machine tools and robotics. Manufacturing is going high-tech, and as a result its productivity has skyrocketed - meaning fewer jobs . Bringing back American manufacturing isn't the real challenge, anyway. It's creating good jobs for the majority of Americans who lack four-year college degrees. Manufacturing used to supply lots of these kinds of jobs, but that was because factory workers were represented by unions powerful enough to get high wages. That's no longer the case . Even the once-mighty United Auto Workers has been forced to accept pay packages for new hires at the Big Three of only $14 an hour - half what new hires got a decade ago, and about the same as most of America's service-sector workers. GM just announced record profit, but its new workers won't be getting much of a share. If there's a single reason the median wage has dropped dramatically for non-college workers over the past 3 1/2 decades, it's the decline of unions. In the 1950s, more than a third of American workers were represented by a union. Now, fewer than 7 percent of private-sector workers have a union behind them.

Reducing the deficit is considerably more important than boosting manufacturingGary S. Becker, University Professor Department of Economics and Sociology Professor Graduate School of Business The University of Chicago, “Concern About The Decline in Manufacturing in the United States?,” Becker-Posner Blog, April 22, 2012, http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2012/04/concern-about-the-decline-in-manufacturing-in-the-united-states-becker.html, accessed 6-16-2012.

President Obama, in his State of the Union address, advocated special tax breaks and support for the manufacturing sector. I do not see any more convincing case for subsidies to manufacturing than there was for the special treatment of agriculture during the long decline in farm employment. Most of the arguments made in support of privileges for manufacturing could be made for services and other sectors of the economy. For example, although certain manufacturing industries have had high rates of productivity advance, so too has mining, such as through the development of fracking techniques. The most important technological advance of the past several decades has been the computer and the Interne t, for these gave birth to email, word processing , apps, online sales , and social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Instead of singling out manufacturing for special privileges, the government should get behind certain general policies . High on the list would be raising the rate of growth of the American econom y, for this will tend to create jobs in most sectors of the economy. More government support may be justified for basic research in science and other areas that would also benefit all sectors ,

not just manufacturing. Local and state governments, along perhaps with the federal governments , could try to reduce the dismally high dropout rates from American high schools . Dropouts have trouble finding good jobs even in the best of times, and they suffer the most during recessions. Many other steps can be taken to help the American economy, especially by limiting the growth of entitlements and the federal budget . None of the steps to improve the economy involve favoring manufacturing employment and the manufacturing sector . The call by many for special treatment of manufacturing jobs is basically misguided.

The U.S. is already the world’s largest manufacturer and government action on manufacturing leads to fewer jobsRichard A. Posner, Judge, United States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Senior Lecturer, University of Chicago Law School, “Decline of U.S. Manufacturing—Posner,” Becker-Posner Blog, April 22, 2012, http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2012/04/decline-of-us-manufacturingposner.html, accessed 6-16-2012.

There is a general anxiety about becoming dependent on foreign nations for products that are vital to our nation. That is a legitimate concern when one is talking about products that are essential for national security or economic welfare, such as military aircraft; and obviously our military production is heavily and justifiably paid for largely by the government, although some is paid for by foreign buyers. The foreign “products” that might be thought essential to our security and welfare are not manufactured goods at all, but commodities such as oil and rare earth metals . The United States is still the world’s largest manufacturing country , accounting for a fifth of total world industrial output. Becker points to the analogy of agriculture. Employment in agriculture has plummeted, leading to anxieties spurred by agricultural companies about the decline of the “family farm” and the loss of the imagined virtues of the independent farmer, to combat which agriculture continues to be heavily subsidized. The subsidies are widely recognized to be a pure social waste, and the same would be true of subsidizing manufacturing. Like manufacturing, American agriculture is thriving with its historically small labor force . The decline in agricultural employment is a product of technological advance, and likewise the decline in manufacturing employment. Subsidizing manufacturing will no more increase employment in manufacturing than subsidizing agriculture has prevented the precipitous decline of agricultural employment, for a manufacturing subsidy will be used to speed the automation of manufacturing tasks and so accelerate the decline of manufacturing employment --unless the subsidy is conditioned on increased employment, which would would mean diverting workers from more to less productive work. We would not be better off if 40 percent of the labor force were in farming rather than 2.5 percent, or if 28 percent of the labor force were in manufacturing rather than 9 percent. Some concern has been expressed that we need to boost manufacturing in order to reduce our trade imbalance, because many manufactured goods are exported. But a recent article in the New York Times (April 10) points out that the United States is the world’s largest exporter of services —and would be larger still if we took steps , such as loosening visa restrictions that impede international provisions of services and making the same efforts to pry open foreign markets to American services as we do to pry open foreign markets to American goods. The politicians know all these things. The push to promote manufacturing is political in origin and may (one hopes will) be abandoned after the election. Its political appeal is related partly to the fact that unions still have a foothold in manufacturing, and partly to the fact that America’s prowess

in manufacturing (think of the vast output of munitions in World War II) is associated in the public mind with the epoch of greatest American world power. I have no objection to efforts to negotiate with foreign countries trade agreements that facilitate U.S. exports (they also of course facilitate imports—and that’s fine too). Such efforts are the centerpiece of the Administration’s program of stimulating employment in manufacturing. But the efforts should be extended to services. I can think of no rational basis for putting manufacturing ahead of services.

Warming Answers

1NC FrontlineThe plan forces natural gas to remain artificially low which kills the renewable energy industryRichard Harris, “Could Cheap Gas Slow Growth Of Renewable Energy?,” NPR, February 2, 2012, http://www.npr.org/2012/02/02/146297284/could-cheap-gas-slow-growth-of-renewable-energy, accessed 7-5-2012.

***Quotes Henry Jacoby who is an economist at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research at MIT, a leader of MIT research and analysis of national climate policies and the structure of the international climate regime, has been director of the Harvard Environmental Systems Program, director of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, associate director of the MIT Energy Laboratory, and chair of the MIT Faculty.***

From an environmental perspective, natural gas could help transition our economy from fossil fuels to clean energy. It's often portrayed as a bridge fuel to help us through the transition, because it's so much cleaner than coal and it's abundant . But Jacoby says that bridge could be in trouble if cheap gas kills the incentive to develop renewable industry . "You'd better be thinking about a landing of the bridge at the other end. If there's no landing at the other end, it's just a bridge to nowhere," he says. In the short run, at least, the wind industry isn't too worried about this. Denise Bode, who heads the American Wind Energy Association, says low gas prices don't undercut current prices for wind, because those are mostly fixed by 20-year contracts, not market prices. And even if wind is a bit more expensive than natural gas, she says utilities still want it in their mix. Windmills aren't subject to changing fuel prices, so the cost of production is quite predictable. That's not true for natural gas — there's no guarantee that today's cheap prices will stay as low as some predict . "It's very difficult to really know how certain that is, so you always want to balance that with something that is certain," Bode says.

CO2 doesn’t cause warmingJaworowski 2010 [Zbigniew, Ph.¶ D., M.D., D.Sc., has researched the atmospheric pollution of glaciers and CO2¶ concentrations in the atmosphere for many years, and is the author of numerous ¶ publications on climate change. He serves as the Polish ¶ representative in the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, and is a member ¶ of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) January 15, “‘Global Warming’: A Lie Aimed ¶ At Destroying Civilization” EIR Science and Technology http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles_2010/Jaworowski_interview.pdf]

As you can see, there is no connection between CO2 ¶ ,¶ which has been under such fierce attack, and climate¶ change . Indeed, more than 500 million years ago , according to the geological record, CO2¶ was present at 23¶ times the levels we now have in the atmosphere , and¶ yet, half a billion years ago, the land was covered by¶ glaciers .¶ Climate change depends on many factors, and now¶ we are fighting against only one factor, CO2¶ , which happens to be negligible.

No catastrophic warming and its not human caused- past temperatures were hotter and we didn’t cause them nor die from themIdso, Carter and Singer 2011 [Craig D. Ph.D Chairman for the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Robert M. Ph.D Adjunct Research Fellow James Cook University, S. Fred Ph.D President of Science and Environmental Policy Project, Climate Change¶ Reconsidered¶ 2011 Interim Report” Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change http://nipccreport.org/reports/2011/pdf/2011NIPCCinterimreport.pdf

Evidence of a Medieval Warm Period (MWP) ¶ approximately 1,000 years ago , when there was ¶ about 28 percent less CO2 in the atmosphere than ¶ there is currently, would show there is nothing ¶ unusual, unnatural, or unprecedented about recent ¶ temperatures. Such evidence is now overwhelming. ¶ New evidence not reported in NIPCC-1 finds the ¶ Medieval Warm Period occurred in North America, ¶ Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, Antarctica, ¶ and the Northern Hemisphere. Despite this ¶ evidence, Mann et al. (2009) continue to understate ¶ the true level of warming during the MWP by ¶ cherry-picking proxy and instrumental records.¶ Research from locations around the world reveals a ¶ significant period of elevated air temperatures that ¶ immediately preceded the Little Ice Age, during a ¶ time that has come to be known as the Little ¶ Medieval Warm Period.¶ Recent reconstructions of climate history find the ¶ human influence does not stand out relative to ¶ other, natural causes of climate change. While ¶ global warming theory and models predict polar ¶ areas would warm most rapidly, the warming of ¶ Greenland was 33 percent greater in magnitude in ¶ 1919–1932 than it was in 1994–2007, and ¶ Antarctica cooled during the second half of the ¶ twentieth century.¶ Perlwitz et al. (2009) reported ―a decade-long ¶ decline (1998–2007) in globally averaged ¶ temperatures from the record heat of 1998‖ and ¶ noted U.S. temperatures in 2008 ―not only declined ¶ from near-record warmth of prior years, but were in ¶ fact colder than the official 30-year reference ¶ climatology … and further were the coldest since at ¶ least 1996.‖¶ New research disputes IPCC‘s claim that it has ¶ ferreted out all significant influences of the world‘s ¶ many and diverse urban heat islands from the ¶ temperature databases they use to portray the ¶ supposedly unprecedented warming of the past few ¶ decades.

2NC

A2 No Tradeoff

Pushing for natural gas will lock us into natural gas and move us away from renewable energiesBeth Gardner, “Is Natural Gas Good, or Just Less Bad?,” New York Times, February 22, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/business/energy-environment/21iht-renogas21.html, accessed 7-5-2012.

But opponents see the push for natural gas as a distraction from more pressing priorities, like improving efficiency and generating renewable power. “We really have to be quite careful about the language we use to frame things,” said Kevin Anderson, a professor at the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester in England. “If we call things green, we start to feel positive about it.” Natural gas , he said, “ is not a positive thing , it’s just less negative.” In fact, he called it “a very bad fuel,” with “very high emissions indeed.” “They’re not as high as some other fossil fuels, but given where we need to be, to compare it with the worst that’s out there is very dangerous,” he added. Others are less critical. The Natural Resources Defense Council, an influential environmental group based in New York, wants to see U.S. coal plants converted to natural gas, said Kate Sinding, a senior attorney with the council. Reducing energy demand and promoting renewables come first, she said, “but we do see that as we get there, there is inevitably going to be a role for natural gas to play.” In addition to the carbon dioxide savings, natural gas also emits far lower levels of pollutants like nitrogen and sulfur oxides, mercury and particulate matter. Eventually, Ms. Sinding said, natural gas plants could be paired with solar and wind farms, which generate intermittent supply and need backup. Still, even if gas burns more cleanly than coal and oil, its production is often so dirty that it undermines the environmental gains, she said. U.S. and state regulators must tighten rules that have failed to reduce the serious problem of methane leaks and protect the quality of air and drinking water, Ms. Sinding said. Natural gas is composed largely of methane, which, if leaked unburned , is a powerful greenhouse gas. Also, poorly built gas wells can contaminate nearby aquifers. “In theory it can be reasonable, but we’re just falling far short of what we need to be doing for it to realize its promise,” she said. Much of the enthusiasm in the United States and Europe for natural gas comes from its relative abundance, and its location in places friendly to the West. The United States in particular has plentiful supplies, now that extraction from shale rock has boomed into a big industry. “Gas is much better distributed around the world than oil,” said Michael Webber, associate director of the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Texas at Austin. “We keep finding it.” Many environmentalists are not convinced, noting that a growing number of new finds are in hard-to-reach areas or require unconventional forms of extraction, making exploitation riskier, more expensive and more energy-intensive. Still, Mr. Webber said, “If we can really produce gas in a safe, clean way and it’s as abundant as people say, it doesn’t take us all the way to a zero-carbon future, but it’s clearly a big step in the right direction.” The advantages of gas, which include the low capital cost and short turnaround time for building new plants, make it essential for reducing carbon emissions quickly, said Beate Raabe, director of European Union affairs at the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers, a trade group based in Brussels. In the longer term, she said, carbon-capture technology could make gas plants part of a green future. Mr. Obama appeared to share such optimism when he mentioned natural gas in his State of the Union speech last month, surprising environmentalists by listing it along with solar, wind, nuclear

and so-called clean coal power as key parts of a national clean-energy strategy. But some remain skeptical of the idea that natural gas can serve as a bridge to a cleaner renewable energy future. “How long and how wide is this bridge?” asked Ms. Sinding, of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “ The more we put into natural gas, the greater the concern that we lock ourselves into burning natural gas and not substituting for it.”

Natural gas displaces renewable energiesJoe Romm, Fellow at American Progress and is the editor of Climate Progress, which New York Times columnist Tom Friedman called "the indispensable blog" and Time magazine named one of the 25 "Best Blogs of 2010,” as acting assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy in 1997, where he oversaw $1 billion in R&D, demonstration, and deployment of low-carbon technology. He is a Senior Fellow at American Progress and holds a Ph.D. in physics from MIT, “Natural Gas Is A Bridge To Nowhere — Absent a Serious Price for Global Warming Pollution,” Think Progress, January 24, 2012, http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/01/24/407765/natural-gas-is-a-bridge-to-nowhere-price-for-global-warming-pollution/, accessed 8-12-2012.

Building lots of new gas plants doesn’t make much sense since we need to sharply reduce g reen h ouse g as emission s in the next few decades if we’re to have any chance to avoid catastrophic global warming. We don’t want new gas plants to displace new renewables, like solar and wind, which are going to be the some of the biggest, sustainable job creating industries of the century . Late last year, some of the leading (center-right) economists in the country — Nicholas Z. Muller, Robert Mendelsohn, and William Nordhaus — concluded in a top economic journal that the total damages from natural gas generation exceed its value -added at a low-ball carbon price of $27 per ton! At a price of $65 a ton of carbon, the total damages from natural gas are more than double its value -added! For the record, stabilizing at 550 ppm atmospheric concentrations of CO2, which would likely still be catastrophic for humanity, would require a price of $330 a metric ton of carbon in 2030, the International Energy Agency (IEA) noted back in 2008. The fact that natural gas is a bridge fuel to nowhere was in fact, first demonstrated by the IEA in its big June 2011 report on gas — see IEA’s “Golden Age of Gas Scenario” Leads to More Than 6°F Warming and Out-of-Control Climate Change. That study — which had both coal and oil consumption peaking in 2020 — made abundantly clear that if we want to avoid catastrophic warming, we need to start getting off of all fossil fuels.

Lowering natural gas prices anymore will ruin the coming stability in the marketSolar Town, “The Economics of Solar Energy: Is Fracking Killing Renewable Energy?,” January 5, 2012, http://www.solartown.com/community/news/view/the-economics-of-solar-energy-is-fracking-killing-renewable-energy/, accessed 8-12-2012.

That big earthquake you just felt may be a bigger threat to solar energy than a cloudy day. Economics more than anything else drive the solar energy market and when oil and gas go up, the demand for renewable energy also go up. When the price for oil and gas go down, the demand for renewable energy also goes down . In an effort to produce low cost natural gas, the demand for renewable energy, including solar energy, the utilities are reducing the demand for solar panels on your homes . As this new report from NPR suggests, the cost of natural gas has dropped considerably . The primary culprit is that earthquake you may have felt in Texas or Ohio. As the NPR reports suggests, "The reason natural gas prices have fallen is because production is way up, thanks to hydraulic fracturing. Fracking, as it's called, is a controversial drilling technology that some say harms the environment. But the process has also made it possible to extract oil and gas once thought to be trapped in rock too deep underground for drillers to reach." Low utility rates sound good to consumers but in the quest to preserve low utility rates, the thirst for renewable energy is being squelched. As NPR reports, "This has allowed utilities that burn natural gas to produce electricity to hold the line on rates. For most of us, that's a good thing, but for those who've installed solar panels, it makes that investment less of a bargain." This year promises to

be another year of twists and turns for the solar energy industry. The major industry group just announced that it is merging with another solar energy group. As reported earlier this week in the San Francisco Chronicle, "The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), the national trade association for the solar energy industry, announced today that it has officially merged with the Solar Alliance, an advocacy organization committed to establishing solar policies at the state level. Effective immediately, the Solar Alliance will operate under the SEIA brand in an effort to present a unified solar industry voice in all advocacy efforts at the state level." Solar Novus Today reports that there will be more turmoil in the industry , but " stability is on the horizon, especially as the world's energy consumers realize that solar costs are in line with those of fossil fuels, that it is affordable and can be easily financed, and that it is an abundant and reliable source of energy."

Natural gas shifts the energy debate away from climate and towards economics – ruins chance for renewablesJoe Romm, Fellow at American Progress and is the editor of Climate Progress, which New York Times columnist Tom Friedman called "the indispensable blog" and Time magazine named one of the 25 "Best Blogs of 2010,” as acting assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy in 1997, where he oversaw $1 billion in R&D, demonstration, and deployment of low-carbon technology. He is a Senior Fellow at American Progress and holds a Ph.D. in physics from MIT, “Natural Gas Is A Bridge To Nowhere — Absent a Serious Price for Global Warming Pollution,” Think Progress, January 24, 2012, http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/01/24/407765/natural-gas-is-a-bridge-to-nowhere-price-for-global-warming-pollution/, accessed 8-12-2012.

Natural gas might have been a “bridge” to a low-carbon future 30 years ago when the term was first introduced, but now its primary value would be to reduce the cost of meeting a near-term CO2 target in the U.S. in the context of a rising CO2 price. A key finding of the NCAR study is: The most important result, however, in accord with the above authors, is that, unless leakage rates for new methane can be kept below 2%, substituting gas for coal is not an effective means for reducing the magnitude of future climate change. The question of what the total leakage rate is remains hotly contested, but I know of no analysis that finds a rate below 2% including one by the National Energy Technology Laboratory, the DOE’s premier fossil fuel lab. BOTTOM LINE: If you want to have a serious chance at averting catastrophic global warming, then we need to start phasing out all fossil fuels as soon as possible . Natural gas isn’t a bridge fuel from a climate perspective. Carbon-free power is the bridge fuel until we can figure out how to go carbon negative on a large scale in the second half of the century.

A2 Fossil Fuels > RenewablesRenewable energies are more effective in solving global warming – the AFF still emits CO2 through extraction and processingNREL, “Strengthening U.S. Leadership of International Clean Energy Cooperation,” December 2008, http://www.nrel.gov/international/pdfs/44261.pdf, accessed 6-20-2012.

Greenhouse Gas Impacts The primary environmental benefit of the U.S.-led global clean energy market transformation will be reduce d greenhouse gas emissions of 50-80% by 2050, which scientists think will prevent catastrophic climate change impacts—a large benefit to the U.S. and the global community. Clean energy technologies will provide more than half of the reductions needed to achieve that goal (Figure 3).4 Other Environmental Benefits Significant local air quality and other environmental benefits will accompany the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Reduced air emissions translate to improved health, lower health care costs, improved visibility, and reduced impacts on natural ecosystems . Increased use of clean energy also will reduce impacts from fossil fuel extraction and processing . Increased access to clean energy in the poorest regions of the world will reduce the use of firewood, enabling cleaner indoor air quality and contributing to local sustainable development.

A2 Not Enough PowerRenewables can provide base-load power – multiple warrantsDr Mark Diesendorf is Deputy Director of the Institute of Environmental Studies at University of New South Wales., previously, as a Principal Research Scientist in CSIRO, he led a research group on the integration of wind power into electricity grids, author and co-author of several national energy scenario studies, “The Base Load Fallacy and other Fallacies disseminated by Renewable Energy Deniers,” Energy Science Coalition, March 2010, http://www.energyscience.org.au/BP16%20BaseLoad.pdf, accessed 8-17-2012.

Opponents of renewable energy, from the coal and nuclear industries and from NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) groups, are disseminating the Base-Load Fallacy, that is, the fallacy that renewable energy cannot provide base-load (24-hour) power to substitute for coal-fired electricity. In Australia, even Government Ministers and some journalists are propagating this conventional ‘wisdom’, although it is false. This fallacy is the principal weapon of renewable energy deniers. Other fallacies are discussed briefly in the appendix. The political implications are that, if these fallacies become widely believed, renewable energy would always have to remain a niche market, rather than achieve its true potential of becoming a set of mainstream energy supply technologies with the capacity to supply all of Australia’s and indeed the world’s electricity. The refutation of the fallacy has the following key logical steps: • With or without renewable energy, there is no such thing as a perfectly reliable power station or electricity generating system. Both coal and nuclear power are only partially reliable. • Electricity grids are already designed to handle variability in both demand and supply . To do this, they have different types of power station (base-load, intermediate-load and peak-load) and reserve power stations. • Wind power and solar power without storage provide additional sources of variability to be integrated into a system that already has to balance a variable conventional supply against a variable demand. • The variability of small amounts of wind and solar power in a grid is indistinguishable from variations in demand. Therefore, existing peak-load plant and reserve plant can handle small amounts of wind and solar power at negligible extra cost. • Some renewable electricity sources (e.g. bioenergy, solar thermal electricity with thermal storage and geothermal) have similar patterns of variability to coal-fired power stations and so they can be operated as base-load. They can be integrated without any additional back-up, as can efficient energy use. • Other renewable electricity sources (e.g. wind, solar without storage, and run-of-river hydro) have different kinds of variability from coal-fired power stations and so have to be considered separately. • Single wind turbines cut-in and cut-out suddenly in low wind speeds and so can be described as ‘intermittent’. • But, for l arge amounts of wind power connected to the grid from several wind farms that are geographically dispersed in different wind regimes, total wind power generally varie s smoothly and therefore cannot be described accurately as ‘intermittent’ . Like coal and 3 nuclear power, wind power is a partially reliable source of power (Sinden 2007). However, its statistics are different from those of coal and nuclear power. • As the penetration into the grid of wind energy increases substantially, so do the additional costs of reserve plant and fuel used for balancing wind power variations. However, when wind power supplies up to 20% of electricity generation, these additional costs are relatively small.

A variety of renewables are capable of providing base-loadDr Mark Diesendorf is Deputy Director of the Institute of Environmental Studies at University of New South Wales., previously, as a Principal Research Scientist in CSIRO, he led a research group on the integration of wind power into electricity grids, author and co-author of several national energy scenario studies, “The Base Load Fallacy and other Fallacies disseminated by Renewable Energy Deniers,” Energy Science Coalition, March 2010, http://www.energyscience.org.au/BP16%20BaseLoad.pdf, accessed 8-17-2012.

Renewable energy can provide several differen t clean, safe, base-load technologies to substitute for base-load coal : • bioenergy, based for example on the direct combustion of crop and plantation forestry residues, or their gasification followed by combustion of the gas; • geothermal power – a new type of geothermal power (called hot rock, enhanced or engineered geothermal) is being developed in Australia, the USA and Europe; • solar thermal electricity, with overnight thermal storage in molten salt, water, graphite or a thermochemical store such as ammonia; • hydro-electricity in regions with very large storages (eg, Sweden, Iceland, Tasmania); • large-scale, distributed wind power, with a small amount of occasional back-up from peakload plant. It is obvious that the first four of these types of renewable power station are indeed base-load. Efficient energy use and solar hot water, the natural companions of renewable electricity, can also substitute directly for base-load coal. However, the inclusion of large-scale wind power in the above list may be a surprise to some people, because wind power is often described as an ‘intermittent’ source, one that switches on and off frequently. Before discussing the variability of wind power, we introduce the concept of ‘optimal mix’.

A2 CO2 Causes- HistoryCO2 doesn’t cause warmingJaworowski 2010 [Zbigniew, Ph.¶ D., M.D., D.Sc., has researched the atmospheric pollution of glaciers and CO2¶ concentrations in the atmosphere for many years, and is the author of numerous ¶ publications on climate change. He serves as the Polish ¶ representative in the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, and is a member ¶ of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) January 15, “‘Global Warming’: A Lie Aimed ¶ At Destroying Civilization” EIR Science and Technology http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles_2010/Jaworowski_interview.pdf]

As you can see, there is no connection between CO2 ¶ ,¶ which has been under such fierce attack, and climate¶ change . Indeed, more than 500 million years ago , according to the geological record, CO2¶ was present at 23¶ times the levels we now have in the atmosphere , and ¶ yet, half a billion years ago, the land was covered by¶ glaciers .¶ Climate change depends on many factors, and now¶ we are fighting against only one factor, CO2¶ , which happens to be negligible.

CO2 doesn’t cause warming- its colder now with more of itIdso and Idso 2011 Craig D. (founder and chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) Sherwood B. (president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) February “Carbon Dioxide and Earth’s Future Pursuing the Prudent Path” http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/prudentpath/prudentpath.pdf.

But could the higher temperatures of the past four interglacials have been caused by higher CO2 concentrations due to some non-human influence? Absolutely not, for a tmospheric CO2 concentrations during all four prior interglacials never rose above approximately 290 ppm , whereas the air's CO2 concentration today stands at nearly 390 ppm .¶ Combining these two observations, we have a situation where, compared with the mean conditions of the preceding four interglacials, there is currently 100 ppm more CO2 in the air than there was then, and it is currently more than 2°C colder than it was then, which adds up to one huge discrepancy for the world's climate alarmists and their claim that high atmospheric CO2 concentrations lead to high temperatures. The situation is unprecedented, all right, but not in the way the public is being led to believe.

A2 CO2 Causes - Arctic RecordsCO2 doesn’t cause warming- arctic records proveIdso and Idso 2011 Craig D. (founder and chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) Sherwood B. (president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) February “Carbon Dioxide and Earth’s Future Pursuing the Prudent Path” http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/prudentpath/prudentpath.pdf.

Concentrating wholly on directly-measured temperatures, as opposed to the reconstructed temperatures derived by the proxy

approach of Overpeck et al. (1997), Polyakov et al. (2003) derived a surface air temperature history that stretched from 1875 to 2000 based on data obtained at 75 land stations and a number of drifting buoys located poleward of 62°N latitude. This effort allowed the

team of eight U.S. and Russian scientists to determine that from 1875 to about 1917, the surface air temperature of the huge northern region rose hardly at all ; but then it took off like a rocket, climbing 1.7°C in just 20 years to reach a peak in 1937 that has yet to be eclipsed . During this 20-year period of rapidly rising air temperature, the atmosphere's CO2 concentration rose by a mere 8 ppm . But then, over the next six decades, when the air's CO2 content rose by approximately 55 ppm, or nearly seven times more than it did throughout the

20-year period of dramatic warming that preceded it, the surface air temperature of the region poleward of 62°N experienced no net warming and, in fact, may have actually cooled a bit.¶ In light of these results, it is difficult to claim much about the strength of the warming power of the approximate 75-ppm increase in the atmosphere's CO2 concentration that occurred from 1875 to 2000, other than to say it was miniscule compared to whatever other forcing factor, or combination of forcing factors, was concurrently having its way with the climate of the Arctic. One cannot , for example, claim that any of the 1917 to 1937 warming was due to the 8-ppm increase in CO2 that accompanied it, even if augmented by the 12-ppm increase that occurred between 1875 and 1917; for the subsequent and much larger 55-ppm increase in CO2 led to no net warming over the remainder of the record, which suggests that just a partial relaxation of the forces that totally overwhelmed the warming influence of the CO2 increase experienced between 1937 and 2000 would have been sufficient to account for the temperature increase that occurred between 1917 and 1937. And

understood in this light, the air's CO2 content does not even begin to enter the picture.¶ But what about

earth's other polar region: the Antarctic? Here, too, one can conclude nothing about the influence of atmospheric CO2 on surface air temperature. Why? Because for the continent as a whole (excepting the Antarctic Peninsula), there had been a net cooling over the pre-1990 period, stretching back to at least 1966 (Comiso, 2000; Doran et al., 2002; Thompson and Solomon,

2002). And when the real-world air temperature declines when the theoretical climate forcing factor is rising, one cannot even conclude that the forcing has any positive effect at all, much less determine its magnitude.

Hence, there is absolutely no substance to the claim that earth's polar regions are providing evidence for an impending CO2-induced warming of any magnitude anywhere.

A2 CO2 Causes - Alt CausesCO2 doesn’t cause warming- multiple factors offset the greenhouse effectIdso, Carter and Singer 2011 [Craig D. Ph.D Chairman for the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Robert M. Ph.D Adjunct Research Fellow James Cook University, S. Fred Ph.D President of Science and Environmental Policy Project, Climate Change¶ Reconsidered¶ 2011 Interim Report” Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change http://nipccreport.org/reports/2011/pdf/2011NIPCCinterimreport.pdf

All else being equal, rising levels of atmospheric ¶ CO2 would increase global temperatures through its ¶ thermal radiative properties. But CO2 promotes¶ plant growth both on land and throughout the ¶ surface waters of the world‘s oceans, and this vast ¶ assemblage of plant life has the ability to affect ¶ Earth‘s climate in several ways, almost all of them ¶ tending to counteract the heating or cooling effects ¶ of CO2‘s thermal radiative forcing. ¶ The natural environment is a major source of ¶ atmospheric aerosols, the output of which varies ¶ with temperature and CO2 concentrations. Aerosols ¶ serve as condensation nuclei for clouds , and clouds ¶ affect Earth‘s energy budget through their ability to ¶ reflect and scatter light and their propensity to ¶ absorb and radiate thermal radiation . The cooling ¶ effect of increased emissions of aerosols from ¶ plants and algae is comparable to the warming ¶ effect projected to result from increases in ¶ greenhouse gases.¶ Similarly, warming-induced increases in the ¶ emission of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) from the ¶ world‘s oceans would offset much or all of the ¶ effects of anthropogenic warming.

A2 Runaway Warming- Arctic DataArctic data supports the claim that warming will not be runawayIdso and Idso 2011 Craig D. (founder and chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) Sherwood B. (president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) February “Carbon Dioxide and Earth’s Future Pursuing the Prudent Path” http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/prudentpath/prudentpath.pdf.

With respect to the recent rate at which the earth has warmed, we examine the results of a number of studies that have investigated recent temperature changes in the Arctic, which Meadows (2001) described as "the place to watch for global warming, the sensitive point, the canary in the coal mine." Here, in comparing the vast array of prior Holocene climate changes with what climate alarmists claim to be the "unprecedented" anthropogenic-induced warming of the past several decades, White et al. (2010) recently determined that "the human influence on rate and size of climate change thus far does not stand out strongly from other causes of climate change."¶ Other scientists preceded White et al. with similar conclusions. Chylek et al. (2006) studied two century-long temperature records from southern coastal Greenland -- Godthab Nuuk on the west and Ammassalik on the east -- both of which are close to 64°N latitude, concentrating on the period 1915-2005. And in doing so, as they describe it, they determined that "two periods of intense warming (1995-2005 and 1920-1930) are clearly visible in the Godthab Nuuk and Ammassalik temperature records." However, they state that "the average rate of warming was considerably higher within the 1920-1930 decade than within the 1995-2005 decade." In fact, they report that the earlier warming rate was 50% greater than the most recent one. And in discussing this fact, they say that "an important question is to what extent can the current (1995-2005) temperature increase in Greenland coastal regions be interpreted as evidence of man-induced global warming?" In providing their own answer, they noted that "the Greenland warming of 1920 to 1930 demonstrates that a high concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is not a necessary condition for [a] period of warming to arise," and that "the observed 1995-2005 temperature increase seems to be within [the] natural variability of Greenland climate."¶ A similar study was conducted two years later by Mernild et al. (2008), who described "the climate and observed climatic variations and trends in the Mittivakkat Glacier catchment in Low Arctic East Greenland from 1993 to 2005 ... based on the period of detailed observations (1993-2005) and supported by synoptic meteorological data from the nearby town of Tasiilaq (Ammassalik) from 1898 to 2004." This work revealed that "the Mittivakkat Glacier net mass balance has been almost continuously negative, corresponding to an average loss of glacier volume of 0.4% per year." And during the past century of general mass loss, they found that "periods of warming were observed from 1918 (the end of the Little Ice Age) to 1935 of 0.12°C per year and 1978 to 2004 of 0.07°C per year," with the former rate of warming being fully 70% greater than the most recent rate of warming.¶ Last of all, Wood et al. (2010) constructed a two-century (1802-2009) instrumental record of annual surface air temperature within the Atlantic-Arctic boundary region, using data obtained from recently published (Klingbjer and Moberg, 2003; Vinther et al., 2006) and historical (Wahlen, 1886) sources that yielded four station-based composite time series that pertain to Southwestern Greenland, Iceland, Tornedalen (Sweden) and Arkhangel'sk (Russia). This operation added seventy-six years to the previously available record, the credibility of which result, in Wood et al.'s words, "is supported by ice core records, other temperature proxies, and historical evidence." And the U.S. and Icelandic researchers determined that their newly extended temperature history and their analysis of it revealed "an irregular pattern of decadal-scale

temperature fluctuations over the past two centuries," of which the early twentieth-century warming (ETCW) event -- which they say "began about 1920 and persisted until mid-century" -- was by far "the most striking historical example."

A2 AnthropogenicWarming is natural- even if it’s the result of the greenhouse effect that is caused by water vaporJaworowski 2004 [Professor Zbigniew M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc. is the chairman of the Scientific Council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw. Winter “Solar Cycles, Not CO2, Determine Climate” 21st Century Science Tech http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202004/Winter2003-4/global_warming.pdf]

In fact, the recent climate developments¶ are not something unusual; they reflect a¶ natural course of planetary events. From¶ time immemorial, alternate warm and¶ cold cycles have followed each other, with a periodicity ranging from tens of millions to several years. The cycles were¶ most probably dependent on the extraterrestrial changes¶ occurring in the Sun and in the Sun’s neighborhood.¶ Short term changes—those occurring in a few years—are¶ caused by terrestrial factors such as large volcanic explosions,¶ which inject dust into the stratosphere, and the phenomenon¶ of El Niño, which depends on the variations in oceanic currents. Thermal energy produced by natural radionuclides that¶ are present in the 1-kilometer-thick layer of the Earth’s crust,¶ contributed about 117 kilojoules per year per square meter of¶ the primitive Earth. As a result of the decay of these long-lived¶ radionuclides, their annual contribution is now only 33.4 kilojoules per square meter.10¶ This nuclear heat, however, plays a minor role among the¶ terrestrial factors, in comparison with the “greenhouse effects”¶ caused by absorption by some atmospheric gases of the solar¶ radiation reflected from the surface of the Earth. Without the¶ greenhouse effect, the average near-surface air temperature¶ would be –18°C, and not +15°C, as it is now. The most impor- tant among these “greenhouse gases” is water vapor, which is¶ responsible for about 96 to 99 percent of the greenhouse¶ effect. Among the other greenhouse gases (CO2¶ , CH4¶ , CFCs,¶ N2O, and O3¶ ), the most important is CO2¶ , which contributes¶ only 3 percent to the total greenhouse effect.11, 12¶ The manmade CO2¶ contribution to this effect may be about 0.05 to¶ 0.25 percent.13.

Warming isn’t anthropogenicIdso, Carter and Singer 2011 [Craig D. Ph.D Chairman for the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Robert M. Ph.D Adjunct Research Fellow James Cook University, S. Fred Ph.D President of Science and Environmental Policy Project, Climate Change¶ Reconsidered¶ 2011 Interim Report” Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change http://nipccreport.org/reports/2011/pdf/2011NIPCCinterimreport.pdf

New evidence points to a larger role for solar ¶ forcing than the IPCC has acknowledged. Likely ¶ mechanisms include perturbation of ocean currents, ¶ tropospheric zonal mean-winds, and the intensity of ¶ cosmic rays reaching the Earth.¶ The IPCC underestimated the warming effect of ¶

chloroflourocarbons (CFCs) prior to their gradual ¶ removal from the atmosphere following the ¶

implementation of the Montreal Protocol in 2000. ¶ This could mean CO2 concentrations played a ¶ smaller role in the warming prior to that year, and ¶ could help explain the global cooling trend since ¶ 2000.¶ Other forcings and feedbacks about which little is ¶ known (or acknowledged by the IPCC) include ¶ stratospheric water vapor, volcanic and seismic ¶ activity, and enhanced carbon sequestration.

A2 Climate ModelsClimate models suck- we cant know all of the things they claim to knowIdso and Idso 2011 Craig D. (founder and chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) Sherwood B. (president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) February “Carbon Dioxide and Earth’s Future Pursuing the Prudent Path” http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/prudentpath/prudentpath.pdf.

As strange as it may seem, these frightening future scenarios are derived from a single source of information: the ever-evolving computer-driven climate models that presume to reduce the important physical, chemical and biological processes that combine to determine the state of earth's climate into a set of mathematical equations out of which their forecasts are produced. But do we really know what all of those complex and interacting processes are? And even if we did -- which we don't -- could we correctly reduce them into manageable computer code so as to produce reliable forecasts 50 or 100 years into the future?

Climate models suck- there is no way there would be runaway warmingIdso, Carter and Singer 2011 [Craig D. Ph.D Chairman for the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Robert M. Ph.D Adjunct Research Fellow James Cook University, S. Fred Ph.D President of Science and Environmental Policy Project, Climate Change¶ Reconsidered¶ 2011 Interim Report” Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change http://nipccreport.org/reports/2011/pdf/2011NIPCCinterimreport.pdf

Climate models over-estimate the amount of ¶ warming that occurred during the twentieth ¶ century, fail to incorporate chemical and biological ¶ processes that may be as important as the physical ¶ processes employed in the models, and often ¶ diverge so greatly in their assumptions and findings ¶ that they cannot be said to validate each other. Climate models fail to correctly simulate future ¶ precipitation due to inadequate model resolution on ¶ both vertical and horizontal spatial scales, a ¶ limitation that forces climate modelers to ¶ parameterize the large-scale effects of processes ¶ that occur on smaller scales than their models are ¶ capable of simulating. This is particularly true of ¶ physical processes such as cloud formation and ¶ cloud-radiation interactions. ¶ The internal variability component of climate ¶ change is strong enough to overwhelm any ¶ anthropogenic temperature signal and generate ¶ global cooling periods (between 1946 and 1977) ¶ and global warming periods (between 1977 and ¶ 2008), yet models typically underestimate or leave ¶ out entirely this component, leading to unrealistic ¶ values of climate sensitivity.¶ Climate models fail to predict changes in sea ¶ surface temperature and El Niño/Southern ¶ Oscillation (ENSO) events, two major drivers of ¶ the global climate. There has been little or no ¶ improvement to the models in this regard since the ¶ late-1990s. ¶ Climate models typically predict summer ¶ desiccation of soil with higher temperatures, but ¶ real-world data show positive soil moisture trends ¶ for regions that have warmed during the twentieth ¶ century. This is a serious problem since accurate ¶ simulation of land surface states is critical to the ¶ skill of weather and climate forecasts.¶ While climate models produce a wide range of ¶ climate sensitivity estimates based on the ¶ assumptions of their builders, estimates based on ¶ real-world measurements find that a doubling of ¶ the atmosphere‘s CO2 concentration would result in ¶ only a 0.4° or 0.5° C rise in temperature.

A2 IPCC - Flawed Rainfall Models IPCC wrong- they used flawed rainfall modelsIdso and Idso 2011 Craig D. (founder and chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) Sherwood B. (president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) February “Carbon Dioxide and Earth’s Future Pursuing the Prudent Path” http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/prudentpath/prudentpath.pdf.

Other studies have continued to demonstrate the difficulties models have in simulating precipitation properties and trends. Kiktev et al. (2007), for example, analyzed the abilities of five global coupled climate models that played important roles in the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report to simulate temporal trends over the second half of the 20th century for five annual indices of precipitation extremes. Their results revealed "low skill" or an "absence" of model skill.

A2 IPCC- InconclusiveEven IPCC people think that study proved nothingBast, Karnick and Bast 2011 [Joseph L. President of the Heartland Institute, S.T. Research Director The Heartland Institute, Diane Carol, Executive Editor The Heartland Institute, “Climate Change¶

Reconsidered¶ 2011 Interim Report: Foreward” Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change http://nipccreport.org/reports/2011/pdf/2011NIPCCinterimreport.pdf

Mike Hulme (2009), a professor of climate change in ¶ the School of Environmental Sciences at the ¶ University of East Anglia and a contributor to the ¶ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), ¶ published in 2009 a book that contained admissions ¶ of uncertainty rarely voiced by insiders of the climate ¶ change research community. Hulme wrote, ―the three ¶ questions examined above—What is causing climate ¶ change? By how much is warming likely to ¶ accelerate? What level of warming is dangerous?—¶ represent just three of a number of contested or ¶ uncertain areas of knowledge about climate change‖¶ (p. 75).¶ Hulme also admitted, ―Uncertainty pervades ¶ scientific predictions about the future performance of ¶ global and regional climates. And uncertainties ¶ multiply when considering all the consequences that ¶ might follow from such changes in climate‖ (p. 83). ¶ On the subject of the IPCC‘s credibility, he admitted¶ it is ―governed by a Bureau consisting of selected ¶ governmental representatives, thus ensuring that the ¶ Panel‘s work was clearly seen to be serving the needs ¶ of government and policy. The Panel was not to be a ¶ self-governing body of independent scientists‖ (p. ¶ 95).¶ These are all basic ―talking points‖ of global ¶ warming realists, which invariably result in charges ¶ of ―denial‖ and ―industry shill‖ when expressed by ¶ someone not in the alarmist camp. To see them ¶ written by Hulme reveals how the debate has ¶ changed.

A2 IPCC- Flaws in Peer ReviewThe IPCC report may as well have not been peer reviewedBast, Karnick and Bast 2011 [Joseph L. President of the Heartland Institute, S.T. Research Director The Heartland Institute, Diane Carol, Executive Editor The Heartland Institute, “Climate Change¶

Reconsidered¶ 2011 Interim Report: Foreward” Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change http://nipccreport.org/reports/2011/pdf/2011NIPCCinterimreport.pdf

In 2010, the Amsterdam-based InterAcademy Council ¶ (IAC), a scientific body composed of the heads of ¶ national science academies around the world, ¶ revealed crippling flaws in the IPCC‘s peer-review ¶ process. The IAC reported (InterAcademy Council, ¶ 2010) that IPCC lead authors fail to give ―due consideration … to properly documented alternative ¶ views‖ (p. 20), fail to ―provide detailed written ¶ responses to the most significant review issues ¶ identified by the Review Editors‖ (p. 21), and are not ¶ ―consider[ing] review comments carefully and ¶ document[ing] their responses‖ (p. 22).¶ The IAC found ―the IPCC has no formal process ¶ or criteria for selecting authors‖ and ―the selection ¶ criteria seemed arbitrary to many respondents‖ (p. ¶ 18). Government officials appoint scientists from ¶ their countries and ―do not always nominate the best ¶ scientists from among those who volunteer, either ¶ because they do not know who these scientists are or ¶ because political considerations are given more ¶ weight than scientific qualifications‖ (p. 18).¶ The rewriting of the Summary for Policy Makers ¶ by politicians and environmental activists—a problem ¶ called out by global warming realists for many years, ¶ but with little apparent notice by the media or ¶ policymakers—is plainly admitted, perhaps for the ¶ first time by an organization in the ―mainstream‖ of ¶ alarmist climate change thinking. ―[M]any were ¶ concerned that reinterpretations of the assessment‘s ¶ findings, suggested in the final Plenary, might be ¶ politically motivated,‖ the auditors wrote, and the ¶ scientists they interviewed commonly found the¶ Synthesis Report ―too political‖ (p. 25). ¶ Note especially this description by the IAC of ¶ how the ―consensus of scientists‖ is actually obtained ¶ by the IPCC:¶ Plenary sessions to approve a Summary for ¶ Policy Makers last for several days and ¶ commonly end with an all-night meeting. Thus, ¶ the individuals with the most endurance or the ¶ countries that have large delegations can end up ¶ having the most influence on the report (p. 25).¶ Another problem documented by the IAC that was ¶ noted in NIPCC-1 is the use of phony ―confidence ¶ intervals‖ and estimates of ―certainty‖ in the ¶ Summary for Policy Makers (pp. 27–34). We knew ¶ this was make-believe, almost to the point of a joke, ¶ when we first saw it in 2007. Work by J. Scott ¶ Armstrong (2006) on the science of forecasting makes ¶ it clear scientists cannot simply gather around a table¶ and vote on how confident they are about some ¶ prediction, and then affix a number to it such as ―80% ¶ confident.‖ Yet this is how the IPCC proceeds. The ¶ IAC authors say it is ―not an appropriate way to ¶ characterize uncertainty‖ (p. 34), a huge ¶ understatement. Unfortunately, the IAC authors ¶ recommend an equally fraudulent substitute, called ¶ ―level of understanding scale,‖ which is mush-mouth ¶ for ―consensus.‖¶ The IAC authors warn, also on p. 34, that ¶ ―conclusions will likely be stated so vaguely as to ¶ make them impossible to refute, and therefore ¶ statements of ‗very high confidence‘ will have little ¶ substantive value.‖¶ Finally, in a discussion of conflict of interest and ¶ disclosure, the IAC noted, ―the lack of a conflict of ¶ interest and disclosure policy for IPCC leaders and ¶ Lead Authors was a concern raised by a number of ¶ individuals who were interviewed by the Committee ¶ or provided written input … about the practice of ¶ scientists responsible for writing IPCC assessments ¶ reviewing their own work. The Committee did not ¶ investigate the basis of these claims, which is beyond ¶ the mandate of this review‖ (p. 46). Too bad,

because ¶ these are both big issues and their presence in the¶ report is an admission of more structural problems ¶ with the IPCC.

A2 Idso IndictsJust because the Idsos get paid by Heartland doesn’t mean they are hacksPlumer 2012 [Brad 02/16 Washington Post “Leaked docs offer insight into how climate-skeptic groups operate” http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/leaked-docs-provide-insight-into-how-climate-skeptic-groups-operate/2012/02/16/gIQAn8BKIR_blog.html]

4) Skeptic money doesn’t necessarily corrupt, but it can amplify marginal viewpoints. It’s sometimes suggested that climate skeptics are somehow corrupted because they take money from fossil-fuel interests and groups like Heartland. But Craig Idso, a skeptical scientist who receives $11,600 a month from the Heartland Institute, according to the documents, offers a more nuanced defense in his interview with Andy Revkin. Idso says that he has long opposed the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change — even before he was getting paid by Heartland.¶ That sounds plausible. It’s doubtful that many skeptics meaningfully alter their views in order to receive money from groups like Heartland. More likely, the effect of all this money is to increase the visibility and reach of once-marginalized folks who were already inclined to criticize climate science. (And, yes, a person’s funding sources have very little bearing on the actual merits of his or her views.)

The Idsos are qualifiedD’Aleo 2010¶ [Joseph is Executive Director of http://icecap.us, a former professor of meteorology and climatology, the First Director of Meteorology at the Weather Channel, and a fellow of the American Meteorology Society. February 14 “Climategate: What Did Phil Jones Actually Admit? Was He Correct?” http://pjmedia.com/blog/climategate-what-did-phil-jones-actually-admit-was-he-correct/]

The Idsos at CO2 Science have done a very thorough job documenting, using the peer review literature, the existence of a global MWP. They have found data published by 804 individual scientists from 476 separate research institutions in 43 different countries supporting the global Medieval Warm Period.

A2 Heartland Institute and NIPCC Indicts Heartland Institute and the NIPCC are qualifiedBast and Taylor 2008 [Joseph L. James M. ¶ Heartland Institiute¶ Fri, 19 Dec “Reply to RealClimate's Attacks on the NIPCC Climate Report” http://www.sott.net/articles/show/171267-Reply-to-RealClimate-s-Attacks-on-the-NIPCC-Climate-Report]

On November 28, the global warming alarmist Web site "RealClimate" posted a ridiculously lame attack by Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt against "Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate," the summary for policymakers of the 2008 report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). ¶ The NIPCC report was written by S. Fred Singer, Ph.D. and an additional 23 contributors, including some of the most accomplished atmospheric scientists in the world. The paper references approximately 200 published papers and scientific reports in support of its conclusions. It provides strong evidence that human activity is not causing a global warming crisis. ¶ Mann and Schmidt call the NIPCC report "dishonest" and "nonsense," a document "served up" by "S. Fred Singer and his merry band of contrarian luminaries (financed by the notorious 'Heartland Institute')." But instead of critiquing the scientific arguments presented in the NIPCC report, Mann and Schmidt simply dismiss and belittle them and refer readers mostly to their own past blog comments. Time spent following those links reveals a hodgepodge of opinions and superficial comments, a boatload of rhetoric, and very little science--an entirely unsatisfactory way to support such serious charges. ¶ The reference to financing seems intended to imply that the authors of the NIPCC report were paid by The Heartland Institute, which is not true. RealClimate has been informed of this, but hasn't corrected its false claim. To go on implying it anyway tells you all you need to know about the integrity of the RealClimate authors. ¶ And what about "the notorious 'Heartland Institute'"? It's a 24-year-old national nonprofit organization that gets 95 percent of its funding from non-energy-related donors and 84 percent of its funding from non-corporate sources (in 2007). It has a long history of publishing reliable scientific and economic analysis of global warming. Heartland's credibility is certainly less questionable than that of RealClimate, a front group created specifically to attack global warming skeptics by Fenton Communications, a truly "notorious" PR agency.

A2 Paid By Oil CompaniesWarming good authors aren’t paid for the by the oil companies anymorePlumer 2012 [Brad 02/16 Washington Post “Leaked docs offer insight into how climate-skeptic groups operate” http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/leaked-docs-provide-insight-into-how-climate-skeptic-groups-operate/2012/02/16/gIQAn8BKIR_blog.html]

2) Big oil companies seem to be increasingly minor players in the skeptic arena. Seven years ago, most climate-skeptic groups could be linked to money pouring out of ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute — see Chris Mooney’s old expose from 2005 for details. One notable point about the Heartland documents, however, is that big oil companies don’t seem to be major donors. The Koch Charitable Foundation — a conservative charity linked to one of the country’s largest private oil refineries — chipped in $25,000 in 2011, but that was devoted specifically for a health care research program.* Exxon, for its part, stopped donating back in 2006 after pressure from environmental groups (up to that point, the oil giant had chipped in $675,000).¶ Indeed, according to the documents, much of the money comes from individual donors, particularly a person referred to as “the Anonymous Donor,” who gave $14.26 million over the past six years (nearly half of the group’s revenue). That’s one possible signal that climate skepticism is no longer the sole concern of self-interested fossil-fuel companies trying to fend off regulations — instead, it’s become a self-sustaining ideological endeavor, with no shortage of committed backers.

A2 Climate ConsensusExperts don’t actually think the climate debate is over- their authors manipulate data tooBast, Karnick and Bast 2011 [Joseph L. President of the Heartland Institute, S.T. Research Director The Heartland Institute, Diane Carol, Executive Editor The Heartland Institute, “Climate Change¶

Reconsidered¶ 2011 Interim Report: Foreward” Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change http://nipccreport.org/reports/2011/pdf/2011NIPCCinterimreport.pdf

Just months after Hulme‘s book was released, a ¶ large cache of emails was leaked by someone at the ¶ Climatic Research Unit at the University of East ¶ Anglia. ―Climategate,‖ as it has come to be known, ¶ revealed deliberate efforts by leading scientific ¶ supporters of the IPCC, and of climate alarmism more ¶ generally, to hide flaws in their evidence and analysis, ¶ keep ―skeptics‖ from appearing in peer-reviewed ¶ journals, and avoid sharing their data with colleagues ¶ seeking to replicate their results (Bell, 2011;¶ Sussman, 2010; Montford, 2010). The emails reveal ¶ that important data underlying climate policy are ¶ missing or have been manipulated.¶ In February 2010, the BBC‘s environment analyst ¶ Roger Harrabin posed a series of written questions to ¶ Philip D. Jones, director of the Climatic Research ¶ Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia and the ¶ person responsible for maintaining the IPCC‘s all important climate temperature records (BBC, 2010). ¶ Jones appeared to back away from many of the ¶ foundational positions of the IPCC, admitting for ¶ example:¶ The rates of global warming from 1860–1880, ¶ 1910–1940 and 1975–1998, and 1975–2009 ―are ¶ similar and not statistically significantly different ¶ from each other.‖

You consensus arguments are no longer trueBast, Karnick and Bast 2011 [Joseph L. President of the Heartland Institute, S.T. Research Director The Heartland Institute, Diane Carol, Executive Editor The Heartland Institute, “Climate Change¶

Reconsidered¶ 2011 Interim Report: Foreward” Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change http://nipccreport.org/reports/2011/pdf/2011NIPCCinterimreport.pdf

German scientists Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch ¶ (2010) released their latest international survey of ¶ climate scientists in 2010. The survey, which was ¶ actually conducted in 2007, consisted of 120 ¶ questions. Typical is question 11a, which asked ¶ scientists to rank ―data availability for climate change ¶

analysis‖ on a scale from 1 (―very inadequate‖) to 7 ¶ (―very adequate‖). More respondents said ―very ¶ inadequate‖ (1 or 2) than ―very adequate‖ (6 or 7), ¶ with most responses ranging between 3 and 5. About ¶ 40 percent scored it a 3 or less. This single question ¶ and its answers imply that we need to know more ¶ about how climates actually work before we can ¶ predict future climate conditions.¶ The roughly bell-shaped distribution of answers is ¶ repeated for about a third of the 54 questions ¶ addressing scientific issues (as opposed to opinions ¶ about the IPCC, where journalists get their ¶ information, personal identification with ¶ environmental causes, etc.). Answers to the other ¶ questions about science were divided almost equally ¶ between distributions that lean toward skepticism and ¶ those that lean toward alarmism. What this means is ¶ that for approximately two-thirds of the questions ¶ asked, scientific opinion is deeply divided, and in half ¶ of those cases, most scientists disagree with positions that are at the foundation of the alarmist case. This ¶ survey certainly shows no

consensus on the science ¶ behind the global warming scare.¶ The questions for which most scientists give ¶ alarmist answers are those that ask for an opinion ¶ about the ―big picture,‖ such as ―How convinced are ¶ you that climate change poses a very serious and ¶ dangerous threat to humanity?‖ These questions ask ¶ about beliefs and convictions, not discrete scientific ¶ facts or knowledge. When asked questions about ¶ narrower scientific matters, scientists seem quick to ¶ admit their uncertainty.¶ This survey, like previous ones done by Bray and ¶ von Storch, provided a fascinating look at cognitive ¶ dissonance in the scientific community. When asked, ¶ majorities of climate scientists say they do not believe ¶ the scientific claims that underlie the theory and ¶ predictions of catastrophic anthropogenic climate ¶ change, yet large majorities of those same scientists¶ say they nevertheless believe in the theory and its¶ predictions. This cognitive dissonance gives rise to ¶ and sustains a popular mass delusion.

A2 Warming Bad Authors- They’re HacksThere is plenty of money on the warming bad side tooJaworowski 2004 [Professor Zbigniew M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc. is the chairman of the Scientific Council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw. Winter “Solar Cycles, Not CO2, Determine Climate” 21st Century Science Tech http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202004/Winter2003-4/global_warming.pdf]

In 1989, Stephen Schneider advised: “To capture the public¶ imagination . . . we have to . . . make simplified dramatic¶ statements, and little mention of any doubts one might have.¶ . . . Each of us has to decide the right balance between being¶ effective and being honest.”3¶ This turned out to be an “effective” policy: Since 1997, each of approximately 2,000¶ American climate scientists (only 60 of them with Ph.D.¶ degrees) received an average of $1 million annually for¶ research;4, 5¶ on a world scale, the annual budget for climate¶ research runs to $5 billion.6¶ It is interesting that in the United¶ States, most of this money goes toward discovering the change¶ of global climate and its causes, while Europeans apparently¶ believe that man-made warming is already on, and spend¶ money mostly on studying the effects of warming.

Warming bad authors are a product of money and UN mandateJaworowski 2010 [Zbigniew, Ph.¶ D., M.D., D.Sc., has researched the atmospheric pollution of glaciers and CO2¶ concentrations in the atmosphere for many years, and is the author of numerous ¶ publications on climate change. He serves as the Polish ¶ representative in the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, and is a member ¶ of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) January 15, “‘Global Warming’: A Lie Aimed ¶ At Destroying Civilization” EIR Science and Technology http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles_2010/Jaworowski_interview.pdf]

Indeed, these researchers are guilty of¶ brazen fraud, bringing us into a trap, which has dire¶ consequences. For many years they have been incredibly confident, ignoring any criticism of their arguments.¶ But they had the overwhelming support of the United¶ Nations, and specifically the IPCC, the United Nations¶ group charged with examining the impact of human activities on climate change, which takes the lead in all¶ this confusion. The IPCC thesis is based on research¶ from the CRU. Scientists from the University of East¶ Anglia have at their disposal enormous sums of money¶ and political support. In practice, they simply obey the¶ dictates of the United Nations, which is promoting the¶ global warming initiative, in order to suppress the development of industry, which they claim is destroying¶ the Biosphere of the Earth.

A2 Warming Causes Extinction- Now Not UnprecedentedNo catastrophic warming and its not human caused- past temperatures were hotter and we didn’t cause them nor die from themIdso, Carter and Singer 2011 [Craig D. Ph.D Chairman for the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Robert M. Ph.D Adjunct Research Fellow James Cook University, S. Fred Ph.D President of Science and Environmental Policy Project, Climate Change¶ Reconsidered¶ 2011 Interim Report” Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change http://nipccreport.org/reports/2011/pdf/2011NIPCCinterimreport.pdf

Evidence of a Medieval Warm Period (MWP) ¶ approximately 1,000 years ago, when there was ¶ about 28 percent less CO2 in the atmosphere than ¶ there is currently, would show there is nothing ¶ unusual, unnatural, or unprecedented about recent ¶ temperatures. Such evidence is now overwhelming. ¶ New evidence not reported in NIPCC-1 finds the ¶ Medieval Warm Period occurred in North America, ¶ Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, Antarctica, ¶ and the Northern Hemisphere. Despite this ¶ evidence, Mann et al. (2009) continue to understate ¶ the true level of warming during the MWP by ¶ cherry-picking proxy and instrumental records.¶ Research from locations around the world reveals a ¶ significant period of elevated air temperatures that ¶ immediately preceded the Little Ice Age, during a ¶ time that has come to be known as the Little ¶ Medieval Warm Period.¶ Recent reconstructions of climate history find the ¶ human influence does not stand out relative to ¶ other, natural causes of climate change. While ¶ global warming theory and models predict polar ¶ areas would warm most rapidly, the warming of ¶ Greenland was 33 percent greater in magnitude in ¶ 1919–1932 than it was in 1994–2007, and ¶ Antarctica cooled during the second half of the ¶ twentieth century.¶ Perlwitz et al. (2009) reported ―a decade-long ¶ decline (1998–2007) in globally averaged ¶ temperatures from the record heat of 1998‖ and ¶ noted U.S. temperatures in 2008 ―not only declined ¶ from near-record warmth of prior years, but were in ¶ fact colder than the official 30-year reference ¶ climatology … and further were the coldest since at ¶ least 1996.‖¶ New research disputes IPCC‘s claim that it has ¶ ferreted out all significant influences of the world‘s ¶ many and diverse urban heat islands from the ¶ temperature databases they use to portray the ¶ supposedly unprecedented warming of the past few ¶ decades.

Current temperatures are historically low- your evidence is only a shapshot of a broader trendIdso and Idso 2011 Craig D. (founder and chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) Sherwood B. (president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) February “Carbon Dioxide and Earth’s Future Pursuing the Prudent Path” http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/prudentpath/prudentpath.pdf.

The claim: With respect to air temperature, the climate-alarmist contention is multifaceted. It is claimed that over the past several decades: (a) earth's temperature has risen to a level that is unprecedented over the past millennium or more, (b) the world has been warming at a rate that is equally unprecedented, and (c) both of these dubious achievements have been made possible by the similarly unprecedented magnitude of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, due to humanity's ever-increasing burning

of fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil.¶ With respect to the level of warmth the earth has recently attained, it is important to see how it compares with prior temperatures experienced by the planet, in order to determine the degree of "unprecedentedness" of its current warmth.¶ Taking a rather lengthy view of the subject, Petit et al. (1999) found that peak temperatures experienced during the current interglacial, or Holocene, have been the coldest of the last five interglacials, with the four interglacials that preceded the Holocene being, on average, more than 2°C warmer (see figure at right). And in a more recent analysis of the subject, Sime et al. (2009) suggested that the "maximum interglacial temperatures over the past 340,000 years were between 6.0°C and 10.0°C above present-day values." If anything, therefore, these findings suggest that temperatures of the Holocene, or current interglacial, were indeed unusual, but not unusually warm. Quite to the contrary, they have been unusually cool.

Warming will not cause extinction- the Medieval Warm period was just as bad- models that say otherwise are wrongIdso and Idso 2011 Craig D. (founder and chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) Sherwood B. (president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) February “Carbon Dioxide and Earth’s Future Pursuing the Prudent Path” http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/prudentpath/prudentpath.pdf.

Zooming in a little closer to the present, we compare earth's modern temperatures with those of the past 1000 years, where the IPCC bases its claim for recent heretofore-unreached high temperatures on the infamous "hockey stick" temperature history of Mann et al. (1998, 1999). There is a problem with this history, however, in that reconstructed temperatures derived from a variety of proxy data (which make up the bulk of the temperature history) are replaced near its end with the historical record of directly-measured temperatures, resulting in an "apples vs. oranges" type of comparison, where the latter cannot be validly compared with the former, because the two types of data are not derived in the same way and are, therefore, not perfectly compatible with each other.¶ In addition, subsequent evidence indicated that the reconstructed temperatures of some regions did not rise as dramatically as their directly-measured values did over the latter part of the 20th century (Cook et al., 2004), demonstrating the importance of the problem and suggesting that if there had been any directly-measured temperatures during the earlier part of the past millennium, they may also have been higher than the reconstructed temperatures of that period. Therefore, due to this divergence problem, as D'Arrigo et al. (2008) have described it, reconstructions based on tree-ring data from certain regions "cannot be used to directly compare past natural warm periods (notably, the Medieval Warm Period) with recent 20th century warming, making it more difficult to state unequivocally that the recent warming is unprecedented."¶ In a much improved method of temperature reconstruction based on tree-ring analysis, Esper et al. (2002) employed an analytical technique that allows accurate long-term climatic trends to be derived from individual tree-ring series that are of much shorter duration than the potential climatic oscillation being studied; and they applied this technique to over 1200 individual tree-ring series derived from fourteen different locations scattered across the extratropical region of the Northern Hemisphere. This work revealed, as they describe it, that "past comparisons of the Medieval Warm Period with the 20th-century warming back to the year 1000 have not included all of the Medieval Warm Period and, perhaps, not even its warmest interval." And in further commenting on this important finding, Briffa and Osborn (2002) revealed that "an early period of warmth in the late 10th

and early 11th centuries is more pronounced than in previous large-scale reconstructions." In addition, the Esper et al. record made it abundantly clear that the peak warmth of the Medieval Warm Period was fully equivalent to the warmth of the present.¶ In another important study, von Storch et al. (2004) demonstrated that past variations in real-world temperature "may have been at least a factor of two larger than indicated by empirical reconstructions," and in commenting on their findings, Osborn and Briffa (2004) stated that "if the true natural variability of Northern Hemisphere temperature is indeed greater than is currently accepted," which they appeared to suggest is likely the case, "the extent to which recent warming can be viewed as 'unusual' would need to be reassessed." And more recently, Mann et al. (2009) have had to admit that even using the "apples vs. oranges" approach, the warmth over a large part of the North Atlantic, Southern Greenland, the Eurasian Arctic, and parts of North America during the Medieval Warm Period was "comparable to or exceeds that of the past one-to-two decades in some regions."

A2 Warming Causes Extinction- Models IndictThe models that suggest that current warming is unique are the worst- better models that take into account more comparable variables say now is not uniqueIdso and Idso 2011 Craig D. (founder and chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) Sherwood B. (president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) February “Carbon Dioxide and Earth’s Future Pursuing the Prudent Path” http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/prudentpath/prudentpath.pdf.

Ljungqvist also notes that "decadal mean temperatures in the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere seem to have equaled or exceeded the AD 1961-1990 mean temperature level during much of the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period," and he says that "the second century, during the Roman Warm Period, is the warmest century during the last two millennia," while adding that "the highest average temperatures in the reconstruction are encountered in the mid to late tenth century," which was during the Medieval Warm Period. He warns, however, that the temperature of the last two decades "is possibly higher than during any previous time in the past two millennia," but adds that "this is only seen in the instrumental temperature data and not in the multi-proxy reconstruction itself," which is akin to saying that this possibility only presents itself if one applies Michael Mann's "Nature trick" of comparing "apples and oranges," which is clearly not valid, as discussed earlier in this report.¶ This new study of Ljungqvist is especially important in that it utilizes, in his words, "a larger number of proxy records than most previous reconstructions," and because it "substantiates an already established history of long-term temperature variability." All of these facts, taken together, clearly demonstrate that there is nothing unusual, nothing unnatural or nothing unprecedented about the planet's current level of warmth, seeing it was just as warm as, or even warmer than, it has been recently during both the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods, when the atmosphere's CO2 concentration was more than 100 ppm less than it is today. And this latter observation, together with the realization that earth's climate naturally transits back and forth between cooler and warmer conditions on a millennial timescale, demonstrates that there is absolutely no need to associate the planet's current level of warmth with its current higher atmospheric CO2 concentration, in clear contradiction of the worn-out climate-alarmist claim that the only way to explain earth's current warmth is to associate it with the greenhouse effect of CO2. That claim -- for which there is no supporting evidence, other than misplaced trust in climate models -- is unsound.

A2 Warming Hurts Biodiversity- Flawed ModelsYour Biodiversity studies are flawed- difference between fine and coarse grid scalesIdso and Idso 2011 Craig D. (founder and chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) Sherwood B. (president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) February “Carbon Dioxide and Earth’s Future Pursuing the Prudent Path” http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/prudentpath/prudentpath.pdf.

In discussing their findings, Randin et al. suggested that the vastly different results they obtained when using fine and coarse grid scales might help to explain what they call the Quaternary Conundrum, i.e. "why fewer species than expected went extinct during glacial periods when models predict so many extinctions with similar amplitude of climate change (Botkin et al., 2007)." In addition, they noted that "coarse-resolution predictions based on species distribution models are commonly used in the preparation of reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change," which are then used by "conservation planners, managers, and other decision makers to anticipate Biodiversity losses in alpine and other systems across local, regional, and larger scales," but which, unfortunately, give a highly-warped and erroneous view of the subject.

A2 Ocean AcidificationEstimates of ocean acidification are overblownIdso and Idso 2011 Craig D. (founder and chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) Sherwood B. (president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) February “Carbon Dioxide and Earth’s Future Pursuing the Prudent Path” http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/prudentpath/prudentpath.pdf.

The chemistry aspect of the ocean acidification hypothesis is rather straightforward, but it is not as solid as many make it out to be; and a number of respected researchers have published papers demonstrating that the drop in oceanic pH will not be nearly as great as the IPCC and others predict it will be, nor that it will be as harmful as they claim it will be. Consider, for example, the figure below, which shows historical and projected fossil fuel CO2 emissions and atmospheric CO2 concentrations out to the year 2500, as calculated by NOAA's Pieter Tans (2009). As can be seen there, his analysis indicates that the air's CO2 concentration will peak well before 2100, and at only 500 ppm compared to the 800 ppm value predicted in one of the IPCC's scenarios. And it is also worth noting that by the time the year 2500 rolls around, the atmosphere's CO2 concentration actually drops back down to about what it is today.¶ When these emissions estimates are transformed into reductions of oceanic pH, it can readily be seen in the following figure that Tans' projected pH change at 2100 is far less than that of the IPCC. And Tans' analysis indicates a pH recovery to values near those of today by the year 2500, clearly suggesting that things are not the way the world's climate alarmists make them out to be, especially when it comes to anthropogenic CO2 emissions and their effects on the air's CO2 content and oceanic pH values.

The fish will adapt to ocean acidificationIdso and Idso 2011 Craig D. (founder and chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) Sherwood B. (president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) February “Carbon Dioxide and Earth’s Future Pursuing the Prudent Path” http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/prudentpath/prudentpath.pdf.

Two other phenomena that suggest the predicted decline in oceanic pH will have little to no lasting negative effects on marine life are the abilities of essentially all forms of life to adapt and evolve. Of those experiments in the database that report the length of time the organisms were subjected to reduced pH levels, for example, the median value was only four days. And many of the experiments were conducted over periods of only a few hours, which is much too short a time for organisms to adapt or evolve to successfully cope with new environmental conditions. And when one allows for such phenomena -- as oceanic pH declines ever-so-slowly in the real world of nature -- the possibility of marine life experiencing a negative response to ocean acidification becomes even less likely (Idso, 2009).

CO2 doesn’t cause acidification and it doesn’t kill everything in the ocean anywaysIdso, Carter and Singer 2011 [Craig D. Ph.D Chairman for the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Robert M. Ph.D Adjunct Research Fellow James Cook University, S. Fred Ph.D President of Science and Environmental Policy Project, Climate Change¶ Reconsidered¶ 2011 Interim

Report” Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change http://nipccreport.org/reports/2011/pdf/2011NIPCCinterimreport.pdf

The IPCC expresses concern that rising ¶ atmospheric CO2 concentrations are lowering the ¶ pH values of oceans and seas, a process called ¶ acidification, and that this could harm aquatic life. ¶ But the drop in pH values that could be attributed ¶ to CO2 is tiny compared to natural variations ¶ occurring in some ocean basins as a result of ¶ seasonal variability, and even day-to-day variations ¶ in many areas. Recent estimates also cut in half the ¶ projected pH reduction of ocean waters by the year ¶ 2100 (Tans, 2009).¶ Real-world data contradict predictions about the ¶ negative effects of rising temperatures, rising CO2¶ concentrations, and falling pH on aquatic life. ¶ Studies of algae, jellyfish, echinoids, abalone, sea ¶ urchins, and coral all find no harmful effects ¶ attributable to CO2 or acidification.

A2 Warming Causes Resource WarsNo resource wars from warmingJaworowski 2004 [Professor Zbigniew M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc. is the chairman of the Scientific Council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw. Winter “Solar Cycles, Not CO2, Determine Climate” 21st Century Science Tech http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202004/Winter2003-4/global_warming.pdf]

The strongest fears of the population concern the melting of¶ mountain glaciers and parts of the Greenland and Antarctic continental glaciers, which supposedly would lead to a rise in the¶ oceanic level by 29 centimeters in 2030, and by 71 cm in 2070.¶ Some forecasts predict that this increase of ocean levels could¶ reach even 367 cm.24¶ In this view, islands, coastal regions, and¶ large metropolitan cities would be flooded, and whole nations¶ would be forced to migrate. On October 10, 1991, The New¶ York Times announced that as soon as 2000, the rising ocean¶ level would compel the emigration of a few million people.¶ Doomsayers preaching the horrors of warming are not troubled by the fact that in the Middle Ages, when for a few hundred years it was warmer than it is now, neither the Maldive¶ atolls nor the Pacific archipelagos were flooded. Global¶ oceanic levels have been rising for some hundreds or thousands of years (the causes of this phenomenon are not clear).¶ In the last 100 years, this increase amounted to 10 cm to 20¶ cm,24¶ but it does not seem to be accelerated by the 20th¶ Century warming. It turns out that in warmer climates, there is¶ more water that evaporates from the ocean (and subsequently¶ falls as snow on the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps) than¶ there is water that flows to the seas from melting glaciers.17